Fire and ice. A real-life business case.

I keep going along the frontier between my scientific research, my small investment business, and my teaching. In this update, I bring you two typically educational pieces of content, one sort of astride educational and practical investment decisions of my own, and finally I give slightly educational an account of a current business decision I am taking.  

In the video entitled ‘My investment experience, my teaching and my science #3  BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen’ [ Invest 3 2020-08-26 14-02-22 ; https://youtu.be/Vot6QMXp7UA  ], I discuss those three investment positions in my portfolio. Three German automotive companies. Same industry, same country, same macroeconomic environment, and yet three different performances in terms of return on investment. In this video, you can see me developing on the distinction between long term-trends and short-term variations, as well as trying to connect technical analysis of price trends with fundamental analysis of their half-annual reports.

I have place on You Tube two pieces of content in the stream of teaching designated as ‘Urban Economics and City Management’. ‘Urban Economics and City Management #1 Lockdowns in pandemic and the role of cities’ [ Cities 1 2020-08-27 08-57-15; https://youtu.be/fYIz_6JVVZk  ] recounts and restates my starting point in this path of research. I browse through the main threads of connection between the pandemic of COVID-19 and the civilisational role of cities. The virus, which just loves densely populated places, makes us question the patterns of urban life, and makes us ask question as for the future of cities.

In ‘Urban Economics and City Management #2 Case study of REIT: Urban Edge and Atrium [Cities 2 2020-08-27 11-00-52 ; https://youtu.be/BURimdfpxcY ], I study the cases of two REITs, i.e. Real Estate Investment Trusts, namely Urban Edge (U.S.) and Atrium (Central Europe), with two assumptions. Firstly, cities can grow and evolve, when the local humans master the craft of agglomerating in one, relatively tiny place, the technologies of construction, sanitation, transportation, energy supply etc., and to parcel those technologies into marketable goods. Secondly, rental and lease of real estate are parcelled, marketable urban technologies.

In the video ‘My investment experience, my teaching and my science #4 The Copernic project’, [ Invest 4 Copernic 2020-08-30 08-57-54 ; https://youtu.be/_6klh0AwJAM  ], I am developing on a topic exactly at the intersection of those three: the Copernic project. Honestly, this is complex stuff. I hesitated to choose this topic as educational material, yet I have that little intuition that good teachers teach useful skills. I want to be a good teacher, and the s**t I teach, I want it to be useful for my students. Life is complex and brutal, business is complex and brutal, and, as a matter of fact, each of us, humans, is complex and brutal. Fake simplicity is for pussies.

Thus, whoever among my students reads this update and watches the accompanying video material, is going to deal with real stuff, far beyond textbooks. This is a business which I am thinking about engaging in, and I am just starting to comprehend its patterns. This update is a living proof and test how good I am, or how I suck, at grasping business models of the digital economy.

In educational terms, I am locating the content relative to Copernic project in the path of teaching which I labelled ‘My investment experience, my teaching and my science’, as I am entertaining the idea of investing in the Copernic project. The subject cuts comprehensively across and into many aspects of economics and management. It can be considered as useful material for any educational path in these major fields.

It started when I reacted to a piece of advertising on Facebook. Yes, many interesting stories start like that, nowadays. It was an ad for the Copernic project itself. Here you have a link to Copernic’s website – https://copernic.io/ – but keep in mind that it is only Polish version, at least for the moment. I will do my best to describe the project in English.

Copernic is both the name of the project, and the name of an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership), incorporated under Polish law, in Krakow, Poland. The commonly used Polish acronym for an LLP is ‘sp. Z o.o.’, however, as I write in English, I will keep using the name ‘Copernic LLP’. I checked this company in the Judicial Register (of incorporated entities) run by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Poland, under the link https://ekrs.ms.gov.pl/web/wyszukiwarka-krs/strona-glowna/index.html . A business story emerges. On December 6th, 2019, Copernic LLP is founded, under the register #817764, in Gdansk, Poland, technically by two partners: a physical person and another LLP, i.e. TTC Trade LLP (register #788023). Yet, after scratching the surface, the surface being the Judicial Register, I discovered that TTC Trade LLP is wholly owned by the same physical person who was its partner in Copernic LLP. Anyway, the physical person apported 1000 PLN and took 1 partner share, whilst her LLP paid in 4000 PLN in exchange of 4 partner shares. By the way, PLN stands for Polish zloty and it comes like PLN 1 = $0,27.

