How Buster transformed his diverse experiences into the thriving FruitPunch AI community, uniting 2,500 engineers to revolutionize real-world challenges with AI

There's pictures of me with like the machete, like life clearing the way for the, for the Toyota truck. So that was proper adventure. That's Buster Franken, founder of Fruit Punch ai, a community where you can join different projects and apply AI to solve real world challenges. Imagine building computer vision models to identify different species of European wildlife to improve population monitoring or constructing computer vision models that estimate the risk of diabetic ulcer formation.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, in this episode, We learned about Buster. He had jobs as a paperboy, security guard, chemistry teacher, even as an actor. And of course, we learned the inspiration or Fruit Punch ai, which now has over 2,500 engineers participating and more than a couple of dozen challenges. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode, so as you listen, feel free to find me on LinkedIn at Eric Milco.

Tag me, say hello. I'd love to hear that you're listening. And now let's talk to Buster. All right, Buster. Welcome to Innovators Come Live. How you doing today? I'm good. Good morning. How are you? I'm pretty good. So when I hear the name Buster, I think of, and you're too young to remember this, but there was a boxer by the name of Buster Douglas and he beat Mike Tyson.

It was like a one of the biggest sports upsets. Yeah. In history. And so when I think of Buster, I always think of a boxer. But then you're Dutch, right? I mean this is not a common Dutch name, or is it? No, that's true. So my, my dad spent some time in the US selling classic cars and art. So he, he probably got the inspiration there and he was also an avid boxer, so yeah.

Okay. He, there you go. Alright. Told me, he taught me how to box as well. Alright. So as a kid did he like put on the pads and he like tell you you've j j hook. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So cool. So there is so cool. I'm a big boxing fan myself. I actually had to take up the sport when I moved to New York and it was so expensive to rent a tennis court.

They were charging something like $20 for an hour and at that time I just didn't have that kind of money. So I took up boxing 'cause it was much cheaper. On the streets, like pick out a random guy. Yeah. Like, Hey man, lemme try out this new combo I'm working on. Just there. Well, that's, that's very cool. And so is he, was he a big influence in your life?

Like what was the best advice that your dad ever gave to you? Do you recall that? Ooh, man, that is a hard one. What is the best advice? I think, you know, I, I think to be honest, and I'm, I'm gonna be, I can't really do anything else but be really honest. That's, I think that's a bit, a little bit who I am. I, you know, I, I think, I think there's a lot of things where I modeled myself, kind of like in the, in the contrast to my, to my father.

So I think there's a lot of, there's, there's a lot of things that I definitely learned from my dad, but, but also in how not to do things. Yeah, no. You know, I say the same thing. Yeah, I say the same thing like, people always say like, you know, what did you learn from your parents? And specifically my dad, I learned a lot of things, what not to do.

I won't go into detail with a lot of those things. And I, I, I would say that he was very loving and we were definitely important. My, my brother and I in his life, but he had us when he was very young. He was only 21. So you, he just, They didn't expect us or expect me, and so he was very, very young. And so I kind of chalked that up into just being not ready to have kids at such a young age.

So I definitely understand what you mean. Yeah. But I, you know, my mom, I, I did get like, tangible. I also think that my dad just didn't give, like, you know, it was not the advice giver. He would not like, you know, it was like, Hey, hey son, listen, listen up. But my mom would do that and I, and I did that learn like some very concrete thing that I use in, in business every day still for my mom.

Like, for example, Always having, like, if there's something that's not going to your lighting, always have a paper trail. And that's like a, right, like it's, it's partially like very clearly communicating about things to other people, but also like making sure that, that there is like, you know, a trail of emails or, or anything so that you're kind of built up this, that's like super concrete advice that I've, that I've definitely used a lot.

Yeah. I can imagine growing a startup, I mean, especially when it comes to like investors, employees, maybe partnerships you that, that, that advice definitely kicked in, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Over communicates communicate. Yeah. Alright, now before we get to Fruit Punch ai, I wanna know about your background.

