 My name is Sarah Sterling. I'm the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship at Socap Global and I'm so excited and honored to be presenting to you the second half of our cohort for the Socap Entrepreneur Program. So the entrepreneur program has been around for quite some time since 2008. I took over in 2015 and since then we've been working on getting feedback from our founders and shortly after the merger with the Sorenson Impact Institute we were actually able to create a holistic hybrid program for entrepreneurs for the very first time starting last year in 2022. So this year we have our first fully relaunched program with 40 entrepreneurs that are impact focused coming from all over the globe and different sectors. I'll explain a little bit later who you're going to hear from specifically today. All of whom are currently fundraising or looking for partnerships. The entrepreneurs go through a rigorous application and a review process. We only have a 10% acceptance rate. We received over 400 applications this year to select our cohort of 40. So the people you'll be seeing on stage today are the best of the best and have the most innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time today. Our entrepreneurs receive six months of virtual training under six different strategy tracks. So holistic founder wellness, team leadership and culture development, scaling and growth of your venture, impact measurement, investment readiness and founder self-advocacy as well as storytelling, marketing, communications, pitching and networking. So they get a lot of content and the sessions are facilitated by members of our SoCAP community who might be sitting with you today. We also have blind introductions that we do for our entrepreneurs via email. They curate the list and send it to us. So if you haven't gotten an email from me yet, you might still. I have some in my inbox pending. And we also have partnered with Tonic to do direct matchmaking with investors who are at SoCAP and have opted in who are actively looking for a pipeline with our entrepreneurs. And last but definitely not least, so excited to have one of our partners here today, proof.io, who gave our entrepreneurs access to their impact measurement platform to be able to help them find new and better ways to measure the impact of their organizations. Before I pass the mic, I want to thank our partners who have brought cohorts of entrepreneurs with them today. The Cartier Women's Initiative, the Canadian General Consulate, dream.org, Miller Center and the Kellogg Foundation. You might have seen them previously present yesterday. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to proof to talk a little bit more about what they do and what we've been doing together this year at SoCAP. I'll keep this one. Thank you so much, Sarah. Can we all give it up for Sarah, who puts so much time and energy into planning this in the last six months and years and years. Great job. This is awesome. All right. Hi, everybody. I'm Shannon. This is Kyle. I hope you guys are all feeling energized, inspired, hopefully caffeinated. It's day three. I know it's been a long couple of days. We're here today to present and introduce the entrepreneurs that you're going to hear from in the rest of this session. We're so excited and honored to be able to do that. And we're going to tell you a little bit more about proof and how you can use technology to be able to amplify your impact. You know, I've been to quite a few sessions in the last two days. And one thing that I realized in every single session was that every single speaker had something to say about measurement and reporting. I think it's safe to say that that's because right now ESG and impact data, it matters. It matters to LPs. 84% of them are using ESG and impact factors during their investment committee meetings. It matters to consumers. These consumers are more willing to pay for products or services that have committed to social and environmental impact. And it also matters to executives. Executives are now actually changing their vision of ESG and impact away from something that's a cost center and something that's actually more of a tool that can enable more profitability. Therefore pretty much every single stakeholder has now gone through some sort of action to be able to measure and report on their impact. And at proof, this is what we built for. So we've listened to all the stakeholders, consumers, LPs, executives themselves. And over the last couple years we've been working on impact measurement technology to support their needs. And I think that we've made some very strong progress, incredible progress. We've built tools to simplify data collection, very laborious, collecting all of this data. I think most of you in this room have probably built out a survey, thought about the definitions that you want to create. Automating that has been really, really important. We've collected billions of data points as an industry. And we're seemingly, every week now, a new private market data set is being released. So now entrepreneurs, businesses themselves can start comparing themselves to other companies, comparables, things like that. Super important to understand if you're doing good or if you're doing bad in your impact performance. And finally, standards and frameworks. After maybe 100 drafts of standards and frameworks, 15, 20 different standards and frameworks, I actually think we're getting to a point right now where disclosing this information is getting very sensible and actually very decision useful. So that's a huge step. So we're done. Great, great. We've made all of this incredible, incredible progress. And I think maybe we can go get some happy hour drinks or something. I don't know. I think pat ourselves on the back. No, let's not