 I'm Nicola Echard and I'm really excited to have you all here. I think that, yes, we do want to ask you about the format for this, this session, but we will, because we just have quite a group here. So the idea was originally that we're going to do a very interactive dialogue, right, and engage all of you in the discussion of the things that we're going to share with you today. However, we're flexible. So the other thing we can do is we share the things we want to share with you first, and then we can do small breakout groups where you talk about some of these things in a smaller group. There are pros and cons to these two options, correct? Right, because you might get stuck in a group that, oh, I don't really have that much in common with these people, but hey, it's always good to learn new things, whereas if you're in a larger group, then you can all hear from each other. But on the other hand, on a larger group, we might not hear from everybody. So I'm going to let you think about it, and what do you think? Let everybody think about it, and then we decide, because we have an hour and 15 minutes, so we have the time, and it's a really nice space, and so we can be adaptable. Sound good? All right, so thank you for coming. You must like partnerships, because that's what we're going to be discussing today, and I'm going to first, what we're going to do is each one of you, each one of us is going to share a little bit about this partnership that we have. What we do, I mean as a partnership, what we bring to the partnership, why we are partnering, so that you can hear from all of us, and then we'll open it up to hear how you've been partnering as well. And then we're also going to talk a little bit about some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that partnerships bring, and we're going to be very honest about it. So that's the idea, and some of the lessons learned, and what can we take away from this so that others might want to engage in partnerships of the kind that we're going to be sharing with you all. So that's the idea. So I am with Nest, and Nest, if you have not heard about us, we are an Impact First investor. We have been around for 26 years. Our mission is to invest in enterprises, small and medium enterprises, social enterprises that create quality jobs for the most underserved communities, while sustaining the planet. And we do that in emerging market countries of Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. And we do this in different ways. And I don't know if we should just each introduce ourselves quickly, and then we dive into a little bit deeper. Yeah, I think so. So just, you know, that's Nest. And I am the founder, and I am originally from Chile, and grew up in the US. And then when I founded Nest, I took it to Latin America and Central Eastern Europe. So we work with a team, teams in every country, and we're very closely with our teams that are working in providing the acceleration services and the impact investing to the companies locally. And yeah, I've been to SoCAP a few times, and always find it to be a very great opportunity to learn and share with others. So that's a bit about me. Nelly? Hi, everyone. I'm Neyla Boucher. I'm a little bit out of my natural habitat. I have to say that I've enjoyed it a lot so far. I work for IKEA in the US. I'm responsible for corporate communications and public affairs for the US. And actually, I'm representing today here IKEA Social Entrepreneurship. And I just wanted to check in the room who knows what IKEA entrepreneurship stands for. Oh, no, no one. Okay. So I just want to give a little bit of context. IKEA Social Entrepreneurship is the social impact philanthropy arm of inter-IKEA systems. It's not the same as the IKEA Foundation, of which you might have heard already. The IKEA Foundation is the grant making arm, philanthropy arm. We are the social impact arm. And that is where we work with social entrepreneurs. We do that in different ways. One of them is to work through our business. So we work with social businesses to design and produce products that are being sold in all of our stores in the world. It's mainly focused on handmade products, high quality, natural fibers locally sourced, really providing jobs for the people who need it the most. It's one arm within IKEA Social Entrepreneurship. Secondly, we are working with organizations like Nest to support social entrepreneurs that are not necessarily working for IKEA. And what we want to do there is that we really want to uplift and support social entrepreneurs that are active in communities that are very vulnerable. And there, within that, we focus on circularity, renewable products, but also meaningful employment. And that is, again, an area where I will talk a little bit about later. And then when it comes to the financing within IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, I would say that there are many different ways that we go about that. And that is with loans, that is with grants, that is with the equity. So there's many different ways of going about that. So I'm very happy to be here today. We'll go a little bit later, more in depth in what we are doing with Nest, but I'm very grateful and humbled to be here. And I'm hoping to learn something from you all as well today. Hi, everyone. I'm Charu Adesnik. I'm with Cisco Systems. How many of you know about Cisco Systems? No, the tech company, not the food services company. I'm the executive director of the Cisco Foundation. And then on the corporate side, I lead our social impact innovation investments. And I don't even think we've funded Nest through both those sources. But what I always like to say and sort of joke about is we just look at it as two different funding sources. But what we try to do between the company and the foundation is bring to bear all the different resources and assets that Cisco has to support nonprofit organizations that are working with underserved populations. So we donate our technology, whether it's something as basic as routers or switches, or whether it's something more complex with video security, wireless collaboration, WebEx, any of that. And then our cash grant making is, I think, pretty unique in the field, at least from the benchmarking we've done. We kind of operate like a venture capital firm. And that we invest in early stage tech enabled solutions were a tech company. So we believe in the power of technology to connect to the unconnected but also to have impact at scale. And just like in the corporate sector, in the NGO sector, there are lots of organizations that have great ideas, but it's really hard to get that seed funding. So that's sort of our sweet spot for our point of entry, where an organization like Nest comes to us and says, hey, we have an idea for a tech enabled solution, we'll provide seed funding to give them the time, the space to ideate, to play around, to experiment, to design that initial solution, and then support them to maybe run a pilot test, see how it's working, validate the outcomes. And then assuming the relationship is working, we continue to provide support to help the organizations we're partnering with replicate the solution ideally beyond the initial geography at a national, regional, global level, scale to reach more people, demonstrate social impact, and then eventually have a path to financial viability or exit. And then we operate in four sectors, crisis, response, and critical human needs, education, with the focus on school-age