 Hello, my name is Mike Ravenscroft and I work at the PeaceTech Accelerator here in Washington, DC. The PeaceTech Accelerator mentors, incubates, and supports entrepreneurs who have created innovative technologies that prevent conflicts and promote stability and peace. I'm thrilled to get to host today's GIST Tech Connect, turning a profit while doing good. Today's web chat is all about social entrepreneurship. You're going to hear from a group of diverse and experienced entrepreneurs talk about their experiences running and being part of the businesses that they have founded that are focused on both earning a profit and helping their communities. We really want to know your thoughts and take your questions during the program. So please ask your questions in the chat space next to the video player or on Twitter using the hashtag GIST Tech Connect. To all the viewing groups joining us, an extra special welcome, please send us your pictures by email or Twitter using the GIST Tech Connect hashtag. I'd like to begin by welcoming our panel of experts. Fanta Gilliam is founder and CEO of SUSU. SUSU modernizes traditional savings and loan models found in cultures around the world. It is a crowdsourced banking community that allows people to build credit and wealth together, taking turns paying in and cashing out of the system. Thank you for joining us, Fanta. Thank you. We're also joined by Gideon Taube, founder and CEO of Pinkaloo Technologies. Pinkaloo uses Fintech to modernize and increase charitable giving for businesses and employees. Thank you so much, Gideon, for joining us. We're also joined from farther afield by Leila Akele, co-founder and chief operating officer of Red Crow. Leila's company helps other companies operate in high risk environments using an application that detects and minimizes risks. The application makes communities safer while providing job opportunities for work that would otherwise be too dangerous. Thanks so much for joining us, Leila. Thank you for having me. And thank you all for joining me again today. I'd like to start off the discussion by asking what social entrepreneurship is and what it means to our panel of entrepreneurs in two sentences or less. So, Gideon, why don't you kick it off? Awesome. Thanks for having me, Mike. You know, I think social entrepreneurship can mean a few different things to a few different groups and I think we'll really get into that today. But for me, it really boils down to one, solving a problem and creating value and through that generating profit. And at the same time, making an impact in the communities that you serve and that you operate in so that it's a win-win both for owners of the company or shareholders, but also for the communities that the company works in. Fantastic. Thank you. Leila. Yeah, I think it's about finding a way to address an issue that your community or society suffers from while including them and the solution. Having the contribution of the individuals that you're serving helps establish a sense of belonging and helps make the change from within the community itself. Fantastic. Thank you. And Fanta, how about you? You know, I've always liked the quote, doing well by doing good. And we really tried to embed that mantra into our business model. And what I mean by that is almost having a double bottom line in the sense that we definitely try to build a strong business that can generate a return on investments. But also focusing on products and services that empower the people and the communities that we serve. Fantastic. And Fanta, why don't you talk a little bit about how Susu, about Susu and the impact you seek to make on the communities that you work with. So Susu is a saving and credit building tool that banks, people, organizations, clubs can offer their members and their customers. It's inspired by a community banking model that's really existed for centuries. So if you're from West Africa or the Caribbean, you might use the word Susu. But if you're from the Middle East, you might be more familiar with the term Kamaya. If you're from Latin America or Mexico, you might say Tanda. But really, people have been using informal lending circles, savings and loan models for centuries. So with Susu, what we aim to do is modernize that with tech. And so we've developed a really easy to use tool that you can download on your phone or on a website. Join a community of people in a community loan fund based on your financial goals or your affiliation. And in that, we help you to save more and are interested in your savings. You can request a loan from the community loan fund and we also help you build a strong credit score. And when the time is right, we connect you to local banks. Fantastic. Thanks for that credit explanation. So Leila, your chief operating officer and co-founder of a company called Red Crow. Can you briefly explain what Red Crow does and how it seeks to positively impact the communities that you're operating in? Yeah. Well, as you mentioned, I mean, we live in the Middle East and it's a particularly hostile environment. We moved from one ward to another and the idea came after the Egyptian Arab Spring, where a lot of people had to run into several issues that otherwise for people that are online, monitoring the situation already know what is happening. So using that concept, we created a platform and a mobile app that provides real-time intelligence regarding physical security threats for people and organizations operating in volatile environments. We do that by gathering information from the open source like social media, RSS feed and others as well as crowdsourcing. And by that, we are able to provide critical information that helps save lives and business continuity in volatile environments. Fantastic. Thanks so much. So Gideon, Pinkaloo Technologies helps individuals and corporations manage their charitable giving and donations. I wonder if you could sort of explain what the problem was that you sought to solve by starting the business and what the impact is that you sought to have or are seeking to have around the world with Pinkaloo. Yeah, definitely. So in my case, prior to founding Pinkaloo, I was working at a for-profit tech company, making a pretty good salary and realized right around two years ago that I just had not been nearly as generous as I wanted to be based on who I thought I was, based on what I was earning, based on how I wanted to be giving back in the community and specifically financially. And so really, as I sought to figure out why that was, I realized that I didn't have the right tools to budget for my charitable giving. I didn't have the right tools to find organizations and in particular local organizations that matched my passions and matched my values that I wanted to be supporting. And so in the US, you know, we've seen a proliferation of different kinds of financial tools like a health savings account to help budget for and pay for health related costs, as well as for retirement, as well as for education. And I thought, we need a similar solution like that in order to help individuals be more engaged with their philanthropy and be giving back more proactively, as