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What's up everybody? Welcome to a new episode of the All Things Croatia podcast.
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I'm your host, Stanko Zovak. Born and raised in Los Angeles, I'm now living in Zagreb and studying the Croatian language.
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In this series, I'll be talking with people both in the homeland and around the globe who have connections to Croatia.
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We'll hear from business owners, returning the osbora, influencers, musicians and artists, athletes, and the biggest Croatian celebrities that will return my calls.
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But enough about me. Either Moldavia, and let's get started.
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Alright, welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today we have a special guest, Nikola Kraljevic, or Nick for short.
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Nick is the founder and developer of Pleme. Pleme, which means tribe or clan in Croatian, is an online community and app for Croatians to network globally.
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The main goal of the app is to help local Croatians and the wider diospora communicate in a dedicated place and to foster better connections.
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Today we're going to hear about that and a couple other projects that he's working on.
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Nick, thanks for coming on the podcast.
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Thanks for having me. You're great to be here.
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You're actually my first Australian guest. So, you know, I was a little nervous with the time change and everything.
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It seemed like it was three days ahead over there. So, it's a new experience for me.
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Yeah, Gere from down on down. Hello from the future, I guess.
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Yeah, wow. But you're born and raised over there, right? In Australia?
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Yeah, born and raised. Which part?
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I've grown up in the western suburbs of Sydney. So, a lot of Croatians around here, big Croatian community, a lot of clubs, churches, soccer teams, that kind of thing.
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And you're still over there now?
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I'm still over here now, hoping to head to Croatia really, really soon and come see everyone. But yeah, for the moment, I'm still here. So, just working out now, kind of landing Croatia later this year and how long I'm going to be there and what not.
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Yeah, I know it's tough over in Australia to travel for a long time. So, hopefully that's easier now.
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You know, you mentioned the Croatian community over there, a lot of Croatians. What's that like? Because coming from Los Angeles, I mean, there's a big Croatian community here.
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But I feel like, I mean, I can't speak for Sydney. I'm not really sure about any of Australia, really. But in Los Angeles, everything is so far apart.
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And although the community is big, it's not like people are living right next to each other, you know, for the most part.
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You know, you drive, you drive to the downtown for the church. And so everyone is kind of, it's still not like everyone lives on the same little suburb. You know what I mean? What's it like over there?
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Yeah, I guess pretty similar. Sydney is like a similar city to LA in some senses. Like it's a, you know, it's quite spread out.
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So there's a bit of driving involved to go anywhere or trains or that kind of thing. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty similar.
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A lot of pockets around. I've got a lot of relatives in the US around the New York area.
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So it's from, from what it sounds like, I think we've, we're pretty, pretty close and pretty connected. There's a lot of stuff happening with Australia.
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So I don't know. My gut feeling is it's, we're maybe a little bit closer than the LA squad, but I could be wrong.
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No, that makes sense. That makes sense. And what was it like growing up in the, were you involved in the Croatian community at all?
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Yeah, pretty much. I think everyone here, you know, my parents' generation and grandparents' generation were, you know, you know, super, super patriotic Croatian and that kind of thing.
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And I think that's a pretty, pretty similar story for most people here.
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So yeah, it was just, it was honestly just a part of life and, you know, had that close Croatian connection. You know, had a lot of Croatian friends.
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There was always, you know, Croatian activities on weekends. So I've kind of taken it for granted a little bit, but yeah, it's definitely a big part of life here.
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Australia and Sydney itself is pretty multicultural. So, you know, you have your, you know, everyone has their kind of cliques.
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Italians, Greeks, Croatians, you know, all that kind of thing. Everyone still has a pretty good idea of their, you know, cultural heritage and background and that kind of thing.
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Yeah, I think that's definitely a cool aspect of life to have. You know, you can have your cultural identity even within a different, you know, identity.
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You know, you're Australian, but you're Croatian at the same time. I think that's really cool to have those, you know, different pockets of communities.
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You know, I want to get into PLEME, which is, you know, what we're mainly here to talk about your app.
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But before that, can you give us a little bit of your professional background and, you know, your working involvement in tech?
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Yeah, okay. I'll try to be as brief as possible. But yes, I'm, you know, I'm also a cybersecurity person day by day.
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So I've spent the last probably 10 years now in doing cybersecurity stuff for Australian companies in a variety of different fields.