You had a variety of different jobs and does some of those jobs include security guard and a teacher? And let's see here. I think there was even an acting gig at one point. So yeah, you, you definitely the Renaissance man. Tell us more about that. Like what was your first job growing up and then what did that lead to after that?

Yeah, so the, the, the first job was, the first real job was being a paper boy. And, but before that I did have like some kind of entrepreneurial activity. I would, we have something in the Netherlands, which, which is like the birthday of the Monarch. You know, back then it was Queens Day. And I would, that's the first time I earned real money.

I, I would earn like 200, 250 bucks in a day selling virgin cocktails called Mix On Tricks, which is like, you know, Beatrix was the name of the, of the Queen and like, did like real fancy and like that was my first kind of like, entrepreneurial experience, I would say. Like, like in the park or like in front of your house or what, where did you, where did you set up in park?

Yeah. It was basically a lemonade stamp, but it was very committed, you know, it had like, Like the, like the sugar, like, you know how he puts sugar on the, on the, on the edge of the glass, then like your little fruit stick and you know al Yeah. How old were you? I think I was 10 or something like that. Yeah.

Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. And then after the paper boy and after the actor actually, so I, we were, were the paper boy. Were you on a bicycle? Yeah, of course. Right. 'cause everybody rides a bicycle and, and in the Netherlands, right? Is this Amsterdam or another, another city? This was in Gnostics, which which is in the south of the Netherlands.

So you have kind of like the little foot? Yeah, like the Netherlands looks like a lion, kind of, you know, with like the tail and then there the little foot and that's that was there. Yeah. Were you pretty good at like tossing the newspapers at the door? That's not, that's not considered acceptable. You have to put it in the, in the response.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. So, so that wasn't an option. You mean to tell me like, the paper boys didn't just toss the newspaper and, and the, and the door on the sidewalk? Yeah. No, you have to, I mean, you have to remember that, you know, it's, everything is much more kind of like, houses are much more crammed together.

That's one thing. And it rains like, you know, half the face. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I guess paper boys in the States have it much easier than them. I guess so. I guess so. Yeah. Okay. And after that, after that I always did a lot of plays from very young on and, and then at a certain point I got into like a more serious play for which I was also paid a little bit.

And then after that I was or introduced or scouted by a casting agency. And then I did some commercials, which paid very well. Like still, still to date the best, the kind of like hour if you go by hourly rates I ever earned was one of the commercials Buster. I did one for ikea, I did one for I n g, which is like a big bank in the Netherlands.

Yeah, yeah. And the one for Ikea actually went all around the globe. I was in there for like, you know, a few seconds, but yeah, that's commercials, right? This is like late teens or what? Teenager? No, early teens. I, I think I was 14. Yeah. Okay. Very, very cool. So you, you're obviously comfortable behind the camera then.

Yeah, I would say so. I would say so. Yeah. I like, you know, I like, I like being on stage. That has always been easy, you know, it's exhilarating every time. My heart like beats really fast still, but, but I really like it. Yeah. Yeah. So for a lot of people speaking in public, which is kinda like being on stage, it's like the worst fear.

The heart starts beating really fast, some people start sweating. You got butterflies in the stomach. Yeah. And did you experience any of that? And if you did, what were, did you do have any, like, any tactics or strategies to like, overcome, overcome those? Like did you tell yourself something to get prepped?

1. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I mean, I, I do get like a lot of those things. I, I, I think, I think any, everything except for the sweating. But, but yeah, I, you know, I like that. So, so I don't, you know, it's never, when I, when I get that, I'm just like, you know, it kind of like just tells me that I'm on the right path, Buster.

I totally, I think I know what you mean. I, I call that feeling being alive. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and I, I think I've only had that feeling maybe a handful of times. Yeah. When I'm about to really step outta my comfort zone Yeah. And do something that either this is, this is gonna be like a big win for me, or this is gonna go in spectacular failure for me.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I, and I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people never have that experience or that sensation or that feeling in their lives before because they just don't wanna take that risk. But it sounds like you, you love that. Yeah. And I think, I think that might be like something, something also unique to entrepreneurs that, that, you know, that you kind of like, that you like that feeling.

