 My name is Penelope Douglas, as I mentioned, and I'm joined here by three really wonderful and I will tell you somewhat loquacious colleagues. So we have about 55 minutes. Do I have a timekeeper anywhere? Is there anyone who can keep track of? Okay. Just be good to help me out if we're getting close to our time because I know we agreed that we'd like to leave about 10 minutes at least for questions and answers at the end. So we're going to try to keep our thoughts so that we can have a chance for that. In any event, I'd like to introduce my colleagues and then I'm going to have them introduce themselves. And just to give you all a little forewarning, given David's talk with us just a minute ago, the extra question that I'm going to ask you to answer as part of your introduction is to tell me your favorite myth or story that you read as a child. I think we all are kind of interested in that as part of thinking about how we're going to build new stories, new models. And I promise that we'd do an icebreaker. So on my immediate left is Juryan Vandertas with the Aga Khan Foundation. He's a deputy director doing socioeconomic development in both Africa and Asia as part of the trust for culture for the Aga Khan Foundation. Next to him is my colleague Nicolas Hazard, who is a senior executive with Group SOS based in Paris, but working all over the world. He's both the vice president for the Group and also CEO of the Comptoir de l'Innovation. And he will tell you about his hybrid organization. And to his left is Jean-Philippe Deschereval, the CEO of Bembu Finance, which is a very successful investor in both microfinance and now launching a $200 million impact investing fund. So gentlemen, I'm going to first ask you each, just going right in order to introduce yourselves and your organization in just one or two minutes, please. And don't forget to tell us your favorite myth or story. Yes, and maybe I should start with the last one. Absolutely. And now you come to think of it, maybe my favorite myth is still something I'd like to keep alive is the moment that my mother told me Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus doesn't really exist. I'm with you. I very much lived in the country where I come from the Netherlands. He has a special status. It's not celebrated Christmas on the 5th of December. And I was pretty convinced after that story, the next thing you would tell me also that God doesn't exist. It's all downhill right now. This is really, come to that point. Regarding the Aga Khan Trust for Culture for which I work, it's part of our larger organization, the Aga Khan Development Network, not so much known as a constellation of different organizations because they go by different brand names. All in all represent about 80,000 people and basically in revenues to the tune of two and a half billion dollars on an annual basis. This network contains a number of activities that are considered the for profit. Maybe there's a segment you could call the not necessarily not for profit and definitely not for profit. So it's a mix in which these different companies includes universities, two universities. It includes airline companies, hotel brands, certainly those are at the for profit side. But again, there are parts of investments in countries where I would normally not make investments. Trust for Culture for which I work and which I hope also discuss the activities that we engage in during the next few days. It's more focused on urban development. Thank you very much. Nicolas. Thank you. I represent a group that is called Group SOS that is a French based and a French social enterprise. It's I think the one of the leading social enterprises in Europe. It's the leader in France. Definitely we developed a model for what we called the rich countries. So the real developed countries where we try to fight every kind of exclusion, meaning health, education, unemployment, housing and so on. By trying to develop activities and social businesses. So we have 44 different kinds of entities throughout France in overseas departments, but also in 30 countries in the world. And the result is after 28 years of existence, we are now 10,000 employees. They are full time employees with an annual turnover of more than 750 million US dollar every year. And that's for the last six and seven years. We had a growth of 25%. And so we try to really to find the best solution and we work with public partners and with private partners. But we really think it's important to have big social enterprises that are able to fight poverty. And we have now just for France an impact on over one million people. So that means that there are more than one million people that everywhere, every year benefit from our services. So we're really proud about that. And we just launched two or three years ago a company that is called CDI, Le Contoir de l'Innovation as you mentioned. That is the investment company of the group because we think it's also important to help the other social enterprises to scale. And for my favorite myth, I think the one that I always loved is the myth of Ulysses. I don't know the name in English, but it's Ulysses in French because it's really this kind of adventure. And I have going for 10 or 20 years everywhere trying to fight all the possible monsters. And sometimes I really have the impression by doing social entrepreneurship that I'm a kind of Ulysses in this world. So I'm really happy to share that with you. Thank you very much. Jean Philippe. Good morning. So I work at Bamboo Finance. Bamboo Finance is a Geneva based asset management company. Today we manage two private equity funds totaling $250 million. We invest in microfinance and other sectors, providing access to low income communities in the world to essential goods and services. I mean affordable housing, healthcare, clean energy, you name it. And we believe that we can combine through our investment social and financial returns. That's really what we really believe in. We're 25 people today, offices in Bogota, Singapore and opening other offices in India and Eastern Africa soon. We come from a tradition of investing in microfinance. I mean, the first company we created was Blue Watered in 2001. Same idea, very focused investments for impact globally. And the last eight, nine years we raised close to a billion dollar that we deployed through probably 250 microfinance banks worldwide, touching indirectly lives of probably, I don't