Transcript - Bavidra Mohan: De-Risking Social Entrepreneurship By Creating a Support Network
As told to Anita Hossain Choudhry
At The Grand, we love rituals, so we're going to start with our favorite ritual. We like to really understand who people are at their core. One question we love to ask is: introduce yourself in a way that you don't normally introduce yourself.
It's a great question, and thank you for having me Anita. For a little bit of context, I geek out about The Grand. I have been following them for a very, very long time. I've been trying to figure out a way to partner with them. That has led to a series of conversations between Anita and I, and now this one here. So, really grateful to be here and grateful to see some familiar faces who joined as well.
It's a great question. So, part of my story, I would normally go the whole global citizen route and having moved all in my life.
But instead, I'm going to say: I'm a father and I have two daughters whose names are Niya and Aza, and they're two delightful and spectacular humans. Years ago, I moved to India to start the India Fellows program, and it was about that time that Niya was born in Bombay, and so, weirdly the journey of fatherhood intersected with my journey of going really deep on leadership development, and figuring out how to accompany social entrepreneurs in that journey.
So much transfer of knowledge and insights between those two worlds that I don't think should be so separate, but are treated as one. But the first and foremost is probably this idea that fatherhood, like leadership, is not a role. It's a relationship. I think that's probably the core and the thread of this whole conversation that we'll have today.
But it's been an obsession of mine, this intersection of these two worlds that I occupy. Anita, I know that you occupy the same two worlds as well, and I'm curious if you have any intersecting insights between those two.
But I'll start with the father introduction, because that's pretty different from how I normally do it.
I also have two daughters just a little behind you and I absolutely agree. You know, I used to have this limiting belief right when I was starting my company and starting my family: will I be able to do both and do both well? I realized that actually, because I'm in both of those relationships, as you put it, it actually strengthens the other relationship I have.
That's awesome. If you ever get a chance. There's a book by this poet who's one of my favorite poets, name’s David Whyte, and he wrote a book called The Three Marriages, and it talks about this idea of work-life balance being a fallacy – the idea of it being a balance. Rather, it’s a marriage to three things: vocation and all this… anyway, I think you’d love it. It's very connected to that same premise.
At business school, we talked about, instead of work-life balance, we talked about work-life integration, and how do you create these four-way wins within the different realms of your life, instead of thinking of it as trade offs? Another one to check out. It's called Total Leadership.
If you're pulling at one thread, what is one insight or gem that you have related to fatherhood and leadership that you want to leave folks with?
I think it's this idea that neither is a role. Neither is a position. Both are a series of actions, a series of choices and relationships to enter into with different stakeholders, whether that be your kids or your C-suite or board. I think the minute you reframe that way, it shifts how you engage. It's suddenly not about telling people how to do things or selling anything, but it's mobilizing them collectively from a very human place.
I love the collective mobilization and the intentionality behind it. I think that goes hand in hand with Acumen and your organization's unique approach to social impact and investment. So tell me a little bit more about the thesis there.
I'll give you the brief history and then where we are today. We're about 24 years old now, which is wild. But we started out with the premise that the world of aid was failing, and markets were falling short, and there had to be some middle ground way to create impact in the world.
The original idea, which now is a super common phrase, of impact investing, was raising philanthropic capital, what we call patient capital, and investing it in extraordinary leaders who are building for-profit social enterprises and all those enterprises. We're offering critical goods and services to people living in low income situations.
Now, years ago that was a crazy radical thought. Now, it's a trillion dollar industry. It's completely mainstream, and everyone knows what this thing is. But back then, it was really really new. In many ways, Acumen was the pioneer of that space. It's ushered in this new sector. Over that time, I think we've impacted almost half a billion people through the companies that we've invested in: more than 74 companies, more than 150 million in philanthropic capital, and now raising other types of capital for other types of funds as well.
But at the very beginning, in the early days, if the mission was to change the way the world tackled poverty, it was this realization that capital alone would be insufficient. You could put all the money in the world in some model, and it still wouldn't crank out a solution that would really solve it. Like most things, it's a people problem, and it really starts with the individuals with the leadership in place to both have the courage to start these models and then have the committee around them to sustain them and to build them into something more. That's where Acumen Academy, which is the part of the work that I spend most of my time, is situated.
I loved how you framed that. It's not just about financial returns. It's about the greatest impact here you can make on the world, and really about: how do you make these founders really step into the most audacious version of themselves?
It is a big, audacious goal. They're tackling poverty and really trying to build something beyond themselves.
