EP 218: Incubate public value with Alexander Hertel

Alexander Hertel is the CEO and Founder of Public Value Hub an NGO that is focused on creating social impact through entrepreneurship. Over his career Alex worked as reporter in different media companies such as MDR and ARD in Germany and as well abroad in Central Eastern Europe.

In our conversation Alex shares the story how he got to build the Public Value Hub we talk about RestartUA a program that helps displaced people from the Ukraine to start a social business in Germany and how this fits into the Public Value Incubator

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EP 218: Incubate public value with Alexander Hertel

Alexander Hertel is the CEO and Founder of Public Value Hub an NGO that is focused on creating social impact through entrepreneurship. Over his career Alex worked as reporter in different media companies such as MDR and ARD in Germany and as well abroad in Central Eastern Europe.

In our conversation Alex shares the story how he got to build the Public Value Hub we talk about RestartUA a program that helps displaced people from the Ukraine to start a social business in Germany and how this fits into the Public Value Incubator

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Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-hertel-8273b973/

Website:: https://www.publicvaluehub.com

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Transcript:

(This Transcript is AI generated)

Alex Hertel

Hello Alex. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. Great to have you. 

I'm eager to learn from you about public value today, but before we go into what you do from a business perspective, let's talk about yourself. You have owned a pizzeria. Let's start with that because I love pizza. How did you get into starting and owning a pizza restaurant?

It's kind of a weird story, uh, as they always start so basically I'm from former Eastern Germany. I was born in 88 in the former G D R. My father is from Poland. My mom is from Germany. And as with many families throughout the nineties, um, you know, the reunification of Germany changed a lot of careers, life models, lifestyles and with my family being mostly like teachers and translators it took them a couple of years to find their way in the new society.

And I was still a child back then. And at some point, um, there was a situation in my family where money was an issue and the only way. Out was buying a restaurant. And by total coincidence, the restaurant was in the house where my grandparents live. So they own an old house in Weimar, a small little town in the middle of Germany.

Very well known for a lot of writers coming from their Goethe and Schiller and also some pizzerias. So the Italians who owned the pizzeria had to give it away, and that's how we got into the pizza business. So my mom bought the restaurant asked some people for help to understand how it works and opened up the, in August, um, I was 10 at that.

So I spent the next couple of years, like in this restaurant, I did my homework there, I had my friends over. I tried to seduce girls by giving them free pizza. Um, it was really the center, uh, of my life, um, and also of everyone's else's life because basically all our, all the people working there were our friends and they had like backgrounds all over the world.

So we had people. Morocco from Georgia, from Russia, Ukraine, and it was really international melting pot. And it was a business but also like kind of a family thing, you know? And how I came into the picture was not when I started washing dishes and doing all this stuff. But like right before my 18th birthday we got into financial trouble again, um, due to external factors and at some point we had to do another decision about this business and it.

Basically it's going bankrupt and me reopening it the next day. And the next day was my birthday, uh, my 18th birthday. Yeah, right after my 18th birthday party I opened, um, a pizza store or, um, a restaurant. Let's put it this way. That makes tremendous pizza, which was our biggest asset because frankly speaking, we didn't know much about business, but we were really good at doing pizza.

That's, that's helpful when you have a restaurant.

Yeah, definitely.

So, and that's of course not the only entrepreneurial endeavor, but let's start a little bit earlier as well. How did you get from owning a pizza place to getting into radio and media.

I mean, basically the restaurant like a necessity to have it to keep the family business running, you know, to have everybody on the payroll to keep our house. And there was a lot of dramatic stuff involved that, like looking back, you tend to forget it, but at the moment we couldn't have known that it works out.

Um, on the other hand, I always wanted to become a journalist. This was actually my dream. So, um, pizza was my passion, uh, on the side. Um, but my, my actual professional passion was being a journalist. And I remember like when I was younger, as I said, my parents were from a like, Middle class, semi intellectual background.

We had a lot of books. We had two libraries at home and a lot of newspapers. And it sounds weird when I say it now, but I really read their Spiegel when I was like 12 because it, it was just lying around. And I love the foreign reports. I love the features when they went into war zones or, um, transformation countries, development countries.

I always wanted to be a reporter. I always wanted to go out there to see the world, to talk to people, to experience new things. Um, and back at the beginning of this century, this also was, was a valid, um, career option.

Yeah.

I don't know if we go into, if it's still in, in, in this year or in this day and age, but back then, yeah, uh, going into journalism, uh, was my passion and I pursued it first by studying political science to get a little background.