opposed to reactively. And so that was the initial problem I sought to solve for myself and for peers that bringing it back to the conversation today, obviously for it to be a successful business, we needed to have a clear business model. And so as we looked at the opportunities there, we realized that there was a tremendous opportunity to be partnering with companies and to be partnering with banks to allow them to bring this product to their employees and to their banking customers so that they could both amplify the impact as well as provide this awesome tool to their stakeholders. So the problem, you know, initially very much was about solving something that that I and others like myself faced, but to turn into a business realized there was an opportunity to embrace corporate partners and have them help sponsor the product. Fantastic. For those of you who are just joining us, we are talking today about social entrepreneurship, how to make a profit while also making a positive impact on your community. Our expert panel of entrepreneurs is sharing their stories and insights today. I know there are questions coming in from our online viewers, but before we take any outside questions, I'd just like to ask Gideon, you often say that there are three different ways that companies can relate social impact to their businesses. So I was wondering if you can elaborate on that. Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I was at a previously at a tech company that really was not in the social impact space at all. And so as we were figuring out how to turn this into a business, we went to a handful of different events and I felt like there was a lot of different definitions of impact investments or of social entrepreneurs or of impact entrepreneurs. And it was a little overwhelming and a little bit confusing. And so essentially, I looked at the different kinds of companies that people were pointing at or highlighting as successes and sought to figure out, you know, other a couple different flavors that that make sense to me. And so I wanted to share those for a moment. And so the first group I think of is organizations that have dedicated themselves to taking a share of their profits and making an impact with that. So that can be organizations like Tom's who sell shoes. And then for every pair that somebody buys, they donate a pair to somebody in need or Warby Parker, who does the same with with I wear or even a brand like Ben and Jerry's who sells ice creams but has dedicated themselves to giving back to farming communities. And a lot of charitable charitable work around that. So I see that as one flavor organizations who take a share a portion of their profits and give it back. But it's core to their DNA and consumers and customers really know that as part of buying from them, a share of what they're spending is going to be giving back a second flavor that we often see. And this is probably what our company fits is organizations that are helping more dollars move to philanthropy and move to charity, whether that's organizations like ourselves or fundraising organizations that are helping these organizations more effectively operate or more effectively fundraise and examples. There go fund me obviously has been tremendously successful over the last 10 years. We're even seeing Facebook now get into charitable giving campaigns within the giving feed or an organization like classy, which is doing amazing work with helping charities fundraise. And so I see that being a second group where they're helping charitable organizations be more efficient and more effective. And then the third flavor, which it seems like both of these women's organizations fall into our groups where giving back is core to their DNA and core to their service and core to their product in and of itself. And so in that case, the product makes an amazing impact in the communities like Layla was mentioning earlier, but also they are generating a profit. And so, you know, well known examples there can include Tesla, who obviously are delivering an amazing vehicle, but at the same time reducing carbon emissions and reducing reliance on gas. So, you know, those are sort of three flavors that I think is a useful framework to think about things as you figure out what kind of impact is my organization going to have and how do we want to build it into our business model and into our core DNA. Absolutely. And thank you all for your very insightful answers to all those questions. It's fantastic. And now let's take some questions that are coming in from our online viewers. And so the first question you've got, what are your thoughts on finding a balance between earning a profit while seeking to be a positive impact on your communities? So Fonta, why don't we start with you on this question? No, sure. I think that's a great question actually. It's something that, you know, we definitely struggle with as a startup because the reality is sometimes when you are very focused on not just making money but helping people, particularly in underserved communities or in privileged communities, it can be a lot harder. Then it would be if I was just concerned with money alone. And so some of the things that we've tried to do to kind of maintain that balance is, one, embed our social mission into our business model. And I talked about how we use our double bottom line to do that. Two, we are very proactive around working with partners that have the same mission, customers that have the same mission. And so that helps us to not only amplify our efforts but to create a like-minded ecosystem that we can do business within. And that can help you to stay true to your mission as well. You know, and I guess the last piece is, you know, there's always ups and downs in what you can do and what you can't do. And I think that as long as you kind of keep your vision on, is this helping people? Is it empowering people? You can kind of make sure that you maintain the balance effectively. That's fantastic. That's a great answer. Alright, so the next question we've got from one of our viewing communities. How do you develop an inclusive, participative model combining a profit model and a social impact model? So Leila, this actually might be a great question for you based on what your company does. Would you like to take it away? I'm sorry. Can you hear me now? Yep. All good. Actually, this fits perfectly to what we do as when we first started collecting the information, we did it from one side where we had listened to what people are talking on the internet. And then we realized that people are getting more engaged and giving us their feedback about what is happening and even if they're doing that on back channels. And we realized how the communities are always eager to join in to make changes, better changes into their communities. And that's when we had opened the channel of having people report their own incidents or anything that they face. So that kind of creates a community where people want to protect each other, even if they don't know each other or they don't know the areas that they are working with or they're operating in. And having a model