The Portico Podcast

I’m really excited to share today’s episode, which features an interview with Karim Hussein, a Managing Partner of Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading institutional-quality venture capital firm.

I was thrilled to speak with Karim for several reasons.

First, I find Egypt to be one of the most captivating countries in the world, not only because of its rich history, but also because of its energy and potential. It’s the largest market in the Arab world, with a population of 100 million people — one in five of whom live in Cairo.

Second, Egypt’s startup scene is vibrant — with more than 80 venture investments inked last year — and it’s approaching another inflection point of growth.

Third, Karim’s background in deep tech — and his bona fides as a successful entrepreneur — enable him to provide high-fidelity insights on the depth of the country’s technical talent and the quality of its entrepreneurs.

Karim does a masterful job covering the landscape of Egypt’s startup and venture ecosystem. He also shares some great book recommendations at the end for those who are keen to learn more.

With that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Karim Hussein.

This podcast was recorded in January 2022.

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Learn more about Algebra Ventures.

Follow Algebra Ventures on LinkedIn.

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Karim’s Book Recommendations:

· Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

· Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy

· Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious

· P.J. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt

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Music credit: Daniel Allan, “Too Close” released on Sound. You can learn more about Daniel’s community-owned DAO that underwrote his latest EP here.
(Disclosure: In addition to the “Too Close” NFT, Portico’s founder Michael Casey owns $OVERSTIM tokens, as well as NFTs of Pat Lok’s “Over U” and Aluna’s “Forget About Me”).

In today’s episode I speak with Gopal Jain, co-founder and Managing Partner of Gaja Capital, one of the leading private equity firms in India.
It was a real pleasure to speak with Gopal because he’s lived through the boom-and-bust cycles within India’s private equity industry, so he’s able to place today’s environment in context, and impart some of the hard-earned lessons he’s gleaned over the last two decades.
Gopal and I cover a lot of territory in this conversation, so I’ll spare you the rundown of topics. But I’ve been marinating on two of the things that Gopal said since our conversation.
The first is that a couple decades ago, upwards of 80% of India’s most talented engineers and entrepreneurs were migrating to the United States; whereas today, most are choosing to launch startups within India, with the benefit of a robust private markets supply chain of capital at-the-ready.
The second is that Gopal thinks that India’s PE industry could grow from $50 billion in deals to $100 billion over the next five to 10 years. And if that happens, he thinks India could detach from the EM complex and become a standalone market like China.
I was also really enamored with Gopal’s “5+1” construct for explaining the foundational infrastructure that is accelerating India’s digital transformation.
One of the things we didn’t talk about — but I think you should know about — is the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, which has some great suggestions to add to your bookshelves. I’ll be adding a few volumes to mine.
My audio came out a bit odd in places, so I apologize if it’s a bit distracting. The good news is I don’t speak much.
There’s so much food for thought in this episode that I don’t want to keep you waiting any longer.
With that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Gopal Jain.
This podcast was recorded in November 2021.

Learn more about Gaja Capital and its Business Book Prize.

Follow Gaja Capital on Twitter.

Bain & Company, India Private Equity Report 2021.

Bain & Company, India Venture Capital Report 2021.

This episode of the Portico Podcast features a conversation with Tariq Fancy — the former CIO for Sustainable Investing at the ~$10 trillion asset manager BlackRock.
He’s also the author of the delightfully thought-provoking essay The Secret Diary of a ‘Sustainable Investor’.
I reached out to Tariq after reading his essay because it raises some uncomfortable truths about the explosion of ESG-related products across public and private markets.
While I agreed strongly with his writing about the nonsense of ESG-related investments in stock and bond markets, I maintained that sustainable- or impact-focused investors in private markets could drive meaningful change.
I also wanted to think through whether the so-called ‘greenwashing’ effect changes with scale.
I know managers whose investments are driving positive environmental and social change in some of the most underserved markets — indeed, some have been featured on the Portico Podcast.
And honestly, I worry that the asset-gathering activities of large-cap firms will not only crowd out the earnest players trying to increase human dignity, but also tarnish the idea that private markets investing can be a positive-sum enterprise.
I also worry about the proliferation of service providers bilking people with asinine accounting and compliance solutions — a phenomenon that famed corporate finance professor Aswath Damodaran refers to as the ESG Gravy Train.
I remember reading an article in the FT over the summer about PwC looking to hire 100,000 people to provide ESG advice and thought the madness must stop — we’re creating entire categories of jobs that inhibit the flow of capital to productive users of financing.
And we all know that scale providers can absorb these costs, thereby entrenching their market position and reducing competition from new entrants and smaller firms.
So, you can see why I was keen to speak with Tariq about these issues, as well as the roles the public and private sectors can play in solving the structural environmental and social challenges of climate change and inequality.
But we also talk about Tariq’s nonprofit, Rumie, which should resonate with listeners of the podcast.
Rumie provides free digital education to learners in over 176 countries, including Afghanistan where one of their big initiatives is to create more content in Dari and Pashto so that women and girls can continue their education despite the return of the Taliban.
I’d encourage listeners to visit Rumie’s website. And, if you’re a fund manager or institutional investor who’s interested in supporting the growth of a nonprofit in the edtech space, reach out to Tariq and say hello.
This podcast was recorded in October 2021.