On May 6th, 2020, the physical person who founded Copernic LLP steps out of the partnership, and her own LLP, TTC Trade, sells two of its two partner shares in Copernic LLP, to Sapiency LLP (https://sapiency.io/en/, register #789717) incorporated in Krakow, Poland, at their face value of 2000 PLN. On the same day, the partnership contract is being reformulated entirely and signed anew, including a change of headquarters, which move from Gdansk to Krakow, Poland. By the same occasion, another corporate partner steps in, namely Reset Sun Energy LLP (Konin, Poland, register #802147) and takes 2 partner shares in Copernic LLP, for a price of 2000 PLN. By the same means, the total partners’ equity in Copernic LLP moves from 5000 PLN to 6000 PLN.

On July 20th, 2020, TTC Trade LLP and Reset Sun Energy LLP both sell their partner shares in Copernic LLP to Sapiency LLP, at face value, i.e. 6000 PLN. We have an interesting legal structure, when one Limited Liability Partnership (Copernic) is wholly owned by another Limited Liability Partnership (Sapiency), which, in turn, is 50/50 owned by two gentlemen, one of whom I had the honour to meet in person. Cool guy. Fire and ice in one. A bit like me.   

Sapiency is mostly active in cryptocurrencies. They make Blockchain-based tokens for whoever asks, and I think their main technological platform is Ethereum (https://ethereum.org/en/). The marketing model is membership-based, thus oriented on long-term relations with customers. The business model of Copernic LLP is logically connected to that of Sapiency LLP. Copernic builds solar farms in Poland, and markets Blockchain-based tokens labelled Copernic1, at a face value of 4 PLN apiece. Each such token corresponds to a share in the future leasing of solar farms, and those farms, by now, are under actual or planned construction. Later on, i.e. after the solar farms become operational, those lease-connected Copernic1 tokens are supposed to give their holders a claim on secondary tokens CopernicKWH, which, in turn, correspond to claims on electricity generated in those solar farms. The first attribution of CopernicKWH tokens to the holders of Copernic1 tokens is supposed to take place within 14 days after the first photovoltaic farm becomes operational with Copernic LLP, with a standing power of at least 1 MW. That day of operational capacity can be a movable feast, and thus the official statute of those tokens stipulates that the first attribution of CopernicKWH will take place not later than January 1st 2021. After the first attribution of  CopernicKWH, subsequent attributions to the holders of Copernic1 are supposed to take place at least once a week.

The CopernicKWH tokens can be used as means of payment at the Kanga Exchange (https://kanga.exchange ), which looks cool, on the whole, with one exception. According to Kanga’s own statement, ‘Kanga Exchange is operated by Good Investments Ltd, registered in accordance with the International Business Companies Act of the Republic of Seychelles, Company Number 192185’ (https://support.kanga.exchange/company-information/ ). Just for your information: I can incorporate a business in Seychelles without getting up from my desk, 100% online, for the modest sum of 399 British Pounds (https://www.offshoreformations247.com/offshore-jurisdictions/seychelles). I am fully aware how bloody hard it is to set up any business structure connected to cryptocurrencies in the European legal environment, however… Seychelles? Seriously?

The average price of electricity in Poland, when I am writing those words, is around 0,617 PLN per 1 kWh. One Copernic1 token, with its current price of 4 PLN, corresponds to 4/0,617 = 6,48 kWh of energy. Assuming that every week, starting from the day 0 of operations at the solar farm, Copernic LLP attributes me 1 CopernicKWH token for each Copernic1 token in my possession, I break even after 7 weeks, and each consecutive week brings me a net profit.

I do my maths according to the logic of the capital balance sheet. First of all, I want to compute the book value of assets that corresponds to the planned solar farm of 1 megawatt in standing power. In a report published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA https://irena.org ), entitled ‘Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019’ (https://irena.org/publications/2020/Jun/Renewable-Power-Costs-in-2019 ), I can read that the average investment needed for 1 watt of power in a photovoltaic installation can be cautiously estimated at $0,38, thus PLN 1,40.