Actually studied Arabic, but I forgot everything about it. Um, um, and then yeah, I started going into classical, um, radio jobs, like starting in a small university radio and then, you know, climbing up the ladder.

So what was the first radio interview you did?

 So I know the first. Piece that I did was not an interview, it was, um, being an expert me. Um, and it happened like this, uh, I was having a party with a friend, um, was like November or December, 2008. I was already one year into my, uh, studies and we got drunk at his place.

I slept at the couch and the next morning he was gone. Gone for some reason. And just his roommate was there, a very nice uh, girl. Um, she's working at ZDF now, um, but back then she was 19 like me. And she, she gave me a coffee for my hangover, um, and IBO profane. And then we got talking and I told her the same story.

I wanna become a reporter. I wanna do this and that. And she was like, she's really tough. She was like, But did you do it until now? And I was, no, I'm still studying. And she was like, dude, you're studying for a year. Let's go tomorrow. Let's meet at this address. And it was the university radio. So there's a, like a university radio owned by the university in, in Leipzig

but it sends on a public channel. Uh, so I came in there and as I mentioned it was 2008. Um, so the first thing they were looking at me and said like, can you talk? I started talking. I said, yeah, that's fine enough. Do you know anything about banks? No, not at all. Doesn't matter. Read into it tomorrow.

You're the banking expert. Um, there are a couple of banks that went belly up and now we remember why 2008.

Yeah.

Um, so I spent the night reading into, um, the whole banking collapse story and trying my best to become an expert on this, and the next morning at eight o'clock, I had to go on air. And, uh, talk about what this will mean for the economy and for the future of Europe and everything.

And, uh, there is no record of this interview. Um, I think it's better this way.

That's a pity

Yeah.

the, the good thing in today's time, I was just talking to a friend the other day because my dad did radio a bit I still have the CDs of my dad doing like five minute radio show topics and

Now.

fascinating because he passed away a couple of years ago just to listening to that, which like, oh my God, because he was telling stories. Like real stories

Mm-hmm.

it, it's fascinating when you listen to that. And one of the things I say as well, a podcast so that my daughter, when she's old, she can listen to all the fun stuff I did when I was younger.

Yeah, it is. And I, I mean, I keep some of my old stuff, um, especially also the written stuff that I did later on and TV stuff. Um, but yeah, I have some old radio pieces that I was doing when I was much younger and like, When you get into radio and podcasting, you get very audio file. You know, you, you hear little bits and pieces that other people don't hear.

And like now, when I listen to it, I complain so much how, how bad I was at it. And uh, on the other hand, I realize how young I was because my, my voice changed. Like everybody's voice changes over time and you can really hear that, that somebody's like 10, 15 years younger. Um, but you just hear it, you can't see the person.

You just have to, you know, figure out like how old were there at that age. Um, so it is an interesting, definitely to keep it.

Yeah. let's jump into today's world. How did you get from radio to the public value hub?

There's a couple of steps in between. My time in journalism, um, Was going on for like 10 or 12 years. And I achieved most of the stuff that I wanted to do. I was in a foreign reporting department at public broadcasting. We're working on ARTE documentaries.

Um, and at some point that it was, Basically by coincidence, uh, when I turned 30, I got married. We were planning to have a child, and then Covid did. Um, and like in that time, like everyone else in the world, I was sitting at home for a very long time and thinking about what, what the hell am I doing here?

And some things that bothered me for years. I just, I, I realized them before, but they came together, you know? Um, I still was a freelancer, so there was no employment contract, which is a big no-no. When you get older. Um, so there is no leaving for vacation, or at least not if you want to get paid. You always hope that you never have to go to the doctor or anything.

And on the other hand, I saw some things in the public broadcasting system that I didn't like. It wasn't super innovative, even though some people tried, but the structure kept it very ineffective to be innovative. On the other hand, obviously there was no real career option anymore because everybody was a freelancer at this point due to budget constraints.

And I just had the feeling that what I wanted to do see more of the world I did. And what I wanted to do besides that, is like make a career out of this is not going to happen. Um so what I did, and that was like the intermediary step, was I thought like, okay, what can I do to change my life around?

And um, I found an ad for an MBA class, um, at a private university. And I said like, you know what, after I did like 10 years of working for the common good and public value, I'm just gonna learn how to get rich. And, uh, I attended, yeah, I attended the MBA class. Uh, I sold my restaurant or parts of the restaurant to pay for the mba.