children and teacher capacity building, with the focus on STEM, economic empowerment, and more recently climate regeneration. And so Nest, I know we'll talk about this more later, but Nest is one of our long time partners. Great, thank you to both. And I really appreciate that. I have, we have now for the first time met in person, because we've been, we have met through Zoom way too, for too long. And WebEx, sorry, sorry, how dare I not say WebEx? Oh, and Microsoft Teams, right? Okay, so let me just tell you a little bit about Nest a little bit further so that then you can understand better the partnership. So I, you know, I think I mentioned our mission, which is to invest in social entrepreneurs that are creating quality jobs for underserved communities while sustaining the planet. Well, when we say underserved communities, we mean those who are most marginalized. So we're talking about at-risk youth, women, ethnic minorities, people of color, people with disabilities, you know, migrants, refugees, people who need support in order to access quality jobs. When I say quality jobs, I mean jobs that move people out of poverty. So that pay well, that provide contracts that make people, you know, lead a good quality of life and livelihoods. So what we do is in the country, in the markets that we work, we run our acceleration program, which is for companies that are pre-seed stage, they're companies that are not yet ready for investment, even impact investment, they're sort of, you know, they're not able to, they have not had that trajectory. But they have very good solutions for poverty and for addressing employment. And we, after conducting a very rigorous due diligence process, we invite them into our acceleration portfolio. Our acceleration portfolio is, when you enter the next portfolio, you are going to be with us for three to four years. You're not going to be with us for two months or four months. We're talking about early stage companies, missing middle companies that already have a product, have a service, they have a small team, they've already validated what they're doing, but they don't have yet their business model consolidated and clear and they need support in order to position themselves for growth. And that's the missing middle where there ain't that many people there because it's hard work. And then, so that's our acceleration program, and we run it in different countries in Latin America and Central Eastern Europe, specifically we're in Brazil, we're in Peru, we're in Colombia, we're in Ecuador, we're in Romania, we're in Poland, you know, we've been in 12 countries, now we're in, right now I think we're in seven countries. So that's, and we have local teams that work with these companies, providing them with business services, mentoring, coaching, a lot of support, and we also invest. So acceleration doesn't only mean business services, we actually provide what we call recoverable grants, which are 0% interest grants or loans that they need to pay back, but they're from philanthropic capital, philanthropic capital that we recycle to these companies. Usually around the average is 35,000 to 75,000 USDs, and that's our acceleration portfolio. Companies are IT companies, we have quite a number of them that are training and placing at-risk communities or vulnerable communities in the labor force or employing them themselves. We have quite a number of ORECA companies, we have quite a number, I guess the biggest group is our sustainable agriculture companies. In that case, when we say jobs, we mean jobs of people that work in companies, but we're also talking about supplier models. So suppliers that sell to the companies, and that are paid a fair wage, a fair price for what they're selling. So fair wages, fair price is key to what NEST does. All of our companies, we're currently, just to give you some numbers, we have invested in 236 companies, $30 million in the beginning, 89,000 quality jobs, so we know the name and first and last of all of those people, because we really do measure that impact. And all of our entrepreneurs need to do the, we call it the PMT, the performance management tool that they have to apply in order to understand the quality of the jobs. We look very much we're a gender lens investor, so we look very closely at gender wage equity, making sure that people are being paid men and women for the same jobs. And we're looking also at the impact of the company. So we're very closely looking at KPI's like water, energy, waste, et cetera, as well as sustainable agricultural practices, land management and regenerative practices. So that's our PMT. And our portfolio up to now has been 236 companies, most of them in the acceleration program. And yeah, so that's basically that side of the coin. About four or five years ago, as our companies were growing, you know, they were looking for more capital. So I told you we were giving them, you know, average to 2035 to 75. And we were like, okay, let's look for some impact investors, they're, you know, going to help us with this. And we're like, okay, where are the impact investors that are at less than a million that are interested in companies that are selling, you know, 500,000 to 600,000, maybe even less 300,000, you know, that are still in the missing middle. And we didn't find many. I'm sure this doesn't shock you. So we decided to start our own impact fund. And of course, everyone said, well, you know, next, you're not an impact investor. And we said, actually, we've been giving fun funding all this time, we've been giving recoverable grants for many, many years since day one, we always knew that companies needed capital. And so we did have that trajectory. So but we didn't have it in the form of a fund. So we blood, sweat, and tears created the Lyrio fund. So the Lyrio fund is a missing middle fund that invest in Latin America. We give 50 to 500,000 dollar loans, friendly terms, you know, longer grace periods, longer repayment periods. So these are now companies that are graduating from pre-seed to seed, and they can take investment, they can pay it back. They've shown us that they could pay back their recoverable grants. Our rate right now is 85% repayment post COVID, which is not bad. And now we're moving into the fund. And those companies are, you know, able to take pay it back at a slightly higher interest rate. I mean, they do get charged. And we do provide our investors with a return to 5% return. So if you're if you're serious about impact, this has been packed first, right? And that and that's what we've been doing. And now we have a second fund that Lyrio fund is in Latin America. The second fund is in Europe. And it's called the violent violet fund. And violet does also engage in missing middle and invest in companies that are also working with underserved, giving a lot of attention to LGBTQIA plus. So that's nest pretty much. And why do we engage with corporations? Because what we've been doing that from the very beginning, really, from a long time ago, because corporations bring a lot to the table to, you know, they help us with our acceleration program, they bring resources, financial resources, which are important, which we recycled into our companies. But perhaps more importantly, they bring their, their coworkers, the people that work in the in the companies that want to engage, right? And they want to engage in a meaningful way. And they want to support. And so we leverage those people as mentors, as coaches, as, you know, as