Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact with your values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Cameron Neil.

And our topic today is capital entrepreneurship in the Indo Pacific region. Cam is the cofounder and director of Lend For Good, a crowd lending platform to support the growth of Impact Enterprises and the cofounder and director of Red Hat Impact, with which mobilizes capital to finance Impact Ventures in the Asia Pacific region. Cam, welcome to the show.

With Thank you, Paul. I'm very excited to be here.

I'm super excited. And I just have to say, listeners, we are getting a growing audience. For instance, I get this every 2 weeks or so. And so we've got a bunch of listeners in Kuwait and, and Ireland, with, and, Cam is in Australia. So it's been one of my big goals for 2023 to move the needle outside of North America and Europe where a lot of our listeners have been historically, and it's really exciting to have you here to help do that, Cam, in terms of what's going in the Indo Pacific region. So before we do that, Cam, if somebody wanted to kinda know a little bit about who is this and what's like the short version of your backstory before we talk about the ventures that you're doing now and getting capital in the hands of awesome people doing great work in the region. What what would somebody need to know about you and your background for this to, you know, make sense?

Thanks, Paul. It's a really good question. And I think the the request to do this in a in a thumbnail is, is always challenging. I think for us impact entrepreneurs. They always have big stories to tell. Short version, you know, I I was motivated to, with, you know, save my fellow peers at school, kids committing suicide, here, and so that drew me into psychology. With But I quickly figured out, in that context that the individual problems that I was seeing were actually based in systems, And that kind of drew me into the world of business and finance to kind of say, well, I think these these things are having a big impact on the kids that I'm You know, and that kind of led me on a journey of discovery, like coming from a psychology degree, just spending more of my time now in Excel spreadsheets, than, you know, than counseling people. But, you know, I've been on this journey, of kind of understanding business and how business works and how global trade works and the impacts that those things have on the lives of individuals.

And, with I was very lucky and fortuitous, to be looking for a job at the right time and found my way into building the Fair Trade Movement in Australia and New Zealand, and that really with Exposed to me, you know, overseas development, cooperatives in developing countries, farmers, and supply chains, And then the role of businesses in developed countries that need to change the way they operate to support, you know, tackling poverty in emerging markets. With And so I've kind of, you know, I spent 7 years doing that and and increasingly just followed that path now into focusing on how do I help enterprises that do good, be good businesses. How do I change the finance and capital system to support those kind of values? And and, you know, with How we organize and deploy money has massive consequences for the lives of everyday people, for for the ability of our planet. And, You know, I think while I kinda set out to, you know, study psychology so I could help people stop killing themselves, you know, I think where I've kinda landed now is with What's the innovation required in the way our capital system works? Because that has a massive impact on people's everyday lives and communities.

Lot of similarities. I had a 1st career in community mental health. My, degree I have a master's degree in counseling psychology and clinical mental health. So, yeah, same thing. Like, it was awesome work. And I was like, wait. But all the horsepower and, like You know, if you go to a politician, these kids are killing themselves, they say, oh, that's too bad. Maybe we can do something.

But if a business, especially a big business, needs something, like, boom. It happens. Yes. All the horse hours over there. I'm going over there, and we gotta figure out how to do that for good. So there's a lot of similarities in our stories. Yes.

With And those decisions that those businesses and those politicians make about economics and finance have real world consequences, the lived experience of with people, you know, that are not necessarily factored into those decisions. And I think, you know, that's fun to where, you know, with From my from my purpose, I I wrote a piece the other day, and, like, one of the things I kind of asserted in that is with My own values, I think, is that the purpose of capital is to support and evolve our shared humanity in a livable planet. It's not the purpose of capital is not to make more money. But I think we've lost sight of that, like, that money has a purpose. It's not in and of itself a purpose. With And I think, you know, that's a well, I think a lot of your listeners identify with that as well. Like, you know, we're not we're not afraid of money on it to get a profitability, but it's gotta be in service of something

with. So in our title, we have 2 things that I wanted to find given or or or get your input on, Cam. The first one is the frame of capital entrepreneurship. Like, You're starting to touch on it there. Like, capital has huge impact in terms of where businesses go and who survives and who doesn't survive, who thrives and who. With but just what does that even mean, and how are you thinking about capital entrepreneurship at this stage in your journey many years of thinking about these

Yeah. It's it's a term, you know, I think with a lot of my practice, it's been quite intuitive. With And then you hear terms and you engage with people, and you're like, oh, yeah. That's what I do. Capital entrepreneur capital entrepreneurship was one of those things. Right? I I hadn't really thought of myself with as that. But how how I interpret the phrase is that, you know, as as entrepreneurs, with We build things. Right? Like, we we we build, and and what we choose to build or we choose to focus on can vary.

