Translator: Katarina Ericson Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Eight years ago, I moved to Nicaragua.
It was the beginning of a two-year journey that got extended by five years
because of one phone call.
Like any good son moving to a new country,
I looked for a way to call my mother to let her know I was okay.
A couple of bus trips and several hours later,
I finally found a phone
that could make an international phone call.
Unfortunately, it cost me two days' wages
to make a five-minute phone call to a teary-voiced mother.
Little did I know that fateful call would have me loading phone cabins
on the back of a donkey cart two years later
to start a social enterprise.
I'll be honest, five or six years ago I didn't call it a social enterprise
because I had no idea what it was.
What I did know as a Peace Corps volunteer
was that I saw lots of problems that could be solved
through entrepreneurship.
And so, what I want to talk to you about today
is how we built a social enterprise in Nicaragua
that became one of the largest phone companies in the country
by lowering the cost of a phone call by 90%
and disrupting the local telecom industry.
So, six years ago,
my friend, Edgar, and I rented a wall inside an ice-cream shop.
We installed five phone cabins,
and, little by little, we grew the company
just opening call shops around the country.
After two years of sacrificing a salary,
we started to look for ways to expand our business
beyond the call shops
and grow our profits.
So, as many of you know,
when you visit the developing world, you see cargo bikes.
Cargo bikes are the most effective way to transport goods into rural areas.
They transport coke, oranges, even ice cream,
into small villages through these bikes.
Which got me thinking:
"If we can transport ice cream into rural areas,
why can't we transport our low-cost phone technology
into these same areas?"
So, my friend, Edgar, and I did a quick brainstorm,
and we decided to build a mobile call shop.
We called it "llamadas pedeleadas", or "pedalled phone calls".
While it's easy to understand what a phone cabin is,
it may be more difficult to understand what a mobile call shop is.
So let me walk you through the process of how we've built it.
We took a cargo bike and installed a used car alternator on the back.
When you're pedalling,
it's generating electricity that's stored in a used car battery.
From the used car battery,
we have a computer UPS to convert the energy to 110 volts
that will provide the energy to our low cost technology,
allowing people in remote areas to make phone calls
where there's no electricity.
So, if I were to ask you,
what allowed us to scale to a 100,000 customers,
the phone cabins, or the bike,
which one would you choose?
Audience: The bike.
Brian Forde: The bike, right?
If you did chose the bike, you would have agreed with CNN
and every other social investor I've spoken with over the last few years
since I uploaded a video of it to the internet.
You see, like any proud innovator, I was excited to show off my invention.
So sure enough, five hours later, after uploading it to the internet,
it was live on CNN, in front of millions of people.
But, as you can guess, the bike was a commercial failure,
(Laughter)
and the phone cabins served 100,000 customers last month.
Which got me thinking.
I started to realize that, much like the beer industry,
sex sells on social enterprise.
(Laughter)
Only we have our own version of sexy.
It's sexy keywords.
What I fell into the trap of
was building a product that followed trends, buzzwords and fads,
instead of listening to what my customer needs were.
So, if I were to describe this bike,
it would be a locally sourced, pedal-powered, microfranchise,
employment generator.
What it's not is commercially viable.
(Laughter)
And trust me, we tried to make it as commercially viable as possible.
We tried it with our own employees, we tried to microfranchise it,
we tried it in big cities, we tried it in the smallest villages.
What we ended up with were more flat tires than revenue.
(Laughter)
So, while I'm truly flattered
that we got so much press and investor intention,
and interest in our bike,
my concern is that if we sell social enterprise
with the latest fads or keywords,
that the media and the investors will move on.
So, now, I want to talk about just two of my quick learnings.
One: Business model sins cannot be washed away
with the holy water of helping others.
Two: you must design your products for your customers,
and not the latest fads.
Because what I've found, quite simply,
is that a new take on an old solution
can have the most financial and social impact.
Thank you.
(Applause)