A. And I thought like in this two years of doing the mba, I will learn what I actually wanna do with this knowledge. And it turned out that I didn't, um, for a long time I just learned how to make money the old school way and it wasn't like really my thing. And I was just sitting there like, dude, Gordon Gecko times this over.

You know, it's not the eighties anymore. And on the other end, while I was waiting for something to come up that I wanna do, um somebody invaded Ukraine and I have family there.

So yeah, that was the starting point.

It's fascinating. Maybe just stepping one step back, you said like freelancing, that's the normal business model of a journalist in a lot of parts of

Yeah.

you are a freelancer and you work for specific gigs only. It's not that you're employed by your spec stations, though, though that can happen just for the listeners,

Yeah, it's weirder in Germany because you're not a classical freelancer that gets paid by an hourly rate and then just, you know, can, uh, take whatever they want. But actually they have kind of contracts where they.

Tell you the salary you get, but it's, uh, it's not a salary, but it's also not a real freelance gig. Uh, so, um, it's, it's something that, I don't know if it works in different, in other countries as well, but basically they treat you like an employee, but you are not, and they can kick you out. Every time and you don't have all the benefits that an employee has.

So it's a weird system, especially in the public broadcasting system, um, because I have a lot of friends who are working in the investigative unit. So they're doing a lot about weird working models in the world, and everybody who's working on that piece is working in the way that I just, uh, told you about.

So yeah that's the thing in public broadcasting also, partially, I think in private broadcasting, but I don't, don't, don't know too much about it because I wasn't in it.

Yeah, that's why, at least from the US perspective, what I've learned, there are quite some journalists who are going into personalized media. So they're creating it themselves, going into writing blogs, very, very famous ones, and or do podcasts and so on.

Yeah.

So yeah, like you said in the beginning, the media landscape is completely changing and through that as well, how this works together. Why I said that. So the interesting part is you have already this entrepreneurial know how and then like, that's why I was laughing was the b a you don't really learn entrepreneurship in an mba, at least in my experience. There happened something in the Ukraine, and you mentioned that you have family there. Tell us the story where you got the phone call.

Um, yeah, I got the phone call, uh, on February 25th. So one day after the war started and the friend, uh, of mine, Maxim from Central Ukraine called me and he said in his, uh, special tone of voice, he said, bro, You have to come to border, the pick me up. Um, and now we are laughing, but there was nothing to laugh about because he was on the way to the border in the car with his girlfriends, her mother, his sister and her mother and the dog.

And the special thing was that his sister was pregnant in the 39th week. So she was already overdue and uh, they were driving in the car, approaching the border when he called me and said like, you have to come pick me up. Said, alright, okay, uh, where are you at? And for some reason he said, Hungarian border.

And I looked at the map and I was like, fine, it's a 12, 13 hours drive. You know, red Bull cigarettes go. Um, and I jumped into my car and I hoped my phone to my car so I can have calls and talk to Siri. So I started calling people, calling friends that I have that are.

Political, um, organizations that know people all around Europe trying to figure out how they, how they can get across. In the meantime, two things. Um, Came to my, um, uh, knowledge that I didn't know before. Um, the first thing was that, uh, he can't leave the country Maxim, my friend, because he's a male and they already had this order that man couldn't leave the country.

And the second thing is he just, um, misspoke. He's in, uh, Romania now, which is a 24 hour drive, not a 12 hour.

Oops.

Um, but I'm, I'm already in the Czech Republic. I'm going, you know, there's, there's no turning back. Um, so fast forward, it gets really crazy. I'm two days in the car constantly on my phone, just like having a nap in, in Budapest.

Um, and actually they have to cross the border without him because he has to stay behind. They have to cross the border without the, uh, valid driver's license. Nobody in the car has one except him. He's staying behind. And we organize a hotel right at the Romanian border on the other side. It's like, I don't know, 200 meters when you look at Google Maps.

Um, we called them before, said there's a couple of women coming. Just keep them for a day. We gonna pay, I'm gonna pick them up. They arrive. Um, Maxim's girlfriend calls me, says like we are here. And I said, okay, I'm there tomorrow. Then she calls me again five minutes later, uh, and says, Julia is in labor.

Oh no.

And this is in the middle of Romania.

It's not, it's like in the middle of the mountains. There's nothing around. Um, they had to bring an emergency transport from half an hour, uh, away, and it was just mayhem and everything over the phone. Um, So when I arrived, Maxim found an illegal way to cross the border and was reunited with the family.

Yulia gave birth to the child, which is called, who's called Little Maxim because of his hero uncle. Um, and he was born on 25th of February in, um, in Romania, I think the first Ukrainian child outside of Ukraine after the war started. Yeah,

Crazy

weird.

