And we should be live So welcome everyone who's joining. I'm excited today because I have with me He is called MJ the fellow actuary on YouTube. So welcome MJ Hello, hello, and John. Thank you so much for for having me on your channel. Yes, sir Just just like a quick little shout because I'm gonna be copying this video and putting it on my YouTube channel as well So to my subscribers if you're watching it through this I will be putting a link to Paul's channel because he's interviews a lot lot of factories and he's got some great content So make sure you guys check him out. So thank thank you MJ. Yeah, I appreciate it And then to everyone on my channel, you'll have to check out MJ I'm gonna put some links to his stuff at the end of my video, but Again, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on MJ is a is a an actuarial freelancer And he does some YouTube being and a lot of interesting stuff, which we're gonna kind of dive into So let's just start off with just could you just introduce yourself a couple sentences? Maybe of what you do and then we'll kind of dive in So, yeah, I mean my name is MJ or Michael Jordan Although because I keep getting the the basketball jokes. I was gonna I was gonna actually ask you about that if you get that a lot Oh all the time all the time so much that I just revert to to MJ You know as a nice little nickname and John you kind of summed it up quite well a fun Finally finished studying actuarial science and I'm a bit of a freelancer slash consultant working on a few projects and Lovely thing about this is every year or so, you know, I get something else to do So don't get too bored doing the same thing Which is what I like, but yeah study actuarial science and Somehow managed to get through it and this way I find myself now good for you. That's awesome So let's let's kind of back up start from the beginning. I like to ask a lot of the guests this is From a young age. Were you interested in math or did that come later for you?    Okay Yeah So because I was on the border they sent me to like a psychologist for an assessment Like can I actually go into the first grade? I think this was when I was age five or age six And the psychologist said that I was operating at the mental ability of a nine-year-old Which I put down to my my grandmother's early stimulation So so yeah, I kind of got a little bit of a head started in that side That's awesome. So did you did you actually hear about the actual world profession? Profession from your mom since she was a math teacher or when did you first hear about that? You know, it's interesting because I was looking at my like my school records the other day My mom used to love and you know, keep everything and you know When we had a career day they you know filled in this form and it was like, you know What career paths do you want to do and being a child that too that I put forward was either a Religious preacher or a sports, you know manager, you know for football or something like that really wow, that's To you know, the spectrum there To do is a description but those were like my two top choices and then in the bottom I saw the report came back and it said, you know, this child has attributes that would play well for accountants Actory, you know engineer so it was interesting that actually was picked up quite early on Wow, you know, I was so young. I mean, I don't remember that reports I don't think the parents took, you know, those early career assessments to seriously especially when I'd said religious preacher My mom always said to me and I think my dad was also on the same boat They were very much saying that I had to get into a profession They said if I went straight into preaching, you know, people would see me as a bit of like a dropout So they said you first have to become a qualified profession other a lawyer accountant or something And then you can go do your sports management or religious teaching So no, they very much pushed me towards a profession. Although when the time came for me to do actuarial science Then they were very hesitant. They're like, oh, no, we've heard people who do this don't have a social life And it's very difficult, you know, rather rather do accounting or or something like that Which my brother had done and which I was gonna do But because I did well at school, you know, everyone was saying did well at school You must do actuarial science. We'll just consider it and I kind of like the fact that it was a challenge You know, especially here in South Africa.   So I mean got it right there Well, I mean, it was interesting because like my mom only told me that story much later because throughout primary school I wasn't like top of the class. I was, you know, I did it right, but I wasn't top of the class It was only when I went into to high school that they started posting our marks on a board You know, there was like a bit of a ranking system going that it became a bit of a game for me And I was like, okay, I want to win this game that I really started pushing hard To come top of the class and then it was also not just I don't only just become top of the class or become top of every single subject Um, I failed to do that for extra not extra size. Uh, Afrikaans. So I'm terrible with languages So I didn't I didn't get it for Afrikaans But I got for majority of the other subjects and that's You know by doing like that I got in the top 50 in the country And of course then you're in the newspaper and that's when everybody now starts saying Oh, you're child-smart. They must do actuarial science And that was all through like elementary junior high high school that you were in the top 50 or So so no, so they only do the top 50 in the final year. So we we call our final year metric Um, what they would call it on your side, but it's when you're around 17 17 18 Yeah, so it'd be it'd be kind of like your senior year of high school here before you go to college Yes, yes, and the whole idea there is Before that every school would write their own internal exams in metric You write external exams that the whole country then writes Um, and they just to make sure that schools don't issue matrix certificates by giving easy exams Um, so it's standardized and that's where they can then give the ranking But of course, I think I think go into actual science. This is a funny story because I I go and thinking, you know I'm so smart. I'm top 50. Look at me And I remember sitting sitting next to this guy and in like one of the first lectures and I was like, you know, look at him And I was like, bro, um, I'm a top 50 student And he and he just he looks at me and he smirks and he websites his phone and he pushes it And it's a it's a youtube clip of him on the local news station With him being interviewed by an anchor that you know, it's quite familiar It's like the news person and the ticket tape underneath was saying this was the number one student in the country And that's when I was like like listening at school Especially high school. I was getting top marks. I was getting nineties. I was excelling You hit a career science and suddenly, you know, those 90 percent become 60 percent And you go from being top in the class to no longer even in the top 10 Yeah, there were some really really smart guys that I was up against Um, so, you know, it was a bit of a bit of a shock to the pride. Um, but yeah, that's I mean I I know that that's kind of how it is like when you're younger and you're really smart and then You get to high school. You're still good and then college might be a little different and then actuarial It gets even different and it gets more and more competitive.   It was, uh, you know s angle n Yes, and I remember I just it just didn't click it just didn't click I understood, you know a present value of an annuity, but a future value of you know, yeah That that just messed up my mind. I was like, why would anyone want to calculate the future value of an annuity? And it just stuffed me up so bad and I remember just crying like Being so frustrated and then finally one of the kids in my class, you know, I remember he he came over And he helped me understand it, you know He really, you know went through the whole thing and I really like got to grasp with it But of course to my horror like a few months later, he dropped out What's going on like that was the guy who was helping me and now he's he's Tapped out of this thing. Wow And the parents were always like, you know, if you want to quit you can quit You know, you can drop out any time you want and I was like, no, I don't need that I need I don't need comforting. I need motivation. Yeah, exactly But yeah, it was uh, you know the first few years of xerial science That's tough. No difficulty. So where did you go to school in South Africa then? So at school I went to a a catholic school.  Maybe yeah in some special occasions, you know So it was it was very interesting from a religious perspective going to, you know, the catholic school Um, but no, it was it was a brilliant school.   It chipped a tooth. Yeah, and that smells like no this game is not for me. I'll stick to chess Yeah, so so I did chess at school. Um, and you're that was kind of the peak of my sport So is uh, it's south in south africa are most colleges a four-year degree So it's it's interesting. I mean at the university of uh, that's where I went to it was a three-year undergrad and then Only if you got Five of the actual exemptions. Did you then get invited into onizia?  