trainers for our company. So in addition to the our teams, we need and the in the folks that come from these corporations actually, you know, obviously have great experience and can, you know, really provide great coaching and mentoring. And I think value chain is another important, you know, entering the value chains of corporations are social entrepreneurs can access those value chains, which is really important. And, you know, they can become suppliers for the corporations, which is great. So we're helping them to get to the standards they need to, in order to access corporations. And I think the other is, I think this is systemic reasons, because, you know, we're all trying to solve these issues together. We're all coming at it from different perspectives. Corporations have access to markets, they have access to clients, they have, you know, they have their own resources that they're bringing into their corporations, to their companies that they can, you know, also share with the entrepreneurs. And they are very good at communication, which is really important in our field. We need to be better at communicating our stories, and really, you know, being able to share what we're doing with our entrepreneurs who are doing incredible work. So that's why we've all engaged overall with corporations, and we always have. And most recently, I mean, these two companies here are longer term partners for us. So in the case of Cisco, we've actually been together since 2016. So it's coming up on eight years of working together. And what I love about that is that they're engaged with us in our own vision of change and impact, and it aligns with their own values of what they want to see. And so Cisco is, you know, the first five years and Sheru will probably share a little bit more, but they helped us with a innovation that we had, which is a talent tool that is assessing the needs of entrepreneurs at different stages of development. You know, you have you guys heard of blueprint to scale, you know, that for stage of entrepreneurs. Well, this is that at each stage, entrepreneurs need different sets of skills and tools. And so the tool is to, you know, to help an entrepreneur figure out their gaps and their needs and so forth. So that was the first and they helped us get it into the, you know, prototype and then test it in pilots. And then now we're using it across our portfolio. So it's, it's been a, it was a longer term commitment. And then in, I believe it was in 2021, probably 2020, 2021, they engaged with us in our tech Amazon incubate accelerator. So we work in the Amazon, we have, we invested in about 50 companies in the Amazon, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and we partnered with Cisco to bring tech companies that can bring technology that helps bio economy companies in the Amazon do better, they work better, more efficiently for more effectively. So we've been doing that for a few years. And now those tech companies are taking the technologies to the rest of the portfolio. So it's like replicating and scaling the work. So that's been great. And then with Ikea, we actually started working in 2020, right? My last trip that I took on an airplane was in March into Mamlo, Sweden, very warm place in March, really, really warm. And, and we, we start to do with something that Ikea, I think you guys coined it, but now everybody uses it, the word co-create. We actually, now it's become like everybody's using that word, but we really co-created the program together. And that was a Latin America program, because Ikea was entering Latin America. And we worked there. So it was a very nice way to start working together and engage in a partnership that would help, you know, entrepreneurs in Chile and Peru and in Colombia with, with the partnership that we have, which is really an acceleration program. And Ikea social entrepreneurship brings in the resources and the mentors and the coworkers and the support and the communication. Now, fast forward to 2023, we're on program four with Ikea social entrepreneurship. So we've, we've done, we now have a program in Central Eastern Europe on sustainable agriculture and circular economy. And then we also started arts refugee employment initiative where we are investing in 15 companies to create 2000 jobs for refugees from Ukraine and other regions. And that brings in Cisco's also third partnership, because we're doing this together. So all three of us now are working on the employment refugee employment initiative investing in these 15 companies. And we've already invested in nine and wonderful companies that are bringing, that are employing, giving high quality permanent employment to refugees. It can be done. And this is a model that is showing that it can be done. So that's, that's, that's Nest and the partners. And now I would like to turn it over to Nellie. Would you like to start and talk a little bit about the partnership from the Ikea side? And I'll help you with some of the details. You have to help me with some of the details. I work with her colleagues in Europe. And yeah. Yeah, because actually I'm working on the retail side. So I'm not in Ikea social entrepreneurship, but I've been a part of some of the accelerators that Ikea entrepreneurship has organized with Nest, but also with Ashoka and with other civil society organizations. And I think none of this could exist for us without the engagement of our coworkers. And this is really what what Ikea social entrepreneurship stands for as well is that the mission of Ikea is to create to create a better everyday life for the many people. And a lot of our coworkers have a very long tenure with Ikea exactly for that reason. It's really because people want to bring have a positive impact on the society and the communities that they are living in, where the stores are operating in, but also the society at large. And this really offers them and me an opportunity to do that. So I was a strategy partner in one of the one of the programs. And what it is, is that it is really a partnership. It's a partnership where we as Ikea benefit from because for us it's definitely a way to become a more sustainable company, to really follow through in our commitment to make that positive societal impact. It also allows us and our coworkers to really feel that they can bring the added value in a different way. Also opens up for us as Ikea coworkers many new ways of looking at businesses gives us an opportunity to be very close to very innovative thinking within all these social entrepreneurs because that is the thing for Ikea is we don't want to reinvent. It's like you said, Nicole, we really believe that you social entrepreneurs, you have a very good understanding of what needs to happen. And what Ikea really wants to do is how can we uplift you? How can we upscale you and take away some of the barriers that are there that don't allow you to become more impactful? So then what do we have to offer as Ikea? Like you said, we open up our value chain. We are working with social businesses to develop products. But also we want to give some insights into commercial knowledge and strategy development and more insights into the corporate world, corporate financing and then really using our core business where we can. We have worked with social entrepreneurs that are working in affordable housing. Well, we are a home furnishing company. We have developed together with them models to bring affordable kitchens but well designed and in a sustainable