Otherwise, it's, it's, it's hard to survive. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you're, you're an actor and then you're, you're doing okay, right? What, what prevented you from going down that route? What happened next? What, yeah. So, you know, I, I like kind of everything that I did until, until I started Fruit Punch was like, A bit random and I would just go with whatever next thing came up.

So, so it's, it's kind of a shame like, you know, I have no idea what would've happened if I would have pursued the acting path. Because people did tell me like, oh, you should really do something with that. But I did, I didn't have kind of like the structure. I like, and I think I'm like really in, in some ways, like a late bloomer that I, that only very late.

I kind of developed the, the kind of structure and discipline to just spend, let's say 80% of my time on one thing and consistently do that. And from the moment that I, that I was able to do that kind of like, then you get the compound effect, right? And, and that's, that's, that's when, you know, I started to get some more.

Conventional success? I think so. Yeah. It's a shame. I dunno. I actually, the funny thing is, is that I think I stopped acting altogether at like maybe 16 or 17 and, and I recently subscribed for acting lessons again. So I, it's 10 years later, but now I wanna get my kids in drama because they're so introverted.

They take after my wife, they're very shy. And I'm always trying to, like even their coach, nudges them in the back. Like, Hey, go out there and play and kick the ball. And they're very skillful, you know, they're very athletic, but once when the light's on, the camera's on, they get so shy. So I think maybe when they turn six or seven, I'll try to find like a drama class for them to kind of get outta their shell a little bit more.

And so that way they can just kind of build up that confidence as the years go by. So, very cool that you're looking to go back into acting because as an entrepreneur, you know, as somebody that's trying to. Tell a story, share their vision. Get other people to buy into the vision. It's so essential. So now you're also like a developer.

You became a teacher. Now we don't have to go into each of those gigs, but what, what was a gig that you had this, like, this light bulb about fruit punch ai and then tell, tell the audience, you know what it is. Because to me, I find it so fascinating. I, I think I went down the rabbit hole this morning looking at your website and looking all, at all the various projects that are happening.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, so, so to like, very briefly, I, I, I can, I can tell you about the light bulb moment, but also definitely, you know, from each one of these jobs, I, I learned something that that is, That is really relevant to dealing with people, right? It's all different perspectives of dealing with people.

Acting is about convincing, like taking people into that, into your world, into your story and letting them believe that and, and, and doing security is also, you know, I'm not the biggest guy, right? I mean, am I not seeing now? But you got the nickname, but you know, it doesn't match the frame of your body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and so, so I was never like the meathead that, that could like, you know, drag people away. So, I always just use my words and, and that worked out for me every single time. And then, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't you gotta tell us the story of when you had to use your words on a Patreon to get like your point across or prevent him from going inside.

The bar whatev whatever, like tell what happened. Tell us a story about your story. Man, there's, there's, there's so many stories because I did I did security at mostly at heart style festivals. I don't know if you know that. Like what is that at Subculture? I think it's, it's very popular in the Netherlands.

It's, it's kind of like these, these festivals like kind of known for, for a lot of drug use. Okay. And, and like, you know, like really like, Like this kind of music, you know? Yeah. But it's, but it's generally very nice people and like, you know, I, I, I had, I had, but usually, usually with security. You know, I, I, I think people don't mean mean harm, so they don't mean to do anything wrong.

So that, that kind of helps, I think. But yeah, I think, I think the best story is when people try to actually get into the venue that I was guarding one of the exits. Mm-hmm. And at a certain point they even tried to bribe me to get in and, and yeah. But, but intellectually I can just run circles around people and kind of like, so it's a fun game for me, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So somebody was like, trying to like, slip you some money under the table, and what would you like? No, thanks, man. Or it's like, it's not gonna work. Yeah. Just, just the first pretending that I don't understand what they're trying to do, you know, while, while, like, while stating the rules again and, and then, and then saying, then saying stuff like, oh yeah, well, you know, maybe, maybe I'll just, maybe I'll just get my superior to figure out, you know what, because I don't, and then, and then at a certain point it lands, you know, it's not gonna work.