But the concept of entrepreneurship is similar. Like, it's about with Building, creating, giving birth to a new thing, seeing opportunity where others don't see opportunity. It's all that. And I think with Capital entrepreneurship is a particular sliver of that, where there's a growing community of people in the world that are saying, hey, The 20th century capital system is not fit for purpose for the challenges we're experiencing in the 21st century. What we need to do as entrepreneurs is see the opportunities and to build different ways that capital is organized, it's deployed, It's understood. It's experienced, and and that's what you spend your time on. And so, you know, I think that's increasingly you know, with While some of my work is still, perhaps, more traditional technical assistance to entrepreneurs, you know, that are building their businesses, with More of my intellectual time and work is focused on building and creating new ways of capital being mobilized and deployed with that can solve problems, and that might point to, at a systemic level, how capital markets overall kinda need to shift and change with so that we can solve these problems. Because, again, you know, there's 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars traded every day and made every day.

You know, the impact investment markets now, you know, a $1,000,000,000,000 of funds under management, but it's a drop in the ocean. We need to be mobilizing 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 for to solve the problems that we have in front of us. And we just don't myself and other capital entrepreneurs just don't, guess we don't come to the capital system to say, well, this is how it is, how do we work with it? We come to it and go, how how does this need to change to solve the problems we see. You know, we don't we don't come to it to how do we work with it. We come to say, how do we change it and make it different?

Beautiful. Love what you're saying there. So let's put a pin there. We're gonna come back to that. What are you specifically working on? But before we do that, and again, listeners. I take some responsibility or a lot of responsibility. Historically, we haven't done a good job of with the representing the Indo Pacific region. And so our listeners are mostly from North America and, from Europe or might not even know what does that even look like.

So so just, like, define your terms. Right? So, like, give us a sense of, like, what does that include that region?

Well, I'm based in Australia, which is, you know, obviously, right down the bottom. People have probably heard of Australia. You know, it's a it's with The largest island and the smallest continent in in the world. You know, I'm sitting down here. Just above us is Indonesia, is one of the most populous countries in the world, right on the equator, you know, jungles, bioregions, fantast you know, with Fantastic soils, volcanoes, Krakatoa, all those things. But Indonesia has, like, 300,000,000 plus people. So, you know, like there's the USA, China, India, Indonesia, I think, is in the top five, and it's sitting right there just above us. With And it's an emerging market, and there is millions of people there in poverty and struggling to grow, but, you know, they've also got a very a growing economy.

So with We start with that archipelago of islands called Indonesia that sits just above us, and then we keep going to the east. And we go from, you know, Indonesia into Papua New Guinea, which again sits directly above Australia, and then you follow this kind of chain of islands that kind of goes down through the Pacific. With Samoa, Tonga, kind of right down the bottom as you're heading towards, and then Fiji. And then, you know, through the middle, Vanuatu, with Solomon Islands, you know, and then there's a whole bunch of other smaller nation states there. And, you know, I think Australia is uniquely positioned. These are all around neighboring countries, and there's been a long history between, you know, the the Pacific and Australia. But similar for the the US. Right? The Pacific with Theater in World War 2.

A lot of American servicemen experienced the Pacific for the first time, didn't know where it was, but have an affinity now through all those islands, and, like, the Pacific Islanders have a strong affinity for the US because of their role in, you with Liberating, in some cases, from the Japanese, etcetera. So, you know, like, I think there's a long history between the US and Australia in the Pacific, with in the in the Indo Pacific. Indonesia, highly strategic as a place, you know, in in our region, in the Asia Pacific generally, and a very big, big country with quite a lot of, influence in the region. But, you know, in the context of everything that's happening in the world right now, the Pacific's Interesting geopolitically, because it has become a little bit of a proxy war between, like, China and the US in terms of who has influence in the region. Right? And, it's it's it's it they're they're small countries. A lot of them are, you know, island states, with Small island states, many of them are now chuckled by the climate crisis and beginning to go underwater. You know, there's there there's a lot of kind of, I guess, with Canary in the coal mine stuff to the Pacific in terms of early experiences of some of the impacts and and great, with Yeah. Microcosms of kind of the challenges that we're dealing with.

So I guess for someone like me, looking at the Indo Pacific, it's like, well, If we can come up with solutions that kinda work here, then they're likely to work in other places, because this is some of the hardest places for it to work because you've got distributed populations, lots of lots of islands. Solomon Islands has with Maybe a 1000000 people, but maybe a bit more than that. The census data is still kinda coming in. It's got 906 islands. Wow. You know? So And getting between those islands is boats and canoes and kind of getting you know, this is this is challenging, geographies for economic development and international development to work. So this is this is the region. It's it's largely, like, tourism is a big industry, but, you know, with Fishing.

