00:00:01 moving the Neto unfound your failure of one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ during each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face I think there's no better place in the country to be investing than Los Angeles what is the problem that you're solving and for who like what is that specific pain point sometimes when a company is not

00:00:29 listening to his customers and just thinks it knows better than it customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit I want to see somebody that isn't you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work Cristina Rada is the president of IX investments she also has over 20 years of experience leading government teams as well as management consulting teams and she was the chief sustainability officer for the United States under the Obama administration Christine welcome

00:01:06 to the show hi thanks so much for having me yeah a lot to talk about your career and things are working on and with iyx investments what exactly is that so we are an impact investing company structured as a permanently capitalized holding company and so what that means is we're not a fund okay we're actually a company and we were founded by two men the ones Trevor Neilson our current CEO and the other co-founder is Howard Warren Buffett the grandson of Warren and so therefore our structure is very much a

00:01:35 tow lodge if you will to Berkshire Hathaway and we have aspire to become the first mainstream impact investing company that anybody can invest in yeah and with the impact invest in them at that side of things so what areas are you exactly focused on sure so we believe that you don't have to sacrifice returns just to make a good positive impact on people in the planet etc and that fundamentally we invest in those businesses that seek to change the world and do good things while providing a top-tier market rate return areas that

00:02:06 we're currently looking at a lot of our portfolio consists of investments that help address the climate change the climate crisis that we're facing today green commercial really State affordable housing that's also sustainable waste of fuels direct your capture of carbon and then we've also got a portfolio of technology and media businesses that are also focused on doing social good but leveraging more of those kinds of platforms yeah and can you explain a little bit more in depth like comparing this type of model versus

00:02:32 like a venture a VC funds itself is not a funder sure absolutely so what's different about us is that you know we have a fairly diversified set of holding so we ourselves have funds yep that we are GPS in for example the commercial real estate fund is a five hundred million dollar fund we also invest in direct operating companies and in that sense you know we're probably similar to VCS in that regard yeah we tend to invest in the earlier stage we're not seed or angel we'll probably call it series a stage and you know the main

00:03:03 difference of course are the fund of VC fund is that you've got perhaps a larger set of capital if you will you know with which that you can actually invest in a number of company simultaneously but one of the challenges with that of course is that they have they're on a very tight timeframe to have to invest almost right away they have to divest oh god I got to get it out of the way and so that's kind of those are some of the pressures that we don't have yeah because of our model yeah you mentioned the levels that

00:03:31 you're investing in what are those typical check sizes are investment making looking to make that yeah so we've invested anywhere from 50 thousand to over a million okay and again the stage tends to be a little bit earlier yeah okay perfect and then you mentioned this kind of really ready but can you just go through that investment thesis and what if you tell people what that is sure absolutely so our investment thesis is that we are looking for those companies there are many companies out there that can do good things for people

00:03:56 in Planet while providing again top-tier market rate returns there's ample evidence emerging especially out there right now today saying if you do good day for you as a company do good things in ESG environmental social and governance and or a focus on impact they haven't shown to provide higher returns and their competitors who don't necessarily focus on that and I think that there's certainly a lot of elements that are embedded in that ie better management better oversight better governance overall yeah but those are

00:04:25 fundamentally the kinds of companies that we're looking for as we seek to change the world and with that too were saying that and saying that they do get better returns everything like that why do you think other people are not focused on that isn't it that's a great question and candidly a bit of a source of frustration for me I think part of its branding you know impact investments or impact investing the terminology I think came out maybe originally call it about seven years ago or so and it was

00:04:51 intended to convey that philanthropy is not just giving away money that we are also indeed investing in our community and that it's a social investment that we're investing in the impulsively impacting these societies etc so I think it's a bit of a branding issue I think secondly also it's a it's a different thing for a lot of investors I think for a lot of investors my personal analogy is looking for the same thing you know what I like I like my cookies I'm looking for a cookie sure I want a last

00:05:21 week on vested in chocolate chip this week I got oatmeal raisin and I got a like a double chocolate that's great and they all have to be an inch in diameter and certain shape etc I'm trying to sell you a brownie which i think is a superior product okay all right and it's triangular but oh look at it's got some nuts in it if you like etc I I just I just want my cookie yeah right so it's a bit of I don't know how to think about impact investing I can certainly see or at least from an investor's perspective

