Menu
originally published: 2022-06-06 08:00:22
“Find a core for your business that you can always think in the core and build solutions. That core is always more important than driving money.”
–Elie Makhoul, CEO of AssetFlo
Elie Makhoul is an engineer and the CEO of AssetFlo. AssetFlo is a game-changing IoT technology startup that provides accurate 3D locations of tracked assets. That IoT technology is not restricted by physical location. The technology works perfectly even if the asset is inside a container, on the shelves of a warehouse, or in a metal box. The “smart inventory” that AssetFlo builds can substantially increase the efficiency of work in many areas.
Key values of the episode:
Patrick is a creative entrepreneur, team leader, and Altitude Accelerator board member who has focused on the sales and success of companies including: HR tech, fintech, sports tech, Software-as-a-Service, cannabis (CBD / THC), nutrition, health and wellness, fitness corporations, and business of all sizes with a love for helping business grow and scale from $500k to north of $50m. With an entrepreneurial mindset focused on team-building, his ethical leadership delivers win-win solutions for his companies and clients.
Patrick McGuire (00:00)
Hey, it’s Patrick. Before we start, at the time of this recording, we went through a bit of a name rebranding from RIC Centre to Altitude Accelerator. With that in mind, we hope you enjoy the following interview. Welcome to the Startups Transform Podcast. I’m Patrick McGuire, your host, board member and advisor at Altitude Accelerator, where we help startups scale to new heights. We chat with phenomenal tech business leaders who’ve climbed their way to success within their industry. Our guests delve deep into the lessons they’ve learned along the way so that you can get a head start on your next big idea. I got someone here that’s been doing some neat stuff. He’s been a hustler from day one. He has hustled through school, he has hustled through business opportunities, and he has hustled this venture. We’re going to talk a little bit about AssetFlo. So I want to say thank you very much to my friend who’s joining me today, many known as Elie, Elie Makhoul. Elie, thank you very much for joining me today.
Elie Makhoul (01:09)
Thank you, Patrick, for having me. I’m very excited to have this discussion.
Patrick McGuire (01:14)
So Elie, I can tell what AssetFlo is sort of. And I’m just going to give a quick summary, but I’m going to get you to fix me in a minute here. So for everybody on the call, AssetFlo really is accurate. 3d location. It’s got some cool Tags and some cool little trackers. We’re talking really tiny. I almost wish I had one in my hands. Small like coin size for some of these things, if you will. Maybe a little bigger than a coin, but really interesting what they’re doing. They’re changing the game when it comes to tracking and delivering technology that actually works, not just in your building thinking warehouses, but everywhere. So Eli, is that right? Can you tell me a little more about that and what’s AssetFlo?
Elie Makhoul (01:56)
You hit it on the nail, Patrick. Unbelievable. So you know the problem in typical technology for asset tracking. So you have technologies that work outside, on the trailer, on the vehicle, but once they go inside, you have no visibility. So you end up deploying another technology inside. So you hear about RFID and you hear about Bluetooth and WiFi tracking inside the mall or in parking. So we built one technology that understands the environment and switch to the environment and find the location wherever you are accurately. It even improves the location outside the typical GPS at the lowest cost, meaning it reduced the cost of battery. GPS is expensive on the battery, so it makes it cheaper. So if there are two, three devices, imagine we’re standing beside each other with two, three people with the phone, right? 5g phone, then we can correct our location instead of 5 meters down to 1 meter. But a vehicle that goes in an underground parking and your lost visibility on it, that’s what we do the same tracking will work underground. When you go to a shelf on a warehouse, you will know on which shelf it is.
Patrick McGuire (03:12)
Holy cow. That’s a little bit of accuracy, my friend. Yeah.
Elie Makhoul (03:15)
I mean, we’re trying to give visibility, supply chain, or any people visibility is the key. Location is the main context. And by giving them that, they can optimize better their process, they can be more efficient. We’ve seen what happened during Covid. No visibility, no resiliency disasters.
Patrick McGuire (03:35)
Is that kind of bringing us into the whole IoT, the Internet of Things, is that automation built in? Is that why you’re able to do this?
Elie Makhoul (03:43)
Correct. We’re purely an IoT play, and it’s all about the intelligence of IoT. You hear a lot about sensor, AI for sensor. What do you predict? And that’s exactly what to do is to really predict a better location.
