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0:10 path to building a Thunderlizard starts here. Learn more at energytechnexascom. Welcome back to

0:16 the show. I'm here with Nggu Morcho with Vitale area, a

0:21 startup here in Houston developing projects. And you got multiple projects I hear that are under development. But tell us about what you guys do Well, thank you, Jason. Thanks, Nada. Thanks for

0:31 the opportunity. I've been waiting for this to kind of be part of this discussion. So, my egg is said. My name is Nggu Morcho. I'm an impact entrepreneur. I'm a shocker fellow. And I lead

0:43 Vitale area project development and delivery. Vitale area is a concept I came up with after working for over 20, 30 years and working across the US and Africa and realizing that for certain projects,

0:56 for certain initiatives to take place, Primarily in underserved markets where low resource markets you couldn't just deploy a technology and go to market in a point approach Like I'm gonna launch a

1:08 widget. Well, I'm gonna launch this software for this particular group Case in point before I get to what Vittelaria does. I'll give you some kind of background.

1:18 I Work for 18 20 years in healthcare and one of my most Really, really informed experiences was trying to develop healthcare projects in Africa and I realized we were selling medical equipment I was

1:31 leading GE Healthcare's business in Sub-Saharan Africa and we would sell ultrasounds and X-ray machines and MRIs and CT scans into these clinics But every time we went in the physician would say yes,

1:43 I want to buy this equipment But I need help with financing. So could you bring your financing team? So we would now help financing team look at his or her books and find out their accounting system

1:55 for the hospital needed to be redone So you can actually see how credit worthy his business was, not him as a physician, but the business. 'Cause the business was the one that was buying.

2:08 Sometimes they confine the two. Then you realize he doesn't have, he or she doesn't have the right staff and trained for to operate this equipment. You're making a million or2 million investment.

2:19 So you gotta do financing advisory. Then you gotta do capacity building And then you realize, well, even the patients in the community are not well educated about what this technology can do for

2:33 them. So you have to do community education and outreach. And then you realize by the time we get through that and you're importing this equipment into the country, the government sees it as if

2:45 you're importing syringe. So you have to now inform public policy such that they put the right kinds of incentives in place allow for this type of equipment. So you end up starting with trying to

2:58 sell a piece of equipment, becoming an ecosystem enabler. For you to succeed, you have to touch all of these elements. So I started talking, referring to myself as a guy who builds integrated

3:10 care ecosystems. And back then, folks are like, you like to do everything as well. And it's necessary. So at Vitilaria, we develop projects using an integrated project delivery model. And we

3:23 focus on three pillars So health equity, because of my backgrounds from health care. And then we also extend to energy equity. And then we also extend to financial equity. And this is, to me,

3:36 it's just kind of into it. It's just natural. Because for you to be healthy, you have to be able to afford it. To stay healthy, you gotta be able to afford health insurance. That means you have

3:47 to have a job. And in most communities, the number one indicator whether there is an opportunity for employment is access to energy Hmm. Mmm. Mmm. So now think about that for a second. We're in

3:59 Houston, right? Energy capital, health care capital, financial capital. So some would dial us, may compete, and then aerospace. So what I realized naturally, Houston is predisposed, has the

4:12 assets to allow an organization like Vitellaria to prevail. So we talk to startups within energy tech nexus and other parts of the environment. Are you looking for growth with impact? Do you have

4:23 experiments scheduled? Do you have projects in underserved markets? And if they don't, we serve as a conduit. So I will take project A, that is maybe trying to focus on the core of a market. And

4:35 I'll say, can I build a business plan for you to go to Africa, to launch in Africa? Can I build a business plan to launch in the outskirts of Houston and underserved parts of Texas in farmland in

4:45 the US, where your off-grid energy solution may be more appropriate. But for that to happen, farmers need to be trained, farmers need to have access funding all the tools that I use in Africa,

4:58 actually very, very important in the US, but also across the world. So that's what we do. Okay, and it's funny, we just did this program called DevView here in Houston. So I learned more than I

5:08 ever thought I would about project development and how much work it is. And I assume for you, the way you make money is part of wrapped in the financing and the developer fees for a project. Yeah,

5:20 so we make money two ways, right? So advisory, where we hopefully get retained for kind of our know-how to put the project together and guide the entrepreneur and the business about how to build a

5:36 strategy for that particular segment of market that is non-core to them. And then second, when the projects take off, we hope to take a stake, a piece of equity in the project for upside. So

5:50 that's our revenue model got it. And it's funny, it was at this program, it was So it was a discussion on how much did a company build this out as an internal competency? It's building a project

6:01 is different from selling a product, just like you described. It is different from development and kind of the big conversations today around new technology is like, how do I get my first-of-a-kind

6:10 project out there? And it's a big lift to kind of build out that capability. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to spend a lot of time, right? And as we know, time is kind of

6:22 the biggest cost for a startup And a lot of your projects are first of a kind, right? Like no project is the same. You have to, so there, when I went to the rice, rice and rice alliance, energy.

