 Welcome to this session of developing your pitch. We will cover, we will repeat some of the stuff that we've talked about in the previous sessions, but also drilling a little bit in some aspects of how you present yourself and your idea. Very commonly called the pitch, but pitching is more than just presenting at one particular point to a group of people. Pitching or presenting your idea and getting it out there, it's a journey. It's something you'll do several times and you'll do in different kinds of settings and none of these settings will be perfect. You'll always have uncertainty, you don't really know who you're pitching to, you'll still be working on your idea and your model and so on. So you'll never be like perfect with what it is that you want to do, but you need to do as well as you can anyway. So that's what we will talk about today. Jules, could I ask for the next slide please? In order to give any credibility to this, I need to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm not 35 years old, I'm significantly older than that. This is where I used to make jokes about looking so young, but then I realized no one was smiling, so I think I look my age now, so I'm not gonna go into that. But I've been around for a while. I'm currently the lead on innovation and scaling at the Global Resilience Partnership and also the head of the GRP incubator. Global Resilience Partnership has with support from USAID, Rockefeller Foundation, Swedish SIDA, UK aid and a few other Canada, been implementing projects. We do more than that, but we've been working on funding and scaling, incubating and scaling, surfacing new ideas around the globe. We work primarily in Africa and Asia, but it's slightly wider now. We're also doing work with Ocean Unite. So again, trying to surface new innovation and test them in the market and see how we can support them to scale. Sometimes we do this with funding, sometimes quite significant funding, and sometimes we work with them and put them through our incubation process, which is really incubation and acceleration. So focusing a lot on ideation processes, on project planning, on finding out how a model ideally works, context analysis and helping whoever we work with through that process. And then we spend a lot of time on people. And this is a point I'll come back to. People is the most important component in any implementation in my experience. I started my journey in life or adult journey in life with psychology, still my sort of biggest interest, really. But then I started business. So I have a business degree and then I have an MBA. I'm in this for personal reasons. I'm freaking out over the state of the planet. And I say that with a chuckle because it actually is very, very close to my heart. We have an accelerating problem with climate change. Climate change in its own right for the planet's sake and the biosphere is bad enough, but it's leading also, it's exacerbating the second problem that I... And it's not smaller, it's as big, if not bigger. The second problem that I'm freaking out over and that's the inequality we're seeing across the world. And that needs to be sorted out. I don't have the full answer, but I think part of the answer is to dedicate my life to working on this with people like you. It's people like you that will change the planet for the better. You are the leaders. And if there's anything I or my colleagues can do to support you, we're at your service. I've been an entrepreneur. I've started social enterprises. I've started investment vehicles, funds, primarily on the African continent, investing in anything from renewable energy to Agri to transport, what have you. I've also done a little bit of that in Europe and the US, but my main interest is to do it in emerging economies. I also worked, I've worked at Sida, the Swedish Sida as a country strategist, also with private sector development projects on a global scale. And through this and through my various roles, I've worked with hundreds of different businesses. I've assessed thousands of applications and proposals and business plans and so on. But I've advised maybe a few hundred of them, getting them to get funding and so on. I don't wanna mention any particular names because they're quite regional, but if you take East Africa and Coppa, if you take Asia, you have MetaMeta, you have my housing trust, organizations and companies that have been able to scale and leverage a lot of investment from others. I have two daughters, they're 15 and 18 and they're the biggest source of learning in my life ever. And I've studied quite a lot. My main interest, as I mentioned before, is how people function and how they work. And I'm still on a learning journey, primarily through the dogs. And it's good because I have two support dogs. They're quite small, but they keep me, they get me up early in the morning for a walk and that's always good. And if anyone's contemplating getting a dog, the best thing with dogs is that they love you regardless. And we need that. I live normally in Nairobi and here I say that I live in Nairobi and also in Malmö, Sweden. During COVID, I've been based here and that's where I come from. But normally I spend more time in Kenya. Next slide, please. Now I'd like to see if I can get some expectations from you on this session. And we contemplated using Mentimeter, but maybe actually hear what your expectations are. We have 16 people on the call. I suggest that if you have any expectations that you wanna raise, unmute and say them or I might actually pick on you a little bit. I've heard some of you talk about your expectations overall. But any expectations you have? J.V., could I ask you to brave it? You want me to take? What's your expectation? What would you like from this particular session? Well, I would like to have at least a couple of minutes spent on developing some sort of a community center echo sense in the entrepreneurship. See what I want to say. Climate resilient lifestyle is not new to me at least. For the ages, community is living through all sorts of disasters and epidemic and things like that. To me, they're all symptoms of a climate change. And now we have significantly identified as climate change. It may be about like space age, you see. It is about less than 100 years climate issue which has come to the center stage. So what I expect from this session would be to look at such initiatives which can be taken to the business mode so that there could be some spin-off benefit. I would like to put it as a tunnel effect. It's a mountain of resistance and we need to go for social and technological interventions which could work in synergy so that everybody gets benefited. It is win-win plus climate resilient. Okay, great. I think some of that we will cover here. Not specifically on that particular way, but what I would really suggest you do is pitch tomorrow. Pitch that idea. Thank you. Thank you. I do so. I do so. Great. John, nice to see your hand up. Yes, thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Kaganga John from Working with the Grassroot Organization, Chikandra Environmental Association based in the Mithiana District in Uganda. I've been working in the community-based adaptation at the Grassroot for more than 20 years. My expectation was mostly the expectation to enhance my knowledge in how community-based adaptation can be funded and how can I be linked and also to know exactly when we talk about pitch, what is it? And then maybe during your opening in Mac, you talked about intubation. I would like to know exactly what is intubation. That is, and then also another, you talked about emerging countries. We talk about developing countries. We talk about emerging countries. What is the difference? Is this the same or what? That's why I would like to be clear on. I think that is what I could say. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. You've said this in previous sessions, but for the benefit of everyone else, where are you based? Hello? Where are you based? Where are you now? Okay. I'm based in Uganda in the central region, but I'm working with the rural. I'm based in the rural area, not in the city. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm happy to know that you are living in Nairobi. This is very near Africa. I think you will be meeting and let us connect. You'll give me your contact. I hope so. Please find me on LinkedIn. That goes for everyone, but please find me on LinkedIn. Thank you very much. Any other expectations? Taking notes here? Barua, see your camera is on, and it looks like you almost say something. Thank you. What would be your expectations? Dr. Barua, please unmute. Thank you. Good afternoon in Bangladesh. I am from Bangladesh. We are a very disaster-prone country, and people are using life and poverty due to this. So my expectation is to know about the resilience and how to sustain a plan of adaptation for solve the crisis of climate change and also people's best adaptive practice for the solution of their program. Thank you. That was my turn to not unmute. Anyone else? The reason I'm asking is to make sure that I cover what your expectations are. We have a pretty rich discussion ahead of us anyway, but if there's anything specific that you would like to voice now, you can also just interrupt or bring it up towards the end if there's any specific issues that you'd like to discuss. Yes, Fer, I see two hands. One by Dini and one by Lisa, but she's already put her hand down, but she's very free to speak as well. Great, thank you. Thanks for being with us. Dini, please. Hi. Hi. So a little bit from the last time, as I said, my first expectation was learning from it how to do this thing. Basically, we are quite new to this, especially I haven't done this kind of part in any of the roles I have done. I have been part of a little bit of a proposal development, but that's it. Very technical part only. My expectation was I want to be able to pitch something, but still, when I went through from the very first beginning, you need to have some business idea, first a solution, a service. That I have come to a conclusion on what that product or service I would like to pitch. I have come to that, but still, there are still challenges on what are the things that are necessary to do that pitch. There are a lot of parts that are still uncertain because this hasn't been done before. So I have an idea of who could be the solution partners, but since we haven't connected yet, how is that pitch going to evolve? Since I haven't exactly connected with any of the partners, I'm just assuming that if this partner would support me, if this would happen, wouldn't that be a very loose kind of pitch? Because most of the things that haven't happened is mostly my imagination of what would happen or what I would propose. So a little