At the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York City, founder and investor Sarah Dusek shares with Seth Cohen, Chief Impact Officer of Forbes, how the focusing on sustainability and investing in women founders fuel innovation and transform communities.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My name is Seth Cohen and I'm the Chief Impact Officer of Forbes and the founder of the Forbes Impact Lab.
00:06I'm here at Nasdaq MarketSite today where I'm joined by Sarah Dussek,
00:11the founder of Under Canvas, a leading brand in sustainable luxury glamping.
00:16She's also the founder and general partner of Enigma Ventures
00:20and an advocate for women around the world and particularly in Africa.
00:27Sarah, thanks for joining me today.
00:29Thanks for having me.
00:30So I want to start with you right now.
00:33When you co-founded Under Canvas, this very eco-sensible tourism slash adventure company,
00:44what was behind that?
00:45What was your vision for this?
00:46Because I think that that's your why.
00:48So tell me your why.
00:50My why was creating access to the outdoors.
00:54My husband and I, when we got married almost 20 years ago now,
01:00he was a huge outdoors guy and I was not.
01:03But we both were passionate about the outdoors and passionate about being out in nature,
01:08except he wanted to rough it and I did not.
01:11And so our solution to that problem was to reimagine the African safari experience,
01:17to enable other people like me who maybe want to enjoy the outdoors,
01:21but don't want to camp and don't want to have a rough time being out in nature.
01:27So you obviously hit a market that had an appetite for this
01:32because you scaled it to over a hundred million dollar company.
01:36Reimagining a safari, reimagining travel, that's a really big vision.
01:41Did it ever feel too audacious for you?
01:43Of course.
01:44Yeah, it absolutely felt audacious.
01:47But at the same time, when you have big, crazy and magical dreams,
01:53the way you make those happen, it's just one step at a time.
01:56And you take one tiny step and you try one tiny idea
02:01and you see what happens after that as you take step by step by step.
02:06So that makes sense to me.
02:07But what I kind of realized reading your book was that you note that there's a difference in gender
02:14from the way people kind of make that vision,
02:17that having that bigger vision maybe is less common among women entrepreneurs and founders than men.
02:23Why is that?
02:25I don't know why that is, but I think a large part of it has to do with our conditioning.
02:31If you think it hasn't been that long since women have been in the workplace
02:36and women have been out of the role of being only full-time homemakers.
02:41And I think women historically have been largely conditioned to build small businesses.
02:48And in conjunction with renting homes and managing kids,
02:51what we can manage has been a smaller lifestyle business for many, many women.
02:57And I think now what we're beginning to see is this shift between
03:01women working full-time, having very intentional, serious careers,
03:06but we've not necessarily made that huge leap into thinking about building big businesses
03:12and shifting the way we think about business and our role in it.
03:16Yeah, so I guess hence the title of your book, Thinking Bigger.
03:21So one of the things I guess I was also struck by with your journey is
03:25you built this company and then you've decided now not to only be a builder,
03:30but to be an investor with Enigma.
03:32Tell me what Enigma is focused on.
03:34I know you're spending a lot of time in Africa and thinking a lot about Africa.
03:38What is it, why is it, and what is the portfolio that Enigma is focused on?
03:43Yeah, we have been focused on investing in female entrepreneurs for the last five years now
03:48since I exited my role at Under Canvas.
03:52And that was largely due to the fact, because of two beliefs.
03:58One, more women need access to capital to help them build and grow and scale big businesses.
04:03Is a statistic that I recall you sharing,
04:06less than 2% of all venture capital goes to women founders?
04:10Yes, just 2% of all venture money is going to female founders, which is wild.
04:16And we all know it takes capital to make capital, right?
04:20You can't build a business without access to capital.
04:23So my own journey of trying to grow and scale a business
04:27and raise capital for that business was really difficult.
04:30And I just knew it shouldn't be that hard for women to get money to build great companies.
04:37And so that was part of the thinking,
04:39can we engage with other female founders trying to grow and scale companies?
04:44Because I know that building companies is the way you build a nation.
04:48Well, it's the backbone of our economy.
04:50Yes, but you focus not just on building a nation,
04:53this is building a continent.
04:55So why is Africa a place that you think investors like yourself
05:00should be both looking at and empowering those local founders?