Crazy story. How did you get them into Germany?

Yeah, I mean like when you're on such a journey, At some point, everything weird becomes normal and you are just like, go, go, go. So I arrived at like 12 in the evening, the second day. Um, I met them briefly for a couple of minutes because they had to go to sleep as well. Um, uh, Yulia, the girl was still in the, in the hospital.

They had to do a emergency C-section. The, it was really dangerous. Um, so I said, I'm coming back the next morning, and we came back the next morning. Um, met for breakfast at, at like nine o'clock and, uh, some of the Romanian guys came back from the border, um, because they were just like bringing supplies and they said, There is so many people crossing the border that if you don't leave now, you will not get into Schengen.

And, and what I just realized on the, uh, road was I totally forgot that Romania is a European country, a EU country, but not a Changan country. So there's another border. Between, uh, Hungary and Romania. So, uh, we packed up our stuff and started going because we wanted to cross the next border before like the a hundred thousand people behind us came.

Um, and since we had a, a second car on our disposal and the third car like we found, Two girls that needed, uh, to, to go somewhere and just wanted to go with us in a column. Um, I had my car free again, so I took a number of family. So we were 11 in the end and we just went with three cars directly two days back to, to Leipzig where I lived.

And you took the baby with you as well.

No, the baby stayed behind. Um, the baby stayed behind with Yulia because of the C-section. She couldn't travel for 10 days, so the biggest reason we got there was to get her and the baby and we couldn't take them.

Ah.

uh, as I said, weird things become the new normal. There was a point. In the next days where we were so close to chartering a private jet, to go to Romania and get money from some rich people at my business school, um, to, to pay for, for the private jet to get her not all the way to Germany, but at least, uh, to Hungary so she can board the train,

Yeah,

because there's no trains from Romania to Hungary.

It didn't happen, but I, I was on the phone with somebody checking for rates and I was ready to go. You.

but now she's fine. And she's in Germany as well.

Yeah. Uh, she's, uh, still living with my mom. Um, so, um, she got a room with like, the whole family, got rooms in my mom's house. As I said, we have this big old house in the, in the city center, and she's, uh, still living there with little Maxim. The others, some of them are still there. Some moved somewhere else, you know, time moved on.

Everybody has different plans, but they're living, he's super healthy. He's a chubby little boy. He's like, Year and like, yeah, a month now. Um, so we visited, um, a couple of weeks ago and he was like in a super good mood, you know, babbling and touching everyone and playing with everyone. So, so they're fine.

Um, the only thing about her is her husband is still in Ukraine because he's an emergency surgeon and he's basically living in the hospital for a year now, uh, doing emergency surgery on people who got bombed by the Russian.

Yeah. Now I guess he has even not seen his child in, in real life.

Once

Yeah.

went by bus once for Christmas last year to see him. So they went to Ukraine to see him with a almost newborn child. Yeah.

Crazy. So how, how does that end up in a company that's called Public Value Hub?

Yeah. Um, how so? Um, During this whole thing, this journey, um, I was getting furious on one hand about the state of the world and nobody giving a shit about it or not enough people. And on the other hand, I was really thinking like, okay, what can I do? Because after all, I'm. Not a military guy. I'm not a surgeon.

I'm only a guy who can talk straight and who has a lot of phone numbers in his phone. Um, so the first thing I did back in March was to offer my help to a couple of humanitarian, um, organizations here. Just to make connections, to do their communications, help them with social media, like the, the, the little stuff that I know about.

Um, and so I got into contact with a lot of refugees, displaced people, um, basically just normal people who got bumped out of their homes. It doesn't change who you are, you know, the word refugee is just stupid.

Yeah.

so with this normal people who had to come here, And it turned out that also my ideas about who they are and what they want are wrong because I thought they're in need and I need to give them blankets and a place to sleep.

Even though they needed this in the first days, most of them asked me about stuff like co-working spaces, um, about MacBook Chargers. Because they forgot theirs. Um, about good internet connections, um, because it turned out that's normal. People with normal jobs who just got displaced by someone else. And a lot of them, especially in Ukraine, were in the IT sector.

There's a lot of IT freelancers, so they just needed the place to, to stay. And in the beginning I helped them just to find co-working spaces. So we have a lot of wonder. People owning co-working spaces here in Leipzig that opened their doors and said like, you can stay here with like eight people, six people, five people.