00:05:49 they can very much understand the financial returns like I got it so here's mo what's my return on my investments etcetera but on top of that I don't know how to really assess this impact thing feels a bit California hippie dippie kind of hand wavy I don't know if it's necessarily something that I really want to get in and in again for a lot of investors if they have a lot of deal flow they just don't have the time or the patience to try to learn new things yeah learn more about that and you kind of alluded to this already

00:06:19 but what is your kind of diligence processes you're going through a value in these companies yeah so we're really looking for companies that actually embed impact in the mainline business it has to be intentional we're not interested in companies that do socially good things ie so TOMS shoes is a great example great company love their products but that model is based on you buy a pair of shoes from us and we will donate on top of that etc so that's not part of the main business in my personal opinion and I think that

00:06:46 you know we're looking for those companies or again that intentionality is there it's in the mainline business and that's the primary revenue driver for the organization yeah and with that Susan's evaluating these different founders and their business models I mean what are you looking for from the the team the founders themselves then so we're looking for a good mosaic of folks so who there's there's two stereo typically there's like a visionary who's got this fantastic idea and then there's the money person who has to figure out

00:07:13 how do I go about and raise the funds etc there needs to be also a marketing person to figure out how you can actually go and acquire the customers etc and we're also looking for operational like real traction people who have actually delivered in the past show me some evidence that if you're going to be developing a consumer product what are the factories that you guys are considering what are the ways that you're looking at actually doing the distribution what kind of network and relationships do you have to really

00:07:40 make that into reality and as you go into this process to I mean how long does that process typically take for some of these companies you're evaluating off you want to actually invest in it or not for us I would say takes probably about two to three months in total from end to end soup to nuts from the time that we actually meet the entrepreneur initially going through due diligence let's take a look at your financials what kind of contracts you guys have etc to tying up the details yeah and is it at all

00:08:06 challenging just looking at these different companies and other anyone's like on the border of like okay they're not their core business is kind of but maybe not or do not really see that as a pretty clear between the between the TOMS shoes I was there selling shoes yeah say there are so there's and that comes in a couple of different flavors first is it's not in our bucket of impact oriented investments that we want to make so for example we care very deeply about climate yeah and you know I've seen some companies that come along

00:08:36 in their gov tech right so former government I love the field and I care deeply about it it's just not something that we want to invest in and in those cases and I will refer them on to other investors yeah and then there's some folks for which the impact seems very secondary tertiary or it's not very well defined or is it very well quantified or quantifiable and so typically for those kinds of organizations you know we'll say either eight go back and scrub it or you know be where you know you and ER

00:09:08 it's very typically also in those kinds of cases their business model isn't very well fleshed out yet right there and so that's where that'll show up yeah and they are there like one or two portfolio companies that stand out and they may be why you're invested in them yeah so our I'll focus on two I think first are wasted to fuels business you know we're addressing so this is a company that we are basically exporting a proven American technology overseas to places like Panama in the Philippines and it

00:09:34 helps to address two fundamental crises first is waste municipal solid waste ie landfills the amount of obviously methane emissions etc that's associated with that places like the Philippines have a full-blown crisis it is awful and so this technology enables us to take the landfill waste and convert that into basically aviation fuel they're a long process you know Chemical Engineering all that other good jazz yeah and so it helps to address again the climate crisis in that it produces a far lower

00:10:03 carbon intensity aviation fuel that we can now leverage here in regular airplanes this is drop in ready fuel yeah it's one example second example is our 500 million dollar commercial real estate fund where we are look partnering with a company called rising realty partners based here in LA and we are basically decarbonizing the existing building portfolio stock and that might be fairly climate wonky terms but fundamentally it's about energy efficiency and savings and doing value add real estate converting older

00:10:37 buildings into more beautiful properties etc and just you know in that upgrade process you're dramatically improving the energy efficiency of the building and you get some fantastic returns for real estate yeah and with these portfolio companies too I mean where are some of the challenges they're facing as they're trying to grow um couple so they're so for those particular examples they're fairly different challenges so with with respect to the first one waste fuel are the challenges there are more

00:11:04 around doing the development itself so finding the appropriate partners on ground where there enough waste sites and then solving through some of the technical challenges and with respect to the green commercial real estate fund that is much more about over coming back to my earlier point around investors who are very accustomed to seeing a particular type of investment and so when you add words like impact or sustainability to a real estate fund I think you know that's when I start to see a lot of eyes glaze over yeah yeah

