Paul Ford: Hi, I’m Paul Ford.

Rich Ziade: And I’m Rich Ziade.

Paul: And this is The Aboard Podcast, a podcast about how AI is changing the world of software—or not. And today we have a very special remote-only episode from the….very close to the Beqaa Valley, I think. I don’t know where it is, actually. We’re going to get into that. Can we, should we do it, Rich? Should we talk about it?

Rich: I’m Christiane Amanpour.

Paul: No, you’re not.

Rich: Reporting from Lebanon. Okay, let’s get started.

[intro music]

Paul: So, Rich, where are you?

Rich: I’m in Lebanon. I’m in the north of Lebanon.

Paul: Not Lebanon, Pennsylvania, or one of the many other biblically inspired Lebanons, but the actual, like, Lebanon-Lebanon.

Rich: Yes, yes, that’s right.

Paul: All right.

Rich: I’m in Lebanon, on the mouth of the Mediterranean, where East meets West, I guess you could say.

Paul: Cool. I am at home in Brooklyn, because even though we tried to use our fancy podcast studio with a remote setup, Lebanon cut out, like, 40 minutes of the last recording. So little infrastructure issues, but here we are, we’re both doing remotes. It’s very exciting. And I thought, given that you’re in Lebanon, it’s a good opportunity to talk about what you’re learning and seeing about the world.

Rich: Sure. Mmm hmm.

Paul: And I thought I would just show you some pictures and get you to describe them.

Rich: Okay.

Paul: And remember, most people are listening, so let’s bring them into our visual game.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: And we’ll—you’ll describe it. I’ll describe it. And then we’ll just sort of riff a little bit about how things are going. Ready?

Rich: Worth noting, I’m just, I’m not in a random place. I was born in Lebanon. I’m of Lebanese background. I’m an American. I’ve been in America pretty much my entire life. But I have some friends and family here. Let’s do it.

Paul: Okay, so, this is what appears to be a scrawled picture of a tree. What are you looking at here?

Rich: This is obviously a kindergarten assignment where you get to draw different flags. And some child drew the Lebanese flag.

Paul: No, I have pulled the rug out from you under you, just to start. This is the Lebanese flag as sketched by the parliament. If you go to Wikipedia, you can see it. And it does look like a children’s drawing. And the reason that is is because they kind of jammed the country together. And we’re like, “Hey, what about a cedar tree? What about, you know, like, let’s get going.” There’s no, like, Betsy Ross story here. It’s, like, a bunch of guys in a room with a with a magic marker.

Rich: Okay. It’s good to know that the founding fathers of Lebanon were seven years old.

Paul: I think that’s real. And speaking of cedars, I’m showing you something absolutely beautiful. Can you describe it?

Rich: Yes. These are the cedars of Lebanon. Lebanon is known for its various cedar forests that are dotted in a few places in Lebanon. There aren’t many left. And fun fact, the reason there aren’t that many left is that they would often gift the pharaohs with cedar wood, and so many of them were chopped down. Cedar takes a very long time to grow. There are initiatives here where they planted baby cedar trees to get it going again. But if I’m not mistaken, Lebanon and California are the only places where cedar trees originate, meaning they weren’t transplanted by humans to grow in other places. Again, I don’t know 100%, but I’ve heard that from a couple of sources. So cedars are very beautiful, by the way. They’re very regal and kind of striking. I was near the cedars yesterday. It’s pretty cool.

Paul: I got to tell you. I’m looking at this picture. It’s, like, the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. It’s like it’s been beat up a little bit. It’s been taken care of.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: It’s got, it’s just got these sort of green leaves. But it just looks like some sort of deep foundational, genetically programmed version of “tree.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Like, you’re just like, oh, man, okay.

Rich: Yeah. There’s something almost mystical about them, and I think it’s the environments they grow into. So the photo you’re showing has, like, this mist. I’ve seen that, by the way.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: Where everything looks like it’s gone to only green and white, and it’s pretty wild. They’re very beautiful.

Paul: Now I’m showing you what looks to be, like, some sort of modern Mediterranean, but also 14th century village. I see a dome. I see a mosque. What’s going on here?

Rich: I’m not sure. It looks—is it Byblos? Is that what I’m looking at?