And so we just dispersed all these freelancers into the co-working spaces. And very quickly they asked me, uh, like, okay, but what can I do? Can I find work? Can I start a company? You know, you were at the business school. Can you help? Um, so I started thinking about it and uh, it struck me that there's so many hurdles to an outsider in Germany to start a company

Yeah.

that you basically need your private consultant to.

You know, um, and obviously I can't do it for 20, 30 people. Um, so with a couple of my friends from university and the professor, we thought about how we can solve this problem. We said like, okay, if we just give them what they need to do it themselves. It would be sufficient. Um, and we identified that it's basically knowledge with which, I mean specific knowledge about Germany and a little about entrepreneurship and then it's resources and networks.

And if you can provide that, these people are totally capable, they're more intelligent than I am, um, to, to do their own stuff. Um, so we came up with this idea to start a nonprofit company that provides exactly. To displace people and other, what we call underrepresented founders. And then on top of that, give them the knowledge or the incentive to start not any business, but a public value or social impact business.

Um, because that's actually what they asked us for. They didn't wanna sell like to somebody at two in the morning. They wanted to do something for society, give back, um, And that's basically what, what we started to do or what was the hypothesis in the beginning, that if we give them the capabilities, enable them to start their own business and give them the knowledge and the resources that they will thrive as entrepreneurs.

And also we as a society get much better companies because they will be profitable and also, uh, contribute to the common.

Yeah. How do you define public value in this?

Public value describes the value that an organization creates for all stakeholders in a society, not only your shareholders, your employees, your customers. Um, so the idea of public value is a more qualitative than a quantitative, and it means as an organization think about how.

Do you create value for the public, for the common good? And how can you increase that added value that it, that you create for society? And in the original version it's a concept from the nineties, from an, uh, Harvard professor called Mark Moore. Back then they were thinking about public administrations and big corporations and like their contribution to society.

And we just turned it around and said like, okay, if you start with the notion, I want to create public value, what kind of business would you need to create to do this? And obviously the first answer to this is you need to, um, tackle a challenge for society.

Get it. So tell us about how you do this. Maybe let's start with restart UA as one of the projects you do.

Uh, so this, our pilot project, um, restart UA stands for Restart Ukraine. And we thought we were, uh, super clever with start and startup and, you know, um, this work play. Um, but basically it's, uh, going back to the time, uh, when, when I met these people first and they asked me about entrepreneurship and I said like, okay.

Um, if there's no classical incubator that is interesting for you because you're doing it stuff, you know, you could go to any incubator. Let's start a program for you. Um, so what we offer is a 12 week pre ideation program for displaced people from Ukraine, um, to give them the basic knowledge about entrepreneurship and then also sustainability impact public value, so they can create the business model.

Solves one challenge for society. And the thing is that we address everybody who's not yet capable of going into a traditional incubator where you have to bring your business model and you know, at least know the basics.

and the goal is that they built this business in Germany and then go back to the Ukraine and help the buildup after the war, or,

 That would be the long term goal, right? To create impact ourselves by doing this. So in the short term or for the duration of the program first of all we wanna provide them and a possibility to find a purpose, that's bigger than what they're doing now.

Yeah.

and that's also the, the feedback that we got from the participants that it's great that there's like a place or program where they can contribute something and also learn at the same time. So that's the one thing, having a purpose, having something to do with yourselves. And the second is get the basic knowledge and, um, also some guidance. How to develop a business model to a, uh, to a state where we say you're actually ready to pitch it for the first time. So the outcome or the output should.

A pitch deck, a business model, that you at least thought through with all the knowledge that you need and a basic website to, to already have some marketing instruments and the roadmap, what to do next, a tailor made roadmap. Nobody will have found it at that moment, but they will have an idea.

Do you wanna do it in the next three months or six months and do a bootstrap, or do I need a VC already or a, a business angel or whatever, based on what they are doing.

Yeah. So who is helping you doing.

So we have a great network of mentors the first mentors I found were from my private network. So University Network. Uh, we have at the moment two of our professors from university who are doing it for free in their free time. Um one is the one for business model design.

The other one is the one for public value and leadership. So that's a really good match and they're doing like two separate modules. Then there's a lot of my friends from the startup scene, so people who worked in incubators, accelerators, um, we have a sales expert. Um, we have a head of marketing and for every topic that we think important we have.

One mentor that will provide them with some content and also give them feedback on what they're doing answer questions and also help them with making connections if they need a specific network for some topics.

Yeah. What I love about this that like you, you've mentioned this as well, the purpose part,

Mm-hmm.

people a purpose is big thing.

Yeah.

