Maxime Chaya, is Lebanon’s foremost sportsman and climber. In 2006, he was the first person from his country to hoist its flag atop Everest, and he did so en route to ascending the highest mountain on every continent – the Seven Summits – while also skiing to the North and South Poles. Having experienced a multi-cultural education in Lebanon, France, Greece and Canada due to his homeland’s civil war, Max went on to graduate from the London School of Economics with honours. He now regularly visits schools, universities and clubs across the region to help motivate youngsters to ‘Climb their own Everest’. Author of the critically acclaimed book ‘Steep Dreams’, he has been knighted twice for his achievements, and lives in the Lebanese mountains, northeast of his native Beirut with his children Edgard and Kelly.
Two weeks ago Seeqnce had an opportunity to interview Maxime Chaya, Founder of ThinkGreen, a newly founded NGO aimed at promoting the protection of the environment, by raising awareness about it and how to preserve it. It addresses the young generation primarily, but is intent on lobbying wherever possible to achieve its objectives. Maxime shared with us the story of ThinkGreen app, as well as its current and future plans. He was also talking about the biggest challenge ThinkGreen team is facing right now and that is: “how to make sure that the app is put to effective use?” Maxime believes that the app itself “is a very powerful tool if users get to use it in a proper way”. In the end he gave 2 great advices to other entrepreneurs: 1) Before deciding what to do it is important to get the right people on board and 2) It is important to start with your hands behind your back, meaning to do nothing but think in the beginning so that you won’t regret later.
You can find the full interview transcript below.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Seeqnce: What does ThinkGreen do?
Maxime Chaya: ThinkGreen app allows you to take, upload, and share images of examples around you; things –good or bad- you happen to see looking out your car window or strolling down the street. The process is easy and anonymous. Just take a photo and the app will automatically geotag the image with its location. Next, you just tag the photo as either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down example. You also have the option to write a short comment before uploading. All uploaded images can be viewed and shared by accessing the map on ThinkGreen.cc
Seeqnce: What sparked the idea?
Maxime Chaya: Because I pledged 5% from the sales of my book ‘Steep Dreams’ for a green cause, I put together a team of friends, people who care about the environment, and people who are tech savvy. Then we sat down and realized that there are many companies that are currently planting trees in our country and this is very good. So we thought of doing something different and maybe use my influence with the youth to raise awareness about the environment. And because of the high tech age we live in, we thought the best way to do that is to create and app for the iPhone and the Blackberry (the two most utilized phones here).
Seeqnce: Who is the ThinkGreen team?
Maxime Chaya: It’s important to gather the right people “on the bus” and each person “in the right seat” before deciding where to drive the bus. Therefore, I attached great importance to choosing the right team from the onset. The team is comprised of: Mr. Maxime Chaya, Mrs. Hala Saddi, Mr. Karim Chaya, Mr. Samer Karam, and Mr. Nabil Chaya.
Seeqnce: What is your market and target audience?
Maxime Chaya: We believe in the youth because the future of any country lies within its youth so we are primarily targeting the new generation . Having said that, we have not forgotten the older generation, and the App is so diverse that anyone who uses a cell phone can familiarize with it. That’s pretty much anyone from 7 to 77!
Seeqnce: What stage is ThinkGreen at?
Maxime Chaya: We are still at the initial stages, we are just assembling the tools. The app is a very powerful tool if we get to use it in a proper way. What we need to work on now is finding a way to use this app effectively. Actually I am going to have meetings with people who have experience with the government and municipalities to see how we can use this app to effectively make a change on the ground.
Seeqnce: Are you looking for funding?
Maxime Chaya: Funding is always good. But before we ask for funding, which, until now, has come from my book sales and lectures, I think I would like to put a road map ahead and tell potential donors exactly what that money is going to be used for. There are some ideas that we will be implementing, but as I said although funding is always welcome I would rather specify what the funding will be used for in details before asking for funds from the public.
Seeqnce: Are you looking to hire?
Maxime Chaya: In fact we have not really hired anybody. What we have done so far was outsourcing. For example, the app had to be developed somewhere so we outsourced this to a company called Foo, then we have PenguinCube which is doing the visuals for the app and we had a couple of people that we hired on a part time basis. But we will definitely need to outsource some things once we draw up a major plan.
Seeqnce: What is the biggest challenge in your business?
Maxime Chaya: The biggest challenge is how to make sure that the app is put to effective use. We are testing the app now and hopefully it is going to be flawless very soon. But how do we make sure that the app will in fact be translated into effective use? into effective changes on the ground ? We have to work with the Minsitry of Interior, and with the municipalities etc. So unless we can use it to try and implement the law in a better way or to give alternatives for the people who are sometimes unwillingly breaking the law regarding the environment, I don’t think we will have succeeded no matter how good the app turns-out to be.
Seeqnce: Any regrets so far?
Maxime Chaya: I don’t regret anything. Not yet anyway. I am happy that before we decided what to do I assembled the right team. All of the ThinkGreen members are passionate about the environment, and dedicated toward our cause.
Seeqnce: What’s next?
Maxime Chaya: Right now we are just testing. And as I said before, the next thing to do is all about working on how to get it implemented in such a way that will achieve our initial aims.
Seeqnce: What was your greatest fear while working on the idea?
Maxime Chaya: I don’t think I can talk about fear while working on a project like that. When someone does what I’ve done in the recent past, he or she cannot talk about experiencing fear when working on such a project in a safe and controlled environment. So there was no fear. Of course things required investing our time, energy, and resources in order to make this happen. The worst case scenario is that we fail. And there is nothing wrong with failure, especially if we learn from it and come back more determined.
Seeqnce: What advice can you give to fresh entrepreneurs?
Maxime Chaya: In my opinion, before deciding what to do it is important to get the right people on board. If you decide to change direction in the middle of the road, for whatever reason (because at the end of the day we live in a fast changing world) you wouldn’t want anybody to leave you simply because they say “Hey we got on the train with you because we wanted to go to that specific place, now you are changing so we are getting off”. Thus it is good to assemble the right people on the train before deciding where to go.
And there is one other thing I would quickly say and that is: it’s important to start with your hands behind your back, meaning to do nothing but think in the beginning. We see very often people who get an idea, get quickly fired-up about it and then they immediately start moving toward that direction and they soon start thinking “oh we should have done this, or we could have done that…” ,so it’s important to really think in the beginning and once you have everything clearly planned, only then do you bring your hands from behind your back and start working.