where, and I think I've talked about this before, having a model where you can have the community join in on the change is one of the greatest models I've seen because it brings all the community together. And you can see the changes as it happens positively and negatively negatively and you can edit as well as you go. That's fantastic. And actually very similar to Fanta, I think your business model as well. Okay, so we have a question for Gideon from Lena. This is a great question because it's a question about difficulties. So what are the difficulties, if any, that your fintech company faced when partnering with banks? Get in. Yeah, no shortage of difficulties in general, but specific to banks. This is a good one. I think there's two difficulties as entrepreneurs and as founders that I would think are worth highlighting. One is just really long sales cycles. And so banks can be very slow to adopt new technology. And for us, we need to be moving quickly so that we can be showing revenue so that we can be driving profits. And so that's just, I think, a natural for any company regardless of whether you're a social entrepreneur or not when you're faced with partnering with banks is it's going to be slow. There's going to be a lot of compliance, regulation, due diligence, all of that stuff that I think is worth highlighting. Secondly, specific to a product like ours, at the end of the day, banks aren't themselves impact businesses. They're really about driving a bottom line. So for us, we learned pretty early on that we need to be framing the value of our solution to them in terms of key metrics and key KPIs that they really care about, which is more customers, longer relationships with their customers, and ultimately more profits and more services that they're providing to their customers. And so learning that for us, thankfully, we did a lot of customer discovery. We're happy to spend a few minutes talking about that if it would be worthwhile. We can come back to it. But a lot of time just having candid conversations with banks to understand what those key metrics are so that we could figure out how our solution can help them achieve that. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, for somebody to sign on and be that first customer or first handful of customers, they're taking a bit of a risk. They're putting their reputation on the line. The more confidence you can give them around, hey, this is going to be a win for you. This is going to help you meet your goals the better. And so specifically, in our case, we really wanted them to understand that this charitable giving account product that we have that they can then offer to their customers is like a new banking product, just like the customer opening a new credit card or a new savings account or a new checking account. And right now in the US, there's one bank, Wells Fargo, that has had a lot of news time around this issue very much. And so for a lot of banks helping them understand, hey, here's a great, legitimate, valuable product has helped that story. But ultimately, understanding those key metrics and being able to frame the benefit through that has been something that took longer than I would have liked. But thankfully, we've overcome that to some extent. I appreciate you sharing that. And actually, Fanta, I wonder if you might want to answer that very quickly as well, because given that you are also selling to banks, might have been interesting in perspective. Yeah, yeah. So we've run into some similar challenges as well. I mean, this sounds like what can be difficult. And I think one thing that we've tried to do is really focus on what type of bank is most interested in this service. And sometimes, you know, the larger banks can be great if it's a potential customer, but they can be very, you know, owners to work with. And so we've also gone after smaller banks, community banks, those financial institutions that often kind of get overlooked because they're smaller and service more niche communities. But in my experience, they have a huge need for what we're trying to offer, you know, helping people save and build credit scores so they can actually be approved for formal loans. And so that's a push that we've taken as well. So not only I know it's, you know, sexy to go after the big banks, but, you know, the smaller guys can be great partners as well. And they move faster. Right. And potentially early adopters. Exactly. All right. So our next question that we've just received. What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's making an impact, but struggling to generate a profit at a sustainable rate? And I feel like this is a question you could ask pretty much any entrepreneur in the world. But, but Leila, why don't you, why don't you take this? What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's seeking to both make an impact but also struggling to generate a sustainable profit? I would advise them to get out of their comfort zone. When we first, especially for social entrepreneurs, we tend to always, and I'll be talking about that soon also, we always tend to stay within our circles, talk to people that understand our mission people in our community. And we find it difficult to get out of that breakout and venture into people that don't know what the market is don't understand the problem or the solution very well. So I advise them to go into these communities, people who may affect a bigger change by just spreading the word and these are usually people where you, you have to talk to them differently because they don't really understand the whole picture they don't know what the problem you're talking about. When we were talking about to, for instance, investors or affiliates that don't live in the Middle East, so they didn't have a lot of experience about what it means to operate in the Middle East or in war torn areas. So taking that step and talking to them introducing them to the problem and to the solution opened a lot of doors that we haven't thought about before. So it's also it gives you an idea of what other people are talking about or how they're thinking when they look at the problem from a different point of view. That's a terrific answer, and very similar to the lean startup get out of the building approach, the traditional get out of the building approach. Thanks Leila. Okay, so another question we just received. Which approach would you advise an aspiring entrepreneur to use when establishing his or her business plan? And the second part of the question, should they be leading with how to make the biggest impact or how to ensure financial sustainability? So this is a fantastic question. Fonte, I wonder if you'd like to take a shot. Yeah, I gotta be honest. When you're a social enterprise, you're running a business first and foremost. And you're not a non-profit because if you were, you'd be doing more on the charitable side, the philanthropic side. And because you take this approach of running a business, you really do have to leave with the financial viability, how you're going to generate revenue. Because at the core, you're a business. Now, there are ways to make sure that you maintain that social impact. But I think that to be quite candid with you, when you're talking to investors, when you're talking to potential customers, you have to be able to show how you're a business first. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think sometimes for-profits get a bad name because of some bad apples in the past and various reasons. But you can run a successful business and create good impact. But you do have to focus on the business model because if you don't, you run the risk of not being able to maintain your business or track the investment you need to grow or scale. And then you're not helping anybody. Absolutely. Gideon, I wonder if you have anything to add there. No, I mean, I think that that's a fantastic answer. I think coming back to one of the points Fanta made earlier too, aligning yourself with customers or with investors who have an aligned vision and have an aligned view of where you want to take this thing. Can also significantly help, right? So, you know, obviously every business is different. In our case, we have outside investors. Not every company has that or needs that. But, you know, in the case where you are working with investors, just making sure that there is alignment there can be a big piece of it. And even coming back to the examples I had before around the different kinds of ways companies can make impact, right? In the case of that first group who are donating a portion of their profits, right? They have a much more granular control over, okay, for this year we're going to donate 5% of our profits next year of 10%. And they can control a little bit more in terms of ramping up or maybe pulling back on their impact as well. Versus when it's more just inherently built into your model like some of the other examples. And really at that point it's more about how do you price it and how do you bring partners on board that will allow it to be profitable so that you can make that impact. But I think, you know, to your last point around if you go out of business and you're not making any impact at all, then, you know, that's 100% is zero is zero. So, you know, first and foremost make sure that you can be around for the long haul and then after that seek to optimize, maximizing impact given expectations of customers, investors, all of those folks. Well, and assuming it's built into the business model, if the business thrives then the impact would thrive as well. A viewer at the Walt Whitman American Center in Guatemala City asks us, in your experience, what are the most innovative ways in which social enterprises around the world have overcome the barriers to accessing capital. Fantastic question. So, Leila, why don't we start with you. We've done so many approaches to we've tried pretty much tried everything I think to get to first, first round of funding and then for the second round of funding and we tend to hunt the investors that we wanted. We know who we want, we do our research, do our due diligence, understand the sector that they're interested in, and see if we fit or not, we do our homework very well to be able to approach them. And I think this, this one particular strategy has worked best for us. And there's also keeping at it so we don't take the first no or the second no and we maybe give it a rest after the third. No, and then we try again another six months. So this, this has been the most successful strategy for us today. Fantastic answer. Yeah, please. So definitely tenacity. I totally agree with you. But there are other avenues as well. You know, I think as, as when you're a startup, particularly if you're kind of tech oriented, you know, the mantra is go and find an investor. And that's, you know, ideal in a lot of situations, but there's a lot of other types of money that we that, you know, you can go after, particularly if you are a social enterprise, right? And that is not only can you sell, but you can also go to foundations, organizations to go for grants because you're creating impact. And so that's one of the things that we did. We tried to delay our bootstrap as long as we could, taking on investors and just raise money through grants, founder contributions, that kind of thing. And in doing so, we were able to get a lot of opportunities through business accelerators, organizations that wanted to help the people that we wanted to help. And that's free money, right? And so that's one thing that I really encourage people to look at is what kind of, how can you create traction and your proof points using those kind of non-dilutive funding? Government contracts is another really good way that people don't think about. So a lot of us as entrepreneurs, you're starting a new business, you know, your business may be new, but you probably have a lot of skill sets that people would hire you for. And so we were able to go after contracts with the government, both city government, federal government, to build our tech, to do our programming, to test it with users. So that can be a great way to get funds. And then the last piece, too, just to throw out there, is really what our model's been built on. One of my first jobs, I worked as a diplomat, actually, for the State Department for about 10 years. And one of my last jobs was in Africa, and these women were running these million-dollar-plus businesses, and most of them had never gotten a loan from a bank and never gotten investment. And they were using these informal kind of community savings and loans, these sussus, or these chamas, these tendas, to fund themselves when no one else would. And so I would say, you know, your community is a great resource for leveraging the capital and the partnerships that you need, too. That's what we try to do at SUSU, and so I encourage entrepreneurs to think about that as well. That's a fantastic answer. And worth remembering, too, that less than 2 percent of businesses are funded by venture capital. And I think that those avenues are really interesting and worth exploring. But I suppose, and this sort of lends nicely to the next question, how did you raise funding for your venture? We would be remiss if at some point we didn't talk about raising venture finance, because as technology companies, particularly high-growth technology companies, venture capital is an avenue to accessing the capital you need to scale. And so, Gideon, you know, having raised outside venture and having outside investors for your seed round, I'd love it if you could just elaborate on how you went about raising funding for Pinkaloo. Definitely. So in my case, we did not position ourselves as an impact investment opportunity at all. I went at the opportunity of, hey, this is going to be an awesome, really big technology company. We just happened to have an impact, but, you know, that's just icing on the cake, if you will. And so we went to a lot of the traditional routes that other tech companies would to go about raising our funding. So we started with friends and family, you know, when we just had an idea and we wanted to get a prototype or a minimum viable product in market. And then, you know, once we achieved that, then we started talking to some of the