251 | How to Build an Impact Time Machine with Catherine Nomura
Our guest this week on the pod is Catherine Nomura. Catherine is the President and Founder at Kountable, an impact focused company that works to solve the world's distribution problems by integrating people, products, profit and purpose. Her best selling book The Laws of Lifetime Growth was translated into 15 languages.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Episode on Kountable, an innovative B2B marketplace focuesed on sustainability with Founder Catherine Nomura.
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Catherine Nomura
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. In each episode, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience, and is already transforming many lives. Before I get into our guests, and our topic today, I have one request, you could go over to Apple podcast or whatever app you're listening to the show on, do a rating hit the subscribe button, it helps tremendously. Thanks so much for considering. today. I'm thrilled to introduce you to Katherine Nomura. And our topic is How to Build an Impact Time Machine. Kathryn is the president and founder at Kountable and impact focus company that works to solve the world's distribution problem by integrating people products profit and purpose. Her best selling book, the laws of lifetime growth was translated into 15 languages. Katherine, welcome to the show.
Catherine Nomura 01:09
Thanks, Paul. I'm super excited to be here.
Paul Zelizer 01:12
So thrilled to have you, you're doing incredible work, and I can't wait to tell our audience about it. Before we do that, Katherine, were called aware printers. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you use to resource yourself for this really important work?
Catherine Nomura 01:31
Well, you know, the one, the one that I absolutely can never dispense with is taking real free time. And I go by the Strategic Coach free day method of free time, which means sleep to sleep real, full days of disengaging from work. And you know, sometimes that's hard, I thought, you know, the more that you're loving what you do, or, or sometimes against the wall and feeling a lot of pressure to get things done. Interestingly, it seems from experience, that's hard in the moment, those are the times when you most need to take time off. So I push through and force myself. And sometimes the trick is to actually do something where you actually have to be completely focused on what you're doing. And so I kind of love doing things like surfing or lately, I broke my leg a couple years ago. So I'm just back up to now riding an E bike, but I have to pay attention to the road 100% of the time, or I'm gonna wipe out where I live up on a mountain. So doing that and forcing my brain to do something else is is really critical, not just to, you know, rejuvenation, for the sake of wellness, but it actually makes you way more productive and creative, and you get back to work, too. So the thing about this approach is that you get back more than, you know what you give up in that day, or, you know, if you can take more, that's even better. You get a big return on your investment of that time in yourself when you get back to work. And it's amazing how even just having questions in the back of your head that are subconscious. Often the answers are right there when you go back to work after after taking time off. So that's my that's my non negotiable wellness practice.
Paul Zelizer 03:22
How Absolutely I spent the day yesterday in the mountains, they did a 24 mile very, you know, technical trail run with a buddy and we were talking about it as we were running and it's got that same quality like if your trail running in you're not paying attention, especially in the mountains, you could quite easily wind up on your face. Paying attention and being in nature and good conversation for an entire day. You think I'd be an exhausted today and I am a little sore. But I come back to work, you know, nature and doing something very physical, very active, completely off the grid for the entire day. Yes, it's the entire day. And that's a real, you know, commitment to do something like that to clear the decks. But I come to Monday morning just so enthused and excited and rejuvenated. I'm very different than when I don't get that time. So I hear you loud and clear. So this work that you do, it's really wow, just the way you're weaving together such a variety of things. And we're gonna get into exactly what countable is and how it's providing some really innovative solutions to a very significant problem. Before we did that, if somebody's not familiar with your background, Katherine, give us like, the short version of your professional origin story.
Catherine Nomura 04:48
Sure, well, I'm for more than 30 years now. My whole life and career has been devoted to supporting entrepreneurs and the organizations that support entrepreneurs especially have entrepreneurial organizations that support entrepreneurs. That's because it sounds a bit like a set of Russian dolls. But I started off in the early 90s, I had a personal experience actually in Borneo of all places where I was very, I was transformed by interaction with a local tribe. Where they were, there were logging interests and and mining interests, that were removing them from their traditional way of life. And, and I kind of fell in love with them and came back from that trip wanting to understand more about how we could keep things like this from happening if that was possible. And at the time, I was an animator, so I was in a very different space, but ended up falling that question through studying international development and learning that entrepreneurship was one of the things that really allowed people to take charge of their own future, it was the one thing that was really working in the world at that time and development. And unequivocally that was the beginning of of the Grameen Bank. And of course, Muhammad Yunus eventually won the Nobel Prize. But I became very interested in entrepreneurship as a means to self actualization. And I'm still on that path. And I, over the years of working with entrepreneurs all over the world, and, you know, I've worked now within, you know, entrepreneurs who are at the lowest end of income, the poorest of the poor, entrepreneurs, and and up to the top 2% of all entrepreneurs in the world, through an organization called Strategic Coach and across the spectrum, you know, entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs, you know, in some way, because they want freedom or because they want to create a world that they're not seeing an opportunity to create any other way. It's not an easy path. But because of that entrepreneurs are some of the most powerful change agents in the world to and supporting them in that respect to create what they want to create, and bring the innovations that that they're seeing opportunities for the creating the value that they want to create in the world around them, because they know that their own communities need that has become a passion and a driver of mine for years. And it's taken me through working with nonprofits with for profits, and in most recently becoming a founder of countable, which I think provides the greatest platform that I've ever seen for helping to multiply entrepreneurial capability at all levels. And across the globe.