I think that's where Acumen Academy fits in nicely. Tell us a little bit more about why community and learning and development is crucial, especially for social impact founders.
Acumen Academy is really where Acumen's impact work starts, which is finding those individuals who have made precisely what you said: this completely audacious decision, not just to start a company, which in itself is statistically very irrational. Then, to start a company to tackle one of the toughest problems of our time, in markets that will not attract commercial capital, with models that don't exist, and often where there isn't a customer base. Just the layers of complexity and difficulty—hard to comprehend.
Yet, daily, thousands I interact with who have made that choice because they're compelled by a purpose that is larger than them. It's truly extraordinary. So Academy’s work is to find those people, and particularly those folks who are most proximate to the problems, who are immersed in the problems in these different markets, and to identify them, bring them together in very deep cohorts, put them through a deep, transformational leadership journey and then embed them in this community.
It starts really with the cultivation of what I would almost call the inner work. Their moral leadership capacity. Who are they? What is their purpose? How do they hold on to that? What are the…I hate the phrase soft skills. It's how people often refer to them. I actually think it's the hardest skills of: resilience, courage, empathy, listening, adaptability.
Once you've done that stuff, or at least you’re on the path to that, we move into the actual model and approach. And so our community, what we call the Foundry, which now has 1,654 Fellows, is where we focus on accompanying these individuals to grow and scale their organizations. So that shifts a little bit from the leadership capacity of an individual to: what is the capital they need? What are the tools they require? How do we start to scaffold their journey to create wildly impactful companies like d.light, the one we talked about earlier?
I love that focus on the soft skills. I agree with you, those are the hardest skills.
Nonsense framing. I shouldn't have even said it that way!
Yeah, let's brainstorm a new term for it!
But really, you talked about humility, purpose, character, resilience, courage, empathy, and I want you to think about your own journey. You have this unique perspective of being a Fellow yourself. Being a founder. Talk us through what it was like for you in the trenches, and what would have been helpful for you… what was helpful for you to continue to move forward?
Yeah, I think the first step is the acknowledgment of how, still, unless you're fairly privileged and in certain parts of the world, how countercultural it is to take on social entrepreneurship and what I mean by countercultural…my dad is on this call…
Telling your friends and your family and your community: “You know what, I'm not going to take the big tech role. I'm not going to become a consultant. I'm not going to become a doctor.” Instead, I’m going to try and create this model where no one else has to solve one of the toughest problems of our time. In our best case scenario, I would just move the needle in our lifetime. Right? So you gotta first confront that.
Which is both an examination of really, truly, how much do you believe in this? And how much do you want to do it? And then, how much do you need the people around you to believe in that? So we'll get a little bit into that. That's a unique role of community.
But that was step one: which is acknowledgement of just how hard this is, and, are you really up for it? And then, step two is finding the people.
Truly, I think finding the people is more critical than finding the money to start and that they need to be mutually exclusive. It's the people in two senses. One is the talent that you need, but two is the folks who also hold similarly audacious and crazy goals, so that this path doesn't feel quite so lonely, so that you don't feel like you're out there on a ledge. But actually, there's a community of folks around the world who have made the same choice, and who are looking for their tribe in many ways, and to be embedded in that.
From there, it's the work of social entrepreneurship. I believe in starting with immersion. You go super deep to understand the problem, which you should be much more wedded to than the solution, and immerse yourself in that until you…
I don't know about statistical significance, that's hard to get to. But you trust in yourself that you've understood the life of the people that you're trying to work for, and what your unique insight is into that life, and how you could possibly uniquely build a model around it.
Then it goes from there. But it really does start with that inner belief, the people around you to scaffold that belief, and then the journey of starting a company and going through that social entrepreneurship journey.
The inner belief. I want to start there. I think you talked about having this belief that even though it's going be hard, you want to continue to explore this problem. Especially, like you said, there's a lot of societal norms of taking different types of jobs. As South Asians, I'm sure…
You know all about that life…
Vishnu [Bavidra’s father], I'm looking at you!
But you know, we have to really overcome that. You talked about people, really finding the right people. When you talk about people, it's not just the people who are going to work with you to bring this to reality, but the people who are going to support you and keep you accountable. I want to dive into that a little bit more.
Tell me: what are the common challenges that you see now in your role as a Director at Acumen? What are the common challenges that these founders are facing…what are the problems that feel really similar? You talked about founders feeling less alone when they hear that other founders are going through that. Try to bring some of those to light.
Social entrepreneurs are still entrepreneurs, right? So, the categories of problems are largely shared. Whether you're a VC-backed SaaS company in the U.S. or working for smallholder farmers in Uganda. The categories are things like: team, economic model, raising capital.