The blue ocean strategy for the Pacific is a huge focus because the oceans is and the clean oceans and the fish in those oceans is some of their biggest assets. Yeah. So fishing, tourism, agriculture, they're great because they're all volcanic islands. They're awesome for growing things like with Coffee and poco and vanilla and a whole bunch of other things. Right? And we had to access export markets for those. So there's there's a lot of assets there, But it's challenging. Geography is challenging, cost of shipping is challenging, all all those kind of things. That that's the region we're talking about.

But with If you take if you take Indonesia out, you're talking about not very many people in a global context. Indonesia kind of brings, I guess, a with Population heft to the conversation in terms of 300,000,000 plus, and then, you know, a lot of small island states that kind of run down there with that are much smaller in scale.

Makes sense. I'm thinking of like North America by frame of reference because I live here. With you can send fill up a truck in Canada, drive it through the US, and get to Mexico, and it's all in the same truck. Right? And you all are in a very, very different scenario, Justin, in many, many different ways. So one of the things I heard you say, Cam, that that is, it in many ways because of the island nature, and there's so much that is the the ocean just figures so prominently in the region. Right? With the climate and what's happening with the climate is you use the example of canary kind of canary in the coal mine metaphor. What what are some of the things you're seeing, and how has capital traditionally in the region been? Like, with are are you seeing a lot of engagement in climate solutions with capital, or is this part of what you're doing? Say, hey. Folks need to pay attention to this because we've got some significant issues in the region, and y'all are not paying attention.

Like, where on that continuum would you say things have been?

With Look. I mean, I I think my observation would be, I'm not saying I'm an expert, but my observation would be that with Like like most of what we see globally, solutions and engagement is very unevenly distributed. There are some amazing with Climate entrepreneurs and climate businesses in the Pacific. And some of the Pacific leaders and Pacific, people, with Amazing leaders on the climate issue leading the you know, there's a forum of the small island states whiz around the world that's been very, very vocal in talking about, you know, the need, you know, the need for action on climate change because it threatens the very existence of their countries. Right? So with There definitely is leadership, there definitely is entrepreneurship, and there definitely is, you know, there are success stories across the Indo Pacific of businesses that are tackling climate tech. I think in Indonesia, it's probably again, it's qualitatively different to the Pacific Pacific nations, just because of its size. But, you know, there's an increasing focus on kind of with Climate and gender in, Indonesia as a as a, I guess, category of kind of investment and a focus for what needs to happen. With And Indonesia, again, is quite different because of the terms of trade and the volume and all that kind of stuff.

They've got a lot of internal capacity and and local with Local, sources of capital where successful business people are looking at kind of reinvesting through impact to lens that kind of thing. Whereas in the Pacific, you know, with They've traditionally, you know, re relied on international donor funds for a whole bunch of stuff. And so, you know, in in a lot of those countries, with There isn't yet kind of the local the local success stories of Pacific businesses that are now reinvesting in their own country. It. Still very reliant on international donor funds from nation states, from INGOs that are working there. With and so a lot of the a lot of the funding for climate action is not not really geared to, you know, kind of market solutions, but So, you know, kind of more philanthropic and international development kind of finance. There is a large diaspora of Pacific people, with that are in Australia, that are in New Zealand, and then in in other places around the world. I think Canada probably has some as well.

And that with Harnessing that source of, capital is something that I think, I I know the Asian Development Bank is beginning to look at. You know, how how could we begin to mobilize for a reinvestment back into Pacific countries on issues of climate, agriculture, etcetera. But, again, with I I think my observation is the Pacific's had some unique challenges, but some of the patterns are no different to elsewhere where, like, the the activity is very uneven. There's amazing pockets, but in general, you know, there's a general lack. But, you know, there are some amazing examples and amazing leadership from Pacific people as well. With Great.

Thanks so much for that context, Kim. So in that context, let's go into the specifics of what you've been working on, and then we'll widen back out in a second. But with you cofounded 2 different impact focused capital entrepreneur capital enterprises. Right? With one of them is called Lend For Good, and one of them is called Red Hat Impact. Just tell us about these 2 enterprises and tell us about the why. What were you hoping to accomplish with each of them?

Red Hat Impact is a global innovation consultancy. Unsurprisingly, what we're focused on is with Mobilizing capital for 21st century problems. We're a relatively small time, there's 5 of us. We've been going for about seven and a half years. With And what we were really responding to was, again, a kind of lack of capital innovation when it came to funding with Impact enterprises in Australia and our region. And so while we spent a lot of our time focused on supporting individual enterprises, in the region, you know, that are buying out of, Asia Pacific countries, as well as businesses in those countries that are doing things. We've increasingly focused our work on market building, and building new capital instruments, this capital entrepreneurship I was with So one of the, flagship things we've done is lend for good, which I'll come back to. But the other thing that we've done and that we're working, with Working on right now is, we built a menstrual health specific menstrual health trade finance vehicle.