Patrick McGuire (04:01)
One of the things I saw was the asset view, real time 3D view on your assets with it metrics and dashboards and use cases for utilization, Efficiencies and safety. So can companies actually see what’s going on, where their stuff is and you’re helping them do it better? Is that what I’m getting?
Elie Makhoul (04:19)
That’s it. So you want to build a digital twin, but again, without having too many technology and without having very expensive process to set up one view that gives you here’s my asset outside and let me click to see inside the building. Let me click to see in what level, what floor or on what shelf of a warehouse. Or is it sitting in which trailer? So typically GPS doesn’t work. In which trailer because it’s metal. Right?
(04:50)
Right.
Elie Makhoul (04:51)
I have my inventory waiting on the yard for just in time delivery. I have problems knowing exactly in which trailer. So that’s what we try to do and give the market democratized location. We are at the stage of technology where many things should be achiev
able if you can envision them. And that’s one thing we want to democratize. Location always accurate.
Patrick McGuire (05:14)
Right. And I guess that makes a lot of sense when you’re talking just in time. We’re all just in time. Production and facilities and operations now. And knowing where it is and when it is, whether it’s five minutes away or 5 hours away, is going to make a big difference to a business efficiency. That’s really awesome. I’m curious, why are you doing this? What makes you think that you have a chance to be the next superstar to the supply chain?
Elie Makhoul (05:41)
Everybody says they have a better secret. I think the reason you do in life is usually you follow the money or you follow a passion. Ideally is follow a core that will drive money after. We believe in the code, I’m in that core. Let me give you an example. When I go to a restaurant to find a friend, I’ll be like, Where are they? When I go to a concert, I’m like, okay, where are they finding exactly where to go instead of turning around and wasting time is what drive me. I’m an engineer and I’m still practicing engineering. I still code. So being efficient in that process is what drives me. And we started because of a problem before because we built a solution for tracking people. But since it’s a critical data, it wasn’t accurate. We decided we’re going to do the best solution right now. Something can be trusted for payroll or for a critical delivery. Right. And that’s the why the why is always the code. Right. If you don’t have a “why” think you can follow the money, but that is limited immediately. You get distracted or so.
Patrick McGuire (06:54)
Yeah, money is nice to have, but it’s just a tool. It’s good to know that you did something great and you helped somebody out. I always like seeing the smile on people’s faces, and I think that’s what you get when you’re done working with your customers.
Elie Makhoul (07:04)
Yeah, exactly. That’s a key driver.
Patrick McGuire (07:08)
I’m going to pull something out there, folks. Elie says you got to do it as a cause. One of his causes is to helping people know exactly where to go. And maybe if you’re really nice, I’ll tell you how to get there. Elie, let’s back up a little bit. You obviously have done a lot of work to be successful in many different ways as a young man. As a teenager, your story wasn’t that easy. It’s not like you just showed up and AssetFlo was sitting there waiting for you to succeed. Where did you come from? How did that work out? And what was your struggle, Patrick?
Elie Makhoul (07:42)
That takes me back. That’s a long time ago. That tells you my age. But I came because I was in a country where? In the Middle East, where I was in my second year of University, but I couldn’t continue. And every year we’re interrupted by the war. I came for study. I came for study. I came. I said as soon as I finished my study, I’ll go back to my country. Unfortunately, this country has been so great that it kept me here. And now my kids are here and this became home. It’s beautiful country, beautiful people. Let’s put it this way. And I never went back. But coming as an immigrant, it’s always stressful if you don’t know anything, right? Especially coming from Middle East. No language. My language up to the now is still bad and couldn’t enter the University. My only reason that I came not to escape the war only is to continue education. And Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good access because I don’t have a good English. So I tried for the French. My background is a little bit more French and I got rejected. To McGill, to Ottawa University, to whatever French University.
Elie Makhoul (08:51)
So I was very disappointed. I was at the point to go back, but I had a very good friend, someone that I was working in the restaurant with a lady. I still remember her name. She’s like, you don’t know the system. You need to go find guidance. And that’s where it all started. I started hustling, went back to the administration, went back all the way to the Dean, kept communicating, just tell me why you won’t accept me. Finally, the Dean that signed the rejection letter in Ottawa University said, okay, on your own condition, but you have to get an A next year to prove it, because we can’t qualify a Middle Eastern school. Right? University. And that’s what I had to do. And that’s how I had to do for the first year while still working two job and yeah, it’s been an exciting journey, but I’m going to give you something spicy. More spicy.
