Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for being brave enough to come sit close to us as well. Some of you may have noticed I'm not Suzanne Beagle. I do my best every day, make my hair a little bit curlier, get older by the year. Suzanne and I have worked together over the last decade actually and it's really a pleasure to be sitting in her shoes in many ways and she had some visa issues and was not able to join us but given that we're very close partners was happy to be able to come in and support in the context of this panel and the conference more generally so in a couple places in the conference where you see Suzanne's name expected to see me instead and I hope I'll do half the job that she would do as you know she's a fabulous presenter in her own right. So the topic of today impact networks I think we're happy to start there but we really want to make sure that we get the opportunity to hear and learn from all of you and see what you're most interested in and really base our our remarks on that and as much as possible really have a collaborative conversation. So we're going to be giving a bit of background I think really going from from left to right here that I'm co-founder and CEO of the Tonic Global Investor Network then Nicholas Hunter our European director and Frank von Boinegen who I've spent the last 20 minutes learning to pronounce that more or less correctly who's one of our partners in the Netherlands and I'd say founder co-founder with his partner Margaret Pim Wimek put your money where your mouth is community founded in 1994 that works with investors in the Netherlands and beyond. So in that order we'll be able to talk about the mechanics of running a global impact investor network a regional one and a more local one all doing global work in terms of the companies we're supporting that's sort of the background in terms of the what we'll be explaining in the structures that we run but we do want to make sure that we're talking about things that are relevant to you so from that perspective we did want to take a moment before we jump in to get a sense of who's in the audience so how many people are entrepreneurs you can raise your hands great you know always when you do a panel of investing it's the entrepreneurs that come out in full force and how many people are with intermediary organizations are looking to start an investor network that came to learn from that capacity great great and I see there may be some overlap with the entrepreneurs even better and how many people are investors that are seeking to place impact Margaret is cheating she's Frank's partner I'm one of the great forces behind Pim Wimek's community building as well and I'd love to get from the audience if we could get three or four questions of given all the incredible things happening it's so calf today you chose to take an hour to be with us so we value that that choice that you've made and want to make sure we fulfill those expectations what are a couple key questions that you might have come into the room with that you hope that we're able to address say in the music hi I've got two questions the first one is how do you source your deals and then the second question is what are your transaction costs thank you can you please repeat the first question for me so how do you source your deals projects yeah my name is Amir and my thoughts are concerned about how you make your how you've seen on your exit strategies and and and thoughts about that and how around these kind of investments that are the elusive holy grail do they exist I think we believe so a couple other we have a question from the back here sorry to make you sprint we'll try to group these big round of applause for Bjorn very impressive my name is Mark Mullin I I live in Tbilisi Georgia the the country next to Chechnya not the state next to Alabama and I tried to set up an angel network there a couple of years ago I've lived there since 1997 and we had investors and and we had a pretty reasonable deal flow but a couple of different things happen we had a difficulty explaining to entrepreneurs how to do a business plan and and really what we needed was somebody to work full-time for us helping the the entrepreneurs with predictive cash flows and that that sort of thing to simplify it for the investors and we never really figured out who to do that because we weren't a fund we were just a collection of individuals and who who would that person work for who would manage them that sort of thing so that seemed to us to be crucial that that sort of that person in between the investors and the entrepreneurs and I'm wondering what success you've had in that or how who should that person work for or things around you that talking about it you know a small country in a in a mid-income country thanks right and we'll definitely be talking about the different business models that we've all explored everyone recognizes these things needs to be done no one wants to pay for them there's most things in life my name is Jeff Bernard and my question is about what relationship you have with financial regulators as little as possible but yes just some sorry Giles Davis just some thoughts about angel networks and investing directly into single projects versus investing through intermediary funds my name is large precares I have a question concerning the differences if there are any between an so-to-speak normal business annual network and one which is focusing on on social ventures we've been told we're more fun but beyond that there's you know some other pieces sure my name is Walter from tongue I have a question social capital we're after both impact and return at least how do you measure the impact you have a certain impact appetite great let's take maybe one more and if we're lucky we'll answer at least half good afternoon my name is Liz I'm from Sydney in Australia I'd be very interested to hear about the balance between the social return and the impact on people indigenous people in particular and the financial returns great thank you thank you so much well this is a good time as well I'd love to make sure I know in a time check perspective what time does this panel end because otherwise I'll keep you here all day answering all those great questions does anyone have that in front of them 215 okay great so I think our aspiration is that we're gonna take no more than five to seven minutes each to make sure that we're really able to spend as much time as possible on the conversation between the participants and we'll also make sure in the context of our presentations to try to hit on some of these points as much as possible yes amazing fabulous we'll drone on for for 15 minutes more than fabulous looking forward to it so I'm gonna start in talking a bit about the mechanics of the global network that we've built and then as I mentioned we'll drill down into regional local and how those different models interact over time and I think that's in our experience with tonic of really seeing the ways that we need to bring these together so I think as we've seen there's incredible opportunity I know that this stat has been mentioned many times I'm sure will be used many times over the course of this conference and it's a massive opportunity it's 10 times as much as what goes through donations and DFI's globally that this is really the latest trend in terms of where all those economic development dollars are gonna go and as that ecosystem is growing to support it we're seeing that there are incredible challenges so someone had asked about transactions costs and these are significant that when we're looking at global deals that have complex legal structures and environments that are quite new where there's a lack of co-investors locally to be able to support the sort of work or even others locally within your your ecosystem finding quality deal flow I think as Mark had mentioned in Georgia there's a lot of projects but doesn't necessarily mean that they're at the point of being investment deals as Nicholas sometimes says of you know add money and stir right that this is more often looking at projects where we do need to put a lot of tender love and care into building them into investable enterprises who's going to take on that work how do you make sure you don't erode your investment value by the time that you've finished all that preparatory work going into it community engagement and impact evaluation or two big spaces that I think the industry is working hard to build but there's still a long way to go and that entrepreneurs in that context are lacking some of the support systems that they might need and essentially the origin of tonic I'm from San Francisco California was that there were a number of Silicon Valley investors that were hosting some living room gatherings of they were the ones that were crazy enough to be flying around the world and dealing with these transaction costs and trying to find the ways to be able to put this together and this was over about four years ago that we'd done our first meeting and realized that we really had the opportunity in banning together to be able to lower those transaction costs significantly to be able to work on a global platform that would really ease the way that we could get money into this ecosystem. So essentially what we've built over the last two years since we launched at Socap 2010 in San Francisco is now 39 investors across the US and Europe it's about two-thirds in the US a third in Europe we're hoping to get that neck and neck over the next couple years that are collectively seeking to place 100 million into early stage enterprises and funds so I think on that fund versus enterprise question it's that we often do both right that you're able to get different insights through those different relationships and that we help members figure out what's most appropriate to them we've done 19 deals over the past 15 months. I think that often in the context of investment networks out there is often considered an impressive statistic makes us one of the most active networks in the world when you look at the US angel market in general they did 23,000 deals last year so 19 23,000 we still have a ways to go is an industry so I think this is a good start and that we can't rest on our laurels need to continue to move things along. Our membership is quite diverse from individuals family offices family foundations as the three largest groups spanning the US and Europe and I'm going to go through a bit a bit more quickly through these pieces with an incredible mix and that's what we found with the growing network that we have a real range of financial interests of people who say I'll I'll do any sector geography and I just want my money back plus some to really looking for financial first opportunities and we're able to match investors with the opportunities that are going to best hit their interests and someone to mention the question around exits we've started to this is a very small terminology piece but really talk more about return of capital because we're not likely going to have the classic IPO or the acquisition of the coffee co-op and Kenya in some cases yes that may be the more appropriate model but we're starting to look at a lot of alternative deal structures of whether it's dividends or other means to ensure we at least get that return of capital plus some just a little bit more that it's really quite global even though it's primarily US and European membership about 80% of the 300 deals that we looked at last year were in developing markets specifically focused on developing markets in terms of our membership requirements that we really grew out of a desire to be an action oriented community members commit to doing at least two deals a year investing at least 50,000 and that means that we're really not not for everyone nor do we need to be and I think one thing we've learned about running networks is is how to not be everything to everyone and that we wanted to have that very specific focus or meetings are very much about transactions and about building relationships between investors