And this is a great example of what I mean by capital entrepreneurship. So there was a process from with 3 or 3 or so years of Pacific menstrual health organizations talking to each other. So when I talk about those, what they are is with some formal, but a lot of informal enterprises that have been started by women in their communities to address, Period poverty, effectively, where there's been no education. It's taboo. Girls disappear for a week when they're menstruating. With Losing school, losing time, like, all all that kind of stuff. International period product companies are trying to stay out of the Pacific because with There's the Internet economics don't add up, which in some respects is bad, in other respects in terms of waste disposal into their oceans, with Good. So what these, entrepreneurs have been doing, these mental health organizations, is combining education and advocacy and, you know, that kind of stuff with making reusable menstrual pads in their country.

But as I described that dynamic of the Pacific before, you know, you can't drive the truck from Canada to Mexico, in your example, with The biggest handbrake on their businesses has been accessing input materials to make those reusable menstrual pads. With So we created this trade finance vehicle where rather than all these individual enterprises trying to solve for how do we get enough money with to hop on a plane, do suitcase trade to Australia, and buy retail fabrics and, you know, and, absorbents to take back and make reusable menstrual pads, What if we can aggregate that demand? What if we can use a pool of investors' capital to, on your behalf, go out and buy in bulk with the materials that you need and ship it to you. So what we've been doing for the last 3 years is supplying a handful of Pacific menstrual health organizations the kind of core ingredients that they need to make reusable menstrual pads so they can get what they need, not what they can afford. With that, but they don't have to worry about where I get the money from, and they don't have to worry about shipping and logistics. We take care of all that. And then we enter into a supply agreement with them, which says, well, how long is it gonna take you to turn those ingredients into revenue? With Maybe it's 6 months, maybe it's 9 months, maybe it's 12 months, and then they repay for those ingredients and the revenues that they can make from with Getting those materials. So what we're doing here is kind of shifting where the burden is in terms of money, in terms of capital, and what those businesses need to succeed and to grow. And what they've been able to do now is go ahead and bid for supplies to NGOs and for schools because there's no with barrier to how much they can make because before they used to go, well, I can't do that volume because where am I gonna get the money from to go and buy the input materials I need? With We solve that.

We deliver it to them. They can go out, they can grow their business, they can get more margin in their business, and then as entrepreneurs, they can make decisions over what they do. Maybe they can pay themselves for the 1st time. Maybe they can pay their employees for the 1st time rather than being volunteer. So it's game changing for those women entrepreneurs who are trying to solve a very important problem. You know, it's high gender lens, it's women who are running these businesses, women who they are serving, they're building women's products, they're employing women. Our role is we've built this vehicle that takes the capital risk out of the equation for with Like, it's it's what we're using, and we can negotiate better prices because we can pay up front and in bulk. You know? And and we can negotiate with the supply chain in terms of deals on getting stuff for them.

And and and that's an activist role for capital. Right? It's capital saying, how do we fix a market in equity here? With How do we make the market doesn't work the way it currently works, and it puts all the risk on these women and all the burden on these women to do this when When we can solve it. And, you know, we've been doing a 5%. It's not it's not a huge return, but the investors in that fund that we've been using, they're beginning a 5% return on their capital on a 12 month basis. Right? For us to deploy this and support and support these women. So while there's probably not an investment case to make any money back from investing directly in those enterprises at this point. If we step back to an ecosystem or market level, we can create investable instruments that can solve prob problems, that can make impact easier and happen, with And deliver a financial return to investors in a way that it would not otherwise exist. So that to me is capital entrepreneurship.

Like, that is with What how do we design a new way that capital organizers, does its job, and is aligned with the incentives through the supply chain to achieve a better outcome for everybody.

Love that. I love your language, Cam. Activist for capital. Right? Like like helping capital proactively go out and say, Oh, there's something that's broken here or not right or unjust or with just not working well for people who, are falling through the cracks, and let's proactively go do something about that. Just to thank you for doing that and love that you're coming up with some new language for that. That's great. Yeah.

It's you know, I mean, We we we see it as a distinct privilege to get to serve these entrepreneurs. Right? These women are amazing women. They're fighting with taboos in their countries to do really hard work. Right? And, you know, for us, At Red Hat Impact, it's like, how do we get capital to take the risk? These women have already got so much risk. We're asking them to do even more, which I think, something that your listeners probably can understand. In in general, as entrepreneurs, there's lots of risks you take on. But, you know, with with With with capital and access to capital, there's a whole other layer of risk that kinda comes with that. And and investors don't investors don't wanna assume that risk.

They want you to do it. And I think, like, for us, that's a complete failure of the understanding, especially of impact investors, of that power dynamic. With From a Red Hat Impact point of view, we wanna we're driven by that demand led, entrepreneur with Founder focused. It's gotta work for them. If capital works for them and does the job for them and delivers the impact, great. And investor returns are kind of secondary. Not that we can't deliver them, and not that they're not there, but they're not the driver of how we approach the problem. If we're led by the problem, with We're led by what an entrepreneur needs.

