Wed, May 27, 2020

FIP 129: Using Design Thinking in the Needfinding Process, with Juliana Proserpio of Echos Innovation Lab

In this episode of the Finding Impact Podcast I talk to Juliana Proserpio, Co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Echos Innovation Lab, on using Design Thinking in the needfinding process. Juliana talks about her work at Echos Innovation Lab and how it supports organizations and entrepreneurs to use the design thinking mindset for accelerating cultural change and creating new services and business models to create desirable futures. On this podcast you will learn: How Echos Innovation Lab has built a for-profit business that works with organizations to create and foster innovation initiatives, as well as building the design capability of individuals and organizations to create better and human-centered services through its School of Design Thinking. (01:30) Design thinking is a way to understand people and people's needs that helps develop solutions which address these needs better. The design thinking mindset is thus based on empathy, collaboration and experimentation. (02:37) The double-diamond methodology of design thinking that focusses on using divergence and convergence methods for expanding knowledge of user needs (also called "discovery process" or "empathetic research") and then converging ("synthesis") upon real needs and specific ideas or insights that create value for the user. (04:15) Tools for synthesizing, such as systems map, personas, etc., that can help in developing insights by understanding information patterns and interconnections. (11:30) Key suggestions on how to manage the ideation stage of design thinking by thinking about quantity and not necessarily only quality (“you can only get to an amazing idea once you get some absurd ideas”). (15:36) That design thinking is an iterative process where you ideate, prototype and test, while iterating and going back and forth between the various phases. (19:27) Why social entrepreneurs need to have creative confidence for re-imagining how the world can be, and how design thinking aids in developing creative confidence. (23:21) Advice for students and young founders looking to develop social ventures on how they can use design thinking to identify challenges within their communities ("near their doors") - acting locally, starting small, and helping create value within the community first, and then aim at creating bigger impact ("dream big and start small"). (24:55) About the School of Design Thinking at the Echos Innovation Lab, that helps individuals and organizations become better innovators through classroom programs and online courses on various design thinking topics. (26:30) Examples of participants in the design thinking courses (such as Insecta Shoes) who have applied design thinking to their needfinding process and how it has helped them deliver the desired outcomes. (28:44) Advice for first-time founders and social entrepreneurs to navigate the lockdown and the po

Wed, May 20, 2020

FIP 128: The Elder Series with Jack Lowe of the Fit For Life Foundation

I'm very honoured to speak to Jack Lowe this week. He's come on share lessons learnt throughout his 40 year career in microfinance and the startup world. Jack was asked to become CEO of BlueOrchard Investments in 2004 -- a microfinance fund that he grew from $40 million to close to $1 billion, stretching to 45 countries. It became the largest private microfinance lender in the world. Jack graduated from Stanford in 1965, joined McKinsey in 1969, and went on to grow a string of successful startups, from oil and gas to food distribution and restaurants. Jack is currently building another startup, Fit for Life Foundation, helping people stay active and age well. On this show you'll learn: The fundamental difference between the business and non-profit sector (2.24) The experience of pitching the microfinance fund to pension funds, family offices and institutional investors (4.57) The two basic principles of fundraising (7.41) How to know when something's not working and to try something else (11.19) Professional intimacy and other insights from building teams (14.12) Using a network and calling on people for help and advice (18.45) Getting out of a tough spot and avoiding depression (24.15) Advice to his younger self (31.54) Why exercise and ageing well is the feature of Jack's next startup (36.31) 3 quick fire questions (44.08) Links from this episode Mckinsey Stanford University BlueOrchard Get in touch with Jack Jack Lowe on LinkedIn

Wed, May 13, 2020

How to shift your attitude to perform at your best

This episode is about the one thing that changes everything -- mindset. Or attitude. We're living in tough times, and often, our mindset, our attitude, our outlook, can hold us back. With fear, worry, panic, stress, all these different emotions entering our day at some point. All these things hold us back. But, with the understanding of how our minds work, and with the tools to shift our attitude, we can accept this new reality and choose to take action. I'm joined by Scott Roy, CEO of Whitten Roy Partnership. Scott is an expert in the art of selling and sales management. And since attitude is the most important component of successful selling, they are experts in attitude and how people can change their mindset to generate optimal results for their organisation. Listen to this episode to learn: About the process you can take to shift your own attitude and the eBooklet that WRP are offering free to download on their website. Understand the different forms of attitude, from overwhelm to possibility, so you can recognise which you're in and then what you can do with it. We talk about for the four states of overwhelm, which are compulsion, obligation, survival and impossibility. Compulsion: Panic buying is a form of compulsion. It's the feeling that you have to do things to fix this, to get ahead, to make it go away. It's an obsession. It saps alot of your energy. An example is having to watch the news, to not miss anything - to see how many people had died and what was happening next. The next state is obligation. This is where you're so overwhelmed and exhausted, that you give up on trying to change things, you just put up with it. Like you're now in quarantine, you complain about it, you moan about it to your friends, etc. There's not very much you can actually do, other than muddle your way through it Next is a state of survival, which is like running around like a headless chicken Next is a state of impossibility, when you think there's nothing you can do, you're frozen, and you hold up your hands in resignation. To understand these states of overwhelm is to know how our mind works. It makes conclusions, demands and predictions, and we can interpret our thoughts through these lenses. Conclusions: this is the worse crisis the world has ever known... Demands: this has to stop, things have to get back to normal, someone has to do something, I have to do something... Predictions: things will never be the same again, we will never recover from this, my business will never recover, things will be much harder... Then, once you've understood these states of overwhelm, take some deep breaths, in through your nose for 4 seconds and out 4 seconds. Do this 3-4 times. Feel yourself settled. Then say out loud "This is really happening, we're in a pandemic, this is real. And I accept it." The next st

Mon, May 04, 2020

FIP 126: How Business Can Respond to a Crisis with James Mwangi representing Safe Hands Kenya

James Mwangi of Dalberg Group on the podcast today. He's representing Safe Hands Kenya, a coalition of Kenyan businesses who've come together to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. They're distributing free hand sanitiser, soap, face masks and surface disinfectants to all Kenyans, as a first line of defence against COVID-19. Resources: SafeHandsKenya.com @SafeHandsKenya on Twitter Safe Hands Kenya on YouTube

Thu, April 09, 2020

FIP 125: Venture Debt Fund for revenue-generating businesses during COVID-19 with Amanda Cotterman

Today's challenge is for those businesses who're seeing a temporary loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 crisis, but also anyone in the business of raising capital, and interested in different funding instruments. We've got Amanda Cotterman on the show, and we're talking about the fund she's raising, Equalife Capital's Africa Venture Debt COVID Recovery Fund. We help you understand whether this funding instrument is right for your enterprise or if you're a donor or investor, whether you might want to put some capital towards this fund.  What you'll learn on this episode: Amanda works for Equalife Group. They're raising a $20M venture debt fund. It's for businesses that are revenue generating and cashflow positive, and have a specific revenue stream or they want to prove out a revenue stream to get a better valuation. The debt would need to be serviced. Examples of appropriate businesses include:- Agriculture businesses e.g. a milk distribution business that pays farmers up front, before going to market A wholesale distributor in Rwanda, who buys from farmers, adds value to veg by cleaning and packaging, and sells to hospitality market.A FinTech factoring business, that pays against invoices. Businesses that have a genuine liquidity issue are most suited to this fund, so there's good product market fit, there's a demand for their product, but it's just a matter of sourcing sufficient working capital to cover purchases in the short term. How the fund could be used to weather the COVID-19 storm: Businesses might have seen a drop in revenue and need cash to weather the storm. They don't want to take on more equity. Amanda has been an entrepreneur in Kenya for 9 years , working in an operational role with several ventures. She moved to Kenya after working in Asian markets with Morgan Stanley. With a deep understanding of financial instruments and the needs of African ventures, she saw the gap for debt to come in alongside venture capital. The debt can be useful where the venture has a profitable revenue stream and wants to demonstrate the potential to gain a higher valuation, but is struggling with cashflow. Shareholders don't want to dilute their shareholding by using equity to support with cashflow needs. The venture fund prices for the risk, so interest in the range of 5-10%.  Links to useful resources: Check out: http://www.equalifegroup.com/ and click on Equalife Capital in the menu. Check out their LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/equalifecapital/ Connect with Amanda: On LinkedIn

Thu, April 02, 2020

FIP 124: Using Design Thinking in the Needfinding Process with Elizabeth Knight

On this podcast you will learn: How Andy and Elizabeth are dealing with the new world of COVID 19 - structured journaling with pen and paper. (3:55) What is needfind and why is it important? (4:30) It’s important because it’s a shift in terms of how we think about entrepreneurship and creating value as an entrepreneur; building a business or enterprise around a need (real problem) rather than a singular idea gives greater scope to produce value and to solve a problem in a sustainable way; it’s about core needs and what people are willing to pay for. If you take away the beginning pressure of having to come up with a business model that’s going to be profitable but focus on finding a real need that people are experiencing then you get to know that problem in a lot more intimate way and the more you become the expert on that problem the better; potential profitable is short-term thinking nowadays. (7:05) If we’re designing solutions for lower income people in informal settlements (11:03) Design thinking gives you a tool / framework to explore that problem in more detail.  How design thinking has helped Elizabeth. (13:57) Helpful for simplifying her problem down into its core essence which helped in communicating to other people; but also challenged her biases, assumptions, etc.  When does she know that enough is enough and when to move on? (20:20) There is a tipping point where you’ve done so much validation that it can become confusing; when you get to that point that is when strategic thinking is important particularly for early stage founders. Tools that people can use in this process: (25:52) <li style="font

Wed, December 18, 2019

FIP 123: How this young founder is bootstrapping his EdTech Startup, with Cyril Michino of Chaptr Global

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we find out out how a young founder bootstrapped his startup and the lessons he learnt in wannapreneurship . We talk with Cyril Michino, co-founder of Chaptr Global and hear about his entrepreneurial journey having founded 2 startups by the age of 21 and learn that capital is not a barrier for starting up. Cyril shares his experiences around the challenges faced by young founders and how he’s innovating around such challenges by adopting innovative revenue-sharing business models. On this podcast you will learn: How Cyril started his first business – Deliverus, an e-commerce platform in Nairobi, quite accidentally when he was just 17, based on an idea that he and his friends came up with for a high school business plan competition. (03:38) Cyril shares how he overcame the challenge of lack of experience, being a young founder, and used tools such as YouTube videos for creating pitch decks, learning marketing techniques, etc. He also shares how he kept his curiosity levels high by reading blogs and articles to learn how things work out in a business and trying to find answers though online resources as much as possible. (09:47) About what went wrong with Cyril’s first startup as they set out to focus on things such as getting the infrastructure ready, building the best mobile application, planning a big launch, etc., - things that Cyril calls “ entrepreneurial naivety ”, irrelevant from an entrepreneurship point of view and leads to wannapreneurship . Cyril also shares these, and many more insights based on this experience on what’s stopping entrepreneurs from actually starting up and also what’s holding back entrepreneurship in Africa in his TEDx talk (check resources below for the link to the talk). (13:26) One of the critical things about being a young founder is to invest time in building a team with skills who solve the gaps that the founder personally has, like for example in Cyril’s case, he learnt that they needed people with real experience in managing deliveries, logistics, order fulfilment, things that cannot be learnt online but comes only with experience. (16:13) Cyril then shares his journey of starting up his new blended learning edtech platform – Chaptr Global, that helps teach emerging technologies, such as AI, data science, blockchain to people in emerging markets, using an income sharing model, where students can sign-up for courses without upfront payment and pay later when they start earning upon graduation from the program. (19:34) Finally, Cyril shares a powerful quote, based on his experience that says –“if you're an entrepreneur and you cannot start off your idea in two weeks, then you're probably not the best person for that thing”. As a young founder, it is important to be able to start work on something that the founder can personally start and build an MVP in less than two weeks. Once the