Paul: It’s Byblos. It’s—

Rich: Yes.

Paul: Good job. Good geography matching. Yeah.

Rich: I’m actually about a 15- to 20-minute drive from Byblos. It’s situated in the north. It’s a port town. I mean, history, there’s just layers of it here. There’s the remnants of the Roman Empire. There are remnants of the Ottoman Empire. There are strong religious symbols everywhere. There are citadels that are defending the port from invaders that you’ll see that are still standing, that now have, like, nightclubs and restaurants around them. So it’s a pretty wild place. Uh oh.

Paul: And now I’m, this is the last picture before we get to sort of the focus. I’ve got a, it’s a portrait of, I’ll describe it: Incredibly attractive people, just young people, hundreds and hundreds of them, holding up signs saying kind of Lebanese Pride, marching down what looks like could be that street in Byblos.

Rich: Oh yeah.

Paul: Like, you’ve got this old 1400 city. And then you have these really cool people, some of them with flowers in their hair, who all appear to be, a lot of them appear to be, like, in their 20s. Just, like, what are they upset about? What do you think they’re upset about?

Rich: Lebanon is in a region that has a lot of tensions. All you have to do is open up news about the Middle East. And a lot of strong conservative sentiment, grounded oftentimes in religion or political causes and whatnot. But Lebanon has a notoriously stubborn and youthful progressive, sort of libertarian streak to it. They believe in strong independence of individuals and individual expression. Also they wrap that up in Lebanese identity. It’s worth noting, Lebanon and the whole Middle East was kind of chopped up by colonial powers. And so the thing that’s interesting about Lebanon is it sort of held on to a much more Western sort of progressive mindset. Now, mind you, that created tension and led to civil wars in Lebanon. [laughing]

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: So it’s—not everyone’s on the same page, but they are undoubtedly the most stylish protesters I’ve ever seen.

Paul: No, they really, they really are. They all look like they’re on, like, an HBO show. Like, this looks like a setup. [laughter] Like, it looks like Kylie Jenner is in here somewhere.

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And then the last old-school—I just obviously cached Wikipedia for this little visual journey that I’ve taken you on that we’re describing. But I’m going to describe, there are three men who look like they could be in your family. It’s a picture from 1950. They are just, there’s a lot of little plates with olives and things on it. Like, what am I looking at here?

Rich: I mean, this is just the communal experience in Lebanon, and I see some of the glasses have arak, which is the sort of the Lebanese liquor of choice. It’s like ouzo, like Greek ouzo. You mix it with water because it’s very strong.

Paul: Mmm.

Rich: It’s made from anise and I think the remnants of white grapes, if I’m not mistaken. This is a page out of sort of the Mediterranean, the Greek, the Italian, the communal meal. A lot of shared plates, a lot of conversation. The meal isn’t really for eating—

Paul: This is real.

Rich: —it’s for talking and connecting and eating. That’s, it’s not just to eat in Lebanon.

Paul: No, I don’t think the Lebanese have any—I doubt there is a lot of nutrition in the conversation. It just happens to be that food is always there. Everyone is always gathering. Honestly, if you order an entree, you give yourself away as having no understanding of the culture.

Rich: [laughing] Yeah.

Paul: It’s the most, it is the most small—I ordered an entree with you at a Lebanese restaurant once early in our friendship and you were like, “What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?”

Rich: Yeah, yeah. Who let you in here?

Paul: I couldn’t understand it.

Rich: Speaking of nutrition, it’s worth noting, it’s actually, it’s the Mediterranean diet. It’s actually extremely vegetarian friendly.

Paul: Mmm.

Rich: Lots of chickpeas, sesame, beans. But it’s yeah, it’s lovely. It’s actually very good food from a health perspective.

Paul: So now I am changing it upwards. I want to show you a picture of a very modern office park. It’s got a lot of parking, got a lot of, like, 10-story buildings, and it looks great, looks like a place that would be nice to work. So what’s going on there?

