29. Social impact investing and conscious capitalism | Eva Yazhari, Co-Founder and CEO of Beyond Capital

Podcast

Eva Yazhari | Co-Founder and CEO of Beyond Capital

PODCAST DESCRIPTION

In this episode we spend a very interesting hour in the company of Social impact investor, Eva Yazhari. Eva is the Co-Founder and CEO of Beyond Capital, an impact investment fund that believes that investing is a powerful mindset that can inspire good and improve lives.

GUEST BIO

Eva Yazhari with brown hair and a black top

Eva Yazhari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Beyond Capital, an impact investment fund founded on the belief that investing is a powerful mindset that can inspire good and improve lives. Throughout her 16-year career, Eva has worked in the impact investment, finance, and asset management industries. 

Eva built Beyond Capital to be a recognized global brand. Its portfolio improves the lives of a growing 7 million low-income individuals, including investments in Kasha, a technology-driven e-commerce women’s health company in East Africa; and Frontier Markets, a fast-growing distribution business providing goods and services for consumers living throughout rural India. Both companies are targeting addressable markets numbering billions of consumers and are uniquely poised for commercial financial returns as well as social returns. When it comes to impact measurement, Beyond Capital partners with pioneering firm Proof of Impact to independently verify and track the growth of outcome-linked metrics. 

 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] – Eva Yazhari
I really believe in business as a force for good. Impact investing is an industry where creativity is also valued.

[00:00:17] – Doug Foulkes
Welcome to The Future of Work, the podcast that looks at, yes, you’ve guessed it, the future of work. It’s brought to you by WNDYR for their blog Chaos and Rocketfuel. WNDYR are productivity and human behaviour specialists who use technology to help us humans on our digital journey from disruption to transformation. Check them out at WNDYR dot com.

[00:00:40]
That’s WNDYR dot com. I am Doug Foulkes and along with WNDYR CEO Claire Haidar, we regularly meet up with industry experts and mavericks to get their take on work in the future.

[00:00:54]
Today we spend a very interesting hour in the company of Social Impact investor Eva Yazhari. Eva is the co-founder and CEO of Beyond Capital an Impact Investment Fund that believes that investing is a powerful mindset that can inspire good and improve lives. She also has her own the Beyond Capital podcast. So make sure you check that out. Coming up, you’ll discover what social impact investing and conscious capitalism are, how their impact can be measured, and how going forward conscious capitalism will become more and more the norm.

[00:01:30]
Eva also highlights some examples of the companies the fund invests in. And we finish off by looking briefly at the UN’s sustainable development goals. So a packed show, but first, let’s start with a couple of definitions.

[00:01:45] – Eva Yazhari
Impact investing is investing with the intention to generate not only financial but social, environmental or even governance related returns.

[00:01:55]
So that’s kind of a broad definition. But what it really means is bringing one’s values into investments. And I’m happy to unpack that a little bit more. But maybe to take it one step further, when I think about what conscious investing or conscious capitalism is, it’s actually a furtherance of impact investing and thinking about all the resources that we have available to us. So while the term investment or capital is utilised, thinking about not only one’s, you know, money, but also relationships and consumer choices and, you know, perhaps being an active citizen and even one’s voice or even social media presence and how that could be used to express values.

[00:02:50]
And so that’s kind of the basic definition of impact investing.

[00:02:54] – Doug Foulkes
Eva I’m going to ask you to go a little bit more and walk us through the basics. This is certainly something that’s new to me. So if I was to choose to become a social impact investor, does the return on the capital that that’s invested work in the same way as say traditional investment.

[00:03:12] – Eva Yazhari
The answer is, for the most part, yes.

[00:03:15]
So I actually believe that as we enter 2021, we will start to not need the labelling of something being an impact investment. When I think about conscious investing there’s also the consideration of all stakeholders, meaning shareholders, the environment, customers, employees, as well as others, and communities in which a business or a company sits. And when we think about all stakeholders, I think that’s where there really does become a recognition of return that goes beyond just financial return, beyond just what we would call a single bottom line.