Wed, December 04, 2019

FIP 122: How to build processes and systems for scale, with Boston Nyer of BURN Manufacturing

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking to Boston Nyer, co-founder of BURN. Boston's played a wide variety of roles during his 8 years at BURN, including COO, where he was tasked with setting up processes in their factory in Nairobi that makes more than one stove per minute. It's the largest of its kind on the continent. On this episode you will learn: An intro to his background, to BURN, and how BURN is structured. 1:48.  How BURN is split up by departments. 6:00. Four pillars: 1) Innovation (ie. new product development, piloting sales models, distribution schemes, etc.), 2) Operations (ie.manufacturing and supply chain), 3) Commercial (sales marketing), 4) Finance and Business support (Admin, IT, and HR).  Which of these four areas Boston realized he needed to formalize by establishing systems and procedures. 7:00.  How Boston would start making a procedure. 10:32. Start with and have the right vision on how you’re going to succeed on the market as well as operational side.  Find expertise externally if you do not have it internally. Find two or three experts who disagree with each other, and where they disagree is the spotlight of the area that you can play in.  Avoid the trap of making systems to make systems.  Start early and often. 21:50. How Boston introduces new processes to staff without too much pushback. 18:02. Skipfab? - Why, How, What How often he revisits procedures. 23:10. It’s continuous, although some things have more of a natural cycle, like launching a new product.  Create a forum for conversation of sharing of ideas which might or might not be

Wed, November 20, 2019

FIP 121: Maintaining culture with growth through scale, with Paul Breloff of Shortlist

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about the challenges of maintaining culture as your social business scales, and tactics for how to adapt and scale your culture, with Paul Breloff of Shortlist. Paul's company, Shortlist, helps companies build and develop their teams through a new approach to hiring. Particularly, we’ll be talking about Paul’s experience as he grew Shortlist’s team across two continents and to nearly 100 people and lessons he’s learned from the entrepreneurs at companies Shortlist works with. On this podcast you will learn: The definition to the word Shwashbuckle. 0:58. Why why he got into “talent;” his background is mostly in non-talent social enterprise and impact investing after advertising and corporate law. For about 14-15 years now, very focused on financial inclusion and initially was part of a team who set up a community development bank in the US which led to Accion Venture Lab. https://www.accion.org/how-we-work/invest/accion-venture-lab The theme underlying all of this has always been looking at for-profit business models which can expand access to opportunities in different ways. 2:30. Saw a talent gap in companies and how culture could enable or disable teams in doing things.  Realized that investors comfort zone was talking about fundraising and strategy. The messy reality of building teams and getting the right people on those teams are something that doesn't get talked about as much, but they often make or break whether these companies work. So Shortlist emerged from those experiences. 6:12. Shortlist created a platform (now close to 1 million people) that connects skilled professionals to great careers in India and Kenya, using tech tools that automates the collection of data points beyond their CV. 8:08. How Paul came to define Shortlist’s culture. 10:10. Culture should come from the co-founders. A key part of defining the culture was setting strong core values, which are: own it, act with intention, find the adventure, be a whole person, and one team. <span style="font-weight:

Wed, November 06, 2019

FIP 120: Adapting managment and leadership styles for scale

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about how founders of social enterprises can transition from being a product builder to company builder, with Glynis Rankin from Creative Metier. Glynis is the CEO of Creative Metier, a niche consultancy that works with social impact investors and their investees to support social enterprises and small and growing businesses in emerging markets through executive coaching, human capital resources, and organizational strengthening. On this podcast, you will learn: How founders shift their leadership and management styles as their social enterprise scales, by looking at issues such as delegation, role of culture and values, coaching styles, etc. The key difference between leadership and management roles in early stage social enterprises, where the core objectives of the leadership role are to set the strategic vision for the business, manage the interface between the business and the external environment, and inspire others to engage in it. Whereas, the management role is about the day-to-day activities to achieve the strategic business plan and deliver results. The importance of delegation and coaching as a necessary leadership style so that the founder can pass on responsibility of key business functions and driving the business to others within the organization, while the founder can focus on other key aspects of aligning the culture and values with the business vision and future growth. About examples of Creative Metier's programs to support small businesses and social enterprise founders in making the transition to a delegation and coaching style of leadership in line with their business objectives and values. And finally, Glynis shares excellent resources that are useful to social entrepreneurs and small business founders as they think about shifting their leadership styles and prepare to transition their business for growth and scale. The links for the resources are provided below.   Links to Resources: Creative Metier HBR Article - 5 Things Leaders Do That Stifle Innovation HBR Article – Creativity and the Role of the Leader HBR Article – Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? Wired Magazine   Connect with Glynis: LinkedIn Tw

Wed, October 23, 2019

FIP 119: Tips for young founders with Lamia Makkar who launched her first startup at age 13

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we’ve got Lemia Makkar and we're going to talk about Lamia's experience as a young founder, with the hope of inspiring and helping other young founders succeed at what they're doing. Lemia started her first non-profit Haiti: Hands On , at the age of 13, when at times she had to skip school to present to CEOs in Boardrooms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where she lived. Fast forward 8 years later, to today, and Lamia has kindly come on to share her experience. On this podcast, you will learn: Why she started a non-profit at 13 years old Challenges she had to overcome because of her age: Basic infrastructure to run an organization: couldn’t open a bank account or register as a 501c3 in the US until she was 18 years old. Getting people to take you seriously: validity of being recognized as a serious stakeholder while still not being able to register with proper documentation; fundraising; buy-in from Haitians. Opposition from parents: stigma surrounding Haiti; safety, etc. Advantages, because of her age:  Able to answer questions about their doubt, ie. at their age, there was no social stigma around saying, “I don’t know.” Very easy for us to ask other organizations questions and interview them before building anything.  High level contacts sharing information with us since they didn’t see us as a competitor nor us just trying to build our careers.  How to ask the right questions and who to reach out to: Researching education nonprofits in Haiti and throughout the world Sending out cold emails to ask how do you do what you do Practicing a phone script and writing a business plan and proposal  <li style="font

Wed, September 18, 2019

FIP 118: Building entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging markets with Maryanne Ochola of ANDE

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are starting off a new series to help social entrepreneurs understand and navigate the whole gamut of services and service providers in entrepreneurial ecosystems and we are talking with Maryanne Ochola, East Africa Regional Chapter Manager of ANDE (Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs), based in Nairobi. Maryanne shares her views on the different players in entrepreneurial ecosystems, roles they play and services they offer to help social entrepreneurs succeed. On this podcast, you will learn: Why entrepreneurial ecosystems are important - just like Silicon Valley for technology startups or Hollywood for films, these ecosystems increase the productivity of enterprises associated with the ecosystem, drive the pace of innovation and help stimulate the formation of new enterprises. Learn about ANDE, its focus on Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs), and its work in building strong local entrepreneurial ecosystems - with 8 offices in emerging economies, having 280+ members as service providers providing financial and non-financial assistance to social entrepreneurs and operating in 150 countries. About ANDE's 6x6 framework or key activity domains that underpin its entrepreneurial ecosystem services, such as: (i) finding entrepreneurs, (ii) training entrepreneurs, (iii) cultivating physical and virtual support spaces for entrepreneurs, (iv) funding support for all types of financing, (v) enabling entrepreneurs with legal, regulatory support, and finally (v) celebrating entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. How entrepreneurs can find and make use of the different services provided by the ANDE ecosystem and its member organizations - such as networking events, acceleration programs, pitch competitions, funding support, legal services, etc. And finally, how it is also extremely important for investors and entrepreneurial support service providers to be embedded in the local ecosystem and possess an understanding of the local context, challenges, and opportunities in order to deliver maximum value to entrepreneurs.   Links to Resources: Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Global ANDE East Africa Chapter Website   Connect with Maryanne: LinkedIn Twitter

Thu, September 12, 2019

FIP 117: Hardware entrepreneurs II 3/3 – Deploying a network of kiosks, automated fuel dispensers, with Sagun Saxena of KOKO Networks

Sagun Saxena, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of KOKO Networks, is a company operating in Kenya and India that builds and deploys a dense network of kiosks inside local corner stores that distribute bio-ethanol for the modern cookers they sell. This is the third episode in our second 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. On this episode you will learn: A description of the physical product, and how KOKO customers use this on a day-to-day basis. 0:58. KOKO deploys dense networks of KOKOpoints inside neighborhood stores across the city, which communicate real-time with the KOKO Cloud. Customers can buy KOKO Cookers, refill their KOKO Canisters with KOKO Fuel, and access other useful products and services. The India team supports the engineering and manufacturing of KOKO Fuel, and the first commercial market they are targeting is East Africa, specifically Nairobi, which already has 700 KOKOpoint dispensers throughout the city. 3:10. Target is to get around 200-250 households around each dispenser location. Long term goal is to be in at least 40 to 50 major metropolitan areas across Sub-Saharan Africa. How they move highly flammable liquid around the city and partner with large oil companies which already have the infrastructure in place at scale. 6:45 Why they decided to manufacture in India versus locally in Kenya. 10:45. Cost considerations, and many other factors including logistics. Pros: engineering skills in product iteration, moving product in and out of India easier for global markets, density of suppliers, stable/cheap energy (electricity), and contract workers. 15:00. Cons: Long logistics chain (India is far away), Kenya import uncertainty especially with import taxes of new products not yet categorized. 18:45. Top level tips on achieving compliance with regulations. 21:15. Chose this market because clean cooking is a priority for the government, Kenya has a reputation of innovation, and other countries in the region respect how the Kenyan Bureau of Standards (KEBs) looks at new technology - a regulatory body that has a rigorous process for supporting innovation and making new products available. Partnerships with established players adds to credibility. Organizations like gearbox (tied to universities), plus commercial partners like Vivo Energies (the Shell brand) which has world class facilities 25:17. How they mobilized capital for hardware with just a prototype. First, articulated a vision, then tried to demonstrate demand (ie. consumer appetite at their price points). 27:20. Co-founders had quit their other activities and

Wed, September 04, 2019

FIP 116: Hardware entrepreneurs II 2/3 - The inventor who's creating Africa's first CNC machines, with Simon Oshera of Proteq Automation