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Cybersecurity is something now that is, you know, like front and center, I guess, in tech and IT. So it's also a good place to be in.
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And, you know, I've just done a couple entrepreneurial things on the side.
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I'm probably, you know, I'd say I'm like someone who likes to have a bit of a tinker, have a bit of a play with a whole bunch of different stuff.
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And it's just naturally led to me creating a whole bunch of apps and products and stuff, you know, in my free time.
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And yeah, it's something I really enjoy. I guess it's, you know, my little, you know, as a kid, I was, you know, very into my little projects.
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And I'm kind of the same now as an adult, you know.
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Yeah, I mean, double that's a, I don't think that's a bad thing. You know, I think that's so cool, such a cool skill to have to be able to, you know, think of something and create something in your mind and then be able to develop it, you know, encoded and bring it to life.
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Did you go to school for that for programming or I mean, I know you're cybersecurity, but also you were talking about app development. Did you go to school for that or were you self taught?
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Yeah, kind of, I'm going to say kind of both. So my dad was also in technology. So I guess from a young age, he kind of got me hooked and kind of developed a love of all things technology.
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And then later I went to, I did a computer science degree at university, finished that and went straight to work and here I am now.
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Very cool. You know, let's get into playmate. When did you first think of the idea? When did you first come up with playmate?
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It would probably be about two and a half years ago now. Obviously, I think we're, you know, at the time, trying to recall exactly, but there's, you know, there's, as you know, on Facebook, there's a whole bunch of different creation groups and, you know, there's Instagram pages and, you know, all that kind of thing.
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And essentially, you know, I think at that stage and, you know, I'm kind of further along in the journey now, but essentially looking at really how you can kind of, you know, give back, contribute and, you know, do something for creations or creation communities and kind of, you know, help each other out, stick together, that sort of thing.
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So yeah, just noticed there was a, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of stuff, you know, that kind of all the Facebook in the, in those groups, so kind of really focused really, you know, mainly around sports and a couple other things.
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But there's, you know, obviously so much more to do in the space and things, you know, you'd want to learn as a creation outside of Croatia with the hopes of, you know, moving to Croatia full time.
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And that kind of thing. So I thought this is probably, you know, despite efforts on, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. We're still kind of not, you know, able to talk about these other topics.
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So how about instead we look at building a network for creations to get together, work this stuff out, help each other out and see how that goes.
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We kind of, I guess, you know, took a while to build and now kind of, you know, just over two years now we're kind of into it. It's kind of growing and now we're ready to look at the kind of the next set of steps of what we're going to do with Plimmer and in that community.
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So.
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And when you first started it, were you, you know, doing like market research, were you going around telling, you know, your family and friends, you know, what do you think of this idea, or is it more just like, you know, I'm going to do this and if it works great, and if it doesn't, you know, well, you know, what was the situation like.
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Yeah, so we did it, we did a little bit of market research, but there was that feeling of, I think, you know, the way online way communities, you know, is kind of headed in this direction. I think I kind of been proven right now in two years.
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There's a whole bunch of different stuff that's popped up that's kind of on that same trend, the plummeters.
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So yeah, a little bit of market research and it was, you know, basically like if I get, you know, you know, this many likes, I'll go do this and I did. So here we are.
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Well, yeah, I mean, the Croatian community is so tight knit and it did feel like there was something lacking, you know, that Plimey offers. So I'm sure it wasn't, you know, the heart of a decision to try and bring that to life for you.
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Was it just you working on it? Did you have a team or some friends helping out?
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Yeah, we had a team and we've got a lot of friends who've, you know, who've really helped out along the way, you know, some of them, you know, almost for nothing. So really grateful for that.
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So, you know, but yeah, so there's me, there's a development team, which do the most of the work. We've got a lot of contributors now for all our premium stuff.
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Those boys and girls are working away really hard on answering all the questions we all want to comment on the answers to. And I hear that there's a big community of friends and stuff and who've really, you know, gone out and above and beyond and helped for, you know, I don't know how I can repay some of them.
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So I'm sure a lot of effort is going into that from a lot of people.
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Yeah, when you first came up with this idea, you know, your first main goal with PLEMEN when you were creating it, has it, have you hit that yet? And now you're at a part where you're even branching out more and, you know, doing more things that you thought you were going to achieve at first?