And helping them being in their situation where they come from. most of them are in this situation for over a year now, helping them to find a purpose and helping them to find kind of, uh, a star on the horizon where they say, Hey, there is something which I can build. Not just, say work in, in, in a normal job doing something bigger, which. Us and helps, helps as well the society in a different way. I I really love that. How do you finance this? Are they paying to be part of this or how does that work?

Uh, no, the participants are not paying anything for the program. For the pilot project, we were fortunate enough to get, um, some funding from the City of Leipzig. They had a crowdfunding project for refugees from Ukraine. And then we got some private donations. Um, basically. Enough money to do the pilot project, but not enough to keep it running in the long, um, in the long term.

Um, so this funding, which is exclusively by donations at the moment, is just for the pilot project which we also see as kind of a proof of concept and M V P for us to show like it's possible to do this also with a very very restricted budget and obviously if we would have more resources, we could scale this up and not help only 11 people, but many more.

And also people from other target groups, um, because this place people, uh, are not the only people who would be interested in such a program.

Yeah, I was about to say

Yeah.

right now, you, you mentioned already 11 people who are part of that. They all come from the Ukraine.

Yeah.

have. background, at least from a story perspective, that they, they left their home country going into another country trying to survive, let's say like this, but doing that in a way that they want to build value for the society they live in right now.

And then going back one day, if, if they ever want to go back to build,

and

the country.

I mean, it's really. Heart wrenching to hear some of their stories. You know, how they have to, uh, had to flee the country. We have one couple that got married on the border because otherwise the guy couldn't leave the country. I mean, they love each other, so it wasn't a question of whether they want to, but do you wanna do it because somebody bumped your hometown and you have to do it for legal reasons and not for, you know, I wanna feel this, I wanna have a party.

And the, the other thing is that, Through this en endeavor. Uh, I would say, uh, not the endeavor of being displaced, but the endeavor of being forced to be somewhere else and to see things from a certain perspective. They developed, some of them developed a new urgency for doing something. So we have one woman who's in her forties.

She's from a Mariupol you know the city that was bumped to the ground by the Russians and she said, um, she actually studied German when she was in her twenties, and then she stopped because she raised three children. Um, and she's totally happy about it. There's nothing wrong about it, but she said, Because of Putin, I learned, and that's a quote from her, that I have to do something to give back, to change the world because he, and like this military, this war on Ukraine, forced her to see that individualism doesn't work when somebody else wants to destroy your individualism.

You have to think in some way about the common good, and even if it's only for your own sanity, because you're sitting somewhere else and you have to do so.

Yeah, it's, it's powerful. I'm happy and try to find ways how I personally can support and with my businesses. What else do you need? So if we can use this to ask for people who might say, Hey, this is an interesting story. I, I would love to support.

How can they, um, connect and what other things you are in need right now?

Uh, first of all, thanks for saying this, and I mean, I know already that you're supporting us, um, but it's good to hear because sometimes you also question your own sanity when you do this for a year and, you know, nothing comes out of it, or not, not nothing, but you know, in terms of corporations or funding.

Yeah.

So, as I always say, uh, the first thing is networks, uh, because we need the same. So getting in touch with people who are much more knowledgeable than we are, have much more resources or influence. Always helps. So if you are a person that, uh, identifies like this, reach out to me. I'm always happy to talk.

Um, the second thing is obviously funding. Um, um, I, I would like to like split it up because obviously we are taking donations. We are a nonprofit and it's a very nice way to get things started.

But we don't wanna rely on donations in the long term. Um, for two reasons. The first reason is I saw it, especially with associations in Germany.

That do good. And they're lovely people and they have great causes, but they rely on funding for the rest of the lifecycle of the organization. Um, so we need it as a Kickstarter, but we actually want to create revenues with this. And I don't know if we talk about this, but we wanna make money with what we're doing.

So we take donations, but that's not our long-term strategy. What we are much more interested in is finding corporation partners who have the same ideas or who who believe we are not totally crazy. And this is to the advantage of the world and also themselves and wanna partner up because like we have.

Ideas We have now the incubation program, we have the people lining up to, to, uh, go into these programs. Um, but at the moment we can just do it on a small scale. And, um, basically with our program being mostly digital, we could reproduce it in any other city, um, in Germany or even in foreign countries if we have a partner who has the resources and the infrastructure.

And also obviously companies who are interested. In partnering up with public value ideas, and what I mean is a lot of companies do corporate social responsibility. They give a lot of money to charity. They give a lot of money to people who plant trees and then they get. You know, rid of the problem.