know, 10, 15 million people. We believe in impact investing. We believe in improving people's lives through intelligent investing and generous investing. To come to the story or the myth, it's more a book. Since we were talking about planets at the beginning, I always carry with me the Petit Prince from Saint-Exupéry. I like the idea, you know, the real things that really matter are invisible for the eyes. And you can only understand and live with your heart. So that's what I like about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, we're here actually, the official reason that we're here to talk to you is because these are all organizations that have achieved scale. And just to make a definition of scale that we can all at least speak to for the discussion we're having with you this morning, I think what we'll use is the definition that basically says, you know, that with scale, with growth, the outputs grow and your efficiency grows as well. So I want to make sure we stay true to a real definition of scale as we continue our conversation. We're unbeknownst to all of us, we were unaware that we were going to also be introduced by a discussion by David about the really important idea of thinking about scope as well as scale. And I think the best way to maybe have us all think about that for our brief discussion is to really think about making sure we're solving the problem as opposed to sort of the symptoms and thinking about how we are really building new models. So I'm going to really be asking you to focus on those kinds of answers when I take us through a few questions. And the audience, please think about questions that you have, and we will be sure we have time for you, and I'm looking forward to that as well. The first thing that I wanted to talk about, particularly as we're thinking about building new models, is for me it's really important to know what was the original driving vision or passion. And for one or more of you that may be your own, but for another it may be your original founder for the Aga Khan himself, for example. But I want to ask each of you to answer this for me. I'm going to start actually in reverse order, and Jean-Philippe start with you. And we're going to have to keep our answers succinct, because again I've got lots of questions for you. But what was the original driving passion or vision? What was that model that was in that person's head, yours I think? It was mine. I guess it started through a long education of caring for others. I think it culminated when I was 20 years old, when I spent seven weeks in Calcutta, in Slums. And from that moment on I decided I would do something, one way or another, I didn't know. Then followed the traditional curriculum and then decided after having encountered in Tanzania and Guatemala microcredit, microfinance and what it was doing to people's lives to actually try to do something through microfinance. So the real driving force, the motivation behind the creation of Blue Water at the time and now bamboo, was having an impact on people's lives. That was the objective, that still is the objective and hopefully as many as possible and as efficiently as possible. And then very quickly the idea of the capacity through microfinance to combine traditional mainstream, financial tools and redirect this system to solving world problems, not necessarily challenging the established order, but trying to twist it from inside and redirect the flows of capital to where it's most needed in the world. So that's really what we liked about microfinance and what we're trying to do now with bamboo and private equity. Thank you. Ikula, driving passion, what was the original vision? What was the model that was being built, the problem? It all began actually 28 years ago, so as you can imagine 28 years ago I was at the kindergarten, so I'm not really able to say what was my vision at this time, but the original founder of the... Very precocious. ...of the Group SOS actually, he liked to say that he had no vision. He just saw that there were inequalities, that they were very strong and he wanted, as you mentioned, to do something, but he was not really able to know what he would like to do. But then he came to one problem, there were no structures in the early 80s for drug addicted people, the government, the states, the public sector, they didn't really realize that there were an increasing need for that. So he decided to build the first structure for drug addicted people. And after a while he was working in another space and he was not really interested basically on the social work, but after a while he saw that these drug addicted people, they became, lots of them were HIV positive and there were no structures for HIV positive people. So he decided to set up structures and entities for HIV positive and these HIV positive didn't have houses because they had difficulties to find houses. And then these people didn't have a job and so on. So the approach of Group SOS is really, there is no global vision, it's just because social needs are moving so fast and so quickly, you always have to adapt actually. So you don't necessarily, I think, need a global vision but at the end, from our point of view, we have this integrated approach of exclusion because we know that every single exclusion is a mix of several exclusions. When you have one person, for example, that is unemployed, he's unemployed, maybe because he has also education difficulties, health problems, housing problems and so on. And poverty for lots of people is a vicious circle. And so it's why we decided to do everything, we have more than 40 different departments for 40 different kinds of activities because we know that the phenomena is more complex than just one answer to one question. Thank you. So before Yuri and I turn to you, obviously what we hear here is not that people sort of come wake up one morning and say, my grand vision but rather it's this hunger to solve a problem that you see and then it's a matter of trying to figure out what part of it you might be able to solve to get a little deeper into sort of seeing what aspect of it is solvable for your resources, etc. Yuri and how about the Aga Khan Foundation? Well, the drive behind the Aga Khan developer network, I cannot explain without explaining the Aga Khan in person. And then we have to go back some time because it was not this Aga Khan but the grandfather of this Aga Khan, Sultan Aga Khan, who