Simon Oshera is from Proteq Automation in Nairobi. We talk about Simon's invention that is set to propel manufacturing in Kenya to compete with the likes of China and other industrialised nations. Proteq Automation builds CNC machines, which are computer numerical control machines. CNCs control machining tools (drills, boring tools, lathes) and 3D printers by means of a computer to alter a blank piece of material (metal, plastic, wood, ceramic, or composite) to meet precise specifications by following programmed instructions and without a manual operator.   On this episode you'll learn: Simon was motivated to solve the problem of not being able to manufacture high--precision products in Kenya. 3.50. He realised he needed to approach bigger contract manufacturers who had existing contracts, and could help them achieve better per unit costs with his machine. 6.04 Helping companies with their problem of long turnaround times of sending parts outside Kenya to be manufactured 8.59 Simon started with an engineering degree, moved into programming, and making his own electrical circuits.  11.11 He wanted to make enclosures for his circuit boards, so got into vacuum forming, which needed wooden moulds, and he needed a machine to make the high precision wooden moulds. He built one at home over the course of a year, whilst working a full time job 14.37 His first client was a university who used it for educational purposes. He did a lot of research online to figure out what parts he needed to make his machine, and which suppliers to order from. He chose US suppliers because they contained alot of content and how-to guides on their website 20.48 His first commercial client was a manufacturer with a contract from General Motors who had to improve their turn around time for custom parts  29.47 Simon's proposal to the manufacturer included a design to improve turnaround time, which the manufacturer won the tender on. He received a 50% down payment to build his CNC machine for that client 33.04 Training staff is key to the business, as it's a unique skill set, and he has a bespoke training scheme for new staff that takes a year. 35.12 Simon doesn't have competition and he doesn't see it coming, because of the processes and training required for a successful service business 38.48 Resources from this episode: proteqautomation.co.ke buildyourcnc.com Connect with Simon: Twitter @ProteqAutomate Facebook @proteqautomationltd  

Wed, August 21, 2019

FIP 115: Hardware entrepreneurs II 1/3 - PayGo Energy with Mike Hahn

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are continuing our second series on hardware entrepreneurs, this one with Mike Hahn of PayGo Energy about his hardware development journey. This is the first episode in our second 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. As many will know, from episode 44 with Mike's Co-Founder Fausto, PayGo Energy has created a smart meter that sits on an LPG gas cylinder, that lets customers pay on a PAYG basis. On this podcast, you will learn: How the idea of PayGo came about: started in 2015 with an observation that, on a daily basis, lots of people were lining up at petrol stations to buy kerosene or diesel fuel for cooking and they were bringing small vessels to carry this fuel home, despite there being a liquified petroleum gas (LPG) option 10 meters away. This spurred our question about why aren’t people cooking with LPG? It’s clean, fast, and convenient. This idea came about while all of the co-founders were working for different organizations within the informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya.  What their first basic prototype looked like: technical discovery "can we turn gas on and off with a text message?" How their diverse group of co-founders with diverse skill sets helped: technology development, understanding the market/operations, etc. and this blend of personalities and experiences gave them an advantage early on. For their first prototype they used BRCK components (see episode 111 with Erik Hersman, Co-founder of BRCK https://findingimpact.com/fip-111-hardware-entrepreneurs-3-3-creating-a-modem-cum-router-device-aimed-at-solving-last-mile-connectivity-issues-in-africa-with-erik-hersman/ )  in order to test how to get some level of accuracy of measuring gas vapor (actual flow) to the stove, and then send that data remotely to a server while including the ability to shut that gas flow off.  Why he uses SolidWorks for designs

Wed, August 07, 2019

FIP 114: When to say 'No' to more investment with Solonia Teodros of The Change School

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking to Solonia Treodos, Co-founder of The Change School, who describes why social entrepreneurs need a clear fundraising strategy and goal before starting their fundraising activities. Solonia shares her journey of fundraising for The Change School, with lessons from her experience of almost closing a fundraising deal, changing course and walking away from the deal and coming back to it later with a clear strategy. On this podcast, you will learn: How Change School helps transform organizations and individuals by helping them re-connect with their values, re-design their work and re-define success as authentic leaders. Change School thus equips and empowers people to navigate uncertainty and embrace change during the transition or transformation that they are going through. About Change School's journey of testing various offline business models such as: creating immersive retreats for people to re-connect with themselves while enabling a peer-to-peer and community learning experience; to creating Change School mind gyms for bite-sized learning to develop mental resilience; and creating bespoke experiential transformation programs for organizations. How the founders encountered the growth and scale challenges of Change School by evolving and developing an online delivery model of working with its vast pool of trainers and experts while drawing from the expertise of its offline immersive retreats and retaining the Change School brand personality. Why social entrepreneurs should have a strategy of pro-actively approaching investors for funding and alignment with business growth plans rather than just nosediving into fundraising re-actively in trying to impress investors, while not losing focus on the business vision and operating matters such as managing cash flows properly. Finally, you will learn about Change School's online courses and tutorials for anyone needing resources and additional support to managing change and transitions. Check out the free online course at https://findingimpact.com/changeschool , which is a 5-day visioning challenge for teams or individuals to help find clarity of vision in careers or lives.  Links to Resources: The Change School Personal Website of Solonia Teodros Free Online Course – Vision Your Bold Career Move  Connect with Solonia: LinkedIn Twitter

Wed, July 24, 2019

FIP 113: Funding for when things go wrong, with Caroline Bressan of Open Road Alliance

This week on the Finding Impact podcast, we will be speaking with Caroline Bressan, the Director of Social Investments at Open Road Alliance. This incredible service at Open Road Alliance provides capital (loans or grants) to social impact organizations (non-profit and for-profit) facing an unexpected roadblock during implementation. On this episode you will learn: The story behind why it was set up: founded in 2012 by psychologist and philanthropist Dr. Laurie Michaels to address the need for contingency funds and the absence of risk management practices in philanthropy. It originally started as a grantmaking organization and then moved on to recoverable grants, and finally in 2018 launched Loan Fund Open Road Ventures which is a $50 million dollar commitment towards short term loans on solving this unexpected roadblocks and cash crunches. To date they have put out $18 million towards that $50 million target. Half of their portfolio is in East Africa. Fast response: from initial request to decision being made, it’s a period of 6 weeks. Examples of: Some organizations receiving bridge loans for accounts receivable and / or the large purchase order, and  Open Road Alliance speaking with actual investors to say that they can help and to not back out. The Roadblock Analysis Report which has around 150 data points which shows (among other things) that about half of these cash crunches are caused by funder created obstacles. E.g. An agricultural social enterprise in Kenya can look to see what are the top three risks likely to occur so that they can put a contingency plan in place. Caroline’s advice from the entrepreneur side: when talking to investors, first make sure they have already raised their funding and ask if they have made their first deal out of their new fund. Impact investors, particularly in East Africa, could do a better job about being clear and transparent regarding their application process, their timeline for disbursement, and criteria they use to make decisions. Open Road Alliances criteria for social entrepreneurs: 1) It has to be mid implementation (ie. you had all the money you needed and then something happened). 2) An “unexpected” criteria (ie. something external outside of the management teams control, like a funder pulling out, the government changing a policy, or an office being robbed, etc.). 3) Discreet criteria (ie. need to be able to fully solve the problem at hand, for example, the average loan is $300k and if you have a million dollar gap, Open Road Alliance won’t be able to fund you until you find that first $500k). 4) Catalytic impact criteria (ie. does this model have the potential to be system changing either in design or scale, and what is the probability of achi

Wed, July 10, 2019

FIP 112: Tips for Social Entrepreneurs Wanting to Apply to an Accelerator

Many social entrepreneurs will consider applying to an accelerator to help grow their business, so we reached out to a range of accelerators to hear what tips they have for people putting an application together. These tips come in three buckets - one on selecting the right accelerator, next on what will need to go into your application, and third on how to deliver a great application. Allie Burns - CEO of Village Capital: get clarity on the key milestones to grow your business i.e. building your team, validating your value prop, refining your product or sales process. Then ask how an accelerator will help. And then do your research to find out which accelerator will help you reach those milestones. Check out https://vilcap.com/programs/  to check out their active and recruiting programs, and they're tweeting at  @villagecapital David Bartram - Director of Ventures at UnLtd: Three key things. 1- be really clear what you want to get out of programme; 2- think about what you can give back i.e. to other cohort entrepreneurs or the accelerator organisation; 3- don't change your idea to fit the needs of the accelerator. Check out https://www.unltd.org.uk/  and they're tweeting at  @UnLtd Siobhain Dullea - CEO of MassChallenge: Be clear about what problem you're trying to solve and why your product is the solution. Share your numbers (churn, revenue, profit), traction (interest and demand), go-to-market strategy or product development process. And your team - why they're the winners. Check out  https://masschallenge.org/ and @MassChallenge Ben Powell - Founder and CEO of Agora Partnerships: Articulate three things. Your market opportunity or idea (sustainability), quality of your team, quality of your impact. Be sure to highlight your core values and the kind of culture you hope to build. Talk with maturity, and openness and some vulnerability on how to build culture and attract the best people. So check out  https://agora2030.org/  and Ben is tweeting at  @BenAgora Paul Miller - CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures: Tell us something about the problem we don't know. Explain why you're the people that understands this problem, in a way that people haven't understood it before. Check out https://bethnalgreenventures.com/ and they're tweeting at @BG_Ventures <

Wed, June 26, 2019

FIP 111: Hardware entrepreneurs 3/3 - Creating a modem-cum-router device aimed at solving last-mile connectivity issues in Africa, with Erik Hersman

This is part three of a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation. The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. This third part episode is with Erik Hersman, co-founder of BRCK, which creates a modem-cum-router device aimed at solving last-mile connectivity issues in Africa. We're going to talk about the early prototypes, how they funded manufacturing and validated the market, some of the challenges they had along the way, and how the product evolved into what it is today. On this episode you’ll learn:  Erik’s mantra about why “Experience is knowing what not to do.” “Managing expectations.” It took 15-16 months to get a prototype working, then another 12-18 months to build it for the market. It could be done quicker if you: 1) really know what you’re doing (ie. what materials should be used, 2) if you’re well capitalized (have the money), and 3) if you’re not based in Africa (increases costs and time). How to validate the market to make sure people will buy it? Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform, is a great way to find out. Raised $170,000 then created a for-profit company to raise additional capital. Early stage companies (particularly in hardware) have to find a balance of when to pull the trigger on shipping. Internal message was that it is not acceptable to miss deadlines. External message to stakeholders that you try to deliver when you say you’re going to. Some of the initial problems (that went wrong) and why initial timelines were pushed back: “end of life” manufacturer (ie. they don’t make it anymore), testing at scale, user experience, etc. Internal conversation within the company on whether they are solving the real problem of how do you get people online? Resulted in business model innovation (more so than technology innovation) which led to Moja wifi in Kenya and Rwanda which serves up free internet to half a million people. Linear versus non-linear growth: when you’re getting venture backed finance or choose to take venture funding, they are looking for non-linear growth. Why they became a vertically integrated company—discovered value in building everything in house—helps with risk mitigation, agility, and the ability to respond to customer needs. How Moja wifi is funded. What Erik knows now that he wished he knew back then: Realize earlier that they needed to build a platform on top of the hardware since the hardware is just a means to an end. Focus more capital on the super brck earlier (their next generation device) since it was delayed 6 months. Hiring the right people: maybe hired too fast in some positions and didn’t get the right people.