6:33 Tech venture forum. Energy tech venture forum. I saw a lot of, so if you go to these things, you'll see 20 or 30 companies pitching about a different way to deliver solar energy, a different way

6:45 to capture flared gas and converted to methanol and

6:49 make green methanol There's about 20 different innovations and every one of them is a variation. of a clever mechanical chemical process. Now the investors and all the corporate ventures that was

7:01 there, BP, Shell, Chevron, very excited. And they, you know, pitch and these guys and girls who are smart will get half a million a million to go get a contract to go do a pilot in some city.

7:17 There's flayed gas all over Africa, right? But that company, and I'm talking about a specific company I've been talking to for over a year, they have limitations. They have a pilot actually here

7:28 in Houston where they've got a relationship with

7:33 a waste depot where they're gonna capture gas, methane, unconverted to methanol and make green methanol. But

7:47 you can't do that in Africa. So who does that for you, right? There's a company that I want to Florida to go see it's a waste to energy play. So they capture waste and plastics and rubber and

8:01 convert that to fuel that you can use to power, for clean power. They are super busy looking at developing power solutions for data centers in and around the US. There's a government of Uganda sent

8:16 out on RPB because one of their waste plants literally fell and they're like, we need somebody to come to convert these waste into use, beneficial use. That company could be good, but somebody

8:30 needs to do that interface. So what we try to do is to be a conduit where we take established US companies, so we don't take technology risk. There's no need for that. There's so many technologies

8:42 that get approved and get funded and 80 of them die. That's the venture model. So 80 of these really, really clever technologies that are patented die because the entrepreneur runs out of cash

8:57 because they cannot implement fast enough. So it's not because the technology is bad. No, it's because they're not getting to the right problems. They're not getting to the right problems. So we

9:06 kill 80 of our innovation because you are trying to match a venture model. So what we do is we say, I am not smart enough to come up with the next widget.

9:17 I really, really love implementing. I love matching technology to a need And so if we do that well, money follows. And our focus is really about tech delivery. So

9:32 we wanna use the technology to deliver a value proposition, but impact has to be a core component of that. 'Cause in every market where we play, if you don't leave the environment better than you

9:42 met it, then the technology is useless. So we gotta train people. We gotta bring access to finance, make sure energy access, we gotta keep the people healthy. Back to those three pillars.

9:53 energy equity and financial equity. Yeah, this gets me really excited because this is kind of my hypothesis is like what we really need to be able to scale these technologies is more project

10:04 developers. Like we need people who actually build the ecosystem. If you look at how Tesla was able to come and completely disrupt the car industry and get everyone driving an EV was because they

10:14 built an infrastructure around it. It wasn't just looking at like introducing one vehicle, a different type of vehicle They had to like, he had to think about the whole infrastructure that he had

10:25 to build so that people didn't charge the charging stations, the supply chain. You can't do Tesla without the infrastructure. Yeah Right.. You can't do Uber without the infrastructure. Yeah. So

10:35 we have, so we, I call, so Vitalair is an impact infrastructure business. We enable impact infrastructure ecosystems. This is literally word for word and I'm going to make sure I don't even know

10:47 which are my own language, right? But I'll read it for you. We are, our purpose is we're, integrated project delivery and finance platform for low carbon impact infrastructure projects in high

11:01 potential and untapped communities. That's word for word, what we do. We for us, impact infrastructure is green energy, is food security, is health care, it's education, it's water, it's

11:18 social infrastructure, housing, it's environment, so climate related stuff, right? It's ICT, so telcos, smart data centers, and it's pandemic preparedness and readiness or e-government. So

11:33 all of those require cross coordination across sectors. We, I, listen, I went to Rice, we did the MBA, I was there when Rice Alliance started because my executive MBA was from 2004 to 2006. So

11:46 it was right at the beginning of that And I left a very lucrative job in pharma working for Pfizer AlphaDev, which is today Fanning Innovation Studios, which is one of the most successful stories in

11:59 healthcare, early development, and pre-venture development. So I was at the very beginning where ventures tried to figure out how do we do business in Houston. What Fanning Innovation Studios has

12:12 been able to do successfully after we spent four years failing and failing until the figure right out after I left, is they were able to create an ecosystem around all the healthcare innovation.