way kitchens into those affordable housing programs. We did it together. So I think that that is really for me what is unique about what Ikea social entrepreneurship is doing is that it's really a total organization effort. And that is, I can honestly say having been there myself, it's been an enormous experience for me, a very humbling experience but also I've been super inspired. Great. Wonderful. Yes, and just what happened, we actually, there's a team in Europe in the Netherlands and in Sweden and that is working closely with our team in terms of all aspects of the partnership. So for example, we have people working on the strategic side and I actually participate in that and then there's people working on the operational side of the program and planning together and so forth. The strategic side is more like the high level, like thinking out and did that work that didn't work. So it's very sharing and believe me, it's not like I am used to being really open with corporates. I mean, it's willing to have partners that are really making you comfortable with being able to fail which is not always the case and so or not always doing everything perfect. Okay, iterate, let's learn from it. And I have to say that IKEA genuinely, I mean at first I was like, but actually genuinely they are okay with sometimes making mistakes and getting up and having to do something over again. And they're very humble about it I think and very open about it. And so we do the strategy piece, we do the operational piece and they get in the weeds with us. It's like, oh, that's welcome summit we did last time we did too much talking heads, we got to do more workshops this time or you know, or so they you know, there's a there's a operational side or you really, you know, and we're sharing all of our information, you know, each one of our companies we have an investment memo that we prepare and they they share they look at it and so forth. And they're and their coworkers are looking at it and so forth, and sharing with us what is the need what are the mentoring needs what are the collaborative you know what are the coaching needs. Oh, you know what we match that person with this person and he never you know he didn't it didn't really work out it wasn't as fruitful as it could have been. Oh, this one worked out really wonderfully. So it's a really a good dialogue and then even on the communication side like our communications directors here Sabrina, she works with Kim on the on the IKEA side talking and so forth. So it's very close partnership. And we're like building on each other. And we're also learning when things don't go right to to to share. So I think that that that's been a great part. There's also that with Cisco and I'll talk about that but I want to give Sherua a chance to talk a little bit about the partnership. Yeah, thank you. So just out of curiosity, how many how many of you represent a social enterprise? Okay, and then how many of your investors? Okay, so, you know, as a company, it's hard to find organizations like Nest, I feel like there are a ton of entrepreneurship programs out there and most of them are pretty bad. What drew us to Nest was that deep focus on impact, the impact first piece and really, you know, I come from the consulting world before Cisco. And you know, we used to talk about design thinking before it was called design thinking, but that focus on the end client because there's so many entrepreneurship programs out there. But the ones that really work are the ones designed with actual social entrepreneurs in mind. And there just aren't a lot of those. And so what we really liked about Nest was that and I still remember the first time I talked with with Nicole and her colleagues about this sort of the phased approach, the assessment approach of whether you're at the blueprint stage or the scaling stage, you need different things. Is it you know, preparing your pitch? Is it coming up with a pricing strategy? Is it, you know, fundraising? Is it you need to develop version you know, 2.0 of your org structure? And you know, the thing that people always ask us is how do you choose who you're going to invest in? And what I like to say is, I'll bet on the solution all day long. We don't have as many failures with the solution. It's the org. And there's no sort of founder syndrome with Nicole or anybody else. And that has been, I think, also the key to this to success. They're willing to share with us what's going well, what's not. We want to hear it. We know that because we're investing early stage and it's higher risk, there are going to be things that, you know, best laid plans, there are bumps in the road. We want to hear it. We want to help however we can. You know, from the time when we first invested in Nest to tech enable that, that assessment and feedback loop, giving Nest better ways to communicate with the social entrepreneurs they're working with, but also better visibility into their own operations. And then, you know, moving toward the employment, the refugee employment initiative, I think when we first started talking about it was before Ukraine. So they were thinking about developing this employment fund anyway, and then Ukraine hit. And I will tell you from a Cisco perspective, we were as a company running around trying to figure out how can we respond to the crisis in Ukraine to the point where, you know, we have employees who wanted to cross the border and hand out things. We have to say, you know, you can't do that. But here's an organization like Nest who is doing work with companies in the region who are supporting refugees. That's a way to get involved. And then more recently, the Amazon tech incubator, we launched in 2021, a new focus on climate. And so this is part of that it bridges both economic empowerment and climate. But I think the thing that has been the best about the partnership is that impact. And in 20, so fall of 2015, Chuck Robbins became our CEO. I'll never forget, you know, it was his first company meeting, he was talking about the business, but then he talked about Cisco CSR work. And he said, we have a great track record. I want to do more. And I want to be louder. We're, you know, our whole team was like, yes. And so we wanted to sort of tap into his excitement. And we came up with this goal that we want to positively impact 1 billion people by 2025 through our signature networking economy program, but you know, also through our social impact partnerships like the one we have with Nest. And so fast forward a couple of years, we decided, well, we've been reporting on our progress against that goal. And our annual CSR report, we should really, you know, back this up. And so we went through a process where we engage PricewaterhouseCoopers to, you know, externally assure to audit our progress against that goal. And we made it intentionally, we set a high bar because we said positive impact, not just reach 1 billion people. So how do you define positive impact? At what point can you count someone as having been positively impacted? You know, what's the attribution to Cisco, right? We don't want to overclaim credit. And so I think it was maybe two years ago that when PWC went through their testing process, they selected Nest for testing. I deal with the external audit of the Cisco Foundation every year. My background's in financial sector development. I thought, okay, it's an audit. It's not pleasant, but you know, we get great data from our grantees. It was excruciating. It was