do that quite yet. Because what we've realized most recently, and it's actually been a very humbling realization, is that all of this work that's being done to collect impact data, to measure it, to disclose it, is actually not being translated into new impact. So IBM studied this hypothesis. They studied 2,500 social executives, business executives across the United States. They found that 95% of them had ESG propositions and strategies. It's on pen, it's on paper. Great, published. But only 10% of them have actually made progress against those ESG strategies. Okay, so what does this mean? Creating an ESG strategy, doing the base level work, table stakes now. Actually making impact and making progress against those pledges and claims, very, very difficult. It's not being done. Just because you have a strategy, just because you've collected data, just because you've made your impact report and disclosed it, does not mean that you're actually creating impact. And this is an interesting problem because the markets are estimating that ESG and impact measurement are estimated to be a $100 billion industry by 2030. And so we're asking ourselves, that's proof, where is this going to come from? Where are the value drivers here? Is it going to be impact and ESG reporting technologies, compliance technologies? And what we actually believe is that the companies that are going to be the value drivers are the companies that are going to move closer to the change makers themselves, the social entrepreneurs, the businesses, and actually work directly with them for impact creation. This is new. And so what does this look like? We think that with new technology that's coming out, by this time at SoCAP next year, everybody in this room, all the change makers themselves are going to have an impact advisor in their pocket. Okay, before you go to sleep when you're checking your phone, you're going to be able to ask your impact advisor based on your data, based on the sector that you're in, based on the geography that you're in, what can I do tomorrow to push my impact? So no longer will impact measurement be a sort of backwards facing retrospective on what has been done, but actually it's going to move forward and work directly with the entrepreneurs and translate all that sort of raw data into real information that can be used to create impact. So hopefully that 10% goes way up. Technology is definitely a critical component, but I think we're all here because we agree it's not everything. Human interaction with technology is the most critical component because humans are the ones that are using this technology to continue to build products or services around initiatives that truly have a measurable impact. We are on stage right now. You guys are all in the room right now because you want to hear from these extraordinary entrepreneurs that have actually measured and reported on the outcomes of the products or services that they're building that are making an impact around the world. These are just a couple of examples you're going to hear from quite a few more today. So I hope you're all very excited about that. And if you want to learn about how to take action, I think one thing that sometimes gets left at presentations is a lot of talk and not a lot of action. Scan this QR code. We're going to give you three specific things that you can do today to actually be part of this translation or this movement from impact measurement to impact creation. And then please join me in welcoming the rest of the entrepreneurs that we'll hear from shortly. So without further ado, we're going to be hearing from three different sectors today, health and wellness, sustainable agriculture, and then sustainable renewable energy and climate action. After the pitches are done, we invite you to our networking session so that you can have some one-on-one time with the entrepreneurs, learn more in-depth knowledge about them and their organizations. All you have to do is go out to the main lobby that you came in through in the theater and follow the stairs upstairs. Thank you so much and enjoy. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. My name is Fred. I'm the co-founder and CEO of the farmer's truck. We're on a mission to increase fresh food access in every community. Behind me is one of these programs, one of the first programs we started working with right here in Sacramento. It's a mobile farmers market. They actually are a urban farm right in West Sacramento where they teach the next generation of farmers and they use the mobile market to sell the products that they grow. They actually use the mobile market to go in what they call underserved community or food deserts and help these communities have access to fresh healthy food. As you can see here, they're serving new members of their community. Also, one thing that they do is working with their farmers. They're actually able to grow culturally appropriate food for the community they're serving. So depending on where they're going, they'll have the different types of food. I'm a big fan of their programs. Did you know that 19 million Americans live in a food desert? Who knows what a food desert is? Awesome. Well, food deserts are a problem. It's where no fresh food is accessible. A food desert diet is mostly comprised of high salt, high fat, highly processed food and in a result increases your early life stroke chances by seven fold. It also doubles your chances of having a heart attack and diabetes. We work with community champions to build and launch mobile market for mobile farmers market from coast to coast. These programs are transforming lives, bringing fresh accessible food to those who need it the most. We've designed the most popular mobile market truck in North America, collectively serving about 20,000 families a week. We're on an ambitious goal. We want to serve one million families a week by 2030. We need all the help we can get. We're looking for grants for our customers, for the programs. We're looking for investments and we're also looking for support. If you want to connect us and build some partnerships, we would love to get your help. Please scan the QR code and add me on LinkedIn. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. My name is Claudio. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Monivo and we're an assistive technology company that uses smart glasses to empower people with disabilities to become more independent. According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 60 million people that require a wheelchair worldwide. Also, according to TechCrunch, the market for assistive technology is already at $26 billion in total. During 2018, when we did our first clinical trial in Germany, where the company is based, I met Dirk. Dirk was traveling the world before working for a big company doing lots of amazing things until he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and, unfortunately, the progressive one, which means that Dirk is depending on a wheelchair and at some point in time, he won't be able to use the wheelchair with the standard joystick that is usually attached to it, but he will have to use a mechanical solution that is attached in front of his chin or there are buttons around the head where he pushes against the button using his head's motions. But just like Dirk, there are many others such as people that have ALS or had an accident and suffered a spinal cord injury and they have to depend on these mechanical solutions. This is the current gold standard that is available to them, which is very hard to adapt. It's very stigmatizing and they depend on 24-7 support. We developed Monnevo Drive, the first control system for power wheelchairs using smart glasses. It uses the integrated sensors in the glasses that also tracks head motion, but now for the first time, people can calibrate it to their needs within seconds as opposed to the mechanical process of hours and hours to try to put it in the right position. The solution can do much more. We created a platform that can also connect to the phone, the computer, their home environment and truly becoming an everyday life assistant that helps them to be more independent. The solution is already certified in Europe and we got FDA cleared last year and now we're ready to scale. The solution has been used already by hundreds of people and they really enjoy how to use it and especially Dirk is really happy that he can continue, be independent and do what he loves. This wouldn't have been possible without an amazing team in the background. We're supported by medical advisors that helped us with the clinical trial, but what makes us most proud is that actually the users that we equipped some years ago have now joined our team and are part of the team. Last year we raised three million seed to enable us to get here to the US, get FDA, get it covered to insurance. People don't have to pay for this because it's covered and now we're raising six million to expand operations in the US, but also look at new technologies such as eye tracking, brain computer interfaces and develop our own smart glass. So I invite you to help us empower more people. Good morning everyone. My name is Simon DeBeer and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Athea Pomoja. Athea Pomoja's vision is for citizens voices to be at the center of an accountable government decision making. We're on a mission to build Africa's first digital citizen feedback platform for the healthcare service. I began my career working service delivery NGOs across East Africa and I saw two big problems. Delivering services scale often requires the government regardless of the best interest of the largest and most successful NGOs or development partners. And I also saw that so often those services were unaccountable and didn't listen to what citizens were saying. I knew that if you shifted power to communities and gave them the option of providing their feedback into how services should be delivered, you can empower them, increase accountability and improve service outcomes. It was then that I met my co-founder Helga. She was working in medicine and public health across Tanzania and she was experiencing these problems on a day-to-day basis. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, she was struggling to understand the real-time and diverse needs of her patients across the wide areas she served. It was here when Afia Pomoja was born. Across public healthcare facilities in Tanzania, there are insufficient citizen feedback channels. Typical feedback facilities look like this. Suggestion boxes for paper and pen suggestions. 60% of citizens say these are ineffective. Without sufficient citizen feedback channels, you break down trust with communities and you reduce people's willingness to even use services. Furthermore, for public healthcare decision makers, a lack of real-time information about what citizens are demanding prevents them allocating resources effectively, prevents them from advocating for the resources that they need. So our solution is a mobile feedback service using low-cost and scalable SMS technologies. We allow patients to provide feedback on the core quality of services they're receiving. The platform collects large volumes of real-time data and provides decision makers with accountability tools, insights and suggested ideas. We've launched the platform in over 200 facilities and found impacts on improved patient trust, improved uptake of key services, improved reported service quality and increased healthcare worker motivation. We're now on a three-year journey with the government to scale