[00:04:03]
So the answer is, absolutely.

[00:04:07]
You know, you are viewing your investment as having a return. However, that return is multidimensional. So when we say, quote unquote, traditional, I would, of course, love to push back and say I don’t even know what traditional means. And in my opinion, market rate is defined by a specific group of finance professionals that have a specific definition around what that means. But, you know, I know what you’re saying. You know, having worked on Wall Street, that is a language that I certainly also speak.

[00:04:42]
So the answer is, yes, you can generate financial return and social good or environmental return at the same time.

[00:04:49]
Now, the reason that it depends is because there are specific sectors that are new.

[00:04:55]
One of them is still specific aspects of renewable energy and making complete grids entirely renewable. And others relate to other kinds of innovations, even around, you know, biofuels and in other sectors, even infrastructure that require subsidies. And there’s a great article in the Harvard Business Review called Impact Investing Won’t Save Capitalism. Well, I don’t agree with the premise. They have a great little chart that describes which industries might not be a traditional style return. But in general, the majority of impact investments can have environmental or social impact baked into their business models and have a commercially viable strategy at the same time.

[00:05:46] – Claire Haidar
You’ve worked on Wall Street. I really want to understand why you do what you do, but I want you to wrap the answer to that with a little bit of your background.

[00:05:54]
And, you know, where did you come from and how did you end up being where you are today?

[00:06:00] – Eva Yazhari
So I grew up in New York City. My parents are artists. I have a family history of public service on both sides, one side in Africa, in the health space, the other side in American politics. And I learnt a lot about justice and I kind of formed some core attributes early on. One of them was a belief in social justice. Another was around just frankly, leadership and innovation and thinking about how those can really drive forward change.

[00:06:36]
And then a fourth is wholeheartedness, which I believe to be kind of a core value, I call it an attribute to distinguish between the values that I care about on the social and environmental side. But really, you know, it’s an attribute that I aspire to be. And so if I bring those kind of four areas together, social justice, leadership, innovation and wholeheartedness, what really kind of comes out of that is impact investing and thinking about using money as a force for good and all of the other resources that I have at my disposal as a force for good.

[00:07:14]
So when I was working on Wall Street, I’m a mathematician and have a finance kind of training not in university, I was more technical, but really brought it to the analytical side of Wall Street and doing deep due diligence. I thought a lot about change.

[00:07:31]
And I actually happened to work with activist hedge fund managers who rally for a stock price increase by making tweaks within management teams or other specific policies that a company may have. And I was actually really inspired by the use of capitalism as a tool. Now, those activist hedge fund managers are not rallying for anything more than an increase in the bottom line and financial return to shareholders. But I thought that there was more that can be done there.

[00:08:02]
And so I launched Beyond Capital, which is a venture fund that invests in early stage companies providing access to the next wave of innovations around basic goods and services like health care or agriculture tools or financial inclusion, waste and sanitation, and mobility.

[00:08:22]
In doing so, I kind of took my finance skills, pack them up and, you know, unpack them in a world where there was possibility to have more than just a single bottom line, there was a possibility to also impact lives with access to critical basic goods and services and occasionally have an environmental impact as well. Just to maybe illuminate kind of what our impact themes have been over the past decade of being an investor. We have gender distribution and livelihoods.

[00:08:56]
In other words, gainful employment as the key pillars of how our portfolio tends to express its impact more broadly.

[00:09:05]
And of course, each unique portfolio company as a venture investor has its own impact as well that we can refer back to. But ultimately, I would circle back to the original question and just say I really believe in business as a force for good. And I think almost my entire upbringing kind of brought me to that place. And lastly, impact investing is an industry where creativity is also valued. And as the daughter of two artists, that was kind of the missing link for me.

[00:09:38]
You know, I have the finance, I have the Wall Street. I have these kind of core values that relate to impact investing. But creativity was missing for a while until I realised that actually, it is a way to solve for some of the worlds, or at least the challenges of the markets where I invest in India and East Africa as well as, you know, be creative and reaching wider audiences about what impact investing actually is.