Rich: So this is the Beirut Digital District. Now, the Beirut Digital District is a tech hub. It’s actually a set of office buildings that are kind of designed not just to let any tenants, it’s business tenants, corporate tenants be there, but tech-forward companies be there. Why? To create central spaces and there’s a sort of a courtyard where these companies can co- mingle. It is in the heart of Beirut, which is the capital of Lebanon. It is also sort of right there in the…it’s on a fault line. It’s in an area that often has been exposed to conflict. It’s had to shut down a couple of times. There’s been a lot of, you know, upheaval in Lebanon over the last five, seven years. But it’s really a testament to Lebanon’s optimism, its tenacity to kind of keep going, in spite of the circumstances there.

Paul: So we drop, we drop a technology hub. When you, when you talk about this area, here’s what I understand, I understand that the south of Lebanon—south of Beirut, controlled by Hezbollah. The north of Beirut is more kind of, like, classic cosmopolitan mix. And this is kind of sitting, the digital district is sitting kind of in between those two worlds. That’s what you mean?

Rich: In a way, yeah, I mean look, Lebanon, Beirut is extremely dense. You could take one turn and you are in a very traditional sort of religiously minded community and you take another turn and you are in Paris. Like it’s just—

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: Modern and cool and people are sipping martinis. That’s Lebanon. Like, that is Beirut especially. And it’s all kind of smashes together and it sort of maintains an equilibrium, not because everyone’s tolerant about it, it just finds its own equilibrium. There’s actually every so often over, it boils over and there’s tension. But it’s kind of what makes Lebanon so different and unique. You know, there’s 15 million Lebanese outside of Lebanon and everyone you meet here is connected to someone outside who’s aspired, done well, entrepreneurs, professionals, and they want to bring that back in in different ways and they want to, they want to emulate it in different ways. It’s an aspirational culture. It just is, it’s an optimistic culture in spite of everything it’s gone through.

Paul: Well, walk me through this, right? Because the point I’m sort of making more broadly when I was putting these pictures together is we have this very—and actually I’m going to pause for a sec because there, last night was the July 4th in America. And I’m in New York City. It is absolutely bananas anarchy. And what you realize, we went to a friend’s place, 360 degrees of fireworks that never stopped. Not just the Macy’s but, like, the whole city just blows itself up.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: As we walked home, we walked through, like, three different ethnic enclaves. You know, like the Bangladeshis were out and they have their own fireworks tradition. Like, one thing that is, that brings everyone together is we just, every culture has its own tradition of just loving to blow stuff up.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And it’s very, it was very sweet. Like we, you know, it’s, like, we just kind of went neighborhood to neighborhood and everybody was just blowing, blowing up stuff in their own special way.

Rich: Sure.

Paul: It was very delightful. So, so like I, there’s a beautiful cosmopolitanism when you bring those cultures together. There’s also conflict. There’s also, like, stressors as, and, like, Lebanon is just sort of almost ground zero for all of that. But here I am, I got this thing, it’s been around for 4,000 years. I’ve had the Romans, I’ve had, you know, this, that and the other. In America we have Silicon Valley. It’s very insulated. You can go out there, you can try to make your fortune. There are venture capital, you know, folks just kind of pouring zillions of dollars in, and it can turn—this huge area can kind of turn on a dime. I was just sort of like, when you see this, I know you’ve, you’ve talked to the Beirut Digital District folks, and you’ve spent time with them. It feels to me like this is just a really hard thing to do to try to create a technology innovation hub in a place that is just not associated with that. Like, trying to sort of, like, bring this culture, this culture of, like, technology change to a radically different 4,000 year old culture. And sort of, like, I don’t know, just react to that. Am I—what, what do you think?

Rich: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is a product of Lebanon embracing Western capitalistic ideals, frankly.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: It’s embracing ambition, it’s embracing entrepreneurship. It is disruptive, which is a word that is often used in the Valley. The Lebanese like the idea of somehow upending the status quo and finding opportunity in causing change to happen. They often do that when they leave. There’s endless stories of Lebanese entrepreneurs that land all over the world and dominate, and succeed, because they’re willing to take risks and sort of seek out opportunity.

Paul: A lot of them are named Carlos, oddly. Like, you got Carlos Ghosn, who’s back in Lebanon after a little tricky time at Nissan.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: And then Carlos Slim is Lebanese in Mexico, right?