Wed, June 19, 2019

FIP 110: Hardware entrepreneurs - 2/3 Creating electronic hardware products for businesses in East Africa, with Mary Mwangi

This is part two of a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs, supported by The Lemelson Foundation . The series aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. This part two episode is with Mary Mwangi of Data Integrated Ltd. , and we are going to hear about her electronic hardware development journey on manufacturing products to improve security in public transport, and to reduce financial leakage. Data Integrated Ltd. is creating electronic hardware products for businesses in East Africa to help business owners keep track of money, whether that is transport companies keeping track of passengers, or point of sale (PoS) devices for retail businesses taking cash and mobile money payments. On this episode you will learn: The biggest problem that most small businesses in Africa face is a lack of data. There is not enough information around their payments, about their resources, and services they are being paid for--there is no digitized or automated way of keeping this and it has been very manual and not very productive. Cash leakage and loss of revenue for owners Insecurity Her easy and affordable point of sale (PoS) device for retail businesses taking cash and mobile money payments, particularly small restaurant owners, and making sure it would work for the local African market. Integrates with mobile money providers, card payments from the bank, and cash payments all captured in one place. Keeps track of inventory that has been paid and gives data back to the owners in an easy to read dashboard so they can make better decisions. Raspberry pi - premade hardware kit for simple programming. One of the biggest challenges she faced was the long development cycle, having to send electronic boards to China, create a prototype, test, iterate, and send back again for testing. Each iteration can take over two months to get the next version back. No PCB manufacturer exists in East Africa that can create such small PCB units. Mary recently bought a 3D printer to shorten casing time. Her struggles with sourcing good local talent so people can help create these PCBs. Since there is no industry in East Africa, there is not as much local talent nor expertise, and people are finding the tools online to teach themselves, so there is a lot of trial and error going on. Her advice is: Get referrals from local universities Recruit young people keen to learn Accessing experts on LinkedIn, YouTube videos How she is financing her business with this long development cycle. It is really difficult to get funding for hardware development, so they label themselves as a software company, since the

Wed, June 12, 2019

FIP 109: Hardware entrepreneurs 1/3 - Creating tools for manufacturing in Africa, with William Maluki

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are kicking off a new series on hardware entrepreneurs, this one with William Maluki of Gearbox about creating tools for manufacturing in Africa. This is the first episode in a 3-part series on invention-based entrepreneurs that aims to provide unique insights into some of the challenges and workarounds faced by entrepreneurs creating hardware products in emerging markets. On this podcast, you will learn: Why and how William invented a marvellous machine called KunjaBot that is an automatic pipe bender specifically designed for people in the Juakali (informal manufacturing) sector in Kenya. The KunjaBot provides the Juakali sector with access to mass manufacturing capabilities at affordable costs while improving quality and profit margins and allowing them to compete against imported products. About the pay-as-you-bend (akin to a pay-as-you-go) business model of the KunjaBot that enables the Juakali to avoid expensive purchasing costs of manufacturing equipment and absolves them of the costs for operating and maintaining the equipment. How William has dealt with barriers while building the KunjaBot such as customer demand, lack of awareness among the Juakali , business model changes, manufacturing challenges, commitment and lead times from suppliers and contractors, as well engineering and accounting skills to get his project off the ground, etc. About the Gearbox initiative in Kenya and how it enables and provides incredible support to hardware entrepreneurs and inventors to design and build their products through capacity building, maker spaces and engineering and technology support. Finally, you will learn about the new the actionable playbook for invention-based entrepreneurs based on interviews and discussions with leaders in the field, delving into the challenges of bringing physical products into the market. The playbook prepared by Finding Impact will provide actionable content around issues such as workarounds, hiring teams, raising funds, creating minimum viable products and launch strategies, to help entrepreneurs on their invention journey.   Links to Resources: Gearbox Kasp3r Technologies (William’s venture for the KunjaBot – website to be launched soon) One Man, His Machine, and a Mission to Take Kenya’s Manufacturing Jobs to the Next Level Modern technology for "Juakali", the informal sector Sign-up Page - Playbook for Invention

Wed, May 29, 2019

FIP 108: Last mile distribution 3/3 - How to pivot from a cash-based to a PAYGO model, with Washikala of Altech

This is part three of a 3-part mini-series on last mile distribution. This series is a collaboration between the Finding Impact Podcast and the Global Distributors Collective (GDC). The GDC is a collective of last mile distributors around the world, with over 140 members in over 40 countries, who cumulatively have sold more than 8 million life-changing products to last mile households. The GDC is dedicated to supporting and representing last mile distribution companies to help them reach underserved customers with life-changing products like solar lights, clean cookstoves, water filters and nutrition products. The purpose of the GDC is to make last mile distribution the first priority so that life-changing products can be made affordable and available to all. This episode is with Washikala, Founder and CEO of Altech, who operate in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Altech is a distributor of solar lamps, working to enable off-grid households and institutions to have access to modern energy.  On this episode you'll learn: Washikala got started by focusing on cash sales in his own village, but found the upfront cost of the product too high for the target market; They focused first on selling to schools and their teachers, and to health centres and their health workers, giving credit for two months, and the school administrator would be responsible for collecting cash. Insight here is to start with the most trustworthy groups in the community to build traction. Next they opened it up to all households through a solar ambassador model, recruiting young people from the communities, to recruit households on credit, and collect money on a daily basis. This was essentially an early PAYG model without the technology. They encountered significant 'leakage' (cash disappearing), and it was a cumbersome process. They heard about PAYG in early 2017, and an enabler called Angaza. Altech were selling d.light lanterns but back then, they had no PAYG solar lamp option. So they selected suppliers for a pilot and ordered a small batch of PAYG lanterns. They started the pilot in Jan 2017 in two areas in the DRC, with 50 products, 10 sales agents/solar ambassadors, 5 products each. The Angaza app was managed in the office, and solar ambassadors had the app on smartphones.The payment collection process was end-to-end. i.e. No "leakage". Some initial problems included having to buy smart phones for solar ambassadors, but it later became part of the recruitment criteria; data is expensive; needed to connect the lamp to the smartphone using bluetooth, but initial equipment was faulty and didn't connect so had to replace; there were regular internet shut downs,

Wed, May 22, 2019

FIP 107: Last mile distribution 2/3 - How to manage a merger of like-minded social enterprises, with Sita Adhikari and Alexie Seller of Pollinate Group

Wed, May 15, 2019

FIP 106: Last mile distribution 1/3 - How to pivot a distribution model from door-to-door to retail, with Philip Wilson of EcoFiltro

This is part of one of a 3-part mini-series on last mile distribution. This series is a collaboration between the Finding Impact Podcast and the Global Distributors Collective (or the GDC). The GDC is a collective of over 140 last mile distribution companies around the world, which helps them reach underserved customers with life-changing products like solar lights, clean cookstoves, water filters, and sanitation and nutrition products. The GDC has two main pillars of activity: It provides services that help distributors save time and money, adopt best practices and facilitate new partnerships; and, It works to build a collective voice for and raise the profile of last mile distributors, and works with key stakeholders to help them better support the sector. The GDC is hosted by Practical Action with implementing partners Hystra and BoP Innovation Center. Visit the GDC’s website at www.globaldistributorscollective.org to find out more. This episode with EcoFiltro, a distributor of water filters in Guatemala, focuses on how distributors can improve their sales efficiency by pivoting their distribution model. On this episode you'll learn: EcoFiltro started with a micro-consignment model in which they'd give hundreds of community entrepreneurs across Guatemala five filters to sell in their community, and they'd earn 10% on each sale. The model proved unsustainable due to the cost of pre-financing the filters which would often be paid back over two years, the cost of collecting the money from customers, and the low sales volumes achieved by community entrepreneurs. They tried a number of different things to try and improve sales, such as training, offering incentives and encouraging referrals, but all their efforts only yielded a few extra filters sold per month. They spent 18 months designing a new model, which involved speaking to retailers all across the country, and ultimately selected a few to be key distributors of the filter. Retailers were happy to sell it because the filter had a strong brand, since it had been sold for a long time in big shops in urban areas and received good PR from a school donation programme. Retailers were required to invest in 20 filters at a time for a $500 investment, so were motivated to recoup their investment. The school donation programme, where filters were donated to local schools, was channelled through the local retailers, so they received the attention and drove customers to buy from them locally. They now have around 100 local distributors and they're targeting 270 by June 1st, 2019, which will be about 20-25 distributors per sales agent. They've strengthened the brand by investing in their sales and marketing collateral, so all retailers are giving the same message to customers. This enables them to more easily m

Wed, May 08, 2019

FIP 105: The view from inside an accelerator, with Fhiwa Ndou, formerly with MassChallenge

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we will be looking at the insider's view of accelerators with Fhiwa Ndou, formerly of Mass Challenge, well known venture accelerator in Boston, US. Fhiwa previously also helped setup the Mass Challenge accelerator in London and is currently Growth Manager at Lambda School. This is episode #3 in the 4-part series about accelerators for early stage social enterprises. In this episode, we look at various aspects of choosing accelerators such as: the role of accelerator alumni network in attracting social enterprises, and non-profit versus the for-profit (equity-based) models. On this podcast, you will learn: About the MC accelerator and its ethos and non-profit business model. MC does not take any equity from its start-ups and rather focuses on community as one of the best levers for helping start-ups grow and succeed. MC accepts around 100-120 start-ups in every cohort across various industries that makes it very different from most start-up accelerators. How MC selects and operates start-ups as franchise model in different regions and it leverages the local business community while starting and operating a start-up accelerator at scale, through funding and other resources. Examples of successful MC alum such as Flywire in Boston and Handy in UK, that went on to raise lots of funding for scaling and built successful businesses. How the no-equity, non-profit model and wide alumni network of MC presents a very powerful proposition and is big consideration for very early stage start-ups while choosing accelerators. MC also helps entrepreneurs unlock opportunities by helping them ask for stuff they need and providing support to access resources such credits for Amazon Web Services, other free tools, office space, introductions to experts such as patent lawyers, investors, etc. Finally, Fhiwa shares his views on future models of accelerators, such as corporate style accelerators and other accelerator models that support entrepreneurs through their journey - from teaching entrepreneurs to code early on (coding schools) to teaching entrepreneurship and what it's like to be an entrepreneur, through summer internships.   Links to Resources: MassChallenge Lambda School Examples of successful MC alum - Flywire , Handy TED Talk by Amanda Palmer Books - Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer , <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt-ebook/dp/B00HUU13Y0/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=how+google+works&qid=1557078483&s=gatew

Wed, April 24, 2019

FIP 104: What I learnt from attending my first accelerator, with Nava Osembo of Enda Athletics