globally to be able to facilitate that and we also have a nonprofit Institute that helps to contribute to best practices globally and help other networks try to get off the ground so we've been quite active with groups in India and Mexico and different parts of the world to help develop local angel networks just a couple examples out of the 19 investments that we've done together so Sanergy which some people may have heard of it was actually received some grant support from the Swedish Development Organization as well that does sanitation and energy in the slums of Kenya of essentially being able to collect the waste and convert that into energy that they can sell to the grid and one of our members brought together 11 investors in a syndicate to invest half a million in the company and one of the things tonic members are really hopefully thoughtful about is in scaling enterprises this was a case where a member made a grant first to the company to be able to do a proof of concept and then once they felt secure that this had in fact turned from a project to an investable deal was able to bring that syndicate together so we really try to do a life cycle analysis of what is this company gonna need what types of capital at different points in time and bring those people around it and Lumni is another one that came out of Latin America and actually went from Colombia and Mexico to the US now that finances education based on future income I wish I wish that all these countries like Sweden had access to free education and the absence of that what you find is that low income students who do not have collateral it's very difficult for them to get financing to go to school and in this way they're able to pay three to five percent of their income for the 10 years after they graduate school on the assumption that if someone gets into the top medical school in Mexico when they graduate they're gonna have a decent income so the company is already profitable in Latin America and it's just getting its foothold in the US this year so I'm gonna go ahead and turn over to my colleague Nicholas who's the director in Europe and he can talk a little bit more of the specifics of what the dynamics of running in a network in Europe look like thanks so tonic Europe is about the same age as the first tonic global group in the last 15 months about 14 members now across five countries and as you know the European Union and Europe is much more fragmented and homogenous as the United States so we are applying a bit of a different model we're growing through partnerships one in the UK and in the Netherlands and Pemwimek Frank and Margaret are our partners in Holland and Frank will talk a bit more about how this works the partnership between a very well-grounded network and the global network like tonic and what we see with the growing membership around in Europe is also that with more members in Europe who also focus on bottom of the pyramid projects in developing markets but also want to invest in companies that are addressing domestic issues either here in Europe or in the US so the last two deals that were closed by European members were deals in the US and in here in Europe a renewable energy company for instance and so we're here to connect in Scandinavia and really get a feeling of how the impact investment space here is working to connect with the relevant players here so please after this panel seek us out we put our business cards there and we'd love to connect with those people who are interested in moving the space forward here in Scandinavia that's fine but Frank why don't we turn it over to you would love to hear a bit more about the PIMWOMIC experience I'm going to be talking I don't need a double microphone that's silly nor do I really need one at all but essentially hearing more about how you've brought together this group of investors locally that the growth of PIMWOMIC and I know is the type of platform that a number of groups would like to be able to emulate in their local context and then also in connecting with tonic of then you've been able to connect the local and the global so would love to hear more of your story thank you this is a long story because we started in 1994 and we really started in mirroring what already in the States started in this investor circle investor circle was the first community of investors in impact investing the word impact investing wasn't invented then yet it was social responsible companies but it was the first circle coming out of SVN and the social venture network and that was a very great example how we should have the how we did it in that time and it is a membership organization they do the due diligence with the people who want to go deeper in a project so that's the cost of the due diligence as a question of that and the membership organization investor circle provides the companies the companies come in they search for the companies and they present them on the special day two days in the year we brought that exact copy of that system we brought over to Holland and we called it in that time money meets ideas and it was great but the authorities and it was a question and what how do the authorities look to those things was against it they say you're offering shares you are not authorized to advise you're not authorized to offer shares and we said oh we don't do that all we offer only a table and two chairs so we couldn't do that and we had to sell the concept of money meter dears to a bank who had the authority rules or applied for the 30 rules so there we were we started again and then we started a small little fund with 30 shareholders and we did with that and but that was limited we only invested in eight companies because the fund was very small and we want to do more so slowly on we start to be a transaction or a matching making firm and so we could serve more companies and we could help many more people with capital today and we have around us a group of 350 informal investors and we know exactly what they want a small group wants to go in water thinks water issues is the most important thing in the world another group wants to go affordable housing sustainer market culture health care call it all wherever you meaning is you want to invest in something and when we have and when we have a company and we do the due diligence of the company we give a stamp of approval for women approved then we call the capital who wants to go we know wants to go in that particular company and so a match is done and and we changing now how the economics of this group work how this angel group works in the beginning the company paid as a success fee and now we changing over to a membership organization because the 350 informal investors we have around us is a loose organization they don't pay membership and we're going to shift to membership organization and shift over that if some one of the members invest that he or she pays a small little fee to cover our due diligence cost and our operation cost so the membership will cover that and the success fee so we're shifting over to a new system and that new system is in is parallel to the thinking of the authorities those authorities like to have a very clean and transparent system and if the company pays for the for the success fee it's not transparent for the investor so this is transparent and authorities like this so we changed this to be you know in the rules now once once the investors have done a couple of local investments then they want to go outside they want to go outside of the borders of the Netherlands outside the borders of being Luke's outside the borders of Europe and then they become member of tonic so this is the correlation of the step up from learning curve to put your foot wet to do it locally internationally and to tonic that's the curve that's that's a curve but it's it's a one that's worked out well for us and I think you hear and I think pretty strongly and obviously this is going to be our bias as we've run networks but the power of collaboration that when we look at a lot of these questions of how do you do effective deal sourcing how do you address transaction costs how do you look at exit strategies that the more good minds you have around that question and I think increasingly in the context of impact investment you need those minds working globally so there's something great in tonic sitting globally with collaborations in local impact networks around the world if you need the best Indian lawyer to facilitate a transaction or the best Brazilian tech guy to join your startup you know we're able to get access to those global relationships in a way that significantly reduces those costs there's a lot of examples of people doing it on their own but boy did they work harder so I think that's what we found the incredible power of collaboration through networks and then as Frank has said the evolution of what are the business models that are going to be able to support that and I think we all run incredibly lean organizations in terms of the work that we do and that there's a lot of room for growth but I also think it's encouraging for the sector that it really doesn't take that much that would just a couple staff you're able to really pull together three hundred and fifty investors and am I correct is it thirty four investments so has been quite active as well in terms of bringing things together so that's that's just our opening remarks and we really did want to reserve most of the time for conversation we have some questions from the beginning that I know have not gotten fully touched and so feel free to come back to those themes but I do want to start opening things up if there's questions then also if panelists have questions of each other and feel free to jump in there as well but can we start with someone from the audience and I think thank you so much for you and feel free to walk I'm just curious about tonic Europe question for Nicholas how many investments have been done in year in tonic Europe with your 14 members and do you mind people who ask questions your name where you're coming from a different day I'm entrepreneur for Desmo right yeah actually I have to pass this question to Morgan this is my second month with tonic Europe and I don't have the statistics at the bit point of my tip fingertips he's already a pro so I think there's a couple different ways to answer that question so out of the 19 deals I want to make sure I'm parsing the data in the right way I'm going to say that seven of those had participation from European members and a number of those deals are global as I mentioned the last two deals or as Nicholas mentioned the last two deals which are currently still raising so I'm not going to say the names but just describe them and these are the sorts of regulatory gymnastics that we do but it's really it's not that long of a list of do's and don'ts in terms of being able to pass regulatory muster but this is one of them so one of them was a social networking platform in the US but that has the opportunity for global reach that's about helping connect people to resources outside their individual networks and then the other was a crowd-funded solar platform and in general we found strong interest from some of the European members that want to have access to early stage clean companies in the US particularly around clean tech and technology platforms specifically one of our members on the US side is GreenStart which brings in about 15 companies a year as investments early stage clean tech companies that Kleiner Perkins and other VCs want to see grow so sort of pass them first to GreenStart to incubate there's been a number of opportunities that have come through there where Europeans who want to have a local partner to do early stage clean tech can come in so that there has actually been a strong emphasis on Europeans investing in the US and then there's also been a couple deals in Africa and in India and I think I see a tonic member who I'm making eye contact with who if she wants to speak about some of their portfolio is welcome to do so but not to put you on the