That that's the difference. Right? There's a there's a there's a power lens to how capital is deployed with that I think a lot of people are blind to. And what we're trying to specifically call out here is there is a power imbalance here. Let's try and with Shift that and shift the risk onto the capital as opposed to the entrepreneur in in this trade finance vehicle.

Beautiful. And I can imagine, with you know, thinking like a social entrepreneur, I can imagine if I was a leader in one of those organizations that, let's say around menstrual products, I can go to the head of, you know, education in a whole country or a whole region. Right? And say, look, with we can help you solve this problem and keep girls in school and help them do better in school and then sell a quantity, right, and scale up much quicker, right, and provide more jobs for women entrepreneurs, etcetera. So as I can imagine, a whole cascade of positive effects with what you're doing because with you're taking the unknowns and you're derisking it for the social entrepreneur so they can be bolder and make, with they can just scale more quickly. So I can imagine so many ripple

effects of what you're doing. Yeah. And, Paul, importantly, what you just described there, they focus what they're good at and what they

know. Exactly.

Exactly. Distract them by having to try and figure out how the global supply chains work. Yeah. How do with What what's this dance I need to do to become an investable enterprise so that people will deign to give me their money? Like, We're talking about spending 10,000, 15,000 US dollars on buying input materials. Like, it's not huge amounts of money, but it's transformative. With And and and that's what's really frustrating. You know, from an impact investors, generally, they don't wanna get their hands dirty below with a certain, you know, 7 kind of figure price point because their cost of due diligence is too high, and they need things to pay off, you know. With But what the scale of need here is so much smaller.

Right? And and what's exciting, Paul, just to mention, with What we're now doing with that trade finance vehicle, the backing of DFAT here in Australia and a few other donors that are coming on board, is we're looking to evolve that model now to serve not just specific menstrual health enterprises, but women's women entrepreneurs across the whole Indo Pacific to run that same fund vehicle to be able to do that job, not just Pacific Minister Health Enterprises, but for, you know, agriculture businesses in Indonesia, for fishing businesses in Fiji, for with health and education businesses and, you know, catering, you know, food businesses. Anything where they have a kind of import exposed part of their business where they've got to buy things in. We imagine that we can buy solar washing machines and e cook stoves and, you know, tabletop counters or whatever it is that they're buying right now, we can buy that for them. But then beyond that with That ripple effect you talk about, what else could they do? What else would have they imagined that their business could do if only they could overcome with The high upfront cost of buying stuff to do the next thing. And we go, well, let's help you do that. Let's buy the thing that you need for the next part of your and and to and to go from there. So that's Aware July next year, we're looking at launching this new entity that'll be Pacific Island and Pacific Bay. So with Our ambition at Red Hat Impact is we back out of we back out of the day to day running of it, and we hope set up and empower specific women to run this for themselves and create a sustainable business that can keep doing this for them, you know, the decades into the future.

So that that's our ambition now is to, you know, is to make this transition from a pilot project to, you know, a a pathway to a commercially viable entity that can serve women with in the whole Indo Pacific region.

Very cool. So listeners, as always, I'll put a link in the show notes. Go check out Red Hat Impact and what they're doing. Let's do this. In a minute, I wanna come back and hear another very cool enterprise that you're working on. It's called Land Brigid. But before do we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? With And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but with You don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars.

You're looking for an affordable, targeted and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. With These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure it, so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, with And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. I am here with Cam Nils doing incredible work and getting us up to speed, those of us in North America and Europe who maybe haven't been paying so much attention to the Indo Pacific region. Kim, you were just telling us about some awesome work you're doing at Red Hat Impact. One of the things you all developed is another new initiative oftentimes called impact crowdfunding here in North America.

Not sure if that's language that, lands for you all, it, but you you started something in that, you know, in that neighborhood called Lend For Good. Tell us about Lend For Good, why did you start it, and who is it for?

Well, just to it's it's aligned with what I just described. Right? I think as Red Hat impact, Getting into market building, one of the things that we have done, you know, in the last seven and a half years at Red Hat Impact is we have kind of pioneered with Crowd crowd impact lending in in the Australian and Asia Pacific region. So when we started seven and a half years ago, with Most of the impact capital that's available is equity. Right? But then we've seen things like the Jobs Act in the US that kind of opened up, you know, crowd sourced funding and equity, with And we've, you know, and we've seen, obviously, the success of crowd funding, donation, and reward based. Our observation was that We need we need to democratize access for individuals and organizations to be able to fund the things that they care about, you know, and it needed to be different to with equity, and it's not donation or award based crowdfunding that sits in the middle. And, like, for us, debt is an amazing tool. It's it's what most with Small to medium sized enterprises and the and large enterprises used to grow their businesses. But in the impact space, it's terribly underutilized, Very difficult to access, not really there.