05:04Yeah, we know that Africa is one of the least developed continents on the planet.
05:10We've got a huge gap between the rich and the poor.
05:14And a vast majority of the world's people living in poverty
05:18are living in the continent of Africa.
05:20And if we want to change that, we've got to stop thinking about handouts,
05:25and we've got to start thinking about hand ups.
05:27And the way we do that is to invest and invest in local people,
05:32people who can see the problems,
05:34who can solve them with their own African solutions
05:37and build companies that are sustainable, impactful and economy building.
05:43And so that's the idea was like,
05:44could we take our dollars and see them go so much further?
05:49Could we physically see ourselves investing in a continent
05:53and seeing individual GDPs of countries going up
05:57because of the companies that we built?
05:58And that was exciting to me,
06:00feeling like we could champion talented, smart, capable human beings
06:06who just don't have access to capital, access to networks,
06:10access to a global community of people who could help them
06:14and do business with them and partner with them.
06:16And could we be that bridge?
06:17Just like when I built Under Canvas,
06:18could we build a bridge to the outdoors?
06:20Could we build a bridge for Africans to grow and scale their business?
06:24Beautiful.
06:24What is the culture shift that has to happen in Africa
06:28and with some of these investors that are looking in Africa
06:32and some of the entrepreneurs that are looking out for investors
06:34to really make that connection
06:36and maybe have them end up being as successful
06:38that they too can be listed on NASDAQ?
06:40Yeah.
06:40Well, I think it's fascinating that less than 30 women
06:44in the history of the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange
06:48have taken their companies public in the U.S.
06:50From founding...
06:51Say that stat again.
06:52From founding to taking their companies public,
06:56less than 30 women have founded companies that they've taken public.
07:01That's an extraordinarily low number.
07:04And so we know that part of that problem is to take your company public,
07:08you have to have built a really big company.
07:11That's why you would typically do that.
07:13And we know that capital is that missing gap.
07:16We know that supporting female founders to grow and scale
07:20and build extraordinary companies is a capital problem.
07:23And that's the shift that we've got to make.
07:26So let's talk about your book for a moment,
07:28Thinking Bigger, A Pitch Deck Formula for Women Who Want to Change the World.
07:32I love the title.
07:34I read it cover to cover or as however we read it now on digital formats.
07:40And what I was struck again was the very preciseness
07:44in which you lay out a vision of how people can change their...
07:48And this could not just be just women,
07:50although obviously the book focuses on women,
07:53but from really that idea of knowing the need to building a business.
07:57But why focus on the pitch deck itself?
08:00Your pitch deck is your introduction to your business
08:03and your introduction to yourself.
08:05It's like your calling card.
08:06It's the way you give everyone the headlines about your business
08:10in a really quick format.
08:12You get 10 pages typically to...
08:14And sometimes even less.
08:16You make a two-minute pitch to tell us your story
08:18and tell us all the hard information.
08:21So the pitch deck is the tangible sort of data points
08:26for you to tell your story about your business.
08:30And what I realized was a lot of women don't know
08:34what are supposed to be in that deck.
08:36There's a formula.
08:37Investors have metrics, they have acronyms,
08:41they have philosophies about what something that is investable looks like.
08:46And for women to succeed in raising capital,
08:50you have to understand the answers to the quiz, right?
08:54If you don't know what someone's looking for,
08:56you don't know what the answer is,
08:58you can't study for it, you can't prepare for it,
09:00you can't build for it, you can't make it happen.
09:03And so that was the idea for the book.
09:05Could we unravel the mysteries of Wall Street, if you like?
09:10Could we get behind the acronyms?
09:12Could we help women understand the building blocks of scale?
09:16It is such an important point you're raising.
09:18There's this inside language in a way that many people take for granted that they have,
09:23but particularly entrepreneurs who are not familiar with the sector
09:28don't know how to code.
09:29Is there some watchouts when individuals are building their pitch decks?
09:34Not only should they incorporate some of this language,
09:36but maybe common mistakes they make
09:39when they're making their pitches, yeah.
09:40Yeah, so many pitches.
09:42I remember when I first started listening to the pitches of female entrepreneurs,
09:46entrepreneurs would tell me that they had a plan
09:49of how they were going to do a million dollars of revenue.
