In this episode, Hall T. Martin is joined by Brian Axelrad of Beyond Capital. Brian is the Chief Investment Officer of Beyond Capital, he oversees the investment decision-making process, guides the investment due diligence process and coordinates overall investment, portfolio and fund strategy with Beyond Capital's CEO.

A little about Beyond Capital: Beyond Capital Fund is a social impact fund that invests in for-profit social enterprises throughout India and East Africa. We invest in businesses that are focused on greater access to health care, water, sanitation and energy, as well as food security and financial inclusion, which can increase the quality of life and standard of living for consumers at the bottom of the pyramid. Though we seek market rate financial returns, Beyond Capital is structured as a nonprofit, which permits us to emphasize fidelity to our social mission alongside our financial mandate. Investments in India include Frontier Markets, Karma Healthcare, ERC Eye Care (exited) and Bodhi Health. Investments in East Africa include Sanergy (Kenya), East Africa Fruits (Tanzania), Kasha (Rwanda), Numida (Uganda) and Tulaa (Kenya).

Hall kicks off this episode learning about how Brian got into early stage investing and what Beyond Capital’s focus is. In this episode, you’ll learn about impact investing, how the landscape is changing, the evolution and its impact on Beyond Capital, where it's going and what the risks are. Brian talks about how and why he got into impact investing, and offers advice to those who are interested in this type of investing.

Hall and Brian also speak about Beyond Capitals investment in East Africa and India, Brian's role and travels, challenges to long term success in the region.

In this episode, Hall T. Martin conducts an interview with Jonathan Heiliger of Vertex Ventures. They kick off the interview learning how Jonathan got into early stage investing as well as what his fund focuses on. In this episode, Jonathan also shares his views on:

• The continued landscape change in enterprise software
• Outsourcing to the cloud and how it continues to progress
• Data governance and data privacy is coming to the forefront as witnessed by the launch of GDPR
• Industry 4.0--digitization across the heavy industries
• $90B of direct spend on industrial IoT will be spent
• Blockchain and 3D printers and other technologies will eliminate spare parts and provide them upon demand.

A little about Vertex Venture: They seek founders who want to tackle fundamental challenges. People who identify with a problem or concern that’s kept them up late at night — broken tools, broken lines of communication, broken processes, broken boundaries of trust.

Sometimes this will require new skills; sometimes it will require different processes. Sometimes, it will require a completely new organization.

Whichever of these is necessary is ultimately beside the point, because there is just one result when the solution is in place and the naysayers have bought in to the vision: Things will simply be better.