[00:10:06] – Claire Haidar
In listening to you, you’ve actually just taught me something.

[00:10:09]
I never realised that there was that role. I can’t remember the exact term that you gave it, but almost those activists on Wall Street that are advocating for change within an org. And as you say, like they’re looking at it through a very singular lens. But you’ve taken that concept and really expanded that. I genuinely didn’t even know that those rules existed. It’s very obvious now that you’ve stated it. And it’s really powerful.

[00:10:33]
But, yeah, I’ve just learnt something.

[00:10:35] – Eva Yazhari
They’re also known as corporate raiders.

[00:10:39] – Claire Haidar
I’ve heard that term. Share with us a little bit about some of your portfolio companies, like what is it that you’re investing into?

[00:10:48]
And I know Doug is then going to start talking about the impact.

[00:10:53] – Eva Yazhari
You know, we’re looking for companies that have simple solutions to complex problems. I think it’s easier to state than build a business around that. But ultimately, some of our successes in our portfolio have been, you know, providing a good or service where there’s just no access for individuals at low income levels. But the market sizing of individuals at low income levels is about a billion people between the four countries where we invest India, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

[00:11:22]
There is a bit of a simplicity in the strategy in that we are meeting a demand. But there’s, of course, much much more nuance in how social and potentially even environmental impact gets expressed. So a couple of examples are Kasha, a women’s health e-commerce platform in Rwanda and Kenya, which is essentially getting, you know, women’s health products, whether it’s feminine sanitation or even soaps and lotions or contraceptive into the hands of women in a way that is, you know, fun, exciting, aspirational and fights the taboo around, you know, female health, which exists in so many parts of the world, and particularly in the countries where we invest.

[00:12:09]
And that company has grown in scale. I think they have had over a hundred thousand orders in the last even quarter. So they’re really kind of on a trajectory to be kind of a strong player, although still a young business. And they also were resilient in the time of covid. So I think that also shows, you know, in this world where we’ve redefined the essential, there is tremendous impact that can be had, but also, you know, without trading off financial return on an investment.

[00:12:42]
And we are a seed funder. So we got involved quite early on and the business actually closed at series A, very recently with some larger pools of capital. But what’s fascinating about the business is not just the access and how they’re speaking to an audience and how they’re very clear about not being branded as what they call a period company and being much more than that to their consumer and the communities around their consumer.

[00:13:05]
But they’re also employing women to be a part of their sales force, particularly in local more rural areas where women’s health is even more taboo of a subject, and so the business has been able to have what I would call a multistakeholder approach, because they’re not only in the health sector providing women’s health, but they’re also run by a female and employing women in the process of distributing their products.

[00:13:35]
So I think that it’s a perfect example of the type of conscious leader that we’re looking to invest in.

[00:13:40]
If I were to be really bold with you both today, I would tell you that in a sea of tech investors, we are really a people-centred investor.

[00:13:49] – Claire Haidar
Which I like and which is why we have you hear on the show today, because we’re people/human-centered company and it’s what we’re all about. Doug, I’m going to hand over to you, because Eva has said some really clear things there about impact.

[00:14:04] – Doug Foulkes
Yeah even from my side, you’ve spoken about many avenues of how you do impact socially. I also read that your Beyond Capital fund helps in excess of seven million lives that are living below the poverty line. How do you measure all of those things? How do you measure the impact that you’re making?

[00:14:24] – Eva Yazhari
Great question. It’s definitely an extremely important question in the industry, and I think we are lucky to almost sit at the sweet spot of measuring impact in that, I’ve referred to this before, but the impact is kind of, quote, baked into the business model of the companies that we invest in. That’s a quote from a colleague of mine in this space, Jessica Yagan, to give her credit. But I think it’s the perfect way of describing how we can then approach measuring impact.

[00:14:59]
So taking Kasha as the example, when we design the reporting system for the company’s social impact, we do it during our initial due diligence phase. So we’re thinking about it before we’re even investing because it does help to inform us and the, you know, the founding team on what we can expect. But it also helps us understand how that founding team is thinking about impact.