Paul Zelizer 07:38
Entrepreneurs are some of the most important change agents. I couldn't agree with you anymore, Catherine is exactly why I do what I do. So in trying to help our audience understand countable, this is a, this is a fairly sophisticated model that you've created. And it's beautiful, and it's designed. But when we were talking before we hit the record, you shared something with me that was like, Oh, I got it. You said when we're looking at impact projects around the world, that the failure rate for impact projects is over 50%. Right. Did I hear that correctly?
Catherine Nomura 08:19
Yeah, and that, you know, and that that's, you know, it's very, it's a very hard thing to measure because people do not like to talk about what's not working for them. But even from looking at failures that are measured in projects that fail to get financed, we can see that the level is, is at least that 50% of entrepreneurial, requests for financing for trade, finance, are rejected. And that is that, you know, that's obviously a small portion of projects. But those projects, all entrepreneurs who are working in the developing world, are working on something that has impact, whether it's growing their own business or and it's that and the jobs that creates and how that builds the local economy, but it's also what they're buying. And that the they're engaged in in things like building hospitals, and bringing in pieces of equipment for building computer labs and schools for girls there. They're building infrastructure, bringing in renewables, and they're engineers and medical suppliers and all kinds of different small businesses that that helped to build the things that those economies are working on, which are, by and large, very impact producing types of projects.
Paul Zelizer 09:40
So this high failure rate, like as you were coming up with the concept of countable, you said, I want to go right there. These are really smart people who have great ideas, and they're struggling to get the things they need the products like let's say one of the examples on we're going to talk about a Wonderful we funder that you have and, and it was an example of like malaria medicines or other like medical needs or even construction materials, right? And and trying to source those and get them delivered and pay for them, especially now in times of like disrupted supply chains. You said, that's where I want to go, how does countable work to smooth out that process of helping impact oriented entrepreneurs get what they need to have the positive change that they want to have in the world?
Catherine Nomura 10:32
Sure, well, you know that the thing about this project is, by the time it gets to the point where an entrepreneur has a contract, these entrepreneurs have contracts with very large buyers, quite often, you know, large buyers, like, or at least, they're often government or large corporates, it may be the FAO or a un branch of the UN, the UN based organization, there are lots of large nonprofits, that these contracts come from that these local small businesses are fulfilling. So by the time something gets to the point where a small businesses want a contract to do this, a ton of work has gone in to already get that project to that stage. And this is, you know, really, it wasn't that we went there to they brought this to us that when we went and met these small entrepreneurs, we started in Rwanda, actually, they brought us projects that they were having challenges with, and it was that they situations like they would win a large contract, but then they would go to try to get funding to purchase the goods. And this is the challenge. So you need to purchase the goods, and have them shipped before you get paid. So they need to pay to have the goods leave the loading dock, and whatever country they're coming from, they would typically bring those goods through customs be what's called the importer of record, an important role in bringing goods in for project that is sometimes you need certain licenses and things like that, to be able to do that for medical goods, for instance. So they, they have expertise in being able to do this and even know what the right goods are for that project. But they're not actually going to get paid for that contract until those goods are delivered in the country. And so they have a lot of work to do. And, you know, these, some of these contracts are over a million dollars, you know, for a single order, our average contract is or average order is around $150,000. So these are not small amounts, but you're talking about maybe, you know, the entire supply of diagnostics for malaria, for instance, for an entire country, which might be divided up into a few different purchase orders. But still, it's a large amount of goods for a small business, to have to finance over a period of time, which could be 90 days, 120 days, it's not, that's not a long time for impact, or a long time for a funder to have a loan out the problem, there is more who the loan is to, which is a small business that doesn't usually have a credit rating that doesn't have the collateral to, you know, to fund a loan in the hundreds of 1000s of dollars, or if they do you know, that's they have other business that they're doing as well. So how many of those can you do before you run out, and you just have to wait until your next deal is done before you can do the next one that really slows things down these projects, because there are a lot of these contracts going on at any given time. So what accountable does is we actually use structured finance to create a solution that takes the entrepreneurs lack of of credit file out of the picture. And what they really need is not the money, they just need the goods, they need the goods to be paid for at the manufacturers, and any logistics providers, customs clearance insurance, things that have to happen along the way to get the goods to where they need to go, so that they can deliver those goods, and then they will get paid. So what countable is able to do is take that transaction and digitize it and turn it into an asset that an institutional investor can fund. And then through cannibals platform, we have sort of cloud based Treasury capabilities. So we pay all of those providers along the way. And then at the end, we clear and settle the funds get back, you know what the what the lender has put into it, and the entrepreneur keeps the rest, we release that to them. And so it just takes that financing piece out of the picture so they can focus on the really important jobs they do figuring out what the right products are building, providing all the services and other things that go along with those products and making sure that you know that these these buyers get what they need.