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Or are you still reaching towards that main goal? If that makes sense?
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Yeah, I think our main goal was to kind of do it, which we have. And now we're kind of looking at, okay, how can we make, you know, this network and the stuff we've learned more valuable for people. So we've, you know, now we're kind of really pivoting to looking at, okay, there's, you know, PLEMEN does, you know, let's say it does 10 things.
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It's doing, you know, five or six of these really well. Another four maybe might be better off as, you know, the standalone products or services. So we're kind of looking at that now and we're kind of getting ready to kind of improve what we have and then spin off a few things to kind of help out because PLEMEN is great, but there's, you know, there's a lot of users who are, you know, instead of interacting all day, they want to be able to, you know, have some different features and do some different things.
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So that's kind of resulted in a whole new stream of work for us. I'm happy to kind of talk about that and go into detail a little bit more on some of those. But yeah, so essentially now we're kind of looking at, you know, building a whole bunch of different stuff to that kind of helps with those initial main goals of
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of what PLEMEN is for, which is, you know, helping creations get together and network globally.
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I wanted to ask you a little more about that and I want to go into the features in a second here. But you mentioned, you know, four or five things that PLEMEN is doing really well right now. You know, what are those? You just mentioned, you know, networking globally.
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What are some of the others?
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Yeah, I think networking, we're doing really well. I think in terms of the premium content we come out with, there's no one really doing anything like this. And there's no way you can really get those questions in one place, which I'd say we're doing really well.
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You know, as like our two main, you know, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff in the app, I think, you know, in terms of, you know, definitely a lot of the message I get regularly is, yep, we can definitely talk about way more topics than other social networks.
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So I'd say we're also doing well there.
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And I guess that's the real main ones. The others, I think, are kind of really technical stuff that I want to get into and bore the listeners. But yeah, I think news as well, we're doing quite well.
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So you can, you know, a lot of people are telling me now that they get their news straight from PLEMEN for the creation news. So yeah, there's a few things I think we're doing pretty well.
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So when you go on to PLEMEN, you know, if I'm a new user, I go on to PLEMEN and I log in. And not only I can talk to, you know, other people on the app, but I can comment on, you know, you have like different, different topics, right, and you can be a part of those groups or not.
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And you can be in discussions. And I didn't know about the news. So you can get your news from there too.
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Yep.
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Can you go into some of what those other features are that you offer? But for, you know, before the features, can you just kind of say, you know, what an average user on there is doing? You know, what it, for those who don't know what PLEMEN is or haven't been on the app yet?
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Yeah, yeah, sure. So the average user is, I guess, quite similar to something you'd see on Facebook. I'd say, though, the PLEMEN users, we're a slightly different demographic. I think we probably skew to the, you know, the 30 plus 40 plus age range.
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If that helps.
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Most of the users just generally chatting about things. So there's the standard, I guess, topics of, you know, politics sport.
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You know, there's a lot of discussion at the moment around COVID and lockdowns and, you know, what does everywhere else look like for people elsewhere?
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So a lot of people, I guess, the COVID is, you know, is the dominating topic of the last two years, I guess, for us and everyone else. So there's, you know, a lot of discussion around that.
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So average users, you know, I think I would say the profile is as well that there's a lot of people, you know, creations in Crescia who are kind of interested in, you know, what other creations outside of Crescia are doing and, you know,
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and looking to kind of get more creations back to Crescia as we've seen the population has dropped a little bit in the last census.
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So I think there's a lot of people here in Australia, Canada and the US who are, you know, kind of a little bit unhappy with the state of play and state of affairs in the last two years.
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And, you know, they're on PLEMEN seeking more information and, you know, to kind of get to Crescia and, you know, picking up their life in Crescia and moving away from countries like Australia and the US that have been
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really good to them, I guess, in the past, but, you know, now they're kind of ready to go back to Crescia with all the skills and all the networks they've picked up elsewhere.
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I mean, I do think now more than, I mean, I'm still young, but more than any time in recent history, it seems like people from all over are willing to relocate, you know, just because of the so many unprecedented events and, you know, the global situation.
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It seems like now is a very good time for relocation just all over the world.
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Yeah, I think so. And I think community wise, you know, to what we said earlier, you know, people are kind of spread out and you need to drive by car that, you know, hasn't, you know, hasn't been allowed in some parts of the world for now.