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we have part 2 of a new 3-part series about accelerators for early stage social enterprises. We are talking with Navalayo (Nava) Osembo-Ombati who is Co-founder and CEO of Enda Athletics, a Nairobi based running shoes manufacturer designing footwear to inspire customers to run like a Kenyan. Enda Athletics recently attended the SHONA accelerator program based in Kampala and just recently finished their second and final residential bootcamp. So we’re looking forward to digging into that with Nava. On this podcast you will learn: How Nava used her management consulting background in putting this business together even though her and the co-founder had no prior experience in making shoes. Her initial impression of accelerators (she initially got a lot of feedback from entrepreneurs), and the guiding factor as to why she joined one primarily to get the skills). Her selection process for selecting an accelerator: looking at the skill sets that they needed, which accelerator had the most positive feedback from entrepreneurs, and the cost (monetary and time). Cost considerations: finders fees, and equity. How she shortlisted accelerators: quality of mentors/expertise, and the cost (whether they were asking for equity and if so, how much). Her experience participating in SHONA, which has a residential component: taking three weeks off / away from her company in order to participate was worth it and she came out having a birds eye view. Nava’s top key things in order to get to an accelerator that is right for you: know yourself (as in what you want), really understand the costs, and read the contract! (especially if you can’t hire a lawyer). Links to resources: Where to find the shoes: https://www.endasportswear.com/ Kickstarter campaign for model 2: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1723798662/enda-lapatet-the-game-chang

Wed, April 17, 2019

FIP 103: Do accelerators actually work? A look into the evidence, with Emily Eastman of GALI

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are kicking off a new 3-part series about accelerators for early stage social enterprises. We are talking with Emily Eastman, Global Partnerships Manager at Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), who has been working on the leading edge of accelerators for social impact. In this episode, we look at the overall evidence on the effectiveness of accelerators in helping entrepreneurs grow early stage companies - what makes for a great accelerator, how entrepreneurs can choose the right accelerator and the pros and cons of accelerators.  On this podcast, you will learn: How GALI was formed as a collaboration between the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and Emory University, to do research on the effectiveness or true impact of accelerators across the globe. GALI works with individual accelerators to track their specific programmatic impact as well as study the larger research questions on how accelerators are working and how can they be made better. How accelerators help in the growth of start-up businesses by running programs for early stage ventures through a selection process and providing support in areas such as finance, marketing, raising investments, business model, etc. GALI collects standardized baseline data on accelerator applicants and performs analysis on accelerator cohorts versus the un-selected applicants to figure out the progress of the each of these groups - do cohort ventures grow faster and quicker than their un-selected counterparts. GALI publishes insights and reports from such research periodically as well as the full anonymized data set from over 19000 applicants to accelerator programs across the world. Why it's important for social enterprises to choose accelerator programs aligned to their needs and goals, such as: business growth focus, or social impact focus such as creating jobs, or environmental impact, etc. Online tools such Conveners.org provide an accelerator selection tool for social enterprises to filter accelerator programs based on sector, geography, and focus areas. GALI’s research points out that accelerators grow ventures much faster than their un-selected counterparts. The best accelerator programs have a perfect combination of 3 things - knowledge, networks, and capital and the greatest benefit that accelerators bring to ventures is their ability to challenge business models and help ventures fail or pivot faster. A study conducted by GALI with Village Capital found out that high performing accelerator programs emphasized quality over quantity and had the following similar characteristics: smaller applicant pools, more targeted in recruitment, more practical and hands-on guidance than mere lectures, thus leading to stronger cohorts compared with the lower performing accelerator programs. How accelerators such as Echoing Green have been able to recruit and build str

Wed, April 03, 2019

FIP 102: Why donor money is distorting the entrepreneurship ecosystem in East Africa, with Fiona Mungai of Endeavor

Fiona Mungai joined endeavour with six years of experience working in Private Equity and Asset Management in East Africa. Fiona started her career at British American Asset Managers and then at Actis — a leading pan emerging markets private equity fund, She he been a founding member and Board Director of the East Africa Venture Capital and Private Equity Association that has 100+ members. On this episode you'll learn: Endeavour supports high impact entrepreneurs. Why? Because high impact entrepreneurs are able to create thousands of jobs, can come up with a business model that is scalable, and can create millions of dollars of revenues. High impact entrepreneurs will also support the entrepreneurship ecosystem, by creating an entrepreneurship culture within their organisations, empowering their employees to think about spinning off to create their own businesses, are willing to mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs and re-invest capital back into the ecosystem. There are very few venture capital or early stage funds operating in East Africa. Even those that do label themselves as venture capital, have the risk profile of private equity funds. Which means they do less hand holding and have a lower risk tolerance. As a result, many entrepreneurs in East Africa have to look for investors aboard, for example in the US or Europe, and growing their networks and relationships with these investors from afar can be a challenge. Endeavour connects businesses with international investors, by organising roadshows for entrepreneurs and networking events with investors in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the US. International investors have a certain expectation for how companies should be packaged, which companies in East Africa need to know about. This includes things like governance structures, leadership and HR structures, business model optimisation, and business model valuation. There is alot of soft money (grants) supporting entrepreneurship in the East Africa ecosystem. Those providing the soft money may also be advising the entrepreneurs, but don't necessarily have experience running a business that has scaled. The prevalence of grants to scale businesses can create a dependency, that hinders the ability of the business to scale. Endeavour also advocates for entrepreneurs to pay it forward in (a) investing money back into the ecosystem after an exit / liquidity event, and (b) mentorship, by supporting up and coming entrepreneurs with advice and access to networks. Relationships takes time, so you need to be on the road meeting potential investors at least 12 months before you need the funds. The feedback you receive from investor conversations can feed back into your business and will serve you well as you go back on the road. Links to resources: Endeavor.org Connect with gue

Wed, March 27, 2019

FIP: 101 Experience from a recent investment raise with Dr. Christie Peacock of Sidai Africa

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking to Dr. Christie Peacock, founder of Sidai. We're going to do an interview about her recent experience of raising a round for her social enterprise Sidai Africa. Sidai offers farmers solutions to the challenges they face growing crops and livestock productively and profitably. So Sidai trains farmers to help them farm more profitably, and provides support to franchisees, stockists and suppliers to help them grow their business. And they manufacture and sell a wide range of quality crop and livestock products. On this episode you’ll learn: Christie’s experience in trying to raise a round of equity investment, especially when not selling the latest “cool” app but selling a very practical and fundamental product for farmers which is a low margin business. How many funders she spoke to, and the timeline. Selling SIDAI to investors: the original business plan projection was that SUDIE was not going to be profitable for at least eight years although investors want to see profitability sooner. Her advice to investors: Perhaps the cost of impact capital is sort of going up because of early failures. Instruments being used from the commercial sector are not so appropriate for social business which typically take longer to make money. Similar to sophisticated grant makers, investors should have clear deadlines, milestones, timetables, etc., and make those steps as short as possible. Her advice to social entrepreneurs about hiring a very good and experienced transaction advisor with a good track record: They can really help you in structuring the investment and getting as good an evaluation as you can get, and Can help in having the capital structured that’s helpful for the business and not just structured in the way the investor wants it. So many impact investors that are new and are start-up’s themselves. The “good no,” which only took six weeks, versus the “bad no” after 12 to 18 months of engagement. It should only take one to two months if you’ve got all your documents in order, and people can come and visit. Open Road Alliance and their report called Roadblocks which talks about some of the challenges that they funded: The issue of investors stringing along social enterprises and then dropping them because the decision making is so far away from the people on the ground. The specialty of Open Road Alliance is emergency bridge funding to fill a gap for entrepreneurs who have hit a roadblock for whatever reason, but there has to be a genuine external factor blocking the flow of investments that will be ultimately removed. Communicating the challenges you’re facing as an entrepreneur in the East Afr

Wed, March 20, 2019

FIP 100: What I've learnt building my social enterprise after 100 episodes, interview by Andrew Foote of Sanivation

This is an interview to mark the 100th episode. Andrew Foote is the host. He's the co-founder of Sanivation - a social enterprise in Kenya that takes human waste from cities and converts it into fuel. Andrew is interviewing Andy Narracott, founder of Finding Impact. On this episode you'll learn: It's important to stop and celebrate in any social enterprise, to mark milestones and recognise how far you've traveled on your journey. It's good for your mental health, and it's good for building a positive culture in your team. Finding Impact is process driven. Andy created a process to uncover insights for social entrepreneurs through interviews. Then improved that process via feedback (from listeners and himself), and once all the kinks were ironed out, he trained other people to follow the process. Andy claims this to be the most basic form of creating an enterprise. Andy recognises the incredible help he's received from volunteers, and the power of creating win-win partnerships. Andy offers new skills training and an opportunity to learn and build experience, and in return he gets help with the creating content procedures. People naturally want to share their knowledge. The goal of the podcast is the make that as easy as possible - to remove friction to knowledge sharing. Andy shares a couple of books that taught him the importance of a repeatable process for continuous improvement. The first is Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, then Work the System by Sam Carpenter, and The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. All are instructive on procedures, experimentation and feedback. On how to determine what procedures are important, it depends on what the goal is, and this will probably change over time. For Andy, the goal of the first episode was to record a half-decent interview, develop the basic process of getting it onto the web and hoping a few people listen and share feedback. Nowadays, his goal is to create content that is relevant and has some urgency in need, and he's moving onto measuring impact in the traditional sense, with a a theory of change and an M&E plan. On what he's learnt about himself, Andy says he needs structure and process in his life, as the alternative seems to be chaos and continuous reinventing the wheel. This dovetails into his interest in efficiency. Journalling can help us monitor ourselves so we get better at understanding our strengths and weaknesses, and help us be the best version of ourselves. Andy plans his week on a Sunday night using Google Calendar. He sees what phone calls and meetings have been scheduled, what pieces of work he has to do, and then puts chunks of work into this calendar, so when he starts his day, he doesn't waste time by thinking about what he has to do. He also puts in family time and exercise time. Streaks is a google chrome add on that sits within Gmail, which Andy uses to track projects, pro

Wed, March 13, 2019

FIP 99: How local founders can attract foreign impact capital with Andreas Zeller

This episode shines a light on why local founders, who have excellent businesses, struggle to attract foreign impact capital. Open Capital Advisors has been advising in Africa for 9 years now, helping entrepreneurs grow, and helping advance economies, whilst also helping build a generation of business leaders in Africa. Based in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, covering 20 countries in Africa and have worked on 450 engagements to date. On this episode you'll learn: Village Capital studied the amount of impact investment money going to local founders, which showed less going to local founders. Some of the reasons is the lack of understanding by local founders about what is needed to raise capital, not being active in the networks that foreign investors are active, and knowing how to communicate effectively. Alot of OCA's work goes towards bridging this gap. Many impact investors from North America or Europe don't have local offices and are not familiar with cultural norms or business practices in country. When they do, local staff are not part of the decision making process, so when they take deals to their investment committee, made up of members who are not familiar with the context, they're often rejected. Founders need to get good at how they describe themselves to foreign funders, how they articulate their value prop, how much info they need to share. Another challenge is that local founders might expect to build a relationship over several interactions, whereas foreign impact investors might expect to develop a relationship over one meeting, because their time is limited in country. Local founders might not have international brand names on their CVs like international founders. They may still have very good CVs with experience at reputable local companies or universities, but are not known about by international investors. The due diligence process can be more effective by helping local founders understand what is necessary, what information needs to be shared and when. Local events can be organised to allow for more touch points between local founders and investors. One of the biggest frustrations of all the local founders that OCA works with is for an investor to quickly say No, if its a No, instead of wasting their time for 3-6 months on a lengthy process process. A greater understanding of the language used by investors would help the whole process. But investors should not expect Founders to be finance specialists to enter into these conversations. A primary reason why investors might give a No to local founders is lack of documentation and record-keeping. Also, a simple inability to communicate with local founders effectively. Also lack of trust, that local founders might not be willing to give a share of their business to international investors. Local founders should also be clear about what they mean by impact, including how it