Rich: Yep, yep. And yeah, and you have—

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: There was a lot of immigration, not just to the United States and Europe, but to South America and Central America. So there’s a lot of Lebanese in South America, a lot of Lebanese South America. A lot of Lebanese in Canada, as the US sort of tightened immigration, a lot of people routed to Canada. A lot of Lebanese in Australia.

Paul: I mean, fast forward 10 years. Like, do you think this digital district is growing and growing and growing? Do you think this is kind of a little bit of an island in the city? Like, where can this go? Because this is a tough place to do business. It’s a complicated country and it’s an unstable region, right? Like, what—if you were to sort of like think about next steps for something like this, what would it look like?

Rich: Mmm hmm. I mean, look, there’s an irrational optimism to every entrepreneur and there’s an irrational optimism to the Lebanese.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: Like, Beirut Digital District is banking on better days ahead for Lebanon. And it is the type of mindset that when like, hard things come, come at you, you navigate them and then you kind of dust yourself off and you don’t just close up tent and leave. You sort of say, “All right, well that’s behind us. Looks like maybe better days are ahead again.” [laughing] It’s, it’s a wild thing, you know?

Paul: Well, but this is real, right? Like, it won’t—I feel this way in business with you sometimes. Like, we make bets that are extremely optimistic, even when the world does not feel optimistic. And you sort of have to, because in case things get better, if that infrastructure isn’t there, the next step of things getting better cannot happen.

Rich: Yes. And look, there is—

Paul: So when you look at, but when you, when you look at this, these nice buildings, you’re, you’re thinking to yourself, that’s a little bit in trust for the future. We’re assuming some stability, we’re assuming technology companies continue to be interested in this population and we, if things stabilize, boy, this could grow. Because there’s lots of smart people. There’s lots of, I mean, we work with tons of Lebanese people who are just great technologists. Right? So like, if we can stabilize, here’s the building, we can go from there.

Rich: Yeah, it’s a little delusional.

Paul: That’s okay.

Rich: And I don’t mean that put-down sort of way. Like, I think any startup founder who is like, “I’m going to disrupt the way taxis work forever” is a little delusional.

Paul: We’re delusional.

Rich: We’re delusional.

Paul: Our business, we’re sitting here doing a podcast. We’ve got an AI—we’re convinced that we have found a way to change the way that business software is created. It’s, like, a multi-trillion dollar industry.

Rich: Yeah!

Paul: And you and I are pretty sure, right? You know, we think we got something here.

Rich: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Paul: Okay, so now inside of Beirut Digital District, you know, we’re kind of talking our book a little here, but not really. There’s a, there’s an organization called OnRamp Academy and I got a website here. It says OnRamp, “accelerate your career path.” Young attractive people again, just, just, but I think they’re using—one’s on a Mac. They’re on Macs, they’re on iPads. And it says you can register for programs. So what’s going on here?

Rich: OnRamp is an organization we’re involved in. It is an upskilling boot camp. So effectively, if you have a baseline education, maybe a little bit of experience, and you want to dial up your abilities so you can get a better job or find a new job, OnRamp is a nonprofit organization that will educate you on sort of what the modern world is looking for. Right now, we just do tech, but it’s very sort of current and topical in terms of what seems to be in-demand out there, and let’s educate you on it. And then we try to help you find work.

And OnRamp is in its second year now. It’s on its, I think, 70th or 80th students, set of students. And it’s gone real well. I mean, it’s changed people’s lives. Like, we know this for a fact. It’s actually, not just, “Oh, I helped someone get a job,” but when you help someone get a job in this environment, you’re helping probably about 15 people between family and extended family.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: So it’s a cool program that sort of is another bet, is another bet on Lebanon’s remote-work capabilities. The Lebanese are always natively educated in English as well as other languages. It’s worth noting they’re very good at communicating. Very fast on their feet, just by the nature of the environment. And it’s a, it’s been, it’s a program we’re very happy to be connected with.

Paul: I mean, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, like, let’s take a step back and just sort of, after we sold our agency, you really wanted to build something that would give back to the country, and this was where you started. There’s more to do, right?

Rich: Correct.