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So I think people are looking to go somewhere and kind of have a more authentic, a more close knit community. And I think going back to Crescia is the answer for a lot of people.
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I wanted to ask a little about the, you know, specific numbers and some demographics. How many current total users do you have?
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Yeah, we're at about the 5000 mark. You know, I've kind of said before that we're not really chasing, you know, numbers of users that much rather have, you know, five quality users than 500 users who are who are not interested in not contributing.
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So definitely, yeah, I mean, we're always going to be niche. So, you know, we're not, we're not looking to, you know, to grow to ridiculous numbers but have, you know, heaps of accounts dormant.
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Yeah, exactly. And I wanted to ask, you know, what sort of different countries are you seeing? Like has there been any countries where you have users that you didn't expect?
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You know, there was a large de-hospital population maybe?
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Yeah, I'm not sure about large but there's definitely places where I've got messages from people who are, you know, working in Afghanistan, China, South America is obviously huge.
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So that's always surprising but I'm actually surprised. I'd say, let's say 60% of the people are in Croatia.
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So I would have thought that would have been much lower but, you know, it's pretty interesting.
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Yeah, that's pretty cool. Especially seeing all over the world. I mean, Afghanistan, yeah, I never would have thought, I mean, I guess Croatians are all over the world but you know, you don't really think of it like that. That's pretty cool.
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Yeah, it was like, whoa, this guy's talking to me from Afghanistan.
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That's cool. I wonder if there's a, if a community starts to develop over there, a large community, how different the accents would be.
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Because I'm learning the language right now and it's tough and like hearing just in Croatia, the different dialects and you know, all that, it's kind of interesting. I wonder on a global scale how much harder that would be for me to understand.
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Oh yeah, that would be nice.
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I told you I'd let you get into the new features and if you can now, you know, talk a little about the recent updates that you've been implementing and you know, I know you've partnered with some other groups and doing some collaborations with other organizations.
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Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I guess we, our kind of, you know, our kind of roadmap for the next, I guess, year and a half to use is really, you know, number one.
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We've kind of partnered with, you know, Craig Diaspora and a couple other people. So to kind of build some services, you know, I think Craig Diaspora as well from what I understand as an organization, kind of want a lot of creations, you know, who might be, you know, second, you know, first,
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second, third generation to return and kind of come back to Croatia. So, which I think fits pretty closely with what we're also doing. So we're kind of partnering on a few things.
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So I guess at the moment, first cab off the rank, which should be out in a couple, you know, in probably a month and a half or two months by the time we're all finished and launched and and market it is, you know, we've kind of got this business index portion of
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the plumber, which is, you know, kind of get some interest, but we probably feel it would work better as a standalone product. So, you know, creationbusinessindex.com, I think that's kind of the first cab off the rank.
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So we're essentially just building a huge global business directory for creation and businesses. And so that way, you know, if you can, you know, if you're in Sydney or you're in Los Angeles and you want to, you know, find a, you know, a creation lawyer or you want to find, you know, which
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is a great place to go. And restaurants are there or, you know, grocery stores or whatever, you can, you can kind of do that.
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So that's almost ready. That's almost ready to go out.
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We're also kind of doing a full up redesign of the app to make things a little bit more intuitive, a little work a little bit better.
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And then we're going to build a dedicated messenger. So something, you know, that kind of splits out the messenger app and, you know, has a has a bit more features, kind of like telegram and, you know, some more bots and automations and things.
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So hopefully that, you know, that's pretty good. I think we see most of the, you know, the trend now away from networks as well is group chats. So that's something we're looking to kind of do.
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And then we've obviously got way more premium content coming out at about, you know, a million different subjects.
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I'm just looking on my wall here and I've got a bit of a picture of where we're going to. So we've just done hell.
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I think the first immediate thing is citizenship. So we're going to have a whole bunch of stuff that helps people get citizenship, including building kind of a citizenship calculator.
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As someone who's recently gone through the whole process of finally getting my creation citizenship, you know, there's a depending on what route you're applying with this whole bunch of different documents and you know what depends on what stage of your life if you're married unmarried that's, you know, changes everything again.
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So we're looking to kind of build a citizenship calculator so you'll be able to just, you know, kind of tick some boxes and it'll tell you kind of what you need, who you talk to and you know, what were your closest consulate and embassy is something we're really excited about.