spot so any tonic members are welcome to chime in and thank you for those that are in the room because I understood your question to be how many transactions have actually been to tonic members investing into companies based in Europe right yeah as far as I know only one the last one which presented yesterday but one of the issues that we also discussed yesterday and I don't know whether you were still there at this impact investing forum but at the end there was a quite interesting discussion about is there enough deal flow in Europe or is there not and Frank said yes and other people said no and I think that really depends on whether you prepared and maybe that's towards Mark's question whether you prepared to do the capacity building roll your sleeves up and help the entrepreneurs so up until now I think our European members haven't seen the deal flow that they would want to see in Europe but we ramping that up because the maturity of the entrepreneurs on average in Europe is less than it would be in the US and also if you look at some of the prominent and advanced companies that raise money in developing countries very often they are have entrepreneurs that have been either they are American and are quite advanced in in knowing how capital raising works or that have worked in the US so I think we're just not as mature as this here in Europe and it needs more handholding in order to bring a company to an investable stage and on that note there is another company in the Netherlands that we're actively working with right now to get it to to investment ready stage but I think we're pretty committed to that transaction happening Margaret was going to chime in there yeah we can maybe have a couple mics running I think that what we see at Pinwimik is that we have a number of really wonderful partners who are funded from the lottery who have helped incubate social enterprises we actually see different deal flow because some of the companies that come to us don't consider themselves social they consider themselves good companies and and and don't have a separation between kind of social first and and finance they're more blended so I think that's some of why we have we have experienced different deal flow and we have some pretty yeah pretty healthy companies that we also now with this partnership can hope to feed up into a wider global channel to move more of that money but about the 34 investments that we've done I would say at least at least half of them and maybe more at least 50 percent are in Europe Frank do you want to add to that yes 50 percent are in Europe because the early investments where all in the United States when we started in 1994 there were no companies in Europe who answered to the criteria we're looking for social responsible and making money so we had to find a two United States where it all came from so our first bulk of investments was in the States quite successfully though and I'll note anyone sorry to interrupt anyone in the audience who's ever enjoyed a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream in Europe has this man to thank for getting the agreement together to bring them to Europe so thank you for that thank you well we liked it too so but later on now slowly on in Europe 10 years ago social entrepreneurs started here social entrepreneurs who had a great social product and investable and brought a possible possible outlook for financial positive returns so only 10 years is the is the past time that we are investing in Europe think we had another question maybe we can get the other microphone oh I guess okay great is on oh hi my name is Ross Baird I run an organization called Village Capital that we have about 20 seed stage investments across the world friends I'll just talk well okay we're very big fans and close friends with both Pim Wimek and tonic and we've had companies get get funded through these networks I just wanted to ask a question based off of dynamics I've been seeing with entrepreneurs and angel networks because most of my experience with angel networks even though I used to work for a tonic member and was on the investor side is actually trying to get entrepreneurs through angel networks closing rounds and we've had great experience with entrepreneurs and angel networks and we've had some pretty frustrating experiences and the biggest differentiator is if there is a member inside the network who jumps on and says this deal needs to happen and it requires the member you know making calls and twisting arms and conjoling and saying you know we need another hundred thousand do me a favor and I'll do you a solid next time like that's that's that's the network at its best and we've seen that work what happens often is on the flip side an entrepreneur maybe has two or three investors who are interested and then they'll have a call and one of the members will come in and say some comment that just kills all enthusiasm from everyone there's a kind of veto player like if someone speaks out publicly like I don't particularly like this deal there are two other people that the that the entrepreneur had been having conversations with who are you know no longer interested so there's I don't know there's a plus and a minus of the group dynamics between investors that seems confusing and opaque to the entrepreneurs that I work with at least so I guess I guess the question is how do you think through managing investor group entrepreneur relations to maximize the good experiences and minimize the bad experiences maybe I'll start on that one that's something we've been really thoughtful about from the beginning in setting up tonic and I'm not going to say that we have mastered it by any stretch of the imagination and I think it's based on an overall ethos that I'd say we all share of the impact industry has this great opportunity to really put entrepreneurs and investors on a level playing field that I think in traditional Silicon Valley if I am the tech expert and I'm working with an entrepreneur that's coming pretty green into the field I can make a viable claim to being the expert in ex-field whereas in the context of being an impact investor all of a sudden I'm expected to be the expert on health education water right all these different fields so many different geographies in this context we have to have a lot of faith in the entrepreneurs to really be our partners in building this and that it's one thing to have the capital but that's not the same as having the brain power behind it so we try to really think through as a guiding principle in our processes if I ask for an hour of an entrepreneur's time how do I at least how do I give that hour back right and whatever it is that they need to do for me so that can be as simple as if they're going to do a diligence call do I make sure that I'm giving feedback to that entrepreneur consistently even if they're not going to get funded also I think the common dynamic with investors are angel networks that set the best answer is a yes the second best is a no and the worst is a maybe and that we really try to be is communicate as clearly and quickly as possible if we feel that we're not going to get traction when someone applies to tonic they get an email about this long explaining exactly who's going to be looking at their deal how it's going to get promoted when they're going to hear from us you know so that we're trying to be as clear as possible and a lot of folks that actually advised us in the beginning don't do that you know if you tell people what the process is and they're just going to ask you more questions and you're going to get overburdened by entrepreneurs and what we found was overwhelmingly we got the feedback of wow now I know thank you this is fine I think there's still some pieces that we need to do better a fourth of our deals actually came into the network or the deals that got funded did not have a champion when they entered the network it was that we were able to determine through our relationships who was going to be the best person and have them really take up the charge you do need to have someone excited about your deal and I do think there's sometimes the expectation on the entrepreneur side they are so committed to what they're doing someone else must think this is the most important thing in the world and hopefully that person's out there they might not be part of my thirty nine people right so sometimes you do have to take that risk not every deal you know we did nineteen out of three hundred deals that's a pretty decent ratio it means I'm going to disappoint those two hundred eighty one but at least I can provide them with some useful feedback and some connections to help them move forward and so I think that's how we tend to look at those would love to hear other thoughts on those questions I totally agree if the panel is called how to make it work and I think finding that champion for the deal is is the biggest key in order to make it successful and also pleasurable and fun experience so I think a lot is also in the framing of when you you know like entrepreneurs come and either upload their information on to our platform and redistributed and draw attention to it among our members or they present in our global call but the presentation is really just a sneak preview of ten minutes five minute Q&A and then those who are interested can come into a longer call and a longer presentation a day or two later so I think when you say rather than try and get interest for people to sign up trying to find that champion that's your first sort of entry point and when that happens then then things work and as you said like those people take leadership and this also ties in with the regulatory question we can't promote a deal somebody needs to pick that up so we can't push on a string somebody needs to stand up there take up the string and then start pulling and then we can help to pull and and make the gain momentum make the process gain momentum and and make it actually work rather than you know everybody's standing there and waiting for somebody to pick up the line and start pushing pulling you know and one thing just to add on that before we pass to Frank I think in the dynamic of successful networks as well has to be the expectation that investors are really taking the lead on doing the work so I think there's no other way that we would have been able to facilitate 19 investments with essentially two and three-quarters staff right that the responsibility really has to be collective and there's five of us that are co-founders of tonic and additional 10 investors that signed on as founding partners that we really made sure from the start that it was a community effort and I think that's another piece in starting a new network of how you make sure you have a strong community that everyone expects to be putting in the time and work that it takes to do successful investments and Frank there is a big difference between tonic and we make us Nicholas had some of the members have to stand up and take it over and pull it and organize a group of of other members to do to gather the diligence we do different the companies come to the mimic we get about hundreds hundred companies a year you know soliciting you know do you have money for us and we select immediately from that about 10 companies and with 10 companies we we we search further we do the due diligence and we make this due diligence and when we think hey this is all right when we give a stamp of approval then we look for capital then we kind of push it but we kind of sure already then when we have put the standard approval then we then we can give them money because we know our circle of capital we know that in that company you know out of the 350 there are 20 people wants to invest in it so there's a kind of a difference in approach and different in thinking what you're talking about is a peer-to-peer sharing that's also an important distinction regulatory wise is that we're talking to accredited investors so that when we say we believe in this they also know that it's still it's always risk capital it's a very high