perhaps already more than 100 years ago started first activities that were very much linked to education and health. And those are carried out predominantly in what was then British India by groups of volunteers. Those institutions still exist and they still run by volunteers so they go back a long, long time. With that, of course, there are also communities of people that came from the Indian subcontinent to East Africa. So also in East Africa, these activities are certainly coming close to 80 years already. So there was a lot of thinking in those terms but this was still at the level of compassion and encouraging people to take their destiny in their own hands but still at the level that's not really understood the way that development is understood today. Over the years that has evolved, it has resulted in a different number of organizations in the network which I mentioned briefly in my introduction with levels of specialization and that still come together for activities that are nowadays in jargon called multiple input area development programs. In other words, for all the capacities that are there within the network are thrown in. My own involvement, if I can just add to that because I'm certainly only came at the later stage is a more traditional way of traveling abroad being impressed by the negatively impressed I should say by the big levels of inequality and finding catching up through various organizations worked for this organization where I thought there was a very healthy way of combining business, sometimes regular business with compassion at the same time. So taking in these different components I felt was the right mix. Before I go to my next question, is there anything else that any of you feel compelled to say that has to do with sort of connecting this idea of scope because next I'm going to sort of talk about how you get to scale. Any burning thoughts or shall we keep our discussion moving? This idea of kind of needing to build a new model, how you came to sort of start these organizations. Your thoughts? Go ahead, Jean-Philippe. Maybe just a quick thought. I mean, recognizing the scope of problems, not to fight symptoms, is of course very important. Yet at the same time, I believe that once you have established your scope and in order to get at least the story of blue orchard and bamboo in order to be very efficient and have impact, you focus. So scope, yes, but then very well defined to your objective and it may appear very limited or very not encompassing. Yes. And maybe what you're delivering is a little piece of a larger problem, but then you deliver it. Whereas if you probably have a tendency of spreading to thin your efforts, you don't get anywhere. You have nice projections or nice presentations. But then how do you get to the heart and how do you get to scope? I understand, yeah. So that's what I wanted to say. I think that's an excellent additional point and actually in my own personal experience, I would say that if I were talking about mistakes I'd made along the way. One of them certainly was trying to develop too many solutions, too many products, too many services because you see so many things to be done. So this idea of scope and then focus in order to start to achieve scale. But scale doesn't just happen. A lot of the work that we do, I don't think actually is scalable. It is our job in this particular panel to talk about how important it is to think about replication, think about new models as opposed to thinking about scale. Our topic is scale. But over the next couple of days I hope that really what will be brought out is a lot of conversation about why scale matters but also why it doesn't matter in some cases. But going on about the question of how to get to scale, we talked to each of us on the phone together. And one of the things that I really want to bring out to this audience is how long it takes before you actually begin to scale. I think often, particularly in certain parts of the world, there are kind of skewed views of how quickly one should get where one's going. And I think actually in this case you're going to start with you because I think the Aga Khan Foundation is a particularly interesting example of living, breathing leadership that's been around for, as you say, over 100 years. Do you know when it was that you felt the organization was really beginning to achieve a type of scale? Like how many years ago or how many years of leadership in the Aga Khan's family that took? I find it difficult to say. Because by and large the activities have been focused on national scale so there would be advances in one country and there's no princes in another country you could not expect to speed up based on the experience you got in the previous country. I think the difficulties that you face in scaling up is that when monies have to be made available they tend to be linked to fashion. And everyone who's worked in development work knows particularly at the political side the electorate is very sensitive, politicians come forward and money is earmarked particularly in countries that have advanced development programs through government sector every decade changes. Activities that are financed through these means that also means that they only run for a particular period of time and they can't outlast your particular original objective. The advantage working for the Aga Khan development network is that it's a bit diverse of fashion because there's one person, court person at home the institutions have been established for long periods of time there are people that tend to stay for long periods so there's institutional memory and once because we are local once you're in a country you're there to stay and that means when you start a project or a program you have an horizon of 30, 40, perhaps 50 years perhaps 100 years or there's not really anything inside that you say well cut it off precisely that doesn't mean I know deliverables they are there but it's important you can keep the course. Very much a long, long view. There's a very, very long term view in that. Nicola, I know when I talk to you you actually could sort of think about it in years a little bit you know when do you think the organization is 25 years old? 28. 