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Because we can, you know, we can see right now there's a huge influx of people who are going to going back to creation getting all that citizenship and everything sorted before so that's something we're really happy about.
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And that's kind of our main ones for the moment. There is a whole bunch of little stuff, but I won't probably talk about that. That's, you know, really more about making, you know, putting a little bit faster and a little bit more responsive.
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So that's, you know, really boring unless somebody is like a site reliability engineer or something listening in.
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Yeah, you never know.
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Yeah, I'm sure the citizenship is a huge topic of interest. I mean, I'm going through that myself.
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In about a week I'll be submitting my paperwork, but I'll be in Croatia while I'm doing that. And I have this.
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I'm in this program. I don't know if I told this to you before, but I'm in a program where it's like a diaspora program to go back and see your roots.
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And so I'm learning the Croatian language over in Zagreb. And as part of that program, they're like helping me out with citizenship and getting my papers.
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And even with that, it's a mess. And it's just a lot of work and trying to figure out what you need.
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And it still seems like it's almost not a, it's like still you're almost guessing, you know, it's not like there's, you just do this, this and this.
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It's like it's always something depending on, you know, when your dad was born before or after the war.
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So it's like it's a lot of work and that's definitely something you need help with.
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So I'm sure that's a big topic of interest. You mentioned the groups. I want to ask, what are some of the more popular groups that you have over there?
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The discussion, I don't know what the word for it is in playmate groups.
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Yeah, yeah, groups. So yeah, I guess a lot of them, I'd say the most frequent one, there's a lot of, you know, the Australia one has a fair bit of chatter.
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The BHA one has a lot of chatter, which is, you know, so those are kind of the two most frequent.
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I think though, with our new app, we're going to move, we're going to move away from groups.
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I think the groups have probably locked down a lot of conversation and a lot of collaboration in some way.
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So we'll probably move to something that looks a lot more like tagging. I won't say hashtagging, but something like that where you can, you know, everyone will still be able to see this.
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But it's kind of, you know, it's tagged with, hey, this is, you know, maybe more relevant to you in Australia and stuff like that.
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Interesting. So that way it's a little more flexible, the topics of discussion, and it's not just only in these certain groups.
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Yeah, exactly. I think we want to open it up more. I think, you know, we do have a lot of groups around everything from, you know, cryptocurrencies to farming and stuff like that.
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And I think it's probably now it's maybe hurting us a little bit where we, you know, make more sense to open it up.
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So if you don't know anything about farming and you might be interested, then it's, you know, you'll kind of see it now and be able to engage with it.
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Whereas before, you know, you wouldn't see that and, you know, you wouldn't know.
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So yeah, that makes sense. I think that's cool.
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I wanted to point out that, you know, since I got to Croatia, I was living there the last 11 months.
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And I noticed that everyone is, you know, there's like group chats for everything on WhatsApp or whatever.
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And, you know, like X-pack group chats. And it almost makes sense that in Plime, you know, you can, you can, you know, push a lot of those conversations into that app, you know, that can happen on the app and about news and things like that.
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And even you mentioned, like, if you're looking for a Croatian restaurant or Croatian lawyer, I mean, those are things that people are always asking in the group chat.
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You know, does anyone know a good lawyer? Does anyone know this and this?
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It's like something that's of interest to people where you can all be in the same place, you know, and ask questions.
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Yeah, I think so. There's a lot of cool stuff that's kind of complimentary, but a little bit overlapping.
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So, you know, there's a lot of this stuff will work on its own and work together other things.
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So I guess that's what we're really looking at now is looking finding those opportunities and making something, trying to make it as free as it is cheap for everyone.
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And making it just generally easier.
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You know, we've seen a lot of, you know, a lot of stuff in Croatia has really, you know, built off personal network.
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So not that we want to, you know, get rid of that or change that. But if you don't have a personal network, you're pretty much stuck.
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So, you know, we're kind of just giving those guys without a network an opportunity to get started and, you know, find those lawyers and restaurants and whatever else.
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You said you were going to try and make it out to Croatia this year.
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If you do, are you planning any, I don't know, like conferences or anything plenary related over there?
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Yeah, with really early discussions, we're looking to set up a few things, you know, but it's still pretty much in the air.