this platform to 10,000 facilities across the country and secure contracts from large development partners to fund this vital piece of digital infrastructure. We're seeking $400,000 of catalytic grant capital to scale our platform to a thousand facilities and elevate the voices of one million of the marginalized citizens and prove this solution can be deployed at scale. Thanks for your time. Before I started my career, I decided to dedicate my life to health because it's a multi-trillion dollar industry filled with innovation, technology, a huge opportunity for impact, but it's also a human right. That's what I want to talk to you about today. I'm Emily Ewell, the founder and CEO of Panties, the leading fashion femtech brand in health and sustainability. We're based in Sao Paulo, Brazil and our core product is menstrual underwear, which looks and feels just like normal underwear but is used to substitute up to 16,000 disposable menstrual products along a woman's life cycle. It's also killing bacteria, fungus, odors, so it's even more functional than traditional menstrual products. When we look at the market, what problem are we solving? Well, it's a huge market. Menstruation is a huge market globally, but it produces up to one trillion disposable products, an enormous amount of waste in the industry. On the other side, we see that one in five women lack access to menstrual products globally, so it's an incredible cause of gender inequality around the world. These women can't go to schools, they can't do their jobs, and the waste that's created by this is completely unnecessary. When we do research in the market, we see that 96% of consumers actually don't love the menstrual products that they use, so that means that there's a huge opportunity to create more emotional connection and more innovations that actually is relevant for consumers today. Today, we've built the largest portfolio in our segment, an absorbent apparel, and gone way beyond menstrual underwear to the first absorbent leak-proof nursing bra in the world, fitness line, swim line, incontinence wear as well, a pharmacy line in partnership with Johnson & Johnson, and our liner technology is patented and the only clinically approved technology in the world. When we look at the market, we're really focused on transforming the market from a market that's focused today on disposable products, single use, an enormous amount of waste, an enormous financial burden that's exclusively for women, and something that's associated as dirty or has a taboo around it, even the psychology of throwing away your menstruation every month. On the other side, our products we see with our customers, we get emails every day from them, that they feel that it changes the way that they relate to menstruation, changes the way it relates to their body, and creates that empowerment both in terms of health, in terms of emotional, psychological security, but also in terms of how they relate to their menstrual cycle, something that can be desirable as something that is focused more on self-care. It's very rare to find a product that actually creates that kind of transformation that can, per user, create directly a social, environmental, and financial impact. As we think about scaling our business, we're a bootstrapped, scaling profitable business. We look at it in two lenses. One is our retail lens focused on selling products. We have thankfully over 3,000 retail partners in Brazil, but also in many other markets. But on the other side, we have donations and philanthropic procurement, which is the area that we want to even focus more on this transformation. This industry, when we look at it today, there are huge funds, whether it's government funds or non-profit funds focused on distributing menstrual products, and so this is an area that we really need your help. Today, we're asking for grants and non-profit partners to help us scale our impact and create a future that is healthier, more sustainable, and creates more equality. Thank you so much. At Participant, we are democratizing quality-assisted products. Meet Karim. Until recently, the best mobility that Karim's family could afford was a common baby stroller, so he wasn't able to lift his arms. He was developing more postural problems. This just doesn't work for a child with cerebral palsy. Then Karim became user number one for Cub. It loves all terrain. It folds, it fits into cars, it's award-winning, and as Karim grows, the chair grows with him. So this allows the child to go to school. It allows participation. Rigorous research shows that a dollar invested in assistive technology returns nine to society, and so adults, if they have mobility, can access work. That's why we also offer a line of adult products. The raw power of this need makes me ask, why are they left behind? So industry offers either low-quality, cheap products, research shows maybe they last a few months in the rigorous, in the rugged, low-income settings, or very expensive products that are really designed for insurance systems with deep pockets like we have in the US. But for the 60 million people in the middle, there's nothing that fits their needs, their design needs, or their wallets. This is a two billion dollar market opportunity. So hi, I'm Kiyoki. I'm CEO, co-founder of Participant, and before I worked at Participant, I founded a global assistive technology distribution organization. So I could see the whole landscape, and I saw this gap in the middle. So to learn more, I talked to my friend Dave. He's a wheelchair user, he's an occupational therapist, he's trained the specialty of wheelchair provision in many different countries, and also my co-founder Yoda, who's a brilliant mechanical engineer. He's probably the most prolific wheelchair designer in the world today. A half million people are using his chairs right now. So our strategy is to be the dominant brand in low and middle-income countries. Today, we have a team of seven. Four of us use wheelchairs. We've shipped over a thousand units. We won a giant contract with UNICEF. We beat out dozens of existing competitors. This year, we'll have $600,000 in revenue. We're raising a million dollar safe note. It's got a six million dollar post-money evaluation. Just for context, this year we'll have 600,000. Next year, I can see two and a half million in revenue. Probably 10 million the year after that. This is a big opportunity and the impacts are very substantial. So if you're interested in the scale of this opportunity, the broad impacts, and the business case, if you share our values, I'd love to meet you. So please catch my information here and contact me. I look forward to talking with you. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. Four billion people in the world at this point in time don't access to safe drinking water. We are trying to reduce inequalities between the wealthy and middle-class and the low-income people. So foliar water is the world-first water filter sold as a mass market grocery stock. Like a soap, shampoo, sachet, or any sort of like the first-minute consumer goods in the world at this point in time. The number one causes of the hospitalization for the low-income people is one of the reason is the dirty drinking water. And 1.2 million people in every year die because of the unsafe drinking water. So this is the major problem in the world at this point in time for the unsafe drinking water solutions. So there are 58 billion bottle water market across the world, whereas the middle-class and the wealthy class family can also afford the appliances which is around more than $40 to above. So 2, 3 billion people actually doesn't have the safe drinking water solution at this point in time. So we have found our research that says basically any sort of thing like the appliances which is above $40, they cannot afford. But anything within their affordable limit like $0.10 or $0.20, their income level, they can afford it like. $2 to $8 income level people at this world, they cannot afford like a $40 of appliances. So foliar water is silverized nanoparticle, silver-infused antimacrobial water purifier. It removes the virus, bacteria and protozoa from the water and provide clean drinking water. You can see it's very simple to use. They don't need any additional investment for that. They will just buy the filter from any nearby grocery stores. So we are now expanding in Bangladesh. We are now currently in 2,500 stores. By 2024, we will be expanding and scaling in 10,000 grocery stores. And within that in 2015, 2025, we will be distributing our product across the countries like around a million stores in Bangladesh and within any national distributor like Inulipar or similar kind of large giant organization in Bangladesh. Then we will expand our distribution and market penetration in the international market like India, Indonesia, Kenya, Ghana and Vietnam. We have just closed our OPC round on the last July and August, which is 450K. And now we are raising 550K for our commercial expansion in Bangladesh that will help us to reach our break even and profitability. And then we will expand our international expansion in the other market and then we will raise another 1 million for that. This raise 550K will allow us to help advertisement and promotion, hiring the team and reaching the break even and profitability. So thank you so much and support us so that we can actually reach the universal access to safe drinking order for the 3 billion working class people. Thank you so much. Good morning. I have a question for you. Do you know the answers to those questions? If you do, congratulations. If you don't, don't worry. You're part of the 95% of the population in this world that as me, we didn't receive nutritional training in our schools or universities. But we think that we know how to nourish our bodies. But we don't. 41 million people died every year from chronic illnesses. 70% of them preventable causes because we eat in a bad way. And 13% of the population in this world has diabetes. So definitely we don't eat well. In my country, Colombia, eight out of 10 people suffer from food insecurity. This is a crisis. It's a big, big problem. Nutrition is like an investment now that we are talking about investments. You eat properly today to be healthy tomorrow. So you have to think about nutrition like an investment in a middle and long term. But vulnerable communities, they just don't. They think about today. So we decided to do something and to fill this world of food change. Engines. So what we don't do this together, we in Soidoi create a model called nutrient empowerment. Especially for to work with women and youth in rural and urban context in three phases. The first one, circle of trust to strengthen their self confidence. Second, to work with them to strengthen their social fabric. And third, to teach them nutrition training. So we have a food change agent. Women and youth that they are now in power of their health and their lives. And they are replicating this model in their families and communities and doing this work in a sustainable way. We have been doing this work for 16 years with this number that you see there. And now we want to replicate this in Latin America, reaching 2500 women. And we need $500,000, just $500,000 to reach almost 11,000 people and to impact them and to end malnutrition and food insecurity in a systemic and sustainable way changing the mindset and the behaviors. I want to invite you all to be a food change agent. To invest in Soidoi, to be part of this revolution and to change this crisis in an opportunity to make these vulnerable communities with dignity and to change the crisis of food and security in the world. I'm Andrea Escobar, co-founder and director of Soidoi. And I will be more than happy to talk to you and to partner with you. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Ashley and I am the co-founder of Kazietu US. So I've spent the past 15 years living and working in East Africa. And one of my fondest memories is filling a 20-foot shipping container full of 20,000 tubes of tea grown by smallholder farmers in Tanzania and hand-packed in the Kazietu Women Run Factory in Dar es Salaam. While I was in Tanzania, I saw so many other beautiful products from agribusinesses that pay farmers premium prices, guarantee access to markets, and support with productivity increases. The problem is these companies tap out with sales in East Africa, and they struggle to expand internationally without a presence here. So when I moved back to the US, I decided to start Kazietu's US entity to help make their vision of international access for East African agribusinesses a reality. Kazietu is a women-owned and run social enterprise that creates a range of products that are ethically sourced, traceable, and produced in East Africa for international markets. Tanzania Tea Collection is our flagship brand. We have eight different tea blends, and we're using a unique mix of herbs and spices from Tanzania and Zanzibar. Our model is built around local value addition of fully traceable supply chain and global distribution. We source raw materials from smallholder farmers across Tanzania. We're working across 18 different value chains, and we're engaging farmers in tea processing. We're paying farmers $5 per kilo compared to $0.15 per kilo, which is what they were making before. We blend and pack the tea in our women-run factory in Dar es Salaam, and we are producing over 10,000 tea bags per day. Finally, we have a global distribution network, and we're selling across over 200 B2Bs in East Africa and in Europe. So our ask of you, the SoCAP community today. First, as we speak, we have over 2,000 tubes of tea on its way from Tanzania to the US. So if you have connections or relationships with retailers on the West Coast, we'd love to hear from you. And second, we're raising $800,000 in debt and equity to fuel further expansion and for working capital. I'm looking forward to saying in touch, thank you so much for your time. Hello, I'm Aaron Ebner from the Annie Alliance for Sustainable Development, and I represent a innovative, farmer-led, coffee cooperative and social enterprise in the remote rainforest of Peru. I've been living and working in remote or in rural farmer villages in Peru for the last 13 years, and I represent an incredible team of indigenous-led technicians. I just wanted to recognize them. 11 years ago, I was in a remote valley of the rainforest in southern Peru collecting data for a research project. Eight years later, I came back and what I saw shocked me. Desserted homes, abandoned farms, and stories of a disease that caused it all. A coffee disease was ravaging the coffee harvest. Farmers were losing 80% of their crop, and farmers had to leave. They had to find work elsewhere. Our organization, the Annie Alliance for Sustainable Development, we're an agriculture organization. We committed ourselves to working with these farmers, and after a couple years, we had a very good impact. We significantly increased production and quality of the coffee, leading to significant increases in incomes, keeping farmers on their land and even bringing farmers back to their land. As coffee disease was ravaging these communities, something else was happening. Data from various institutions came out, culminating in National Geographic determining that this very part of the world was in fact the most biodiverse rainforest in the world. More reptile and amphibian species than anywhere else in the world, and in an area smaller than the size of Connecticut, more bird species than all of Canada, the United States, and Mexico combined. It's very important that we keep indigenous communities on their land to protect biodiversity. They are critical guardians of biodiversity, and our project was the only thing actually doing that. So we created Cafe Orijines with the farmers. The farmers created a co-op. It's completely farmer-led. We're working with them to improve production, improve quality, use agroforestry techniques that maintain the biodiversity, and amazing beans are coming out of this area. The coffee is high-grade specialty coffee. The specialty market in the world is booming. There are 225 small-scale coffee farmers in Peru. They all live on high-biodiversity land areas, and our goal is to work with tens of thousands of them to make sure they can stay on their land and protect the critical biodiversity. We're looking for $350,000 in debt to integrate this supply chain, sell roasted coffee in the United States so we can bring more profits back to the farmers, and we're looking for $100,000 in grant money to support the Women's Association within the Cooperative. Thank you to Socap and Sarah for this amazing program, and congratulations to all the fellows. It's been an honor to be a part of this group. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Kristen Strong, and I am the co-founder of ZED Motors. ZED Motors stands for Zero Emission Designs. ZED is the easiest way to access clean energy on earth. Tap to get it and digitally pay to use it. I am originally from San Francisco Bay Area. I was born and raised here. Right now, I am living and working in rural West Africa, in a small country called Benin Republic. How did I end up there? How did my business end up there? Ten years ago, I joined the Peace Corps. I was sent to a small rural village without running water and electricity. I met my now co-founder who had just started solar energy business. I worked with him over the past 10 plus years to introduce productive use of energy products into the economy, making access to solar milling machines, solar freezers, solar water pumps. A couple of years ago, we asked ourselves what's next. How can we use our expertise in solar energy to incorporate more products into our line? Right now, there are 1.5 billion people in Africa. Approximately half, approximately 600 million people don't have access to reliable energy. I lived in a community where we didn't have access to energy and there's just not as many opportunities available. So we decided to tackle the transportation industry. In most urban African cities and rural cities, people use electric, I'm sorry, they use IC patrol motorcycles to get from point A to point B. These two and three wheelers are causing immense amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. They're loud, they're noisy, they're causing a lot of health problems and we decided how can we help accelerate electric mobility into the African continent? Right now, the main pain points that are making it hard for the transition to electric mobility are range anxiety. People are afraid they're not going to have enough power or find the next charging station or be able to charge their bikes. It's also expensive and also it's just not clean. Most electric mobility companies are using the grid to charge their electric bikes. So what we have designed is a worldwide clean mobile power network. We are using our expertise in solar energy to be able to power battery charging stations and be able to widely distribute them across cities. They're easy to access through our Z app. Whether you have a smartphone or if you just have a regular phone, you can send a text or use a Z card. Everything is digitalized and we are using and we are digitalizing it and making automated dispensers so that they can be distributed easily throughout cities. It's already happening and we invite you to help us expand. You can come find me after this to learn more about what we're doing. Thank you. So my name is Ruthio and I'm going to tell you about my business in Kenya and Uganda. I'm starting with some memorabilia. I guess some of you understand, no recognize what this is, Tupperware. So my name is Ruthio. I'm one of the co-founders of Pida Sasa. It means products now in Swahili. And why am I using this? Because the core of what we do is reimagining the Tupperware model in East Africa to serve women in the rural areas. So what we did in Kenya and Uganda, we have merged the Tupperware model with microfinance practices and we have created a social commerce platform to serve women in rural Kenya and Uganda. So this is a classic way of operating that we have in Kenya and Uganda. Every client will be in a group which is led by a leader and we will serve them with climate smart products that we make them more affordable by offering credit to all of the members in the group. So we are specializing on products that have a clear impact on mitigation and adaptation. Within the mitigation bucket, most of what we do is about cooking. As you can imagine, I think three billion people still cook with sticks on the floor. This has a huge impact on CO2 emissions and obviously health and poverty alleviation. On the adaptation side, we are focusing on food security and water security products. So far, we are eight years old in Kenya, a couple of years old in Uganda. We typically generate two million dollars in revenue every year. This is equivalent to 40,000 products being delivered to an equivalent number of people. We are in two countries. At any point in time, we have 25,000 tiny, tiny loans that we manage ourselves. So far, we have reached around 700,000 people focusing on the ladies, on the women, on these families in rural areas. It is without saying that not only we are trying to reduce and make people to reduce climate impacts, but we have a very strong mission to empower women in the rural areas, which is intrinsic to our model. So they ask, as we are like a bank, borrowing is part of the bread and butter what we do every single day. We borrow to buy the inventory upfront. Today, we are seeking $300,000 to spend in inventory in climate smart products and also to carry on developing our carbon project. And in return, we offer financial returns and clear impacts that go beyond carbon. Thanks for listening. Thank you all so much for coming and listening and staying. We all appreciate that. In 2009, I attended the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen as part of a delegation from Stanford. In Copenhagen, world governments were in deep discussion on what to do about deforestation because we were destroying the very resource that we all depend upon. It quickly became clear that there was a distinct lack of solutions. Now, as a NASA engineer, I knew that we could know that we had to do better. So I invented tree planting drones, yeah, the flying kind, in order to automate and accelerate global reforestation, which is a great line. And of course, now I'm going to freeze and lose all my time, automate global reforestation. And now I completely forgot my entire pitch. Look, at Oxford with my co-founder, Dr. Irina Fedorenko-Aula, we founded the very first company and we created the vision that launched a brand new global industry from zero. So powerful was this vision. It inspired Sir David Attenborough to narrate this, my dream, word for word on our planet. I know, right? But it simply wasn't good enough because it only served a small slice of the market and we knew that we could do even better. So now we have a new team and a new mission to bring this technology to the people who need it the most because the size of the problem is enormous, two trillion trees. And