But the difference with social entrepreneur: each of those categories take on a unique texture.
Even with team, attracting talent when your number one draw is purpose is quite hard, actually. You really can't offer aggressive compensation packages with equity that stands to allow people to retire. That's not a thing in the space.
You have to motivate with something different. You have to tap into an intrinsic motivation which is much, much harder. There's attracting that group of people, and then, if you're making the choice to join these teams, unlike a standard tech company, where if you get laid off, your skill set is immediately transferable to the next company in the space, that also does not exist here. There's just a level of risk that is extraordinary in the team building space that social entrepreneurs face whether they're recruiting or you're trying to join.
And then, the economics of it. I mentioned that for a lot of these folks, their customer base are earning less than $ a day by design. They're low income customers. How do you design a model that is both sustainable and where the unit economics make sense, that also is affordable to a community like that, and often, by the way, where there are no markets?
We talk about d.light design. Now, offering solar energy is a massive market, but again, when I was at that company 11 years ago, it was just starting, and so, too, was the market. It was not a thing. It was not an industry.
So, creating an economic model where there are no markets, where your customer base likely requires some subsidization… It's just a level of complexity that's bananas. That's really unique as well.
And then, it's the capital side. Raising money in this world is such a funny business because you have to be conversant in both worlds. You have to be able to raise and speak the language of a VC, and also raise and speak the language and connect in the development world, because you're holding this tension between two. It's not code switching. It is really the capacity to hold these two worlds in service of your singular mission that is uniquely hard for social entrepreneurs, for sure.
There's probably many more. The loneliness piece, as I mentioned, it’s certainly there as well, but those are the big ones.
When you think about some of these challenges, and the work that you've done to alleviate some of the challenges that these founders are going through, what have you found the most effective way to really support some of these challenges?
This is where our thesis really is. Going in on those, what I would call hard skills, which is typically ignored.
Greta is on this call, who's done a lot of work with our Fellows and our Fellowship program around storytelling. Storytelling not in a “how do I tell a good story,” but in understanding a narrative arc that connects both you to a purpose, to a company, to a business model, which is way more nuanced than just: can I stand up on stage and speak? That requires an understanding of a business strategy, of a market, of a customer. And then weaving that all together in a full narrative. But again, that's not really…
Next to unit economics, and how do you scale, that's not a skill set that's particularly celebrated or lauded, but we believe it's beyond essential. Same with the capacity to mobilize very diverse stakeholders from a place of values.
I don't know where you learn that. Frankly, I don’t actually think it exists. When we look at some of the stuff that we found to be the hardest in the world of social entrepreneurship, there's all these sets of technical skills which are super important. Don't get me wrong, it is essential and these businesses cannot scale without them. But there are places to learn them, including Acumen Academy, where you can take courses to learn the harder skills.
But the space to develop the leadership capacity to put those skills into practice, to build scalable models, that's rare. That's where we create these unique cohorts, these unique moments in the context of the Fellowship in the community to not just learn those, but to practice them with peers, so that you and I can practice in a place that's safe, so that I can go out into the world and do it again, not for the first time, where it's all on the table, but I've come at it having sharpened the ax, so to speak.
I love this point about practice. When you think about athletes, they spend most of their time practicing and little time performing, and that's why they're so good when those moments count. Whereas in the business world, we spend most of our time just performing, and we have this performance-prove mindset a lot of times, instead of a growth mindset, where it doesn't feel safe to practice and to fail and experiment and try again.
I love your point on creating safe spaces where people can feel comfortable practicing these leadership skills, having difficult conversations, and then going out and doing that in the real world.
That's really what we do at The Grand as well. It's: how do we create the safest spaces? And, really thinking about coaching as an ongoing reflective practice. Because it's not this one time thing that you're gonna learn. You're going to be on this journey.
Absolutely. One thing on that is: we used to use the language of safe space quite a bit. I can't tell if there's something about the moment. I just came back from India, where I had a bunch of gatherings for their Fellows, and I was hearing a lot about how that phrase “safe space” has become quite unsafe. Which is weird and nuanced. But it's more now… the creation of spaces…I don't know what the right word is, I don't know if it's brave space or learning space, but an opportunity actually to push towards the edge of whatever that edge is for you.I think the notion of a safe space has become, I don't know, almost in service of the opposite in some ways, is part of what we're hearing.
