SITUATION
A company was creating a new type of bottled water where a percentage of the revenues went towards water wells in Africa. A noble strategy, but was their execution right?
QUESTIONS
Beyond vetting the founders, our due diligence included questions to measure the impact across the value chain:
- Where are they getting the water from?
- How sustainable is the water source?
- What is the quality of the water?
- Do people in the community where they’re extracting water from have access to water?
- Does their model increase the cost of water to the community?
- What packaging are they using for the water?
- Is there a better material and if not, what are they doing to counteract the environmental impact of this material?
- How are the bottles being shipped?
- What are they doing to counteract the environmental impact of transportation?
- How are they allocating the funds for water projects in Africa?
- How do they choose their partners?
- What monitoring mechanisms to they have in place?
- What metrics are they using to measure success?
We could then truly assess the impact, the framework needed to tackle the gaps, and the founders’ commitment to proper execution and true value creation.
WHEN INVESTORS COME IN
Bringing investors on board can help a company scale, but difficulties can arise from growing too quickly. Here’s how we helped a high-growth company tackle transition and the associated growing pains.
VISION + EXECUTION = VALUE
A budding entrepreneur wanted to create an investment company focused on Africa. We helped him define and shape the vision, as well as the values and behaviours he wanted to stand for and demonstrate. Wanting to ensure he could translate his vision into practice, we...
GOING AGAINST THE HYPE
When a company is receiving a lot of attention and significant funding, it takes great resolve to buck the trend and quash FOMO. It is wise to take time to peel back the layers and do proper due diligence.
ENTREPRENEURS SOLVING COMPLEX CHALLENGES
Entrepreneurship can be harnessed to solve complex challenges. For this, several factors are needed, including great innovators with the mindset, capabilities and commitment required, and the right partners to ramp up and get scale. The following is an example of an EU/member state initiative.
SPOTTING ROGUES
Due diligence on people is an art and a science. The telltale signs lie in the subtleties, subtleties we translated into a red flag system. Here’s an example of how easy it is for rogues to slip through the net and the power of following the subtleties.