We're some of the other universities. They build it in. That's like it's a four-year Course and you know, if you pass third year, you automatically go into to onizia Yeah, of course vits was a little bit easy on other sides So with vits, we broke up let's say actuarial science three into three separate modules And you just had to pass it overall Whereas I seen some of the other universities you had to pass each and every model on its own If you you know, if you've got like 49 for the one and 51 for the other At vits, you'd go through at these other universities. You'd have to repeat so So yeah, so and and this is where it does get a little bit confusing Factuarial science in South Africa is because even let's say at vits you can do something you can do it through the bachelor of science Or you can do it through the bachelor of economics And I remember as a student being like, I don't want to take physics and chemistry You know, maybe I should do it through the bachelor of economics Whereas the bachelor of economics was just added on additional subjects Unfortunately, I had someone warn me that said, you know, this degree is hard enough on its own You don't want to be doing all these additional subjects on top of it Right. So But job and I think that was one of the things going into university I mean, I even had a brother I had an older brother who had been to vits who was at vits He could tell me, you know, like you don't you don't come here to play You come here to work that type of thing But I still didn't really know what was going on And I think that's why a lot of guys do drop out because We see in the movies, especially, you know, the american movies Everyone having fun in college, you know And then we get there and it's like, oh flip, you know, there's exams and these exams are tough So I think that also contributes to big dropout rates is the fact that people just don't know What they're getting into when they start xural science. Well, I guess any degree for that fact Totally. I'm kind of curious. So do most people in South Africa that go into the actuarial profession Do most of them study that in school or do any of them study something completely different And then get into it later and take the exams later Yeah, so how the schooling works here in South Africa is so we don't have actuarial science Yeah, as a subject at school, I mean, we don't even have economics as a as a subject at school What happens is we've got very like predefined subjects And you then the big thing is that in grade 10, so what held you in grade 10 like 1615 You make your subject choices And so I chose it which is computers and programming And I chose accounting and I chose science. So those are the three subjects I chose along with your others, which is mathematics life orientation English africans and us then did the extra advanced mathematics But you can choose to to drop maths you can choose to drop science And you can also do history biology or geography But that kind of is it, you know, we we're very limited with the subjects that we can that we could choose from But in in college though, you said that you studied actuarial science, right? Or you were doing When you went off to the university Yes, so so that's another thing in in South Africa. We we have school and then we have university We don't have a college and in between Okay, see I I'm calling uh, I'm I'm using the term university and college In place of each other So I should be more clear university because sometimes in America we have Colleges and we have universities, but they are both the college level So you have you have to be at a certain point to become a university, but um Yeah, so sorry, I should I should have clarified. I'm at university It's horribly confusing because my school's full name is st. Benedict's college. Oh, okay. I I get it It gets very confusing. I was uh, I yeah, I was not clear there What I meant was do most people study actuarial science at the university level? Yes, yes, most people study, um, yeah at the university level There are there are a few people who maybe study engineering or accounting statistics And then start doing the actuarial exams once they're in the working world, you know They'll sometimes get a degree in they say mathematical statistics Um, then they start working for an insurance company They start seeing that the actuaries are treated like gold and they let stuff that we want to write the exams We can do this, you know, we want to get that that special treatment and that bump in salary That's why that's kind of why I was wondering because uh, a A lot of people traditionally at least in the united states Uh would major in math or statistics or something like that at the university level And then go on and take actuarial exams while you're working at a company. In fact, that's what I did but More and more actuarial programs have popped up Now it's becoming very common in the united states for universities to have an actuarial science degree that people go through And they end up taking a lot of exams while they're in school Which I think is nice because like for me it was like I studied a whole math degree And then when I was out, then it was a whole bunch more exams while I was working. So So that that's that's interesting That's like for you when you got through school, were you done with the exams or did you have quite a bit more to do While after you got out So it was interesting. So in first year, um, I was able to get the the economics Exemption and the accounting exemption. So those were two very easy subjects.  Yeah Second year comes along and to get the The the financial maths exemption You needed I think it was a little bit of first year and a little bit of second year And same with statistics, you need a little bit of first year and a little bit of second year And that's what made it a little bit complicated But I remember stats second year was oh, that was dreadful. I was getting sometimes 25 for an exam Oh, that's rough And and that's when I got my final mark my final mark of like 55 percent. Again, I cried. I cried a lot at university Um, very emotional time. It was an emotional time. Um, so yeah I was just so happy to to pass, you know statistics. So 55 for me was brilliant You'd needed 60 in order to get the exemption Okay A lot of other subjects. I mean like survival models. I've got 59 for Um or financial maths. I got 58 percent for so these ones I I would have to Redo at a later stage right and it started becoming a little bit problematic because like I said You needed five exemptions in order to get into your honours year And I got two in the first year. I got nothing in the second year Oh, wow Fortunately for me third year comes along and I start dating a girl whose sister was studying at choral science and she was the year above me And she kind of introduced me to the the act ed notes or you know, these online textbooks and just other resources and gave me some of her notes And that helped a lot that helped a lot because you know, this this is great No, but sometimes, you know, we had lecturers who weren't that good with English. We had this french guy So you had a phd and statistics. It's a very small guy But he couldn't really speak English Or he could speak English, but I really struggled with the accent. So I didn't understand anything I didn't understand anything going on in that lecture Fortunately, I could get her notes. I could get her books And I was able to get, you know, which which exemptions did I get? I got ct seven Oh, no, sorry ct six ct eight Um, I got another one because I managed to get five. Oh, and I got the communications exemption We see which is a three although they've changed the names of all the subjects. No, suddenly, you know Yeah, yeah, I could and in america you guys you guys use different It's all different. It's all different. Yeah, but they it's all Even here in america, they they keep changing the exam I mean, they're it's all similar subjects, but they just like change around the exams every 10 years or so So it's like, you know, this is the best material in that Yeah But y'all so I somehow managed to get three exemptions right at the final exam session of third year So I just nothing to honest like I always I like just good for you So you got that final year then which enabled you to study more actual exams at that point Yes, which allowed me to go into honors year where we did the big exam called ca one Which is called actual risk management Uh, which is seen by many as the hardest actual exam And the reason why it's the hardest actual exam is because it's finance. It's pensions It's life. It's general. It's health. It's banking. It's everything and it's a written exam It's not like a calculation exam, right? And so there's just so much to learn So remember we the first half of honors is just dedicated to to the subject and this is actually when I started making my youtube videos Um, I didn't I didn't post these ones on youtube, but I started making video study notes for myself Okay, so each chapter I turned into a video study note just so that while I was eating I could watch myself learning I could try here see and I had all these pretty pictures I think I've got some of the notes. I lost I lost a lot of the videos um But a good I mean, I think there's around 10 or also these videos I did manage to put on to to youtube um And they were like you're my very first attempt to making video study notes And then another thing I did for ca one because like I said it was it was just too much and I was really struggling with it I decided to take all the pass papers all the pass papers And plot them against the syllabus objectives and stop, you know marking when you know Okay, back in this year. They asked this question back in this year. They asked the syllabus objective back here They asked this and it was amazing because a pattern formed A clear pattern formed where if they asked one syllabus objective the previous year They never asked at the following year. There was never a syllabus objectives And then there was also some syllabus objectives that would oscillate So they would always ask one or the other and you could see this clear oscillation pattern happening interesting So I kind of looked at this stuff and I was like, well Look, the subject is really difficult and we had a month before the exam off to study for it You know It's supposed to be a holiday, but you know, you get the holiday before the big exam, right?  