Paul: But this was, this has been going on for a couple years, and it’s, it’s really, it’s really good. I think it’s also worth emphasizing, because of Lebanon’s position, like, literal physical position in the world, you end up with people who are really, like, getting out of Syria, out of Palestine, and trying to reboot new lives, having maybe lost a lot, like, lost everything.

Rich: Yes, that’s right.

Paul: And so that’s a, that’s a portion of these students. Like, it’s people who are just like, I need—and, you know, we’ve talked to other people who are trying to do kind of education around digital stuff in the country, and they describe situations where if somebody can get a laptop, they will just kind of sit on the, on the curb and practice if they can. Like, here, there’s a facility, and so on and so forth. But it’s a very eager community, very educated community that has some really bad geopolitical luck.

Rich: Yup.

Paul: And, and I like, I feel that like this is going to keep going for a while. We’re going to keep growing OnRamp. It’s really solid. Some of the talent that’s coming are people we might want to work with as we’re growing our company. So it’s a really, like, I don’t know, it’s a positive thing. You and I actually kind of don’t do a lot on it. There’s a really, really good team on it who are very accountable and tell us what’s up.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: But it’s a cool thing and I’m glad you started it. I didn’t fully understand it when you were getting it going, but. So that’s OnRamp. And then kind of next door to Onramp, there is an agency in Beirut. It’s in the Beirut Digital District, if I’m not wrong, called Speedlane. Okay? So you can go to OnRamp Academy. You can look at their website. If you’re in the region, you can apply. What is Speedlane, Richard?

Rich: Speedlane is a high-end boutique digital agency that builds really cool, excellent web experiences, web apps, websites. They do everything. They’re a very talented group. They are a partner company of Aboard. They are an implementation partner of Aboard. We actually—

Paul: Lebanese team, but also a U.S. presence. It’s a global company.

Rich: And a U.S. presence, yes, yes. And Speedlane is…it’s great. We’ve hired people into Speedlane in the past.

Paul: Our product is, a big portion of it was built by Speedlane.

Rich: Correct.

Paul: Under the direction of our engineering team.

Rich: Correct. And it’s a—

Paul: Let’s be clear like that. No, no, but when we’re talking about that, this is an experimental, abstract, AI-powered business software-development automation framework. Like, this is not like, “Make me a database schema,” or, “set up a search engine.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: This is bananas work.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And they rallied, they got it together. It would be very, very hard to find another partner to help here.

Rich: Yeah. That’s right.

Paul: And so Speedlane, as an agency, has been a huge part of our success. So sort of like, another big—what is, I’ve got this Lebanese talent, and this sort of deeply broken Lebanese government, and the entire world is a mess. How do you grow? You know, we want to grow in the region. You think about this a lot, because genetically you’ve been programmed to bring your success back to Lebanon. It’s just, it’s just sort of part of who you are [laughter] and part of what, what many Lebanese people have. Right?

And then at the same time you have this, like, this thing, and everybody loves to say the Lebanese are so resilient, and when you get to know a lot of Lebanese people, they’re just like, “I’m really good on resilience. I would just like a job and, like, less state-level violence and to have my house and to hang out and sort of eat mezze plates with my family.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Right? So like, I think a good way to talk about this, Richard, and a good way to close this podcast out. Here, you know, we’ve given a nice tour of this great, beautiful old country. I’m very connected to it because I know so many Lebanese people right now. You’re there right now. But the chaos and the spikiness of it, of the world always come to rest on Lebanon. And yet at the same time we’ve committed to building, and we sort of keep building in the region. There’s OnRamp and we’re working more and more with Speedlane.

How does—how do you balance that out? You, this is, a lot of these relationships are yours. So it’s a chaotic piece of, it’s chaotic infrastructure, but the humans are very reliable. And like, how do we build and structure growing in a place where you can’t necessarily trust that things are going to be stable tomorrow?

Rich: Yeah, I mean, I think when we start, you know, a little backstory, Speedlane is something we started way—years ago. And we sort of decoupled ourselves from it over the last few years, and now it’s sort of coming back into view. We didn’t know what it was going to become. It turns out that there are very, very talented technologists here in Lebanon. Part of it is we don’t want to lose that talent. And part of it is we do feel a certain bit of loyalty to Speedlane, as an agency.