Just playing stupid. People are like this. Security guard doesn't even know we're trying to like, you know, gotta slip him some cash so we can get in. He just doesn't get it, you know? But you're over here just pretending like you don't know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Get them, just get them to play my game, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Do you miss that? I mean, was that a lot of fun being security guard and. I mean, it was fun at times, but to be honest, like I would work, I would work 12 to 18 hour shifts, like with one break, and most of the time was just standing, like standing, standing at some, at some exit. You know? You would, you would shift around a little bit, but then definitely you would spend like eight hours.

Is that some exit where nothing happened? Yeah, so. That's I, I think I have a bit of a romanticize to you and it wouldn't go back to it after a quick break. Buster and I talk about how he ended up in Africa with the machete cutting down trees, which happened to be how Fruit Punch AI got started. Hey, in case you didn't know the Innovators Can Laugh, newsletter comes out every Thursday.

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Welcome back to my conversation with Buster. He's got a fascinating background, you know, actor, security guard, chemistry teacher, but let's hear about the inspiration for Fruit Punch AI and how he was able to get that off the ground. But it was really the teaching where I had the light bulb moments, where I saw that, you know, kind of like the huge impact that you can have by, by making some, by motivating people in the right way.

I was never the, I was never the, the person that knew the most about the subject matter. You know, I'm very comfortable saying that, but I was the person that could look at each student and I. Kind of figure out what would be the thing that would make it interesting for them, what would motivate them.

Right? And that is what I always used and that is definitely also what led to Fruit Punch ai, because such a big part of it is, is motivation in, in teaching and what we do with, with or or skills training, right? Whatever. And what we do with Fruit Punch in the end is, is just next to having a direct positive impact.

If you look at like what the effect of that is on. The motivation of people is that it's just tremendous. It's, it's so much better than doing theoretical exercises, so, yeah. What were you teaching, Buster? Mostly chemistry. Yeah. Okay. I'm laughing because I, I flunk chemistry three times and yeah. So c Yeah.

Chemistry is the one thing that, that kind of like is the most difficult for most people, for some reason. I, yeah, I dunno. It's, and you taught it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So sort of like, you know, a semi genius, maybe you are a genius, you know, but you're hiding behind the occupations for like a security guard and an actor, you know, and some of these other things.

And then what was the light bulb moment? You're, you're in class, you're, you're teaching, and was there like a specific, you know, period or class or even student and you thought, you know what, these kids have some really good ideas here. How do we like, take their ideas and combine it with AI and do it, you know, just for the, for the, just for projects that could really, really make a difference through in the world.

Like what happened? Yeah, so, so to be honest, it it, it wasn't, it wasn't, I did definitely did take a experience from the teaching job, but it wasn't that which, which triggered, triggered starting what I do with, did what I do with Fruit Punch. So, do you wanna hear the story of like what triggered kind of fruit punch?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that was, that was really that I I, that I found my own education lacking. So, so I went to university. I, because the, like, the acting also meant that I went to like a high school, which was specific for people that wanted to go to either theater school or art school. Kind of like, you know, you, you build your portfolio there as well.

And, and then at the very last moment I decided to go into engineering because I thought like I had like my first real existential crisis. And I, and I thought like, okay, there's, sure there's artists that have a positive impact on the world, but there's definitely more engineers. So, so, so I decided to go into engineering with this idea of like, I'm gonna have a positive impact.

And then, and then it's just like, the reality is just years of, you know, doing very highly theoretical exercises. Right. And, and, and I, I did do some interesting stuff. Like I specialized in neuroscience and robotics. I did some research in brain computer interfacing, then started a master in ai, and then I was kind of, kind of got fed up by that in my master's.

I was still like just doing theoretical exercises and that's when I decided to, yeah, to just. Go looking for a way for, for a more motivating way and also a way in which I could have a direct positive impact while studying because I just thought like, it's bullshit that you need to like, this, this is, doesn't seem like of this time, you know, like three to five years of, of studying and, and then getting, getting in contact with kind of like the real world.

And, and then I, and then I, and then I, shall I just do the whole story now? No, go, go ahead. It sounds like, okay, it sounds like, you know, you're, you're in theory or you're studying for your master's, and maybe that's when the light bulb moment came off that, Hey, I don't have to wait until I graduate to actually start making, make an impact.