You know, it was it was intense And so I used my my spotted notes, you know, what syllabus objectives I thought we're going to pop up in the exam and They were there in the exam. So I went from being like at the bottom of honor's class I think I got the fourth highest mark for for that exam. Everyone was very confused. They were like Like this kid just scraped in, you know, and out of the class of 20 He went from like last place to fourth, you know, how how did that happen? That's amazing And then you're and then the second part of honors you choose which subjects you want to study So I chose finance and general insurance And finance was I found quite easy quite straightforward. So I got the exemption for that Um, whereas general insurance went like right over my head like there The maths was at another level and uh, I didn't you know, I didn't manage to get that exemption So yes, I came out of university with how many exemptions that five and then got the ca one and the finance So I came up with seven exemptions So when you come out with an exemption that basically means that the society of actuary of the society of actuaries in south africa considers you to have passed that exam and then you take the other ones Yes, so And it was so weird that going out of the exams and then having to read write, you know, some of the earlier ones I had to write financial maths again, which is ct one. I had to write subject ct three statistics I had to write Like I had to write a quite a few but they were it was weird They were very straightforward like off like at university. They're very difficult After university, they're quite straightforward But what I started doing was I continued the video note method, you know, where I was making video notes for myself And this kind of is where I think the youtube channel because I started posting a lot of these onto youtube on a consecutive basis So on my channel, you've got all the financial maths exams So all the financial maths syllabus all the life contingencies syllabus as well So you've got two complete courses that I was making while I was studying for those exams And I think that kind of gave my channel just the bulk content or that core content for it to Get a little bit of a following Of course, I would then go and make, you know, a bunch of stupid videos which I watch back now and I cringe so hard I'm like, oh my gosh, did I make that? You got to you got to leave those out there though because then you can see your full story over the years Yes, I think I've got one video out there which I call the the five myths of the actuarial exam And I think the last myth I even I made it up I said something about if you get 100 for the actuarial exams you get invited into the illuminati And I don't know why this video does better than all the tutorial ones It is just so bad and I'm just like, you know, if anybody just touched my name on youtube They're going to see these cringy videos first. I'm pretty sure I saw that one But joe I get that that is the interesting thing about youtube is, you know, you can make a video where you discuss You know, like some really heavy piece of of the syllabus going to like a lot of depth And you'll maybe get like 200 300 views of people who are actually looking for that But no one's just going to want to watch that, you know, if they're having lunch or they're just chilling And I think that's where the stupid videos people, you know, you sometimes just get people who are procrastinating They'll maybe watch those Totally So I always wanted entertainment Yes, that entertainment and that's why there was there was a big temptation to to just keep making silly videos And I had to tell myself I was like, listen, yeah, you know getting a lot of subscribers is nice You know, it's nice to get a lot of subscribers and it's nice to get a lot of views But I try to tell myself I don't want to chase that I don't want to be the person who is forever chasing views chasing subscribers by making You know entertainment because one I don't think I'm that good at it You know, I don't think I can compete with you know, the the Logan Pauls and and those tough guys of youtube Um, so I I'll try to say, you know, let me keep my content Let's keep the majority of it serious But then every now and again have a fun or silly video Which is weird because the silly videos do do the best like my latest silly video was Choreoscience versus accounting or actually just accounting And then also that does much better than you know, how to calculate the moment generating function of the exponential distribution You know, like that content gets completely wiped compared to the city I think that can be that can be good though because it provides a little variety You know, you get a little bit of entertainment and then you get some of the serious videos as well Yeah, so I think I think the silly videos have also helped a lot in growing the channel because you know I find people on youtube they will only watch a video if it has a certain number of views Right, if your videos got let's say 50 50 views people are going to be less You know like should I watch this whereas if the video's got 5.5 million views people like oh damn I need to see this, you know, why does everyone checking out and then you know that that snowball effect starts happening um So yeah, so I think it's it's it's been a good way to bring people into the channel But I have very aware that y'all I don't want to come across as too cringy or too Too silly because I have got comments where people like this guy's an idiot, you know This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.  Yeah, but uh, so I'm uh That was actually kind of my next question and you answered is how you got started with this whole youtubeing thing And it sounds like uterus really put put those study notes out there And that's that you started getting views you started getting subscribers and thought hey, there might be something to this I'll keep making videos at that point. Was it um, was there any motivation and keep going? Was it fun for you or was it something that helped you in any way? I'm just curious like kind of how it kept going So it was interesting.  Yeah, I was very curious to see how that thing works And I mean the videos they don't generate that much. They they they make what I'm trying to think what it's in the dollars They make around 80 dollars a month Okay, yeah in monetization Which is nice pocket change, but you know, it's nothing that you can you can't live off 80 dollars a month. Exactly. Yeah Um, so the you know, like I said, so the channels were never made, you know, it wasn't never to try and become You know, this a full-time job It was very much like I said, I made the videos initially because they helped myself And I put them online and I saw that they helped others And then I made one or two more videos because you know people were requesting. Oh, yeah I did that for quite a while We I'd ask people what do you want me to talk about and then people give me video requests and I would make it But my uploading is very sporadic and I know that's bad for growing an audience You know, you want to have consistent content, you know, right? You choose that nine o'clock You know, you want to create a bit of like a habit But I also didn't want the youtube video to be too time-consuming. Like, you know, the actuarial signs There's a lot of other things that demand our time, you know, start the artwork and all these other things So I wanted to always keep the youtube video like alive But I didn't want to become like a slave to it not like oh, I have to now release, you know Right release bad content just for the sake of releasing content Um, but having said that I mean the youtube video has been very very strategic or very important With my current career now, it's the way a lot of clients find me It's a way that I can prove that I know what I know Because you know, it's one thing telling someone oh, you're in this professional You have this degree and they're like, okay, that's cool But it's another thing for them to actually see oh, wow, you've got a library where you're talking and discussing the stuff Okay, you probably do know what what you mean by this. Yeah, so from a career move It's probably been very beneficial and I'm probably still gonna be reaping a lot of the You know the fruit from it for the years to come That was good. Yeah And that's what I was kind of curious about because I know you do We talked a little bit and you do some consulting kind on the side Uh, you also have a udemy course as well And I'm sure having youtube channel has helped create connections for those other things Um, so can you tell us a little bit about uh about what you do other than the youtube? So, I mean like the the one thing is the actuarial society of South Africa They contacted me and they're like look you make these youtube videos. Do you mind making some for for us? So I've actually