00:11:38 that makes sense and then as you move forward these different companies - I mean are you pretty hands-on with helping them out as ania I'm just curious like you're a company specifically yes definitely so we are we're very hands-on we leverage both our expertise as well as our networks granted with a lot of the work that we're doing in the climate front I have a lot of friends from the Obama administration who do a lot of work in this particular area and so it's been very helpful certainly selfishly for me

00:12:01 to be able to lean on them and say hey this is kind of things we're trying to look at etc and getting their advice yeah and what other things are they these founders I coming to you for we it you think they were working with your your company specifically because of those areas of expertise you have on the team is that maybe one of the main reasons you think I would say it's more of a values alignment is the messaging that I'm hearing more or that that's what certainly comes out a lot more in my interactions with entrepreneurs they

00:12:26 are looking for people like us who believe in their mission who want to help support their mission and that mission is important yeah and in our when we roll up our sleeves and really take a dive and you know take a look under the hood if you will is we're trying to scrub out the financial model is this business really viable doesn't really have traction who are your customers today what kind of contracts do you have how are you distribute this what's your pricing model gonna look like it's Sarah yeah I assume the way

00:12:54 your company set up as well that it's been helpful for my deal well perspective can you talk to are you getting more deals because they know specifically what you're involved with as like an in fact it doesn't like or how is that then I think it certainly helps hone our deal flow if he was a little self selecting yeah sure um so I would imagine if I were to put it in university or like you know college application parlance if you will it's a bit like you know we're not Stanford that has offers the sciences and

00:13:22 humanities and whatever we're probably a little bit more like MIT where you've got the engineering and science folks applying right so I don't have the English majors I don't know music majors etc nothing nothing wrong with those major no of course not I do doctors a little bit too with your role at the company yeah so I focus on a few things one is around driving the operations for the company itself and really rolling up my sleeves and working with the portfolio companies yeah themselves and enhancing their

00:13:52 operations etc I would say that's probably my biggest value-add and secondly is around driving the thought leadership and thinking around how we want a further quantify impact so at our firm we know we use in a proprietary methodology called the impact rate of return okay and that's a method that's been developed by Howard as he did his work at both his family's foundation and also in conjunction I believe with the Gates Foundation as well we're fundamentally he developed a way for you to assess how much impact you're able to

00:14:25 have for how much money for how much time so he incorporates to that like the time value of money type of element into making that kind of trade-off decision so instead of investment a that I can make for call it a million dollars it'll return me ten percent but I impact a thousand people versus investment B which is like for two million dollars but it'll impact you know five thousand people but it'll return me eight percent right so how do you make that trade-off in that kind of call and so that's the

00:14:54 kind of methodology that we've got that we've got put in place yeah and trying to help drive that forward right I know you mentioned like a proprietary system are like just factors that go into that yeah equation yeah sure absolutely um and it's listed in it he published a book it's called social value investing and it's I think it's a really elegant way to that it's been structured it's a formula structured very much like net present value and impact and in internal rate of return so the factors that would

00:15:21 go into it around you know it's the cost of the investment or rather you know how much money gonna be how much Kaplan redeploy against it the time itself they're like the length of duration of time and it does depend on what's the KPI that you're looking to impact so is it educating girls for example if that's gonna be the case is it the number of girls or is it the overall economic development for that particular region etc for green buildings it's relatively easier and I think more straightforward it's about how many tons

00:15:49 of carbon dioxide have you removed for the atmosphere as a result of the operations or the renovations that you're doing is building etc and so it's thinking in that kind of way that we're going to deploy yeah how do you so obviously have the system to help you with that but do you go strictly off of the system output in terms of like this is the best project or how does that decisions being made around around those companies then yeah so we seek to maximize both the impact rate of return as well as the IRR like the classic

00:16:16 financials and so if you're to do like a two by two right one axis is impact one axis is financial we're really targeting that top right quadrant yeah well and now we'll take a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big heartfelt thank you to Breck's who is out there support this show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on as companies grow managing expenses has become more

00:16:45 difficult and time-consuming which is why we've partnered with Breck's to offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limits provides Auto reconciliation and integrates with ERPs using receipt capture Breck's is the credit card let's start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show so what areas you particularly are you most excited about with what companies are looking at and everything gosh I am so excited about the level of creativity out there yeah

00:17:17 that I see I think it's fantastic and and I don't know if it's because we're here in California people tell me a lot more innovative and forward-thinking and progressive and adventurous if you will with how they're thinking about businesses whether it be that and or just with the opportunities that are out there impossible in the realm of impact investing and I love that people really want to help combine those two things together yeah especially you know I see this a lot with the millennial generation they really care it's not to