I love that: how do you have a space that pushes you toward that edge? So, it's a space that maybe pushes you out of your comfort zone. It really challenges you. So yeah we gotta rebrand this! We have a lot of things to rebrand…
It's a lot of reframing. We have this phrase in the Fellowship program. It's like the rituals at The Grand. We have language that permeates throughout the whole community. It's the “one armed hug,” where with one arm you're holding and the other you're pushing, and that unique type of relationship which you can talk more about. That's actually what's required. Too much holding is not actually gonna get you there, because it's not gonna push you to the place where you will learn. Nor is too much pushing, because you're gonna fall off the edge. You can't really expect that unique balance from everyone around you in the world, but from Fellows, and I mean Fellowship in the literal sense, that is actually the kind of relationship that serves a founder.
I absolutely love that. The concept of the one armed hug. In coaching, we think about the best coaches not being cheerleaders, but also challenging. You want this group of people to be there when things are going really well. You want them to be your first call when things are great and your first call when things are not going well.
Another ritual we do is called Challenges and Appreciations, and it is exactly related to this concept: where you've built this depth of connection with this group in such a real way that not only can they appreciate the things that you bring to the table, but they can challenge you. You've built so much relational connection, so much accountability with one another, that you can genuinely challenge each other in a way that your friends, your family might not even.
When I think about the hardest skills of our time in this moment of unbelievable polarization, where, if I'm right, you must be wrong, which means I'm good, which means you're bad, which means you're canceled…It's a critical skill set of being able to disagree without being disagreeable. Like, you and I can hold conflictual opinions, and I think that's completely fine, and we should be able to build things and move forward together. But, spaces to practice that currently do not exist. I directly think that is part of the work of social entrepreneurs who are inherently holding two opposing ideas. It's the same muscle that you're actually working, whether in a leadership context or in the building of a structure that sits at the intersection of these two worlds between scalable enterprise and deep impact.
I feel like people need permission. Oftentimes you don't get permission to show up in that way. And I think you're right. In this heightened complexity of the world that we're in, it just doesn't seem like you're allowed to do that. So, appreciate that point of view.
Going back to this point about relationships and accompanying relationships. I know that your team’s starting to put together some of the data on the impact of this work. I know it's work in progress. But I was really excited about our early conversation on some of the insights you're able to gather on: what is the ROI, or some of the quantitative analysis on supporting or accompanying relationships to create an outsized impact on these Fellows’ lives?
I think it's still slightly aspirational if I'm being honest with you, and how quantitative that is. But clearly, you and I believe this to our core, that there is immense relational value in a network that's built on trust.
There aren't a lot of people who are actually trying to quantify this. There are a few, and it's awesome that people are trying to push this field forward because they recognize that this may, in fact, be the secret ingredient. This may be the missing piece, which is a little bit of what my personal belief is.
On the Fellow side, for example. We have over 1,600 Fellows around the world now, which is a wild number, and they have reached through their companies more than 50 million lives, which is a great number.
Now, the lives reached, I appreciate, is a proxy and kind of a blunt instrument, but it directionally gives you a sense. Part of what we're trying to figure out is…that's extraordinary. What has membership in this community enabled you to do? How has that driven you forward? I think that is the starting question of a lot of the impact questions that we're asking. What are those intangible elements that matter the most? We hear a few things.
The first is… and again, it's not quantitative, but I think when I say it, it will resonate as true for you. The membership in a community like ours or any community like this, the identity that comes with it is extraordinary. That identity is a massive piece, and we hear that time and time again.
What does it mean to be an Acumen Fellow? Not just… I don't mean the credibility in terms of the doors it opens, and the network value. That's all true.
I mean the sense of responsibility that it holds. I mean the shared identity that it holds with the group of people who are completely across the world, whether you're in Pakistan or Bombay or Bogota and especially in a world where it's not celebrated the same way. We won't get the Forbes cover, or this or that. So the identity becomes a really really huge anchor and grounding force for a lot of these entrepreneurs and an idea that they come back to.
Which is incredible, and also a very large responsibility for us to continue to support and hold that, but that has been really interesting to see and to hear over and over again.
Another piece that I wish I had numbers for, but I know is true: for so many of these social entrepreneurs, the wisdom is in the room. Meaning, I don't have the answer, but they definitely do. Especially now that we're at 1,600. But even before that. It's so clear to me that the questions that social entrepreneurs have are rarely answered by textbooks or long courses, but rather from a peer who's figured this out already. Entrepreneurs will find the shortest path to solution, and most often that means calling somebody up who's been through it, which will save them the time and the money and the hassle, and they'll just go that way.