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You know, to get out them to get from Australia to overseas at the moment, there's still a bit of, you know, hoops and stuff to jump through.
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And there's not a lot of flights at the moment, to be honest, or it looks like it's changing now, but there hasn't been.
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So we're just trying to work out that hurdle. And obviously, you know, you have a girlfriend and all that as well to work within coordinate.
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So, yeah, we're just focusing on getting there first, getting those dates locked in and then, you know, the conferences and all that stuff will happen much later.
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Very cool. So there's a lot in the future, a lot in the store for Plime.
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I wanted to get back just for a second with, you know, talking about finding the Croatian map, so to say, if you want to find a restaurant or a lawyer,
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are people or should people come to you and, you know, email you or contact you on Plime saying, you know, if they have a business saying, oh, I'm a Croatian lawyer or I have a Croatian restaurant, you know, we'd love to be on the app, on the map so people can find us.
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Yeah, absolutely. You can always drop me an email at nick at plimea app.com, sorry, at plimea.app.
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So we are also going to advertise pretty heavily on, you know, Plimea on all the other socials as well as Google.
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So we'll kind of have a what we're kind of building now is you'll have a sign up page where you enter your kind of business details and your address and phone number and everything like that.
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So that's that's coming soon. So, you know, but you know, if you want to let me know now, nick at plimea.app. Otherwise, I'm sure you won't miss it.
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There's going to be a lot of ads and a lot of traffic dedicated to this in the next month.
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So okay, great. And I'll drop links when the podcast gets released.
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So whoever listening, they can go and click the links as well and find your contact information.
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So yeah, contact Nick if you you've got a Croatian business or or you're a lawyer or any type of profession.
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Yeah, I'm excited to see what Plimea has in store for the future.
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I remember when I first downloaded it, I forget I might have read it actually in Croatia week.
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I believe when it first got released and I was so excited and I downloaded it and I was trying to speak Croatian.
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I didn't speak any Croatian even worse.
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You know, it was even worse than I was now and I was spelling everything wrong and saying everything.
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And but I mean, it's not even I didn't have to do that because, you know, it's in English as well.
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But I was just excited to communicate with other Croatians across the world.
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So that was cool for me. I do want to get into a little bit about some of the other projects.
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You have your own firm that develops apps and stuff, right?
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Yes.
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And what is Ljepanasha?
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Okay, so that was essentially iPhone has got a lot of sticker apps where, you know, you can kind of send stickers on our message to people and stuff like that.
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So that was literally just us getting together and we had a whole bunch of cute, you know, Croatia characters and pictures and stuff like that.
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You know, that we're out there. So we thought, let's just roll this up, put it into an app so everyone else can can send these around.
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And there's, you know, lots of cute little characters, you know, in the New Orleans, you know, we've got the, you know, the, you know, the historical figures and stuff like that.
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So yeah, that's Ljepanasha for you.
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I'm definitely I'm gonna have to download that because, you know, I didn't have WhatsApp until a year ago when I went to Croatia and I said, OK, well, I need this now.
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And my girlfriend is always sending stickers. And at first I was super against it.
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I was like, no, like, I don't want to be the guy that's sending stickers, emojis, whatever.
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But now I'm really into it and I'm always sending, like after every sentence, I got to go and find a sticker that relates to it and I send it.
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So I'm gonna have to download that and start using those.
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Yeah, I think myself and many others have been on the same trajectory with stickers.
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I don't know about this, but it's one of these things has been surprisingly popular.
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Yeah, those are fun.
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And then as far as some of the other stuff, you know, you've been on other podcasts, right, for entrepreneurship.
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Yeah, I've been on a few other podcasts. I've made a few great friends and found other podcasts I listen to regularly.
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So, you know, I feel like a lot of Croatian diaspora are really entrepreneurial just, you know, because of their situation, or at least the ones I know here in Los Angeles are.
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And I'm sure around the world and in Croatia as well.
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But a lot of them have started their own companies and, you know, I kind of want to know what your experience was and the things you think that are important for, you know, creating a startup and going through with it.
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Yeah, I mean, oh, wow, that's a really good question.
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And so many ways to start.
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I guess the kind of the main thing I'll say is, you know, don't worry so much about your idea. Don't be so precious about your idea.