Paul Zelizer 14:48
And in that process of helping these entrepreneurs get what they need to use your language Catherine, you're explaining to me I wish I had better language for this but in The military, they talk about a force multiplier, right? Yes. And you were when we again, when we were chatting before we hit the record button, you were saying here, this is no small difference, right? That when you add all the ways that countable helps, you know, both get the materials that the entrepreneurs need and the financing and reduce the timing lot of these things are like can be even be life saving, you know, let's say malaria medicines, right? You can have an up to 60x Return on $1 invested in countable because of the way you stack these various ways of having positive impact on top of each other. Did I hear you correctly? And if so, how do you take $1 and turn it into six?
Catherine Nomura 15:47
That is correct. And it sounds like a magic trick, doesn't it? But it's it's based on doing? You know, we've had we've had, believe it or not over $1.3 billion of projects, and analyzed through our platform. And we've done over $70 million of those in the last five years. And so we've learned some things, you know, when we started out, it was really the financial and those numbers by the way, they come right out of our data set. So we know this is what happens on average, obviously, every every project is a little different. But let me tell you how that how they kind of how the math works on that. So So one of the things that we use equity for is we've put it into trades. And, you know, we put in $1, and our capital providers are willing to put in $4 for every dollar that we provide. So it's sort of an 8020 split. So that's, that's the first five times multiplier. So you get from $1 to $5, that you can use them to buy goods and a project, then we can use that because these projects are on average about 120 days, some of them are quite a bit shorter, others longer, but on average 120 days, we can turn that three times in a year so that $5 can get used in three trades. So that's you're up to $15. Now in the course of a year, then we have into the platform itself. And the technology. And this is this is where we're able to do a lot that up till that point that's just in any financial person will understand that it's just you know, this is this is basically using money leveraging it. But leveraging technology is where we get the rest of that the other $30 or so that we can add on top of that, or or more comes from digitizing, what are otherwise typically very sort of analog processes that are disconnected and often sort of highly siloed processes where one party doesn't know what the other is doing. In fact, these trades don't even look like one trade. Typically, because you have you have the manufacturer who's selling it to the point of the loading dock, then the small business takes over, then when they get the goods in the country, they're selling them basically to their buyer, who the government or the UN, whoever it is inside the country. And it looks like it's actually a bunch of different transactions. But when you can digitize the whole thing from end to end, which we do through a very simple process operationally, for a user anyways, there's a lot of magic that goes on underneath that through the technology. But we can turn this into one transaction, which we can derisk really significantly because we can find all kinds of efficiencies, we remove it, we remove the the challenges that I just spoke about around lending money to a small business in in a country that doesn't have maybe good credit rating capabilities and that sort of thing, where it's it's very hard to know what you're doing. So there's time delays that happen because of that there's worries about currency exchange and and what's going to happen with currency over time, there are a lot of risks that we can manage using sort of institutional processes, because we do it at a portfolio level instead of an individual entrepreneur often having to try to manage these things on their own. And just you know, they just don't have access to the kind of resources that we can bring to them as a platform. So that that efficiency effectively immediately doubles that $15 to 30, we can get that much more buying power out of it. And then we also have partnerships because we're a b2b marketplace. So we have manufacturers on on the platform who and partners who are also partnering with manufacturers bringing in things like long term agreements for preferred pricing. We can get economies of scale and enterprise pricing on on logistics and things like that as well in insurance. We have partnerships with insurance providers. And so we can do those things for the whole countable Network of Entrepreneurs and trades, obviously, much more economically than any trader could do that endeavor. digitally, then. So that gives you another one and a half times the value. So that takes us up to about 3750. And then, you know, there's there's the rest of the value in these projects. So the on top of that, we've talked up until now about, about being able to get more goods for your money. And that's really important when you're talking about things like malaria testing kits, or even equipment for building renewables, you don't want to be paying twice as much for those kinds of things, when you don't have to, and that's, that's the price of inefficiency, generally, which we're getting rid of. But on top of that, there are all kinds of other services that get unlocked, that are part of those projects that if you don't have the goods, you just the whole project fails. So you lose everything along with it, which are jobs, there's there's revenue to the small business. But there's often, you know, service contracts and other other types of the value that are provided that go along with that that are critical. For instance, one of the things we've purchased on our platform are neonatal ICU and neonatal ICU is you need to train nurses and you need to train technologists otherwise, they're not going to be used properly, and they're going to break down. And that's part of the same contract. But all of that value is the value of the project. So on average, so we measure contract value as well, which is the total value of the project. And the projects, when they succeed, typically add another sort of $20 On top of that 3750 In additional value that's going into that economy and towards that impact. So that's that's the math and that happens with any dollar, any dollar of equity that we put into a trade. And that's just you know, that's just one year, then it gets it's a virtuous cycle. So the next year, we get to put that dollar or those dollars that come back into into nitrates provided that they're, they're left.