But then you look at what Kiva has been able to do with their kind of zero interest kind of lending. You know, it's it's been immense and powerful. So So we've kind of, you know, standing on the peers of giants, looking at, shoulders of giants of these peers that we look around at to kinda say, well, How can we use debt in in you know, to kind of really target impact entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their businesses? With What we see, you know, is this classic thing of this missing middle of impact finance, which is understood, well documented, you know, and we kinda point with to the SME financing gap in emerging markets, which is about 5.2 US $1,000,000,000,000 per year. And we're saying, well, how do we with Begin to make a dent on that. What is it that's needed? And it and it relates to what I just said in the Pacific before about, you know, what these organizations need here is 10, 15,000 US dollars. With Impact. Investors wanna deploy, you know, 1,500,000. And so there's this kind of gap.

And I think From a Red Hat Impact's point of view, so, well, hey, we've pioneered this. We've done 60 odd deals. We have deployed, you know, $3,000,000 of capital. How do we build a market that's not just us? And so when we said we need a platform, we said why would we build a platform just for ourselves with to do crowd lending. Let's build one for the world. So Lend for Good is the outcome of that, partnering with our, friends at Start Some Good who run a crowdfunding platform. With we've now launched Lend for Good, which is that same dynamic. It's it's impact lending.

It's crowded, a crowd of individuals coming around a particular ask with Of, you know, 50 we need 50,000 US dollars to buy a new piece of plant or equipment, and we're able to fractionalize that. So that might have 20 investors contributing 500 US dollars or, you know, 25,000, you know, US dollars into that with Funding pool, that loan goes to the borrower, that borrower repays and gets repaid to the lenders. And lend for good facilitates all the financial transaction and legal kind of agreements that flow through the middle there to make that possible, and and run this marketplace. And and with But, ultimately, it's, you know, it's a platform and a marketplace, but it's it's a movement. What we're trying to do here is to mobilize with A movement of individuals and organizations that understand and want to lend their support to impact entrepreneurs around the world. With The kinda understand the access to capital on the right terms at the right time, at on at the right size is fundamental with them being able to unlock their potential and unlock the innovation they've got. So, you know, that that's the journey we're on now is to build a scalable platform that has, you know, 50,000 individuals, organizations from around the world, who are deploying capital through us to impact entrepreneurs that embodies what I just was talking about in terms of the trade finance vehicle in the Pacific. It's demand led, borrowers are saying, Here's what I need.

Here's the terms at which I need it on. Here's what my re proposed repayment terms are, because this is what'll work for me in terms of how I'm gonna deploy that capital. Rather than with Entrepreneurs having to turn up to a fund and say, here's how I fit your box. Here's here's how I will do that. Here's how I'll start my repayments next month. With We need more flexible capital. We need more capital that will take on risk. But we need capital to actually say to be designed for with What the entrepreneurs need, and that's fundamentally what we're trying to do with Lend for Good is provide an avenue for impact entrepreneurs You might be listening to be able to say, well, I need $30,000.

I can turn that $30,000 into $250,000 of revenue over 12 months, But I don't have the $30,000 I need right now to realize that opportunity. Lend me the money. Repay that, but here's how I need to repay it to make it work for me because I've got to invest it for the 1st 6 months. So I need a 6 month repayment holiday, then I'll repay, you know, but I'm mostly gonna repay it near the end because that's when I'm making lots of money from in in taking your cash. It it's it's it's that kind of thing, Paul. And, you know, For us, it's another market building activity. Like, we're the 1st customer at Red Hat Impact of Lend For Good, but we're building this to any intermediary like us in the world to use with their clients, For them to be able to work with their impact entrepreneurs to say, hey. Have you thought about impact debt? What could that look like? How could we use a platform like Lend for Good with To access the 15,000, the 150,000 that you need to pursue this opportunity.

Yeah. With give us an example, listeners up again, put a link in the show notes. You can go check out, Lend For Good. But what would be an example of a a couple of the campaigns that have already been funded.

Well, to keep going on my Pacific Medsura Health example, one of the most recent ones we just funded is PerfectFit, And they're an Indonesian based, period product business. They have just used Lend2Good to raise 79 with 1,500 US dollars. They've raised that on a 30 36 month term at 8%, and they've structured those repayments, you know, over back ended, like, at 12 months 18 months, they're paying interest only, and then they you know, and they're repaying most over that that last 18 months. And they need that capital because, again, they've been going for about 2 years. They've got a proof of concept. They've got customers. They've got revenue, but they need to invest in getting more Getting more product made, more inventory, they need to invest in some, marketing and expansion to kind of, continue to grow their business. And, you know, they're they're they're tackling a problem in Indonesia where there isn't a lack of disposable period products, with But they're not the right fit culturally, and also it's creating huge environmental problems.