Yeah.

and I think it's good. It's always good to give and to do good, but you can even have a bigger leverage and bigger impact if you partner up with other organizations to create something with that. And I think like one thing we are looking for is corporations who want to create public value, innovation or social innovation.

And don't wanna just give the money to somebody and let them do whatever uh they want, but actually be involved. Send some people pro bono once a month that help, uh, send their own trainees to our programs because it would be a perfect fit to have a trainee from a big corporation and a displaced person from Ukraine working together.

Um, so apart from actual financial resources, we are definitely looking for these kinds of partners and I think it would be to the benefit of both sides and also obviously the public and everybody.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So if there's anyone out there, please reach out to Alex or to me. I'm happy to forward that. Talking investment. So if you want to get investment, how do you monetize that long-term?

And what is your strategy in building revenue streams for you so that it's be beneficial for you to grow, which

Mm.

return just creates bigger.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, the basic idea you already described, the more impact we create, you know, the more impact we can create and to do so, um, you need revenue streams you need financial resources and then obviously, Also you have to create output because you cannot talk about it all the time on a podcast.

You have to prove it.

Yeah.

.So in order to do that there's a couple of steps involved. The first thing is obviously we have to, uh, first finish our proof of concept. And then measure the outcome and the impact and who ever in this world has spent five minutes on understanding, impact knows it's really hard to measure impact.

It's really hard but it's not impossible. So we are also working on a way to find some kpi, how we can measure the impact, not only of our own organization, but also of potential startups coming out of these programs, uh, as early as possible because that is where I think it becomes interesting when you start on day one or even before day one of your existence of your company to envision, and then to measure your impact and have a clear story, um, with clear KPI that you

maybe in the beginning to yourself or to your angel investor or your mom who gave you like 5k. Um, but then at, at a certain point when you're eligible for an impact investment, you actually have the KPI in place. So this is the important basis for everything that comes afterwards, because if we can't prove it, we will not, you know, thrive as a, as a company.

And then to monetize that, there's multiple ways. The first is, as I said, if we have, um, corporate partners or we do programs for corporates we would do the whole program management for them, like come up with the idea, implementation and then reporting and take a fee on it. That's not a new model, but that's just for providing the service of, of implementing this, uh, these programs.

 The second would be obviously to monetize an impact investing tool that we are creating also for others because it's not exclusive to our beneficiaries, but for our beneficiaries it will be for free forever. And then the third way, um, which is the biggest stretch, um, from where we are starting is obviously have our own fund. Because that's the only. Uh, at least that I can think about how this can work in the future. Because you don't have to rely on external VCs convince them every time. But basically my dream is not on my own, but with a lot of stakeholders, public, private organization individuals have a big public value fund that for the first 10.

It doesn't give a crap, um, uh, about like two digit, um, returns, which doesn't mean that they shouldn't be profitable, but not in the short term. Um, in the long term, they should be at least as profitable as regular companies, but that care more about the impact, the public value, and then just take the money and invest in it, and then it will be a, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah. Love that. I still remember when. I was involved in an accelerator inside of IKEA when I was working in ikea. The benefit of doing that for a corporation like IKEA or any other cooperation, worked with the startup and it was not just the, the they have been building for us. Trying to solve different pain points just by the nature of a startup. It was also the engagement between each other because a large organization is not that agile. Like we always talk about though, that the this buzzword is out there. Just small things in the engagement on the daily base help people from the corporation understanding needs of startups, needs of entrepreneurs and potential customers for them as well. To get that input in the organization. What we did was taking this learning into the organization and then have changed a lot of things though that nobody understood that it came from this project. So the impact and is still going on. That's,

Yeah.

interesting part for corporation. So highly to reach out to you as well on this topic as a corporate. Another thing you do, so if we now go. St. Restart, ua. The other thing you look into is the public value incubator,

Mm-hmm.

us about that.

I mean, it's intertwined with the, uh, restart UA program because, uh, as I said, um, the Ukraine project is basically our proof of concept. Um, but what we wanna do in the long term, and I already touched some parts of it in my previous answer, is, We want to incubate public value, which sounds like a very abstract concept, but if you actually think about the ways to do it, it becomes more tangible.

Um, so basically if you are in the mindset, you wanna do something good and it doesn't matter, you're an individual, you're a public administration, research facility, investor, corporate, um, then oftentimes, You ask your friends or your colleagues or your spouse, but how do I do it? Should I donate? Uh, should I do like voluntary work?