But as we look ahead, the capabilities—it’s easier to continue to grow what you have than to just go start over again in another country or in another location and whatnot. I feel like we’re not giving the full backstory around Speedlane, as we talk about this, which is, okay, Speedlane is a company that you and I started alongside of our old agency.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: We stepped away from it when our agency was acquired. Now we have—we’re not limited by which kind of business we go into, and so Speedlane is kind of in the picture again. But it was always kind of helping Aboard. Like, I don’t know if we’d be where we are today without Speedlane. Look, you could make a strong case that we should, you know, cut and run. Like, you can make that case. Like, why bother with such a difficult, hostile environment? A) we’ve met some great people. I had lunch with them a few days ago, and they’re….

Paul: You have to, if you’re in the country. That’s not, you can’t—

Rich: There were a lot of small plates. A lot of small plates.

Paul: [laughing] Yeah.

Rich: And look, it’s not a huge group, but, boy, is it a vetted group, and it’s some of the best people we’ve ever worked with. And so I want to lean on that. And, you know, we want to lean on that not as a token of charity, but as a, like, this is really good for business. And so if we can find more talented people, we’d love to. And again—

Paul: There’s another element here. There’s a thing that’s really important because, I mean, we’re talking about a country that sometimes the power goes out. The internet wasn’t always reliable. And it’s a very stubborn populace who, like, wouldn’t always communicate that clearly.

Rich: [laughing] Yeah.

Paul: And you, you’d realize things were going on because you’d be on a conference call, it would go pitch black, and then they would come back in because there’d been a power outage, or they’d look out the window because drones were flying by, right?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: So this is going on. And I gotta say, as a Westerner watching this, boy, do you feel like garbage. You’re just like, “Wow, I was upset because my coffee was bad this morning.” Right?

Rich: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul: And people are just trundling through.

Rich: Well, I mean, yeah, yeah.

Paul: No, no, but the point I want to make is, like, you just have to let, if you accept that the world is chaotic and spiky, and particularly so for this group of people, and you ask them to just kind of do the best they can and figure it out and communicate clearly, the work is of the exact same quality over time. Like, you can just—it feels like you’re kind of entering a very confusing zone.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And I wouldn’t do this without a lot of my native Lebanese tour guides helping me out. But the work is excellent. And the fact that the power goes out sometimes doesn’t mean anything, not really. Not to getting stuff done.

Rich: They also. I mean, just to close it out, they grow a muscle that you don’t often get from other people in other environments, which is they’re incredibly good at adapting, and that can be with a difficult client, that could be in a really nasty piece of tech that you’re trying to solve, or an algorithm you’re working on, or it could be the environment you’re in and that, you know, your infrastructure is not doing great. The Lebanese are, you know, they do scoff at resilience. I think what they’d rather be here is that, you know you can rely on them in difficult, tricky environments. And that’s a meaningful thing for them. That is just how they see the world. They don’t assume stability in the world. That is unfortunately a product of history, but also a really good trait to have in general. [laughing]

Paul: You know, I’m going to tell, I’m going to tell you it’s interesting because you have this culture that’s under a lot of pressure. But people really, they all have their hobbies, right?

Rich: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. Oh yeah. There’s…yeah.

Paul: I’m a big synth nerd and I was looking at the Lebanese synth center [Beirut Synthesizer Center]. I was just curious one day, so I started following it on Instagram. [laughter] And it’s a bunch of Lebanese synth nerds are into, like, modular synths and all the regular stuff that a hobby, a hobbyist who is interested in this stuff would be interested in. It’s a big city.

And then, there was a lot of bombing in the south, and there was essentially an internal refugee displacement situation. People are coming up as Israel is bombing in the south. And suddenly the synth center became a mattress and food distribution center, like, in a minute.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: And I gave some money. Lots of other people gave money. I think they raised, like, $90,000. And then not too long ago they put out a post that said, like, “We raised $90,000 and we’re back to be in the synth center.” Like, that was that, right?

Rich: That’s a pretty normal story.