local angel groups, talking to some of the local early-stage seed funds and as well as some larger individual angels who knew our space well and had a passion for what we were doing. So, I mean, I think if you were to look at our fundraising to date, it probably looks very similar to any other early-stage tech company, if I'm going to be honest. I mean, I think that there certainly was more interest because we had an impact. But at the end of the day, our investors feel like the trend, particularly of millennials, caring more about causes, wanting to align themselves with the brands and with companies that are making an impact and giving back is really what our investors think there's an opportunity to take advantage of and to make a really big, impactful, long-lasting company around as opposed to, you know, trying to position ourselves as an impact investment opportunity. I will share one additional anecdote. So we actually were introduced to an angel group that their mission was to invest in impact companies. And we went through the whole process, multiple screenings, big in-person day. And at the end got feedback that we weren't enough of an impact company and that we didn't have enough of an impact given that all we were doing was helping to make charitable giving more efficient and easy. And I just tell that anecdote because I think it comes back to some of the comments earlier where understanding what your investors are looking for. In this case, that angel group was really looking for, like, actual physical products that could make an impact in their communities as opposed to software that had impact built into their mission. So I think understanding what investors are looking for regardless of how you're positioning the opportunity and who you're talking to can save a lot of time. And I think as Layla said, you know, probably shame on me for not doing more homework and sort of filtering them earlier on. Thanks so much for that. One group at Yonar Liberia asks, how do I leverage profit as a social entrepreneur when the goal of social enterprise is not to generate direct personal economic gain? Interesting question. Layla, would you like to take this? Yeah, sure. That's a very important question I think because most people who want to start their social entrepreneurship or social project, they always think of making profit out of it as something wrong or something that we shouldn't be doing. And I think this is one of the misconceptions of the idea itself because making profit is not shameful. It's also a way to better your community by creating better jobs. Plus what you do, you can add to it creating jobs to that community as well. Helping students intern at your company and learn how to get into the working force or what is social entrepreneurship to begin with. So there's more than one way to serve your community with the project that you're making and making profit out of it doesn't defeat the purpose. Absolutely. That's a great answer. Hernando Garzón from Venezuela asks, what is your advice for entrepreneurs to start businesses in an unstable economy? Very interesting question. So Layla actually, would you mind taking a crack at this? Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the most dangerous things in the world to create a business, let alone an unstable economy. And where we work at today, it's in Palestine, the West Bank, and we average a war every five years where the entire economy collapses and you have to build it up. And for the past 20 years, startups have been the ones that would pick up the economy. So instead of being afraid of tackling that issue, I think startups and the private sector can actually help maintain the economy from collapsing to begin with. And then when it does collapse, it doesn't affect private and small businesses, especially startups and entrepreneurs. There are also so many laws and regulations that you have to look at and it's more difficult in places where there's war or there's instability, political issues or economical issues. And my advice to people who want to start the business in unstable environments anywhere is to understand the laws of the government that you're operating under and always have a plan A, plan B, and C, and if you can go down to D is also good so that you don't get caught in the economical collapse. You have to be registered in multiple countries if you can and comply to all the countries that you operate in and is registered at as well. That's one of the, I think, greatest advice that I got and it saved our startup two years and actually. That's a fantastic answer and certainly quite a challenge as an entrepreneur. And actually to sort of take a slightly different spin on that, Fanta, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about not selling to an unstable economy or operating an unstable economy but selling to customers that particularly for the venture community maybe less traditional customers, right? Or customers that maybe, I mean to be blunt, they don't want to sell to because they're either underrepresented or they just don't think there's much of an opportunity there as a startup. I wonder if you could speak to that briefly. No, yeah, that's exactly, that's an interesting question and spin on that. You know, and we're faced with that, you know, I had someone also tell me once that there's also in times opportunity and crisis, right? And so when you see a problem and you see a community that's struggling as opposed to thinking, oh, that's hopeless or there's no business opportunity there or that's going to be too challenging to take on. If you sit down and take the time to understand that community and look at the opportunities in that community, you'd be surprised what you can come up with. And so that's what we found, you know. We work with people that most banks deny and walk away from and don't really get any opportunity beyond that. We find those, you know, banks walk away from them. We actually run toward them because we feel like those people won with just a little bit of credit-building support, a little bit of community banking support can actually go from an unviable opportunity to a great partner in business investment. And so oftentimes, like back to your question, I think that one of the cool things about being an entrepreneur is that you have the ability to be creative and you can see opportunity when others might not be able to. And if you can really get to know the community that you're trying to serve and develop a product that addresses that and do it in a genuine way, you can create a strong business model around it. And so what we found is that, you know, where some folks might feel like a lot of the small businesses and prospective land and home buyers that we work with might not be a good investment opportunity. We think that, well, maybe with a little bit of help, they actually could. Not only empower themselves, but, you know, communities. And so that's just another way of looking at a problem. That's a terrific answer. And thank you everybody for submitting your questions. These are fantastic and we'll get to more very soon. But first, I want to ask Layla