At least that's the way I, I hear it. No, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I had that, I had that hunch, and, and then I, and then somebody, you know, I, I was kind of like looking for some kind of project to pick up myself. I got in touch with, with a Dutch entrepreneur who was down in South Africa, and, and it just happened to be like an hour away from, from where I lived in the Netherlands when, when I got in touch with him.

So, so we, we started talking Peter Bone, a rest in peace, and, and he wanted to do something about the poaching crisis in South Africa, the wildlife poaching crisis. And Okay, we decided, we came up with this plan to do a call to action on the radio in South Africa to wildlife reserves asking if they wanted to innovate with ai.

And we got like an overwhelming, overwhelmingly big response. And then I was like, okay, shit, I need to go to South Africa. I need to figure out like exactly what this you, I mean, it's kind of also, you know, it's, it's kind of also an excuse to, but that's, that's like a lot of big steps in my life has have been a mix of like something which could be something really cool, but also kind of an excuse to go on an adventure.

Yeah. Yeah. So all these people are saying, we wanna know, and you're like, oh shit, we gotta do something about it now. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so I went there and then we got a call from a guy Robbie from Spots, which stands for Strategic Protection of Threatened Species, who was up in Burg, Ilan Bay as the bull would say.

And, and that's like one of the bigger, bigger, bigger reserves. They were already flying with drones, but they basically had scaling issues because these drones, you need like three to five people, personnel, like personnel to, to operate them. Big fixed wing drones and. That they could only do that. They only had the, the means, the resources to do that.

Like, you know, three days a month, let's say. Okay. And of course you wanna, you wanna patrol much more often than that. So I went to Berg. I did like the whole survey and I went with them on the, on the drives in the nights to search for poachers. You know, there's, there's pictures of me with like the machete, like, like clearing the way for the, for the Toyota truck.

So that was proper adventure. And then, then I thought like, okay, we have to solve this problem because I saw some gruesome stuff as well, you know? I can send you some pictures afterwards if Yeah. If you like, of the, you know, we would get back to base cam and there would be these skulls of these rhinos, and you could see the, like the, the, the X marks in the, in the kind of like the front part of the skull where they, where they took out the, the horn.

Yeah. And I thought like, okay, I really wanna do something about this, but I definitely don't have the skills at this point to like solve this problem. Yeah. So then I decided to, Do what any entrepreneur would do, I guess, and get other people that are better than them to, to solve the problem for them. So, recruited the AI engineers from, from across the globe through like a little bit of a social media campaign.

And that's how we started the first challenge. And it turned out to be super successful for, you know, for this project. We kind of like did the first sprint to develop this autonomous drawing with thermal cameras to search for poachers in the wildlife reserves. Built a scalable solution. And then I thought like, okay, you know, we can do this more often.

This is a great way for people to learn, but also to, to like bring AI to place for resource or scarce. And that's how Fruit Bench started. Yeah. So recruiting through social media, was there like one primary channel that you were using, and then what was like the main message that you were, that you were, you know, shouting for help?

Yeah, so it, it's always been LinkedIn for us, that's just, yeah, we, we have used. Instagram in the beginning, and definitely our, our chapters, we call them, it's kind of like volunteer activities within the community. They use Instagram a lot because they're more active amongst the students. But yeah, LinkedIn has always been the, the big one for us.

And always organic, like just campaigns where I. Where we just play into, you know, the, the AI for good angle. Like okay, people wanna help, people really wanna help, they wanna do something meaningful with their skills. They want to develop, they wanna develop a portfolio. That's something which is very important to AI engineers.

Yeah. If they want to get a good job, they, they have to show that, that they're able to apply these skills, right? Like, just having a diploma is not good enough. Can get quotes from like, you know, Jeff Bezo and Elon Musk saying like, I don't care about your diploma. Right. They, they care about what you did.

So these are some, these are some of the messages that we used and yeah. That is so cool. Is there like a specific hashtag that you guys are using? Is it AI for good or something else? Yeah, AI for Good is always in there. Okay. And then we always like use the hashtags from the specific sustainable development goals that we're tackling.