Patrick McGuire (09:45)
Hey, I love spicy. Hey, if it’s Middle Eastern, it better be spicy.
Elie Makhoul (09:49)
You know what’s my first startup? I don’t tell many people my first startup.
Patrick McGuire (09:54)
I think with you at University, you have to hustle and you have to make it happen.
Elie Makhoul (09:58)
Yeah, that is better than that. The first startup being an engineer during the war and not able to go to school during bombing, the idea was aluminum is very expensive. Cars are being burned on the street. So the first startup was to drive in the morning after bombing and find cars that have been hit and buy them for aluminum. That was the first startup.
Patrick McGuire (10:24)
Oh, my, you were a scrappy scrapper.
Elie Makhoul (10:29)
Take the car that is burnt, pay the money, or take it for free to a parking lot where we disassemble it for park. We used to love those engines that are aluminum engine because there is so much aluminum in them, like a Seat or some European cars. And that was the first startup. And the second startup was how to build a pizza place at the most cost efficient and sell it fast, like a startup.
Patrick McGuire (10:53)
Bombed out and burnt cars to pizza joints.
Elie Makhoul (11:02)
You hustle again. And this is during school. But yeah, the actual tech startup was building mobile application. And this was great.
Patrick McGuire (11:13)
All right, so you’re in Canada. It was a war to get through University to keep that A to stay, to find the right mentors, to do a couple of startups moving into mobile applications. What inspired this startup? What made you switch and pivot to do your own thing with AssetFlo?
Elie Makhoul (11:32)
Yeah. Look, I had two things are going at that time when we found that there is a problem. And I’m driven by, as I mentioned, being a little bit awkward socially or so introvert that I like to find things where I’m going, not to be discovering things. So I’m driven by location. But the next thing is I had an incident back where my daughter went into an elevator. She ran before me, young kids, and the elevator is gone. And for ten minutes you’re panicking and she’s panicking. She’s traumatized and the parent, I said finding where in which floor is a must. And with that drive, plus myself, my personality to solve location if I can solve it for myself. How many times you lose your glasses or your keys? A couple of days. That is a consumer solution to tell you how important they are trying to attach things to the glasses or to the key and just being efficient not to lose anything or in business, to be able to automate and save money. And that’s our drive. So it’s always a call. It’s always the cause.
Elie Makhoul (12:42)
And without the cause, yes, you can do magic, but at some times, the magic disappear.
Patrick McGuire (12:48)
Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, you said earlier that you got to have a cause. And the cause to be able to not lose your kids is actually a big one. Not lose your laptop and your glasses. Okay, well, those are kind of motivating, but that’s unbelievable. That’s what’s inspired you. That’s a great, great reason to know that. And actually, I think more people should probably figure out how to track their kids better, myself included.
Elie Makhoul (13:15)
Look, kids at some age don’t want to be tracked. Of course we want to give them the opportunity to grow. But definitely not knowing on the wrong, but not knowing when it arrives. It happens once a year, not every day, but that moment is really panicked. And I got through it a few times.
Patrick McGuire (13:31)
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got three kids of my own, and the oldest one is driving now, and the other one is not far off of driving. But even when they’re just walking to school, you know, I know it’s only five minutes away for us, but I get worried. Are they going to get there? They’re going to get back. And if they’re five minutes late because they were hanging out with a friend, having a talk, I start to get concerned. So I get it. In business, every box is that business owner’s baby. And if they can’t find that box, that unit, that product, that computer chip, that car bumper, they’re going to freak out. And I think AssetFlo is awesome. The fact that you can track when it’s outside the warehouse or leaving one warehouse onto a truck, down the highway, into the underground and into the warehouse. And then even on the shelf, that guy knows that his baby is secured or that product is secured with AssetFlo. And I would call it smart inventory.
Elie Makhoul (14:29)
Thank you, Patrick. You get me.
Patrick McGuire (14:33)
Thank you. I was going to ask you about a pivot. Help me understand what was an important pivot point for your business. And how did that happen?