about the power of networking, sort of the bread and butter for an entrepreneur. Why is networking so important to entrepreneurs and to social entrepreneurs in particular? Layla? Yeah, absolutely. Networking is, I think, one of the pillars of any business strategy that you put. And like every business strategy, you have to go at it with a plan. And it's been working for us since we started to implement an aggressive networking plan here at Red Crow. It could help you connect with people around the world. It could help you connect with people for affiliations, for investment or sales. And like we talked about before, it helps you open up to other communities to tell them about what you do. And in this way, you can create affiliations that can minimize resources and spending and saves times. To get the most out of networking, you have to always have to put together an action plan. So you do your research. You want to know who your target is and how to reach out and connect with them. And when you do that, and when you identify who your targets are, prioritize them. So for instance, when we go to a networking event, you don't really have much time to meet everybody that you want to meet. And you also have very little time with them. So prioritizing the people that you want to meet based on their efficiency and what can you give them or what can you take from them? How can you both collaborate? So after you do that and you identify who they are, knowing what you want from them, it's called the asks. Everyone you talk to always understands that you have something to ask of them. So if you keep talking about your project and you don't really get to the question that you want, they stop asking. They stop listening. And so when you have an ask, you kind of talk about it and you talk around it. So you can tell when the person in front of you is interacting with you and how you can build affiliations and move from step of meeting them today to helping them and them helping you. There's also being available all the time in relevant networks and add to that that you have to break out of your comfort zone that we mentioned before. Meeting new people and talking to them and telling them about your organization helps shed a light. And that also when you network with people, keep the word of mouth, keep moving from one person to another, you get a bigger exposure and you get bigger awareness to what you do. The best part for me at least about networking is follow up. When you talk to somebody in an event and they've talked to about a million people, it's going back and reminding them of yourself, remind them of your cause. And then you'll get the one-on-one interaction with them that you could either ask for a meeting or ask for another email or more information. And that is where you get to, how do you say reap what you sowed? You get to give them the information that you have more in a personal level and get their feedback. Networking for RedCrow has been tremendous. We've got investments. We've got grants through networking. We've had affiliations with the UNICEF, the World Bank, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Social entrepreneurs depend mostly, at least in the Middle East, on networking, on spreading your idea, spreading your solution and having people feel engaged in your product and everybody wants to help. Whether it's by financials or connections, it helps the startup or the organization break out of its small little shell and spread to the markets that you want to cover or you want to reach. Fantastic. Thank you, Layla. And I feel like that answer was a graduate level course in networking. So for everybody listening, pay attention to those points. Let's get back to a few more questions from our viewing groups. So the viewing group at Yonar Liberia, GIST iHUB Liberia asks, what advice would you give to an entrepreneur who wants to impact the financial or banking sector? So a very good question, very pertinent question for two of our entrepreneurs on the panel. So Gideon, why don't you take a first stab at that? Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, in a similar way that I didn't set out to be a social entrepreneur. I also didn't set out to make an impact in the banking sector. So I think in my case, it was about identifying a problem, identifying a solution to that problem that creates value, and then it just happened to be that banks were a place to do that. And so, in our case, that's probably because the team maybe didn't know banking as well as other groups would. I think to set out and say, hey, I really want to make an impact on this very specific part of the economy or this very specific vertical, I think it takes a very, very deep understanding of that space to do that. I think the more generic approach is to identify an opportunity and then figure out, okay, what's the biggest way that we can expand this and realize this versus going after something very hyper-targeted. So I think to come back to the original question, assuming that the entrepreneur really understands banks really well and really understands the local dynamics and understands where there's opportunities to make an impact, I think it can be successful, but it comes back to identifying what is the value to create for the bank so that they're going to be buying in or maybe if you're trying to disrupt banks and go around them and go to the end user, what's the value that the end customer will reap that they're not getting from their current banking institution. But more generically, I think it's about understanding how to create impact and create value and go after that as an entrepreneur as opposed to trying to be very focused and targeted and specific. That's a great answer, and Fontaine, I'm curious your thoughts. The only thing that I would add is keep in mind that banks have a different ethos from an investor, right? So investors, they're known to take risks, they'll see an opportunity if it's a viable business model and you can prove that you can implement it, they'll kind of go with you if you're early. They tend to want to invest, they tend to want more proof points and a little more experience before they'll adopt something and like getting a mention before they have an incredibly long sale cycle which can be tough to a startup. And so one thing that I would suggest is figure out a way to develop a niche, demonstrate proof points that what I'm doing can actually work, make sure that you have the numbers behind that and the data behind it because they love that and then go to them. I think that in my experience it's been a much more effective way at generating partnerships with banks. Once they see you have a little bit of traction and sometimes you've got to be creative about that because in some cases your solution might require the bank. But for SUSU's case what we've said is well look, let us just show what we can do outside the bank and then bring it to the bank in a way that they'll be able to understand it easier and adopt it. And so the negotiation thing is much easier. Don't get bogged down in the bureaucracy of the bank because that can render your ability to