[00:15:23]
And so we put together a framework, you know, as a part of analysing the business. We identify the business activities and how they express themselves in particular impacts. So in other words, you know, how many female health products are reaching low income women, how many contraceptives are reaching low income women?

[00:15:44]
And then also thinking about the women that are employed by that business.

[00:15:49]
So how many women have jobs as a result of, you know, being a Kasha employee and this company existing. And then we also think about the policy level. So this company in particular has strong government ties and is instrumental in actually lowering the access to contraceptive age in Rwanda very recently. So there’s also kind of the other things that maybe are harder to measure because they’re one time events, but they certainly encompass the impact. And we basically create a little matrix, a little table, where we get to kind of understand each different metric that we want the company to report on, we use the standardised language and taxonomy in our space called IRS+ where we link those metrics to specific kind of coded and numbered metrics that if one day we wanted to report into maybe a centralised database, it would be very easy for us to do.

[00:16:48]
And then we kind of take it from there.

[00:16:50]
And typically we get reporting on either a monthly or quarterly basis. It is not without quantitative, excuse me, qualitative data. And so I kind of mentioned to you the quantitative part and the metrics. But then we also get, you know, data around anecdotes and what might be working in the company, having a hotline, perhaps for women who have questions around the utilisation of contraceptives and the products that the company is selling.

[00:17:16]
And when we get that qualitative data it allows us to just have like a feedback loop and add on different metrics to our reporting system as we go on as an investor. I don’t mean to kind of talk too much on this point, but I think we’re living in a time where there’s a lot of potential also to independently verify impact using the Blockchain.

[00:17:40]
And we are in the process of actually working with a South African company called Proof of Impact to design a more direct integration into companies just kind of like CRMs, or in health care space, kind of patient management systems in order to gather more frequent and data that we can see trend lines that go beyond just quarterly reporting and also are independently verified and placed onto an immutable ledger.

[00:18:12]
So that’s kind of the next wave where Impact will go and if you know anything about Blockchain, you know that will, maybe one day lead to tokenization, which is also very exciting. Where let’s say investors can invest in a specific impact and put a value on that.

[00:18:31] – Doug Foulkes
That’s interesting, because I was thinking, not necessarily the trade off, but the balance between, you say, the quantitative and qualitative metrics, for many you would think that job creation would be one of the most important things. Just maybe tell us alittle bit about this job creation side of what you do?

[00:18:48] – Eva Yazhari
We know that our portfolio, as you mentioned Doug, has reached 7 million people, including 5.2 million women.

[00:18:55]
But we also know that it’s created 10000 jobs with 11 companies and a relatively small size. And so business as a force for good has the great potential to play a significant role as an employer, to create jobs.

[00:19:17]
I’ve seen it also in the interviews that I’ve done with other purpose driven leaders, including Jeffrey Brown, who runs a chain of supermarkets in Philadelphia, and he is one of the leading employers of formerly incarcerated individuals in the US, because he has deep knowledge of his communities and also has enough experience to feel comfortable and remove his own biases around hiring formerly incarcerated people.

[00:19:59]
And so I just think impact is, you know again, taking the multidimensional approach we certainly measured in our portfolio. But, you know, it’s almost an easier metric to collect as well. You know, how many people are being employed by a particular company? And it’s actually a really great starting point for burgeoning impact investors to think about how companies are having impact. Now, just to be cautionary for a minute you would want to make sure that the impact is holistic.

[00:20:34]
And so let’s say a company’s providing a good or service that is extremely relevant and life changing and improving quality of life and standard of living. But they’re not treating their employees well. That’s problematic. And I would caution any investor to think a little bit more deeply about what that means about the leader and the person that they’re investing in, ultimately what the risks can be there.