made um So like I said ct1 and ct5 which is financial maths and life continuities on the or on the youtube platform They then got me to make survival models and advanced statistics of ct4 and ct6 I mean I actually did a whole bunch of exam walk-throughs and a whole bunch of things for their private Assa academy So that was quite good because then it was I was making You know videos still on actuarial science, but this time I was getting paid to do them for the actuarial society Oh, so So that was one direct job that came from from the youtube videos Um, the other thing is like now I help up with the actuarial society I give workshops on its price risk management and you know do these other things for them Which they pay for and the students they're like, oh, yeah, we like this guy because we've seen him, you know on youtube So so from that point of view, it's been it's been great. Um, but then just on on the other side Like when I qualified as a fellow in 2018 um at the end of 2018 I got contacted by an act tree in london And she was down here for the South african convention She said can we meet for coffee and originally she just wanted to kind of give an interview, you know How i'm using technology to teach, you know, that's basically what it was about But after coffee we got to know each other she explained her vision how she wants to combine actuarial science technology and I was told You know, I love technology. I love a I love blockchain. I don't understand it all too well But it is something that has has piqued my curiosity. I noticed you have some stuff on blockchain on your channel, too Yes, yes So I was like, well, you know, I'm curious about this life and she said well You know what should would you be interested if I you know if she has over capacity Oh, you know, she runs out of capacity Would she mind passing one or two clients to myself? Um, or you know, I can maybe work under a banner or something like that And that's very much where this thing called actua tech is coming from So you'll see on some of like my new upcoming videos. We'll put actua tech as like kind of like the sponsor Um, and we're trying to and we've been hosting events and we've been throwing breakfast or having, you know cocktail evenings and we're trying to build this actua actua tech community Here in South Africa and also where she is in London Um with the whole idea of using technology to address traditional actuarial problems And the whole way I got connected with that was because she she identified Oh, here's a guy using technology to teach actuarial science Let's meet up with him and then that meeting led to to this which has been very beneficial Yeah, been very beneficial because also she's bringing a lot of overseas clients to me And especially with the South African exchange rate, the overseas clients are, you know We're cheap South African activities are quite cheap compared to, you know, you guys and everybody else in the world So so they do favor us. Uh, you know, we do have that that price. Um, wow, that's interesting Interesting. So the clients who's bringing you are you doing actuarial like finding type work for them? Or are you doing teaching type stuff for them? No, no, so so this is more like your your bread and butter actuarial work Okay, okay.  I can make a youtube channel. Say, hey guys I need four young act trees based in Cape Town who want to do modeling That's awesome. Let's do it. And you don't You're really kind of all over the place. It's kind of amazing that uh having this people kind of know your name And know you that you know what you're talking about and then it's led to so many different things like this Well, you know, and I think that that's that's the whole and this is like I said Why the parents were so obsessed with me getting into the profession because I said the profession gives you credibility You know when you go and you say something Uh, my dad was a lawyer. So he kind of saw that firsthand, you know by being in that profession You just you don't have to always prove yourself.  Yes Now most people Yeah, and then then there's other people who even like let's say in the finance space, you know They're like, oh, I'm I'm I'm a cfa and I'm like, oh, I'm I'm an act tree And they're like, what does an act tree do and I'm like, you know, it's it's quite interesting that even in Like I say financial circles, right actually people know that we're smart But we they don't really know what we do And I guess that's because you know, you're asking actually what they do They do have to sit down and explain, you know, what exactly it is because there are so many different things that we could be doing So But no, look, I mean the youtube channel has been has been a major blessing and it's weird how, you know I made this thing to like like I said, it was first to help me put it online. It did help some people Um, and then seeing that that has paid back in the future It kind of you know, it almost shines a little bit of a Like a world truth, you know, if you are nice to people Today, you know something nice will happen to you tomorrow, but there is that time gap, you know, it's kind of Yeah, that's no, that's awesome And then the fact that the society of actuaries in south africa contacted you and you started up with that I'm curious if uh, is it called the society of actual society of actuaries of south africa What's it called? Yeah, it's called uh, so the the short name or the abbreviation name is asser And that's the actual society of south africa. Okay. I looked it up. I couldn't remember the order of the and So, do you know like I don't know a whole lot about uh, the comparison of that society versus like this I know there's so many societies, but the society of actuaries in the united states You know, how much overlap there is in terms of requirements and exams or You know, I know some societies will work together some societies don't work together. Do you know much about that?  So they value our profession. We value their profession And everyone's quite happy Um, and we're quite happy with the content. We share notes. We so like points in south africa We've been developing the banking act tree and that's something that's now feeding on to the other societies However, the americans the americans And look it might have changed by now. It might have changed, but I remember I remember Yeah, the big thing is that the americans don't recognize the south african exams or exemptions or profession At the same level tell you those those darn americans So so that's why like my my theory and of course i'm biased because I wrote them But my theory is that that's why the south african exams are so much harder Than the the rest of the world's exams because we're trying to prove to america Yeah, like hey look, we're smart. You know, we know what we're talking about And and I mean the one thing we we kind of saw that was um, I remember writing Enterprise risk management, which was this for the sera qualification and that's an international exam So right the south african fellowship only the south africans write that fellowship And I mean that one flip only passed it on the the third attempt and I studied, you know day and night That gave it everything. Yeah Whereas the enterprise risk management one I kind of read through, you know the flash notes on act dead I didn't attempt one pass paper and you know, I passed it quite comfortably Straight away and that was an international exam versus south african exam So there's also one thing that I do get a little bit concerned about i'm thinking Oh, maybe actuarial science is only hard in south africa Well, I I mean, I don't I don't have a comparison, but I can tell you that I mean the exams are Extremely difficult here, too. So if they're hard there, then they're very hard Yeah, if it makes you I mean you're probably smarter than me, but still Like like I for all the exams I mean I had to study and I'm pretty smart like I'm good at math. That was kind of my thing But I had to study at least 300 400 Or more hours for each exam. So it's pretty challenging here. It consumes people's lives. So it's uh, Good to hear, you know, and I'll tell you why that's good to hear because the worst thing is Is you don't want to study like like you say so much to get into a profession And then in other countries the exams are super easy or the next day they make exams easy and then everyone's an act tree And uh, it's it's not it's not and there's so many like I can't tell you how many people I know that uh, You know that that's stop stop taking them or just got overwhelmed because it is it's overwhelming and it consumes it's stressful and It's rewarding at the end, but I'm almost like wow is it is it worth it to go through that stress? But it's so good. It is at the end. It's just it's it's a brutal process. So Yeah, no, look, I I cried a lot You know, it was one way for me to to get out all those emotions. And yeah, like I said, it I was very very fortunate to have a very supportive family Yes, they were very much saying, you know, you can always quit if you want to But they were very supportive They were like, you know, what if you need extra time off to study, you know We can give you a bit of a bridging load You know, they were they were very much like, you know, we're gonna help you get into this thing That's yeah, and if I even needed like extra textbooks or all these type of things It wasn't a question of I need to get a part-time job in order to afford You know the act dead notes or you know to rewrite these exams because they are expensive Yes, you know the parents the parents were very generous