00:17:48 say us Gen Xers don't Sara yeah but the emphasis and the intentionality and the is there yeah and I definitely will vouch for that being in the MBA program at USC I do notice a lot of people interested in the impact side of things like actually making a difference from what this which is great to see I mean clear there's always gonna be people aren't but I just least notice in my class there's a lot of people where do you see that being maybe more more companies or more opportunity kind of in in that industry - oh I'm back

00:18:17 investing here see the sky's the limit yeah this one I think there's a lot of really great per inch in the US or on top and you know we focus ours in the US yeah so because if you go global there's just a ton more opportunity I feel like I think that you know especially with a lot of the opportunities own legislation or the regulations etc I think there's a lot of opportunities they're not necessarily perhaps in real estate I think that they've that's been kind of a herky-jerky start if you will

00:18:45 herky-jerky err then I think the government would have liked but the investing in the businesses element of it is part of that particular legislation I think it's fantastic the combination a emphasis on whether it be environmental or girls education you know enhancing women's education enhancing people of colors economics a lot of that is out there and again of course with the climate crisis there's a ton of energy being applied to solutions that help address that yeah and if someone's looking to I mean this is

00:19:18 difficult maybe but something's gonna get involved start a company in one of these areas I mean what would you suggest like how they look at which problems to solve which problems to go after I'm just curious about that yeah I would say entrepreneurs should pursue their passions given how all-consuming entrepreneurship is like you have to love it and live it and breathe it every day and so that means if you're if I were in their shoes yeah it's gotta be an idea that I love and I am obsessed with I think obsession

00:19:50 is probably a good way to put it so find a passion and find a find a topic that is an obsession of yours and I think once you have that that's when it'll really fly yeah maybe a great example but for I could never be an entrepreneur for enterprise software it's just boring I could probably do it as a job but you know had a company but I would I would never startup enterprise software company unless I felt the pain and wanted to do something about it yeah it's a self-awareness I understand yeah what you actually want and if you're

00:20:27 founder is looking to because they have a company in the kind of that realm of like that would be invested in by IX for example I mean what questions should they be asking potential investors whether it be IX or someone else when they're trying to raise money for their company yeah I would probably some of the classics around like tell me about the kind what what types of checks what your check sizes what stages of investment do you guys make what's your investment thesis or what are your areas

00:20:47 of focus because you know what you want to suss out is not just the technical details around like this is really a fit for me but also you got to make sure like it's a lot like dating and it's painful but you want to make sure that this is a longer-term relationship you are with these people for the next three five seven maybe even 10 years or so you want to make sure that you like these people that you can go and travel with with them etc and suss out and make sure that your values are very much in

00:21:13 alignment with them and I think that's particularly important if you're going to do work in impact investing yeah you want to make sure that you're working with an investor who will fund your enterprise in a way that is consistent with both your vision as well as the direction that you want to take it in and agree no granted there's a lot of discussion around how do you insure over you know the fund mechanics and fund politics etcetera that type of thing that can certainly come into play on that front but you really want to think

00:21:42 through and make sure that that you like these people you're going to be working with yeah and you mentioned kind of earlier too that sometimes RBC funds are not investing in these different areas and most like IX is is that then more challenging you think for founders to raise money if they're in those type of industries or really how do you see that going for them I think it would depend it requires perhaps more flexibility on the founders part on how they tell that story so with investors like us

00:22:12 emphasize the impact yeah how are you going to drive the impact emphasize the return everybody's the body or you know the fundamentals is you gotta you know we're gonna assume they have the fundamentals and Mercury returns etc that's right what's the impact and so that's how you're going to get our attention around the impact that you're going to be having perhaps was like in if it's a technology or software angle then obviously with a software investor you want to focus on here's the technology that it's pushing here's a

00:22:37 market blah blah blah kind of the classics yeah and with you I mean how did you get involved with AI X in the first place um you know is very much one of those you know right place right time type of situations and in this particular case a recruiter actually reached out to me because I X was looking for somebody to help them with this kind of work yeah and it's just one of those like wow this just fell into my lap what a perfect opportunity I'm gonna go find out more this is great you're interested by it so

00:23:09 like why did you ultimately join I joined because I wanted to continue the work that I had done in government yeah in the private sector so with the climate crisis you know when I was in Obama administration we spent a lot of effort and a lot of our federal dollars in greening our operations etc but the crisis is one such that we need investments of upwards of two trillion dollars a year in order to be able to help stave off the one and a half degrees Celsius etc yeah governments can't do that alone period we just don't