risk business this business so and they're the kind of people that have testified basically that they can take take this risk because otherwise then you're talking about we we still encourage all of those investors to also see their own lawyer see their own tax attorneys you know we are not a bank that says you know this is a guaranteed product but but it is about trust Ross and so you would the trust part process is a really important part of the network certainly of our network so once we say that we you know this one is worth a risk then people trust us enough to come and look at it thank you that's very true because it's a very fine line between what we say hate is okay does not mean this is a this is a winner so that's the very fine line i'm looking at where the microphone is and how we get it closest to the uh maybe keep both moving around um to the woman in the sweater right there i am landing wing from vietnam um i i think somebody had mentioned about emerging market and uh what i like to know is what are the criteria as well as how do you measure impact in that case can you clarify do you mean criteria for emerging markets or for investment in in a social entrepreneur that that is in an emerging market got a general criteria um so that that varies a lot from investor to investor and i think that's part of the challenge uh the challenge and the opportunity of a nascent industry and i actually do think it's good that people are at a phase of being very open-minded um about what that can mean and really needing to harness the wisdom um both of entrepreneurs and then i think um the often least talked about community because even in something like socap they're not in the room is is the beneficiaries um and that connects back to impact measurement we can pick any number of whether we're looking for more you know clean water or electricity or whatnot the end of the day question of um did we help the people we intended to help you know did they get to be part of the conversation about what are the product services that are most helpful for their communities of what sort of assets they're looking to build and that's one of the things i'm hopeful you know for future events like socap of um it's great that there's opportunities investors and uh scholarships for entrepreneurs let's make sure that communities are part of that conversation so that when we as investors are looking at where do we get the most impact it's it's who who is informing those decisions right that we can't just make those that conversation can't just be a credited investor to a credited investor um so i think that's it's evolving um in terms of what sort of impact people are looking for um and then in terms of impact measurement there's a number of tools that have sort of been growing and becoming more and vogue globally in the context of tonic we've done a bit of a mishmash um between the gears analytics system which i believe is doing a demo later on today um it's a great opportunity i think globally for us to be building up um a collectible source of global data about social enterprises of being able to rank them against each other and get a broader sense of what's happening um the iris taxonomy which is essentially a library of terms um it can be tricky if i'm saying you know this water project had a thousand beneficiaries well was that they came once in a day or multiple times in a day you know that you need to be pretty specific on what those terms mean to make sure you're able to compare across enterprises so the iris taxonomy has been a useful tool for that the final piece is that um we make sure to reserve a lot of space for indicators that are reported by that beneficiary community by the entrepreneur um because some of the impacts you can't sort of go with your measurement tool and in that same way have the presumption that you know what's most impactful for that particular community so to give an example of that there's a company that we've invested in or rather tonic members have invested in called liberty injustice based in Liberia that's a fair trade clothing factory um i believe chid liberty has spoken at these forms in the past one of the really interesting impact indicators that you wouldn't quite think about from the start of the 25 women that were working at the company for the first in the first six months six of them got divorces and it was that often in the context of Liberia these were women that had been married off at the age of 12 had no choice in terms of who they were marrying and the moment that they had some financial independence to be able to send their children to school to be able to live independently that was the first choice that they made for themselves now i don't think in the context of a social enterprise you would typically think to have classes after the factory day of how to go get divorced or how to change your name right but if you look at indicators of economic empowerment this was something that was very important to these women and i think it's that as investors we need to really be open minded about what are the benefits that people are really looking for and what are the appropriate indicators and yes that means that it's not always going to be comparable across enterprises and you know too bad right and that's where you do need to have some customized approaches to communities curious about how pinwimek looks at measuring impact well especially in emerging markets to answer the question most of it immediately is an employment and the biggest impact investor in emerging markets is microfinance combat against poverty and what is even better investing in SMEs because not everybody is entrepreneur not everybody can start with a microfinance loan so SMEs if you invest in SMEs they employ people who are not entrepreneurs or might be not entrepreneurs so this employment possibility for SMEs is much bigger than even microfinance so there is the biggest measurement tool in in employment and we have invested in in a small fund in eastern Africa and there the management fee or the management extra bonus what they get is is calculated or they get punished if they don't achieve the the measurement rules of the social impact and it's very very good and I think that's something that investors are more and more looking for it's a criteria anything you wanted to add Nicholas I think the question from the front the green sweater I'm Caroline Siedeloff from Social Initiative I'm curious to learn more about the investments that you've done in poor countries both in terms of the share of the investments that you have done but also in terms of the sourcing do you see a lot coming there and also from the investors point of view is there how big is the interest for making investments in social entrepreneurs in poor countries for tonic in particular very high so about 80 percent of our work is looking at deals in developing countries about that percentage of our deals has been conducted in developing countries a lot of the actual corporate entities that we're investing in might still be US or European but that the work of the company is conducted through a subsidiary or otherwise and that helps to also conquer some of the issues these are usually dollar denominated investments regardless of the country and sometimes there might be a layer of currency insurance you know finding ways to deal with the forex challenges that come along with it in terms of deal sourcing we've put a large emphasis in tonic on two pieces so one is the members themselves about a third of our deal flow comes from members coming and saying and I think this is one of the main value that that members get from the network it's not just here's this great company in Brazil it's we just finished Village Capital and of all these companies that presented you know I just spent three months with so and so and they're really terrific and we've put our money in and you know who who wants to come along with us right so it's qualified deal flow from investors that people have the opportunity to build relationships with and sort of get a sense over time of oh if so and so is interested in a deal it's likely a good one for me and our members travel so much that we literally have a member on every continent any day of the week so then we're able to capture a lot of their local relationships the second third of our deal flow is through deal flow partnerships that we've established so we have a network of both local investors and local organizations that are in at this point about 15 countries some of the largest markets for impact investment globally so we do quarterly check-ins with them at least some quite more often than that and are able to ensure that we're getting a good sense of what investors are working on locally and find that that piece is really essential as much as possible like to have a local investor involved in a deal when it's in a developing country so and then the last piece of your question I think interest level is quite high and that a lot of the talent you know has been looking in some of the poorest countries in the world it's also interesting to note that the largest concentration of poor people nowadays actually live in middle income countries right so the indians and the brazils of the world and one of the pieces that I'll note on the job creation side we certainly look at job creation I think we try to as much as possible think about job creation that's on ramps through education and asset building that some of the sort of trickle down theories of let's create jobs and hope that creates an equitable economy it didn't work so well for the US right and are not looking to to replicate that those structures so can we find a way that is job creation that's really going to encourage a more equitable economy in a longer term way and that's in you know looking at solidarity economy models and other ways that we can contribute to that conversation I'm gonna leave some space for my colleagues to comment as well I'm sorry I will take the back seat for the next question sure it's just because we're doing the live web recording I see a question about angel investors I am I get the impression that there are people who are passionate defenders of debt and others who are passionate defenders of equity have you got any thoughts on what in particular in the sort of deals you do the blend between the two and the pros and cons and challenges etc I'll take this one so I think it depends on two things one is obviously the risk level of the company and the risk appetite of the investor and the other one are exit considerations so even if you would not invest from a risk perspective through a debt instrument maybe sometimes you have to because you will stay marooned as an equity investor in that company forever so even if you invest equity and then you have a sort of payback or recapitalization or dividend policy it comes down effectively to a debt instrument so I think it depends and for me impact investing and the social enterprise in particular is setting out to do one thing which is sort of breaking down the silo barriers between different sectors that we have now and we all have to collaborate a lot of social enterprise doesn't work without support from philanthropy either to ramp it up now or because philanthropic investors or the public are actually the customer for paying for the beneficiaries and you have sort of tripod business models and so I think we have to think about business model engineering on that side and the flip side of that within the company is the financial engineering and really breaking down the barriers between the different instruments grants debt and equity and taking those elements from these different instruments and making them work for to deploy capital in a more effective and and efficient way and Morgan was talking about various new capital structures that may help to solve these exit issues such as revenue sharing for instance or factoring and things like that which will help to overcome some of the different difficulties that we have at the moment for instance with investing plain