scale. Focus on creating the impact independently if you can and being creative in how that model looks and then coming to the bank when all your kind of ducks are in a row. It'll make your life a lot easier. As easy as it can be when you're selling to banks. A viewer at the Honduran Institute of Inter-American Culture in Honduras asks, what is your advice for social entrepreneurship excuse me, for social startups in need of funding? Would it be better to work with a business incubator or an accelerator? Great question. Layla, why don't you take that one? When we first started the Red Crow we started with an accelerator and I think the benefit that we got from the accelerator was kind of ushering you into the sphere of startups and entrepreneurs and how to create these little technical advice and technical courses that they give you is how to create a business plan and how to create a marketing plan and so on and that was all great especially because we've all come from a business background but when you have to create a company it suddenly becomes all too much but aside from that the connections and the people that you meet around the accelerator is actually what helped this build so you meet older startups people who have failed and succeeded multiple times and just learning from everybody else is advice was actually very helpful for us so I think from my personal experience I think accelerators for startups and entrepreneurs is the best way to go. That's a great answer and I'm curious to the rest of the panel having both recently completed the PeaceTech Accelerator in DC without shamelessly promoting the PeaceTech Accelerator I'm just curious what you see the benefit for an accelerator or an incubator being Gideon I know you had experience in an incubator prior I'm just sort of curious similar to what Layla said what your thoughts are. I can go first for one I think the lines are blurring a little bit at least in the market around here of what an incubator is an accelerator and what a company or entrepreneurs like ourselves can expect to get out of them so in the same way I think that Layla was earlier highlighting of really doing research on your investors it's probably worth really doing research on each potential incubator and each potential accelerator to understand what is their focus area if you can talking to a few entrepreneurs who have been through the program before who can help you understand what were the good parts of the program that you might not expect to have the impact on your business that other programs might offer all of those pieces and I think really figuring out what makes sense for you and your specific team and your team's strengths and weaknesses because at the end of the day obviously not only might there be some equity or some other component of participating but it's also going to be a lot of your time and so doing a good job of filtering to figure out what is the right program is super valuable and in our case specifically for the most part we felt like product and technically we were in good shape we really wanted to focus on messaging telling our story a little better introductions to more investors around the region and so going through the program I remember you and I had a conversation a couple weeks before it started where we really had the opportunity to talk about what those opportunities through the program look like because it was really valuable but I think it's because we had a good sense of what we wanted to get out of the program and then making sure we put the effort in during the program to take advantage of those opportunities and even as Layla was sharing during the networking advice in the program you run there's a lot of experts that come through a lot of advisors or potential advisors and mentors and so taking the opportunity to follow up with them after the sessions where you think they might have an impact you know, no accelerators for dummies or incubators for dummies that helps you get the most value out of them but you know, taking every opportunity as it comes and taking advantage of it makes it valuable. Fantastic, I infant a very brief of your thoughts on accelerators. No, I agree with everything he said we really wanted to do peace tech also because we felt like rarely do you get into an accelerator that is run with a venture capital fund and so we had a really interesting unique insight that were invaluable to us because we were looking at opening up a seed round and we really wanted to work with people who knew how to do that could teach us how to talk to investors how to present ourselves in our business model and then make those strategic connections and so peace tech was great in that regard I would just say you know the first step is getting in but you got to be strategic when you're in and I think getting in alluded to this but know who you want to talk to and know who that accelerator has access to because when you're in the accelerator you need to take advantage of that prestige and that opportunity so know your ask have an agenda when you go in try to include as many team members as possible so that everyone can get trained up so that when you come out of it you can really hit the ball running. Great response, thank you all for your responses there we've got a lot more questions to get to Salah Ahmed asks what differentiates a non-profit company or a non-profit from a social enterprise this is actually a great question often the distinction is very difficult Gideon why don't you take a stab at that? Sure and specific to the United States market where I'm most familiar there's a legal designation across the two that has to do with in the case where the company generates more revenue than costs what happens to the excess profit that is generated and in this jurisdiction here a non-profit has to put those funds back into operating its business to have an impact in the community whereas a for-profit can distribute those profits out to owners of the business or investors I think it's very much a distinction around what happens to the profits from a financial point of view and from a legal distinction as well but I think it gets back into where it's funding going to come from investors, business model those pieces as well that all plays into the differences in execution So if you're a viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Lome Togo the question how can governments effectively support social entrepreneurs this is a fantastic question Leila would you like to answer this? Sure the government's job I think this is a very sensitive subject here in the Middle East since governments rarely support startups making it easier legally and financially for startups in general and social entrepreneurs to operate in a country is a step one when we're talking about legal formation or legal changes to accommodate a smaller entity that works at a high what's called velocity can benefit the startups especially social startups since not just making profit is their main goal but also creating a social impact another thing is the financial strains that is put on the startups making it easier or distinctioning between startups