12:24 That's why they today, quietly, one of the most successful healthcare, early stage healthcare life science development companies in the country. The way you work in Houston is you have to stop

12:35 placing bets on singular technologies. You have to build ecosystems, right? Because I can make a battery all day, but the battery goes into a car,

12:49 but it has to go into a kind of car.

12:53 if it's non-fuel, if it's a battery, then you need to have a recharge station, right? And then you need to have that recharge station in an environment where somebody's gonna make money from that

13:04 recharge station. And then you have to have somebody to recycle the battery. Then you now have to create somebody to manufacture that type of car because it's a new skill required. And then there's

13:14 all kinds of electronics and programming and coding that goes into making sure that the electronics of that car. So you see, you just create a whole new industry and none of that has anything to do

13:24 with the whole automobile industry, right? So what is the new energy industry? And I know in the current climate everybody, climate or green or low carbon is like a fall out of word. I look at

13:37 that and I call it energy industrialization. It's not climate tech, it's energy industrialization. It's how are we moving away from conventional energy to add to what else we do. Mm-hmm, right.

13:54 When we started the internet and we are AOL and the way we were a broadband and getting online, you know, you remember that sound. Oh yeah, yeah. We don't do that anymore. But nobody is upset

14:05 with that, because technology innovation makes lives easier. But when we try to do that energy, people freak out. In Africa, climate technology or clean energy, in any underserved community,

14:18 when I keep talking about Africa as maybe it's too far, in Baytown, in Baytown, Texas. Clean energy is a necessity. Absolutely. Because if you have a clean energy solution in Baytown, you are

14:32 creating jobs, you are creating access to energy, and you are keeping the folks in Baytown in Baytown, because now the cost of labor is better for you to invest. Yep, yep, yep. And in many

14:43 countries like in Africa, like I come from Pakistan, you have like failed governments who are not able to manage a grid that can provide reliable and secure. electricity to people, so what do

14:53 people do now? More and more in places like that. They go off grade, they put solar panels, and now they're cheap because China's our neighbor. This is not because it's cool climate stuff, it's

15:02 necessary to survive. You gotta shorten the energy supply chain, right? That's really what it is, and I think the thing is, also like clean energy, it's just more cost effective than other

15:13 solutions today. It's great. It's just good business, it's good infrastructure, it's just better, right? And that's just kind of the position we're in versus five years ago, right? And so I

15:21 think it's definitely an interesting time to be here and see that get deployed. No, the other part of this, so there's certain aspects to this, right? So when you look at what we do, it has four

15:33 elements, right? And I'm gonna go refer to my slides to make sure that I keep, I'm consistent with my messaging.

15:41 You

15:45 spent some time on this. It's very practice, it's like so hard to keep on message. There's four aspects to an integrated project delivery platform. First one is a project development consulting,

15:51 visibility, come in for a certain amount of money, I can tell you how to put the project together and where we're going. We can design the OKRs, we can design the milestones, and design - you

16:01 kind of use lean startup principles to figure out how do we get to first learning MVP outcome number one, two, or three. Now, the second aspect is the project finance advisory which, Nada and I

16:11 talked about. You cannot use traditional funding for this. This is blended finance. You need to use catalytic non-dilutive capital for the aspects that are non-dilutive in nature, right? So if

16:24 you're going to do

16:28 capacity building, if you're gonna train folks to use your machines, you can fund that through grants. Philadelphia likes to train people. So why do you have to use return tagged capital for that?

16:42 So learn how to raise grants and donor capital, but you have it be tied to an outcome Now, if you're gonna do early feasibility, high risk, donor capital pays for what you call a pay for results,

16:56 a PFR contract, so they pay for outcomes because they want to know if this is even possible before they put investment money. Family offices are doing this. So you use grant non-dilutive capital

17:07 and technical assistance for that first piece. Then when you validate and you do first-in-kind and you do the proof point and you build a pilot, then now you can bring concessional equity in

17:18 concession or debt, which really just means equity and debt that is even ready to take lower than market returns because they want to see this first-of-a-kind project happen. So you have to go to a

17:28 different category, a different class of capital, which is called blended finance to do this.