So these guys are coming in with solutions for, with, you know, urban and rural women in Indonesia that are culturally relevant and that are way you know, that are solving a whole bunch of the environmental problems. So that's with One example. The other one, and that I'll just quickly talk about is we which is very different, was, US $20,000 loan from a business called Danish Care Foods in Cambodia, and they do, ready to eat kind of nutrient, products for children with and young moms that can help with the nutrient deficiency they have in Cambodia, that then has a flow on impacts to birth weight and, you know, growth weight and that kind of stuff. With So they've got international, buyers who are wanting to support those kind of activities, but they got into this gap where, You know, they've had a lot of success. They knew there's another big order coming from one of their big suppliers, but they needed some bridging capital to be able to people their staff, Invest in some new equipment and new technology to be able to be ready to go with this next big order that would come in. So they borrowed for 6 months because that's, with You know, we've got this new order coming in, but we need to do things now. And we've got money in the future, but right now, we need to uplift our manufacturing processes and facilities. So they have been hugely successful at taking that money and just massively increasing the capability of their business.

They've kept all their staff, they've with more people. They're ready for growth now that if they hadn't have got that $20,000 for us, they wouldn't be. You know? And the fact that they've got that $20,000 through lend2good, They're also able to talk to local banks now about backing them because they've got a track record and and and, you know, whatever. So for our lenders, with Their contribution of US $20,000 has been catalytic for that Cambodian enterprise for what they're gonna be able to do with to tackle that nutrient deficiency problem in Cambodia, employing local Cambodians and and homegrown solutions. It's not lots of money for us sitting in the US and Australia, but it is when you go to these emerging markets, like, access to that kind of capital on terms that make sense for them at the right time is transformative. Doing that at scale unlocks so much potential for impact entrepreneurs around the world, and the innovations that within these, impact enterprises that way too many of them fail or are trapped at A scale that they just the potential is not realized, and that's fundamentally what we're trying to do. And rather than rely on with governments or institutions or whatever to kind of see this. Our experience has been it's much easier to go to with A crowd of people that are motivated by impact and that are kind of coming at it from, how do I make a difference, with Mobilizing their capital together to to support those entrepreneurs.

Institutions will follow, but, you know, I've got a community psychology background, and we're talking about building with Parallel institutions to what exists now that can do it differently, that will become attractive to others to say, well, why aren't we doing that? How do we come and play? And that that's that's you know, we're market building and market making with that, with that enterprise.

With and you're doing it for entrepreneurs that may not be a top of mind, shall we say, for some large multinational bank that the ones you said, you get somebody, you get a leadership team to a certain level in terms of revenue and, a history of, like, oh, look. They got a loan. They paid it back, and now they're looking for another loan to grow even more. They can potentially, should they want to go to a more traditional form of capital, but there's a whole different, just a story of success, another level of revenue, and they've weathered some loans before, paid them back. Their credit is better, etcetera, etcetera. And my sense is you're more you withstand what that, you know, nutrition business in Cambodia or what a menstrual health product business in Indonesia, like where they are starting from, what the what some of the challenges are, and you can help some with Buddy, build a track record that then allows them to access other forms of capital. Maybe they come back to lend for good next time, but they might have other options that if they didn't get that capital, through you all, the those other options wouldn't be on the table. Is that fair to say?

With A 100%. You know, it it it changes go back to Viola Clementa before in the Pacific. It it changes the power relationship. Yeah. The these entrepreneurs have more power with now. Like, they have more options. They have more power. They're more successful.

You know, they can go ahead and negotiate more on their own terms.

It. Yeah. We're a business of 50 employees, and now it's 200, you know, quarter 1,000,000 US revenue a year, and you walk into a bank and you say that. And when if you're in an emerging market, you're gonna get somebody's attention that when you're like, we're trying to survive, but we need 20,000 just to make it. With that maybe you're not gonna get the right person's attention. Yeah. So

That that's exactly the insight, Paul. And the the other just final thing I'll mention on that is is, Sources of capital for non non for per for profit enterprises is really difficult. I'm sure many of your listeners have encountered, right, if they're a not for profit or a charity or a co op or whatever, that equity route is kind of taken off the table. So, you know, we one of the reasons why we love debt is it doesn't care what your structure is. You, as entrepreneur, figure out what's right with For what you need in your community and to solve the problem, you decide that. We're not gonna make you be a for profit venture with shares that someone can buy in order for us to with. Right? Like, it's it's what's the impact you wanna create? What's the right you know, what's what's your right context and the right type of organization to be? With because I think so much of that equity stuff comes with a perspective of an exit at some point is how I'm gonna get my return. Yeah.