So hashtag Ss, d, G, and then the number because people are also looking for that. But all our challenges always link to one of the 17 sustainable development goals. Besides that, we always stack the, the specific technologies that we're, that we're using in this case. Okay. Because people are also following those, you know, like object detection or large language models or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, during this time you were in South Africa, were you just living on your savings or like how were you getting by Buster? I was. I was, yeah. Yeah, so I was definitely living on my savings. The, the, the whole story of how I went to South Africa is even like Moran, but I don't know, I don't think we have time for that, but I, but because I took my, I took my girlfriend at the time, so I was definitely just living out of my savings.

I've done that quite a few times, and I think, you know, now I'm starting to build a little bit more, kind of like long-term financial security as well. Yeah. But it's definitely the privilege that I've had that I've always, you know, I, I, my family is not well off at all. But I just, what I definitely learned was just to hustle and to work, and I just never had a problem making money.

So I always looked at it, you know, I always looked at it like this, like, money to me has always been kind of like, just a, actually to get back to the advice from my dad, but I very like if like, I, I don't know if this is like a good thing, so that's why I didn't say it directly, but he always said that money should roll.

This is, this is like, this is like, you know, This has some bad sides to it, but the positive side to it, I guess, is that I, that I always really looked at money as, as a, as a tool rather than something that I should really say, or, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I've heard that. I've heard Naval, or I think it was Naval or other people say that the, the wealthy, they look at money as a tool.

It's, that's what it's there for, you know, to, to use it properly, a a as a tool. Now I saw one of your social media posts that you partnered with Colgate University. So is that starting to be like another strategy that you guys are having to get the word out about fruit punch AI is by partnering with different universities working with them?

Yeah. Yeah. We did that. We did that from the, from the start. I think. So the, the most relevant, like the, the most relevant target audience for us is not really university students like, They can definitely join, you know? Okay. We, we always have kind of like our budget for the more junior people, but meteor and senior people are obviously very important in these challenges because we also wanna deliver real results that next to teaching people something.

So there's definitely space for university students, but it's not our like main I. Focus area and most of the collaborations that you see that we do with universities are actually with their research centers. Got you. Yeah. So they provide the challenges. So for example, that that's like the combined research center from Colgate and Stanford.

It's the Elephant Listening Project. I think that's the one that you're referring to. Oh, no, actually Colgate, sorry, that was Cornell and Stanford. Colgate is the AI for Seals. Seal Nets. Yeah. So that's their Marine, Marine, like coastal Ecosystem Monitoring Research Center. Okay. Okay. So on the website there's, there's all kinds of projects.

You got AI for air quality. Ai, AI for impact assessment and AI for Pelicans, which is actually, and, and the delta and the, the new delta here in Romania. I'm in ra, so it's actually not too far for me. Okay. How does somebody go about submitting a project? Like what does that process look like? Oh, yeah. And then also how do you guys determine which projects to pick?

Yeah, very good question. So, You can just, yeah, send a, send a DMM to me on LinkedIn, like go through the website. I mean, we have a web form for this stuff, but it doesn't really matter matter how, how you reach out to us, that's all fine. But then the most important thing is first of all, that there is a clear link to one of the sustainable development goals.

Otherwise it's a, you know, it's a hard no. Then the second thing is like, do you have the data? Because we cannot, we cannot, we're not the domain experts. We're the, we're the, we're the domain experts on the side of ai. Right. But we're not the domain expert on whichever domain somebody is in, like, you know, healthcare or, so they need to have the data.

We can very easily work with like NDAs. We've also used federated learning. We, we've done like, you know, on-premise stuff. So, so the data doesn't have to be open sourced or anything like that, but you need to have the data. Then after that, just a clear problem statement, but we can figure that out together as well.

And then usually we do most of the heavy lifting on the side of defining the deliverables, defining the challenge, and of course recruiting everybody and then managing the project. Okay. And so if you're an AI engineer and you wanna help out on one of these projects, you just like sign up and then you get like notifications when a new project pops up that you may be interested in.