17:34 Green credits, credit instruments, low interest debt, programs that allow for that. The third part is the project management consulting. So once you get the funding, you have to

17:48 bring EPCs who understand this game to implement because they're implementing with years of history, so the floors of the world, the vectors of the world, at a bigger scale. But most of them, so

17:59 for example, back to the floor, they all don't get into a project until it's half a billion dollars. Yep, yep. We can't do that. These impact infrastructure projects are 100 to 150 million a max.

18:10 How do you get them to play? You get them to play by having two or three of their senior executives come in in a PMC role where there's a line item and then they train the locals. So you pair them

18:22 with a contractor, you pair them with a supplier. And the supplier and the contractor takes the local delivery risk, but the bigger EPC is therefore quality control, processes, implementation.

18:33 That's how you build capacity. So you're kind of giving them a different role? You give them a different role. They can't come in at the top 'cause when they come in at the top, the cost is

18:42 prohibitive for the project anyway. And they're sitting in their big offices waiting that have a billion to a billion dollar project. You and I, we won't get there. 80 of projects are below, are

18:53 between 50 million to 150 to 200 million. That's the space we play in. And then the last piece, which is the most - So I wanna go back. So part of this is, do you also source the like the local

19:05 EPC talent? Yes. Right? 'Cause you, reality is you need someone who's boots on the ground, who knows how to work. It's a coordination, right? It's a, we're a conductor. Yeah. It's a

19:12 coordination game. So you first, you do the feasibility, make sure that the project is feasible Excuse me, you bring funding, do advisory, and then you bring an EPC type,

19:25 a senior EPC working with a local EPC, a local contractor to bridge and make that marriage. And then at the end, you have to always have an outcome, sustainable development goals, tied outcomes,

19:36 which are tied to climate, which are tied to gender, which are tied to how many jobs you create, tied to how much you do access to finance. So the local EPC, the local companies, they are now

19:46 credit-worthy. You've helped them build their books, right? You've helped the local contractor become stronger. So tomorrow he or she can be the lead bid for that400, 500 million contract. We

19:58 don't always have to wait for floor or back to whoever to come from the US to bid or to leave Houston and go bid in beta on when they're trying to build Dubai, the next airport, right? So these are

20:10 the things we have to build local capacity 90 of all the frustration that we're seeing in the middle class in the US is because that local small contractor has disappeared, right? Because we no

20:21 longer, we say we're a service economy. Okay, great. But somebody's still building our cities. But because we don't have that local capacity, the cost of developing part of the highway, the

20:32 cost of developing housing, it's just,

20:39 I think we have a dysfunctional approach to look at this So on one end, there's billion dollar projects. And then on the other hand, the smaller projects that are done by people that we really

20:46 don't want to admit do those projects, right? And then when things change, we chase them out of the country. But the focus, if we're willing to have a system that paid good money for good labor,

20:58 our middle class, our young kids would be happy. Doing those jobs. To do those jobs. So some ways like technology has really allowed you to, I don't want to say DIY, but like it reduces the cost

21:08 of some projects where you can implement them, but they're smaller And so you kind of don't need this middle sophistication. And then all the rest of the money is on the expense of it. The

21:20 middle middle The. disappeared is is disappeared. Now, the middle is necessary when the country is going through industrialization, right? You cannot industrialize or grow an economy without a

21:30 middle that deploys and implements for itself. When the US was growing, the middle class was building cost. The middle class was developing farms and producing and shipping. The middle class was

21:42 sewing. We had textile industries, right? Now, I know it's romantic to think about that. I think the US has a different growth. There's an industrialization 30. But I'm looking at Africa, I'm

21:54 looking at parts of the US that can still go do those older things than where the cost of delivery is going to be acceptable to the customer, right? I want to build a data center outside of, you

22:06 know, on the fringes of Texas. I want to go to Galveston and figure out what can we do in Galveston to protect Texas when we have the next hurricane and we lose power. We are supposed to have

22:19 off-grid solutions in Houston as standard, but we don't. You know why? 'Cause that centralized procurement system where there's a bunch of generators that get bought when the weather is bad. And

22:30 then as soon as the political attention goes away, nobody pays attention to it. But if we had incentives for local school districts to get on upgrade power. Then it could be the center hub.

22:42 Imagine that. Local communities, if we give them incentives, my neighborhood where I live in Missouri City, if we had an incentive to be on smart power, we would be better off, my cost of

22:53 utilities would be lower. Center point would be better off, 'cause they could use their power for more critical stuff like the hospitals and all these other things. Harris Health is building42

23:01 billion hospital. They should have an incentive to have redundant power in that. What they had to do on that, I don't know, economically the tax you're supposed to set them up to that, so that's

23:11 what we try to do. We try to build those kinds of projects in areas around the world where it is critical for livelihood, right? Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy

23:25 Technologies is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy in carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexascom and start building your Thunderlisset. Yeah, I

23:37 know I think an interesting point point or all to how.