Wed, March 06, 2019

FIP 098 Mental stress and isolation with Bedriye Hulya

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about burnout in the social sector, the third in our interview series, and we talk about Bedriye Hulya ’s own experience, and how it took a very unique project that aims to promote the inner wellbeing for changemakers to help her get unstuck and make drastic changes in her life. Bedriye is founder of b-fit, which is a chain of women-only sport and health centers in Turkey, and uses a unique franchising model which empowers women.   On this podcast, you will learn: More about her b-fit model. Profit versus social good: how Bedriye maintained the thin line / keeping the balance between focusing on maintaining a profit so you’re sustainable, but also keeping in mind that the social good is more important than the profit. When Bedriye started to feel symptoms of burnout. She felt trapped, started getting angry at people, started to resent the company and her work, and started to feel an injustice of trying to do social good, but not feeling good herself. About her experience with the Wellbeing Project, an intensive 18-month program for creating and supporting a culture of inner wellbeing for changemakers. Bedriye particularly benefited from Gestalt Practice which made her realize she lost touch with herself and her feelings by burying things that she should have lived through. How Bedriye loved founding the company but hated management and felt like she was forcing herself to fit into the role. Her advice to other social entrepreneurs stuck in the hamster wheel: take a sabbatical (if possible), do inner work (ie. Gestalt Practice, going to therapy, etc.) - anything looking into yourself to understand what processes are manifesting in your altered behaviors o

Wed, February 27, 2019

FIP 97: The dangers of being a Corporate Insurgent with Gib Bulloch

This week on the Finding Impact Podcast, we are talking about burnout, corporate insurgency and a mental hospital. This is the second in the series of podcasts that we are covering on burnout and mental stress in the social sector. We are talking with Gib Bulloch about his personal experience of what he calls the ‘event’ when he suffered from a burnout that put him in a mental hospital for 5 days and became the setting of his new book "The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a Corporate Insurgent". The book is an engrossing read on Gib's personal journey of burnout, and how he's turned it into an opportunity for others, to spark a new breed of social activists working within, or about to join, or completely disillusioned by today's business world.  Gib Bulloch is also the founder of Accenture Development Partnerships, a non-profit arm of Accenture, for building cross-sector partnerships between businesses and NGOs. On this podcast, you will learn:  How Gib first discovered the true meaning of working for ‘purpose’, when he was volunteering with the VSO International in the Balkans after the Kosovo crisis. VSO partners with businesses to attracts mid-level corporate professionals and offers them volunteering opportunities. How this experience led to Gib conceiving and founding the Accenture Development Partners (ADP) in 2001, as a social enterprise within Accenture. ADP was conceived on the idea of bringing business and technology expertise to parts of the world where it is greatly needed but has least access to it, and its business model depended on the three-way contribution between people, ADP and the charitable organization clients. The ‘event’, which became the inspiration of his new book and he quotes - "Looking back, the retreat in India couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I’d signed up for an event organised by a group called Leaders’ Quest that would see me spend four days in the Rajasthan desert. The retreat offered a mix of activities – discussions in small focus groups about the state of the world, visits to impoverished villages, talks by inspiring NGO leaders – even yoga and meditation classes. I’d gone to get myself out of the rut, out of the comfort zone – to find new inspiration to break the internal impasse I’d been facing. I got more than I bargained for." Why social entrepreneurs are more prone to stress and isolation when compared with business entrepreneurs. The jobs of people working towards a social mission are never ever done fully and it’s very difficult to dis-engage like in a regular day-job. This leads to an incredibly high burnout rate in the sector. The Wellbeing Project (an initiative of Ashoka, Skoll and Schwab) recognizes this endemic problem in social entrepreneurship and works towards catalysing a culture of inner wellbeing for social entrepreneurs and changemakers How there is a fundamental challenge at the heart of business today - as the cap

Wed, February 20, 2019

FIP 96: Burnout in Social Entrepreneurs with Ilaina Rabbat of Amani Institute

Today, we speak with Ilaina Rabbat (co-founder of Amani Institute) on burnout in social entrepreneurs--why it happens, what can be done to protect yourself from it, signs it’s happening, safety measure to put in place--which is so critically important when you’re doing this sort of work. She recently published a thesis on how to thrive in the social sector. On this episode you’ll learn: Ilaina focuses on thriving rather than surviving /burnout, although burnout is not usually a word used by social entrepreneurs since it’s almost seen as a bad word; saying that you’re burnt out wasn’t part of the dialogue originally. She gives an example of experiencing burnout herself, opening up an Ashoka office in El Salvador, a new country for her with no support network. Inside Armani institute, a main topic included in their curriculum, “inner journey of a changemaker,” is to help intrapreneurs understand who they are, what they want, and how to sustain themselves since normal university curriculum never talks about this, and it was their most popular curriculum topic. Sacrifice, and touching upon Daniela Papi-Thornton’s thesis on tackling heropreneurship . Signs that Ilaina felt when she first started to get burnout: When you feel like you don’t want to keep doing what you’re doing (e.g. intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation), Your body (ie. headaches, back pain, fatigue, etc.), and concerns from loved ones. Binary trap that entrepreneurs get into a lot, like should I run my social venture or should I spend time with my family, e.g. A or B rather than A and B. It’s a mental trap that entrepreneurs get into a lot. Social entrepreneurs cannot do everything so they should narrow down their responsibility and their impact to make it limited, tangible, and achievable; otherwise you will burn out. Ilaina discusses five out of ten variables (or common themes) across groups of social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs: Sacrifice (want to versus have to), Work centrality (ability to not think in a binary way), Responsibility (everyone thinks they are responsible to make this world a better place), Privilege (either in a grateful way or guilty way), and Empathy (remaining centered and avoiding compassion fatigue). Actionable things to do in order to move from surviving to thriving: Self awareness (feel more connected to yourself) and meditation helps with this, and in slowing down burnout. Relationships (spending time with people that love you; but quality over quantity). Intrinsic motivation (remember why you’re doing what you do). Who is high risk to burnout? Social entrepreneurs in the middle of their career. When you first start, you still have a lot of

Wed, February 13, 2019

FIP 95: The ingredients of an effective government partnership with Ruth Ngechu of Living Goods

This interview will help you put yourself into the shoes of government so you can work with them effectively. Ruth Ngechu is the Deputy Country Director in charge of partnership with Living Goods in Kenya. Ruth shares her strategies and tactics she's developed over the course of her 17+ year career working in Public Health, which includes some time within the Ministry of Health On this episode, you'll learn: A different engagement strategy is needed in every county or district you work in, because each one has their own policies and priorities. They're like separate governments. Ruth's role is to understand policy frameworks to make sure Living Goods approach is aligned in each county. When Ruth was in government, and NGOs would make requests for collaboration, Ruth would look for support to help them execute some of the initiatives they had going on, since government budgets were quite thin. Governments have their own priorities and agendas. When you approach government you have to align your approach with them. So first thing to do is to find out their needs and priorities. Because government only supports the things that they think are contributing to their priorities. A bad example of an organisation approaching government is when they come with a ready made plan that does not align with the needs of the government. Living Goods' model has evolved. A key reason for this is the changing priorities and capacity of government. Living Goods' tailor their program to the needs of the government. For example, in one county, the government is paying a good stipend to their community health workers, so Living Goods provides other support. Champions are needed to support an effective partnership with government. Ruth stresses the need for champions within technical departments but also from elected leaders. If you don't build several good relationships, your programme could be seen as a political initiative and your support stops when the elected leadership changes. Investing in time is also important. You can't try to go faster than government - this is a recipe for disaster. So invest time into building the relationship. Also take stock of the government level of preparedness (i.e. their capacity or level of skills and experience) to ensure it is adequate to engage. So this needs to be understood: what their priorities are, what infrastructure is in place, and the capacity of the infrastructure (like HR support). Ruth recommends we need to listen more and let government move at their pace. Invest time in co-creating projects that address the needs of government. NGOs and social enterprises sometimes see each other as competitors, competing for the same resources and attention of government. They need to speak and work out ways of collaborating, to support government in the best possible way, by leveraging each others strengths, and work to

Wed, February 06, 2019

FIP 94: Shannon May from Bridge International Academies

Wed, January 30, 2019

FIP 93: Scaling Pathways with Erin Worsham of CASE, Duke University

This week we're kicking of a three-part series on how social enterprises can partner with governments to achieve greater scale and impact. We're talking with Erin Worsham, Executive Director of the award-winning Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Erin shares her views and insights from the Scaling Pathways research study around scaling impact through government partnerships. The Scaling Pathways study, of which Erin is the lead author, surveyed over 100 social enterprises to understand the hardest barriers and challenges encountered by social enterprises and gathered cross-cutting lessons and best practices to shed light on how to overcome those barriers and challenges. On this podcast, you will learn:  Why working with governments has been identified as one of the key challenges for scaling impact by social enterprises. The Scaling Pathways study focused on uncovering some of the best practices and lessons from 11 social enterprises across geographies and sectors, such as VillageReach, Partners in Health, Code for America, and Pratham, to name a few. Why as a first step, it is critical for social enterprises to set their vision for engaging with governments and define clear goals of the partnership and why funding from governments, while important is not among the key driving goals for social enterprises The 4 key government partnership goals and the roles that social enterprises need to play in meeting these goals: a) Clear the path: engaging with governments to seek informal permission or permits and avoiding potential barriers.  b) Outsourcing: having the government partners outsource the delivery of a certain product/ service through a contract. c) Adoption: working with the government partners to transition or transfer the management of a service or solution over a period. d) Change policy: influencing the government to change policies, allocate resources or change regulations Why social enterprises need to adapt their staffing based on the needs of the government partnership. Having local staff who understand the local context and who ideally have already existing established relationships with the governments, is critical to having a successful social enterprise-government partnership. Erin talks about specific examples such as WSUP, Village Reach that have adapted their staffing model to address local contexts, government relationship management, and leadership to influence policy change. Why it is important for social enterprises to know when to start engaging with government partners, i.e. start with a fully formed solution based on evidence that it works (building and proving the model first) or start with an idea of building together with the government? B