How does that work? So you can, you can go to Apple F Punch AI and make an account and then you do a little bit of a self-reported when you're new, you do a little bit of a self-reported like, you know, skills skills assessment. Then based on, based on that you can apply to different challenges. You can also join education material masterclass, bootcamps, all of that kind of stuff.

You can find out if there's a local chapter where you can have some, you know, real world interaction with other fruit bunchers, which is something really cool, like, kind of like mind boggling to me still, that there's like, you know, just like, like over 150 people in Uganda. Are that feel that they are fruit puncher, right?

So, so this is something that I think is really cool that you can get together with other AI engineers. Then when you're new, we usually just try to, like I said, we have kind of like a budget of like a 40% of more junior people. When you're meteor or senior, this usually becomes quite apparent from, from your LinkedIn.

And then we let you into one of these challenges. And then, then once you've done a challenge with us, that is kind of like our strongest indicator if you performed well. And then after that, you know it's very easy to, to join other activities as well. Okay. Question here, dumb question. Are, are any of these people compensated for when they do these challenges?

No, no. So it's, it's, we, all the challenges that we do are nonprofits. Okay. So, and this is kind of our way from the, from the beginning, right? The stuff that we did with the Wildlife Rangers as well is our way to bring AI to place where resources are scarce and create a positive impact. So it's kind of like a very structured open source project, right?

You know, these open source projects, usually they, they run over a bit of a, a longer time and, We've kind of tried to optimize this project, this, this, this format of, of an open source project. So we also open source everything that comes out of it. So, so you sign, you sign away the, the, like the intellectual property rights of the, the code and that kind of stuff, and we then open source it under a copy left license and yeah.

Buster, this is so cool. So, so cool. For a question, for you personally, what, what do you think is the best indicator that you're doing a good job running? Fruit Punch ai. Okay. So, in terms of the challenges, I would definitely say just that the challenge owners, so the, so the w whether it's, you know, Stanford and Cornell with their, with the Elephant listening Research Lab or the medical centers that we work with or whatever.

That after one of these challenges, you know, they, they very consistently come to us and they're super impressed by the results because we really go the extra mile, right? Yeah. We don't just develop the machine learning model. We go from dirty data. We always say we go from dirty data all the way to an implemented solution.

So we, we built some software tools around it as well, and, and kind of like that is, that always really hits me when we have like one of these final presentations. And then yeah, the, the gratitude, you know, from these people that we helped out. Yeah. That is, yeah, that, that's like right in the fields. I've, I've definitely have cried multiple times when they're like doing their, kind of like closing a dress where they, you know, where they're like, oh my God, this is so great.

You know? Cool. Cool. Game changing. Yeah. I've got some rapid fire questions for you. Just gimme the first answer that comes to mind here. What is an unusual food or drink that you consume, Buster? I want say something really fun. Tomato juice. I think I like tomato juice. Is that rather, I like the Ps. I haven't seen blow tomato probably 15 years.

I'm just thinking of those little cans of tomato js. Okay. Yeah. And I imagine they're healthy for you. I mean, right. But very, very Dutch answer is cook at bja, which is like, yeah, I can't translate that. Okay. Basically like fried, like Dutch cuisine is like non-existent. Basically the only thing we have is fried stuff, like deep fried stuff, basically deep fried stuff on a sandwich.

That's is the funky stuff. All right. Another question. What's the most interesting thing that you did in the last 26 days, Buster? In the last 26 days? Ooh. Okay, we're gonna go really fringe here. I, I got into, I got into a proper fight last Saturday. Yeah, yeah. This is more wrestling. This is, but, but I'm part of this community called Sigma Squared Society.

It's really cool. Impacts young impact entrepreneurs from all across the globe. And we gather, you know, every few months we gather like in one place. So I was in, I was in Washau and I have this friend ssa and we just get up to the craziest shits. We kind of like, are both intense and then we meet each other and we just like, and we, we.

Like came up with this idea like, oh, you know what we should do tonight? We should, we should fight. Like in one of these bars, you should like make a ring and we're gonna fight. So I did like one leg and one arm, you know, to make it fair. So I have had like one arm and one leg behind my back and we did like, proper, like three rounds of full blown fighting.