28 years old and when along the course of the organization's life do you feel it started to achieve scale? What's actually really interesting is that I think that we didn't scale for 20 years I mean the 21st years were really not very impressive it was like a classical organization and I think that the most difficult part is now over because can you just imagine for 20 years in the 80s and in the 90s speaking about social enterprise we didn't actually spoke about social enterprise because we didn't know the concept actually of the social enterprise but for you know we were working with public clients we had public clients and we had private clients in the meantime for the public sector we were two for-profit companies they said why have you legal status of like kind of NGO because obviously there were no status of social enterprise and then you're like profitable in some way and that's not normal it shouldn't be like this and on the other hand you have the private sector to say but yes okay you say that you're profitable you may be self-sustainable but on the other hand you have a social mission and you're really looking at your impact and so on and you can make more money with your activity so we're not really interested in that so I think that it's important that people like Bill Drayden for Ashoka like the founder of Group SOS like Mohammed Yunus like for years and years and years and it's just not only one year or two years it's 20 years they're really an aga-can obviously but in different ways they really try to develop this concept of social enterprise where after the beginning of this century we're really easier for us and so it's how we achieved to scale because it was more understandable for the private sector and for the public sector what we were doing and that it was possible to have hybrid solutions to fight against poverty and to tackle social issues So we're gonna get to the question that's coming next but one thing that you just heard is that there was probably an opportunity that started to arise to begin to achieve that scale and I want you to talk about that in just a second but Jean-Philippe, how about you? How long did it take you? You can measure in slightly shorter years I think Yes, but we have to put things in perspective But you have to go back to your... Because, yes, starting 2000-2001 we grew to a billion dollars in eight, nine years but two things I'd like to comment there One is it's still peanuts compared to the pools of capital out there So yes, it's scale but it's not scale So let's remain very, very modest about that The second thing is we can only grow as fast as absorption capacity by social entrepreneurs and companies in which we invest That's another very important factor that I hope we can discuss And last but not least, yes, we grew quickly But we have been preceded by decades of charity philanthropic, not-for-profit work preparing the ground for the commercialization of microfinance So it's not that we came in a vacuum and suddenly grew to a billion dollars just like that Many, many international organizations, networks were very active for decades developing microfinance, institutions, environment and then leveling the playing field from World Bank and CGAP, et cetera So there were many success factors surrounding us that were there So yes, we did it in eight, nine years and we're continuing but it was just at a specific point and we were helped by the supportive environment In a way, what you're saying is that without all of those years of enabling microfinance to grow to a scalable point perhaps your model, you wouldn't have even thought made sense Absolutely You really had to wait for that opportunity Go ahead, Nicolas I always compare that like a software thing that you have to reboot It's exactly like this For years and years we had this software with philanthropy and then money-making profit-making and then all these people worked for years and years and years to all the people like Jesus, I mean like going to all the places and try to convince all the people and reboot all the time the software of these people saying there's not only one alternative two choices, it is possible to do it in another way So they were pushing to the button all the time everywhere and for years and years and it's thanks to them that we're now able to scale and to develop and to fight against poverty in this way And if I may, one last point I agree with you One last point is looking at specifically the nine-ten years of Bloorjet Bamboo we started with investors that actually invested just like if they had given a way money so really venture philanthropy angel investing and they were certainly coming at this from impact first rather than finance first type investment The good thing that these people realized is that if they were successful in supporting us we would then develop a model that would attract auto types of capital institutional investing and when we talk about scale I do believe that we talk about attracting really big institutional investing money and it takes time, it takes track record and it takes people coming for impact first and willing to trust you to build a track record so that you get to scale with institutional investors that's our very limited experience Well, so that's a great segue though because one of the things that I really want each of you to address is kind of a combination of something that you just brought up and also this idea about was there an opportunity whether it was externally or internally an opportunity that arose where you had a choice to make that allowed you to scale In other words, was there a specific moment in time or a specific strategic decision or an externality in fact that allowed you to and then the other thing that I want to make sure and talk about is this idea of absorption because it's an extremely important part of the conversation and if we can do a good job of setting that up for the next couple of days I know there are going to be a lot of discussions about sort of the capacity side of this whole new market so any of you who cares to could start by telling me was there a strategic decision an opportunity and externality that really allowed the organization to have this growth this efficient growth, this sort of opportunity to scale Jordan? One important element I'd like to mention for the Iyaka Khan Development Network was the opportunity that arose in the north of Pakistan in the early 1980s when particularly in rural development when new approaches have pioneered since the independence of Bangladesh a number of schools of thought have come out and a large number of the organization of