23:45 you know, yes, we're advancing in technology, but because people are becoming more efficient because they're using that technology, we're actually paying them less. And we want them to work more

23:49 hours. And, you know, that then - It's kind of backwards. I just wanted to land on the full point 'cause I didn't want to miss my - Yes, please. So project development consulting in front end,

23:59 project that finance advisory to bring the money in, project management consulting to supervise and make sure implementation. But the last and almost, usually the most important but least

24:10 appreciated part is the additionality, which is the sustainability piece, which has to be built into the financials of the project. So what do you mean by additionality? Additionality is

24:21 customized sustainability on impact index. So it integrates low carbon and SDG targets. How many jobs did we create in the local economy? So really just really measuring articulating and showing

24:35 the impact But everyone just has to have a social and financial impact. So impact investing needs to have those legs. And it's not a fancy, you feel good. It's actually good business, right? The

24:47 reason Coca-Cola is so powerful because almost in every community, the local distributor, the Coca-Cola is a local guy. It's the local business. And it's very localized. It's very local. That's

24:60 delivery mechanism. The best brands in the world are local. So the more local you make your project implementation and delivery, the better your probability of sustainability. Right? So it's good

25:12 business if you want to build a power plant to first train 100 to 200 locals on how to do the 80 of the non-essential task and then hire them and pay them and then watch how they use that money to

25:29 build to buy houses in their community. And those houses will now draw from that power and yourself, you're building your own customers, right? But oftentimes we come in with this very, you know,

25:41 a mercenary type way to just, I just want to optimize with shareholder profit. How is that working out for us? Yeah. And I think the challenge is it's easier to measure one and hard to measure the

25:50 other. And that's, that's where you're coming in. Yeah, it's lazy, not easier, but it's lazy. Because a lot of us, and to be fair, the fault isn't a lot of us MBAs, right? We're trained to

26:04 just look at something and we feed a beast IRs,

26:10 IRs, the bigger the IR, the better the project, really? Talk to us about some of the projects that you're working on that are under development. So, the beautiful thing about what I do is that

26:21 it's a passion project. If I want the lottery tomorrow, I will still do this. The most dangerous thing about it is 'cause it takes a long time. It's frustrating, right? But it's worth it. Now,

26:32 I have about three or four projects that we're developing. I just got off the phone with a group that's looking at addressing blindness in low to middle income countries. an engagement I did when I

26:43 ran a nonprofit, which now I have an opportunity to do it the way I always wanted, which is taking, building a for-profit structure that builds technologies, blended with a nonprofit vehicle, and

26:53 then taking that into emerging countries, partnering with hospitals that do vision care, and then deploying these technologies that are custom designed for that market, and leveraging grant money

27:03 and donor money to train, to do population screening, and then empowering the doctors with training so that they can deliver affordable access to quality care to the locals. So that's integrated

27:15 care ecosystem for vision care. The second thing we're doing is integrated farming for impact, which is another project I'm developing in partnership with some folks. There's a nonprofit in

27:27 southern African country. There's a leading energy company that has a huge water conservation portfolio that wants to participate because they realize Water conservation is an issue to modernize

27:39 agriculture in Africa. There's a large European operator that operates a network of 480 farms across 12 countries. So they have a methodology that we're gonna integrate. And then obviously African

27:51 Development Bank is putting about30 billion a year. So Africa imports anywhere from 50 to 75 billion dollars a year in food. Sure, the goal of this IFOR at the Integrated Farming for Impact is to

28:05 make Africa a net exporter of food So we're going to turn every farm into a self, into a food producing entity. So every farm we engage will be a private SME, a small, medium enterprise. We will

28:18 put the capabilities in place where they will produce package and distribute food from the farm, right? And again, capacity building is necessary. So we're talking to Texas AM about a certificate

28:30 program that will be accredited there where we can do smart, sustainable farmer certificate level one, smart, sustainable, pharma, certificate level two and three. You see, I think you're

28:40 seeing a parallel. So there's one in healthcare, there's one in farming. On the energy access side, we're looking at a couple of things where we wanna look at waste to energy 'cause we do have a

28:49 lot of waste on the continent. The economics of doing a public-private partnership or doing an off-take where you get paid to take off the waste and then conversion and doing that that

