Invest in people. Easy, right? While more money than ever is being deployed around the world into new ventures, Oslene Carrington is leveraging her own entrepreneurial experience to ensure entrepreneurs in Guyana and the Caribbean have access to financing as well. Oslene is not one to wait around for change to occur. She decided she would create her own community of angel investors.

By expertly explaining the risks of financing innovation abroad, especially at the angel stage, some of that risk is mitigated by tapping an angel network with first-hand experience within these unique cultures and landscapes. With the Caribbean Diaspora Angel Investor Network Trust and !nnovate Guyana, Oslene is accelerating the trends of access and democratization of private markets with a veteran approach.

Show Links

Check out !nnovate Guyana
Check out The Caribbean Diaspora Angel Investor Network
Follow !nnovate Guyana on LinkedIn or Twitter
Connect with Oslene Carrington on LinkedIn
Check out Nth Round
Connect with Andrew Seski on LinkedIn

Key Takeaways

3:45 - Fostering and funding great ideas from home

Oslene traveled home to Guyana and witnessed some innovative business presentations. When she realized those great ideas would need greater support to develop, she started a program to award capital to the most viable ones.

“I happened to be at home in Guyana at one point visiting five years ago and was at the university there where I have friends and saw some really amazing things happening in terms of innovation. Like a lot of universities, they have these annual presentations of student research conferences...I had experienced doing startup programs and finding funding for them, and commercial relationships with the private sector and with the academic environment and so on and so forth. And so it just clicked for me very easily to create something. And so what was born from that is something called the Guyana Innovation Prize, which is like an MIT prize or any of these other university-based prizes where I go find money. I find capital. Either initially as donations, we started out and in many ways still are a philanthropic endeavor, and find capital and match those up with great ideas. And so annually, we have a competition and the funding is awarded to the best commercializable ideas.”

5:53 - The angel of the Caribbean

Oslene’s second major venture was founding the Caribbean Diaspora Angel Investor Network (CDAIN), an angel investor network that takes the concept of funding great ideas in the Caribbean further, this time backed by corporate sponsors and government grants.

“That brought me to my second business idea, which is the Caribbean Diaspora Angel Investor Network, or CDAIN. Because, you know, again, we would find the funding. We have corporate sponsors now, you know a USA government grant. But [the] point is, now we're able to take these ideas and go to the next stage. So you can sort of say that the initial support is pre-seed. And that what we then do is, you know, you can sort of categorize pre-seed and stages. Maybe there's a pre-seed A, and a pre-seed B round, or whatever you want to call it. I mean, we can pretty much make up anything we want in this space, because it is still pretty much angel. And so now through the network, we're able to bring those products along further and get them ready for [an investment], or actually get them invested.”

9:55 - Invest in solutions aimed at solving big problems

In Oslene’s eyes, community members are best positioned to know exactly what they need. Investing in ideas that meet fundamental needs feels much less risky than other investing endeavors.

“The idea of a community coming together to find opportunities that we're all familiar with, or that we can connect to in some way, because it's either from places that we know, or it's addressing problems that we know happens, quote-unquote, back home, that's kind of how it all came together. To your question about risk, I mean, we don't see these things as risky. Because we know what the challenges are. We know what the needs are...It's amazing what people consider risky. Like I would never put my money, for example, in penny stocks. I would never put my money in yet another IoT solution when most people in America and in the world are not living in quote-unquote smart homes. Like I would never do that. And I'm not saying that stuff isn’t smart, I'm not saying that it's bad investing to do that. I'm just saying there are so many other problems in the world that are fundamental. And there are a lot of smart people in other places that have solutions for these problems. And if the capital met up with that, there'd be a lot of very, very wealthy people. And it's the basis of that, that I said, well, why not us? Why couldn't it be us? Who we're not only pooling our money to solve the problems, but potentially experiencing a wealth boom.”

12:23 - Solving for the southern hemisphere

Seven billion people live in the southern hemisphere, where primary concerns revolve around agriculture more than tech. Problem-solving in one agricultural area, for example, has immediate potential to expand to other, similar areas.

“I know about my particular area of the world and the sector, which happens to be ag-tech, agro-processing, and ag science. Right. Because the part of the world we're talking about is heavily agricultural. But so are a lot of other places in the world. And so we feel like we're not just solving for a country or a few countries in this region. We're talking about any place in the world that's heavily agricultural and tropical. Well, guess what? That's the vast majority of the world, right? Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, the Caribbean. The Southern half of the world is as populated as the Northern part of the world, and the Southern part of the world is tropical. So we're talking about half of the 7 billion people in the world and solving for them. So this isn't risky. We're not talking about is somebody going to buy this IoT solution versus this other one, is somebody gonna buy this electric car versus the other one? That is real risk. Solving for problems that affect billions of people is not risk.”

14:33 - Establishing trust outweighs the data

When a community already knows what needs to be done, they don’t immediately worry about what the data says. Building trust and the narrative becomes the focal point.

“The risk aversion is a different kind. It has to do with trust. And it's not about data. So, you know, how do you bring data to the picture to establish a level of trust? So the fact is, if I say to you, Andrew, I've got this great offering, this great opportunity. Probably because you don't know the region or the area, you're probably going to look at all the numbers. Probably try to do some additional research outside of what I share with you to see whether what I say is in fact the truth, or if I've missed anything, or if there's more, assuming you're interested. When we're talking to people who already know what the problems are, now it's well, I want to be sure that I'm not going to ...

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1173