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There's people I know who are kind of been wanting to start a business or do something for a couple years now, but they don't want to, you know, they need help, but they don't want to talk to someone because they're, you know, worried someone still their idea.
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But I mean, you know, ideas are, you know, people feel, you know, some of these ideas are really, really valuable. I think, you know, ideas are really cheap, really easy.
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What's really hard is to actually spend the time and get dedicated and probably a little bit crazy about making that idea real.
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That's the real hard part.
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So, you know, I would say to guys, if you have a halfway, you know, decent idea and you can execute it, that's way better than, you know, the best idea in the world. So don't, you know, get too caught up on the idea and, you know, and that kind of stuff, you know, it's really about, you know, how dedicated are you going to be to making this idea a reality?
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I would say is probably where I'd start for a lot of people if they're looking to get into it.
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And, you know, then, you know, back from that, just back yourself, you know, just, you know, you might not know all the steps, but, you know, get started, you know, take, you know, the first few steps and then when you get stuck somewhere, then figure out how you move on.
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And before you know it, you'll, you know, you'll have, you know, come a really long way. So that's, I guess the really general starting advice I could give that I think, you know, probably would be most valuable to a lot of people.
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I mean, yeah, of course I have to agree with you. Yeah, that's, you can come up with all these ideas, but if you never really take the necessary steps and go through with it, you know, it's not going to matter how good that idea is if you don't do anything with it.
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You know, I have the same problem. I'm always having these crazy ideas and thinking, oh, you know, this would be great. I should do this and then sort of dies down after I realize how hard it would be to, you know, start that up and it's a lot of work.
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And I think, ah, I'll put it on the back shelf and, you know, I got a whole list of ideas that someday I want to do, but it's just, you know, starting and actually doing them is the hard part.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And then once, once you do start, do you have any advice for growing, you know, once you've, you had an idea, you put it down on paper, you made the necessary steps to, you know, at least have a basic model of whatever it is, a business or an app or a service.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You're so kind of a list orientated person, you would say. So I pretty much just, you know, make a list backwards of what you need to do to launch it.
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And, you know, essentially my process is, okay, what's it going to look like? What's the first thing we're going to go live with or the minimum viable product in, in startup terms.
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Work backwards from that and then kind of spend a bit of time a couple months, you know, just, you know, marketing and getting buzz and figuring out, you know, how many signups we can get.
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You know, I've had ideas that I thought would be great, but they just not generated the buzz. So they, you know, they've kind of died now or they're left.
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You know, if maybe the buzz generates again, you know, someday we'll come back to those but really just, you know, kind of making a dedicated list on everything you need to do.
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You know, doing a bit of marketing to see how you can, how many users you're going to get and then just building it and getting ready for release, I guess.
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Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, we're getting our own little entrepreneurship 101 class over here.
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I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Croatian startup scene. You know, I guess specifically Zagreb just because that's where I'm at and that's, you know, the capital where I think a lot of the bigger things are taking place.
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But I'm sure you're in contact with a lot of people that are and you see, you know, potential for Zagreb or Croatia in general to be an up and coming tech hub in the near future because I have heard some people say that surprisingly, you know, there's a lot of
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programmers that are over there now and sort of the technology sector over there is growing. You know, do you have any thoughts on that?
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Yeah, absolutely. I think I hear a lot of good things about OSCEC as well as a bit of a hub for technology and just having a look as well recently helping someone with job hunting in Croatia.
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There is a lot of IT jobs out there of all kinds. So it definitely looks like that's the sector of the economy that's booming.
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And I think, yeah, you know, my dad used to say to me that, you know, back in the day that creations are masters of improvisation.
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So I think that's kind of extended a bit and, you know, become a little bit entrepreneurial. So yeah, we're definitely seeing booms. You know, you have like you have all the big ones, I think like Gideon, Remarts, you know, those guys who are building some really successful brands.
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There's there's a whole bunch popping out, you know, I think it's a little wider in the diaspora. There's there's a whole bunch of entrepreneurs coming out with creation gear, things or businesses or ideas that can easily move to come out.
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Easily move to Croatia. And I think just generally location wise, it's, you know, kind of bang in the middle of Europe. Everyone is is multilingual.
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So everyone knows English or German or something like that, which is super valuable.