22:04
Yeah, sure, a model such a genius model.
Paul Zelizer 22:08
So if I'm an entrepreneur who uses countable compared to the old analog way, like, in addition to all these great value add ons that you're doing, like helped me understand some of our listeners might not be familiar. If an entrepreneur did it the analog way versus they work with countable, like, what's the time difference between let's, we've been using the malaria kits, right? Let's stay with that. Like, I go the analog from the moment I say, Yes, I want these malaria testing kits, the analog way versus the countable way, like how what's the time difference between I get these kids like actually ready to start testing people in the community that I've signed up to help?
Catherine Nomura 22:54
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's really hard to measure it just that way, that thing that we see more often than not as these they don't happen at all. So projects, without countable many of the projects we see would just not happen if we weren't working with them. Because the problem is they can't, they get stuck quite often, it's the it's the financing part, where they just actually can't get the money and time. And then the contract gets, you know, that money gets taken out of that budget and put into something else. So the product, these projects have deadlines on them. So there's a constant stream of these projects flowing sort of through our network and through the world of actually a lot of manufacturers. Sales execs are the ones who see this because they see these orders get stuck look at a request for a quote, but then the order never comes in. And that's how they see it. And so it's not even so much that it's about things taking longer. And we have had projects, you know, for instance, that there was there's a project where there's a video on our website about building a boiler room at a hospital, which is you know, it's like the heart of the hospital, you need hot water to run a hospital, you also need you need laundry, so laundry was part of it, but you can't have a hospital without hot water. That project was within 10 days of failing when it came to our platform. We try not to you know, it's not our normal, ideal practice to to get projects that late in the game, but often that that will happen because people hear about us and know that there's there's at least another chance for them to try something different because it does work differently. And within within a few weeks we were able to turn that around and get that project done, but it just wouldn't have happened at all. And that project had been on various bankers desks for about a year before it came to us. So it had been delayed and delayed and delayed. And you know, this this was a highly a highly trained structural engineer who, whose team had come over to the US to train in assembly at the is very specific products and working with hot water and pressure, it's, it's dangerous. So you need to have, you need to have a team that really knows what they're doing. And they, they still couldn't get it done even between all the businesses trying to work it out because the structure of the financial world is not set up. For these kinds of triparty transactions where you have a small business in the middle, it's just extremely, extremely challenging. Even when the other end, the buyer was the second largest construction company in China. So you know that that's where the the being able to transfer the credit risk from the small business actually goes to the buyer, who has a credit rating, usually, you know, a credit rating from Moody's or Standard and Poor's. So they're they're much easier to finance, it is a complete game changer. What happens when the prices are higher, what we can see is the pricing, we see the pricing on the the deals that have gone through the platform. And you know, pricing is often about two times what it should be. And there's there's an article, anybody listening can can look at our blog and see that about how to how to build a time machine that talks about this, when when things cost twice as much, then it, you know, takes twice as long or more to get the same results. Because you have to raise more and more money and funnel it through all these processes to get it, you know, to get the result. But it's it's not necessary if you can actually do it the first time, which is what we can do when we start working. No, we work with suppliers, buyers and small businesses, it's not just the small businesses, but having the entire value chain on our platform, we can do it right the first time, bring the cost down and get everybody you know, then that then entrepreneurs free to go out and do it again. And they quite often the next time they do it, they want to do more because they're less gun shy because they know they're not going to have all the challenges frees up a lot of time and energy from all of those resources. I mean, everybody, the supplier takes their time and energy. Buyers are wondering what's going on with their project. And meanwhile, these small businesses are struggling to try to in they're incredibly resourceful. I'd say they're amazing, amazing people, and amazing business people. But it is a struggle, and they don't always win in the end. So I know that's not a very direct answer to your question. But
Paul Zelizer 27:26
that's a great answer. So you're reducing the failure rate, which like if you fail, it's a take that doesn't get done, period. Yeah, so it's getting done faster, it's getting done more reliably. And it's getting done more affordably, which allows people to then say, Oh, now I know how to do this. And with countable as a partner, I can do more of this and can have more scaled impact in a more less risky, more comfortable way. Is that fair to say?