Elie Makhoul (14:42)
The first was natural, right? It’s Covid hit. And we’re passionate people, engineers. We think we can help. We need to help in this. So what can we do? We can use our accurate location to give social distancing, and many people start looking at it. So that was a quick pivot. It’s not full pivot. It’s temporary to help the market. Right. While we go back to our product. That was the first pivot that we’ve done, a device with a partner that was praised in the market highly. And it gives you accurate location. Are you standing beside someone? After 5 seconds, it starts vibrating. Within 5 seconds, it beeps y
ou. Within 15 minutes, it beeps your manager. If you sit in a room, dance room, it knows that this is different timing. There is a risk, higher risk that you shouldn’t be in that room. So that was temporary and driven by passion to participate in the fight. Right?
Patrick McGuire (15:40)
Was that through mobile devices or was that on a separate tag? How did that work?
Elie Makhoul (15:45)
That’s a linear device by our partner. So we gave them the technology.
Patrick McGuire (15:50)
Wow.
Elie Makhoul (15:50)
Not the hardware. We gave them the intelligence on the software to derive that solution.
Patrick McGuire (15:57)
Brilliant.
Elie Makhoul (15:57)
Yeah.
Patrick McGuire (15:58)
You found a partner that could take your technology, and they had a problem that they wanted to solve. And you said, hey, we can license it to you however you do that. I don’t know. I’m not going to ask your monetary deals, but tell me more about the pivot that you’ve recently gone through and how things are going.
Elie Makhoul (16:13)
As an entrepreneur, you say, I want to be agile. I want to solve one problem after the other. I can’t boil the ocean. Our vision is everywhere. Accurate location. We started with the indoor, right? Like any other, it’s just better than RFID, better than existing. But there are other Bluetooth other like Apple today’s launch store yesterday. But we started going through the market. We started going through our ecosystem. Our channel to market is through our investor, an ecosystem called Geotab. There’s a leader in IoT right in vehicle tracking. And we agreed we’re going to solve the indoor because it’s demanded by many of their customers. But as we start rolling out and there are customers lining up for it, as we start going up to the market right now, the customers are telling us what we want. The everywhere solution that we know you’re working on it. We love the indoor, but you’re pitching us something that your vision is to do that. But then you’re giving us another solution for the indoor, right. Which is, yeah, great. But that’s not our biggest pain. We already have technology. We already have RFID or other solution.
Elie Makhoul (17:22)
Okay, so we post the marketing and we pushed on executing that vision with the help from RIC to guide us. What you call a nice model to prioritize where your target market. We start zero in on that. And the outcome of that, we were able to demonstrate it on 5G, the technology work. We are starting manufacturing right now. I have sample coming, and we’re very excited for the next few months to be able to start serving the market. So the market has told us even we had few customers waiting for the indoors, the market, the whole ecosystem, majority of the ecosystem telling us we need that more. So you have to listen.
Patrick McGuire (18:07)
Excellent calling that one out for everybody listening. You have to listen to your customers’ demands. You might have what you think is the best idea, but your customers really, they almost don’t care what your idea is. They care how they can implement and use your idea. And will it form to what their idea, their ideal idea is and really glad that you listen to them because they might be using one system, then using another system. And now we’re asking just to add expenses. What you’ve done saying it’s one system end to end. From the time it leaves your suppliers warehouse, to hit the truck, to get into your warehouse, it’s the same system. And I really think that’s asset flow value proposition. Maybe that client’s not adopting asset flow, but maybe the supplier is and the supplier says, hey, we’re tracking your packages from start to finish. And then the client falls in love with the solution. And now the client is begging you, how do we make asset flow work for all of our suppliers and all of our products? I think it’s amazing. I really like that idea. You listen to your customers now, Elie, everything sounds like it’s moving good.
Patrick McGuire (19:15)
It’s flowing. Not to play on that aspect flow, but it is flowing. Not everything’s perfect. Tell me about something difficult, or was there ever a time in the business.
