Good Future

Alex Vynokur is the CEO and founder of Betashares, and he’s well placed to help us understand the market impact of the corona-virus, and what we can expect in coming months.

Betashares is only ten years old, but it pioneered the use of ETF’s, or exchange traded funds here in Australia. And they have a suite of ethical and sustainable funds that they manage through their own investment committee.

Alex is a business-man, and he’s a fund manager. He’s been deep in the Australian financial sector for a long time. So I value his views on the reaction that we’ve seen from the public, the government and markets, to the corona crisis.

We talked about the impacts ETF’s have had on investing over the past decade, and also, how resilient they’ve proved to be in a major correction.

Plus the decision making process for removing companies that don’t live up to their ethical and sustainability standards.

All the show notes are at www.johntreadgold.com

Enjoy!

Today I’m joined by Ant Moorhouse. He’s a champion problem solver who cut his teeth in the military, before discovering entrepreneurialism.

Now, he’s back in Australia where he’s furiously re-tooling his social enterprise, EarthTech, to discover and fund the enterprises that are working on solutions to beat corona virus, and more long-term, to help boost the recovery of the businesses and communities that are most hard hit.

Ant is a great storyteller, and he’s had a really rich life. What I took from this conversation is that the new breed of businesses, the digital natives, really have resilience and adaptability at their core.

They’re agile, because they have to be in such a competitive industry, but that works well in a health crisis, amid a pandemic, where staff can shift to work online, and the wisdom of the crowd can be distilled to solve big problems.

All the show notes are on my website at www.Johntreadgold.com

Enjoy!

Zali Steggall is not your usual politician. She defeated ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott to take office last year, and now she’s shepherding a Climate Change Bill through parliament that has the potential to define Australia’s next century.

Her Bill doesn’t define policy or technology, instead it acts as a roadmap. At its core, it has the goal of getting emissions to Net Zero by 2050.

She’s garnered support from all sides, and for business, it offers stability and certainty that has been sorely lacking, and which is vital for making long-term investment and capital decisions.

Zali Steggall is the Federal member for Warringah, she’s independent so she’s not beholden to any party.

Zali is a lawyer, but before that she was in fact an Olympic skier. In Nagano she won a bronze medal, Australia’s first individual winter Olympic medal.

She’s clearly no stranger to winning, but she may still have her biggest challenge ahead of her. You see, Zali is taking a new Bill to parliament, it’s called the Climate Change Bill.

This conversation was originally organised as part of the RIAA Conference, that’s the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia. But, like so many other events, it was postponed in the wake of the covid-19 crisis.

Zali talked a little about how her community is handling the Corona virus, as well as how frustrated she is by the conduct of some commentators.

We talked about the need to address climate change after a lost decade of political inaction, and she explained that this issue has increasing support from members on both sides of the parliament, from business, land holders and greenies alike.

This is about cleaning up our environment, but it’s also about catching-up, across innovation, renewable power, productivity and efficiency. Things that are already proving to define this new decade.

All the show notes are on my website www.Johntreadgold.com

Enjoy

It's double the impact this week, with two guests; Shuyin Tang and Lee Fitzgerald are from Patamar Capital. Shuyin is a partner at the Venture Capital firm, and Lee is one of the founders.

Shuyin is originally from Sydney but she’s now based in Vietnam.

While Lee Fitzgerald hails from San Fransisco.

Patamar is focussed on improving economic opportunities for low-income communities in Asia, and they do it by making early-stage investments in high-impact enterprises.

It was great to go deep on the thinking behind a leading venture capital firm. They pride themselves on seeing opportunities that other people miss, and the case studies around the businesses they’ve supported offer powerful inspiration for how much value there is in building the entrepreneurial potential within low income markets.

All the show notes and links are on the website: www.johntreadgold.com

And, please leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy the show.

Thank you!

Eric Savage has spent more than a decade living in India, in Bangalore. In this episode he explained his work at Unitus Capital. An impact investing firm that works to make capital available to a range of businesses, that have a big potential for positive impact.

He also described daily life, and the charm of controlled chaos. It renewed my energy to get over to India.

According to Eric, India is the land of the entrepreneur, and for an investor that offers a lot of opportunity, and a huge potential for having an impact.

We dug into capital controls, the history of microfinance and we then wound back to Eric’s early days when he was working in finance in the US at Salomon Brothers, this is the Wall street firm was the subject of Michael Lewis’s first book, Liar’s Poker, and it was the prequel to the book The Big Short. Eric ended up at Salomon Brothers only a few years after Liar’s poker was published and we discussed this timeline, the evolution of finance towards the Global Financial Crisis and the new era of conscious capitalism that I’m interested in, and which this podcast is all about.