an excruciating process, but it was amazing all of the data that Nest captures that PWC wants. They really, I mean, the level of detail that Nest has is an auditor's dream, which made things much easier for us, even though it was painful, but being able to document this many people have received jobs. This is what the, you know, sort of pre-post salary people, all the other things of, you know, whether it's a full-time employee, whether it's a contract worker, whether it's suppliers, the gender balance, the, you know, focus on ethnic minorities, LGBTQ. So it was, although it was painful, and I kept pestering Nicole for more and more data, we were able to get through the process relatively easily, and they, you know, were able to validate the positive impact that Nest has had. So for that, you know, that was, and I was impressed with Nest before, but really digging into the underlying data and the level of data that an auditor wants to see. It's the same as it is for financials, but it's really hard, you know, for a lot of organizations, whether you're a nonprofit social enterprise or a for-profit social enterprise, getting that level of data and being able to sustain it over time to show kind of their trajectory is really difficult. The other thing that was about this goal, and this was a surprise, about three weeks before we started the first-year engagement with PWC, my SVP said, we were talking about it, and she said, we're talking about one billion unique people, right? Only counted once over that, and my colleague and I were like, what? No, but she's our SVP, so we did. So this was what PWC validated was the positive impact on unique individuals, which was frankly, I had thought the whole time that the most difficult part would be being able to demonstrate positive impact. The more difficult part was being able to demonstrate the unique impact, but also our partnership with Nest has led to other partnerships. Karen from Laboratoria is in the room, we were first introduced to them through Nest and they've become one of our partners in what I call our skills to careers work within our economic empowerment portfolio. So just lots and lots of really fruitful things that have come out of the relationship. I'm laughing because I'm smiling because actually the last email from Sheru was on Christmas Eve, and I remember answering and it was like, okay, we're done. Can I have Christmas now? No, no, no. But it was still, it was to the end, but it was a great experience. And so I guess I'd like to take a pause and you know, we've shared a lot with you and I want to open it up to see if you have, we have some more things we want to share, but it's time to hear from you. So I guess first, let's just, and you did a show of hands, so we do have like quite a mixed group here. Are there other corporates here in the room? Okay, so there are social entrepreneurs, there's investors, foundations, few foundations, okay. So, but pretty much it's the group of, yeah, the SOCAP group. So I guess one question, first of all, do you have any questions from what you've heard? And then the second part could be, are you involved in any corporate partnerships? And how's it going? So any questions from what you've heard so far? Yes. Thank you for bringing up the design happening and what people need. And so when you talk about this, I'm really pleased to hear this. And so I'm curious what tangible, like how tangible and how like how dirty do your hands get with like working with your, working with companies to kind of build what they actually need? Like how involved do you get with that? I would love to learn I'm new to this space. We get very involved, so but we're not common, I don't think, we're not as common because, so to give you a typical story, for example, we do a call for application, we're have five calls for applications going on right now. So if you go to our website, I mean some of them are just ending, but and we're, we, you know, really promote them and so forth, then we do a first vetting and then we start, you know, it's getting to a smaller group and we start meeting all of these companies and start getting to know their management teams, their, their board, the people they impact their clients, we start, we do a level one investment memo, we do a level two. Now, those of you who work in early stage or the stage of missing middle, you know, you say to the entrepreneur, okay, so can you show me your financial projections? And they're like, well, no, okay, can you, you know, can you give me your balance sheet from? Well, you know, so we are, we actually are helping them develop the things we need from them many times at due diligence, which is, you know, an investment of time and energy. And so the same thing. So we're looking at the governance piece, and we're saying, okay, you don't have a board, you don't have an advisory group, you don't have, okay, so you, so let's talk about that, what's your vision for that? And, you know, so part of the due diligence is helping the companies, sort of asking the questions and getting them to commit. And some of it we help them, for example, do you track your impact? No, we don't. Okay, let's see. Okay, how would, what would it take to track your impact, you know, and actually, so due diligence is like, I don't think we're, I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by calling it due diligence, because it's actually doing, doing diligence. So, and so that's what we do, and we were very committed, so our due diligence could take up to four to six months sometimes, right. And so, and I can't just go understand that, you know, they understand that, and they know that we're bringing a lot of value to the companies during that process. And then we take them to an investment committee, and then, you know, the investment committee will ask hard questions and so forth. Warned red flags, yellow flags, and so forth, we go back and do additional due diligence. And then we actually survey their benefit, some of their people, the impact, they, you know, we talk to their great clients, etc., etc. And then we come back, do a more in-depth, and then, finally, they're invited to the portfolio. Once they enter the portfolio, let's say this company, we have outlined everything they need. They need to strengthen their business, you know, their sales. They don't have a salesperson. They only have three clients. They need to help them, you know, with everything I've mentioned, their governance, etc., so we do a plan, an action plan to help them grow, to help them consolidate and grow. And then our team meets with them on a regular basis to help them every other week, actually, to sit down with them and really working with them to do these pieces. Then they also connect them to the co-workers, right? This person needs a coach. They don't know how to delegate, or they don't, you know, they're having a hard time being with leadership skills, or they're having a hard time, you know, even presenting in public. I don't know, whatever it is, we try to give them mentors to help them, and so the mentors will come in. So there's a plan with objectives, with goals, with a PMT, right? We're going to create 20, you know, we're going to create 50 jobs, you're going to create whatever, you know, so all of that. So there's three year projections of what they're going to do, and we're helping them meet those KPIs, both livelihoods and jobs and so forth, as well as green KPIs, we're helping them. And then we're, you