equity and then not getting the money back because of the money is not coming back we will have a sort of a bump of impact investing now and then we'll die down and I'll just add to that we have a couple law professors at the University of Michigan who are doing a project for us next semester on alternative deal structure term sheets so we should be able to put out some good resources soon on investors that want to look at different models for returns of where they can go for that in practice you would see in developing countries most always debt because they don't have the companies don't have a structure and the families who own the company don't like to give away their company so debt financing is very much most most used but that's financing with a as we call it a royalty so if the if the company does well then you get a better return back than you six percent you are agreed about so in investor parlance you will have structural you will have investment in a debt structure but with a risk profile of equity and the return profile of equity so there is a kicker element and also if things go wrong you it's uncollateralized and you will lose your money so that would be the blend that most likely will happen and this is happening are there other structures any investors from the audience where you've had particular success with one instrument or another it's just because they're recording I think the the royalty model is and it's a kind of hybrid between as you say between equities of principles and and debt but I think it's a really good good way forward in my experience other questions from the audience and quickly before the next question we've added some information about how to get in touch with pinway make so I'll take notes yeah and I think the next slide here too yeah my question also dealt with the debt and equity we haven't discussed the profitability of the investments yet so what is the return you're after and are there any success stories of successful exits if I say a beautiful success story I have to say as well a negative story so let me say first start was a beautiful story we invested in a company called plant health care and they make a natural fungus what you introduce to the root of a plant and it can be any crop or anything any plant or grass root or a big tree and the crop is resistant or the roots are growing faster the little plant gets more nutrition out of the soil and is resistant all about what happens above the soil so you don't have to spray it anymore and it grows faster you have a higher yield and this company went is great it went really well and it went to a stock market so we had an exit on stock market so that was a really really good exit and a fantastic company now a bad story to compare to make the balance is we came in love with this company because it had it is biodegradable plastic it was the first company in biodegradable plastic and we said wow that is great biodegradable plastic that will conquer the world everybody's waiting for it and so we invested heavily in it but unfortunately our love for the product was too wild we didn't enough search if the technology was fully developed and you can imagine when the big bag of dirt is in that bag and you want to put it on the street and they pulled it up and the bottom goes out because it was already biodegraded and so people didn't like it so much so but now you have to see now you have to nowadays everywhere you see biodegradable plastics it is it's caught on so this company was a forerunner and our investment went foul but the seed of the company the idea of the company the technology was taken over by somebody else so our investment became a grant to the technology of this world some pretty good reframing you want to add to that just a general observation that when a window of opportunity opens it's not very often it's not the first one who jumps through who gets it right but the one who lands on its feet so I actually think we did a decent job in getting through some of the questions from the beginning there were two that I wanted to acknowledge to make sure that we addressed and then we'll take one more from the audience and then some framing comments so one was about investments in indigenous people and how that's been part of the conversation and then businesses versus social angels so I might take that first one because there's some investments within Tonic I can talk about and then I don't know if you have any experience investing in companies connected to indigenous peoples to share and then businesses versus social angels would be great if one of you could take on so investments connected to indigenous people I think this is part of an important conversation that's been happening in the industry about ownership of social enterprises that traditionally the model that we've seen a lot in the US is that very bright Stanford MIT students go down to Kenya or whatever country and sort of poof bring in their solution and it might be a great product or service that's being sold but particularly in the context of some rather expensive innovations the family winds up in debt the entrepreneur might wind up decently well off and hopefully the investors make a killing how do you make sure to balance out the benefits between investors entrepreneurs and communities and make sure they're really a key piece of that as well and then finally connecting back to making sure it's actually innovations that people want so a prime example of this an organization that was supported by one of our members called Grupo Yansa in the south of Mexico which is an area that's very prime for wind energy and essentially major corporations were coming in and buying up through faulty contracts indigenous land so that you started to see major protests and wind blocks of wind energy and this is the last thing you would expect to see right large indigenous groups going down with wind energy the enemy and some of the groups recognized that wind energy wasn't the problem the problem was corporate control of their land that this wasn't something that impact investors wanted to be promoting and essentially the head of the Global Wind Commission who started Grupo Yansa came together with these communities to work on founding an indigenous owned wind company and the idea that then investors can support solutions that are really going to grow community assets create a community foundation there's a couple models like that globally that I think have done a good job of growing assets within indigenous communities and being able to exploit natural resources on their own terms so I think in general we're interested in projects that are really promoting local ownership in that sort of capacity so then the question on working with business for social angels Frank I don't know if that's something in growing pinwimic I know you've seen lots of responses from people on different sides of that table social angels we only work with social angels sure they're all social angels but the question was what's the difference between social angels and and non-social angels and I think groups are non-social angels are more are tend to be more groups of man private equity is almost a man environment not on the LP level most funder funds are run by women is that so well not most funds but there's a there's a disproportionate number of funder fund managers so actually the the overlords of the private equity industry are there's lots of women in that industry which I think is nice I will cooperate with Frank for the impact in this trade that my theory is is is run over so I'll stop as the female representative here I will corroborate your your story and what you see a shift in in social responsibility in so impact impact investing there are so many more women there because it is part of gut feeling as well it's not only done with your head not only numbers it's also what kind of good do I do in the world and that's gut feeling and that's that's a good feeling and that's the the the what you want and therefore you see so many women as well now moving in this industry of impact investing and and and the group of investors social investors around us are are a mixed bag of women and men and therefore it is fun it's not a drive to maximum financial profit there's a drive to do good as well and and that drive is is mainly you know driving up on the on the surface so Frank now I understand impact investors are more fun because there's more women yeah I appreciate that but I mean it is it is very pretty Nicholas having come from more conventional venture capital worlds and now moving into the impact investor world I'm curious if you're seeing some differences in how more conventional business mining investors run their processes versus impact investors I think it again it depends a bit on where you are so if you are in places which are largely run by or or characterized by the American culture and also the conceptual clarity that this brings and I've seen that in India and in particular in the U.S. of course and and also in North Western Europe I would say that there is a distinction and but the the worlds are more coalescing as you said like lots of tonic members have been entrepreneurs or VCs or business angel investors themselves and they're now increasingly putting the meaning into their money affairs as well and coming back maybe to your question as well that I think here in Europe both the impact investing the social angel space and the social enterprise space is characterized by social angels and social entrepreneurs who don't see themselves as such they just do what they do and do what feels right but they don't necessarily put that label upon themselves also because these terms are not so clearly defined and I think so the if you would say who's doing social investments in Austria for instance none of those people would say I'm an impact investor when you ask them what do you do so I think it's because the market is so nascent at the moment it's difficult to make that distinction you really have to see what is under the label what people actually do so can we take one last question from the audience and then we'll do closing remarks well I have the mix so I'm supposed to have the last question in regards with that I think the many investors are interested but not so well informed about the structures of these social ventures how much does your networks help with the structuring the deal or is it hands off when it comes to the deal this structure and it's yeah that's my question so in the case of tonic it varies widely just because there's investors that have greater levels of greater and lesser levels of experience in terms of being able to jump in and lead a deal I think the other thing that we've learned through our last couple of years is that also some common practices and impact investment doesn't mean their best practices right so there's also a role that we can play in educating investors on what might be new structures or opportunities that they're able to to bring into their work and that we have sort of a privileged position in watching the transactions of 40 different investors of getting a really strong library of potential term sheets and ways to put deals together there's times where we might have multiple investors working across borders where we'll be much more engaged in in setting terms and sort of running the conversations and it really just is about working with that lead investor figuring out what level of support they're going to need being able to provide that so there's some elements who sometimes say it's like advanced secretarial essentially to some that's more really specific and getting into those deal terms Frank do you want to mention in the PIMWIMEK yes we educate the investors we help the investors and but we also help the entrepreneur and I think that's your question and we guide the entrepreneurs through all their difficulties and problems they have we do the capacity building there and that we do a PIMWIMEK but if we have in our group of investors somebody who's really expert in that particular field of