and and that is something that I'm very like I acknowledge that privilege and that's why I also see this actual video thing as you know What I need to do a little bit of good because so much good has also been done to me by the parents That's awesome. Yeah, you know and help other people. Yeah. I need to help other people Yeah, and this was weird like getting all this extra benefits from having this YouTube channel So I was like, no, I don't need this, you know, this is to pay a debt to hey Well, maybe something out of it Maybe the society here in America will will discover you through YouTube And they'll be like South Africa is awesome and they'll start talking to your society because of your YouTube So, I hope so I mean, I maybe maybe they do talk more by now, but I'm also curious like how big Is the society in South Africa is I mean is the profession fairly large there or is it kind of a growing profession? Um, I think I mean the last time I looked like we that I heard people discussing numbers We were around a thousand, you know a thousand fellow fellow act trees Um, but I think that the student members or like the associate members Probably puts us maybe at around 10,000 like I'm guessing there. Okay. So yeah, that's I heard But yeah, so I think we're much bigger when you consider Everyone who's got one or two exams or just you know is one or two away. Yeah, but the actual fellows We quite yeah, we quite short on those um But I mean it's it's interesting because like I say I've Like I've got another fellowship in in finance And that hasn't been as well received as the the sera qualification. So the charts are really okay.  Oh, you know, let's talk. Oh, let's do this. They really value that one Whereas the fellowship in finance they kind of like And I'm like, no I had to flip and learn everything there is to know about finance because you know the way that exam is is You know, it's a few topics, but they kind of say we can ask you anything Yeah, I say it took me three attempts to get this thing um So I kind of feel like I know finance well, but everyone's more interested in the risk management or your The basic actuarial skills like programming, you know the modeling Yeah Discutting cash flows that stay more keen on that and no one's too interested in my my financial skills, which is that Uh, but yeah, it's uh, but that's what I have. Well, yeah, what it was weird because Last year I I was like, you know what let me write a book on finance because you know, I've got all this finance things And this is before I met uh the the actuary in london So this is before I knew that, you know, my life would become so in I mean I've worked harder this year than I think any other year from a working, you know career point of view. I believe it So my goal for 20 because I kind of went through that quarter life crisis, you know, I think you know at trees we You know got metric got university got to get your actual exams and it's like, okay now. What do I do? right um And that's why it was like, you know, because I did work at a corporate for for 14 months and I didn't enjoy it at all So it was always like, you know, do I go back to the consulting? Do I do this? Do I keep making youtube videos? Do I you know be an entrepreneur? And I did try the entrepreneur route. Um, some people in my channel remember All the hype coin videos I was making where I was like, I'm going to combine Bitcoin and facebook and make a social currency. It's just going to be amazing And it was there's a total disaster Um, and then at least you tried I know and then I was like, I'm going to get into the ethereum programming So I made these decentralized applications remember making this thing called crypto rose people could send little You know love letters on the blockchain And then of course the blockchain or the whole crypto universe crashed, you know at the end of 2017 Yeah, so I was sulking for like a lot of 2018. Um Going through a little bit of like quarter life crisis. What do I do or that type of stuff? And I was like, you know, I know so much about finance because I passed the exam in in may 2017 I was like, let me write a book So I put together the whole book proposal sent it off, but they take quite a long time for these book proposal people They've only like come back last week saying they've approved it, you know, we we can we can go for it So it's going to be a busy year because like I say, I've got this book to write. I've got a lot of actor tech stuff to do Um, I also want to look at maybe, you know coming into the insurance market with a little bit of a twist with technology Cryptocurrency still, you know, you know bitcoin's pumping again So it's kind of like oh some of those old ideas. I can maybe bring back and and look at maybe making like a Stable coin for africa and then building financial institutions on top of that You know, so I've got I've got a lot of these these wild dreams Um, that's all so you like so it's gonna be interesting to see You've got a lot of stuff going though and on top of all that you have your udemy course as well Can you talk about that a little bit and I uh, I know we're already past I don't know if you have a couple more minutes. I have a few more questions for you Got some time We can keep chatting. Um, okay the udemy course was was an interesting one because like I said, um 20 2017 The first half of 2017 I was studying towards the actual exam Um, the fellowship passed the fellowship then spent the second half of 26, uh, sorry 2017 Like really having a go at this hot coin idea, you know, raising investment building the app marketing it, you know Really giving it a good push Um, and of course, you know, it it flopped quite badly So 2018 started and I was I was very depressed like I'm not gonna I was Properly depressed quarter life crisis. What do I do now? Had you invested a lot into bitcoin or any of the cryptos? Um, you know what I was I was fortunate in the sense that like I remember back in back in 20 I started working at 2014 for a company and they had asked me a question, you know, what is bitcoin? Yeah, and I was aware of it in 2014 didn't know much about it. I just knew I knew it was pirate currency That's I think that's as far as my bitcoin knowledge was back then um But then everyone would talk about bitcoin at the, you know, you know, with a coffee at the office So when I left the office in beginning of 2016 Um, I spent a lot of 2016 getting into artificial intelligence That's when I made my rock paper scissors and submitted it to the the science journal, which they they published. I was like, nice crazy Um, I mean they published it in the same month that I was having my very first art exhibition So it was quite it was quite weird. It was like, you know, I'm doing this arty thing and I was in the science journal So that was fun a fun month, which I needed because like I said, I didn't enjoy working because I needed a little bit of that Yeah, yeah Um, and then I also started reading into to bitcoin and all that type of stuff. I remember the price was 650 dollars I was like, I've missed the boat. That's what I thought. Oh, wow I missed the boat and the technology and then it went up to like 19,000 It went fortunately though. There was this other coin called light coin There's light coin and doge coin. So I stuffed around a look with doge coin I was buying doge coin sending it to random people I think even on some of my youtube channels I was giving out doge coin and I was putting it in these weird betting sites I think I used doge coin to bet on Donald Trump winning the election just because I thought I thought because they were paying like times five and I was like, no, he's got like a 50% chance I was still shocked when he got the election.  Yeah, so so what but like, I mean it was it was the doge coin and it was it was like, you know, big mountain doge coin But it was like, you know a couple a couple of thousand in South African currency So but it was still fun. And that's when I was like, you know what? I sat down with my parents and said, you know, I want to put it I want to get I want to put a sizable amount in this light coin like and I said I know it's this weird technology and everything but I want to be part of this journey So I bought a lot of light coin at three dollars Wow I remember it went it went up to a certain price and I was looking at, you know, like really fancy watches And my dad was with me at the time. He said, you know what?  You really want this nice watch And I was like, you know what the price is going to keep going up And sure as nuts it did, you know, this is end of 2017. I'm looking at m2 bmw's, you know It was like proper, proper stuff.  So yeah, but it went from being, you know, like times Like a hundred up, you know from three dollars because they like coins hit three It was over 300 Yeah, he's 381. I think at one stage. Yeah, you know, so I went from being times 100 to now Throwing more and more money into this thing to now only being up like probably about times four times three So with the whole crash now and everything like that So I I only bought a little bit of bitcoin kind of like right during the hype time and it went up And then I sold it and I I made just like a tiny bit. It wasn't much So, well, this is the thing so I was I because I I couldn't understand all the cryptography like some of the maths was a little bit like above my level Um, and like I didn't really understand mining like that So I didn't I was very interested in buying a machine to try and do the mining But electrical engineering wasn't my thing and it was like I said was just a little bit above my my IQ But fortunately I could see that this was a cool thing So I did buy like coin and it had done well and that's why I wanted to make my own currency Which was a big flop And then so, yeah, now we come to 2018 and I'm like, what do I do in 2018? So in 2018 I basically did just two things To help with the depression.  