Catherine Nomura 27:55
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's really we're building kind of an institutional process with transparency that comes through digitization, which, you know, is something we couldn't have done 10 years ago, it's because everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket now. It that we can, we can build these processes. So we can also then get better and better at doing these things. So if we're rolling out a program, say for, you know, a medical device company where they want to, they have a new, really innovative product that's going to save lives, and they want to roll it out over multiple countries, say in Africa, if we can get that rolling, and get get goods delivered more consistently without these kinds of long waits and dragging it out, because because the the local distributors who are a necessary part of the supply chains can't can't overcome these challenges. We just changed the whole cycle. I mean, we can save them years in trying to figure out if these problems can even be overcome, but how to how to get the work done.
Paul Zelizer 29:04
Beautiful. When we come back, I want to hear what countable looks like now and talk a little bit about this very exciting round of funding that you're working on. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. I'm excited to announce that we have a new sponsor for the pot, Saybrook University. Saybrook University prepares students to challenge conventional thinking in business, social structures, mental and physical health and more. They have innovative online and hybrid programs to help students become part of a global community. They offer certificate, Master and doctoral programs, and they're guided by renowned faculty with years of experience in their respective fields. Saybrook is committed to helping students achieve their full potential and their sacred community is deeply rooted in this humanistic tradition. safer graduates are transforming healthcare, providing organizational leadership, developing sustainable practices, and caring for populations and be open to business and non business majors like, say bricks. 100% online Master of Business Administration Program is designed for students who are passionate about conducting business operations guided by the principles of sustainable social impact. Their hybrid online Doctor of Business Administration Program is designed for experienced professionals who are interested in exploring and applying the most recent research and theories regarding organizational and social systems change. You can learn more@saybrook.edu There's a link in the show notes. And thank you to Saybrook University for sponsoring this pot. So welcome back, everybody. In the second part of the show, Katherine, what we like to do is joke about putting on our entrepreneur glasses. So if you were to put on your entrepreneur glasses and just look at countable right now, what's happening right now, like help us understand, okay, now if I'm a listener, I say alright, I understand, in theory, what countable is doing, but like helped me understand like, how do you all get paid? Who tends to work with you some of the basic questions? Sure, we'd look at countable as an enterprise.
Catherine Nomura 31:22
Sure, well, right now we're, we're, we're in a very exciting, but also, you know, it's a scary phase. It's this. But it's exciting because we have built this machine and this we have, you know, sort of an interesting history where we have a bit of a, an opponent that we were very, very active, we had a very large line of credit from, from us hedge fund that actually went bankrupt, not had nothing to do with us, we were very small part of their portfolio. But we were rocking and rolling, you know, on the Inc 5020 20. And well, on our way to profitability with a large team. And then we just got hit 19 trades and flight and No, no capital overnight, to put into these trades that needed to keep moving. And so we manage our way through that and grew the technology platform, as a way to sort of pivot through that. We did a lot of things that that became necessities to sort of clean up that situation. But we're now having this sort of Second Life in a time when there couldn't be a greater need for cannibals. So we have incredible demand, like 30 times, last year's volume, just in the first month of this year. I mean, we're getting, we're getting a lot of great response from enterprise partners from, from large funders who appreciate and understand why countable is necessary now, because during that time, we also had the pandemic. And so the whole world became much more attuned to why supply chains are so important, particularly healthcare supply chains. And in those kinds of that those areas became very interesting for innovation. And there became a focus and an urgency that we just weren't seeing before. Before. We were this odd ahead of our time, but the weekend of our of our launch and Kigali in 2015 we had $12 million worth of projects, just from Rwanda, put onto our platform. That's how much demand there was. And you know, there are trillions of dollars in demand for what we do, which is why we cherry pick the impact projects, and projects in certain areas, which include healthcare and, and infrastructure and tech, and we're working on renewables a lot. But those are those are projects that investors and that donors, and manufacturers are all very interested in. Getting done right now with a sense of urgency that isn't always there. You know, when you're an entrepreneur, you see time very differently than larger organizations do.