bit understanding how to frame that so that it sounds more concrete and more strong would be good. Good. Okay, that's a really good contribution. So basically the last thing you said was how do I take it from imagination to reality and how do I present it along the way? Okay, good. We'll cover that. Lisa, I see your hand. Hi. Hi, I'm just here ready to learn about the process. So I work on the CDCAN program for South-South North and I suppose I'm coming in from the other angle. I'm really interested in the GRP's incubation, acceleration work and how it happens in practice. So I'm just here to learn, really. Great. I'll include a little bit of the incubation process on GRP as well. Brilliant. Thank you, Lisa. Josephine. Yes, Mia, I think I was also wondering, like when you have a very short time with someone and you want to present your idea, what are the key points you need to, because you always want to take 10, 20, 15, like even one hour to explain your idea because there is a lot of things happening. But if you have like really three minutes, what are the really crucial elements that you need to present and which one are those that you should keep on the side and not speak about? One other question I heard. Okay, good. Thank you, Josephine. Good. Any other questions? Lisa, I think you have a legacy hand up. Unless you want to ask something more, please go ahead. Sorry, no, I always do that. So do I. Good. Anything more specific from anyone? Otherwise, I think we'll get started. I have quite a bit to chew through here. So that's good. Thank you very much. And Jules, please do keep your eyes on the hands because I might miss them. Thank you. Yes, of course, yes. So the structure of this session is to run through, run through of pitching tricks and traps as well. We'll come, we'll look at what do you need to focus on. We'll also look a little bit at what's the prep you need to do beforehand. And then how do you deliver it? Because there's different, there's a difference between an idea and another idea, not simply because of the content of the idea, but how it's presented and how it's communicated out. We'll cover that. And then we'll see if we have questions in the wider group. And then if, if we want to, and if time allows, we could, we could break out in smaller groups and try some stuff out around pitching. I have a very simple exercise, but we don't have to. I think you'll be fine without that exercise anyway, when it leads up to the pitching. Before we start, I would also like if people could add, if you haven't already in the previous sessions, maybe add your email, your name, your email, your organization slash company in the chat, and then we'll save that for later on. Next slide, please. What's the purpose of this draws from your expectations, but what's the purpose of a pitch? What is it that you're trying to achieve? That's a question that was sort of raised by several of you. Well, what do you expect to achieve? Do you really know what you want? Having a clear ask in mind is a little bit like knowing what it is that you're going to ask someone. And if you know specifically what you want to ask someone, you can frame it in a way that makes sense to them and you get by in. You don't have a lot of time with anyone. And this is true not only in pitching environments, but at home, at work. Maybe you want to pitch an idea for a proposal you guys are working on. How do you frame it? You might not get the whole hour to explain all the details of your idea, but you need to get the buy-in. So you need to hook them in some way. My daughters, when they were younger, they wanted ice cream. We were out driving and they wanted ice cream. There were two really good ways they could ask. One was really good and one didn't work at all. The first one was to nag and say, when can we stop for ice cream? And then I would say, you know, we're making good time. So let's just continue going. We might have an ice cream later if you eat your lunch. The smarter way was to ask dad, if I was to get an ice cream later, what flavor could I get? And what happens there is that you trigger something in me because I can't help thinking about which flavor of ice cream they would get. It just happens. And then the follow-up conversation to that is actually getting an ice cream. Now, you have a similar situation when you're pitching to someone. You can include them in your thoughts process and trigger them by making them more curious about what you want to do. And that's really what the role of a pitch is in the larger scheme of things. You'll have a couple of minutes to pitch tomorrow. And I know you will make good use of that time. But that happens in a wider context. Part of that wider context is that there will be follow-up discussions. Someone who you didn't think you were pitching to might follow up because there's an audience present. You will internally have processed what it is that you're pitching. And the best ideas come at very different times. Sometimes it happens in the shower. Sometimes it happens when you're sitting down and you're really focusing on something. Sometimes it happens as you're presenting something. New thoughts pop up and creep up. And you want to mind those because those are good ideas. When you're explaining something to someone else, it's also a very good way of learning what it is that you're saying. I find that, again, sorry to bring my daughters up. But when I ask them to explain how they do a particular math problem, I don't want to go into details. I want to understand how I approach these problems. Because then they have to think, how do I word this so that someone else can understand it? And that's really what's happening with you when you're pitching to someone. What you need to do is make sure that you don't get too nervous and that you've done enough of the prep to be able to respond to questions and so on. But most people are also nice. They're not going to put you on the spot. what to respond. All you need to do is keep your head cool and also remember that it's a process. Everything that happens is connected to everything else that's happening with regards to how your idea is evolving and how you present it in the future. You need to know who you're targeting and that comes back to what is it that you're going to ask. If you want to ask a philanthropic organization for some grant funding that's what you're going to ask. So you need to know what triggers them. Are you hitting the right sensors in their system? That might be gender, it might be climate, it might be specific things like CO2, it might be mangrove restoration. Are you are you triggering the right sensors in them? And to know that you need to think through what's my model? Will I figure out a sustainable model in the short term? If so, maybe I need to go to an investor who is willing to put up some funding for me to start up some seed funding. Or do you think that, no, I still need to pilot this for quite some time, but I'm addressing a really important problem and I have a good understanding of the problem and I need to still refine my idea. That's also totally fine, but then you need a different type of partner and founder. And maybe you don't need just funding, maybe you need other things too. Be honest with yourself, I need more expertise in this particular area. Find those people. Getting those people on board is as much the result of how you present or how you pitch if you want, but how you present your idea and yourself. You need to also address why you are suitable to do what you say you're going to do. Are you from the area? Do you know a lot about this particular thing? And make that come across. You need to have a clear storyline and that comes back to the timing of everything. If you only have a few minutes, a good storyline is key. Winston Churchill is credited with saying if I'm going to hold a one hour talk, I need three minutes to prepare or something like that. If I'm going to hold a three minute talk, I need three days. And that's really what it comes down to. The more prep you've done, the more concise you are in your own thought process, the better you will be at presenting it quickly so that other people understand it. You also need to put yourself at the right level. If they have no background in the particular sector or space that you're saying that you're going to work in, you need to allow for that to be included as well. So simplify it. Make sure that they get enough to get curious. You don't need to explain the whole idea. You need to explain the important bits, the important cogs in this machinery that you're proposing to build or process that you're proposing to build. And if you get them curious, then you're fine because then you'll get the 15 minutes and then you'll get the half an hour and then you'll get the full hour to be able to explain that I really know what I'm talking about. Is it clear what you're trying to do? Same thing with a clear storyline. Are you clear what you want to do? If you don't have a finished idea of what you want to do, you can still be clear about that. You can be clear about we see a big problem here. We have a couple of ideas that we would like to try. That's fine. You're clear. You're clear that you don't know exactly what you're gonna try to do, but you have a couple of ideas and those are the ones that you present. And finally, practice. Practice like in your head when you lie down for a bit. Practice in the shower. Practice live in front of a camera if you want. Practice with your spouse or partner or friend or colleague. Practice alone in a room. It's going to sound a little bit like uncomfortable to do, but if you practice with a camera, it's the same thing as I mentioned before. You can watch yourself and you can pick that apart. Criticism, self-criticism too, in the right doses is an enormously beneficial thing for making something develop and get it better. So that's sort of what I see as the purpose of the session. What I would add, based on the expectations, is I'll talk a little bit about the incubator process. If you have more questions on that, do reach out and we can share material on how we do it. But I'll come to that. Next slide, please. A quick recap, and this is stuff we've covered in the other sessions. Know what you want. That's from the previous slide also. Figure out what you want. You will be able to change this want as you go along. You don't have to decide it and then you have to stick with it, but know what you want right now. Because if you do, your message will be a lot clearer. What's the kind of problem you're dealing with? So understand that. That's something that will continue to evolve because the more you learn, the more data you have to process, the more you understand the problem, and the more you understand the