Dr. Yunus was mentioned earlier, the Grand Mimang Prach there has been a number of approaches in order to kick start development and find how you could scale that up the experience of Iyaka Khan in the north was through productive investments and productive physical infrastructure these provided opportunities for village communities rather than go through a lengthy process of conscientization to almost immediately start and say well we have an idea we want an excess road we want an irrigation channel we want something very solid and very concrete that could be provided as a ground on a first time basis but the second time it wouldn't come as a ground anymore so by doing so you could very quickly scale up and that concept has since been replicated in other countries with equal levels of success but in varying circumstances and we have it at Trust for Culture where I work also introduced it in the urban environment and that first started with but that would be too long to explain now would be with a large involvement in Cairo that's a great example though I mean so you were able to take advantage of a situation to start to build real infrastructure and then you could replicate that in other developing countries we actually at the beginning of the 2000 we were only 500 people we're now 10,000 people so it's quite impressive and if I were like at the Oscar ceremony I would thank a lot of people and first of all I would thank the European Union for having such a conservative and a market-based policy I want to thank the financial word for putting us in such a mess I would like to thank the state that has been unable, the French state to modify its system and to make it more sustainable for the social challenges and so on so actually we're not responsible for all that but it was just an opportunity without being cynical it's just to say that obviously the situation we're in a very bad situation in France but in continental Europe more generally and the indebtment rates of the states are very very high and we really, and that's on the one hand on the other hand we really like our social welfare model and we want to bring it forward because we elected someone two days ago it's to continue that but we have to reinvent this model actually because we don't have the means and the financial means to continue with that so what we try to do with the social enterprises for the state and for the public sector a very good opportunity to complement the existing framework of what exists to fight against poverty without the means they had decades ago and so the opportunity is the economy this new model to really take off in the interest of making sure we have enough time for all my questions how about if I ask you to take on this issue of absorption since you raised it a minute ago can you talk a little more about that very simple, I mean we're just an intermediary we're just hopefully an efficient intermediary between people willing to invest money and people borrowing or taking that money in their capital to grow we quickly realized that you can only channel as much money as you can possibly absorb reasonably at a pace that allows you as a company on the ground to okay, grow quickly that's alright, but grow well respecting, well first of all your clients and your customers all your stakeholders and not putting a threat or at risk the very idea that you're pursuing by too fast a growth by weak governance, by weak management of information etc and we've seen some problems in microfinance recently that are I think examples of probably too fast a growth in some countries in some instances so yes, if you ask me impact investing is a great future but I don't see quite there yet the trillion dollar or the 500 billion dollar at base of pyramid potentially probably but when I look around I don't see 500 billion dollars worth of potential investments tomorrow and I suspect that much more entrepreneurial angel investing venture we'll have to go into impact investing before intermediaries like us mostly targeting growth stage private equity we'll be able to find the opportunity I think it's growing yet I would and there's probably a lot of interesting discussion that will take place about those who believe that it's just a matter of finding those great deals and those who perhaps like you and I perhaps because I would say I'm slightly biased to thinking that we don't quite have the capacity yet for the absorption side of this model although I'm very optimistic about it and I think that this creative tension sort of is is actually quite good because it's really what we need to focus on in order to grow this market the one thing and then quickly passed the one thing is though if in the next two three four years we're capable of spotting the right disruptive business models in different sectors then replication could accelerate the growth and I'm not saying it's the same approach in every geography or in every market yet you know companies will have tested ways of bringing basic services to the right price point managing growth managing distribution and then I think you'll see an exponential growth but it's not there yet and I happen to know that our group here for the next couple of days has a large number of social entrepreneurs in the mix and so it's one of the reasons that I really wanted to make sure to draw out the entrepreneur sort of capacity side you have 30 seconds for this because I have a very important question I want to ask before we run out of our time yeah I just wanted to add something about that obviously I'm always quite afraid when I see that there are lots of intermediaries sorry but the and and I don't see lots of social enterprises and I think that we really have in the future to focus on that and to really to insist on that because it's very difficult for a social enterprise to develop to scale and so on and so we're thinking a lot about the market how we build the market and so on that's very important I totally agree but we have to find these entrepreneurs and all these people as well that are entrepreneurs but that don't know that they are social entrepreneurs and we have lots of them and actually our deal flow for our investments comes a lot from these people who are building absolutely huge things but they're not in the for us in France in the Parisian world where we speak a lot about social enterprises and we love social enterprises because they are changed the world but there