Uh, should we plant trees? Should we, um, build a school in Africa? Should we, you know, whatever. Um, and a lot of times, like getting that answer is the most important step in your journey. And then the rest comes afterwards. So we wanna actually be this first touchpoint, um, for whoever has this thought, I wanna do something, you know?

Um, but I don't, um, probably I wanna do it in a way that's more related to the business world. Yeah, because if you wanna volunteer for nonprofit, there is much better organizations out there. Um, you know, um, I'll be happy to refer anyone. Um, but if you say, yeah, I wanna do it, but somehow it has to do with business, or we wanna invest in it because we are corporate and then we come back to this, um, then basically what we do with them is the same, uh, we do with, uh, our participants.

We do ideation. We sit down with them and say like, okay. What's the values of your corporation? Let's say, for example, what's the goals you achieve? What's your expertise and what's your blind spots and where you wanna go in the future? What's the kind of innovation you're lacking? And then out of this, like we say in German, uh, we come up with ideas on, uh, what project to either reproduce that we already did or start a totally new project, especially for your organization and maybe together with other organizations.

Um, so, uh, I was approached by someone, uh, just recently, um, from a, let's say, rural Area in Germany where he's in the public administration and said like, we're losing 5% of our population every single year. And we have public funding, but we don't know what to do with it to bring people back and said like, okay, let's do a workshop.

I mean, that's like what Hal of the consulting business is about. Um, Other than just, yeah, doing a workshop, it's coming up with ideas on what project to implement that has a lasting impact for both sides, for the one that's funding it and the beneficiaries, because we always bring the beneficiaries. We always say like, your project must have a beneficiary.

Apart from your own company and then in bringing them together, it, it's the same thing that you said. We, we are already changing the culture, the approach. There's an exchange, everybody's learning. And in the end, probably there's great joint venture startups coming out of this, um, that disrupt the company from within, you know?

Yeah, I think this is, uh, a big thing for everyone who is looking into the future, because we are, we are often as entrepreneurs or people working with corporate innovation, we are often looking at the fancy stuff, which is all the AI things that are happening right now because it's interesting and it's intriguing and it's, it's good and it, it's important. But I truly believe the the biggest differentiator in the future is us and doing that in a human way. And I think you are onto something that's very interesting, which, Helps us as a society to, to think differently. So not just, of course now you are starting in a city in inside of the German context, but being a global citizen like you, you as well, this can spread throughout the world.

Definitely and it, uh, I'm not arrogant enough to say it should be us. You know, I think there is already a lot of players out there who are doing it much longer than we are doing it. You know, people who are doing development work, people who are doing social impact for 10 years plus, uh, people who invented SDGs and E S G, uh, factors.

I mean, these were all smart people who basically, Our ideas, our values, and I think the most important thing about it is not thinking, like when we talk about scaling, not thinking about the old idea of scaling one business until it's big enough to, you know, eat everybody else, but it's scaling the whole.

Um, cake, you know, uh, grow The Pie is one of one famous book about this. It's not, not slice the pie in a different way, just grow the pie. And I think that's what we have to do. Um, we have to grow this pie of understanding that. The economy has to serve us as the people and not the other way around because all the crap happening in the world, um, that, uh, challenges us have something to do with the way we conduct business or politics.

That's what I've learned throughout the last 15 years. Yeah. Um, and. It is not necessarily the case that it has to be like this forever. This is a lie, you know? Um, like even our way of doing capitalism is roughly 200 plus years old. It's not like the only way you can do business and the world has existed before and it will exist after.

Um, so we just have to come up with better. Together and then just have everybody involved to do their part. And we are happy to do our little bitsy piece of it. Um, but we need millions to do, to do it on a level that we take over and we create a better future.

Yeah, using this. It's a, it's a good ending. So for every corporate people who have ideas and want to connect to Alex and the topics, um, reach out to him. What, what are, what is the best way? How can people reach out to you?

LinkedIn. Yeah,

Yeah.

definitely.

So I will put your link to your LinkedIn profile into the show notes. Wherever you see. Listen to this episode. Reach out to Alex, um, or to me, happy to introduce. I'm definitely going to support which way ever. Um, I have a couple of ideas. Um, let's talk about that offline first.

I'm intrigued.

Yeah, yeah, no eager to support and as well, try to find a couple of network partners out of my ecosystem to support.

You guys, what you do. Thank you very much for joining me on the show, and good luck with the future.

Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. The hour went by very fast and I could talk on for hours. As you can imagine, um, with you or with anybody else who's willing to meet, um, we can definitely do this.

We, maybe we do a, a second round in half year or a year where we share the best results.

Sounds great.

Super, Alex, thank you very much.