Building a solar farm of 1 MW, thus of a million watts in terms of electric power, means an investment of at least PLN 1,40 * 106 = PLN 1 400 000. To that, you need to add the price of acquiring land. At the end of the day, I would tentatively put a PLN 2 million capital tag on the project. Supposing that capital for the project comes from the sales of Copernic1 tokens, Copernic LLP needs to sell at least 2 000 000 PLN/ 4 PLN = 500 000 of them Copernic1.

Looks like a lot, especially for a Limited Liability Partnership with partner equity at 6000 PLN. Assets worth PLN 2 000 000 minus PLN 6000 in partner equity means PLN 1 994 000 = $ 538 919  in capital which is not clear at all where it is supposed to come from. The sole partner in Copernic LLP, namely Sapiency LLP could pay in additional equity. Happens all the time. Still, Sapiency LLP as a partner equity of PLN 5000. See what I mean? Another option is a massive loan, and, finally, the whole balance sheet could rely mostly on those Copernic1 tokens. Only those tokens are supposed to embody claims on the lease of the solar farm. Now, legally, a lease is a contract which gives to the lessee (the one who physically exploits), the right to exploit things or rights owned by the lessor (the one who graciously allows others to exploit). In exchange, the lessee pays a rent to the lessor.

There are two things about that lease of solar farms. A lease is not really divisible, as it is the right to exploit something. If you divide that something into smaller somethings, you split the initial lease into as many separate leases. If I buy one Copernic1 token and that token embodies claims derived from a lease contract, what specifically is the object of leasing? There is another thing. If I buy Copernic1 tokens, it gives me claims on the future CopernicKWH tokens. In other words, Copernic will pay me in the future. If they pay me, on the basis of a lease contract, it is as if they were paying me a rent, i.e. as if they were leasing that solar farm from me. Only I don’t have that solar farm. They will have it. Yes, indeed, WTF? This is the moment to ask that rhetorical question.

A few paragraphs ago, I wrote that I am entertaining the idea of investing in those Copernic1 tokens. I think the idea has become much less attractive, business-wise, whilst becoming much more entertaining. There is an important question, though. Isn’t it ethically advisable to invest in renewable energies, even if the legal scheme is a bit sketchy, just to push forward those renewables? I can give an answer in two parts to that question. Firstly, renewables grow like hell, both in terms of power supplied, and in terms of attractiveness in financial markets. They really don’t need any exceptional push. They walk, and even run on their own legs. Secondly, I worked through my own ideas for implementing new technologies in the field of renewable energies, and, notably, I worked a lot with a tool called ‘Project Navigator’, run by the same International Renewable Energy Agency which I quoted earlier. The link is here: https://irena.org/navigator . There is one sure takeaway I have from working with that tool: a good project needs a solid, transparent, 100% by-the-book institutional base. Wobbly contracts translate into wobbly financing, and that, in turn, means grim prospects for the project in question.     

Another doubt arises in my mind, as I do flows instead of balances. A solar farm needs to earn money, i.e. to make profit, in order to assure a return on investment. The only asset which can earn value over time is land in itself. In practical terms, as long as we want that solar farm to work, it needs to generate a positive operational cash flow. Photovoltaic equipment ages inexorably, by physical wear and tear as well as by relative moral obsolescence. That aging can assure substantial amortization, yet you need some kind of revenue which you can write that amortization off from. If all or a substantial part of energy produced in the solar farm is tokenized and attributed to the holders of Copernic1, lease-based tokens, there could be hardly any energy left for sale, hence not much of a revenue. In other words, the system of initial financing with tokens can jeopardize economic payoff from the project, and that’s another thing I learnt with the Project Navigator: you need a solid economic base, and there is no way around it.

Crossbreeds, once they survive the crossbreeding process

 

As a bit of a surprise, I presently have two business plans on the board, instead of just one. A former student of mine asked me to mentor a business project he is starting up with his friend. The basic concept is that of an online platform for managing medical visits, and the innovation consists in using the Blockchain technology to create, for each patient using that functionality, a digital, trusted ledger of all their medical documentation, i.e. their medical visits, diagnoses, treatments received etc. all in one set of data, properly secured and available from any place on Earth.