I'm getting my helmet spray painted and then I'm gonna make you should definitely do that Yeah, make make a little fun video there. Um, and then the other thing I started doing in 2018 was Revisiting some of the other actual subjects that um, I hadn't posted videos on for youtube that people were requesting and I thought you know what could I maybe make a profession out of online learning so maybe you know, the youtube ads aren't very you know They're not going to generate a lot of money. Yeah, but what if I made quality actuarial content? And I put it on like a course like udemy And I must say that was probably something else that I I failed at if I look at my projections You know, I was expecting because you to me. I think I don't think I even have I mean, I've got just under 2000 students on on udemy across all the courses And I was going for oh, I'm gonna get a thousand students a month Yeah, so I mean let's go a good start though Yeah, and I guess these things do take time to snowball and all that type of stuff But it that was 2018 was building these udemy courses seeing could I progress from youtube? You know providing free education to maybe making yeah making selling it where I put more exam walkthroughs and You know do a little bit more in depth videos and spend a lot more time and justify by saying You know, I'm going to maybe make a make a living off of this and with udemy Can you explain to our viewers what udemy is a little bit? So so udemy is kind of like YouTube in the sense that there's online videos The thing is that they they're behind a paywall. So you have to pay to access them And they're normally much better organizers and they very much geared towards tutorials. Yes In youtube if you type in statistics, okay? You're going to get just a whole bunch of everything like it's going to be like all over the place Right, whereas you type in statistics into udemy and they'll say, you know, this is so my course is actuarial statistics Uh, which is very much based for the exam p. Oh, there was another thing with udemy I also started to factor in the american exam structures as well went through american exams Because on my youtube channel, it's mainly just the the british the british ones And that's because a large chunk of my audience is from the states like, uh, you know, the usa is my biggest cohort Followed very closely by india And then south africa is only like fourth or fifth, you know, it's gonna be all Yeah, you're quite a small one with the with the viewers Um, so yeah, it was trying to, you know, make this this udemy thing And I know there's there's been a lot of requests for people to make Want me to make, you know, the ca1 videos again and and do these other subjects But it's kind of like it's it's interesting as soon as you introduce a price people Very hesitant and it's weird whether it's one dollar or whether it's a hundred dollars It's just that whole idea of having to spend money. Yes, and I know that that's something that I've only recently Started to overcome like I would never pay for apps. I would never, you know, try pay for subscription services and all of that stuff But this year I've started to say, you know, let me get apple music. It's, you know, that subscription thing Let me pay for some quality apps, you know, when I'm going to play games on my phone Let me rather play like the proper ones then play ones with you could ads popping up everywhere So I've slowly made that transition into, you know, buying content is actually better because you're getting better content But I remember being a student there was this big resistance And I think that's also the same because my audience is students. There is that resistance to to the paywall And I don't know hopefully in time that will, you know As the years go by I can maybe start reducing it. But another big problem with the udemy course is They went and changed the syllabus as soon as I Published it, you know, now there's this big r component So I need to update it or I need to make a another separate course for that But what I'm looking at now is rather maybe another approach and that is like, can I get a corporate to sponsor me making educational videos? Yes, because what happens in that sense is They then tick their box of social responsibility, you know, they've provided funding for education And they're getting their brand out there to a natural audience who potentially could work for them And then what's nice is the corporates are then funding or paying, you know, spending my time to make these things And the students can then benefit from it, you know, because they also have been getting it for free So I was going to say the other thing you could try is If there's I know I know you're targeting a lot of students But some of the people taking that exam are probably already at companies that may be paying for study materials For those students who take it So then the student doesn't have to pay and the corporation pays for it At least I mean at least in the United States, you know, most companies we work for they'll pay for study hours for exams Uh for study materials So if they knew like if I was taking that's the actual statistics, I'd be like, oh, I want to take MJ's class I tell my company and then they pay for it. Like that could be an approach No, look, and I think that is definitely That they were saying we looked at was, you know If we could tap into to that funding so remember also here in South Africa if you work for an actual training office They do subsidize your your payments And I think the students that we are selling to Do have that kind of vibe or they are the older students coming in coming in So I can say we are making sales It's just like I said, we've got 2,000 overall where I was expecting a thousand a month Yes, yes, yes And and there was this exact same thing with hot coin was like I was like expecting, you know 1,000 downloads every week type of thing right to be fair to poor hot coin We were getting those amounts of downloads if you're going to look at the app, you know It's got like a lot of people downloads But what apps don't tell you is the number of uninstalls, you know, we got a lot of a lot of uninstalls on And that's kind of when I was like, yeah, this app is because you're like, you know Why are you killing this app? You got 10,000 downloads and I was like, yeah 8,000 uninstalls, you know I don't think the market really took the app to well and then of course the You know I posted Hot coin on the youtube channel with a bit of a bitcoin prize Yeah, and some of the subscribers figured out how to get into the back end of the app And you know sort of fiddling around with everything and all that type of stuff Oh, wow So and that's why it was interesting because I was kind of like, you know In order to make hot coin It was this high frequency payment thing So I couldn't really put it on the blockchain per se or in the beginning It was kind of like I wanted to do this hybrid method and actually never got there But fortunately there has been like a lot of advances in technology Like I don't know if you can see the t-shirt I'm wearing now. It's this company called Raiden And they I can't kind of see the logo, but I can't really know it's a very it's a very Terrible logo can barely see what it is But they went to a hackathon and they've actually created technology to assist with these micro payments On the blockchain. So it's weird. There's always this like nagging thought in the back of my head I'm like, you know, you could you could resurrect hypecoin or I know one of these things and and throw it out there But yo, I mean that's kind of I mean, I don't know it was weird I always said hypecoin was going to be the last app I made because I've made a lot of apps before then Somebody even got me in trouble. I got I got some legal letters on some because So kid posted something on the app and then I was sued for defamation because I was the publisher of that You know, so apps do get you in into trouble and they are expensive and they are time consuming. Yeah, but Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. You know, I said that today I wouldn't be surprised if two months you see me on my channel. Hey guys launching At you know, it's because it is something that I am very very drawn to is the tech side of of life But um, but you're hopefully hopefully I'll do my homework properly next time and I'll just be You know, have a business plan. That's I think that's the lesson. It's have a I like it Yeah, yeah have a risk register, you know apply what we learn in natural sciences Going for it going all in Well, I like uh, I mean I like your boldness you do a lot of different things and um, I I mean I could go on and on asking you questions, but we're at about an hour here So I'm going to ask you just two fun questions kind of in this Uh, and those are the first one is uh being from South Africa for anyone going to visit Where's the best place to go in South Africa? Uh, by far by far that's such an easy question. Um Cape Town Cape Town is it's the jewel of Africa It is absolutely stunning. I mean we've got the mountains. We've got beautiful beaches Um, it is just it's stunning and we've got wine farms So it's you know, you can have fine dining to crazy parties in long streets. I mean Cape Town Number one destination in the world. I you know, I always tell people Cape Town is the best city in the world I mean, I hear I've heard a lot of good things about Cape Town. So I I'll definitely have to visit there sometime And that's why I live here. I mean, that's the nice thing about so are you are you actually living in Cape Town then? Yes, so I live in Cape Town and I mean, this is the lovely thing is you can as an actress Especially now the internet and stuff you can live wherever you want You know, you can work remotely and that's what I choose to live in Cape Town because in my opinion It is the the best city in the world So everyone watching come and come and visit.  