29:03 power off-take. That's a conventional process for structuring a power deal It takes too long and it's too expensive. So we're trying to figure out what is the best way to use technology, maybe

29:15 distribute a ledger type technology blockchain, smart contracts, to build a structure, right? Where we can turn waste into energy in certain sectors. For example, we have, I think, 60 to 80

29:29 coal mines that are abandoned across Africa. And those coal mines have what you call coal fines,

29:37 the little grains of coal, those are just sitting there. And that's bad for the environment, but then those coal mines are also defunct. What if we can pick up those coal fines? 'Cause this waste

29:47 to energy generators can turn that into fuel. It's not processed. That's what's wrong about it. It's just we take the coal fines as input and turn it into refuse derived fuel, which can now

29:60 provide power in that power kit either go to the grid or industrialize a special economic zone Yeah. So it's these very interesting,

30:12 very interesting ways to design projects that improve humanity, improve community. So community-based, integrated project delivery at scale. So about three or four of those are what we're working

30:23 on right now. Yeah, super exciting. Now, I also have a, on the financial equity side, I advise a cohort of about four or five FinTechs, ones from Latin America. The other one, the lady I was

30:34 on the call with,

30:36 real-time payment infrastructure, which is kind of an alternative to Swift. But it allows for community banks and credit unions to operate big international banks, because it does cross-border

30:50 payment real-time, who secure minimum fraud, and it reduces the ability to make sure the identification, fraud, and time and cost is reduced, which is the biggest issue. And it allows for

31:05 remittance to be processed cross-border. So Africa, 200 billion a year of remittance gets transferred. I think globally, 898 billion of remittance, about190 is in Latin America. So I work with

31:17 FinTechs who develop these solutions. One of them has a digital bank that allows you to have a bank account if you're in Africa with your ID in Africa. You can immediately open a bank account in the

31:29 US or in Europe where the ID is verified. So now, if you're selling, if you're business, and you're selling goods or importing goods from the US, you can have your US dollar account that pays for

31:41 the goods in the US and get transferred so you don't have to be, is to mitigate the loss of money when you do foreign transfer. Yeah, yeah. So these are solutions, again, we're addressing energy

31:53 equity, health equity, health and food and wellness, and then financial equity, those are pillars. Yeah, interesting. I remember when I was looking at energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, gosh, well,

32:06 12 years ago, it was amazing to me how much power here, like we talked about 10 cents a kilowatt hour. And there, there were so many applications where it was like 50 cents to a dollar a kilowatt

32:15 hour. And you felt like, why is it so expensive and why are people willing to pay this much? And on the one hand, it is expensive. On the other hand, it's valuable, right? Like that's just

32:26 what it's worth. It is, it is the blood of the

32:29 economy. Exactly, and it drives that industrialization the way you strive. Yeah, you do not make money if you don't have energy. Yeah. Simple. Yeah. So no matter what, so I realized very

32:38 quickly when I was helping folks, when we were very gladly building our chest, I worked for GE and we sell all this nice equipment, but every hospital and every clinic, 30 to 40 of the operating

32:51 costs was energy. Diesel generators, they could care less. I couldn't reduce the cost of the equipment There's no effects on that, GZO,

33:03 all that kind of thing. The effects of the diesel, obviates their profitability. So now I had to start thinking, well, what if I had a business that allowed them to reduce operating costs could

33:09 they now afford my equipment? Yeah. Could I call somebody who sells solar panels? But then if I'm calling this person, I'm giving them business, how come I don't benefit from that? Right? So

33:20 then you start thinking, oh, am I a jack of all trade? No, I am actually a solution provider. So I need to give you energy. So you can get access to health. And oh, by the way, I can teach

33:30 you, I can put a digital wallet so that your customer doesn't pay cash and you can do subscription based care. So you mitigate your revenue loss. Bingo. This is kind of how Visualair was created

33:43 out of necessity. Because for me to be a successful businessman in the US, in

33:49 Africa, using technologies that are validated in the US, I need to create an ecosystem where those technologies can be deployed elegantly.

33:58 And that's the new business model. It's an ecosystem based on venture capital cannot understand this. And traditional PE cannot understand this. There's a market for that and it's blended capital,

34:09 blended finance. Yeah, let's talk a lot about that a little bit more. In terms of blended finance for your particular projects, 'cause I can imagine it's still hard to be able to get that debt and

34:20 get access to that finance Yeah, so, fortunately or unfortunately, philanthropy in the US.