Additionally, an educational project – a book on the FinTech industry accompanied by an educational toolkit – which I am running with a friend of mine, has gained in maturity and we will be giving it a definitive form. All in all, ideas and projects abound, and I decided to use my blog for conveying as accurate an account of my intellectual journey into all of these three realms. From now on, I am doing my best to weave an interesting story of scientific research out of three distinct stories, namely: a) my EneFinproject b) that medical ledger project, which I provisionally name MedUs, and c) the FinTech educationalpackage.

As for the EneFinproject, in my last update in French, namely in Les séquences, ça me pousse à poser cette sorte des questions, I came to the conclusion that the best way of starting with the EneFin concept is to create or to join an existing generalist trading platform, possibly using a cryptocurrency, such as Katipult, and include in its general features some options, which, in turn, are likely to spur the emergence of new suppliers in renewable energies.

A little pill of update for those who didn’t follow that update in French: I used a technique that data scientists frequently use, and which consists in expressing something we want as a sequence of events, actions and decisions. When I did this with the general concept, to be found in Traps and loopholes, I discovered that at least some potential users of the EneFinfunctionality are likely to have and want a bit more choice and freedom of movement in their financial decisions. I came to the (provisional) conclusion that the strictly spoken EneFinscheme, i.e. promoting the development of new suppliers in renewable energies, will sell better when expressed as a set of financial incentives, placed in the environment of an otherwise general, well-running platform of exchange, rather than as a closed system.

Right now, I am working through the issue of contracts and the legal rules that accompany them. I am deconstructing the typical contracts signed for the supply of energy, in order to have a very precise idea of what should the smart, crypto-coined contracts at EneFinlook like. Contracts are about securing a precise pattern of behaviour from the part of the other contracting party. I want to understand thoroughly the patterns of behaviour, those wanted as well as those unwanted ones, in the relation between a supplier of energy and his customers.

The business plan I am preparing form the MedUsconcept, I am at the phase of evaluating the size and the value of the market, together with defining, progressively, the core business process. Let me present a bit of the initial idea, and a few openings that it creates. The idea has its roots in the observation of the Polish healthcare market, which is a maze of mutually interweaving public funding and private schemes. An average Polish patient seldom can rely exclusively on the public provision of medical care. Frequent blood diagnostics, dental care, post-surgery rehabilitation – sooner or later, you just need to stop waiting for the public funding of these, and pay privately, either in the out-of-pocket formula, or in some kind of pooled funding scheme.

Those entangled, disparate funding patterns results in the dissipation of the patients’ medical records. The initial ides of MedUsis to take the already known functionality of online arrangement of medical appointments, and combine it with the aggregation and proper handling of digitalized medical records. You make an appointment with one doctor via MedUs, you are being diagnosed and treated, then you make an appointment with another doctor, another diagnosis and treatment ensue, and the record of all that is being stored with MedUs.

This is where the Blockchain technology becomes interesting. Blockchain is basically a ledger, and in handling medical records we need, precisely, a ledger. Medical records contain legally sensitive data, and improper handling can lead to a lot of legal trouble. Every single action taken regarding that data has to be properly documented, and secured against fraud. The basic digital architecture of medical records is that of a database, with the identity of the patient as the leading variable.

In those databases, well, s**t happens, let’s face it. I had a good example of that in my own recent experience. As some of you could have read in ‘The dashing drip of Ketonal, or my fundamental questions for the New Year’, due to a complicated chain of events, involving me, some herrings, and the New Year’s party, I spent the New Year’s night in an emergency ward of the district hospital, with the symptoms of acute food poisoning. As I was being released, on the New Year’s day, I had my official discharging documents. In those documents, space and time warped a little. It started with my data, and then I could read that I had been taken in charge three days earlier, in Berlin, with acute cardiac symptoms, and subsequently transferred to the very same hospital, and then, all of a sudden, my own (real) description followed.

As for me, I wouldn’t care, but my wife said: ‘Look, if you have any complications, or if you need any follow up in treatment, that official discharge will matter. Go to that hospital and make them get your records straight’. So I did, and you would really like to see the faces of people, in the hospital’s administration, when I showed them what I am coming with and for. It was that specific ‘Oh, f**k, not again!’ look. They got it straight, and so I stopped being that cardiac patient hospitalized in Berlin, but as far as I know, it all required a little bit of IT acrobatics.