complexity of the problem, and the easier it will be to address that particular problem. Understand the context. Anything from the market. How willing is the market to buy this? Those of you who attended the previous sessions, who's your hungry crowd? Who is your target market for this? Who is it that you're actually helping? In the context of community development and community enterprise, the target might be the community. It might also be the local authorities. It might be someone who would like to introduce a new service because they think that it's a useful thing to do, and then you need to figure out, does that fit? Is this context understanding that I have really comprehensive enough? Do I understand where everything is here so that you can come up with a plan to fix it? Then you define your plan to fix it. What is it that you propose to do? Most of you will have this already, at least in your imagination, as was previously said, an idea of what it is that you want to do. I think that's where you can add a lot of value, but it needs to be well suited to what the context is and what the problem is that you're trying to fix. It's very hard, and I've seen many examples of this, to fly in the solution from somewhere else. In traditional development, that's what we've seen. We've seen that someone from a good university, and nothing wrong with good universities. Not saying that, but without the context understanding, without living in the place, doing the research that's needed, you'll fly in something that looks like a really good solution, but it's a square thing and you're trying to fit it into a round hole. That only works sometimes. That's how you define what a proper plan is. Does it fit into that context? What do you know and be honest? What's your skill set and what do you need to complement it with, as I've said before? Where are your gaps and how do you fill them? Again, that's part of your plan, because fixing a problem on the ground means that you also need to be pretty good at what you do, and you being pretty good at what you do is not going to happen automatically. It's a process and you need to spend time on it. I've been doing this long enough to really know that I know very little, but I know people who know a lot of stuff, and I can see a larger picture sometimes quicker than others, not always, but sometimes, and I can draw on that, but I'm also super humble knowing that if I feel that I'm the smartest in the room, and that doesn't happen a lot, but if I feel I'm the smartest person in the room, I need to invite other people, and that's why I like being in this room, because I'm clearly not the smartest person in this room, and that's where we learn. We all have different skill sets. Coming back to just rephrasing, know what you want, what do you need to make it happen? What is it that you need to complement this with? A lot of people will immediately go to, well some funding would be good. Yeah, funding is important, but in my experience, and also in my absolute conviction, money is only a small part of the thing. It's a tool that you need. You need a lot of other stuff too. You need to give yourself time to think this through, find the right partners, really make sure that you're addressing an underlying problem. The thing is, if you're trying to address a problem, and you have a really good solution for that particular problem, found it on a really good understanding of the problem that you're trying to fix. Funding almost comes automatically after a while, not immediately, but if you have a really good solution and enough people want it, it will happen. If you take an example of a particular product that's marketed or sold, let's take the iPhone, for example. When the iPhone came out, it was the first proper smartphone in the market. Super expensive, very few people could afford it, but quite quickly, they reached the tipping point, and more than 20% or wherever that tipping point was for them. Once that tipping point was reached, enough more people wanted it to make it just happen, and all the investments they've done previously at Apple and in other companies too, started paying off, and more and more funding was coming that way. It was like holding onto a vision that I'm doing something here that really speaks to enough of people out there to want it, as in there is enough of a demand for this. They might not know it, but there will be. Because the iPhone, as we know, sorted out internet connection, you could also call people on it, you could browse the net, you could be on various apps, you could download your email, basically it just transferred your entire computer into a small screen, and for some people that works really well. They addressed the need out there. Now, if you put that in community development, in a community development context, you need to address something that is enough of a problem for enough people so that they want it. If you're trying to address something that's not a well-defined problem and enough people want it, they might not go for it, and maybe that's them telling you that no, we don't really need this. We have other priorities. That comes to value proposition. What's your clear value proposition to this? Now, value proposition sounds a little bit abstract to a lot of people, but it really comes down to what I was just saying. Do people find this valuable enough to want it? The people here, are they the buyers? Well, if you have a business idea, I guess so, but it could also be, does the local authorities think this is important? Maybe you need to get their buying. Do other organizations in the area find this valuable enough so the service you can offer them for a fee or partner up with? If they find it valuable enough, they'll go for it. That's your value proposition. It depends. As long as you can show that this adds value to my customers, you have a clear value proposition. Now, in the value proposition, you can also refine and it will also evolve because your context will keep evolving. If you start addressing a problem, that problem will not go away necessarily, but it will change in nature. You will continue to change with that, hopefully. You don't need to go into all this in the pitch. You only have a couple of minutes, but you need to show that I know what the value proposition is. I know what it is that I need to do in order to get this off the ground. I'm agile enough to actually keep changing and it might not happen immediately. It might happen a few years down the line, but we're in this and we're willing to roll with it. Value proposition is maybe then a bit abstract. When it comes to businesses, what's your revenue like? What generates your revenue? Who will you sell to? We saw in the previous sessions who is it that will actually pay for this? When will they pay for it? What's your margin? Are you making enough margin? The margin being the difference between I'm buying this thing here and then I'm selling it to you. I buy it for 10 and I'm selling it for 20, then your margin is 10. Is that enough to be sustainable for you? It doesn't have to be immediate. The break even when it's enough doesn't have to come immediately, but you need to know roughly when it will happen or you need to see that, well, there's a pathway here. If I get 100 customers buying this thing from me at 20, then I have enough margin to make this go around. Always learn more. There's always more stuff to learn. The curious mind is the one that gets the furthest and that seems to know the most. Being conscious and aware of the fact that there's always more stuff to learn. Then quickly say, this is relevant for me, this is not relevant for me. Take whatever is relevant on board and use that. Build that into what it is that you're talking about. Next one, please. What do they want and who is it that you're talking to? The dragons. We've had a run through of those. We have a mix of community developers, of innovators and investors. Some of them will be looking for impact. Some of them will be looking for money, looking to invest something. What's most important? Is it impact or is it the return on investment? That depends. If you find a mix there, that's usually pretty good. If you are a philanthropic or if you're targeting philanthropic funders, then impact is more important than funding. If you're targeting impact investors or just really hardcore investors, then return is more important. Are they looking for partnerships? Maybe they want to do something in your specific area. Maybe they have a mandate to engage more in Uganda or Bangladesh or wherever. Maybe you can provide that with your idea. Keep that in mind, too. It might be that they're looking for something else. You need to also be ready to ask questions. What are you interested in? The best sales process, really, is one where you ask the salesperson or the picture or the presenter or the entrepreneur that wants someone to understand something and help you buy into it, help you make it happen. The best process is really start off with asking them questions. What are your interests? What's your passion? These people will have clear mandates to do certain things, not just dragons, but anyone that you present to. They will have clear mandates, but they're all individuals and they're all people. Some things really trigger their attention. In my case, I know what the GRP mandate is, what we can do and when we can do it and when we have windows and so on, but I will also look with extra interest at certain technologies and certain solutions that trigger me, that tickles my passion, so figure out what that is with these guys as much as you can. Now, the dragons for this particular exercise, the dragons, they're published on the website and if you can't find it, let us know and we'll share that slide with you. Do a bit of background on them. Find them on LinkedIn or Google them and see what they're involved in. That's a good indication of what they're interested in. In the future, when you bring your idea and you want to pitch it to, let's just take the Gates Foundation as an example, figure out what they are investing in. How are they investing in things? What's their mechanism? How do they engage with initiatives on the ground? Taylor, make your presentation to them. Your presentation might be a pitch because you get an opportunity to actually pitch to them or it might be that you present yourself in some other way through an introduction of someone who knows them, through just an email or a letter to them. Figure out what they want and try to speak to that. What they also want to see, and this is true for any serious funder, be that an investor or a philanthropic entity, you need to, and I know I'm repetitive, but it's sort of, it works to be repetitive because these are important points. Show that you