the technology that we previously created only services governments and large-scale landholders. And it completely left out the millions of small-scale landholders around the world that don't have enough land for a single day's operation of the existing companies. This locks them out of access in the technology and excludes them from the direct financial benefits. So we created a simplified low-cost technology that delivers up to 600 seed balls per minute. It's empowered with rich data that drives decision making and verification of project success. Seed balls are manufactured in parallel, loaded into the drones, and then distributed according to a predetermined pattern. The seeds germinate and grow into a healthy diverse ecosystem. Now simplified technology is great, says the NASA engineer, but the most important innovation applying for us is our decentralized business model. We work with local organizations who are already planting trees and who have already built deep trust networks. We bring the technology and the methods, but together we equip and empower the local drone pilots, seed collectors, seedball manufacturing, and local communities. This power of local means that the end-to-end system is 10% the cost of the existing drone companies and still provides direct financial incentives to drive local social uplift. And that is how you create a solution that empowers the other 80%. We have great partners in four countries with 30 more ready to go. We just need your help to power it up. We're looking for 2.6 million in blended finance and with 2 million in funded projects, and we're always excited to meet new partners. Now we all know how critical it is to create climate solutions that will solve our problems in the next five years to avoid the worst impacts. However, in order to accomplish this, we must put people as the heart of our solutions with technology just like ours. So together, together you and I, together with the millions of land holders around the world, and only together can we build impact at the speed of trust. Thank you. All right, last presentation. You guys ready? There we go. Hopefully not going to be too boring. Where's the screen button? All right. Hey, everyone. Nigel Sharpe, CEO, co-founder of a company called Aquaga. Who's heard of PFAS? Hands up, interactive. Let's go. Oh, okay, not bad. We've got about half the room. For those who haven't, you have heard of it. It's Teflon, Gore-Tex, Raynex, Scotchgard. It's the stuff that's here in the room with us today. It is in your clothing, in your makeup, unfortunately, in your frying pans at home, and it is in your water. Interactive piece right now. For the few people that are left in the room that are hardcore pitch books, put out your phones. You have my permission to see this is the last pitch. We're going to scan the QR code and do something interactive together here. So let's scan it, and then you're going to be showing everybody what's up on the screen. So let's take a second, and then I want you to wave your phone around and show everybody which color drop you got on your screen. So hold your phones up high so everyone behind you can see it. Not just me. I see lots of blue drops, a couple of red drops. Okay, now let me tell you about PFAS. This stuff called PFAS, if every human being in the entire world right now was holding up a blue drop on their screen, the few red drops that are here in the room would be enough to make the water toxic and impact the next thousand generations of humanity, causing negative and serious health effects for everyone that's out there. I want to put that in context again. There's new EPA health advisories and work that's being done to really show that the science is in that this stuff needs to be removed for the purpose of like allowing our civilization to continue and grow as we go forward. Luckily we're on that mission. We've been working on it. This is a trillion dollar global problem with some really amazing science that's been shown both across the US and the Europe in sort of measuring and seeing there's a problem. The challenge is that PFAS also has this other moniker, the forever chemicals. They simply don't go away, they don't break down and they impact generation after generation after generation. Luckily we've been working on this now for four years. We've attracted over two million dollars in grants, four and a half million dollars in real contracts and a million dollars in prior investment. This year we're on track to do two million dollars in revenue. Next year we already have three and a half million dollars in secured contracts backed by seven US federal agencies including the EPA, a number of DOD agencies and we've won multiple awards and we've won multiple tech challenges building real equipment and real systems to destroy PFAS once and for all. I know it's hard to care about this when you're in a room but you've just heard from some astonishing entrepreneurs, a lot of them are still in the room who are working on the climate, agricultural, health space. Water is the one area that connects all three. It is one area that needs everyone's investment because it's the shared resource that we all rely upon. If what equality is not there for the little fresh water that we have in the world we are literally stuck. We're in a position where we can destroy PFAS, at least forever chemicals, once and for all. We're excited to have everyone in the room engage with this. We're about to start opening up our series A round so we're looking forward to inviting investors to engage but more importantly for everyone in the room please come out after this because it is the last presentation. Come out and join us in the foyer, talk to all the entrepreneurs including myself about all the great impacts that we could all be making together. Thank you.