Wed, January 23, 2019

FIP 92: Helping People Make the Right Choices with Kevin Green from Rare

We have Kevin Green from Rare, who leads their Center for Behavior & the Environment. He's a whizz at qualitative and quantitative social research methods and behavior-centered design - and he's on the show to talk us through using behavioural design in practice, so a real life example of how it was put into practice to motivate fishing communities to conserve their fishing resources so they didn't deplete it and it would be around for future generations. On this episode you'll learn: When applying behavioural design, you're applying the best science available about people, what motivates them, how they make decisions - so what makes them tick - paired with the best knowledge available about the field you're working. in. So for Kevin, that's about the ecology of the resources and ecosystem they're trying to protect. They knew that for fisheries to be sustainable, they need to limit the amount of fish taken out of the water at different times and allow the fish to renew. They also needed to motivate small communities to work together and self organise, to set rules themselves and enforce them, for their own benefit. Above all, they needed to lead that process themselves. Existing tools we have had to solve big problems like these is through 3 tools: (1) we rely on policies to force people to do things, (2) incentives or disincentives to get people to do things, or (3) give information or data and hope they'll change. These tools haven't always done the trick. They assume people operate as rationale human beings. Wrong. Humans are emotional characters. Behavioural design comes in handy here. We can use the behavioural design process. First step is to do empathy-based research with representative communities, understanding their motivations, needs and barriers through households surveys, in-depth interviews, participant observations, and focus groups. Once all this research is collected, you come up with a point-of-view of behaviours you think people need to adopt to fix the big problem. After many pilots and empathy based research, Kevin and team figured that renewing coastal fisheries comes down to four categories of behaviours to restore and manage coastal fisheries: (1) fishers join a local register, to they get officially involved, (2) they need them to participate in self-organised management committees; (3) fisher comply with their own rules about what, when and how can be fished and fishers; (4) fishers have to collect and submit catch data. We use behaviour design to think about how we can get the fishers to adopt and sustain the above four behaviours. They drew from the best knowledge about what motivates human beings to come up with: (1) making fishing something to be proud of; (2) give them the sense they're part of a group so they have a reason to cooperate; (3) make doing the right thing observable so there's a social benefit in doing it, and; (4) reducing the hassle to d

Tue, October 30, 2018

FIP 91: Alexandra Fiorillo on behavioral science and social impact

On this episode: Alexandra defines behavioral design as the integration of the mindsets of the two disciplines of human-centered design and behavioral science. She explains how behavioral science is the study of action-taking and is often very focused on a single moment in time or decision while human-centered design is an empathy-based collaborative process which is used as a problem-solving tool. When these two are combined together, you have a discipline that addresses both how humans actually behave and as well as what their aspirations are. Some of the elements of behavioral science that contribute to behavioral design include biases that create barriers to behavior, such as status quo or default bias. Understanding default bias is important for designers so they can think about how they can develop an active choice set. Alexandra shares some of the ways behavioral design contributes to social enterprises, including helping companies create customer acquisition and retention strategies and develop marketing materials and pricing policies. She goes in-depth on the example of sanitation, noting that just because a toilet is “better” does not mean it is necessarily going to be embraced by customers. Some of the barriers to adopting a new product – especially in the case of sanitation – could include social norms and mental barriers. Another example from the global health field is kangaroo mother care, which Alexandra notes will not be taken up just because it is recommended. In this case, GRID Impact has worked to redesign and test new counseling experiences with families that employ visual story telling methods. As kangaroo mother care use usually drop-offs after hospital discharge, they are also testing a new method of turning the moment of discharge into something celebratory that encourages future use of the method. Some of the practical principles of behavioral designs highlighted by Alexandra include focusing on changing the context of the decision and not the person. She also addresses “nudges” and advises that social enterprises think about incorporating the three principles of nudges: never mislead and always be transparent, always provide people with alternatives, and have a clear reason about why the nudge will ultimately be good for the person that is being nudged. Her final tips are that social entrepreneur leaders should also consider their employees to be their users, focus on redesigning tiny moments, run micro-experiments, make evidence-based decisions, and understanding that some biases can actually be a combination of multiple biases. Links to Resources: GRID Impact “Nudge” by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein Connect with Alexandra: Alexandra on <a href= "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-fioril

Wed, October 24, 2018

FIP 90: Drones for Social Enterprise? Imagining What's Possible with Lauren Fletcher

Today we're doing a replay of my interview with Lauren Fletcher of Biocarbon Engineering - a social enterprise that is imagining what is possible with drones - and this, he describes, is about reforesting the planet at scale. This is the last in our three part series on high tech for development. Some of the things you’ll learn on this podcast include: How social entrepreneurs should always be stepping back to see how their product or solution fits within the bigger picture, which can, specifically, link you up with those who have available resources to help you go further. How Laurent went about finding his founding team, and how he looked for people with exposure and basic understanding of the subject matter he needed. Their strategy of finding early capital, where they went after equity, prizes and government grants We learn the downside of going after prizes, including how they are a lot of work for not alot of money, but the upside was a viral video that got over a million views that gave them the notoriety to attract seed round investors How their product development roadmap panned out, which included building a pre-prototype basic flying planting machine in 3 weeks for the Drones for Good competition in Dubai. How they’re thinking about getting their first clients, and the short to long term vision for revenue generation and growth Resources: biocarbonengineering.com Connect with Lauren Twitter.com/BioCarbonEng Facebook.com/BioCarbonEngineering linkedin.com/lauren-fletche  

Wed, October 17, 2018

FIP 89: High Tech Bio Tech for Development with Eddy Agbo of Fyodor Biotech

For the second episode in our high tech for development episode, I’m speaking to Eddy Agbo of Fyodor Biotech. We speak about early diagnostic methods that are changing the game for global health and the opportunities these represent for social enterprise. Eddy is the CEO of Fyodor Biotech, he's a PHD from Utrecht University in the Netherlands in molecular genetics and has a post-doctoral fellowship in medicine and infectious diseases at John Hopkins. Fyodor Biotech is building a portfolio of non-invasive fever diagnostic products for emerging markets, of which one, they're now commercialising, is the Urine Malaria Test (UMT) – a test for malaria that tells within 25minutes if a fever is malaria, using only a few drops of urine. On this episode you'll learn: Malaria diagnosis is a field that hadn’t evolved for over a hundred years until the 1970s, and then again today. So the time to big disruption has reduced from 100 years to 40. The big innovation has been to remove the guess work in whether someone has malaria or not. The UMT product took 8 years to get to market, and has been sold commercially now for two years in Nigeria and Liberia only. Their strategy is to target the private healthcare sector first. They started developing the product in the market crash of 2008 so funding was a challenge, so they had to bootstrap and form strategic partnerships. They competed for public grant funding in the life sciences sector from the US or British governments. They were able to raise equity funding from different funders during the development stage. When the technology was developed and in people’s hands, it made a difference to their funding, and they received much more interest from investors. They’re distributing to both business and consumers. They’re working with major pharmaceutical distributors, but are also allowing customers to purchase directly from them. They have distribution partnerships with a range of suppliers, mostly of the online marketing kind. They went to the Nigerian market first, because of the size of that market, because they wanted to get to scale in a market where the impact could be felt and where they could eventually achieve a lower price point for the public sector. And Nigeria has a large private health sector which is key to their growth strategy. Their partnership with John Hopkins was due to a key part of the technology they licensed from them. They have a global, exclusive license from them, which was critical because of the credibility it has brought and the resources they’ve drawn on to help them succeed. They do their early stage research in the US and later stage development in the target market. This meant bringing blood and urine samples into the US, and the red tape was such a challenge. But it was something John Hopkins was able to help with, since they had extensive experience with this. John Ho

Wed, October 10, 2018

FIP 88: Using Cryptocurrencies in Social Enterprise with Elizabeth Rossiello from BitPesa

This week we're kicking of a mini-series on high-tech for business within a developing country context. We're talking to Elizabeth Rossiello, who co-founded BitPesa Ltd in 2014 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Elizabeth has worked in Kenya as a Microfinance Analyst and Investment Associate since 2009. She is an expert in East African financial product development and establishing best practices in risk, governance and IT for local banks. Prior to her work in East Africa, she served as an Analyst at Credit Suisse in Zurich and a Robert Bosch Fellow in Frankfurt. She speaks four languages and has a Masters in International Finance from Columbia University’s SIPA. On this episode you'll learn: Cryptocurrency can be compared to how letters (snail mail) used to be sent to another country, and now email has replaced that. Cryptocurrency, or Bitcoin, was created to replace the traditional way of sending money to another person. Bitpesa is sending money around the world a lot cheaper than traditional means. They're increasing liquidity for companies. Bitpesa's business model is to take a small percentage on each international money transfer transaction. Bitpesa doesn't hold Bitcoin overnight so they're not affected by the fluctuating price that the currency has seen. Elizabeth built the simplest test case of how it could work. She hired one engineer and one UX (User Experience) team. They built it on the Mpesa system in Kenya to test it out. It took a month and a half. Their first customer traded in January 2014, and they relaunched in April with a market-ready product. The regulatory framework was setup for traditional money transfers, but Bitpesa showed they were doing the same thing just using a different tool to do so. Working with regulators still makes up part of their work today. It's about ensuring they're following the rules, and keeping the focus away from what the technology is. They've had plenty of setbacks, such as being sued by Safaricom in Kenya, and potential investors who learnt from their company and ended up creating something similar. Bitpesa started out on a small $50k seed investment which they used to build the prototype, and then raised follow on investment from international investors. Follow on investors were only willing to put in cash for 6-12 months runway, so Elizabeth says it was a really inefficient fundraising process. Elizabeth advises to enjoy the ride, because it's a long journey. Enjoy building a company that you want to work for. And take care of yourself along the way. Links to resources: Bitpesa Blockchain for Development: Emerging Opportunities for Mobile, Identity and Aid , a 2017 report from the GSMA Digital Identity Progr

Wed, October 03, 2018

FIP 87: Audience Stories – Ravi Shankar from AcceleratED

Today, we speak with Ravi Shankar of AcceleratED on how Finding Impact has helped the company as it doubles its operations during its growth phase, for which learning from others’ mistakes has been critical. On this episode: Ravi noted that there had been multiple podcast episodes that have been helpful to his company. An episode that was particularly helpful to Ravi was Episode 78 with Raghu Krishnaswamy . Ravi took away Raghu’s focus on “casting” and building a diverse culture within a team. Some tricks that AcceleratED borrowed from the episode include: Hiring: The company is now taking a “casting” approach to hiring and employing a portfolio approach to human capital management. Retainment: Thinking through the employee life cycle and applying user center design aspects to it. Culture: Connecting with people on a personal level, not just a professional level. They have created a “Hobby Hour” to share interests from outside the office. Ravi noted that when any company is very small, it is easy to develop a culture but can often result in people becoming copies of each other or suffering from group think. Now, AcceleratED is building an internal culture guide to share both successes and vulnerabilities. Ravi was struck by the irony that AcceleratED itself is a behavior change-focused organization, but it is only now that they are incorporating some of the behavior change elements from the business model back into the operations of the company. Links to Resources: AcceleratED AcceleratED on Medium Connect with Ravi: Ravi on  LinkedIn