have a clear understanding of the problem and the context. Anyone knows that if you, as I said before, fly in a solution from Sweden and try to implement it in Kenya, if I take myself as an example, you're going to fail. I can actually take myself as just an example to illustrate that. One of the social enterprises that I co-founded about 12 years ago is called Give What's. We distribute, or they, but Give What's distributes climate smart renewable energy solutions to rural households in Kenya and Tanzania. So I came down with a ponytail, extremely naive, and I hope that you're all giggling a bit now because I was so naive trying to do this. I had no understanding of the problem, of the context. I didn't understand my customer. I didn't understand how to reach the customer. I didn't understand how much they could pay. So I had to spend the first five years experimenting, pretty expensive, and I could have done it quicker, but for me it took five years. As I said, I'm not the smartest person in the room. I understand who the customer was, what they spent money on, how important is this energy for them anyway? What are their substitutes for this? What would they prioritize ahead of a solar lamp or an energy efficient cook stove? What is more important for them to fix? What problems will just jump at them and they will need to drop everything else just to sort that out? That could be that someone in the family pauses away and they need to do a harambe, sort of a fundraising event for that. Suddenly they have no money. It could be that they lose their job. It could be that the harvest is crap. There's a flood or whatever. All those things make them really vulnerable and you need to understand that because you're trying to address a very vulnerable, very sophisticated when it comes to how to make choices market. I spent five years doing that and then I started understanding the problem and I could adjust the product offering. I say I, but it's a whole team. We could start adjusting the product offering. We could start adjusting how we reach them. What's the payment terms? That's okay with them. Does that align well with how much money they have available? How flexible do we need to be on repayment terms? What's the risk we're willing to take? How far down can we reach in the income pyramid? Because if we go to the most vulnerable communities, they might never be able to pay. Now they need help still, but for our model, is that sustainable? Would we just keep on losing money and never recover it? Then we're not a social enterprise. We're probably doing some good, but we're not a social enterprise. A social enterprise needs to continue operating and therefore maybe we need to adjust a little bit to who we target and then try to support others doing work lower down in the income pyramid. You also need to show a clear understanding of your solution, of your innovation, what it is that you're trying to do. As I said before, you don't need to have a finished solution, but you need to show a clear understanding of this is what I need to test. This is my pilot. It has immense impact potential, but I need your support to test that. If I bring up the example of Guy Watts again, showing a clear understanding of what the solution is, is part of addressing what the real underlying problem is. Are our products relevant for these guys? Are they too expensive? Do they give the right utility? Are they strong and robust enough not to break after six months? Can they withstand living in rural harsh climate, drought, flooding and so on? Will they live long enough to actually lead to good utility for our households, for our customers? Do they give enough light for school children to study and so on? Similarly for you, do you know what it is that you're trying to do? Does that really help them? That both shows the one you're presenting to that you understand the problem and you understand how your solution will actually help them. Then you need to give a clear understanding of how you plan to make this happen. You've already figured this out, but it builds on the previous things I've said. It might be that I'm ready to run, I just need my working capital and then we have enough people on the ground to roll this out or we have secured enough land to plant all these trees or we know which stretch of the coast where we will do mangrove restoration or the seaweed farming or whatever the thing is. We also know how to engage with the local community to get the buy-in and get the benefit to the community and get the employment opportunities to the community and so on. You need to show a clear plan for how you want to make that happen. That leads to what's the time frame and plan of action? It's almost the same thing but slightly different. How will you roll this out? What is it that you will roll out and by when should you meet certain milestones? As an investor and a funder and you know this, you always want to know by when will something happen? If I give you 12 months what will you achieve in 12 months? Now 12 months is not enough to make something take off completely and have a life of its own, but it's a start and during that 12 months you'll test a few things, you'll learn a few things, you'll adjust a few things, you'll keep the funder updated and hopefully happy and use that opportunity to get them more and more engaged. Then you also set a plan for how will I find additional partners, funding, execution partners, maybe I need to get more people involved that know more about this particular problem that I'm trying to fix. So a clear time frame and plan of action. This is outlined in a sort of a template that we will share with you that you can populate for the actual pitch. And then second most important thing of all, and the most important thing is the last one, but the second most important thing is who are you and why does that make sense? I've been part of several selection processes for for actual investment and understanding of the market of the context, very important. You need to know that there's an opportunity here. There is a need for this particular time of product or service. You also need to know that the idea that you want to implement on the ground makes sense, that that's a solid enough product. That's less important, but because the idea will keep changing, right? The product offering will keep being adjusted. The actual approach for how to address it, you will learn, as I said before, you will continue to evolve and how you do it, how you can make it better and so on. Those are important, but the absolutely most important thing out of those things is the people. Who are you? Do you have what it takes? Do you have the skill set that's needed? That's also important, but most of all, and this is the last point, do you have the passion for it? Do you have the attitude to make this happen? I'd be willing to invest in a not so good market understanding and a not totally finished idea for how to address that market opportunity. If I felt confident that the people that are presenting it are the right people and what I look for there is attitude, passion, a bit of brainpower. You've made it to this session, so clearly, not just by virtue of being in this session, you're smart, but you're attending the CPA 15 for learning and so on. Clearly, you're a step ahead of most people. Do you have the passion? Most important thing. One of the dragons is a winner from two years ago. She had a good understanding of the market and she had a good solution to it. It needed a bit of adjustment, but most of all, she had the passion and that's what won the jury over. She had so much passion that it was impossible not to vote for her. That's what it comes down to. Next slide, please. A suggested storyline. You don't have to follow this storyline. A similar storyline is in the template we will send out to you, but what I would like to see in any kind of pitch, be it with slides or be it just someone I meet, and they don't have to tick these off as they talk to me, but in your head, keep them in mind. Introduce yourself briefly. Who are you? And really, really brief. They are interested in what your name is and what your background is in one or two sentences. Don't need to go into too much detail. If you get their attention and their curiosity, they'll follow up with questions on that. But it's important to build credibility. So say it with confidence. I'll come back to that point in a minute. Describe the problem. You can call this the market opportunity if you want or any other term you'd like to use. But describe what the problem is. Frame it a little bit. Give the size of the problem. Describe your solution. That's linked and again, I'm repetitive, but it's on purpose. Describe your solution and how that links to the problem. Well, the problem is this and our solution is this. So the problem is that in this particular slum in this coastal big city, there is a slum that's located on an island. The construction is weak and there's only one school and we had a floating school before and that floating school sunk a while ago. So that's a bit of a problem that leads to a lot of other problems and you can mention them briefly too. This whole slum area is totally reliant on fishing, but the water is polluted because it's in the city and there's no waste management and sewage management that really works. So these are really vulnerable people. My solution, I want to build a new floating school and here's my technology. I'm just bringing up an example of something I've worked with, but it's addressing the problem with your solution. So who's your target for this? User or buyer in this case? Well, it's going to be school children and the households because we need to give these kids a future. We need to give them the opportunity at least to study and do something else than what their parents might be stuck doing because they're a bit landlocked on this island in this city and they don't have access to the labor market. In order to do that, they need to go out and get an education and in order to get an education, at least they need to finish primary school. To find other benefits, what I started talking about those a little bit, but another benefit could be it could lead to that you clean up the water around there because you'll have a more educated population and a more educated population will put one, they might change the habits, they might also be able to put a bit of pressure on the city to put up proper sanitation and waste management processes. So you can see many things. You don't have to pitch the whole thing, you can just talk about these sort of things that we will also engage with. Describe your value proposition. So the value proposition for this is, I think, pretty clear. The kids will get a better education, they will be