34:28 is quite mature, right? When things are mature, they have a particular way they operate. Mm-hmm. There's a particular way. We donate 501s, donate to 501s, right? And once they give money,

34:42 they close their eyes. Mm-hmm. Okay? 'Cause I get, it's by design, it's for to reduce your tax liability. Yeah. First. And then the impact is secondary. Let's be, come on, let's be honest.

34:55 That's the main driver. That's the main driver So when you talk to philanthropy in the US about impact focused giving, you gotta get past the young gentleman or lady who's a graduate school or comes

35:11 from a really good school who's now tasked with managing not do not lose my money. You

35:17 can get past, you can't get to the benefactor, the sponsor who created the philanthropy because they actually had a mission. So there's a block Now we have some friends. that creates organizations

35:31 that give you more access to family offices that want to do evergreen investment, impact-based funding. And so, a good friend of mine, Eric Olson, will grow close, one of those, and

35:42 organizations like that, where they allow you to interface, we give you access to interface with family offices and philanthropy that's looking to do good, and

35:53 make a profit and do good. So that's the first thing you have to re-educate philanthropy Now around the world, some other philanthropy like in India and Pakistan, in Africa, a philanthropy knows

36:02 it's a necessary part of the ecosystem building. So yes, you have to educate and you have to re-think the way the donor philanthropy play works. The other part is the concessional capital, the

36:17 equity and debt that has to take first loss or take risk. So if you're asset manager, you get rewarded

36:28 your returns, right? Why would you take money that is conventional capital, supposed to get high return? 'Cause that's where you get your bonus and put it in a risky proposition you can't. So you

36:40 have to have a different asset class, capital allocated specifically to play that role. So if there's an organization called Convergence that is the leading organization that brings together blended

36:53 finance deals. So I'm affiliated with Convergence and I talk to them, we follow them So organizations that play in this space,

37:01 look, the billions of dollars and I had the convergence figures and I don't want to misquote them, but that's a place of avenue to go. Now in the US, 80 of blended finance is done outside of the

37:12 US, but the US needs blended finance because this, the,

37:19 It's a strategy that will work here, right? 'Cause we have these different people who want to take different risks. Look, I am not, I don't want to make a political statement, but the fastest

37:28 way

37:30 to get people back to work in the US is to develop these types of projects,

37:36 is to deploy smart capital with concessional capital to create industrial, for example, all over Africa, we have special economic free trade zones, because it's necessary, because it takes the

37:50 tax off and allows people to invest. We need free trade zones, we need economic zones in the US that are actively engaging folks to do good, not some way for corporate to just write off a tax bill,

38:03 right? So in the US, I think it was project 40, I can't remember the name in the previous administration, they looked at the amount of impact infrastructure that was needed based on propositions

38:19 that was sent to the government just a couple of years ago, it was about45 billion a year of deals that needed funding. And that number is expected to grow 30 year-on-year for the next 10 years. So

38:30 an entire infrastructure rebuild is to happen in the US, but it can be done by people in the US, and it can

38:38 reignite the entire economy. And actually talking about that, because we had the infrastructure bill, we have the IRA,

38:48 and there's the Justice 40, like a lot of that. Those were all designed to do that. That's how the rest of the world operates, by the way. Because if you travel outside the US, I don't know most

38:56 Americans who if you travel international and just go to the Middle East, even some cities in Africa, right, you'll go to Australia and look at airports and look at airports in the US. Then you

39:06 tell yourself honestly,

39:09 what are we talking about? It's night and day. It's not even a fair fight. I was like, it is not a fair fight. I like how they're huge. No, they are elegant, they are modern, they're

39:18 efficient, they operate well, the immigration, the processing, It's just, it's a different level. go to hospitals, and just see how they operate. When you go to Africa, you do not use cash.

39:34 Interesting. You don't use cash. We have some of the best banking systems in the world. I lived in Nigeria for eight years. I had never felt more secure with my money. I can transfer money from

39:46 myself to within seconds. In the US, when I transfer money to myself, from one bank account, it takes a day or two Yeah, I'm just, yeah, I'm surprised of how outdated our banking systems are,

39:57 but I guess - It is not even close, but these are things we can solve, right? Education, education, we're still the curriculum that my kids are, it's still so outdated. But it's, these are all

40:12 goals, right? That we need to just stop. But you do that by focusing on impact infrastructure. Infrastructure that is focused puts the community at the center of the development, not the

40:23 corporation. I mean, same goes with public transport, you know, all these things. Oh my God. Like, I mean, yeah. Why do we not have, why do we not have trains, smart trains for me to get,