are lots of people everywhere in France doing great things well this is actually also a good segue because but I wanted to be sure to draw out from each of you and we talked about this before our panel today is to me it's always really important to sort of identify also what didn't go well like what was a big disappointment that you learned something very important from or what was an experience you want to be sure that you don't duplicate something that you could share that would either shorten others you know curve to their scalable opportunity or just a really important opportunity for yourself and your organization to learn from a mistake or disappointment. Yuryun, do you have one that comes to me the other way? I can point at five or six if necessary. No, what I really mean to say in general is that the environment in which you work and you don't have that at hand there are so many ways to decide things. If I look at the trust for culture that we work we have projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria Egypt and Mali and Kenya recently I said well Syria is really in trouble things are on hold at present Egypt is difficult thank god we got Mali. Now look what happened in Mali right at Kudeta how can you ensure that you can continue activities one way or the other or at least scale them down to the level that they can be picked up again at one point that's something you have to take into account. Well to sort of if you need to just sort of say this is not a place where we can actively work right now but we can stay here and we can reactivate. We actually had the biggest problem is not in terms of business I think because we were we had the chance to be quite successful for that but it was more in terms of human resources and it's actually fundamental because I think it's the most important thing for an enterprise for every enterprise and for social enterprises it is even more important and we had we faced actually during our scaling up phase we faced actually lots of problems of the people that they were at the real beginning of the enterprise and they that don't recognize themselves in this new model in this big corporation they were quite afraid about that they say small is beautiful you're becoming big, you're becoming evil it's kind of things even if it's not that simple but and so we had this problem with all these people we haven't been able for lots of them to convince them that it was a good thing for us to scale to become bigger because we could have a better impact a greater impact on the population on the people and we haven't been really able to bring them into this project and they didn't really understand why we should become bigger and bigger and so on and develop the activity and I think that the human resource for scaling up is absolutely fundamental because they are the pillar of the company that's really, really an interesting point I'm afraid I have to repeat what he just said usually I don't do that but I totally, totally relate to that I guess the single most important key success factor would be and quality of people that you have around you and working that at least in our activity that makes 95% of success and as we grow we have increasingly this natural tension between the investing profiles and the passionate social entrepreneurship profiles and we have to strike the right combination in the team and in our investment committees by the way so that we work this fine line of dual returns and that's a challenge, that's a very important challenge and that happens at the level of team investment committees, governance and I'll stop there as we said to one another I definitely identify with that issue and I think probably each of you sit in positions of leadership where your ability to walk that line gracefully and impart that every day to your talented team becomes almost the entire job you know it's for you to really embody that every single day and in essence it's almost like you're recruiting every day even if you're not actually actively hiring somebody so it's a really, really important point I was told that we have a little more time and so I have a chance to ask you each to sort of comment on one other aspect of this topic which is essentially is there ever been a point in time when the external environment sort of turned against you in other words for success instead of breeding kind of the accolades of those that supported you for the first years or who were part of your enabling process for example in your case JP you know was there a point along the way where any of you can remember that actually part of the external environment gave you a shock you know there was a sudden shift perhaps because you were successful in fact or possibly because there was a new trust issue anything like that that has been part of your growth there are things that could be on the horizon I cannot, the way I'm thinking particularly about the urban renovation projects that we do we work for public private partnerships and it tends to be for periods of 25 years when you come to such an agreement you're pretty certain at least we feel certain that we can negotiate up to a certain level and generally speaking then if people have little particular local governments little faith that these will be profitable in the end if the project is being returned for other purposes they tend to be lenient but of course if they become successful then once the lease is over they certainly would like to renegotiate in a different way where they want to take a larger share we would say well anything that is there in excess is to be used for socio-economic development for continuous can we be sure the government does that we don't really know so there's an inherent risk at that you would like to grow you like to grow up a certain level if you go way beyond that you're facing a different partner I think that's exactly the kind of I thought I was having was that if we can bring out some of those situations I think those are really important to kind of share and no surprise to me that you would be thinking way ahead about we're in particularly in developing countries that could be a completely different partner tomorrow than it is today I had the we had that actually during our scaling up we faced lots of difficulties especially with the external world because I think that at a certain point people really began to hate us I don't know why but it was really really