As I described the situation to a friend of mine, an IT engineer, he explained me that this sort of things happen all the time. Our sensitive data is being stored in a lot of databases, and errors happen recurrently. Technically, once they happen, they should be bound to stay happened. Still, what do we have those IT engineers for? What you do, in such a case, is either to run ‘a minor reloading of the database, just to remove some holes in the security systems’, or you deliberately put the system to failure, and reboot it. Both manoeuvres allow miraculous disappearance of embarrassing data. A lot of institutions do it, like hospitals, banks, even ministries, apparently on a recurrent basis. This is, for example, the way that banks hush up the traces of hacking attacks on their customers’ accounts.

Databases with medical records are basically proprietary, i.e. each database has to have a moral entity clearly owning it and being responsible for it. That’s the law. If I use the services of many different medical providers, each of them runs their own database of medical records, and each such database is proprietary, which, in turn, means that my personal medical data is being owned by many entities in the same time. Each of these entities holds one piece of the puzzle, and the law prohibits any sharing between them, basically, unless a chain of official requests for information is being put in motion. As strange as it seems, such a request cannot be issued by the patient, whose medical records are in question. Only doctors can put my dispersed medical records into one whole, and I have no leverage upon that process.

Strange? Absurd? Well, yes, still no more than the promises, which some politicians make during elections. Anyway, that student of mine came up with the idea of using Blockchain to revolutionize the system. There is that digital platform, MedUs, which starts innocently, as a simple device to make appointments for private medical care. Now, revolution begins: each action taken by the patient, and about the patient, via MedUs, is considered as a transaction, to be stored in a ledger powered by the Blockchain technology. The system allows the patient to be effectively in charge of his own medical record, pertaining to all the medical visits, tests, diagnoses and treatments arranged via MedUs.

A sequence comes to my mind. A patient joins the MedUsplatform, and buys a certain number of tokens in its internal cryptocurrency. Let’s call them ‘Celz’. Each Celzcan buy medical services from providers who have joined MedUs. As it is a token of cryptocurrency, each Celzis being followed closely in all its visits and acquaintances: the medical history of the patient is being written in the hash codes of the Celzeshe or she is using in the MedUsplatform.

Crossbreeds, once they survive the crossbreeding process strictly spoken, are the strongest, the meanest, and the toughest players in the game of existence, and so I am crossbreeding my business concepts. The genes (memes?) of EneFingently make their way inside MedUs, and the latter sends small parcels of its intellectual substance into EneFin. Yes, I know, the process of crossbreeding could be a shade more fun, but I am running a respectable scientific blog here. Anyway, strange, cross-bred ideas are burgeoning in my mind. Each subscriber of the EneFinplatform could have all the history of their transactions written into the hash codes of the cryptocurrency used there, and thus the EneFinutility could become something like a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management), where each token held is informative about the past transactions it changed hands in. How would the reading of such data, out of the hash code, work in the (legal) light of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

On the other hand, why couldn’t patients, who join the MedUsplatform, use their Celzesto buy participation in the balance sheet of those medical providers who wish such a complex deal? Celzes used to buy equity in medical providers could generate extra purchasing power – more Celzes – to pay for medical services.

In both projects, which I am currently preparing business plans for, namely in EneFin, and in MedUs, the Blockchain technology comes as a simplifying solution, for transforming complex sets of transactions, functionally interconnected, into a smooth flow of financial deeds. When I find a common denominator, I tend to look for common patterns. I am asking myself, what do these two ideas have in common. What jumps to my eye is that both pertain to that special zone of social interactions, when an otherwise infrastructural sector of the social system gently turns into something more incidental and mercantile. It is about giving some spin to those portions of the essential energy and healthcare systems, which can tolerate, or even welcome, some movement and liquidity, without compromising social stability.

As I see that similarity, my mind wanders towards that third project I am working on, the book about FinTech. One of the essential questions I have been turning and returning in my head spells: ‘What is FinTech, at the bottom line? What part of FinTech is just digital technology, versus financial innovation in general?’. Those fundamental questions popped in my head some time ago, after some apparently unconnected readings: the Fernand Braudel’s masterpiece book: ‘Civilisation and Capitalism’, ‘The Expression of The Emotions in Man and Animals’ by Charles Darwin, and finally ‘Traité de la circulation et du crédit’ by Isaac da Pinto. It all pushed me towards perceiving financial deeds, and especially money, as some kind of hormones, i.e. systemic conveyors of information about what is currently the best opportunity to jump on.

