No Fear
Reed isn’t afraid of taking chances or seeking out opportunities. She is looking for investments that break out of the pack, not go along with it.

“I’m not suggesting that there aren’t opportunities in big infrastructure—the dams and hydro. ... We’ve actually looked at hydro. We just haven’t figured out how to play in that space because there’s already huge financial institutions there,” Reed says. What’s more interesting to her are the overlooked opportunities in the communities near the dams and hydro plants.

But how do you see those opportunities? It sounds simple enough. And it is. Although it is not standard practice for an impact investment fund.
“How do you invest in Africa? Well, buy a plane ticket,” she says. Armed with her HP 12C calculator that she’s had for 20 years, she hits the road.
PIC has someone on the ground in Africa at least once a month. That’s where ideas spawn.

“My first investment was a company called Binu,” Reed recalls. “I was three hours outside of Kigali, [Rwanda] going to see a hydro plant. We were approaching a refugee village. Immigrants are coming in. I was looking at what were atrocious living conditions. ... [And yet] I noticed that all these kids had cell phones. There’s no water. There’s no electricity, which I thought we were going to try to fix. There’s no nothing, but they all had cell phones. It struck me. I got back [to New York] and I had a ton of deals on my desk. One of them was this company called Binu and it’s Australian based ... or domiciled. It’s a technology solution for the developing world. What does it do? It takes dumb phones, which all these kids in the villages have, and turns them into smart phones.

“I said, ‘This is a computer.’ We forget that, but if you’re bringing the news, books, even fun things like Facebook, and then you’re connecting them to the outside world, it’s the same connection. I think some of the bad that’s been able to happen in Africa has been because they’re so disconnected.  They don’t know what’s going on. To me, I found [Binu’s technology] to be hugely impactful.”

Of course, the technology alone might be enough for most fund managers. But Reed takes it a step further: Because Binu can upload books, when she was in the Ivory Coast meeting with the education minister, she asked if he wanted more books in classrooms. Binu’s technology solution was evident.
“They loved it. Those talks are going on. We don’t just invest. We don’t just write a check. We actively engage with management and help the business to grow,” she emphasizes.

It’s that personal touch, experiential in nature, that leads to thinking in terms of synergy, investing in terms of the bigger picture and adding value in more ways than mere capital can account for. Moreover, it’s a pretty cool way of doing business.