and small businesses with more money coming in and out or venture capitals creating laws to accommodate for both startups venture capitals and funders in general Thanks so much and we have a lot more questions and we only have a few minutes so we're going to try and get a few of these quickly so if you are at the Walt Whitman American Center in Guatemala asks do you think you have a larger impact by paying higher salaries or by investing in the community very interesting question Fanta your thoughts I feel like investing in the community hands down I mean like you know as a startup if you're paying large salaries you might not be in business very long I mean the idea is even when you do raise funding you need to bootstrap because you never know what expenses are going to come up and if you have a huge payroll to cover it can be difficult to do the work also you know if you if you're focusing more on new hires and less on the work and the impact it's going to be harder for you to grow scale improve that you're actually a social enterprise so I would be careful about taking on a lot of big expenses and payroll up front you know regardless of the business type good answer works to live by from Stop Terrorism a non-profit based in France we would like to create apps and create prevention projects to fight radicalization where can we find financial support and mentoring for this type of social enterprise great question Layla do you have any thoughts on this yes when we're focusing on security or risk mitigation in general talking to humanitarian organizations social entrepreneurs for affiliations and also humanitarian well summits and security summits in general is usual where we found most interesting around the Middle East and Europe especially Southern Europe there's annual summits that happen and we make sure that we are included we can join or we get to present in these summits and this was one of the main events that we found very helpful also talking to people or communicating with people who work with governments with the Army with the intelligence in your country also helps widen up your network and introduce you to people that would be interested in funding or advising and consulting which is also plus to especially security organizations just to throw out some names really quick building upon Malayla's sailing so like World Bank the United Nations we just had a really interesting call with them and a new kind of piece kind of related lab that they're launching a lot of these big organizations a lot of the donors like USAID and DFID fund those kinds of projects and they'll fund you at a very early state they'll even fund pilots so I would encourage you to reach out to them as well their websites will give information on the grant solicitation opportunities you can apply for any kind of programs they're running fantastic really helpful since social entrepreneurship focuses on decentralization how can social enterprises measure their impact on the community they're targeting Gideon since measuring impact is somewhat directly aligned with your business I wonder if you could handle that yeah I mean first I think this is the longest panel or conversation I've had without blockchain coming up in some way shape or form and obviously decentralization obviously goes hand-in-hand with blockchain these days but I think coming back to the question how can they measure the impact on the communities they're targeting I mean I think taking one step back early on measuring everything and anything is super valuable whether it's to show traction in the way that Ponto was describing earlier to be able to show results or benefits for prospective customers and so I think the first step in that is defining what are the key metrics that we want to be measuring to show an impact right I mean I think it can be hard to prove impact and you don't even know what the right metrics are and what you're trying to show so I think it starts with defining what is the impact we're having how can we measure against that and then figure out how can we be collecting data and more importantly ingesting that data and iterating once you have it so that you can be improving as you move forward Terrific great answer so final question so I'd like all of our entrepreneurs to answer that very briefly what sector are you excited about for the future of social entrepreneurship Fonta Definitely blockchain I'm a fintech of course then I'd also add in AI artificial intelligence machine learning is really exciting right now I think across the board there's opportunities to tie social impact into any and all businesses but at the end of the day I think there's still a tremendous amount of automation and localization in terms of bringing services that have not necessarily been localized or not necessarily been automated and then opportunities to tie impact into those business models Perfect and Leila your thoughts I think it's artificial intelligence I think this is what I've been most excited about for the past couple of years and I think it could help communities all around the Middle East especially when we add to it natural language processing Fantastic answers thank you all and unfortunately we're out of time thank you Leila Fonta and Gideon for joining us and sharing your advice and expertise really appreciate it I'd also like to thank everyone viewing today especially the viewing groups around the globe for bringing entrepreneurs together to be a part of this fantastic conversation we had audiences in the U.S. Embassy in Lomé Togo the American Cultural Center in Windhoek Namibia the American Center in Moscow, Russia the International Center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras American Space Point Noir in the Republic of the Congo the Binational Center in Cordova, Argentina the Binational Center in Managua, Nicaragua the Binational Center in Tegucigalpa, Honduras the Binational Center in Guatemala City, Guatemala the Binational Center in Quetzaltango, Guatemala the Walt Whitman American Center in Guatemala City, Guatemala the Honor Librarian American Corner and the American Corner Cacata, Liberia even though today's program is over we do not want the conversation about entrepreneurship to stop please continue the conversation on Twitter at hashtag GIST Tech Connect and please check back here on gistnetwork.org for information about upcoming GIST events including the GIST APEC Startup Training this October in Brisbane, Australia we are looking for innovative entrepreneurs from Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum countries 21 countries around the Pacific Rim who are working to support women vulnerable communities or rural communities if you are accepted into the training we will show you how to grow a startup into a successful business we will give you the opportunity to network with experienced entrepreneurs and you will have a chance to win valuable startup resources to help you scale applications are due Friday, August 31st you can learn more about this startup training and apply at gistnetwork.org I hope you all enjoyed our discussion today thank you again everybody for joining us goodbye