The show notes are on the website at www.johntreadgold.com.

And you can continue the conversation on Twitter and Instagram.

Enjoy!

Speaking with Ashara Ekundayo was such a treat that I didn’t want to miss a word. This was one of those conversations where I didn’t even glance at the list of questions I’d prepared.

Ashara is a cultural strategist, she’s a committed supporter of the arts and she’s a deep thinker about how we can better value design, creativity, artist communities and ultimately the cultural assets that make a city worth living in.

Ashara is based in Oakland in California, which is fortuitious because I’ve just returned from a trip to neighbouring San Fransisco, where gentrification and urban renewal is rapidly changing the face of the city and threatens to smother the cultural value that makes it so special.

Ashara is in Sydney for the Impact Investment Summit so there’s another opportunity for people to experience Ahara’s energy and wisdom.

You can check out the website at www. johntreadgold.com for all the show notes.

Today’s episode was recorded at the Impact Investment Summit in Sydney at the end of 2019, where I spoke with Michele Giddens. She’s co-founder of Bridges Capital, she’s based in the UK, and during our conversation she summed up really well how poignant and emotional it was to be here in Sydney, having these conversations about climate change and about investing in sustainability, with fires all around us.

It really did spur a sense of urgency for shifting the way we treat this big, brown country that we call home.

Michele co-founded Bridges Fund Management in 2002, alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen, she has more than 25 years experience in sustainable and impact investing and, as she explains, she began to see the power of using capital markets to solve social problems in her formative years when she was working in development finance for the World Bank and the IFC.

I launched this podcast a little over a year ago, and I did it with the support of the Impact Summit, so it’s great to be telling some of their stories. And we’ve got a few more guests from the Summit lined-up to be on the show in coming few weeks, so do stay tuned for that.

All the show notes are over on my website at www.johntreadgold.com, and if you want to keep the conversation going, find me on Twitter @mrtreadgold

Kylie Charlton is well-known in the world of Impact Investing. She has lots of energy and lots of experience and so I took the opportunity to talk to her about risk.

Risk, is a key issue, for all investors. It drives decision making, and its central to how they forecast the future.

And I wanted to know… how impact investors perceive risk, both in terms of their analysis of potential opportunities, but also from the business side. And some of the key factors that fledgling, purpose-led businesses should think about when they consider taking on investment funds.

Kylie is Chief Investment Officer of Australian Impact Investments. She’s also a venture partner at the Giant Leap Fund, Australia’s first venture capital fund that is 100% impact focussed.

She’s the co-founder and managing director of Unitus Capital. And she also works with Patamar Capital on their Investing in Women initiative.

We went wide but we also went deep on this one. I think we spent as much time talking outside of the recording as we did with the mics turned on. So I’ll certainly have to get Kylie back in the studio to share some more of those stories.

Dave Rae is a financial advisor, and he’s a Member of one of the Technical Working Groups at the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative.

Its been great to watch Dave build his financial planning business and he’s helped me understand how his clients feel about sustainable investing, and the key concerns that people come to him with. I think it’s useful to get insights from outside the ‘impact’ bubble every now and then.

Now Dave wasn’t always an advocate for investing in-line with your values. He talks us through his journey to focussing on the impact his money is having, and how he sees the sector evolving. He also tells us about the changes that the Royal Commission is bringing to the world of financial advice with both the pros and the cons for the end consumer.

All the notes are on my website at www.Johntreadgold.com

Plus you can follow along on Facebook and Instagram.

Enjoy

Simon Griffiths is CEO and co-founder of Who-Gives-a-Crap, they make and sell toilet paper, but they’re having an impact that goes well beyond the product we see in bathrooms all over Australia. The company has a clearly defined purpose to bring the miracle of toilets to the 2.3 billion people all over the world who don’t have access to one.

Despite the hilarious potential for puns, the toilet paper business is actually pretty perfect for the social enterprise model. Simon and his team give 50% of their profits to a range of charities that are working towards providing water and sanitation services, infrastructure and education to millions of people all over the world.

As Simon explains, he wanted to find a way to raise money for worthwhile causes, but he wanted to find a way that was more sustainable than relying on donations and grants.

At the same time it brings awareness of the issue right into our homes. And arguably into the smallest, and most intimate of rooms in our houses. With the colourful packaging telling a story, and reminding us how lucky we are to have a loo of our own.

For all the links check out www.johntreadgold.com

Enjoy!