So, more and more if you buy this concept that the wisdom is in the room, which means the wisdom may exist within this community, it reframes our work. We're not teachers by any stretch. Our job is to unlock that, package it, and redistribute that amongst the community, and then hopefully out into the world. But that's become so clear, particularly for social entrepreneurship, where there just aren't templated approaches for this. There just aren't. But there are shared challenges.
The value that we hear so much from our community is like, “The fact that I could call this dude who had just been through this with this funder in this moment and they can cut straight through all that,” is massively valuable. Really, really huge.
A third one that’s really interesting, this one super fresh from India, is: We have a Fellow whose name is Ullas. He's based in Bangalore, and he just started a company called Gritworks, which is an AI company using generative voice to change the way that we interact with our customers… creating a much quicker, more efficient feedback loop directly with customers to inform the type of products that usually an impact focused business is building.
I had a chance to sit down with Ullas literally the day before yesterday, and he's got an awesome tech background. He could have raised whatever money he wanted to raise. This is no question. He's got the network. He's got credibility.
I was like: ”Dude. Why would you not go out and raise some seed capital to grow this thing quickly?”
And he's like: Why would I waste my time, when I had four Fellows in our community who were ready to trust me to be my first customers, which meant I could generate revenue immediately? Why would I bother going to do an equity raise when we have this trust and established network that I can go to as my first customer base to validate the model, because I know I can screw up with them, and we can figure this out and move forward.
I'd never heard that before. This value of the community being one way to literally bypass traditional fundraising because of the trust that's built. That trust really is the rarest currency in the context of it. I would put that under a broad category of membership in these types of communities in many ways just derisk it.
They de-risk it for the entrepreneur. They de-risk it for us as an investor or community holder in many ways.
But it has become clear. I'm really keen to get to the numbers of this. That some of our most successful impactful organizations, like d.light, some others that have hit the hundreds of millions of lives, all have had very deep, very long accompaniment from many members of the community. In that journey from a business point of view, from a leadership point of view, from a community point of view.
I'm eager to make that point very firmly, with more evidence in the future, because I can see it very clearly. It's the reason why I think you guys are taking off. I think people are recognizing these accompanying relationships are not nice-to-have. They're actually critical. They're essential.
I agree with everything you shared 1000% and a lot of what we’ve found: this point around de-risking is critical. It really increases the founder’s chances of success and really de-risks those investments, because it's not just the community. But think about talking to someone who's been there before. You're able to make better decisions faster.
In moments where you might be overwhelmed, or you might want to give up. It helps you keep going and moving forward. I think all of that is so so critical. That's why I'm so energized by the idea of potentially quantifying it. You and I feel it in our bones. Once we have more data, I think it’ll tell that story in an even stronger way.
The point around the sense of responsibility and the identity piece that you talked about. One of the things that we think about with our community as well is: what are the guiding principles that help people know, when I show up to The Grand, this is how you know I can show up. This is the type of support I'm going to get from other people. If you were to name that at Acumen, what is that sense of responsibility? How do people show up for each other? Are there any guiding principles you can think of?
This is such a critical question. It's a big one that I'm thinking about now, because I think ours needs to refresh for this community, as we scaled very quickly. And again, the world is going through this moment that there is something that needs to be renewed for this moment.
But again, having just come from India, one of the values that is held and it is relentlessly held, is showing up, which is really understated as a value. But just the picking up of the phone call, the showing up at the door, the responding to the WhatsApp—it’s massive. It's absolutely massive. Because everyone's got a lot going on. So that is a value that this community holds. We are committing to showing up for each other because it's rooted in a belief that it's not just that you and I are friends.
But, actually, it's rooted in a belief that your success is intertwined with my success, because poverty is interconnected and interwoven and so there is no world where you working on…let’s call it access to menstrual hygiene products, and me working on increasing the efficiency of smallholder farmers…These two worlds need to succeed together. Which means I'm as invested in you as you are in me, and that’s an undergirding belief that this community has, which is beautiful, just philosophically. But it's amazing to see it come to life, because it really does mean showing up in the fullest sense every time there's an opportunity. Which is very, very cool. So that's certainly one.
I think the other is a little bit of this… one armed hug idea, and you touched it. Which is that we're not just each other's cheerleaders. I think that's a super important point. You need that too. Everyone needs a hype man or hype woman. That's essential. But you really need the people who will hold you to your highest self. And that's a rare relationship to find.
A story that I always think about is… I don't know if you saw it… it was many years ago… But Desmond Tutu wrote this letter to Aung San Suu Kyi and published it in The Guardian. I think it was seven years ago. I'll send it to you after, they're both Nobel laureates.