[00:21:01]
And last thing I’ll say is that zooming out to the stakeholder capitalism discussion. During covid, we saw tremendous spotlight on employees and how they’re being treated. And I think that, you know, companies have been asked to walk the talk even more and hopefully they rise to that occasion. One of my favourite trackers is JUST Capital, which does an excellent job of showing how companies kind of behaved by vis a vie investors and workforces and other stakeholders during the pandemic.

[00:21:37]
And I think if we keep shining this spotlight on employment and job creation as a key element of impact investing, it can really have the ability to make great change.

[00:21:48] – Claire Haidar
Eva in terms of the future workforce, I want to pivot the conversation there.

[00:21:56]
You’re a mom and I know that you have, in your own words actually used the word vision.

[00:22:04]
You have a very clear vision for the world you want your children to step into one day.

[00:22:10]
Tell us about how you see the world of work changing because of conscious capital, social impact investing becoming more and more mainstream. And as you say, more and more people are becoming conscious to the fact that these are not things on different ends of the spectrum. They can actually very easily live together.

[00:22:33] – Eva Yazhari
I almost see the future of work changing the world and not the world changing the future of work.

[00:22:40]
And what I mean by that is purpose is shining into every area of our lives. And one of those areas is being an employee.

[00:22:53]
And, you know, maybe if you’re a young employee in a company, you don’t actually have a large investment portfolio or even a large pension to work with to express your values. But you have your voice as an employee and you’re almost intrapreneurship in that company if it can be structured correctly in order to effect change. And so I think that, you know, young employees, the next generation of the workforce has been asking for more for the past decade.

[00:23:28]
Covid has been a terrible global tragedy, in my opinion, and I’m sure in everybody’s opinion, but one of the silver linings has been that it has kind of accelerated the need for companies to meet this demand.

[00:23:47]
And if I give you a couple examples, I have worked with post MBAs for the past decade who assist in our due diligence. And every time we have recruited since 2010, we have had incredibly qualified candidates step forward to volunteer their time. It really has showed me that people are looking for meaning and purpose. And there’s a study by a gentleman named Dan Ariely. He’s a social psychologist. He’s like almost an anthropologist.

[00:24:24]
And I apologise for not knowing his exact title, but he did a survey of S&P 500 companies and he asked, what was most important to employees. And, you know, we can all bounce around some ideas and guess that it was like the bonuses or the health care or even like the free food at Google or the, you know, the foosball tables.

[00:24:45]
But really, what it came down to was meaning, purpose, and emotional connection to one’s work. To me, it’s not only in the anecdotes, it’s also in the data that we’re living in a time where workforces are asking for more. And that actually is a positive force that will shape how companies do business. And I think that that’s great. So my view is really that the workforce is going to impact, impact investing maybe more so than impact investing, will impact the workforce.

[00:25:21] – Claire Haidar
I’m pausing because you’ve definitely given me some food for thought there, like in terms of, you know, which one is the push and which one is the pull I’m definitely going to be pondering that for a while.

[00:25:34] – Doug Foulkes
Claire while you’re pondering that, Eva could you share with us maybe one or two of your portfolio stories?

[00:25:41] – Claire Haidar
What I’d love to unpack there with you Eva is, not just the story about the company, but the process that you went about finding it, you know, how they found you, potentially the vetting process that you’re going through and coming back to that leadership piece. And what is it that you’re looking for in that leader?

[00:26:01] – Eva Yazhari
Typically, when we’re sourcing companies, we’re finding them amongst business plan competitions or fellowship programmes or other kind of beachheads of what would be known as social entrepreneurship. But I am trying to redefine as just business as a force for good. And so when we get to know companies and they meet our initial criteria, so they have to have positive unit economics and be sustainable and be on a path to sustainability, they have to have impact as a core part of their strategy.

[00:26:34]
They have to have also a conscious leader that is perceptible to be somebody or a team that truly believes in the mission of the company and in serving all stakeholders. And so those are kind of like three key areas.

[00:26:51]
And, you know, I think that ultimately when we’re doing our due diligence, it looks very similar to venture capital.