09:52And I was like, oh, no, no, no.
09:55If you're gonna pitch an investor,
09:57you need to tell the investor your plan to build a $100 million company or more.
10:02You have to sell us on a much bigger dream.
10:04And what I noticed about women was, and myself included,
10:09we tended to be more realistic, more practical,
10:13more this is what I can see, this is what's hard,
10:16this is what's definite without a sense of this is what's possible.
10:22And investors need your possibilities with a plan
10:26of how you might make your possibilities a reality.
10:30And women tend to be more conservative, less aggressive,
10:37more measured in their approach.
10:39And of course, from an investment perspective,
10:42we need people who are bullish, we need people who are brave,
10:45we need people who are gonna champion something
10:48till it's knocking the doors down.
10:50So it sounds like the best combination in your mind is both, right?
10:53Have that big vision and be able to articulate it
10:57in the right kind of framing,
10:59but then also have some of those skills, the emotional intelligence,
11:03perhaps a bit of humility that oftentimes women entrepreneurs
11:07have more than men entrepreneurs.
11:10It makes a lot of sense.
11:11I guess I'm curious, again,
11:13it must not have been easy building your company.
11:16What other lessons of resilience or overcoming challenges
11:20have you brought into your thinking and advising those women
11:23that are either reading this book or receiving investments from you?
11:27Yeah, I often tell the entrepreneurs that I'm working with,
11:31it's he or she who can stay in the ring long enough
11:34is the one who's going to succeed.
11:36And often we give up too soon, right?
11:38And the challenges for entrepreneurs are endless.
11:41And building a company is solving one problem
11:44after another problem, after another, after another, after...
11:47It's just endless problem solving.
11:49And the challenge becomes, can you go the distance?
11:54And what is required to be resilient enough, strong enough,
11:59thick skinned enough to be able to take the rejection,
12:03to take the issues of things not working out,
12:06things not going the way you wanted,
12:08things not panning out the way you hope them to.
12:11And can you stay?
12:13Can you stay with your core problem?
12:16Can you iterate enough to find a solution
12:20that ultimately has enough legs that sticks
12:23and that people want it and will pay you for it forever?
12:26So Sarah, I have this like kind of super enthusiasm running through me
12:30because you're making me feel like anything's possible,
12:33even at this time of real complexity and challenge.
12:35So I refer to myself as an applied optimist,
12:39a realist, but an optimist nonetheless.
12:41Tell me in kind of some final thoughts,
12:44what's making you most optimistic these days?
12:47Either, again, as a leader, a founder, an investor,
12:52someone who's engaged in the continent shaping
12:55and global shaping work of Africa.
12:57What's keeping you going right now?
13:00I think what keeps me going is meeting extraordinary people with vision.
13:05And I know when we have vision
13:09and when we have an idea of what something could look like
13:14and we start to pull that future in towards us,
13:17you know, and however hard and however heavy that is,
13:20and meeting enough people with a sense of they can see a better day.
13:25We can build a better future.
13:27And that's what entrepreneurs are doing all the time.
13:30So if you want to be encouraged about the shape
13:32and the size and the, you know, feel of our world,
13:35spend time with entrepreneurs
13:36because entrepreneurs are our builders of our future.
13:39They can see the future and they're pulling it in moment by moment.
13:43And often they're ahead of their time, right?
13:44It takes a lot of us time to catch up
13:47to where the entrepreneur often is and what they can see.
13:50But that's what makes me hopeful and even more hopeful
13:53that if we can diversify who has access to capital,
13:58if we can make sure that, you know, the global South has capital,
14:02women have capital, people of colour have capital,
14:05we'll start to build the kind of world that works for us all.
14:08And when we do that, that's when we're going to build a better future.
14:11That's beautiful. I love it.
14:12The idea of inclusivity of capital creates opportunity for the world.
14:17Sarah, thank you so much for taking time with me today.
14:20I've really appreciated your insights.
14:21I've been joined by Sarah Dusik, who is, again,
14:25a entrepreneur, founder, investor, Enigma Ventures,
14:30and author of Thinking Bigger,
14:32a pitch deck formula for women who want to change the world.
14:35Sarah, thank you so much.
14:36Thanks, Seth.