Wed, September 26, 2018

FIP 86: Audience Stories - Rachel Sklar from Pit Vidura

Rachel Sklar takes the guest seat this week to tell us how the Finding Impact Podcast is helping her with her business in Rwanda. Rachel runs Pit Vidura, which offers pit latrine emptying services in dense urban areas where there are no sewers. On this episode you'll learn Apart from helping to improve her business, the podcast has helped Rachel get back into long distance running! When she's back at her desk Rachel listens to bits again and writes down the parts that were the most insightful and sends it to members of her team, inviting them to listen and come back to her to have a conversation about it. The podcast is confirmation to Rachel that they're on the right track. Sometimes they have to make stuff up on the fly and under pressure. So later when they listen, they realise others have taken their course of action as well. The podcast also confirms that not everyone has the answers before they start. Rachel and her team are not from a business background so some of the knowledge, in the form of frameworks or processes, is really useful. They also hear that others are doing the same thing they are, but they speak about it using more formal language and approaches. So it allows Rachel and her team to redevelop their strategy in a more structured way and speak to people externally using the right language. She loved the episode with Lauren from GetIt about how her food distribution business soon became a logistics business, since this is what their pit emptying business has become. Fausto's episode was also instructive in that he shared how the early days were so scrappy, and they survived from winning a few prizes and surviving off of customer revenues, which is how it's been with Pit Vidura. Fausto was also open and honest about the emotional side of a startup, and the thoughts of failure, which Rachel experiences. The interview with Jonathan Lewis also resonated with Rachel, about a sector-wide problem which is the lack of diversity in social enterprise, and which she's now building into the values of her company to intentionally confront this. The episode with Rob Mills helped Rachel talk about social enterprise to more traditional investors, and help them understand what a social enterprise is. Rachel really enjoyed the episode on unit economics with Steve Andrews. As with many social enterprises serving the base of the pyramid, you need to be so clued-up on your unit economics and use it as a management tool for decision making. We talk about imposter syndrome, where you feel you don't have enough of experience, knowledge, skills, (insert next one here!)... to build a business. Rachel has found listening to the podcast has made her realise that everyone's in the same boat - no one really knows everything they're going to do from the beginning and there are times you've just got to do your best. Human capital is a constant str

Mon, September 17, 2018

FIP 85: Audience Stories – Emily Woods from Sanivation

Wed, September 12, 2018

FIP 84: How to Build a Relationship with Your Core Customer Base with Lindsay Stradley

Tue, September 04, 2018

FIP 83: Marketing in Emerging Markets with Amanda Arch of Kasha

Wed, August 29, 2018

FIP 82: Building an Iterative Product Testing Platform with David Henia

Tue, August 21, 2018

FIP 81: What mobile data can do for social enterprise with Guilherme Lichand

Wed, August 15, 2018

FIP 80: The case for not collecting impact data – and what to do instead with Loïc Watine of IPA

Tue, August 07, 2018

FIP 79: Lessons from a data driven social enterprise with Mina Shahid

Wed, August 01, 2018

FIP 78: Finding Strengths to Let Managers Shine with Raghu Krishnaswamy

Tue, July 24, 2018

FIP 77: Company culture and ways to motivate and build cohesion with Julienne Oyler

Wed, July 18, 2018

FIP 76: KPIs, Cohesion, and Driving Performance with Gayatri Datar of EarthEnable

Tue, July 10, 2018

FIP 75: Board Effectiveness with Charity Chanda Lumpa

Wed, July 04, 2018

FIP 74: Gender Smart Investing with Suzanne Biegel

Tue, June 26, 2018

FIP 73: Men Who Champion Women with Isaac Fokuo

Wed, June 20, 2018

FIP 72: Funding 4/4 – Breaking Down Term Sheet Terms with Nina Gené of Jasmine Social Investments

Tue, June 12, 2018

FIP71: Fundraising 3/4 – Getting to First Close (Part 2) with Miora Randriambeloma of Chalkboard Education

Tue, June 05, 2018

FIP70: Fundraising 2/4 – Getting to First Close (Part 1) with Miora Randriambeloma of Chalkboard Education

Tue, May 29, 2018

FIP 69: Funding 1/4 – Are you ready to raise money? With Elizabeth West of iGravity

Wed, May 23, 2018

FIP 68: The Boardroom Africa with Marcia Ashong

Tue, May 15, 2018

FIP 67: Profit vs. Impact 3/3 – with Arielle Molino of Intellecap

Thu, May 10, 2018

FIP 66: Profit vs. Impact 2/3 – with Tom Adams of Acumen

Wed, May 02, 2018

FIP 65: Profit vs Impact Series 1/3 – with Arjun Bolangdy

Wed, April 25, 2018

FIP 64: The Failure Files – Six Guests Share Their Stories

Tue, April 17, 2018

FIP 63: Human Capital Series 3/3 – Creating Company Culture and the Role of Self-Confidence with Ayla Schlosser

Wed, April 11, 2018

FIP 62: Human Capital Series 2/3 – Recruiting and Retaining High Performers at more Mature Organizations with Sarah Perrott

Tue, April 03, 2018

FIP 61: Human Capital Series 1/3 – Building Strong Teams Through Trial and Error with Anastasia Uglova

Wed, March 28, 2018

FIP 60: David Auerbach Interviews Samir Ibrahim of SunCulture

Wed, March 21, 2018

FIP 59: 11 Social Entrepreneurs Answer “What I Wish I’d Known Before Starting My Social Enterprise”

Wed, March 14, 2018

FIP 58: David Auerbach Interviews Premal Shah of Kiva

Tue, March 06, 2018

FIP 57: David Auerbach Interviews Lauren Russell Nkuranga of GET IT

Wed, February 28, 2018

FIP 56: David Auerbach Interviews Andrew Youn of One Acre Fund

Wed, February 21, 2018

FIP 55: Tools and Tactics to Maintain Strong Founder Relationships with Edith Elliott

Wed, February 14, 2018

FIP 54: Gender-lens Investing with Shloka Nath

Wed, February 07, 2018

FIP 53: Distributing Social Products to Rural Markets with Gaurav Mehta

Tue, January 30, 2018

FIP 52: Bridging Education Gaps in Rural India with Umesh Malhotra

Wed, January 24, 2018

FIP 51: Social Franchising Series 4/4 Franchising in Nairobi with CJ Bak

Wed, January 17, 2018

FIP 50: Social Franchising Series 3/4: What Everyone’s getting Wrong about Social Franchising, with Ben Litalien

Wed, January 10, 2018

FIP 49: Social Franchising Series 2/4: Social Micro-franchising with Beth Meadows

Wed, January 03, 2018

FIP 48: Social Franchising Series 1/4: Social Franchising 101 with Bill Maddocks

Wed, December 27, 2017

FIP 47: Most Downloaded Episode of 2017

Tue, December 19, 2017

FIP 46: Tackling Unit Economics with Steve Andrews

Tue, December 12, 2017

FIP 045: Product design and validation for the urban poor with Simon Dixon

Wed, December 06, 2017

FIP044: Product Prototyping with Fausto Marcigot

Tue, November 28, 2017

FIP 43: Bootstrapping with Audrey Cheng

Wed, November 22, 2017

FIP042: Franchising Social Enterprise with Randy Welsch

Tue, November 14, 2017

FIP 41: World Toilet Day with Jack Sim

Wed, November 08, 2017

FIP 40: Cash Flow Fundamentals with Alex Eaton

Wed, November 01, 2017

FIP 39: Product Design and Market Fit with Charlie Nichols

Wed, October 25, 2017

FIP 38: Designing for Impact at Scale with Kevin Starr

Wed, October 18, 2017

FIP 37: The Key to Success is Knowing Your Why with Ken Njoroge

Wed, October 11, 2017

FIP 36: A Billion Dollar Homegrown African Business with Ken Njoroge

Wed, October 04, 2017

FIP 35: Optimising business models for impact entrepreneurs, with Jon Shepard

Wed, September 27, 2017

FIP 34: Avoiding Burnout, Maximum Employee Output and Hiring with a Dog, with David Goldberg

Wed, September 20, 2017

FIP 33: Charity Revenue via Consulting with David Goldberg of Founders Pledge

Wed, September 13, 2017

FIP 32: Designing an Organisation that People Love to Work For with Jim Taylor

Wed, September 06, 2017

FIP 31: Tips on Building Trust and Hiring People by Founder-CEO, Grant Brooke

Wed, August 30, 2017

FIP 30: Disrupting Markets with Grant Brooke

Wed, August 23, 2017

FIP 029: Breaking Taboo with Shawn Shafner

Wed, August 16, 2017

FIP 028: Fundraising, Media and Conferencing with David Auerbach

Wed, August 09, 2017

FIP 027: Founders with David Auerbach

Wed, August 02, 2017

FIP 026: Disrupting the Coffee Industry with Vava Angwenyi

Wed, July 26, 2017

FIP 025: Time for Slow Innovation with Ken Banks

Wed, July 19, 2017

FIP 024: Finding Your Calling, with Jonathan Golden

Wed, July 12, 2017

FIP 023: Local Talent and Learning to be a CEO, with Xavier Helgesen

Wed, July 05, 2017

FIP 022: Creating Your Own Political Strategy, with Carne Ross

Carne Ross is a Skoll Awardee and TED speaker. He's a principled man, having walked away from his diplomatic career in the British Government in protest over the Iraq war. The non-profit he founded, called Independent Diplomat, is geared towards tackling the imbalance between the diplomatic processes and those affected by the decisions made in diplomatic processes.    In this episode, Carne talks us through nine principles for action that changemakers can use to create their own political strategy.

Wed, June 28, 2017

FIP 021: A Fireside Chat with Jonathan Lewis

Wed, June 21, 2017

FIP 020: Systems Entrepreneurship with Jordan Kassalow

Wed, June 14, 2017

FIP 019: Scaling People Reading with Colin McElwee

Wed, June 07, 2017

FIP 018: Welding Corporate Partnerships with Yasmina Zaidman

Wed, May 31, 2017

FIP 017: Teaching the Skills to Make a Difference with Roshan Paul

Wed, May 24, 2017

FIP 016: Credit Scoring for Under-Served Populations with Nicole Van Der Tuin

Wed, May 17, 2017

FIP 015: Pro-bono Data science with Jake Porway

Wed, May 10, 2017

FIP 014: The Importance of Story with Avery Bang

Wed, May 03, 2017

FIP 013: Planting Trees with Drones, with Lauren Fletcher

Wed, April 26, 2017

FIP 012: Selling High Price Products to Rural Farmers with Mirik Castro

Wed, April 19, 2017

FIP 011: Raising Early Stage Finance with Nicky Khaki

Wed, April 12, 2017

FIP 010: Why Human Connection is Good For Your Social Enterprise, with Devin Hibbard

Wed, April 05, 2017

FIP 009: Raising Equity Investment with Patrick Watson

Wed, March 29, 2017

FIP 008: Raising Debt Investment with Rob Mills

Wed, March 22, 2017

FIP 007: Developing Middle Management in Africa with Rebecca Harrison

Wed, March 15, 2017

FIP 006: Building a National Distribution Network, with Christie Peacock

Wed, March 08, 2017

FIP 005: Not Going it Alone on your Social Enterprise Journey, with Mark Hemsworth

Wed, March 01, 2017

FIP 004: Micro-promotion: an effective way to train and retain a low-skilled workforce, with Michael Kuntz

Tue, February 21, 2017

FIP 003: Transforming Your Sales Capability with Scott Roy

Sun, February 19, 2017

FIP 002: Using Human-Centered Design to Create Solutions with Jocelyn Wyatt

Sun, February 19, 2017

FIP 001: Motivating Community Health Workers with Liz Jarman