Elie Makhoul (19:25)
That you went, yes, even right now, even right now, we believe we found the product market fit right. And the market is telling us this is great, we’re willing to order. And then there is a chaos in the market, delay in hardware parts. So I can’t manufacture fast enough. Right now I need to wait 26 weeks or 28 weeks or 16 weeks on some part. So what do I do in the meantime? So I can serve them? I can collect PO but not commit when I can deliver. Maybe six months or three months. So everybody in the hardware industry in it. There are a few lucky people that they have inventory built in. But this was a serious problem. A Japanese manufacturing that burnt one of the key sensors, pressure from the automotive that priorized to take all the sensors. So anyone that’s using
those sensor or those chips now in trouble, it’s like call it, is it trouble three months or is it nine months? So that’s where I am. But I’m trying to react and do a new pivot without calling it to pivot to a new strategy where we believe it’s a great software, everybody can use it.
Elie Makhoul (20:43)
So I’m trying to pivot a little bit more towards the software solution while we’re waiting for the hardware inventory.
Patrick McGuire (20:51)
Nice. That’s a good way to go. I mean, if others can license your software, like the gentleman with the Lanyard that had that great idea, they can license it. It helps you solve their problems and continues to grow your business as you’re waiting on the hardware supply chain.
Elie Makhoul (21:04)
Correct.
Patrick McGuire (21:04)
It’s too bad the place burnt down. But everybody else, maybe they need asset flow to track their supply chain. I don’t know exactly.
Elie Makhoul (21:13)
Time will tell, but I think, yes, there is no start up without too many challenges. How do you react to them? Right. That’s the lesson.
Patrick McGuire (21:21)
Yeah. If it was easy, we’d all be entrepreneurs. We’d all have successful startups.
Elie Makhoul (21:25)
Exactly.
Patrick McGuire (21:25)
Another thing is that Apple launched their tag. And Interestingly enough, I mean, let’s be honest, when they get into hardware, they’ve already vetted this out. And if tagging and tracking is important to companies like Apple to make it a consumable product, how important does everybody on this call in this session think it is to business? And that just validates, Elie. It validates your opportunity with asset flow. I think that’s the best validation you can have. And others might call it competition. I’m going. No, that means the market’s ready for business.
Elie Makhoul (21:58)
Thank you, Patrick. That’s how we look at it. We do need to have something valuable different than Apple or for example, industrial rather than just consumer. But Apple is validation.
Patrick McGuire (22:10)
Yeah. And I think back to QR codes when they first came out, and I use them for some marketing purposes back then, but they really just didn’t go anywhere. And then they faded away. But let’s remember where they came from. Originally, it was for the just in time manufacturing process that Toyota implemented. And every part had a sticker or QR code. And people are like, oh, that’s stupid. We’re not going to use it. Well, give it about eight years or so and it resurges. And QRs are now one of the best used tools out there. In fact, it’s just pure validation that again, we’re going to say Apple. I don’t care if you’re an Android or an Apple fan, it doesn’t matter to me. But Apple has revived the QR code technology and embedded it right into their cameras. So when you take a picture, if it’s a QR, it recognizes it. Eli. I’m just saying it’s validating your business that if they’re doing Tags, you’re in the right game, my friend.
Elie Makhoul (23:05)
Yes, thank you. Yes, I agree. Very good.
Patrick McGuire (23:09)
So what’s the future that you see.
Elie Makhoul (23:12)
For the company this year is make sure that we are alive. Right to be in this space. But the first is we want to be known as the player in a 5G location, at least hybrid 5G or IoT, whatever you want to call it. But the most important thing we want to prove upon we’re engineer, we’re builder. The only reason we’re building to prove a point. You don’t need all those technologies. Apple did the same way Apple tag has two technology. It tell you high precision or low precision if you don’t have this technology. Ultrawide band, it’s called. It falls back to Bluetooth. That’s exactly on the same path. What we’re doing with Apple, we are the exact same technology, except we understand when to switch. Not just from Bluetooth to ultrawide bed. We understand when to switch to LTE, to 5G, to GPS to cellular and at the most cost efficient way. Right. To keep the battery low.
Patrick McGuire (24:09)
Yeah. And you know what, folks? This is why I need to talk to a self proclaimed engineering geek. So I know that this stuff happens. I don’t need to know how it works. I just need to know that it is going to work for me. And that’s what is beautiful. I think about what you’re doing, Elie and AssetFlo is that you guys are making sure it gets done and we don’t have to worry about that. We just use the technology and
someone says, well, how do you track all that stuff? Oh, I don’t know, it just does. I’m glad I got someone like you to explain it to me.