know, we're working with them. And then once a year we benchmark them and we sit down and we look at all of our portfolio and we go, how are they doing? Okay, and we use this table called the impact, efficient impact frontier, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's looking at all these variables. Oh, they're doing, you know, they're doing great on the management side, they're improving a lot, they're not moving that much forward on governance less. So it's really hands on and that process. And so then we say, okay, this company needs to continue to work with Nest. And I forgot to say, we also do the investment side. So we want to make sure that they are either getting using the money for working capital, or for investing in infrastructure equipment and so forth. And how is that going? We use something that's really useful. It's called we do, we do milestone investment milestones, or in other words, if you reach 50 people, if you create 50 quality jobs, then you get your next investment. So we do that a lot. And, you know, if you bring a woman into management by year two, you will get an additional investment, you know, and so we're providing, we're creating those, you know, we're doing milestones. I mean, it sounds very simplistic, but it's a dialogue, believe me. And we are not just women led. So after our companies, 65%, 70% have are, you know, have at least one woman on the management team, 30% of our companies have no women on their management team. So we're working with them to get them, you know, to get them to that point. So we're, you know, we're really engaged. And so, you know, and we're talking about what is, you need a sexual harassment policy, or you need a workplace safety policy, you know, so we're working with them very closely, very closely. And so, yeah, yes. Hi, I was directly in India for 17 years, being at social enterprises, a couple years in realized how inefficient we are as an investor community, impact investor community in terms of due diligence. I just want to come back to the due diligence question. There's this presumption we've had that if we're all investing for impact, that we should collaborate on due diligence. But yet when you, so we built a platform to that end, it's like a discovery and a due diligence workflow tool. And that's what we've been working on for the last 18 years, basically. But there's a lot of resistance. Even in investor communities that we all, I mean, you show up to a couple of these, you'll meet your peers and you'll build your network. And even with that knowledge, and even with the personal relationships, do you find that enabling tools that help efficiency of due diligence and that process of appraisal are kind of the road to scaling impact? Do you find that, or do you see it as well, like we have that there's quite a bit of resistance to, oh, no, no, because of the VC mindset, like we're not going to share due diligence. We're, you know, that's proprietary. What is your view or experience of that in the context of, well, that makes submission investing? And if you all want to comment on that, I can. Yeah, we, I mean, we have, we have just started doing impact investing in the climate space. I will say we are, you know, we do talk to our peers and try to, you know, sort of share that due diligence, but you're right. I mean, as much as everyone's collecting the same due diligence related data, nobody likes to share. And, and frankly, I was talking about this with someone earlier today, there is a lot of bias in, you know, the pipeline. We've worked with a couple other organizations that, that target women and women of color led startups. And there's another one that works with women led startups and minority led startups. And there's just so much bias. So part of what we've been supporting them to do is to develop a platform that kind of works the deal flow and anonymizes some of the information so that you're evaluating investment opportunities on an apples to apples scale without sort of understanding, Oh, is it a woman led company? Because then they're asking a lot more questions that takes longer to get through the process. When the process is over and investment is made, it's not on, it's not as much and it's not on as favorable terms. But yeah, it's a, we're not good at collaborating the sector. And I would say that impacts entrepreneurs very much because one of the biggest challenges, you know, they don't, they don't have time to be able to, I mean, they're, they're out solving critical social problems, right? So they don't have time to meet the due diligence of every investor is so obvious, right? Like in the Amazon work, we're, we're, we should be co investing and we should be bringing all the resources and we should be using the same due diligence, all of us sharing it and making decisions. And we do one of the, I have to say, and I think I was sharing this with Sabrina today at lunch, we're talking and I said, I've seen a lot of evolution in the field in the sector, you know, I've been around for a little while. And it makes me very happy that people are talking about blended finance and early stage and missing middle and all those things that we're doing that. But I think that the, the problem we are still very fragmented, right? And the impact of being fragmented, everybody has different interests and everybody has it coming from different, you know, so I'm, I'm, you know, we're this group of stakeholders is doing this because they want to, you know, they want their brand to look better and they want to, you know, make sure that their clients see them as a good brand. Okay, that's what they're coming at. And another group might be coming at that, you know, whatever they have philanthropy dollars and they want to give them away to the best possible way. And there's, you know, there's so everyone has different visions. And but the result of that is that at the end of the day, we're asking our entrepreneurs to try to make sense of this very fragmented sector. And we need, if I would say where our attention should be as a sector in the next five to 10 years is to make it a holistic sector, clear of, you know, share the information, make, you know, be open about sharing, make collaborative decisions together, don't compete. And but more than that, sort of, you know, what is that is the thing, because even as an impact investor, first, I don't know if this happens to those of you who are investors, but we spend a lot of time giving information, right, instead of doing, we should be spending 95% of our time doing and 5% or 10% giving information. But sometimes it's, it feels like it's the opposite. And because everybody's asking for different things in different ways. And, and I don't know, I guess it's a question of trust, right? Like, and what I love, going back to this, and I think we should get more partners that when Cisco supports Nest and when IKEA supports Nest, they don't just support their little program, like not their little program, they're good programs, but their program, they support Nest. And what we're trying to do so that don't fragment us, right? In fact, Cisco takes all of our impact indicators, they take credit for the whole thing. No, but I'm saying it's good, because that way I don't have to say just these are my indicators for this program. It's the whole impact. So those are ways that partners and investors and donors could help by just aligning their, their visions and their expectations and the information