able to become more mobile socially, they'll be able to pursue higher education and so on. Now, depending on what it is that you do, your value proposition will obviously look very different. So give that a bit of thought and if you want to bounce it with us ahead of tomorrow's session, please do so. We're all available for that. Send us an email, we'll review it tonight, tomorrow morning, and send it back. We also clear and again, repetition is the best teacher, know what you ask and that has to come at the end. Well, in order to build this low thing school, I need this much and with that money, I will do this and this. That needs to be synced with the rest of the stuff that you're talking about. If you define a problem where there are five million people living on this island and I'd like funding for one school that will take 20 kids, it doesn't fit. So make sure that it's in line and that it follows through. If that is your proposal and the particular island I have in mind does not have five million people living on it, it has far fewer, so a school of 20 would actually have an impact, but make it relevant so that it flows. The clear storyline that I'm talking about and the school of 20, that will be my first step. That's my pilot. If that's successful, I intend to take it to 10 times that in the next three years and then after that, we're going to continue scaling it up. We're also exploring a sustainable business model whereby we can get funding partly from you but also partly maybe from the households in some way or another. Maybe there are other benefits from this floating school where you could do other things during weekends and whatnot. The question really that you need to make sure that is not on their minds, is it clear what you're trying to do and what you want? If it is, you have a winner. You have achieved something that if we take the dragons as an example, they will go away. They might not react immediately, but they will go away with more information and maybe your contact details as well. If you take it in a wider scheme of things, you'll be ready to present this to anyone at CBA 16, at CBA 15 for that matter. When you're talking to other potential funders and so on, because you will have mapped what the people you're presenting to, what they're interested in and what triggers them. If you know what triggers them, you can adjust your presentation and how you present it to them accordingly and be relevant to them. Also, not waste time with people that are clearly not interested in what you're doing. They're focused totally on some other sector entirely. You don't need to do those. So, reiterating, be really clear market problem and that's the stuff we've covered in the previous sessions. Be really clear what your solution and your ideas and again it doesn't matter if it's not the finished idea. Present it anyway. You have nothing to lose. Nothing. Only things to gain. Talk about the team. The team might be you. That's totally fine. Just give confidence in them that you're someone who could pull this off. Next slide, please. To think about when you prep for the pitch, I've actually done theater school partly to pick up some of these things. I didn't do it for the purpose of being good at pitching, but there are a couple of simple tricks that you can pick up and you don't need to go to theater school to get them. Just listen briefly to what I have to say and I think you get most of it. When on stage you need to dress the act. So dress appropriately. That gives credibility. That might be that you have a t-shirt on. Totally fine. I have a t-shirt on today and I think that's absolutely fine. When you're pitching to the dragons, maybe put on a tie or a shirt, you need to give them confidence that you're respectful of them. If a t-shirt does that for you, fine. If you feel that maybe I should put on a shirt, put on a shirt. Find a good place to pitch. You want to minimize background noise. You're not always able to find a completely quiet place and since we're all working from home, we've all heard kids and dogs and stuff in the background. That is okay, but you don't have to like don't walk down the street in a t-shirt, if you know what I mean. Pay respect to the people that you're presenting to so that they know that well, you're taking them seriously and you value their time because they're listening to you so clearly they find you interesting enough. So show back that you value their time. Include your contact details in the slide deck. It sounds like a really like minor detail to mention, but I know when it hasn't happened and when people couldn't find someone and opportunities were lost. So make sure you include that. Believe in yourself and this is really a call for action because I think you should all pitch. You have nothing, as I said, to lose. If you don't want to pitch, fine, but I think it will be a fun exercise. It's all the dragons are really nice people and they will give you valuable feedback and pitching is as much about learning as it is about telling someone else something. They are smart people. They'll be able to very quickly pinpoint something. My father-in-law has been in investment for a long time and when I first got to like build a relationship with him, I was always amazed at how quickly he found the one weakness in what I was talking about. And it was unsettling mainly because he was my father-in-law. But it was also an amazing learning opportunity and it taught me how to think things through and how to adjust how I present so that I take his limited attention span because he has a very limited attention span. Nothing wrong with that, but most people do so that I get the most important bits over and then also to think through the entire model that I'm presenting. Is this something that's thought through nowadays and obviously as old now as he was when he first met me, I can do the same thing. I have a slightly longer attention span than he does, but it's all about learning. It's all about, well, actually that's a weakness. If I fix that, then I have a stronger pitch. Fail forward if you want. Allow the problems and the failures to come, acknowledge them for what they are, find what the root cause is and move on. In a pitch environment, you have the opportunity to actually do that very, very fast track. It might be that the feedback they give and the questions they ask show that they don't understand what you're doing. Maybe that indicates that you didn't present it well enough. Maybe it indicates that they are a bit daft and they're not understanding what you're saying. Either it's possible or somewhere in between, but think it through and adjust accordingly. Maybe you need to present it better or maybe you need to find another audience to present it too. That could also be the case. No one knows what it is that you're presenting better than you. No one can read your mind, so you know it and rest in that. No one knows it better than you. Be humble and curious. You don't know what they know. You've maybe done some background research on them. I think that's an important step to take, but you don't know everything they know and the projects they've been involved in and what they've funded before and what their personal experiences are and what they've been involved in on the ground, maybe even. So when they ask questions, they ask questions for a reason. You have to assume that anyway. Learn from those questions. Be curious. It's also much nicer to talk to someone who admits to not knowing everything and who wants to be taught by you. If someone shows that, hey, I'm really curious, what do you think? It's a much nicer way to start the conversation and coming back to the point about the best sales processes that I've seen and the best presentation processes that I've seen executed by the presenter or the picture or the salesperson is when they start off with questions and not arrogant questions like what do you know about this and this, but rather a little bit more humble. So what do you think about this? What's your take on this? I see that you've worked a lot on these particular issues. What's your main takeaway? One, you'll learn something from that. Two, you'll learn how they think. And that's important because it's them you're talking to, right? And three, you can adjust what it is you present to them accordingly. And if you have a range of things that you want to offer this person and you understand that they're not interested in impact investing, but they are interested in philanthropic investing, don't tell them you can do whatever you want. Tell them if you know that they're interested in philanthropic investing or funding, that's what you offer them, right? So you adjust what it is that you ask for accordingly. Or maybe they want to be involved in the actual processes. That's what you offer them to do. A point I've made already, they made an effort to attend. You are in demand. The dragons that we have, three of them have already signalled. I expect the same to come from the fourth one. Three of them have signalled. We will be able to join just a few minutes before the session starts because we have stuff running all the way up to when the session starts. Ideally, me, Jan Willem, Jules, Emil and Maxim, we would like to talk to them for half an hour beforehand and really brief them, tell them a bit about you and so on. We won't have that opportunity. But they are making an effort to attend. You are expected and they want to hear what you're saying. And they don't need to do this for their own selves. They're doing this for you. So know that. Again, repetition, take this opportunity to learn. Learn about how you function. Learn about what you know subconsciously already about your project and when you put it down on paper, maybe in a bit of a rushed manner, but when you put it down on paper, new stuff will come up and new graphics or images or pieces of text or descriptions will come up. So draw on that. Put it down in the document or in the presentation. Learn about the process. Learn about how you function when pitching. You don't need to take your heartbeat necessarily, but reflect afterwards. How was that to present? What can I do better next time? What do I need to run through my head before I make this presentation next time? Because there will be the next time. This is a great opportunity to think that through. What are you feeling? What kind of support do I need to make this better? Again, we're available even after this. If you want to bounce these ideas or talk about these presentations and so on, reach out. And again, we're quite busy people, but you are in demand, right? We need to fix this problem and we need to fix it together. So if there is anything we can do to help, let us know. You can also learn about what they think about your