Elie Makhoul (24:41)
Yeah, in a simple word, Patrick, just to simplify it, you never have to switch your WiFi on and off right now anymore. You get data in or out, right? Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing from a different perspective, but similar to.
Patrick McGuire (25:00)
I’m going to ask you just a couple of things, but before we sort of part ways here, I’m curious why RIC and how did you get connected?
Elie Makhoul (25:10)
Look, I was researching what’s a good support program. I was part of the Brampton entrepreneur that they were already doing the connection. So I got feedback on RIC from multiple entries that this is a great group that doing good things. Right. Just purely about the support. And that’s why after connecting with their advisor, a couple of their advisors, I really have so much admiration to them and they’re doing it just from helping the community and giving back. And yeah, I hope I can do the same.
Patrick McGuire (25:45)
Excellent, I appreciate that. I’m sure you will. You already are doing good stuff. You are giving back. Maybe it’s not necessarily in what you think is the way, but I think changing the industry and changing the game when it comes to tracking like asset flow, you’re already giving back in a different way. It’s going to make life better and easier for a lot of businesses. I’m going to summarize a little bit here. RIC Centre is a place where research, innovation and commercialization come together. That’s why we’ve got great people like Elie coming out of our ecosystem, becoming one of our great Champions and entrepreneurs that are out there. And I encourage you to check it out. This has been informative and educational for me. It’s also given me an inspiration to remind me to always be hustling. I want to remind everybody to hustle, hustle, hustle. Whether your goal is just to get into University from another country. Or your goal is to build up a business that just won’t quit, a business that looks for opportunities in bombed out cars, to resell the aluminum, or to find a way to make pizza joints and sell them fast.
Patrick McGuire (26:48)
Or to make something like AssetFlo, which is going to change the supply chain game completely. I want you to remember to hustle. I want everyone to hustle like this man here. I want them never to quit. I want them to find great partners. I want you guys to really make a difference. If you have a goal and an idea, find a mentor. Even if it’s Chantal who helped him get into a different way of thinking to get into University. Or if it’s the Dean that said you got to get an A to stay, or if it’s AssetFlo technology, working with Geotab and other big players like that, get yourself a mentor, get yourself a vision, get yourself a goal and go after it. Never quit. And hustle like Eli has. So, Eli, I’m going to sign off here. But before I say thank you, I’ve got one question for you that I always ask. If you’re looking at Eli young Eli getting started all over again from the very beginning, would you be an entrepreneur all over again? Would you do it again?
Elie Makhoul (27:48)
Of course, I cannot do anything else. I’ve failed so many times, Patrick, and I constantly failing. I’m going to stand up again because that’s what we want to show the new generation. That’s what we want to show our kids how to constantly evolve and do better. I definitely don’t advise it for the people are not willing to do the work or the learning, the constant learning. Right. I used to make much more money working for the people. I used to make plenty of money as a CTO in public company. And I take not even 20% of those money. And I’m happier. Right. Because I’m doing happier. Yes. And that’s what I’m showing my kids, the path towards freedom, freedom of being restricted. It’s being able to overcome those challenges.
Patrick McGuire (28:43)
That is wonderful. I love that you said you’re happier. And it’s not always about the money. It’s about the cause. It’s about the change. It’s about the challenge and the opportunity to hustle. Never quit, never die. When Asset Flow is rocking all over the world, then we’ll have another conversation, probably much sooner than that. So, Eli, I want to say thank you so much on behalf of Rick Center, on behalf of entrepreneurs everywhere, thank you very much, Eli. Have a great day, my friend.
Elie Makhoul (29:11)
Pleasure, Patrick. Thank you so much. And thank you to everyone at the RIC Center.
Patrick McGuire (29:16)
And we’ll see you soon on the RIC Center Startups Transform podcast. My friends join us for video and audio and wherever you consume your favorite podcast. Thank you for joining us on Startups Transform podcast. You Can subscribe to the Show Wherever You Get Your Podcasts If you enjoyed the conversation, a rating or review goes a long way. Recommend the show to a friend. Find US Altitude Accelerator.com Where We Can Help you begin your startup Journey with access to our workshops Advisors and Mentorship Opportunities be sure to tune in for our next episode.
This website uses cookies to save your preferences, and track popular pages. Cookies ensure we do not require visitors to register, login, or share any identity information.