[00:26:59]
I’m actually previewing a redesign of not only our due diligence, but of just like due diligence at large and maybe kind of putting this out there in the more public sphere of how do we rethink due diligence in a world where we’re trying to eliminate bias. We’ve always been investing in bias financial systems and structural inequality, and we’re very aware of that in our process. So, you know, we’re not asking company founders to have, you know, track records or to be putting millions into their company, you know, before we invest at the seed stage, which are some of the things I see in the fund in the fund world that are requisites and I think are holding back diversity amongst fund managers.

[00:27:43]
But they think there are some nuances that we can zero in on. And traditionally, we do invest in mostly indigenous founders.

[00:27:54]
There are a few exceptions where we really do see commitment, but that is very important to us. So those are kind of like the key areas.

[00:28:04]
I will pivot to another example.

[00:28:07]
I think it’s interesting to explain where this impact investing space was and where it is now. In 2013 we invested in the company called Frontier Markets, it was initially a renewable energy distribution business.

[00:28:20]
We did it on the heels of reviewing dozens of solar lantern companies that had a standalone product.

[00:28:26]
And we said, you know, we don’t think any one of these companies is going to kind of be the leader. We want to find a distributor and also with distribution as one of our impact themes. You know, we want to kind of tackle energy access from that aspect. And we found this incredible female CEO named Ajaita Shah. She’s Indian American, but has since moved back to India. And she works in the state of Rajasthan and has been able to achieve phenomenal results.

[00:28:53]
She’s the highest revenue-grossing company in our portfolio. Her impact reaches over four million people. And she’s on the track to be kind of the last mile distributor of not only renewable energy, but consumer durables, as well as now fast moving consumer goods. And her company, like Kasha, was extremely resilient during covid. If you notice, we invested in 2013 and most venture funds would have probably exited by now.

[00:29:18]
But I think what’s interesting about Frontier Markets is, you know, they’ve hit their stride 7 years later and most likely companies probably have a shorter time to hitting their stride. But we need the Ajaita’s and the Frontier Markets to pave the way for the next generation of entrepreneurs that are incorporating purpose into their companies. And so we also think about that when we invest, you know, is this a pioneering strategy that can open the door for a whole new industry?

[00:29:50]
And how can we play a role as an investor in that?

[00:29:54] – Claire Haidar
Whenever you get chatting about the stories, I just love it. Eva we’re drawing to the close of today’s conversation, and I really would like to close off with some numbers. So coming back to the purpose and why I wanted to have you on the show with Doug myself, was because what you do impacts work. And we’re a company that’s all about the future of work. And so can you just share with us some of the social impact numbers in relation to job creation, but what that looks like.

[00:30:24]
So the whole conversation has been centred on your fund and what your companies are doing. But if we look at that number from a global level, can you just share high level with us some of those numbers?

[00:30:34] – Eva Yazhari
There are some global goals defined by the U.N. called the Sustainable Development Goals. They flow from zero poverty to gender equality to reduce inequalities to climate action and renewable energy. And they are a very neat set of 17 goals that we can all literally wake up every morning and define our lives as kind of reaching towards. Now it’s initially kind of, I think, meant to be intended for the investment community. But I think if it’s like a perfect little package of like how you can also live your life, those sustainable development goals have a tremendous market opportunity attached to them if they can be achieved in the next 10 years, and they were established in 2015 with a 15 year time horizon, there will be a 12 trillion dollar market created and they will create the opportunities, and that market will create 380 million jobs.

[00:31:31]
A lot of those jobs are in areas where there is job scarcity and some of them are not. You know, some of them are in what you would probably guess, renewable energy industries and kind of shifting workforces from old industries to new. For me, that is the statistic that I think stands out the most, but maybe drilling down a little bit to share kind of where I gather hope during this time, 65 percent of Indians are youth, and it’s a highly educated country, and it’s a country with tremendous entrepreneurship and it’s a key market for us.

[00:32:12]
And so what I’ve been able to observe is in both markets where we invest, but just zeroing in on India and their massive youthful population, I think that is really how the next generation will create innovation that creates jobs in a new way, with purpose being a core component of what employment actually looks like.