34:21
Absolutely. Right. So
Catherine Nomura 34:22
So what's fast for what's fast for a corporate a large corporate entity or, or a multilateral institution? It's it's no like molasses for Prudential. Right? Exactly. And yet, there's been this kind of urgency. So we've seen large corporates wanting to even push our timeframes and see now how fast can we get this done? And how soon can we start? Can you help us with this and this and that, which is fantastic for countable and it's pushing us as we, as we roll out our platform. We have this amazing time machine which we know works because we've been using it over five years, and it now works better than ever, because we've now had this sort of slightly quieter time to purpose build, and strengthen a lot of the underpinnings. And we have better partners than we've ever had all across the board in the marketplace, you know, and interesting, really, really interesting projects and ideas coming in from partners who want to work with us. And so it's, you know, all we know is that there's a lot of explosive growth ahead. Fortunately, our team is made up of people who have a lot of experience, we have a team that's now we have bankers, from Standard Chartered with our head of risk is is it extraordinarily exciting, experienced, former Standard Chartered and, and global corporate banker who, who really gets these markets and is able to very quickly make assessments on you know, what we should do next and where we should go next. So we have a fantastic team that that has, you know, decades of combined experience in in risk management, working at global scale and working in tough markets, they have a lot of institutional knowledge that they're bringing from that side. And one of the unique things about countable is we, it's almost like it can only be created by this weird combination of people came together. It's partly why I think why no one else has done this is that any one of the if you look at banks, or if you look at NGOs, or if you look at entrepreneurial companies, each has a very different perspective and point of view, particularly, you know, on this on this set of challenges, it was only that the collaboration of a bunch of people who came from all those different backgrounds coming together, that allowed us to sort of see how we could, how we could take the best of what small business does the very entrepreneurial and nimble and look at what these small businesses are, are delivering that that needs to be magnified and multiplied. And then and then take the best of what corporates and banks and and structured finance people do. And see how we could turn this into an asset, securitize it and turn it into something that can be looked at from a portfolio perspective and how that could be used to solve some of the challenges. And so we're bringing all those things together with our team. And, you know, it's it. I feel like we're educating people every single day right now, because we're such a new kind of approach. It's made up of a lot of very well, pieces, like trade finance has been around for hundreds of years, and that the structure that we have for our financing is is really based on trade finance, but it's done a little differently because of the technology. And you know, and it allows us to take advantage of some things that that large trade finance facilities could never touch these, this massive, multi trillion dollar constant river have of trades that are so critical to the success of the world have just never been able to be managed by any, any large. Any large bank, any large financial institution, not the IMF, not you know, the UN no one's been able to crack this, this nut because it they're, they look at it the way large institutions look at and they have to they have certain mandates, and they have requirements, banks can't solve this problem the way we do because their banks, the regulations that they face, don't actually allow them to do what we do. And then if you get onto the corporate side or trading companies, there's other pieces of this puzzle that they don't see. So the diversity of our team and their experience is what's allowed us to see the problem its entirety and also see all the possible ways to solve it, which is how this sort of elegant solution came together. But making it standing up the barn, so to speak with all pieces now that we have them is it's a tremendous challenge, but one that's apparently very typical, I've gotten great. I've taken great solace from reading some really great pieces that have been written about b2b marketplaces recently by by some venture firms that specialize in that too and it is is a lot like reading it is like reading our own story because it is our story. Realizing that what we've finally arrived at, in our solution is a b2b marketplace for sustainable trade, which has never had a b2b marketplace. There's a lot of b2b marketplaces for other kinds of commerce, you know, if you want to buy any kind of stuff, you can get it from Alibaba or Amazon. But if you're in certain parts of the world, that's not going to work in certain the kinds of volume and the ways that these large organizations do procurement doesn't work on those platforms. So, you know, for this type of business in the way that it is done, it needed a very special type of platform that understands the small businesses that are part of the process and understands that the bigger companies and small there's some really innovative smaller suppliers in the world whose products would really benefit some of these markets in lower and middle income countries, and especially being a lot of those people are more on the inventor innovator side than they are on the marketer seller, global trade expert side, it's an uncommon, those worlds are not really, you know, they don't really intersect, generally. So we, we can bring those things together. And we can deliver really innovative products into the, into some of the most challenging markets in the world. And do it efficiently and learn from it every time we do it. So we can do it better the next time. And so speaking to those businesses who are doing those kinds of things, and talking to them about the potential and how this works, and how it's different, and the sets of challenges that it addresses, some of which they may not even be aware of, quite honestly, because, you know, like I say these, a lot of these small distributors don't really want to tell, they don't want to tell their suppliers what is actually the problem. Or, you know, if they do often, it's thought that this is not something that can be this is an insurmountable problem, it's just, it's just the way that it is, you know, and that's, that's something that we obviously have not accepted. We don't, it doesn't need to be that way. It's that way, because it was set up that way. And the world has largely been set up for big institutions to do business with other big institutions. That's what, that's what global banking structures are set up for. And that's what a lot of this sort of risk mitigation kind of the rules have been set up for. And small business ever really hard time playing in those real so they need it, they just needed a new structure to be able to get these things done. And I My hope is that it will become the norm, this will be the new normal. And, you know, it will just become known that a few have a product that you want to get out into, you know, for instance, into Africa, or into Asia or Latin America. And it's a bunch of local suppliers that are going to be the ones who who are going to be your best sales force on the ground. And quite often that is the case, you know that countable is the way to do that. And it's a marketplace that allows you to go on there and just sit at your desk and input your products, if you're a supplier or if you're a local buyer and country, you can go into countable and find the best products that your customers will be delighted by and then actually get them and get them you know, if for your buyer, with the support of the countable network at the best possible price and on time, and just like you know, we're used to we're so used to buying things now on Amazon, for instance. You know, that's, that's how it should work for business, too. It should be it should be that easy. There's a video on YouTube on our YouTube channel that it's marrying into school for girls and the story in there, it might be shocking to people but it it's it's one of the first entrepreneurs who worked on a platform talking about how he is a computer lab in school for girls, how he used to have to get his stuff before countable. He actually had to get on a plane and fly to another country, maybe Dubai, for instance, and go to something like the equivalent of a Best Buy, buy the goods and then take them to the airport and get them on the plane and unpack himself. And he you know, he's on video, saying that he would have never believed that he could just go online and order them and what he actually wanted would actually show up. And that it I don't think a lot of our listeners here will realize that that's the way that things work in a lot of parts of the world right now when it comes to commercial buying. And that's that is a big, you know, I studied development for many years. I have a master's degree in political economy development, I had no idea and I've spent years living in low and middle income countries. I had no idea how much this challenge is at the root of why a lot If things are just not their products and services, and now being inside of countable, I can see that. Now if we could solve this problem, we would reduce the divide there. And it's a huge opportunity for all of us.