that particular company then we ask him or her to do it in our place so we really no they'd have to give us a lot more money for that the one just to give a concrete example that I think it's important what Frank mentioned about it's not just about supporting the investors it's supporting the entrepreneur I had a deal closed last week where the amount went from 250 to 10,000 back to 250 based on an entrepreneur just who great entrepreneur just doesn't have experience with financing structures didn't understand a certain term that was being asked of him and I sort of got the sense that his response was based on that misunderstanding and was able to give him a call as the intermediary and say hey just just want to clarify you understand what this anti-dilution clause is actually asking you for and when I explained it he was like oh of course you know not a problem at all but that sometimes it takes the involvement of the intermediary who has the trusting relationship some both sides of that interaction to be able to drive a deal forward in a way that's that's quite difficult and that I think we see ourselves as not sitting on the investor's side of the table or the entrepreneur's side it's that we really need to support both parties in that transaction and that's part of why tonic it's entirely membership fee-based we don't take a cut of deals and it's that we don't want to be biased towards obviously we want investments to happen we want the right investments to happen when it's the right time right so that we don't want to push the transaction if the terms aren't right or you know if something is not working for for our members any addition to that great we'll want to give each panelist a minute of just any final comments observations that you want to share advice for our lovely audience thank you all for all your contributions and a really interesting conversation Frank yeah I'd like to share for those in the room who are investors or like to be social an impact investor just start just make your feet wet just do it small and then do it again if it works well and slowly you come into this field and slowly you become member of one of the investor clubs because I also do capacity building for social entrepreneurs I'll do the flip side and give some piece of advice to the entrepreneurs here ask for advice from investors don't ask for money and then usually the money will come investments happen on the basis of relationships so you have to build that relationship first and usually working together on a problem like working something out and asking for a piece of advice for your company is a good way to build a relationship and to show what you do how you think in a non-sale situation because if you drive somebody in a sale situation like here buy shares in my company people go in a in a defensive mode very often and you want them to listen and that may be a good framing to do that and also I think that goes to both investors and entrepreneurs in particular here in Europe I think as I said many times in this panel we're facing a situation where a lot of the companies are early stage not so and where there's also limited clarity about where a company is and there's therefore also a big potential for misunderstanding and different expectations on the entrepreneur on the investor side and very often I've found that rather than asking can you invest or would you invest into my company to ask how what needs to be true how would you invest into my company in order to get a feeling of what a particular investor would want to see before they can invest and not just assuming that they can invest now so that you can see where maybe you're a concept in terms of maturity or in terms of proof of concept is still lacking the traction or whatever that investor may be looking for and I think I would combine the two things that were just said in the just do it philosophy I think that we found that the best way to form relationships between investors investors and entrepreneurs is really in the process of doing deals and that there can be a lot of time put into that educational process of how do we get comfortable with this evolving field and I think it's we're never going to get to a point or maybe it's five years from now and sort of okay impact investment is this one thing it's going to be what we make of it and I think it's in the process of doing the deals that we're figuring that out you know that's when we're coming up with the most innovative structures that's when we're finding the right ways to support entrepreneurs and their processes and it takes really having that willingness that it may be that that first investment you make is that you're paying for your learning experience that that's what it takes to really get a better sense of how the market's going to grow so thank you all so much for taking this time with us we hope and we'll continue to to be in touch in various ways and enjoy the rest of your SoCAP experience and get a round of applause for our lovely panelists


This study demonstrated that a novel gene transfer strategy can be used to generate immune-competent mice that express interferon alpha, IFN. These mice are then used to study colorectal cancer, CRC, metastatic dissemination to the liver. The researchers found that TEMs, a subset of Ti2 plus monocytes and macrophages found at peritumoral sites accumulated in the vicinity of hepatic metastatic areas. They also showed that TEM mediated delivery of IFN inhibited tumor growth when administered prior to metastasis challenge as well as unestablished hepatic lesions, improving overall survival. Further analysis revealed that local delivery of IFN did not inhibit homing but limited the early phases of hepatic CRC cell expansion by acting on the radio-resistant hepatic microenvironment. Additionally, the researchers noted that TEMs were detected in the proximity of CRC metastasis in human livers, suggesting that this approach could potentially be used for treating patients with CRC. This article was authored by Mario Caterinella, Andrea Monastiroli, Julia Escobar, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


This is by far the biggest canvas I've done 18 by 24 here we go and within five minutes of posting this It has been sold. Thanks so much Alex Rodriguez. You're gonna love this piece. I love it man


Welcome everyone to another episode of we are being transformed the podcast that contrary to popular rumor is not a Transformers oriented show We do not do unboxings of Rodimus Prime here We discuss the myriad of ways in which people interact with and are changed by their culture whether that be ritual myth lore legend or Religion for lack of a better term and our guest today is a man who knows a thing or two about the emperor Julian Dr. Jeremy Swiss welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. It's been a busy week, but I always am happy to talk about Julian and his world Yeah, it's kind of like me with Lution of Samo Sada like there's there's never a time not to talk about Lucian, right? So Yeah, exactly true story is awesome So we're gonna talk about a figure who is very polarizing strangely enough also somebody who While being used for this person or that person's personal agenda. We know very little like in terms of The general public about this person's life We just when we hear something like Julian the emperor Julian the apostate We have a certain idea in our head that's created through, you know church fathers The accidents of transmission through history. So if you could just kind of give us a little Overview of who Julian was then we can kind of get more into the The weeds with it so to speak you're right that you know Julian the emperor or Julian the apostate As I think he's being called less and less now because that is a derogatory term that Christianity Christian authors did impose on him Is not a household name and you can say that's kind of a general thing with late antiquity, right? a lot of people are brought up at least traditionally on this idea that you know There was antiquity then the Roman Empire fell and then there were the Middle Ages you know starting with the so-called Dark Ages and late antiquity is a when people start learning about it there they kind of Realize wait a minute. History doesn't quite work that way. You don't just you know Suddenly we're in the Middle Ages, right? This is a period of very gradual transition in which a lot of elements from the past from you know, Braco-Roman antiquity are coming into some sort of Dialogue fusion conflict with some new ideas new movements new aesthetics that are Kind of early versions of what you will see in the future certainly by the Middle Ages and of course one of the main things is Various types of Christianity and theology which you know at that time was one of many similar Takes on religion that existed at the time including kind of the form of Pagan Hellenic religion that Julian subscribed to so you know when we talk about him as an apostate As he was called, you know, he was not necessarily just You know pulling a 180 You know going to a different spiritual tradition that kind of offered a lot of similar answers to him and the thing about Julian is he saw that what These other cults had to offer him Had grounding in precedent of of being a much older tradition and they were also compatible with The various types of platonic philosophy that he was studying and he did not see Christianity as being able to be reconcilable with these With these other forms of religious and philosophical thought So that's a kind of roundabout way to talk about well Julian himself he was an Interesting situation because you know if you think of one household figure from Chris from late antiquity You think of the Emperor Constantine, you know the guy who because he He didn't convert The Empire to Christianity overnight or make it the official religion, but mainly because he started favoring Christianity And he reigned a long time and his sons reigned a long time by the time you get to the 350s 360 CE which would be about half a century after Constantine had the vision of the Milvian bridge and started favoring Christianity as the god who gives him victory And who will unite the Empire? Christianity really becomes the Establishment religion for a lot of the political elites because that's the religion the favored religion of the of the imperial court Yet Constantine had a nephew named Julian who comes along and While he You know as he's kind of rising up through the ranks so to speak of his of his imperial career. He is nominally a Christian and he but by the time he becomes sole emperor after various for tuitous events He Says well, wait a minute Christianity is actually not You know the religion of the future here. It's a temporary aberration You know my uncle and my cousin, you know at that who ruled before me they were misguided And so I am going to basically reverse course here and return to the traditional And so I am going to basically reverse course here and return to the traditional civic cults of the Empire I'm going to promote all of these traditions that people celebrate in the various cities and in the country founded in much Older precedent than Christianity, which he sees as a recent Innovation in fact, he thinks of it as a sort of Jewish heresy Started as Jews and then they develop this whole new theology where they essentially take this one guy and who died but they believe he resurrected and He says it himself that they worship corpses, right? They worship one man who died one corpse, but they also worship the relics of saints as Having some sort of power and so he refers to churches as you know Ossuaries or charnel houses or tombs where people tend to worship these corpses including the corpse of Of the Galilean as he calls them and he calls them all Galileans in order to for to the origin of this religion in this kind of provincial backwater Galilei because his concept of religion at this time is very much Classically based where a religion is not something that is revealed from above You know and a kind of a universal