A hormone is information in solid form, basically, just obtrusive enough to provoke into action, and light enough to be conveyed a long way from the gland it originates from. OK, here I come: gently and quietly, I have drifted towards thinking about the nature and origins of money. Apparently, you cannot be a serious social thinker if you don’t think about it. Mind you, if you just think about the local (i.e. your own) lack of money, you are but a loser. It is only when you ascend beyond your own, personal balance sheet that you become a respectable economist. Karmic economics, sort of.

Being a respectable social thinker does not preclude practical thinking, I hope, and so I am drifting back to business planning, and to the MedUsconcept. My idea is that whatever will be the final span of customers with that online platform, it is going to start in the market of private healthcare, or, as I think about it, peri-healthcare as well (beauty clinics, spa centres, detox facilities etc.). Whatever the exact transactional concept will be finally developed, any payment made by the customers of MedUswill be one of these: a) a margin, paid by the patient over the strictly spoken price of the healthcare purchased b) a margin, paid by the provider of healthcare out of the price they receive from the patient, or, finally, c) a capital expense of the healthcare provider, to be reflected in some assets in their balance sheet. Hence, I need to evaluate the aggregate value of payments made by patients, the distribution of the corresponding expenditure per capita, and the capital investments in the sector. Studying a few cases of healthcare businesses, just to get the hang of their strategies, would do no harm either.

As I browsed through the website of the World Health Organization, I selected 17 indicators which seem relevant to studying the market for MedUs. I list them in Table 1, below. They are given either as straight aggregates (indicators #11 – 17), as per capita coefficients, or as shares in the GDP. When something is per capita, I need to find out about the number of capita, for example with the World Bankand from then on, it is easy: I multiply that thing per capita by the amount of capita in the given country, and I fall on the aggregate. When, on the other hand, I have data in percentages of the GDP, I need the GDP in absolute numbers, and the World Economic Outlook database, by the International Monetary Fund, comes handy in such instances. Once again, simple multiplication follows: % of GDP times GDP equals aggregate.

Table 1 – Selected indicators about national healthcare systems, as provided by the World Health Organization

Indicator #1 Current Health Expenditure (CHE) as % Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Indicator #2 Health Capital Expenditure (HK) % Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Indicator #3 Current Health Expenditure (CHE) per Capita in US$
Indicator #4 Domestic Private Health Expenditure (PVT-D) as % Current Health Expenditure (CHE)
Indicator #5 Domestic Private Health Expenditure (PVT-D) per Capita in US$
Indicator #6 Voluntary Financing Arrangements (VFA) as % of Current Health Expenditure (CHE)
Indicator #7 Voluntary Health Insurance (VHI) as % of Current Health Expenditure (CHE)
Indicator #8 Out-of-pocket (OOPS) as % of Current Health Expenditure (CHE)
Indicator #9 Voluntary Financing Arrangements (VFA) per Capita in US$
Indicator #10 Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPS) per Capita in US$
Indicator #11 Voluntary prepayment, in million current US$
Indicator #12 Other domestic revenues n.e.c., in million current US$
Indicator #13 Voluntary health insurance schemes, in million current US$
Indicator #14 NPISH financing schemes (including development agencies), in million current US$
Indicator #15 Enterprise financing schemes, in million current US$
Indicator #16 Household out-of-pocket payment, in million current US$
Indicator #17 Capital health expenditure, in million current US$

 I am wrapping up writing, for today. I am consistently delivering good, almost new science to my readers, and love doing it, and I am working on crowdfunding this activity of mine. As we talk business plans, I remind you that you can download, from the library of my blog, the business plan I prepared for my semi-scientific project Befund  (and you can access the French versionas well). You can also get a free e-copy of my book ‘Capitalism and Political Power’ You can support my research by donating directly, any amount you consider appropriate, to my PayPal account. You can also consider going to my Patreon pageand become my patron. If you decide so, I will be grateful for suggesting me two things that Patreon suggests me to suggest you. Firstly, what kind of reward would you expect in exchange of supporting me? Secondly, what kind of phases would you like to see in the development of my research, and of the corresponding educational tools?