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So, you know, from our previous work, there was, you know, we did have a lot of a lot of services that were, you know, kind of in Slovakia and the Czech Republic and stuff. So, you know, kind of slightly similar where they, you know, they all know English or something or another language.
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And, you know, it's quite easy to to kind of have, you know, businesses or services, especially for it run from somewhere like Croatia. I think so. Yeah, I'm all for it.
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You know, every day you learn about something new, that's pretty amazing that you did know in terms of a business or an entrepreneur. So yeah, I only, you know, I only see it going going upwards from here.
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I think even, you know, with especially with the digital nomads that they're pushing now, and a lot of those jobs are it related, you know, the jobs that you can do on the computer from anywhere in the world.
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I think that is going to, you'll see a big boom in the technology sector as well, because of the digital nomads and the policies that they're pushing to increase the amount of those in Croatia.
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Yeah, absolutely. How could I forget digital nomads? Yeah, so I think that as well. I don't know, you know, I think it's a good idea. It's good for the Croatian economy. I don't know what that's going to, what the effects are going to be for the start-up scene, but I think either way, it's pretty good for Croatians.
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Yeah, I think lots of lots of interesting and exciting things to come for Croatia and Paleme, of course. And now I wanted to get to just one or two fun questions here towards the end. Do you have a current favorite Croatian athlete? And why if you do?
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Current favorite Croatian athlete. I mean, favorite Croatian athlete. I mean, there's so many. If we're talking soccer or football, you know, any one of the 2018 squad going back a little bit further used to be a big fan of Ivan Klasnic back in the day and the Kovac brothers.
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Tennis wise, Ivan Isovic, you know, won all-time greats. I actually saw him a couple of years ago in like a pre-Tennis circuit game where they had kind of had all the greats. There was him, there's Petrafter for the Aussies, Henri Lacan for the French.
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And, you know, it was not a serious game at all of what you'd see now. They were, you know, having jokes, making fun of each other, having a play, so, you know, stuff like that, you know, sticks in my memory. And yeah, a lot of real respect for those guys.
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Yeah, that's pretty cool. Are you a big tennis fan? Do you play?
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Not really. I'm pretty uncoordinated myself. You know, I'm kind of good at these physical things, you know, like running or doing these things where it requires minimal skill but just maximum effort. And, you know, I'm quite happy to throw myself at something till I die. So, excellent those things.
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But, you know, tennis and, you know, we need to be coordinated and have skill I'm horrible at.
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And that's an interesting way to put it. Minimal skill but maximum effort. But man, running is, I hate running so much. I don't know how, it sounds like you, I was going to say, I don't know how people can just go out and run for fun, but it's just the worst for me.
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It's just I'm alone with my thoughts, even if I'm listening to music. I don't know. I just, I don't have the mental capacity to put that much effort, I think.
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Yeah, there's a, I don't know if you're in LA, right? I don't know if you heard of David Goggins.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, I'd say look at, you know, as good as I think I am at training at things and then you listen to what he has to say and you read his book about how he approaches things and he's definitely, definitely insane.
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Yeah, I might have to check out his book. Actually, his videos just started popping up on my feed pretty recently. And I did, I forget what I did one day, but one morning I watched one of his videos and I got inspired and I went out and did something.
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I forget what it was, but I felt productive. And then the next day I just slept in again.
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I want to hit you with one last question here, Nick. What's your favorite beach in Croatia? I know you're going back there. Maybe you'll catch the summer. I'm not sure when you're going, but favorite beach for when you are there in the summer.
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Favorite beach. Got to be, you know, bowl on Brac. You can't really beat it. You know, I'm someone who's grown up here with sandy beaches. And you kind of get over it, but you still see that sandy beach and it's, you know, makes little with it.
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Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I do miss the sandy beaches once in a while while I'm over there.
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But, you know, Nick, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. You know, I really appreciate your time here talking about PLEME and David Goggins and some other stuff.
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I'm really looking forward to what PLEME has to come in the future. You know, I do want to check out some of those other features and see, you know, some of the other organizations that you're partnering with.
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But I'm really excited. And, you know, thanks again for coming on the podcast.
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Thanks so much. It was really great to be here. Really great talking to you and good luck with everything. Good luck with all the paperwork and yeah, awesome.
279
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:33,360
Enjoy Croatia and hopefully see you there in a couple of months.
280
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:41,360
Yeah.