difficult they were really critical about what we did because it was not on their software actually and it was not possible to be a commercial enterprise and to be big and so it's and because we have lots of media opportunities we do lots of things and we explain our job and we try to but people are so skeptical I don't know if it's linked to to friends or to Latin countries I don't know what but we had really we faced lots of difficulties with that we had very in the magazines and so on they were always skeptical about our model and they were always trying to know where is the money hiding that's one part so in the garden somewhere or if the money comes from the drugs or from you know and so that has been really difficult and I think that we made a mistake for that is that we didn't communicate at the really beginning enough so we didn't explain the model that we set up why we did things like this how it works and so on and we were just thinking we're doing our job we're focused on our social impact and our financial impact but mainly on our social impact so we try to grow with this difficult to scale up and we have you really in your thing and it's your focus on what you do and so when you don't speak lots of people they become jealous and they wondering and they have and they like to invent like beautiful stories and things like this and that's a real problem and so I think you have to master your communication it's really really important it's what we try to do because I think it's the same we discovered his Highness Aga Khan just one year ago we had the chance to meet him and we didn't even know about that because we were in we were in our world and it was not important so it's interesting for us also to go outside go abroad to see what happens another important point I think so many of us get occupied in being such practitioners that you sometimes forget that it's important to keep telling your story and then also to make sure that your own network you know is always sort of looking out a little bit well impact from the environment or external world it's almost every day for us because again we're intermediaries and we talk to investors and the financial world so whatever happens in the financial world one way or another impacts us right so for instance 2005 2006 we were very happy and actually proud to have developed the first CDO in microfinance structured finance products in microfinance we had sort of educated S&P on microfinance and got the first rating ever in microfinance we had Morgan Stanley structuring this product 2008 you know housing crisis in the US and CDO became a bad word right so difficult even though you're not related to the type of movements that happen in the market you are assimilated because you use the same instrument okay that was one of course now investors most of them actually start sitting on their cash you're frustrated the other way we're willing to fundraise we're saying that we have investment capacity that we have dual returns track record that we can put this money to work efficiently that we can get the returns that they're willing most of them would say too good to be true let's see in a couple of years right you know go ahead no worry go ahead in the meantime so that's tough very difficult today's difficult environment difficult I think we have about ten minutes left is that what the signal was five minutes so we have time for questions and if it's alright with all of you I think it would be great to turn to questions and see if there are some from the audience and we have very bright lights here so we may not see all of you so wave your hand around you right there with the hand waving the blonde hair I think thank you oh the runner thank you very much Hi my name is Bruce Wilson I came out here from California and my question is for Nikola and John Philippe you talked about intermediary organizations and you were worried about that and then there's the absorption issue what pragmatic steps are you sort of taking to create those strategic partnerships where you can source those entrepreneurs or are you and have you considered that option well you see when we started bamboo five years ago I'll be very honest with you I at least had no clue about where we would put this money to work and how we didn't know whether we would do debt or private equity on benzene we didn't know whether we would do venture early stage seed growth over time since we're in intermediary and we want the whole value chain to be sustainable we have to be sustainable as well and as intermediaries we can only be sustainable if we are in the growth stage private equity segment I cannot run an asset management company for profit with zero subsidies from the start on a very lean budget if I do pure venture on a global scale from Geneva, Luxembourg, Bogota or Singapore we need to decentralize so to answer your question any time well investing the deals is sort of easy now we have like five or six hundred you know solicitations per year coming at us and we of course depending on our criteria we select and we funnel very drastically what we're trying to do now is to have partners sister organizations to which we can send those applicants that do not qualify for the growth stage so that they would get help in terms of early stage seed we're not capable yet at Dambu to answer early stage needs the one thing we are willing to experiment right now and we're building that right now actually is the local venture fund we're willing to launch one in Colombia in the next few months and one thing we're trying to do there is to say okay if we cannot do it from Geneva on a global scale venture maybe we can have local resources at a much lower scale much lower cost and at earlier stage for the pipeline that we can then invest and then eventually possibly graduating growth stage private equity from the global funds it's going to take a long time for entrepreneurs to other organizations that's what we're trying to do so it sounds like your question and Jean-Philippe's answer are slightly different but what it sounds like is that you have a pipeline for the later stage deals that you're looking for you have plenty you're always in the process of finding the one you'll actually invest in but what you're trying to do is a little bit the reverse which is feed the venture and seed stage investors some of those deals that come to you that aren't aren't right for you quick and we'll probably