Paul Zelizer 45:17
So one of the things you're actively involved in to help scale countable and really be able to make it available to more people is this We funder campaign. Tell us a little bit about that.
Catherine Nomura 45:29
So the we funder campaign, was it? No, I have to say I'm, I'm loving this campaign, because countable is our hashtag for many years to be counted, and is about being counted. And we started with the small businesses who were kind of invisible in the process. And I think still are, I think a lot of people probably today have learned some things about what small businesses do in getting things to many places in the world, which, frankly, happens in the US as well. So this is not just not just about low and middle income countries, that our network is in our purpose. And if there's a video on our website about this, too, we're about helping everybody be able to contribute their best. And to do that, you know, you have to have health, and you have to have clean water, and you have to have your electricity and basics. And it's about getting everybody on board to be able to make their best contribution to doing all the things that we need to do as a planet, to get to the next level, solve some of the biggest challenges we have. And so any way that we can engage our community and our broader community in helping with that is great. And that's what it's what countable is all about. Sometimes we talk about ourselves as being like an adapter, where we're getting all of these different kinds of parties to be able to work together, because they just haven't had a really efficient way or any way really, in some cases, to work together before. But one of the the other groups that we have, that we hadn't been able to engage or have, contribute, who said they wanted to, or all the friends and supporters that we have, and and even, you know, a lot of the small businesses on the platform, it hasn't been easy for them to actually invest in countable. And I'm especially excited for, for the small businesses to be able to have a way to invest, because why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't they benefit from what they're creating, as equity owners. So this, we found her campaign was anybody almost anywhere in the world to invest in own a piece of countable. And you know, as we talked about, that the math, if that dollar gets put into trades, it's going to turn into, you know, at least $15 than 30, then 37.5, and up to almost $60 in value. So you can do something really significant with a fairly small investment. And we found our allows investments as small as $100 with a credit card. But you know, just like a, a $5,000 investment would, you know, build several of those computer labs, in the schools for girls, and those are changing lots of lives. There's a lot you can do with even a small, even $100 investment. So I think that we funder is kind of like uh, you know, they're a kindred spirit in the platform world and that they're transforming capitalism and making it more inclusive. And we're transforming global trade and making it more inclusive. So it's kind of a perfect marriage to be working with them on this. And you know, it's it's good business and and we you know, we're a company that has a pretty exciting growth trajectory. So at this stage as we're sort of being reborn into our next stage is a great time for people to invest in and take advantage of the leverage that's possible.
Paul Zelizer 49:11
And I'll put a link to the refunded campaign in the show notes as well as some of the other resources that we've mentioned today. Uh, several places on your website, Catherine, there's a quote there that really just stopped me in my tracks. I love this quote and I want to read it and I want you to explain what do you mean by this? The quote is, we believe in building the spaceship to stick tell us about like what That's gorgeous.
Catherine Nomura 49:38
It's a little cheeky but it's not it's not it's it's sort of cheesy. It's sort of a cheeky reference, you know, all these billionaires. This is in the video the extra we're
Paul Zelizer 49:47
looking at Elon Musk and Jeff a
Catherine Nomura 49:51
lot of people spending a lot of money trying to go to space and I you know, I love space. I love I love some it's fiction, and I love the idea of space. But I also think, you know, when it comes down to where I put my money, I love the spaceship that we're on. You know, I live in a very beautiful place. And this planet needs to work. And it's a reference to Buckminster Fuller's opera operating manual for Spaceship Earth, if you've ever heard of or seen that book, that's a great resource. Yeah, and that's, you know, he, he's when we talked about being counted, one of the points he makes is that it's going to take all of us, you really want to do this alone to fix these things, and keep things moving forward and make this a great place for everyone to live, we're going to need all of us. And so that's cannibals raised on that we want to make the planet work for all of us. And, you know, we just believe that, that making that we have this sort of, for profit approach to doing that, that brings in large institutional finance. And, you know, we need to make this as normal business as as anything else. But make it work for everyone so that everyone gets a lift. And it's it is a virtuous cycle. So, you know, it's sort of this is the the next stage marketplace is the one that that delivers both profitability and impact and equal measure and growth to everybody who's a part of it. And we're very committed to that. So that's the spaceship to stay.