This was at the time where Aung San Suu Kyi’s moral choices were clearly…I would say… veering… understated, possibly… but he wrote this stunning letter that wasn't a calling out, but it was an invitation back to a Aung San Suu Kyi to find the version of herself that he knows and that he loves. And it’s the most stunning example of what I mean by the one armed hug. Which is, the times we need the people around us to remind us of our ideals. Because, especially for those who are on an ascent, whether it's in their company or public office, it is too easy to lose that and forget that. But that letter is for me a pretty stunning example of what I mean when I talk about that relationship.
What I love about this letter… It's not teaching. It's not giving advice, it's not fixing. It's reminding them of their ideals. It's really about helping you find that best version of you that we know exists, and really helping that through reflection and through questions. That's really what it's about. I think that a lot of times leaders feel the need to support other people by solving their problems, telling them what to do, giving advice. Like you said before, you're not. You're not the teacher. You're really the convener. You're really helping people get the resources that they need and really unlocking the greatest potential that they have through creating that space for them.
That's a lot of what we think about with The Grand as well, and the spaces. To your point, these are not things that you can just Google. And it's really about having these deep, deep conversations where you can get these new perspectives.
I think it can feel… if you're not in the world that you and I are in… it can feel frivolous and self indulgent. I can't remember who said this to me… but they framed it so lovely: that it's short term inefficiency for long term efficiency. It feels like, what? Are we just sitting here and asking each other questions? I need to go and raise this money, because our burn is going to put us out of business in three months.
But if you can see it as a derisking, if you can see it as the investment of this is going to ensure that we will be on this for the longer run, and I think people are starting to see that now, it completely changes it. It becomes essential. It becomes a non negotiable as as part of the journey of anyone leading any type of organization, and particularly those working on impact orgs.
It’s the long term. It's a really good point. Because if you're constantly solving and fixing, then it's a one-time, one-point solution and learning how to trust themselves and really finding those answers within too.
Audience Q&A
You talk a lot about this deep, impactful trust where it's about intertwined success. I'm curious what some of the strategies you've used to bring that connection to life and start building that deep trust? At The Grand, we have a lot of coaching exercises and things we've developed over time to do this. So, I'm curious what you've done with social entrepreneurs in this community.
We risk me going slightly hokey here. But I think it's okay, because I think it's what's required. The Fellowship program is this process of recognizing, of bringing people in as individuals. Then, having them become part of a cohort, then ultimately having them become part of a community. So, through that arc and through that journey it requires individuals to see that yes, there is a model that they're trying to build. There's a company they're trying to create. But beneath all those layers ultimately is some shared humanity between you and I.
There's this process of creating spaces and opportunities to see the humanity in someone, and have it be seen in yourself as well, and if you come down to that level, which is not about the economics of your model, but it is that you and I both have a right to dignity, you and I have a lived experience of what it means to be human in this world, they may be different, but I see myself in you and you see yourself in me.
And then built into: I've decided to dedicate my life's work to creating higher efficiencies for smallholder farmers, or I've decided to create access to financing for SME’s in Uganda. It starts with a common root: and a grounding shared sense of “Oh, yeah, we are definitely in this together.”
Versus going the other way, and that doesn't work. Because then you're talking about organizational partnership. Which is super important, don't get me wrong, and that has to happen. But we have the great benefit of working with Fellows really early in their journeys and at the beginning. And it really is creating those spaces to see the shared humanity and to create moments that allow them to see that in each other.
[ANITA] That reminds me, at The Grand, one of our principles is: “we come together as humans.” I think just starting with that and naming that helps people. Let's start with self discovery, and how we are in this together. What is that shared experience? And then you can build from there.
Yeah, part of the way we get to that to be just a bit more specific is, these cohorts of Fellows are by design incredibly diverse. And when I say diverse, I mean like crossing almost every line of difference you can imagine, and it's intentional. It's to force you to confront any belief that you have about yourself, or about another in quotations, and the minute you enter into that space, you’re forced into a reframe. You're forced to see that even someone who you see is completely opposite to you, whether it be ethnicity or tribe, or whatever it could be, these are just layers that have been voiced upon us, and you come down to the same principle that you have at The Grand,we come as humans. I love that.
I'm actually in a unique space where I'm just starting my journey in the social impact space. I'm currently in the midst of my Masters and just graduated from undergrad a year ago. I was looking to learn more about how you touched on how important it is to have that support network and keeping the passion and motivation to continue to pursue a career in this space. As I'm just starting out, if you could touch on that a little bit more, I would love to hear.