[00:32:37]
Hopefully those two points kind of give you a picture of where I, you know, feel like we are going globally, because I think that those trends are really, really exciting and have great potential to, frankly, shape the way that this world looks and even the inequalities that we have.

[00:32:59] – Claire Haidar
I’ve actually just pulled up various articles that actually outline them and that outline those market numbers. It’s as you say, it’s a perfect package in terms of how you could frame how we should all be living. It really is a very, very powerful set of 17 goals.

[00:33:16] – Eva Yazhari
Yeah. And I think, like waking up, or you know, picking a few of them. And there are some in my life that I have alined kind of my personal life to, which are gender equality, no poverty, peace, justice, and strong institutions, quality education, reduce inequalities, climate action, and affordable and clean energy. I know that’s a lot, but that’s kind of what I try to focus my investments and my personal day to day on.

[00:33:47]
And then at Beyond Capital all of our portfolio companies address, at least two STGs.

[00:33:54]
And those are kind of more inclusive of no poverty, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, good health and wellbeing by nature of the sectors that we focus on.

[00:34:04] – Claire Haidar
As a human, I would naturally be leaning towards responsible consumption and production, as well as life below water and life on land, like those of the three that just like stand out to me immediately.

[00:34:16] – Eva Yazhari
Yeah. And, you know, it’s hard because it is easy to want to focus on all of those.

[00:34:21] – Claire Haidar
On all of them exactly. But as you say, you know, the more focussed you become when you’re looking at issues that are this big, the bigger your impact can actually be.

[00:34:32]
I’d like to close out with a statement that I heard.

[00:34:38]
For those of you who aren’t watching this, it’s Dave Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction on Netflix.

[00:34:46]
And the show that I watched this week was with Dave Chappelle. And Dave Chappelle is like a comedian, he’s kind of like been there on my periphery. I don’t follow him avidly at all.

[00:35:01]
But this show really opened my eyes to so much and I came away from it. And I really, really learnt a lot from Dave in that hour that he spent with Dave. And one of the things that he said, which I think is so tied to this conversation that we’ve had today, is that you can’t really change the world, but you can profoundly change a small corner of it. And Eva, I really feel that the work that you’re doing is achieving that.

[00:35:29]
It’s like you in the fund that you’ve chosen. You’re not trying to boil the ocean.

[00:35:35]
You’re not trying to change the world, but you’ve chosen very specific corners in the globe and you really are bringing significant impact.

[00:35:45]
So on behalf of us and the world, thank you for doing that. Thank you for serving the way you are. And thank you for being an inspiration. I, we really do admire what you do.

[00:35:56] – Eva Yazhari
It’s a pleasure and frankly, it’s fun. And there are you know, I am just one of many individuals that have chosen their corner of the world to have an impact in a specific way. And I think when it all adds up and we realize we’re all in this together, it will, you know, it will come to a place where we can have those 380 million jobs created, hopefully in the next 10 years.

[00:36:20]
I appreciate you acknowledging that, because I think sometimes, you know, we live in a world of big tech, big VC, and there’s a feeling that everything needs to be big, big, big. We live down here in Texas. It’s go big or go home. It’s just not my modus operandi. It’s not the way that I kind of view my contribution to the planet. Ultimately, what I’m here to do is contribute beyond myself and enjoy life as a part of that.

[00:36:48]
And I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do it.

[00:36:50]
And this is such a fun conversation thank you so much for your time, as well. In interviewing me and talking about these topics.

[00:36:58] – Doug Foulkes
Eva, thank you. And hopefully we’ve inspired one of you to also pick a corner of the globe and make a difference. That was Eva Yazhari, founder and CEO of Beyond Capital. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, then please feel free to share it with friends and colleagues. Just a reminder, for more information about WNDYR and the integration services they supply. You can visit their website. That’s WNDYR dot com. And so from me Doug Foulkes, as always, and Chaos and Rocketfuel. Stay safe and we’ll see you soon.

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