Well, if I'm ever there, I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you up and we'll grab a drink or something No, definitely definitely And then my second question for you is what is your favorite hobby outside of actual rail science? My favorite hobby outside of actual science. It is weird because it's it's definitely a toss up between three things um The one is the go-karting. I mean, I absolutely am obsessed with this go-karting now That's amazing. I even I even entered nationals. Um, really I came sick. Yeah, but I came second law So, um, you know that that's the that's the thing about karting is that I'm like decent Like I'm better than the average person but as soon as I start competing at like the national level I kind of get talk manners, but karting is is absolutely a lot of fun Um, my second biggest thing that I like doing is it's creating whether that is creating art Writing short stories. I really like being creative Yeah Like my art's not that good, but at least it's colorful So and it's it's a nice way to like just relax or writing like especially not even just so I write a lot of like technical Stuff, you know for the actual tech website and you know, I'm writing this book But also like writing just fiction, you know fun stories character developments just love creating And then the third thing is I'm obsessed with learning and I think that's what what helped a lot with the churros Help me get to the religion philosophy You got a whole stack of books there This this is this was basically what I did in like I said jo 2018 it was it was go-karting It was making that those utomy courses Uh, but every morning. I mean I try to still do it now, but I'm so busy now, but yeah, I mean philosophy It's fantastic. I mean the book on religion That's probably my favorite one Yes, I just love learning it's weird And I don't know if it's because we you know, we studied for so long We wrote all these exams, but I get frustrated if I don't learn something new in a day I kind of feel like that day's wasted. You know learn something new So no, these books are great and especially what they are They just summaries of great people's work and then if you're interested in that person You can then you know go and google and actually find their proper paper a lot of them Like one Nobel prizes Nice what they've done. So you're reading good quality.  Oh, yes the little Little corgi. I mean, I love the corgi and the doge and yeah And you are it's I think this one's been with me all throughout all my youtube videos We go back some of the old ones nice see him see him there sometimes even in the thumbnail and then of course Like my previous videos used to have the doge Stickers, which I actually made I made those doge stickers because I wanted to sponsor a formula one car I wanted to get We even made an app called doge pre where you could raise this little doge. Like I said, I don't know why I was doing that But now I printed 10 of those stickers and we're only we actually printed the one on the formula one car There's a video of it somewhere on my channel I remember I got so excited with the formula one cause I posted so many videos in one day I actually lost subscribers. It's the one day where my subscriber count went down. Really? I think I spent my time I got so excited. I was like formula one car And I think the doge stickers on it and everything so So yeah, but um Yeah, I thought that's the little little it's it's weird the dream the ultimate dream is to live on a farm Maybe somewhere in wales because corgis They they've got a lot of firsts.  That's that's me. Love that So you know I'm 35 you have so many interests from go-karting to corgis to Math to religion. You're all over the place man. I like it. So oh bitcoin Yeah, quick. Well, this this is I mean jam I know we any but just like I guess a final thought the one thing I really find interesting about Especially by having all these divergent ideas is seeing how they connect how they do all these stuff or stuff And it's one thing that I am so grateful for with regards to actual sciences Because of places such an emphasis on uncertainty and probability You take that You know set of thinking and you start applying it to religion and philosophy and all these other things And you do get different results and like I said my my article on philosophy, especially around morality Is coming out in philosophy now magazine later this month So and that and that is something by just taking what I read here and saying, you know I actually disagree with what these guys are saying from an actuarial perspective Let me write a counter-argument and the philosophy magazine was like, yeah We love these contributions, you know, we'll post it and see what happens That's so So I guess you're that's I guess a final thought or an encouragement why people should study this amazing subject Is that it can help you see different angles of all the other subjects and that for me has been one of its greatest blessings Wow, that's that's awesome. And on that note mj the fellow actuary everyone Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and like I say everyone who's watching it on my side Please check the description so they can see the rest of your interviews and job Definitely get them get them to your channel as well. Appreciate it. Yeah, and I I have a lot of great guests coming on So, um, definitely, you know like subscribe and go check out mj's channel I have the link below the video also to his utomy course. He's a great teacher. So I recommend his stuff Um, I've been following him for a while. So I definitely uh, definitely need you to check him out And I appreciate you coming on.  So we'll have to uh, stay in touch in the future and Um, maybe we'll do something else in the future No, perfect It's been an absolute pleasure and job on my side this evening, but I think it's still morning or afternoon in your Yeah, it's uh 11 11 a.m on my side.  Hey, thank you so much. You too. Thanks


So, I'm going to talk to you about clean tech, but first I want to ask you a very important question. What do Bill Gates, Steve Case, he's actually from Hawaii, which is where I came from today. Nancy Fund, I know you've heard from before at Socap. Pierre Omidyar, also a Hawaii boy. And Will Smith, what do these five have in common? Does anybody know? The hint is in the name of my talk. They're all clean tech investors. They're all invested in clean tech companies. So why, what does that mean? Well, in June, I was at the White House. This is me at the White House headed in for the Clean Energy Investment Initiative. But more importantly than me being there, Vice President Joe Biden was there as well. And they were there to announce a $4 billion initiative called the Clean Energy Investment Initiative. There was commitments from foundations and family offices doubling their goal of $2 billion of commitments over the next few years to invest in clean energy innovation. And not only were they there announcing that, they were there announcing the Department of Energy opening a new Clean Energy Impact Investing Center as a way for family offices and foundations to learn more about the technology of energy. They're also investing new rules from Treasury around foundations investing in these kinds of areas. And even more importantly, they were there announcing Will Smith's new investment into his first clean tech company. And so this got a lot of buzz, of course, how Will and Jada Smith's foundation ended up backing a little known energy startup. And the little known energy startup they backed is called Quidnet. And it's an energy storage company that actually stores energy in underground pockets of air like caves. Which, of course, made us try and invent some new movie names like Men in Black Caves. We didn't like that one that much. Maybe Independent Investors Day. Still working on it, my favorite is the Fresh Prince of Clean Air. Something we're all working on. And really the question is, how do you bring these kinds of investors and these kinds of people that are interested in the future of our world into clean energy innovation? It's a new area for them. It's highly technical. It's not something people are generally comfortable with. So let's talk about what is clean tech anyway? Clean technology. You probably know a lot about solar and electric vehicles and energy efficiency. But clean tech is much broader than that. So you can think about women's literacy and clean tech can actually support women's literacy. If you care a lot about drought and what's going on in California and other parts of the world right now around water, clean tech technologies can help. And if you care about children and education, clean tech can enable those kinds of things as well. So clean tech is much broader than what we generally think of as just solar, just electric vehicles or transportation. It can actually help children in Tanzania learn to read at night. It can help women in