First of all, congrats. That's exciting. A very thrilling place to be.
I think there's two groups of people that I would try to invest yourself with. One is those who may be slightly further along than you, so that you have models and pathways to imagine yourself in. I don't think yours will look like any one of those, but just just a few steps past so that you can see the future for your own steps.
The second group is, and I think this is a little countercultural, but I would find people who are sitting with the same questions as you. Not with people who have the answers to those questions yet. Because I think that you'll find those folks and the way that they've examined the questions for themselves will help you figure out how you want to explore the questions for yourself as well.
I would think about those two groups as your primary starting communities for this moment.
And then the third, which is… just immerse, I cannot tell you that enough. I feel that in my experience with social entrepreneurs there are people who are very ready to come up with solutions who have not yet immersed themselves with the problem, or the people for whom those solutions are for. So I would find whatever way you can to go as deep as you can with those folks.
I'm a serial social entrepreneur. It may be that I've been at it long enough to, instead of being optimistic, sometimes a little bit jaded and disappointed. But I do have hope. I love the connections conversation that you're having. At this stage, working with impact investors and funders and the entrepreneurs, where's the data? How do we quantify? How do you show that this is happening? I'd love to be able to support you, so not only how do you show that it's happening, but what can we out here do to move this ahead?
Thank you. I think it starts with… one, people who are willing to at least recognize there's enough possibility here to fund the research. They're like, “Yes, I feel something viscerally. Now let's get robust about this, and actually get some numbers behind it.” You'd be surprised how rare that point of view is, by the way, or maybe you wouldn't be… sounds like you've been at this for a minute, so maybe not, but that's rare. That's really rare.
I think we're still at that place of: we viscerally know this to be true, and so the question is, why? Why do we need to back it? And one, it's usually for funding to be able to continue to support this work.
But, more importantly, it's to demonstrate to the world that this matters so that other people can start. Whether you're a VC or whatever, building this into your suite of offerings and support that you provide to other folks.
I don't know, I don't have an easy answer, but I would say it is…we have to get more robust about this. There’s no question. Part of the way that we're doing it is: a community of 1,600 is massive, and it's 1,600 across something like 47 countries, entrepreneurs, different stages. So we're looking at subsets. The first subset is a group of folks who received our earliest stage funding, we call it Acumen Angels, which is our version of a friends and family round. It’s small 50K grants. But it's 74 entrepreneurs.
We're starting with them, and we're looking at the subset and saying: what role has community played in the movement of these organizations? They're very early stage, so, moving from super early stage into product market fit. But we're finding that the slicing of the community into smaller pieces and subsets is offering an easier sample set to get a little bit more granular about it…
But the challenge to that, because as much as you were talking about all the different perspectives, all the different lived experiences, all the different points of view, bringing opposite points of view together. Once you start to subset the community, are you then making bubbles? And how do you avoid the bubbles?
I think we are. And it's a thesis, so we'll see if this works. But part of what we're doing is formation and then breaking apart, and then reformation. Our hope is that you're never forever in a cluster, but that you could have membership in this cluster, and then we break that open. Then any of those 74 entrepreneurs might also want to be part of a group that is all focused on food systems, hypothetically. But I think there's something about the forming, breaking, reforming across those same layers of diversity that allows us to mitigate a bit of that risk. But I do think that is still a risk, just to be clear.
ANITA HOSSAIN: What we like to do is think about—before folks had access to The Grand and accompanying relationships, where they were and where they are now, and look at things like self awareness, emotional resilience, leadership confidence. We're collecting that data set. Over time, we'll be able to share some of those trends.
But I would say, the most important thing that I hear from the work that we're doing… We work with Precursor Ventures, for example, and Charles Hudson has said that every week an entrepreneur thanks him for sponsoring The Grand because they're able to make a really difficult decision like co-founder dynamics or whatever challenges they're facing. So it is right now, a lot of that anecdotal feedback along with the data.
This is a pretty gentle one. There's the version of you who embarked upon this gigantic journey… quest… path, whatever you want to call it. Then there's a person who's speaking today, and I'm really curious: where or how have you surprised yourself along the way?
I'm so struck by your presence and just this deep light that you seem to exist inside of. I'm so just reveling at it. I recognize that everybody's going to go through these twists and turns and goofy experiences, and we surprise ourselves with our goodness and with maybe the other end of the spectrum, too.
Thank you for that. It's a really beautiful question. I had four distinct careers and I have moved around a lot as a result of my upbringing, and it wasn't until fairly recently that I was able to find this thread throughout all of it, which was in and around leadership and that being the core of it all.