sharing. What, what is it? Why can't we share more information? Even with other impact investors sometimes, my goodness, my goodness. Okay. So I think I have a very different take than yours. Okay. What has happened at the last, I have not heard the word competition. I've been on bokeh back and there's got to be competition. Otherwise, competition, I think that what it is, so we might be asked of these companies in a way that maintains a competitive edge. Otherwise, I would say the companies that nest is investing in are they've, they're, they're around still, they're growing. They, I think you have a very low rate of companies that have, you know, gone under, they're continuing to grow and thrive and expand and have offer new, you know, have new offerings. So I think that demonstrates that their, their role in the market. Yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I didn't mean to imply that our companies shouldn't be efficient, effective, have good data and compete, and we're helping them become more competitive. I was looking at more from the sector side on the other side, not from the company side, but more, for example, these are social entrepreneurs and they put a lot of effort into, for example, gathering data, social impact data. Wouldn't it be nice if they could share that among all their investors and not have to cater to each one differently or in the due diligence level? You know, they, they have to do different ways for, for each one because it's opportunity costs for them, you know, when they have to cater to, it's just, it's just, but I was, I was looking at it from a much bigger perspective. I was looking at it from the, the funders and the funding community and the investment community, both on the philanthropic side and the investment side. How can we be better at collaborating? That's, that's what I, what I was trying to say. Yes. I have a question about the, if an entrepreneur actually, a social entrepreneur requires blended finance because of the risk profile, because many, this is where, possibly a lot of people are creating new models there, and there seems to be a disconnect between missing a lot of the collaboration is actually from the investor side, building those blends and understand and I have a financial background, like I think I understand relatively well, and yet still not seeing the players come in and actually from the investor perspective, building out that blend with the entrepreneur versus creating these different vehicles and guidelines for their investment. So are you seeing any progress in that players are coming together to actually build those, that's where I really am seeing. We're not very good at it, honestly. I mean, you know, what we're doing with the Cisco Foundation, with our climate commitment, we, so we started dabbling in, you know, impact investing only 10 years ago with, in the housing sector, with the Housing Trust of Silicon Valley, because we know them, we have a relationship with them. Fast forward, it was literally, you know, 10, 12 years later that we stood up this climate commitment, which is a combination of grants and impact investments and, you know, this blended finance approach. But we talked to other, there just aren't a lot of companies that, you know, they don't want to do it through their balance sheet. And then on the foundation side, they just aren't set up for that. I mean, we frankly, weren't either, we're still kind of learning as we go. But I think we're just not, we're not set up for it. I mean, we have obviously Cisco's got a huge, you know, corporate development department, but they're not investing in this type, you know, that team is investing in technologies that are directly relevant to Cisco. They're not investing in necessarily social entrepreneurs. And so for those of us who are in this kind of CSR space, but want to do impact it, there just aren't a lot of us. No, you're unique, for sure. Yeah. And I have not, no, I haven't seen it that much. I would love to see that. And I would love people because we come in with our tools, but they're not always the right one. And, you know, and then, then you kind of an exactly what you just said. I also would like to see it at the macro level where, you know, corporates bring in this funding and government brings in this funding and, you know, they de-risk a bit and so forth. But you're right, Sheru, entities are sort of, they're siloed, right? I mean, I'm so excited because I mean, even 10 or 15 years ago, it was like, talk to the CSR person, right? And you're like, oh, great. Thanks. Not that we don't love CSR people. But you know what I mean? It wasn't where the deep pockets were, right? That's not where the deep pockets are. So anyway, yeah, we have to do better at that. Yes. Yes, hi. My name is Lina and I do similar work to Nest. We call Angels of Impact in Asia. And one of the things I would like to say is that what you mentioned trust, right, is one of the things that could move us forward in sharing information. I think what I think is needed, at least from the work we've been doing the last seven years, is really looking at it from the entrepreneur perspective. Because if we want to invest in a world, the business as usual is what has caused climate chaos and inequality in the world. So we shouldn't be really repeating the same stories and sort of assuming that corporates, because we have corporate volunteers as well who come in, we actually have a program to decorporate them and really see the world from the social entrepreneur's point of view. And that's part of the advantage they like working with us in that. But it's really a mindset shift. Like if we can trust that these entrepreneurs know their lived experience and their community and are creating the world we need that is more collaborative, more nurturing, more, you know, whatever, then that's where we need to see impact measurements be determined by them, not by us, and success determined by them, not by us, and even terms of financing. But unfortunately, that's what we do. And one more question I had for you is the business model of doing what we do is difficult because we are bearing the cost. And we do exactly like you. We don't call it due diligence. We actually do the work helping them with their books and getting at them. Who pays for this, you know? But anyway, the mindset shift, I think if we can go from seeing the world and investing into the world, indigenous entrepreneurs, for example, right, we don't go in there and tell them this is how you should do this. This is how you do it. No, you don't. We have to learn from that as well. Do you see more of that happening? I would love to know if there's other people out there with this kind of a mindset shift being willing to invest into this. I think it's slow coming in trusting them. We're working a lot with indigenous led enterprises in the Amazon. And, you know, historically, the money has flowed through the big NGOs. That's who's trusted. And now there's a lot of, you know, to speak about, no, no, we need to get the money into the federations, but I don't see it happening yet, right? It's very, and I, you know, it's very, it's very disconcerting, like, you know, so we're actually involved in a new program that is going to support 15 indigenous led enterprises in the Amazon, where we're going to work together. We've been working with them to create the indigenous economy. And with that, you know, they're wanting to create. And actually, it's sort of like