thing. It is something that is very much particular to To Specific places and specific peoples. Okay, so the Athenians have their civic cults of Athena, right? And then the Romans, right? They have their particular cults of Jupiter and Mars and the Jews have their own kind of ethnic God who Overseas them and he did not think of that God as the universal God He is just simply a God who is Particular to that region and so he kind of makes fun of the Galileans as Jesus is their God even though he's not Actually a God Also from his study of philosophy. He sees this plurality of religions is also comprising a unity because all of these different gods all these different traditions that In all these different cities throughout the Empire in forms of worship from a philosophical point of view Can all be reconciled and because all of these gods and these traditions are essentially emanating from a supreme God Hey, it's a kind of a You won't it's not monotheism. It's not Pure polytheism it's somewhere in between you might call it hen otheism is Is one thing that might work here where or a soft monotheism where ultimately it's all one God But there are various subordinate gods that emanate and get and receive their being from this higher God And then these are the more particular Gods who oversee these different parts of the Empire and so Julian when he comes to power as emperor He is kind of taking that theoretical framework and trying to put it into practice because he genuinely sees this as The way things used to be whereas Christianity was this religion that was essentially atheism to him because Unlike all these other this other plurality of religions where they accepted You know the fact that people worshiped other gods The Christians believe these all these other gods were either fake or they were demons or they were just not gods You know in the sense of their God and to Julian he thought that that idea was tantamount to atheism And it was also dangerous right one thing I really love about Julian as a figure he comes up at a very Volatile time in the history of the Roman Empire The world is vastly different at the beginning of the fourth century compared to where it ends This is kind of Western civ one class and it's just kind of like Well this happened and there was Polytheism paganism then Constantine Milvian bridge yada yada then everything becomes Christian afterwards But we when you dig a little bit deeper We tend to forget that things weren't always this set in stone Like there was a volatile period of time where this could have gone any other way and Julian was great Example of this because he's coming up in a time not only where these Cults are established this religion is there's no other way many people can possibly think things could be He's coming up at a time where you have things like neopladenism coming up and all these different philosophies and they're taking In this Christian stuff and they're kind of working their own little thing Right the of the pagan holy man is garth found and would say so you have things like the caldean oracles and there's a huge re-emphasis in paideia and in philosophy on the the pagan the helene Religions and things like that so kind of like a reinforcement of identity you have this kind of culture work going on in a sense I just kind of talk a little bit about What the world that Julian inherited was like in terms of these thoughts and these kind of cultural things that are going on you have like Neoplatonic yamblokian theergy, and then you have all this other side You know all this put this more contemplative platinian thought and then you have wild things like what John Dylan would call the the platonic underworld right the tonic underground with like caldean oracles and Hermeticism and it's just this really Exciting time in terms of like culture and thought so maybe we can explore that a little bit Yeah, but there and you know I think one of the most important kind of explanatory mechanisms for why you have that kind of radical change or shift at least in terms of Kind of the religious landscape between the beginning of the third sense of the beginning of the fourth century and the end is It has very much to do with Continuity so as I mentioned Constantine was in power You know for several decades and so were his sons certainly his son can stand just the second Julian comes along he only reigns for 18 months and then all the emperors after him happen to be Christian Right, and so you get to a point where When the religion of the emperor and the court and the religion of the emperor favors, you know is Maintained in and things are maintained that way for a lot of time Then people get used to it people start to start to kind of acquiesce in the idea that this is this is the new normal, right? Especially when it gets to the point where People who remembered what it was like before Say Constantine started favoring Christianity are no longer alive I think a good example is When the Emperor Augustus comes to power at the beginning of the Empire he reigns for over 40 years Antacitus mentions this at the beginning of the annales where he says basically So few people were around by the time Augustus dies Who remembered the old Republic because of that? most people alive when Augustus dies in his 70s the world that they Cook to be normal was a world in which you had Monarchy essentially, right and you also had relative peace and Prosperity during that time at least if you were, you know a Roman within kind of the the center of the Empire and so people were There was there was inertia people just thought this is this is how things are and so Tiberias succeeds and then You know the whole idea of we can go back to the Republic never really Really happens because nobody really knows what it's like to be under anything that isn't the emperors and so Shift back to the you know to the fourth century CE and it's like that with kind of Christianity as the Religion of the establishment, right? when Julian comes to power In three six at the end of 361, right? It has been as I mentioned Almost a little more long as long as Augustus had reigned, right since you last had When Christianity was not favored and so absolutely when he basically says, okay, I'm restoring the old ways Yes, you have some people But they're very few who actually know what it's like for a non-Christian emperor to the emperor and what I rely on is Basically It's almost like he has to reconstruct what that world is based on Literary sources and based on sort of kind of the evidence that's there in front of him He almost has to be like an historian rather than just consulting people being like how did how were things used to be? how did things used to be right and So, you know some people Will say that Julian came onto the scene too late It was already at that point the inertia had already set in if Julian had reigned for You know much longer and had a successor, you know who maintained his policies Regardless of what those policies were they were just were not Christian You know things could have been very different and you even see something like with Julian's policies like religious reforms Are almost like he's taking the cue from the ecclesiastical structure. He's seeing every day right around him So in a way, he's kind of like he's almost like Like when I was younger, I was a little bit after the Goths, you know, I grew up in the 90s, but I was really Influenced by a lot of like 80s like goth bands So like I would look at the magazine the old magazines and the old books And I kind of tried to recreate that my own little myth, you know of that So I think Julian's kind of doing something similar. He's he's in vogue kind of Neoplatonic Theurgical holy men, but he's also like looking back at a past that maybe is kind of romanticized And he's just really kind of he's being like like I was kind of like a hipster with that goth stuff He's like he's kind of like doing that with like the pagan stuff. So I love that Use kind of your analogy here kind of with my with kind of my counterculture like I think Here in the 2010s and now the 2020s You know, there's a revival in the heavy metal scene of like old-school 80s style Right, and there's been a real renaissance of that and all all the vast majority of people who are into it are people who Were either too young or not born in the 80s But because they're listening to the bands and being influenced from the styles from the 80s They're kind of bringing it all back versus, you know, the people who are actually Part of the 80s, you know, golden age a lot of them are still around and they're taking part in it but discontinuity of evolution and so I kind of think of kind of Julian as someone who was not as someone who was young and therefore not part of kind of the Pagan golden age, if you will, right? He's trying to bring it back basically based on What he has read about it, right? Right, and then what having actually known what it was like cool parts of romanticism versus like a genuine desire I think on his part to really interact with these Rites and everything and he's really being influenced. So it was Julian's relation to philosophy and religion What was his paideia like? Who was he kind of who is he the stand for you know in the paideia sense, right?  He wants to be the heteroid to the most like yeah, you mentioned a few minutes ago kind of all the different things going on in this milieu of the mid-4th century and you mentioned the idea of a culture war and You know while there were certainly tensions there was certainly conflict at you know, it's sort of a similar Dynamic to what you might call the culture wars today where We have strident voices on the extremes that are controlling the discourse and sort of creating the idea that you know, there's this clash of incompatible paradigms Whereas the majority of people who are you know, not at least not participating or in that those extremes on either side of this discourse, right are actually Somewhere in the middle and they're you know, they're they're they don't they're not at war with each other Right, they don't have the sense of the same. We're especially with historical documents and evidence We're not always seeing like the full picture. Yes, life was like for the everyday person.  I'll get to that in a moment But the vast majority of people who were either Christian or non-Christian They didn't necessarily define their whole identity in terms of their religious affiliation Hey, so for a lot of people at all levels of society even at the very top in the court You know in the Roman Senate or the Constantinopolitan Senate, right? You had a mixture of pagans and Christians. Hey, and What mattered to them was they had solidarity of class they had solidarity of kind of politics We were all Romans. Hey before we're all pagans or Christians, right? It was kind of economic You know and idea And the pie day is the other thing, right? We have we have a common culture based around this education system in rhetoric that Is fueled by this canon of classical literature? Okay, and even though this canon is by pagan non-Christian authors the Christians are still Engaged with it and working with it very much like people who are Christian today are classicist, right or are Reading and learning and engaging with classical text same idea. We have people like Themistius, right? You know he is kind of represents kind of this tall. He's like a tolerant pagan who is You know he see he works with the Christian emperors to kind of create this environment in which everyone really in which there's this There's this harmony, right? and You also have Christians. Okay, who you know are not churchmen who are not bishops, right? Who are also and even emperors who are Christian, you know a lot of them in this century are They realize that in order to have political stability you have to work With people who don't share your religion because especially for people like Constantine and Constantinus and Valentinian and even Theodosius, right? Even though they might you know pay lip service to kind of the extreme kind