Paul: Yeah, and when I looked at that, I was like, you know, we, you’re looking at, I don’t know, like I’m on Bluesky and everybody’s just kind of shrieking, like, “You’re not panicking enough, because the world is spiky and politics are a mess right now.” “You need to panic more” essentially is the message.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: But the reality is that the resilient, actual resilient structure wasn’t this, like, government structure. It wasn’t congress, it wasn’t the parliament, it was the synth center saying, “Okay, let’s get mattresses.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And we know people who opened up private schools to make sure that everybody could keep getting educated. We know people who were handing out laptops—like, it’s not great. It’s not ideal. It’d be better if the government was balanced out and could help you out.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: But it actually turns out that pursuing your hobby was the best thing for the community because that network was there to tap into when crisis showed up.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And—

Rich: You’ll often see that.

Paul: I learn a lot.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: I learn a lot from working with the Lebanese because that’s the real resilience. That’s not like, “Oh boy, you guys really get through some tough days.” And, “Yeah, boy, that’s really sad about what happened.” And so on and so forth.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: The real resilience, and it sort of all ties into, like, the family connection and the, the big long lunches, and I know it is a society with deep, deep, deep challenges. But what I have learned is that the healthiest reaction to crisis—and this is absolute baseline human stuff, everybody knows this, but seeing it in action is different, is you find your community, you double down on it, and no matter what happens, you stick with that community.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And so one day it’s modular synths, the next day it’s mattresses for kids, and then the next day it’s synths again. And I think, like, Americans kind of just don’t know where to go right now. And I think the healthiest thing you can do is just go to the things that interest you. But actually let, make sure everybody knows your name and where you live and what’s going on.

Rich: No, I think you’re sharing a more general piece of advice here, which is, you know, we’re on our phones, we’re screaming at each other, we’re just constantly in fist fights. And the truth is, one of the few sort of relatively kind and supportive places left are where you talk about topics that just simply aren’t that controversial, but rather allow you to highlight your own skills and your own knowledge and you get to welcome others in. Because any good community always loves a novice, so they can sort of show them the ropes. This is like, this is generally good healthy advice for…

Paul: It’s Human 101, but it’s also kind of what we’re trying to do and build a new business.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: It’s what we’re going to try to do as we’re growing the—like, this is the basics of sort of growth. And I’m just like, I just wanted to throw it out because that is definitely something I have learned from all of my time exposed to this culture.

Rich: Fourth of July just passed. I have no doubt, I love America, and I have no doubt there are really good communities out there. They’re just not online screaming at each other. They’re just doing their thing. And those communities are orbiting around hobbies or orbiting around towns or orbiting around whatever. It’s too bad that stuff doesn’t surface anymore. And so much of our bandwidth is taken up by shrieking sounds, right?

Paul: There is no money in it, baby. There is just… [laughter] That’s just what it is. Like…

Rich: That’s fair.

Paul: Nobody.

Rich: That’s fair.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: It’s not exciting. [laughing] It’s not as exciting.

Paul: All right.

Rich: All right, well, this is—

Paul: [overlapping] We’re going to do—

Rich: The Aboard Podcast, Paul.

Paul: That’s right. We’re going to do one more of these while you’re in Lebanon. And then, then you’ll get home safe. Everyone check us out. Check out our website. Go and put a nice complicated prompt in the box for the business software you need on our website, aboard.com, and you will see that our platform can build you—very quickly—interesting, secure, intelligent, resilient software for your business.

Rich: Hey-o!

Paul: You can have whatever business software you want. And if you find that interesting, get in touch@helloboard.com. It’s worth noting we are growing. We’re getting quite a bit of inbound. We’re starting to do more work for more people. And so it’s a great time to get in touch if you are a product manager who would like to become an Aboard Solution Engineer and work directly with people and build software, we definitely need engineers, designers, and of course, we are absolutely welcoming new clients and new customers. So we would, we’d love to talk to you. Anything I missed, Richard?

Rich: I think that that does it. Everyone take care of yourselves and take care of the community around you. Have a lovely week.

Paul: What’s a good Lebanese goodbye?

Rich: Dīr bēlak.

Paul: Okay. There it is, everybody. All right.

Rich: It translates to “take care of yourself.”

Paul: All right, well, I will, I will.

Rich: All right, do that, Paul.

Paul: Okay, I will talk to you soon.

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