Most impact entrepreneurs are not at all thinking about exit. They're thinking about how do I solve the problem? Right? And that's that's a complete mismatch with what capital's asking for with And what the entrepreneur needs. And that, you know, that comes back to the start of our conversation, Paul, about capital entrepreneurship. It it's about changing that language and having capital asks different questions. It's how do we help you solve the problem? Not when's the exit gonna happen that I get my return? With And if I don't if I can't see that, then I can't invest. It's like, well, no. We need capital to turn up and say, how do I serve what you're trying to achieve? And, you know, that that's what we're trying to embody with this trade finance vehicle in the Indo Pacific and with Lend for Good is is capital turns up with that with How do I serve you as the impact entrepreneur doing the hard work? You are doing the work of with Trying to create better communities and a better planet for us all. Our responsibility is to figure out how we help you do that with Better and do that more.

And and that's not how capital turns up, generally speaking.

Love that. Yeah. Thanks for doing that, Cam. And I can imagine bunch of our listeners are right now saying, yes. You're speaking our language. So with I can't believe it can, but I wanna be respectful of your time and our listeners. I asked you for a little less than an hour, and we're almost out of an hour or so. With if there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to that we haven't gotten to, or there's something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to wind down knowing the links to Red Hat Impact will be there, the links to Lend for Good.

Go check it out, listeners. With something you else you wanted to leave our listeners with. What would that be?

One of the things about entrepreneurs with Is, I think an important part of being entrepreneur is creativity and imagination. Like, I think entrepreneurs imagine with That something is different than how it is. And I guess, you know, what we're doing with capital and what I invite all your listeners to do is to Look at the way finance works and capital works and imagine what's possible. Right? It's with The way capital works right now is not how it how it was 20 years ago, let alone a 100 years ago, and it won't be what it's like in 1500 years. With These are not systems that are gravity. The way markets work is not a universal constant. These things are built by us. They're social constructs that we create.

Right? And what we need all need to be doing, and I would challenge everyone, is just to think, What if there's a better way? We don't need to accept that this is just how it is. Right? We we we need to challenge that, and that comes down to imagination, creativity. And so so much of what we face in front of us is a constrained imagination because of what we're being told is what's possible, how we've been taught, with How, like, how politicians speak to us around, well, what's possible, what you can't expect that from governments. You can't expect that like, with planet, or, you know, into the 22nd century, other side of the climate crisis that is inevitable and we're already experiencing now, If we're going to overcome the challenges that we're that capital is fueling around global conflict and erosion of democracy, we have to with think differently around how finance works and what we expect of it. That and that starts with our imagination and our and our understanding that We're part of a stream. Right? It's a flow here. We we we are at a point of evolution of our human systems That continues to evolve. Like, nothing that we've inherited now is set in stone.

We have to imagine that it can be different. And that's I think as entrepreneurs, with We've got some ability to do that when we we're we're able to deal with ambiguity. We can deal with abstract concepts, you know, where we can feel uncomfortable in the unknown. With But that that that's what's demanded of us, I think, is that we imagine it's different and think about, well, what would I need to do to do that? If we don't accept with The world has to be the way it is now. That's the starting point. And and and it's for my particular lens is on capital, but I think that applies to entrepreneurs out there who are looking at with Poly tips. Entrepreneurs out there who are looking at infrastructure systems. Polit you know, people out there who are looking at the way agriculture is done.

Like, with It's it's the same thing. We have to imagine it's different, and it's better, and it serves the values that we have. Right? And and what that looks like, need so many experiments. We need to do try lots of different things, see what works. Some will fail, and that's fine. As entrepreneurs, we get that that failure is with of that journey. But I did for me, I think it starts with we have to change the way that we think and understand that, You know, I I frame it as I'm working on what comes after capitalism. Like, what's next? Like, we're not done.

Like, Humans haven't stopped evolving. Well, we could make the we could make the choice not to, and in some respect, it seems like we are, but, you know, with What comes after this? What comes after democracy? Like, we're not done. Like, innovation's not over. We need to keep going. And and the 21st century challenges demand that we do something different than what we've inherited.

It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for your good work. And, with just, yeah, deep out for the way you're innovating and the way you're able to articulate, like these are not fixed systems. We can change them listeners. I hope you take that with you. Go check out the red headed pack site. Go check out the one for good sites. See if there's something on there that you might wanna help on.

Right? And cam, just to deep out to all the great work that you and your team are doing.

With Thanks, Paul, and thanks to the opportunity to be on the podcast and to talk to your listeners.

So listeners, you know what we do on this show? Go tell your friends, Go amplify. Go take a look at what those campaigns are and see if there's something that might fit your values, and maybe you can help an entrepreneur in an emerging economy in a big impactful way. All the links will be in the show note and a reminder as usual, with love getting listener suggested topics and guests. This one came through the network. Big shout out to Drew Tolchin who put me in touch with him, so with thank you, Drew. And if you have an idea for a story that you think would be awesome for us to unpack, with go to the Awarepreneurs website. Look at our contact page. We have 3 simple guidelines that'll give you some sense of what we're looking for.

If you say, yeah. I think this fits. Please send your ideas within. And for now, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact it that you're working for in our world.