Paul Zelizer 51:29
I love what you're doing, Catherine and I can hang out with you all day. And I know you're really busy person. And our listeners are really busy too. So we'll have all the links to in the show notes to all the resources we've mentioned. So please, folks, go check out the we funder and go check out countable, please tell folks about this incredible platform that helps people get the goods that they need to go make a difference in the world. So all that's in the shownotes. Katherine, if there was something else that you were hoping that we were going to get to today, and we haven't touched on it yet, or there's something you want to leave our impact founders with something you've learned a tip, a suggestion or strategy that could help them have more impact as founders, what would that be?
Catherine Nomura 52:16
I will say that, you know, when we started this, that the business that we thought we were going to run was very different from the one that we ended up with now. And yet, in some ways, it's exactly the largest. It's the largest manifestation of that, that vision. And it you know, and it started by listening to people who had a problem who we were very privileged to, to hear from, because they were, they were risking something and sharing things with us that didn't work contracts that didn't work or contracts that they had failed to execute on. And really being vulnerable and saying, This is what we really need help with. And the more that we've sorted that when we have listened to them, and, and not, you know, not stopped at just trying to, you know, a lot of technology companies will take something that's already been done and, and make it a little bit more efficient. And we realized that a lot more than that could be done with this set of challenges. And so we didn't build what could have been a much smaller FinTech business, it was it was a stepping stone along the way. But really going after the problem has been, it's been a wild ride, but it's created this incredible thing. And I think it's been I think it's been inspiring to our partners. And we, you know, granted, we uncovered that this was a problem of global scale that is, you know, insofar as its measured as measured in the trillions of dollars, so, so that it's almost a, you know, an unthinkable sort of Tam, if you think of it that way. But staying grounded in actually, you know, working transaction by transaction, solving the problem really helped us to build something that that is much more, much more powerful, has has huge potential and is inspiring and has a kind of a momentum of its own, that it wouldn't have had if we tried to keep it a simpler business. So people might tell you to, you know, to not try to boil the ocean. And I I agree with that, as a general principle. I think you can't do everything. I think you have to be specific about what you want to do. But what you want to do could be very big. And when you want to do something very big, you just need to have lots of partners in a way for them to work together. And that's how we ended up with a platform and a marketplace. And I hope that there will be more of these I mean, I know that cannibal is only one of one We'll be, you know, a whole host of interconnected next stage sort of marketplaces and platforms that are, that are looking at things this way that are bringing a lot of people together to, you know, if you just identify what the problem is, then you can bring everybody to the table, and together, we can solve it. And I think that's where, you know, some of the biggest next stage opportunities are, is in, in, in, in for profit businesses. Also, this doesn't have to be the realm of NGOs. You know, it sounds a bit like an altruistic role that you're sort of bringing people together for collaboration. But it's it's very much the role of a for profit business. And that then it is elevating resources to the next level. And even being the place where people can be brought to the table being the place that makes that safe for people to share and being the place where people can learn from that sharing and grow results together. There's opportunity to do that, and so many spaces right now, I think, you know, that that's, it's, it's almost my regret that I can only have to just focus on this one, because this is, but I know that there will be lots of others out there. And I kind of look forward to seeing them grow and look forward to working with them. Because I think in some respects, we're all going to be linked together, where it's a networked world. That's what's that's where we're going.
Paul Zelizer 56:24
Katherine, thanks for being on the show today. It's been such a pleasure to have you.
Catherine Nomura 56:29
Thank you so much for having me, letting me talk about some things in ways that I never had before. We have to say so
56:35
folk idea that.
Paul Zelizer 56:37
So again, listeners, check out the show notes, please tell your friends about countable let's dig in as a community and just spread the word about this incredible work. So before we go, I just want to remind you we love love, love listener suggested topics and guests. As a matter of fact, Katherine, I didn't know that Katherine and countable existed, a wonderful person in my network reached out and said, you too need to talk and here we are. So I tell you that to say like, I really mean it. We love your suggestions. If you have an idea about a topic or a guest, please go to the AWARE printers website. And on our contact page, we have three simple guidelines that will give you some idea what we're looking for. And if you've got somebody that fits these criteria, please send him on it. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.