Even in my darkest moments… the tech startup that Anita mentioned did not work. Three and a half years, raised a bunch of money, learned how to code, built this business for it to fail. Most of my team went out to Uber and Google. Even at that point I realized: “Oh, man, I still love entrepreneurs.” But that world wasn't for me.
The insight was still finding what the thread was, even in that failure, which is the same thread that's at the highs, which is right now, which is that I really fundamentally believe that if humans can identify the capacity to flourish, it will solve the toughest problems of our time.
I think it's in creating opportunities for humans to flourish that I found a deep sense of purpose and believe that I'm probably going to take a bunch of swings at this that are not going to work. Some are, but it's very joyful work. It's kind of an extraordinary thing that I'm getting paid to sit with these remarkable human beings. To help them find their highest self.
I do feel immense gratitude that this is where I've landed. I don't know if that has surprised myself, but I think if you had asked me 15, 20, 10, years ago, if I would be in leadership development... I mean, absolutely not. That was a really bizarre turn, but that's probably one of the bigger surprises.
I want to take a moment to thank both of you for convening this wonderful conversation. I think intentionality is important.
I do have a recommendation that is for your consumption. There's a massive ecosystem of B Corps, certified B Corps. I wonder If there's value in that massive ecosystem intersecting with your Fellows.
There are three reasons for that. One is, that's a cohort that has done an enormous amount of work in having their businesses get to a point of sustainability, thriving and long term validity and relevance in the markets that they're in, and these are individuals who have taken their companies from nothing to a whole bunch of something, and based on the precepts of trying to do business in the st century, where it is not a zero sum game along Milton Friedman lines, but along the lines of win win. So I wonder if there's an intersection there?
The second reason is, there's an enormous amount of knowledge base and expertise across the world in those B-certified companies. It's not just U.S. based. It's not just EU based. There might be some fertile ground for those 1,600 Fellows, and as those 1,600 Fellows get more and more in population, to gain some gleanings from the trials and tribulations of companies that have gone through the entire maturity from nothing to something.
The third is, I think the B Corp ecosystem has much to learn from your Fellows. I think we may get to some places of complacency, sometimes, thinking our job may have been done after a good 10-15 year stretch. But we also need some inspiration. I think that inspiration could be welcome from a wellspring of 1,600 human beings that want to change the world in a way that we need affirmation for, that there are others behind us that are willing to carry the torch.
I would offer that, as somebody that leads a B corp company of some size in the northeast corridor in the United States. I would certainly welcome that intersection, and I think you'll find those conversations enormously productive with that ecosystem.
So it's an invitation.
Thank you. It's very well received. We have a few Fellows who are, as you know, as a B Corp, who are a little too early. But we've had a subset who are now starting to get… In fact, just yesterday, a honey company in India just got certification. But I hadn't thought about the coming together of these communities in a much bigger way. So, very well received and appreciated.
[ANITA] As we wrap up, I just want to summarize a couple of points that you made and then leave you with the final word, on one takeaway you want to share with the group.
You talked a lot about the value of the ecosystem, and how Acumen helps with the identity that comes with it and really, that sense of responsibility.
You talked about getting wisdom in the room, the shortest path to a solution – entrepreneurs are able to find that. How do you talk to people who've been there before? Really using this community to de-risk the founder and Fellow journey, for example, using the community as a customer base.
I thought what you just said was really profound. That humans find the capacity to flourish. When they do that, then that will help create the change in the world that we want to see, and your role is really to help people find their highest self.
Any last takeaways or insight you want to share with this group?
Jeez thank you for that summary. That sounds amazing played back. I gotta say. It's very cool. Not a new one, but maybe just to really land on this idea and thinking about… if I were to leave you with one thought, it is: How do you stay connected to your purpose?
For me, the best way that I figured out how to do that is to find a group of people that help you do that. To enmesh with a group of people that can hold your purpose with you so that you can turn to them when it is hardest for you to see it, hardest for you to do it. It is those accompanying relationships that get you there.
I started with a reference to David Whyte. We use a lot of poetry in our work. I use a lot of it in our leadership development.
So I'd love to leave, not with my words, but with his, as a last idea of this type of relationship. He refers to it as friendship, which you can call it or not, but he has this beautiful passage which I just pulled out where David Whyte says:
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other, nor of the self. The ultimate touchstone is witness. The privilege of having been seen by someone, and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another. To have walked with them, and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them, for however brief a span on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
My hope for everyone is to have relationships just like that. Because I think that will enable flourishing.