Nicaragua find clean water for their families more easily. And it can help micro entrepreneurs in Thailand provide distributed cell phone networks to many people. So clean tech is a much broader category than many impact investors or foundations even think of. And as energy accelerator, which is the organization that I founded in Hawaii, and invests in a number of different clean technologies, we think about this as a full system. So anything that impacts our infrastructure or environment, the place we live, we consider that clean technology, anything that helps make our place better. So for us, that's clean transportation. It's vehicles as well as mass transit and data. It's clean water. It's security to help secure the grid. It's a renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable agriculture. We actually have a cattle company, which surprises some people. So foundations historically have been very involved in this space. Between the two world wars, foundations invested $100 million in basic science to support clean technology and to basic research around these kinds of things. What we've seen over the last few years is most of the money coming from foundations, the biggest part of the pie is not headed toward these kinds of big problems and solving these kinds of problems. The biggest part of the pie is headed to technologies that you probably use every day like Instagram and Snapchat, and I love Instagram too. But these aren't technologies that are necessary to solving our big long-term, hairy problems that we have on this planet. So over the last few months in particular, what we've seen is the impact investors coming back into this space and looking at how they can bring their dollars to commit to some of these long-term problems and bring some long-term solutions. There is a lot of funding in this space. One of the companies that we talk about as an example is a venture capital firm called Venroc, which is a fantastic venture capital firm. Venroc is venture and Rockefeller. And back in between the two world wars, they spent a lot of money investing in really important big idea technologies. So think aeronautical engineering, rockets, lots of health and basic science. And they're still investing in those things, but now they're also investing in really high-tech stuff like Dollar Shave Club. That's one. Twitter analytics. And internet advertising. So we've seen this huge shift in Silicon Valley in the venture capital world into things that have faster returns, which makes a lot of sense if you're a venture capital investor, but also things that aren't addressing those same large problems. So our mission is really to bring much of this money from these foundations back into this space and talk about how long-term commitment to these problems can be a great match for impact investors who have a long-term need to see their dollars at work. The market is still there. In global GDP, energy is actually 10% of global GDP. It's a huge market. There's a lot of money flowing through energy every single day.  That's compared to just 3% of the internet. So the internet is a third of the economic size of energy. But if you look at where the venture capital funding is going, only 2% of it is going to energy, whereas a full 25% of that goes to the internet. So you can see here that the market is there, but the time horizon for many investors may be different. This is where we're really coming into play and trying to bring impact investors back into this space. There's a lot of money out there from these various foundations. In the U.S. alone, there's $600 billion in private foundations. About 1% of that goes to grant making a year, but only .1% of that goes to clean tech and energy. So why is this? What is this gap? Clearly, we all know that climate change, drought, large agriculture, these are all large problems that people want to solve. So why aren't we seeing more dollars in this space? Well, there's a number of reasons why they should come back, and I'll talk to you about three particular reasons right now. The first reason is impact. So I talked a lot about the various sectors that you can be in. But I think what's really important is to realize that climate change in particular affects those who are most vulnerable. So if you're worried about malaria, if you're worried about disease, if you're worried about hunger, women's empowerment, climate change exacerbates many of those challenges. So clean tech can help on many pieces of this challenge. The second reason that's really critical for impact investors to get in right now is timing. So this has a couple different pieces. I talked to a Wall Street executive recently who told me that we're 40 years into a 100-year transition in energy. But the trick is that the change is actually accelerating right now. So it's not a linear path of how this change is going to happen. We're seeing very rapid transformation in the energy sector in particular, as well as in transportation and water. And over the next 10 years, we're going to be making decisions that determine how the next 100 years of infrastructure is going to look in this country and around the world. Massive growth going on across the developing world in China, in India, but also massive transformation here in the United States and in developed countries as well. So we're really looking at how we make investments right now impacting the choices we make for future generations and what our children live with. So timing is really critical. The other thing about timing is that many of these technologies are hardware technologies. So there are things like what I have in my hand. They're not just pure software technologies. But this is a very special time to invest in hardware companies. I would say that investing in a hardware company now is a lot like investing in a software company maybe 15 or 20 years ago. So what you're seeing with 3D printing and rapid prototyping is the same thing that personal computing and the cloud did for software about 15 or 20 years ago. It speeds up the process of innovation and makes it more possible. So that's the kind of change that we're seeing in the hardware space and it makes it a really interesting time to invest in these technologies. And finally, the third thing which we all care about because investors as well as impact investors is returns. So one of our portfolio companies is an example of a company called STEM. They raised $45 million this year alone as they're scaling their company. It's an energy storage company. It does distributed energy storage across the system. They're seeing huge customer traction and creating massive value for their investors. So there are companies that are doing really innovative things and the returns are there if you know where to look. So the question that we get a lot is, we know this is a big problem. We know this is something that we want to play in, but how do we get started? How do we engage? So there are two important tools for impact investors that you can use in getting involved in the clean energy space. One is the program-related investment. Other is the mission-related investment. These are things that you, as foundations, are very familiar with already. But both of these can play in the clean energy space. For program-related investments, which is the 5% of your foundation funding, the requirements are that the funding that you put toward your investments furthers your mission and wouldn't be done except for the fact that you have that mission. So these funds can specifically go toward some of the longer-term areas of energy investment that wouldn't otherwise make sense. And the 95% side of the equation, which is the mission-related investments, there are also returns-based organizations and returns-based investments in this space that can be highly impactful now. So those are two important tools for foundations and impact investors. And finally, you don't have to do it alone. There are a lot of partners out there. There are many friends at Prime in Boston. We're the energy accelerator. There are many networks of different kinds of organizations that are pulling this together. So for many larger family offices, they'll actually set up a staff of people that will do due diligence, have the technical expertise to pull in these deals and assess them and track them over time. But for many smaller family offices or smaller foundations, it may not make sense to make that very large investment up front. It may make sense to partner with other organizations, and there are many of them out there. And actually, more every day, there's a phenomenal network now of organizations that are supporting clean energy companies and clean energy startups and clean tech startups across the field in general. So our friends at Prime are a great example. They're the ones that Will and Jada Smith's foundation engage with to make the investment in QuiddNet. So these are huge, important resources and networks that family offices and foundations can tap into to develop their own expertise, and they don't have to do it from scratch. With the Energy Accelerator, when we were at the White House, we announced a new investment fund to invest in our portfolio companies. So we bring public funding to bear, investors bring private funding to bear, and it's a true public-private partnership. There are many new models out there for people to engage in this space, and I'd be happy to talk to you more about that. So Aloha from Hawaii. I hope you will join us in jumping on this wave. It's the right time for impact investors. We're really excited to be on the journey with you. Thank you.