idea. What triggers them. Sometimes it's just a question of passion and sort of a preference that they have for certain things. But they also know about what works and what doesn't work. Because all of them have been involved in multiple ventures and initiatives. So they know very quickly from experience, well, floating school in this particular part of the city might not work because of whatever reason. They know stuff like that. In order to get that, you need to attend and listen. So a great opportunity to learn. And then almost the final point. When you listen to, which is science, when you listen to someone who presents, and this is true in physical presentations, but the same applies in video presentations. So it speaks to the points made earlier about dress appropriately. Find a relatively quiet place and make sure you don't have a lot of background lighting so that they actually see your face because what they see is important and so on. When you present, the listener of that presentation will afterwards take most of the cues from your body language. So how you sit, if you're confident, if you're hiding, if you are standing behind a lot of desks and chairs, if you are trying not to be seen on the video, that's 69% of what they pick up on. 24% is how you sound, how you articulate yourself, the timbre of your voice. Are you sounding confident or not confident? Do you sound arrogant? Do you sound really, really afraid? And so on. Now sounding really nervous is not necessarily a bad thing. It speaks to the passion side, right? So it's okay to be nervous. You're not screwing anything out. What I would avoid though is sounding arrogant. Sometimes that happens when you're a bit nervous as well, but you know, sound humble. But at the same time, sound confident. And I know it's a bit of like opposite there, but it's not really sound confident in that you will follow this through. And I've thought this through. Of course, there's opportunity to learn along the way, but get that across in your voice. Don't talk too fast. Don't talk too slow. But if I would pick one of them, I would speak slower. Slower speaking indicates a bit more confidence and a bit more, I've thought this through kind of thing. But if that's not your nature, be yourself, be authentic, speak at your pace. But maybe you want to practice beforehand and see how quickly you deliver this. I would reduce on content. If I feel that, well, I can maybe do this in five minutes, and they give me three. So I'll just speak faster. Not the right way to do it in my experience. Reduce the content of it. Pick out the important nuggets on what it is that you want to say. And those we've covered already. And I don't think I need to repeat them, but it's the market. It's the problem. It's what I'm going to do. It's what my value proposition is. Make sure that those are really clear. The seven percent is actually what you say. So very few speeches can be remembered and quoted by people. There are a couple of famous ones. Martin Luther King held one, or several actually, but one in particular that really, really is etched into human sort of memory. It's an amazing speech. You have other speakers that have achieved the same thing. I would say Barack Obama has achieved a couple of those. Clinton achieved a couple of those. Sorry to be so America-centric here, but it's sort of a common language for everyone. But they are a fraction of all the speeches and presentations that have been made. Very few presentations. You remember the exact content of it. You might remember that, oh, I attended this presentation. It's a good presentation. What you're picking on is the body language and the tonal voice. That's what you will recall. And maybe you'll recall that, well, he was talking about something around mangrove restoration in Tanzania, but you won't remember the details. When someone listens to you, they will pick up on those things and that's what sort of makes it stay. To me, the answer is be authentic. And I think being authentic is the it's not necessarily an easy thing to do, but just basically be yourself. Where you come from is worthy of a lot of respect. Your experience and expertise in this particular area is worthy of a lot of respect. Your knowledge about what it is that you want to do and your ideas. You've spent time on this, right? Rest on that. So be authentic. And remember that it pays off to not hide. It pays off to time yourself and pace your voice. Pace how you talk. If you need to take a break and have a sip of water, do so. Totally fine. It's not disrespectful. It's actually respectful, right? Because obviously I can't speak now, so I need to take a sip of water. And then practice, practice, practice. Practice in your head. Practice to other people. Call me. We'll have a practice on WhatsApp. I'm happy to. Next slide, please. So I wrote possible breakout groups here. And we might do that if you have specific questions on presenting. But I'd like to hear from you if you'd like to do that. We have another 40 minutes and I need to address some of the expectations. But yeah, let's hear from you, really. If you have any questions, maybe to start off with, complete silence. I have a question. Yes. I was just wondering if we have a short time and we don't really know what they know about the topic, about the context, how much we explain or should we just dive in directly to the heart of the problem? Like what, yeah, because we don't know exactly. Maybe you tell me a little bit what the problem is. No, it's more general. For example, me, I'm working with fisheries and I have no idea if they're aware of the global issues around fisheries. Should I really start speaking about it or should I, you know, everybody knows that there is a problem and just directly go to the local context, for example? I think that's a really good question. Thank you. I think you give a very brief, almost mention it as if you assume that they are aware of it, but mention it anyway just to frame it. But in a few sentences, when it comes to a really short presentation like this, if they all look like question marks, maybe you take the opportunity to expand it a bit more as in, so you have to, if possible, read them as well. But I think for this particular pitching event, they will be aware. They will be aware that there is a crisis in fish stock and oceans and so on, so they know that. So mention it, and then I would go straight more directly to the actual problem and in, where are you doing this project again, you said? One in Mexico, but there are several around. Well, then if you pick the one in Mexico or however you want to do it, then you say, and in Mexico, this problem expresses itself in the following way, you know, and whatever those problems are. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. But yes, I see that Diné asked here. Do you want to ask it live or should I read the question? Diné? It's fine, it's fine. Do you want me to ask? I can do so too. So like you were saying, it can be different types of asks like when we do the pitching, but right now, what is expected us from us? Is it like we should be asking for money kind of financial kind of ask, or it should be more of a partnership or the tools assistance? And what is the limitation of the scope or scale for the pitch? How much should we ask? What is the limitation? Is there something like that? No, not really. You should ask for what you need the most. And then, as I mentioned before, it needs to be relevant for what you're trying to do. So if you need partnerships, if you need all of these things, that's fine. And you can mention it. But is it a particular budget or funding that you need? Then I would ask that. I would tie it into what you're going to use it for a little bit, but I wouldn't go into like a deep discussion on budget. That's a question they can ask. But if I take the floating school, just as a simple example, the school will cost this much and the implementation of it will cost this much. And we're also looking for partners to provide us with electronic reading devices. So whatever it is that makes sense for what it is that you're trying to address, I would ask that. Only ask for money. And it's all clear from everyone that you need a bit of other types of support too in partners or in equipment and so on. Then the ask for money becomes a little bit less attractive, if that makes sense. Okay, thank you. Good. We have another question here. When we are pitching some of the services, like I want to use 3D printing for production purpose, as it is much more sustainable and has less waste. Maybe you can unmute and expand a little bit on your question. Sayed? Hello. Actually, my question is like, I want to provide services of 3D printing, as it's nowadays a very popular mode of mass production for manufacturing. It has less waste and much more sustainable and not directly harming the climate. I want to use it for a production purpose because very few companies are there in the market that are using it for production purposes. So how can we pitch our services to a specific investor or buyer or to get some funding to increase our business? So it sounds to me like you have a business and you'd like to expand on it by including or maybe even expanding on the 3D printing service that you offer. Is that right? Yes. And well, to me, it sounds like you want an investor rather than a grant. Yeah. Are you looking for an equity investor or would some sort of loan be okay? It can either way work because I want to expand it to the international market because as I think it's much more like reliable mode of manufacturing. Yeah. No, no, no. I hear you on that for sure. I would structure the pitch around and you focus how you define the problem is another question, but you define the opportunity rather the opportunity that well, this is increasing in demand 3D printing. It also has a lot of other positive effects less waste and so on. And what we're doing is that we have a 3D printing shop and we'd like to expand or set that up, whichever, set that up to offer this to other manufacturers or supply other buyers, assembly companies and whatnot. And we want to scale that up and this is our plan for how to achieve that. In the case of this, have you identified potential buyers? Oh, okay. Well, then you have actually a full business kind of structure, right? Yeah. You present that and you can also present that well, the cost of manufacturing, we estimate that we will produce print X number of things, 3D, I can't find the word now, but you know what I mean. Okay. And that will give us a revenue of this much and our margin is this much. And then my ask in order to expand on this, I would need the following investment. And then it's always good to say that the existing investment is this much and we're matching it with this much and we want you to put, we're asking for this much funding as well, which is welcome as equity or debt or whatever it is that you want, of course. Okay, got it. Make sense? Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm scrolling here to see if there's any other question, but I don't think there is. Okay. Yes, please. I have a quick question. Especially when I was going through all your presentations, is that about 20 very valuable points? Because yesterday after two sessions, we could draw about five point presentations, putting all the parameters and the criteria. But my question is this. The whole process is taken as a business as a means, the business opportunities, entrepreneurship are taken as a means for climate adaptation, for community enabling many, many parameters like that. So my question is this, my question is this. When we have a situation, let me be very specific, in an urban context, let us say, water for example, quality water and quantity and then a secured availability. You see, if that is a business proposition, already the system has got so much of components. Say for example, please tell me whether it is right or wrong, facilitating the global best environmentally sound technologies on the one hand and the other end allowing the entrepreneurship in the local market. Can that be a good proposition? Can you reframe your question a bit? It's like this, we have already the sustainable development processes on. But when we look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we have got three goals. And my question is very simple. We are seeking the Dragon people to help us and guide us to have some partnership. It could be financial, it could be technical. So my simple question is, the local entrepreneurship is waiting. The setup is ready, the background is ready and very ripe. Can that be a good proposition? I think so. What you are saying then is that you will work with local entrepreneurial hubs or a community, however you want to call them really, or with the local entrepreneurial community through hubs that you will set up or maybe that are there already. And then you talk about what is it that you add to that community? What particular services do you offer? And maybe that is aligning it with SDGs, helping them align it a bit clearer so that the initiatives that are supported through these hubs or lacking a better expression, but hubs I think is pretty generic. How to make that more relevant and what you would be required to do. And that links quite clearly then to what are you asking for in order to be able to do that. Maybe you need a few partners, maybe you need academia, maybe you need a business school or two, or maybe you need a partnership with an accelerator somewhere, and then a bit of funding to run this, something like that. But I definitely think you should pitch it, definitely. Thank you very much because this was based around about three to four Asian Development Bank, World Bank and Danida, Dutch, so many bilateral programs if you make it yesterday, we find that the situation is ripe and climate adaptation could be a way out, it's a means. Definitely, I think definitely it's ripe. I mean just to admit that you touch on something that I feel a lot of passion for, because we can't fly in solutions from anywhere else, they need to come from the community themselves. So that's actually one thing you're doing, you're helping them understand the context and the problem a bit more these entrepreneurs and linking them up with these, because the funders, they have a problem finding good stuff to put money into. I know that that's not what you're necessarily expecting here, but they have a problem choosing, because there's not that much that reaches them. So the better you can become at presenting this and really showing that I'm fixing your pipe problem here, you'll have more stuff to put money into, and it's a cost-efficient way of doing it because we're working with local community actors already. I think that has a good value proposition. Maybe some audio problems. I don't want to hear you. Oh, can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? Yeah, no, it has come back. Thank you very much. Just for one last word, your psychological perception of the whole process and also tips are very useful. Thank you very much. It was a good training session. Thank you very much. I see a couple of hands here. Great. Kanganga, please. Yes, thank you very much for the presentation. Hello. Yep, we hear you. Okay, I'm so happy that, as per now, I'm understanding what is speech. I have two short questions. One, I'd like to know how one can become a partner because when you say global resilience partnership, can it be formalized or is it informal? How do we collaborate? No, there is a formal process. What I will do is see if I can find your email here. Because the reason why I'm only so good people like you, so good people like you, but after the meeting. Could you send me an email? I'll post it in the chat there. End there. That is one. Two, so to know, as you have talked about, you come up with a good idea, but if people digress you at some time, we find it a big problem. Is it easy to partner with you or to get us people who can partner with us, expertise, those who are experts so that we can work together. We can work together on that good idea. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you very much. Yes, there are ways to. I'll share some. Anyone who's interested, send me an email. I put it in my in the chat there. Send me an email and I can share. Let's talk about this. The global resilience partnership has a formal, it's a formal partnership. We have a process for that, but regardless of that, I can think of a few things we could look at together. Please send me an email on that and we'll follow up. Is that okay? Can you hear me? Famous Zoom words? Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. I see also that we have a hand. Thank you very much. I see we have a hand up from Ibrahim. Ibrahim, are you unmuted and then muted again? Hello. My name is Ibrahim Ilusa. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Anyone hear me? Yes, I hear you. Thank you. My name is Ibrahim Ilusa and I'm connecting from a northeastern part of Nigeria here in West Africa. As you know, 2021 to 2030 is stipulated as an action decade on both our ecosystem and the sustainable development goals. We, as a young environmental and climate nature sustainability advocate, I found and run my own initiative, Nature Conservation Advocates for Climate Initiative where I advocate to the young people and the children together with the vulnerable communities on how to raise awareness and take action on the nature and the climate. So currently I'm conceived with the idea of restoring our dying landscape, dying palm lands, our dying hay, palm yields are not no more producing the required food. So I am trying to see how I can raise some indigenous resistant trees which are drought resistance due to the less rainfall we're getting here. So I'm planning to raise some seedlings this rainy season and so I'm just asking and it has been shown that restoration, this is restoration needs money in terms of running it and you say asking for money, it sounds like more, more, make our pitch less attractive. So and I just needed clarity on this. So in this case, do we need partner or collaborators or what is the profile solution or what is the profile way to ask for help from outside? Thank you. Yeah, no, good question. On what you ask for, as long as it's in line with what your needs are to fix the problem, it's flexible, right? If you desperately need partners and you need partners outside of Nigeria or you need partners in Nigeria or if you need funding or particular expertise on certain things, you can also bring bring that up. You don't have to show that you have a certain set of partners lined up already. If you do, that's good. And if you don't, that's one of the things that you could highlight as something that you're looking for. I would also take the opportunity to roam around during the CBA sessions here and also after the CBA sessions, look at who was attending and find other organizations out there and individuals that you'd like to talk to and post the same question to them. Because remember that the pitching session, it's a short, just like a session. That won't solve everything immediately. You need to be out there and present and talk to other people about this. So having a clear picture of what you need and who you'd like to have as partners, I think that makes a lot of sense for you to continue working on forward looking as well. For the project that you mentioned, I would recommend looking a little bit at the organization called Plan Vivo. I'll just put the name here. I don't know what their activities are where you are, but they're quite active in East Africa and they are global. So they might very well have projects there. They're very good at supporting, looking at finding carbon financing for nature restoration. But nature restoration can be combined farming with forestry, which would increase both the landscape resilience as well as food production. I hope that answered your question. Good. Any other questions? Sorry. I see a question from Sakebeer. I find donors, funders are less keen on funding for research capacity building, particular institutional capacity. What is a good way to pitch for such activities with much longer term outcomes, but few short term outputs? It's a very good question. I would show what it would lead to. Be really clear about that. It's not going to be everyone's favorite dish on the menu. So you need to focus in on who do you think will be interested in that. I see no harm in pitching tomorrow at all because there will be other people listening in as well. Now the Dragons might have ideas, especially one of them. I'm not going to give that away, but especially one of them might know where you could go. And when we hear your pitch, it might also be that IUCN or GRP knows who you could talk to. So I would definitely pitch. But in the larger scheme of things, I would present it with certain milestones. What is it that you achieve short term? And there might not be anything. But what do you then expect to achieve medium term? And maybe that's your long term. And what do you think that can lead to later on? Because then you have a storyline what the impact could be. And you also highlight the relevance and the importance of doing that particular research. Institutional capacity is a really hard one. Everyone tries to stay away from funding that. So I would build that into my budget model in a way so that you have enough institutional capacity to actually implement something. And then it's a question of how you present that. I find it a bit strange, but sometimes you will present a budget to a potential funder and they will just because you have called something a core staff or something, they will shy away from it. But you can present exactly the same program. You just re label some of the activities that you have to programmatic work. And then it's more okay. So I would look at how to present in a smart way if that answers your question. Any other questions? I see we have 13 minutes to closing. I'll just briefly talk about the GRP process since that was raised as one of the expectations. It's a well tested model, not just by us, but we adopted various tools and frameworks from the private sector and management consulting and the ideation processes and so on. Basically the first one, and you're going to recognize a lot of these words. The first step is to look at an idea and understand the context that idea finds itself in. Is that mapped thoroughly? And if it's not mapped thoroughly, what additional mapping needs to be done? Referencing the previous examples I gave, do we understand who the user is? Do we understand their needs? Do we understand their priorities? And their priorities might be determined by acute priorities. They might be very vulnerable and any small external shock might put them into absolute destitution. We need to understand that. What does that rest on? What's the context that sits on and finds itself in? Is it very seasonal farming? That's very vulnerable to weather events? Or is it a dysfunctioning market? Is there a lot of food waves at certain times during the year? And then you start prodding what would the solution here, what would it do to address that particular problem? Would it be cold storage for certain vegetables? Sorry, I'm taking just one example to illustrate. Or would it be better market information? Would it be working another way with aggregators? Would it be the input that needs to be more drought or flood resistant? Seeds and whatnot? How does that fit into the context and the texture of that particular community or the communities that you want to work with? Price-wise, distribution-wise? Is it perceived as a very big risk by the community? Because we have to remember someone with very limited resources will be extremely sophisticated in choosing what to invest in. They'll go for what they need to survive. Because a lot of the community members that we are working with are really down on the lowest rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, survival. I would look at that. The next phase is focusing more on the solution. Is the solution addressing these issues in a good and sustainable way? Does it fit in the value chains that exist already on the market and the suppliers and so on? Is there any capacity that needs to be built among the farmers? Is the distribution systems smart enough and flexible enough and agile enough to adapt to changes and expectations? Looking at that in more detail, ultimately what we want to do is come up with a perfect solution. There is no such thing as a perfect solution, obviously, but as good an optimized solution. As good as possible solution. That's a continuous process throughout the lifecycle of the initiative or the company, but we do it right there and then. What's needed in order to do this? What do we need from our partners on the ground? What do we need to understand about our lines? How do we address their needs in the smartest way possible? What's our cost of customer acquisition or what's our cost of reaching one beneficiary? Is that really optimized? Is there anything we can do to make that more efficient? Is the monitoring and evaluation processes in place? Do we really know what it is that we need to measure? What's our lowest common denominator on what tells us if we're having an impact? Do we know what that is? An impact is long term, so maybe you focus more on the outcomes. But I would try to go away from just outputs, but also look at what's the outcome of this particular initiative and maybe that indicates what the potential impact could be in the future. And then I would also look at who's interested in funding something like this and map that accordingly. Now, throughout this process, you get a clear idea of what it is, all the activities that need to happen. And having done this process, you can explain it really briefly because you know what's important and what's not important and you can highlight the important bits. The third stage is to map out what's the execution plan then. What do we need to do? When do we need to do it? And that's linked, obviously, to the problem and the solution that you're putting together. You put pretty tough timelines on that. And the fourth one is, what do I need to make this happen? And by the time you arrive at this last stage, you've changed your initial expectation of what you need quite drastically. And that's a good thing because that shows that you've learned throughout this process. And you might need more money, but very often you need a bit less money than you initially thought, at least to start off. And you will also have built in the flexibility and agility in executing something so that you know that, well, if I get all the money, then I can do it this fast. If I get some of the money, then I need to time it, then I need to do this first. And then I'll use that as an argument to get the next tranche of funding from someone. It also gives you an opportunity to get started and continue to network and reach the people that you need to be aware of these things. And also to map them. What are they interested in? Yeah, briefly, that's the process where we put everyone through. The most important thing of these things is the consistency, the storyline that you come up with. And the other most important thing is that you learn and that you are the right person to do it. And also that you have the internal capacity to execute on this. So what the GRP incubator does is we have what we call a big word, but it's an important bit to our work. We have a leadership academy where we focus on building internal capacity in the organizations and in the people that are doing it. Being an entrepreneur, and I've been an entrepreneur in London during the dot-com boom. That's how old I am, by the way. And that was hard work. I've never what I have, but I've worked a lot. And I had various symptoms of working too hard, exhaustion, phantom pain in my chest and so on. It's really tough because you have to juggle like buyers and suppliers and investors and the team members that you have and that you try to manage and provide guidance to. And really, I didn't know enough of anything because I was too young and inexperienced, but it was an amazing learning opportunity. To do that in London is fairly easy. To do a similar thing in an emerging economy is much harder because the uncertainties are so many more. And you're also trying to address a problem where the end beneficiary or the customer or the client really is extremely vulnerable. So you need to get it right and minimize risk. That puts a lot of strain on people. So what we focus on is helping people understand what their roles are, how they work in groups, how they work themselves, what triggers them, positively and negatively, how to take advantage of dysfunction in a group, how to take advantage of when it's functional. In a positive way, not in a sort of undermining way, but really, what is it that's going on here and how can I type into that? Because even in dysfunction, there's a lot of energy going on. And a certain level of dysfunction is actually positive because it's a creative environment. If everyone always agrees, nothing new comes. So you need to have a bit of disagreement. So we focus on that and also what happens in the power dynamic between the implementer and the funder and anyone who is sort of in between and try to get people to speak the same language and understand more what other people are after. I'm happy to take any questions on that, but I see that we have three minutes left on this session. But any questions, those last three minutes are more than welcome. Just for actually, I'll take one minute. I want to be a little bit selfish. You see, I have one very specific question which is relevant to everybody. See, we have a case of doing the ecoliteracy or space ecoliteracy that is bringing the awareness and knowledge to community. And we have a case in which for the past 40 years, four zero cost ecological and space ecoliteracy models have been successfully implemented. One hour a week now because of the lockdown, virtual is going on. My question is this, can new climate adoption and climate resilient lifestyle activists seek some sort of a technical and financial hand holding so that countries like India, Bangladesh and Africa and even South America can be greatly benefited because I come across many such need when I was an invited member of the WHO, but Pan-American and African pandemic management and WHO briefings. A list of donors and supporters will be a great asset, a good number of younger generation. Your comments please. I was going to, given time constraints, could you send me an email on this and I will follow up and anyone who wants to also know more about it, please do the same. There might be, I can't top of my head name someone who would do that, but I think it's, you're asking the right question here, Javi, because it's mapping who you should target this to. So kudos for that. Thank you. For this pitching session, do a quick scan on the people that will be listening in the dragons, that is. But beyond that, let me get back to you on who I think would be someone interested in that. I think there are opportunities that come in different ways for funding things like this, but there should also be opportunity to talk directly to potential funders to present this particular thing and also to others who have tried doing similar things. So please send me an email. Definitely I will do. I like the self-actualization part of Maslow, which I'm able to see in your presentations. That's what made me raise this particular issue. Yeah, good. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Well, with that, it's 11 o'clock here where I am and I don't know what time it is where you are, what I do, but it would be too long to list it. I thank you very much for your attention and I encourage you to pitch tomorrow. We will follow up a little bit and ask if you're not already registered for pitching and have expressed an interest to see if you are. And we will have fun tomorrow, and that's what it will be. It will be fun, a good learning experience, nothing dangerous at all. And if you don't pitch, it's actually a missed opportunity to be very honest about it. So thank you very much and I hope to see you tomorrow.