00:23:41 got that kind of money sure and I believe firmly that probably we have to bring much more private capital into this particular space whether it be renewable energies or newer technologies or capturing carbon etc etc but if you can't get the markets interested in it it's not going to work yeah are there I mean with that till we talk about all these different issues and everything are there ones that you see as like way more pressing than others I mean there's they're they're all important I'm just

00:24:10 curious me your perspective and having your background very give background other certain areas you see is more private more pressing than others I you know the climate is one of those things for it's very it's an all-hands-on-deck moment and so I don't know that you can go to wrong in any direction all of that said if you take a look at what are the big emitters maybe a way to do it is the 80/20 Pareto analysis is if you take a look at the pie chart of where all the carbon emissions come from a lot of them

00:24:39 around power plants transportation buildings so I would say opportunities in those fields would be a great way if you want to start really helping to tackle that problem and if not then let's figure out other creative ways so can you create a game like a Pokemon go where people are actually spending real money yeah that helps to address a climate crisis can you raise the funds to basically do like a cap-and-trade if you will play a game to invest that money into other green infrastructure or whatever the case might be yeah and with

00:25:11 ax investments how is your time spent day-to-day week-to-week oh I do so there's a it's a great question I do a lot of different things which is part of the reason why my job is so much fun some weeks I am on the road during capital raises for funds and for portfolio companies other weeks we are doing assessments of like the company portfolio company's performance and the things that we want to be targeting for them like what are the goals for this year that type of thing and then I would say on a constant stream of evaluating

00:25:43 deal flow for the various folks who are looking to join us yeah and what's your role to them and what are maybe some of the biggest challenges that you personally in that role what's what's difficult about that know that I would coach this as a difficulty it's more about it's a new learning sure so learning about the deal making process you know granted I have an MBA but yeah one of the things you don't teach you about in Business School is a lot of the corporate legal structuring elements yeah that stuff is all new for me in our

00:26:18 case we also have a lot of international or overseas investors and so thinking through tax efficient fun structures didn't know that I had to think about that before sure okey-dokey then you know and so it's more about learning new things and figuring out how best to lean on my teammates and or what other experts we've got you know around us to be able to help address those yeah and with that too with the team being so strong and have expertise in a lot of different areas I mean how are you kind

00:26:47 of is there a formal process so you're meeting up every way to literally acknowledge and discuss things like how does that work within the team yeah I would say it's a lot more on-the-job training yeah and I think you know our the regular processes that we have you know is consistent we've got a week ahead meaning on Mondays we've got like a senior team meeting on Wednesdays we can talk in greater detail around whether it be the firm strategic direction or various portfolio companies etc and a lot of the this needs to get

00:27:12 done type of thing will come out of that and so you know we have the luxury of being a relatively small team and so we can afford to be more fluid in that kind of regard it's certainly not we're not we're not big like a car level etc sure and with your career too so people who are interested to make an impact through their work whether it be starting companies joining startups they are doing that with your experience how have you gone through deciding what opportunities to pursue how you want to

00:27:35 make an impact in your career yeah absolutely I have always been a mission oriented person so I need a mission I need to believe in the organization I need to believe in my team I need to believe in what it is that we're trying to do regardless of what that mission is so I would be the worst consumer products person unless it had a mission and every time I have shifted my career so I've had probably four or five chapters in my life at this point yes it's been about how can i integrate and build on what I've done previously

00:28:12 and it's not just about the last job it is about everything that I've done so for example when I was in the White House they served as chief sustainability officer up until that point there is really nothing in my resume that's its sustainability yeah but sustainability is the marriage of a lot of technical stuff around like energy efficiency how do you think about HVAC systems how you think about renewables etc how do you think about so that's one bucket the second bucket is around financing at least in the

00:28:38 government we were trying to look for more creative financing solutions because of the backlog that we had and we weren't gonna get any more money like our budget you know we have we're fighting two wars right so justified leave the money's going towards you know the boots on the ground if you will so how do we help address the 20 bill our backlog of facilities maintenance and upkeep that we needed to make without drawing down unnecessarily on those funds so thinking through that part creatively and then last but not

00:29:07 least is around how do I help make that change stick so a lot of the work that it did when I was a management consultant for 10 years is about how do you end up transforming an organization how do you shift their thinking and do that both in a quantify in a qualitative in a quantitative way so that is what sustainability really comes down to for me um I have the luxury maybe it was a luxurious painful of you know having a very technical background and so the technology isn't that hard the principles of physics isn't that hard