of Christianity is you know Should that should be everybody's religion. There's still many pagans, right are You know in the elite class and they need these people to run the empire together, right? There needs to be a consensus, right? It just brought up a thought like you know with Constantine himself He really exemplified that mode the majority of his reign and really I think a lot of people conflate what his sons later did like Constance and Constantinus the second like they were very much like we need to push this and this is what it needs to be You know Constance is like favor favoring Christian rhetorical teachers like Pro-Hyreces, right and a Constantine himself, you know like you were saying he's very pragmatic He's he's he's got played in his philosophers at his court. It's like he's got like the Christian bishops So so now let's talk about kind of what Julian comes up as now He Starts with you know traditional, you know elite Greco-Roman education, you know, he grows up grows up in the Greek East and basically after he gets his ABCs He's starting to read Homer, right and they start with Homer and kind of mythological literature poetry and then he moves on to studying other literature and also learning rhetoric a learning Compositional exercises, right how to write a good argument. Okay, how to learning the various forms of Literary genres and especially oratory for various occasions and of course at this time, you know, Epidetic or kind of Pan-Azyrical Enchomiastic oratory is is very much in vogue because they're under a monarchy and sort of that's how you have to kind of communicate with That way he masters these styles under various teachers and rhetoricians in In age of minor where he's where he's where he's growing up But eventually and he's also of course learning the Bible. He's learning Christian theology, you know Some of his tutors were Christian bishops and so he became very well-versed in that as well regardless of whether he Really was a devout Christian at any point. There's a lot of debate over Whether he was ever really Christian at all or he was just sort of nominally a Christian until he didn't have to be anymore Okay, that's a question that you know is We can't there isn't really a lot that we can say about it Because again, we don't his earliest writings are from, you know 355, you know when he's already You know in his in his mid-20s, we don't know but at some point as he is studying rhetoric He becomes more and more interested in philosophy True because especially the revolutions that he's hanging that he's learning from like libanus, you know, Plato Plato's dialogues are considered, you know, not just works of philosophy. They're also considered models of good prose literature Right and if you ever read Plato's dialogues, you can see that this isn't just a philosophical treatise This is a drop. This is a dramatized kind of Yeah, it really it really is a drama anything but and it's and it's in it's in there Just fun to read at least some of them are like the symposium, right? And so and I'm partial to the faders myself. Yeah. Oh, and so was Julian. Trust me So Plato's dialogues were taught, you know as literary models but Also, you know, they were also had various moral moral philosophy the moral philosophy of it was also, you know, very appealing and of course Platonic philosophy and Christianity certainly found ways to To reconcile them with each other He becomes more interested in platonic philosophy and he starts seeking out teachers of Platonism and at this point we call it if we the Platonism is neo-Platonism, right? But there's really kind of two branches of neo-Platonism that are of coexisting and sort of at this time and one is the kind of the original Platinian porphyry and kind of school where it emphasizes kind of individual rational contemplation on the ability and kind of one's inherent divinity and the ability of somebody through dialectical reasoning and contemplation and purification to Ascend and Reconnect with the the higher principles and eventually achieve kind of union with the highest principle of the one It's a philosophers these kind of seeing school, you know, they see Kind of traditional religion as as useful and good for its sort of instrumental Kind of functions its utilitarian functions if you will but they themselves kind of understand the world working kind of more in terms of You know, Platonist rationalist metaphysics, right while put the Platonian porphyry in school sort of has kind of a mysticism and sort of a spiritual kind of Bent to it much more than say traditional Platonism You know, they are not going so far as to Kind of unify philosophy and religion Until you get iamblicus of calcus coming along, okay, who is probably a student of porphyry who was a student of platinus and It's with the iamblican school that you see much more of a tendency towards a synthesis with traditional pagan religion and the reason for that is It has to do with this thing called this theory of the descent of the descended soul, right? So for somebody like platinus in that school who have a rational soul and you have an irrational soul Yeah, there's parts of the soul, okay? And platinus thought that while our lower irrational souls are kind of engaged with this Material world right our rational souls kind of the divine element within us is actually always up in the World of forms if you will up in them in the immaterial world Okay, and that we're sort of we're connected to it and kind of the idea is to identify with that higher Form of the soul more and more to the point where that's all we become and we unite with the first principle that explains why a platinian neoplatonists sees Themself as the at least theoretically capable of achieving personal salvation through the practice of you know theoretical philosophy Iamblicus comes along and says no the entire human soul descends they from the gods and You know our rational soul our irrational soul all together it descends entirely. Okay, it's all You know begins, you know Kind of trapped in embodiment in this material world Hey, the result of that is Iamblicus thought that the human soul a human being by themselves is actually incapable of achieving salvation and ascending back to the gods By themselves by their own efforts philosophy at least traditional Rational philosophy is not enough You need religion. Hey, you need the gods to help you re-ascend to them a because the gods Exactly the gods are so transcendent of this realm a That they just do not come into contact with this realm By any by any stretch a and so and we are so Separated from the realm of the gods to the point where in order for the gods to have any influence on this realm Which of course they control this realm entirely but the but they don't contact it directly. There's actually there's a hierarchy of inferior divinities and Diamond yes, the the diamo nays the the heroes the pure souls the angels Right, there's this hierarchy of superior beings that are superior to human beings To human souls, but they are inferior to the gods and these is in this is sort of this chain of being right The gods influence. They're kind of their illumination their power is kind of Filtered down through them, but also this chain of superior bearings is also the ladder, right by which the human soul can ascend However, in order to achieve that ascent. Yes practicing philosophy purifying oneself morally is important and necessary however, that's only sort of a preparatory practice you actually need to Engage in various forms of ritual a That the gods had prescribed Okay by communicating through the ancients right the ancient oracles if you will the Caldean oracles are sort of a later Version of of that sort of divine communication, right through various prophets through various oracle sites Ancient oracles essentially prescribed Forms of ritual practice Okay, that someone who has purified themselves can engage in in order to achieve that salvation to lift their soul up to communion with the gods, okay and whereas the Plotinians would think of this kind of ascent and return to the gods as a Form of divinization, right?  It never actually becomes a god. It can't Ontologically doesn't get one or anything doesn't get fused, but it can come into communion with right? and Contemplate the higher higher being and that's that's about as good as you can get Okay, is how an iamblican would call divinization, right? To be a Phaeos on there is someone who is capable of through the practice of these ritual acts to ascend that far and so those ritual acts are Theergy, okay, and the thing about Theergy is you tend to think of Theergy is like oh the Caldean oracles prescribe this sort of Practices that are completely different than anything you've seen in religion And while yes, there's some special practices that like the higher Theurgists and the adepts kind of practice you can really think of any sort of Religious ritual that involves prayer sacrifice and anything that that requires contact with the gods, you know As a form of Theergy like maybe a lower form of Theergy, okay? Right, so not everybody not everybody is animating statues, but people can pray people can meditate do things like that exactly Exactly and the point of Theergy as you mentioned I think is it is Phaeos god Aragon work god activity. It's divine activity in other words by practicing Theergy You are assimilating yourself to the gods or imitating the gods in some way by participating in their activity You're becoming more godlike by doing the things that the gods do Hey and So this is how Iamblichus and his school and Julian after him are able to see have to provide a Neoplatonic as They see it rational framework in which all traditional religion makes sense theoretically Okay, because every traditional religion came into being through oracles that communicated from whatever particular god Was in charge was in charge in that particular place told them how to how to conduct worship, right? Julian is not trying to impose a single Religion or catechism or doctrine Okay, he simply subscribes to a philosophy philosophical school that sees all traditional religion as Essentially doing the same thing You know all of these gods that they worship are essentially emanations of the higher god You know that is you know the one Intellects one being you know descending from there. I guess in philosophical terms. It's almost like a perennialist kind of view of religion and theology and things like that. It's a They take the stoic kind of allegorical method that you have in Crenutus and then they kind of take it to their own and they apply that towards religions and and You know you find that a philo in the middle platonic stuff, but then yeah, it really gets going with Platinus and porphyry, so so like yeah, like you said there's two different Groups, and I don't think I'd ever see porphyry animate a statue, but you know, yeah Yamblich is certainly would and the people who follow in his footsteps. They certainly would and they're looking at that You mentioned that theos honor, you know, of course the paradigm for that divine holy man is of course Apollonius of Tiana Yep Julian seeing all this stuff and these are basically like the rock stars the rock stars of his day, right? He's like I I want to animate statues like Maximus or whatever. Yeah, so I love I love that You know, it's like what he's doing, you know with his social and religious forums I kind of Liking it to you like when he gets in charge He's almost like an oil tycoon and he goes and makes this like all-star basketball team of platonic Philosophers and things like that. He just like brings them all over and like he surrounds himself with his entourage I really love that. I think it like he's like a crunk rapper with all his like entourage of like really smart dudes who are like Animating statues and trying to fend off earthquakes and stuff. I just love it Dr. Swiss. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been an absolute pleasure We hope to have you again sometime. You have an amazing evening Thank you. Thank you