the funding came to us to work with them, even though, because we're not a big NGO. So that's the step they were willing to take. I'm being very honest. So, you know, it's a slow incoming, because we're not set up, you know, to, on the other hand, in this conference, have you guys gone to listen to any of the Raven Capital? Yeah, you know, where they're, they have the resources and they're doing it the indigenous way, right, with the indigenous lens. So we can get there, but we kind of moved a little bit faster. Yeah. Yeah, please. I think it's a good point. And we've, you know, we're definitely moving into, if you look at the calls for applications on our website, they have to have a woman in the management team. So, you know, we're definitely moving in that direction. But tell a cooperative, tell them a bunch of cooperative, you can apply to our funding when you have a woman in the board. We need, I hate to say it, but we need to help them figure out how to do that right. It's just, they're not going to do it if you just do it that way. So it's the, we also need to, we need to make the right conversation to the right end group, you know, and we are dealing with, and the cooperatives are a little bit more difficult in the Amazon. They're the indigenous, they're usually led by men, little by little, they're starting to bring women in. So, you know, we want to work in the Amazon and we want to address climate change and we want to work with livelihoods. And we put too many barriers, you're going to be like with five companies. So you have to learn what is the most important thing, you know, at the end of the day to address climate change. And we're trying to sort of build out, help the build these companies to move to a gender inclusive way. And no, not in two years or ten years, I mean, in the short run, like you want to, you're in our portfolio within the first year, we want to see this and this and we're succeeding, especially with the younger leaders of the indigenous, you know, iterations. So, but it is a conversation you have to have. You just make it a requirement, it's more difficult. We started tracking that several years ago, the diversity of the organizations like Nest that we're funding. And so we've been tracking it for, I don't know, I think seven, eight years. And we've seen, and I'm pulling this data because we have a board retreat next week, but we've seen just in the last three years that shift where 75% of the organizations we're supporting have diverse staff and management in leadership. And 92% are diverse from a gender perspective. So either we're getting better at finding partners. I think it's a combination of that, but also the partners we're working with are becoming more, they're becoming more intentional about having female and, you know, ethnic representation. I don't know the details for how IKEA Social Entrepreneurship is working with that exactly. I know that for IKEA in general, we have a commitment to have a 50-50% gender balance in our own organizations. And that means in all the different parts of the organization. So I would presume that they hold the organizations that they're working with at the same standards. So. No, yeah, Nest, don't worry. We're good on that. But it's the companies we're investing in that sometimes. You know, when we became, we are a gender lens investor, we decided not to define it as women led. So the two are different in my view. If you just like, we want to work with companies that have hybrid models also, that have women in the management team, but, you know, that are also working. So that's how we chose to work and define it. Because as I said, we need to make these changes, right? So that's how we approached it. I know we're coming up toward the end. I think, yes, there was one more. Yes, sorry. Yeah, I really resonate with something that you had said. And I think you mentioned at the beginning of this around how co-creation is this word that gets used a lot without a lot of resonance as to what it means. I also think collaboration in and of itself is a term that we have continued to use without a lot of clarity around it needs. And you said, client to agree that we need to see this shift into more collaborative and co-occur ways of being in the next five to 10 years. Where my opinion differs is that if we're still having this conversation 10 years from now, we're too late. And so while one of the things that I'm curious about, and you're talking about this kind of education and support that is necessary, and this desire for kind of multi-stakeholder collaborations is where the ecosystem support and the entrepreneur support organization in your collaborations as conduits and interstitial tissue for helping bring the entrepreneur voice into these conversations early and often. You're saying in our investment process, when do we bring those voices in? Do you do collaborations with ecosystem and entrepreneur support organizations to support in some of that education and assistance rather than having to do it yourself? Yes. Okay. Yes, we, for example, in our gender work, we often work with organizations in the Amazon who are focused very much on gender and understand gender and entrepreneurship. And they come in with their experience, with their skill sets, with their no networks, definitely bring them in. We're working with the indigenous federations very closely. It's hard to work with them because they're very overworked. They have tons going on, but we're helping them to, they created indigenous entrepreneurship committees that are working with us. So we're definitely working with other stakeholders. In the refugee program, we're working with humanitarian organizations as part of making sure that we understand what the humanitarian response is because we're focused on the employment response. So what do they bring to the picture? What do we bring to the picture? So definitely, yes, I would say we're trying to do that. All of that takes time, right? And you have to be willing to invest in that and not work in your silo. And so it is a commitment to doing that and getting consensus around different ways of issues. But definitely I think it's key, it's important. And I too, Resonate, I thought what your point was very much about bringing this, you know, and we've talked about bringing more entrepreneurs onto our investment committees and, you know, trying to bring their voices as well. It's very, it's critical to making these changes. So yes, on any other questions, I think we're almost out of time. I think you answered the question at the beginning that I said, do you want to work, do you want to do in small groups? Or do you want to have an engaged dialogue? I think we opted for the latter by default. It just happened. And I appreciate that. I really want to thank Sheru and Nellie for joining us today. I mean, this was so, this is so wonderful that we've had this opportunity to have this discussion and share. And I hope that you can take some takeaways here. We did talk a little bit about, you know, how can we have, build these partnerships? How can we bring others on board? And it's a process, but having Cisco and IKEA engaged in SoCAP, for example, is critical, right? To have you be sharing what you're doing so that others will follow. And believe me, and this is a very, this is a, this is a kind of partnership that we should have many more of in the future. So I really appreciate you coming here and being very honest and sharing what's being done.