It was very fun. I think that's a crazy I did. So why did you do that? To make it fair? I mean, well, why, because he just, is he in a wheelchair or what? Like she, she, so, oh, she okay, okay, okay. Lighter me? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Nowadays, I mean, you watch some of these like U F C, you know, women fighters and I'd be a little hesitant to actually jump in the ring with some of the seventh women fighters.

Yeah. Alright. Did she kick your butt? How'd it go? Oh yeah, she, so in one, actually the second round, she, she really, she really got me and I had to tap out, like she choked me out.

Yeah, I like, you know, I like to just like, you don't have to live life through the fullest. Right. Otherwise, what's the point? I like do this kind of random stuff. Yeah. All right. Alright. And more, more politically correct answer I guess is that we just raised the round, so I hope that this is this, if this comes out like somewhere beginning of next week, and then it'll be public knowledge, so that's fine.

Yeah. Just celebrate. You guys will go at it. Edit another round, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of funding, I meant. Yeah. Okay. Now hey, speaking of funding, what's a funny reason? Why you would ask for an additional $10 million in additional investment. What's it funny reason, a funny reason you would ask for $10 million in additional investment?

A funny reason that I have. Good, Richard. That a point funny. A funny, okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Let me, lemme just, lemme just think about this man. Funny reason. Oh man. I'm so used to giving like, really correct answers to VCs. A funny reason, that's a difficult one. Like maybe to do like some really kind of like do some really insane marketing stunts to grow the community.

Like, let's say, let's say we wanna build, like, we wanna build like a, like an, an. Ethical AI agent or something like that, which will, which will, man, I can only give serious answers. What is, this is the difficult, okay, let's, let's go to the next one here. What, what's a silly, a silly reason you once cried, Buster.

A silly reason. Oh man. These are, oh, you call them rapid fire. You are really deep, deep, deep question. The silly reason. Oh yeah. Okay. So the last time, I think the last time I actually cried was when I was recently rewatching all the. Which movie they, the Rocky movies, you know, Rocky, the Rocky movies. And it was a scene where, where they're on the beach and then, and then like Adrian does like a speech to him of like, why he's like, you know, why he is who he is and yeah.

That cried. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Of course you cry. I think all men cry. I, I, there's probably two good spots in the movie where I cry. Where I think when he is in actually fighting and he tells his coach or whatever, I'm not going down again or something like that. I thought, to me it was like a good crying scene.

Yeah, and there's There's a few other ones too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Last question for you, Buster. Instead of a fear of failure, you have a fear of blank.

Yeah. Man, you might think big. My big fear, my big fear is not. Not like getting the fullest out of, you know, this short life and not getting, getting the, the, yeah. So, so I've, the fear of failure is really kind of like almost non-existent in my head because my, my big fear is like not getting everything that I possibly can out of it.

So I think that's kind of like the inverse. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I understand it's like, You know, for, for decisions, a lot of people will have a hard time making decisions. For me, it's like, Hey, if I don't do this later on down the road, am I gonna regret it? And it's, it's just like a simple way of like making that decision.

Oh man, I have somebody that should hear this. That's fabulous. All I'm gonna say, but, okay. All right. Hey Buster, thank you so much for being on. Innovators Can Laugh everybody. Hope you enjoyed this. I'm gonna put links to a fruit punch AI in the show notes. And for those listening, you heard Buster's story.

Check in next week. We've got another Dutch entrepreneur that will be on the show and until then, Buster, how do you say Goodbye and Dutch.

All right. Thanks Buster. Thanks for being a great host. Da. I had a great time chatting with Buster. I wonder if he and I were ever able to fight if he'd gimme an advantage by keeping one arm behind his back. If you're interested in some of Fruit Punch AI's challenges or interested in submitting a challenge, you can learn more@fruitpunch.ai.

Links to all of this are in the show notes and the IC newsletter, which you can subscribe at. Innovators can laugh.com. Thank you to Buster for being on the show. If you like this episode, pl