40:33 listen, I should be able to live in Houston and work in Dallas. Yeah, yeah. I'm very serious. It should be an hour for me to get on a train, work downtown Dallas and live in the woodlands or

40:44 live in Sugarland. Oh, Austin. Oh man, if I could not have computer cross 10, be so happy. No, just think about it. Yeah. You can take a nap on the train. Right, if I could get up and get

40:56 on a train, like they do all over Europe and all over the rest of the world and get on a train and read the paper and not have to drive my car and all that save time is very valuable. And then do

41:07 some work and then get off the train in the woodlands and go to the office or get off the train in Dallas or get off the train in San Antonio. I mean, it just talks about like how you do need that

41:18 central policy who does put community and the people and the city, the citizens. actually first, then like the profits of the corporations. And the thing is, the auto industry would not suffer.

41:29 They would actually improve, 'cause what it does, look, my brother works in the auto industry and is a very successful guy. They do very well, right? And if you were to do something like that,

41:40 for a short term, you may displace a few things. But what happens is now you sell cars that people actually need, not forced to have. Yeah, and it's very valuable. And you can't move in Houston

41:50 unless you have a car. Yeah. Yeah Hi. Yeah. Well, because of time, let's talk a little bit about, you know, what your vision is for the next couple of years for the teller. Sure, yeah. And

42:02 also how people can connect with you. You know, what are you looking for to be able to get these projects to move forward? So I am easy to find on LinkedIn and also through energy tech nexus. So

42:14 you can just look me up, we have a website and contact me directly. But it's better to go through energy tech nexus 'cause then we can - It's because of all Thank you.

42:22 But our goal is, listen, we have an ambitious goal, right? And I'm gonna go back to what I'm doing here if I can pull it up. But what we're trying to do, in every project where we work, we're

42:37 trying to raise at least100 million per vertical. Okay, now that means if I'm in healthcare, I don't do any project unless it has an opportunity by 2028 for me to turn that construct into a100

42:56 million evergreen fund

42:60 for that vertical. So in healthcare, the vision care blindness platform, the goal is to raise100 million fund by 2028. In the integrated farming for impact, same thing, 100 million fund for the

43:13 waste to energy or energy access player, same thing. Because you cannot do this without a dedicated patient, long-term capital So you're thinking like a fund. that they can do multiple projects?

43:24 We're thinking like a permanent capital vehicle. So as it collects payments, it goes back there. There's a portfolio, right? There's a portfolio of projects that we're going to deliver. But

43:33 remember, to do an ecosystem, we can't invest for five years and give you return and walk away. No, we're rebuilding community. So the kind of investor that comes along us has to be ready to

43:44 deploy money for 10, 20, 30 years. Yeah, you can get an exit every seven or eight years and take some returns off, but you've got to be able to reinvest, be willing to. So first, the first

43:55 piece is get some seed capital to get a lot of these projects off the ground. Once we get the seed capital half a million to a million or two per vertical, then the next thing is to go build that

44:05 platform so that we are able to turn that into a hundred million dollar fund, which is an evergreen fund, so it's a permanent capital vehicle. That's the first key milestone. Then after that, the

44:16 goal is to build each of those funds or platforms into a billion dollar place. Mm-hmm. So every vertical for us has to turn into a billion dollar play in In seven by 2030. Okay. So that's the goal.

44:29 It's not even that far away. Yeah, super impressive We'll have to bring you on again to get into the details

44:36 Partition I bring on one of the projects with you at the same time to talk about how you guys work together. Yeah So if we if we do that, I mean, there's somewhat metrics like number of jobs we

44:44 create during that time number of companies We we empower so local SMEs. Mm-hmm, you know Number of jobs we create the percentage of those jobs that are gone Well number of people we train and the

44:56 percentage of those people we train that are women So Africa for example has three nine seven five million young people going into the workforce by 2030 If you don't train them empower them give them

45:06 a job They will get on boats on planes and I'll come here. I don't care how many times you deport folks They will not stop coming so the only way you do it is build jobs. Yeah build infrastructure

45:17 so that they can stay and earn a living in their homes. That's the best use of US. foreign policy anyway. USAID, which was not wrong with it. Yeah, best last word. Yeah, yes, but so that's

45:30 what we wanna do. We wanna go from two million to a hundred million to a billion dollars in the next seven or 10 years. Awesome. Pervertical. Awesome, no, great to have you on and hear your

45:39 vision and your passion. and we'll have to have you back on.