quick we also want to have time for any more questions so my answer is quite the same but it's just to say that we're beside our activity of social enterprise we set up this impact investing fund and we are on the growth stage as well but to find the and we're now launching one for example in Korea and in Japan because there's the social business are developing everywhere and there are opportunities everywhere I don't really have this problem of the deal of flow I don't know why but I cannot explain it but maybe because I think that we have a really open vision of what a social or enterprise is all the different possibilities and you have all the time you need to find your pipeline to speak with the right person for example in French in France the network is definitely the big associations and the big NGOs they know each other they know all the people they know the situation and so they bring the deal when you go to Korea for example you have to speak with the government because all the social enterprises are listed and there is a strong there are tax incentives for social enterprises in Korea and it's the same in Japan so all the government and the ministry of economy he knows exactly where the social enterprises are so in every country you have a different way of sourcing social enterprises but we have lots of opportunities we're going to go to one more question but I think this is a really important again kind of a creative tension between one point of view which is how can investors do more to make sure that we the entrepreneurs are fed into a pipeline and often from the investors side particularly for those investing in later stage the answer is well we have this pipeline it's no longer a problem to have the pipeline our problem is we have to filter the pipeline and so you know it's very interesting there's a reason that that question is out there and we need to keep trying to discuss it I think and find the answers that because I think they're both issues and they're just different one more question that's fine and I'd love to take more but I think we only have time for one thank you Hi I'm Nihar I work with a media company in India that's where I come from I hear two things here one being that there are two people before there were people doing business and there were people doing NGO and now we're talking about a middle ground where it merges and I also hear John saying that it's still not even the tip of the iceberg because we haven't touched enough I just want if each one of you can tell if you've worked with any existing companies or NGOs which are huge but created and help them become social enterprise and measure beyond money and they already exist as huge organizations and companies could be purely capitalistic or business but are there examples in your areas of work where you've picked up something from the past and they've existed for 50 60 70 years and then help them measure more and have a massive impact so if I got the question right I think I did it's have any of you experienced sort of looking at an institution that's probably been around for a while that is just it's an enterprise in country wherever that is but it become more aware of its social impact and really turned it into a social enterprise very interesting because it's exactly what I did last week in Korea because we the big corporation, the big Korean corporation like Samsung, SK Hyundai and so on they want to turn into the social enterprise kind of thing and there are strong incentive from the government actually to do so so it's because certainly communication things they want to set up social enterprise so they identified us as a model of social enterprise in rich and developed countries so they ask us to come to Korea to one set up social enterprise and two to measure their social impact and it's really funny because we're now trying to make a proposition for them like they're huge companies like they really conglomerate so it's really difficult to measure the social impact and they have no social impact I mean at the end but you know it's always difficult to the concept of social impact is very complicated because you have this SRI thing of social responsible enterprises and then you have the social impact and then you're speaking about two very different things and in lots of countries and lots of places and for lots of company they always they mix it up and they think it's quite the same even if it's not the same but so you what we try to explain to them is to say you can do SRI that's fine you can be listed for that that's a good thing that's a good first step but if you really want to have a social impact and to go further on that like Danoni Veolia and other lots of companies you have to set up your own social enterprise department so it's what we try to do and to push them to do so very quickly two things one is very very quickly one is it really depends on your definition of social enterprise and what you're trying to achieve right we come at impact investing with a very specific definition we our investment universe are those companies whose intrinsic business model is to deliver this good or this service right so it's not something they do on the side it's peripheral so that's one thing the other is though to answer the question we are now working with a great company in South Africa in the managed care business that was actually quite significant but Target is essentially the middle income segment and we have invested in this company because they have strategically decided to go to the lower income segment but doing what they do and bringing it out and very efficiently that's I think something that could also accelerate impact that's a great example I think unless you want Rosalie personally to come get us you probably have you probably have a very brief answer I have to refer to the Aga Khan fund for economic development but accountless examples but I could think about utility companies such as in Ajudi Mali I could think about the bean processing plant in Kenya sometimes they are started up by themselves some of the existing entities which there is sometimes some collaboration and they are left to themselves again thank you because I think you do have some very clear examples in the foundation I want to thank my colleagues for a terrific way of starting the morning and thank all of you and I'm sorry we didn't have time for more questions but thank you very much gentlemen