Read The Secret Diary of a ‘Sustainable Investor’.
Learn about Rumie and sample some of its bite-sized lessons.
Donate to support Rumie’s mission.
Follow Tariq on Twitter.
Read Aswath Damodaran’s post on The ESG Movement: The “Goodness” Gravy Train Rolls On!

I wanted to experiment with a different format for this episode and share my writings on the Abraaj fraud scandal as they were happening in real time a few years ago.

Now, for those who don’t know Abraaj, it was one of the largest — and probably the flashiest — private equity firms dedicated to investing in emerging markets. It was spearheading a big push into impact investing and was marketing a $6B fund when it collapsed in insolvency under allegations of fraud.

There are a few reasons why I wanted to revisit my articles:

• First, the founder of Abraaj — a man named Arif Naqvi — had been fighting a battle in UK courts to avoid extradition to the United States. He lost that fight earlier this year.
  
• Second, there’s a book coming out in July called The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by two reporters at The Wall Street Journal — Simon Clark and Will Louch. I’m keen to bring them on the podcast to discuss the book and I wanted to provide some context in the hopes that one or both of them will join me in a few months’ time.
  
• Third, the Abraaj story is a useful prism for seeing the world as it is — unvarnished. As you listen, I encourage you to think about how social capital, branding, and reputation are manufactured; how an industry that talks about due diligence did little to none; and the credulity that money buys.

So, there will be four parts to the story I share today. The first three were from the February, March, and April 2018 editions of Portico’s much-beloved, monthly newsletter, Portico Perspectives.

The final part comes from the July 2018 edition.

As noted, this is an experiment, so please let me know what you think about the format and content.

This podcast was recorded in April 2021.

Sign up for Portico Perspectives.

In this episode of the Portico Podcast I speak with Jake Cusack, co-founder and Managing Partner of The CrossBoundary Group, a firm that unlocks private capital for sustainable growth and strong returns in underserved markets.

I first reached out to Jake about 10 years ago after he and one of his co-founders published a study on entrepreneurship and private sector development in Afghanistan.

That initial contact kicked off a series of conversations on how to harness markets and mobilize private capital in order to build businesses in frontier and fragile markets, which is the overarching topic of this episode.

In today’s conversation, Jake and I discuss:

• His journey from the Marine Corps to co-founding CrossBoundary with a couple classmates from Harvard;
• Why investment is a better tool for development than the provision of grants;
• The critical role that investment facilitation plays in creating investable pipeline;
• The rationale for CrossBoundary’s expansion from an advisory firm to a group that also manages investments
• The suitability of the traditional private equity model in frontier markets;
• Recruitment and how to inculcate a shared culture across a globally dispersed footprint;
• CrossBoundary’s recent initiative to open source its approach to project financing mini-grids;
• And much, much more.

There are loads of links below that will take you to the articles, books, and reports discussed in the episode, as well as other resources of interest.

These include CrossBoundary’s research studies with IFC on private equity in fragile and conflict-affected situations in Sub-Saharan Africa, their recent report on scaling up investment in Africa in the Covid-19 era with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and many others.

If you’re interested in their open-source initiative for mini-grids, the team will be sharing term sheets for the project finance contracts, as well as a template model, on 15 February — so take a look and take action if this is in your area of interest.

This is a great companion to my interview with Roger Leeds in Episode 2 on Private Equity & Development. So, if you missed that interview, I invite you to visit the archive and give it a listen.

And if you’re feeling motivated after listening to Jake, then navigate to crossboundary.com/careers to peruse their job openings.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

This podcast was recorded in January 2021.

CrossBoundary resources referenced in this episode include:

• CrossBoundary Energy Access initiative on Open Sourcing Infrastructure Finance for Mini-Grids
• CrossBoundary and IFC SME Ventures, “Investing in Private Equity in Sub-Saharan African Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations”
• CrossBoundary and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, “Scaling Up investment for Covid-19 Economic Recovery and Jobs in Africa”