00:29:36 yeah how do you make those things stick then you mentioned how do you go about this yeah so you got to make sure that it is affordable accessible and embedded in the mainline business and the frontline business so for example when I was in government my best partner for sustainability believe it or not with the Department of Defense really because when in the especially in Afghanistan four out of five people that we lost were part of the supply chain we lost them because they're on the fuel Tarrant

00:30:05 transport up the Khyber Pass and for every gallon of fuel that we used in theater we spent five to get it there yeah right so the Army and the Navy people who have to schlep all that fuel and they know what it's like you know to work that supply chain yeah they were the best and so you know you may not hear it it's like sustainability like hey Kerry you can call it whatever you want energy resilience and securities the actual name fine but the principles of sustainability are still there there are

00:30:35 the ones that are pushing forth on new fuels that aren't so you know carbon intensive and labor intensive etc that they can have a much more diversified Philip laphroaig Leo with drop-in fuels yeah I stroll the most with the Veterans Administration because it was a heart it was very difficult to make a mainline play into their fundamental business model which is about providing health care they run hospitals around the country and yet verily sustainability fantastic yeah right because low VOCs better in indoor air quality bah blah

00:31:10 blah helps you know reduce your operating costs but it's not directly tied into is my doctor interaction better is my patient getting better in that overall outcome it's a nature so making sure that it is affordable accessible and built into the mainline business yeah and I have to ask the more about the White House is it time with that I mean during that time and what were someone maybe your key takeaways from that time period from working in government that well working in the White House is just a tremendous

00:31:41 opportunity and a privilege and just the impact that you can have may not be very well understood at the time but a lot of the things that we're seeing today around evie charging infrastructure or you know green building codes or whatever the case might be to help address climate is very much directly correlated to the work that we did when we're in the White House when we're hearing things about like the sec or companies starting to report out on their climate risks the materiality of that how does that impact their

00:32:12 operations that is a role that we put in while we were in office how do we make sure that if I had more time I would have loved to have had the opportunity to put in greening requirements for grants so for universities and research centers etc I would have loved to have time like an incentive if your operations are more green you're likely to have actually better governance anyway so that being the case you're probably better at managing the money so let me reduce the overhead costs for you that type of thing yeah I mean with that

00:32:41 to it and in that position then I mean how did you at that time prioritize the many different things you're involved with I've got a bunch of them yeah how did you prioritize it how did you go about that even a so there's a couple of ways first was around you know back to the Pareto analysis and the in the percentage of how much carbon emissions so that was a great way to help prioritize number one and then number two is also the amount of dollar spend so depending on the scale so for example you know we spend the federal government

00:33:12 spends upwards of four hundred fifty billion dollars and then goods and services everything from dog food to satellites just by half joke so that being the case you know how does that how can we help impact that that has secondary and tertiary impacts down our entire supply chain and so how do we think about it that way also with respect to addressing the policies and our own personal or shouldn't say personal but like the government's policies for actions being taken frequently serves as a model for

00:33:42 the other state and local governments or other entities as well and so how do we take that into consideration yeah and then coming full circle to my ex investments again I mean what do you what's the goal moving forward what are you hoping for in the next few years as well our goal is to ultimately go public in a few years time so that again everybody can invest in impact investing that it is a mainstream way of investing it'll no longer be you know ESG and SR or social responsible and whatever

00:34:08 insert additional name it's just investing yeah period awesome and any final words for any entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make an impact through their companies or anything else you'd like to mention to them yeah absolutely say it's probably the you know the fundamentals if you will make sure that your business plan is solid you're thinking through who are your competitors which are market landscape look like Harry gonna go out and do customer acquisition and then last but not least how are you going to quantify

00:34:33 the impact in our case make sure that it is embedded front and center yeah you say that how they're gonna qualify impact I mean how do they how do they actually do that and portray that from there companies have to track those metrics right yes okay yes definitely track the metrics and in addition to list if it's a customer acquisition thing how many of those customers are of a particular impact group that you're targeting or whatever the case might be yeah and Kristine where can people go to contact you and get in touch and learn

00:34:59 more about what you're doing yeah so our website is ix investments com so please come check us out awesome thank you so much for time today thank you so much for having me thanks for checking out star up 2.0 from spark XYZ if you want to learn more about startups and investing and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO