E086: Zebras Unite

Hello. This is James and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. What are we speaking about today? Jane, well,

today we're talking to someone about the zebras movement over in the startup world, which is really, really exciting.

That's cool. Yeah, so zebra zebras, we're joined from across the ocean, in fact, in California, and the Williams is going to be speaking to us about the zebras movement and how businesses can be a little bit more ethical, particularly in the startup space. So we're looking forward to that. Yeah,

I think their perspective on taking growth differently in comparison to some of the existing startup culture, and being slower and more persistent, but also with a sort of longer, more sustainable work model, I think is really good. Cool. All right. Well, let's get into the conversation and see what we learn. Okay,

so here we are in the main body of today's conversation, and today we're joined by Ania, and we're going to be speaking broadly about another conversation in the theme of responsible business, which we do enjoy speaking about. And today we're going to be speaking about the zebras movement and and here we're looking a little bit at the experience of startups and startup funding, and the role that that has in the sort of responsibility and behavior of these these organizations. Before we get into that, though, would you be able to introduce yourself to the audience and say a bit about yourself and your background? Yes,

happily, my name is Ania Williams, and I am the co founder of zebras unite, and I'm also the executive director of black and brown founders. Little bit of this, little bit of that. That sounds

excellent, and it's great that you went in with zebras, because even though I grew up in the States, I'm going straight in with zebras. So we'll get a bit of zebra zebras here,

I know. And it's funny, because we have such a global community, more people in our community say zebras than zebra How fun? Just indoctrinated in the American zebras.

Yeah, I get yogurt and yogurt as well. That's another one. Yeah. We actually know, I don't know how close you are to her, but we know Daisy, who runs for zebras chapter up here in Edinburgh, and she's part of a race, yeah. So it's pretty cool before we talk a little bit about, you know, actually, what's going on with the zebras movement, can you say a little bit about what unicorns are? Because I'm not sure that everybody will know what a unicorn is for the context that we're speaking

about here. Yeah, that completely makes sense, because zebras was kind of imagined as a counterpoint to zebra so zebras in here, in the tech industry, or at least in the world of startups, zebras are what are referred to as companies that have a valuation of a billion dollars or more. This is an ecosystem that's very much powered and dominated by venture capital funding, and for those investors to make the returns that they're looking for, they need billion dollar exits, and so it's a culture that venerates this idea of the unicorn and these billion dollar businesses that go from zero to 1,000,000,005 to seven years, maybe less, if they're lucky.

Cool. Okay, so that's a good introduction, and Edinburgh has got a thriving startup scene of its own. It's not the scale of Silicon Valley at all. And as a little side note, the Scottish National Animal is actually the unicorn. So I think, yeah, we're about the only country, probably, with a fictional animal, I guess, or maybe whales have a dragon or something like that. I love it, the imagination. It's quite fun, isn't it? Yeah. So I guess if we start off, and if we think about these unicorns and these venture capital backed startup companies with an aspiration of reaching that billion dollar private held, privately held valuation. What is it about the way that they operate at the minute and their sort of behaviors that has led you to to try and push back or create an alternative or raise awareness of things that aren't necessarily

great? Yeah, I think it helps to kind of give some context around how it is that I got here and the journey to getting here. So in one like the first part of it really is that I started my own tech startup in 2014 it was a company called tinsel. We made a necklace that transformed into headphones. Our goal was to design electronics, consumer electronics, with women in mind, not just like the kind of shrink it or pink it type of thing. And in the process of building that company, we went out and sought venture backing. We did get some funding, but it was through that experience that I became familiar with the the kind of context around venture capital funding and what it all meant. Because the thing about it is, you know, I live in San Francisco. I had been living in San Francisco for a few years before I started tinsel, and that my experience kind of transitioning into in the to the tech industry. When I moved here in 2011 was one. Where I kind of, you know, quickly became indoctrinated in the culture of it. I was very much taken in by all of the shininess of it. And, in fact, my husband, the reason why we moved out here, he got recruited to work at a company called Yammer, which actually ended up being a unicorn. It was acquired by Microsoft for like, $1.2 billion and so, so, you know, all of the things that were actually even happening in my world very much fit the narrative of how we like, yes, startups and we're doing this, and blah, blah, blah. So I think it's really easy to be taken in by all of what Silicon Valley has to offer. This entire narrative that, you know, you can come here and become, you know, a millionaire or a billionaire just by joining a startup. But the reality of it is like these, these incidents, like these events, are actually very rare when these, you know, big exits happen where everybody makes a ton of money, and it like changes the trajectory of a bunch of people's lives. The reality of it is, like there most of the time there's, there's a small group of people who are making a lot of lot of money off of this, and a lot of people who put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into trying to build up a company that ultimately never ends up, you know, giving them back the same returns that they were hoping for. Like they probably could have made more money just actually having a salary at a regular job during that time. And there's, there's a lot also to just be said about the spirit of the people who come and try to find, you know, their place in this industry as well. But in general, I think that what ends up happening, or at least what I what I experienced, was one after I built I, like left to build my own company. The experience that the other founders that I knew, many of which who were white men, including, like, you know, the company that I was working at at the time, my experience fundraising was not like their experience fundraising, the conversations that I was having with investors were not like the conversations that they were having with investors, the kind of proof points that investors were looking at and evaluating did not seem to land the same way when they were coming out of my mouth. So I realized, like, you know, obviously one thing is the the kind of homogenous, you know, culture that's here, and what kind of effects that has on opportunity and people getting backing and the funding that they need. And then I think the other part of it was me also starting to understand what the implications are of when someone is trying to build a billion dollar business, it's seeing that there are a lot of companies that can actually build a really incredible product, get it to a certain point. And I feel like there's kind of this plateau that, from my observation, at least, of kind of watching startups, and knowing people who run and work at startups for almost a decade now, is that they get, kind of like to the double digit millions, and they kind of hit this plateau of how much revenue they're actually able to make, but that, you know, is, and that's a fantastic business for lots of people would love to have, like, you know, an eight figure business, but it's not enough. It's not enough when you're looking at it through the lens of, you know, what they have to return to their investors and who those investors have to return to their LPs. Like, it is not enough, and so it kind of puts a lot of founders in a situation where they have to make choices to continue that growth that they maybe weren't expecting, or that, you know, might feel misaligned with their values. And so I think that the the time of us building businesses, and this is what I say about startups. But in general, like the time of us building businesses where we are only concerned about shareholder profits and returns, and we are completely divorcing that from humanity and what society needs and what are the effects on communities, it's only it's at our own peril, and so that, I think, is a lot of what was coming up for me and my experience when, when I paired up with Mata and Astrid and Jen and and us really having our own experiences that brought us to that destination, but realizing that we were so incredibly aligned On our perspective of what was happening and what needed to be happening instead as a counterpoint to that. And that was how zebras was born.

That's that's really cool. And a lot of the stuff that you speak about is stuff that we're passionate about and that we speak to others about as well. We're pretty, pretty openly against the shareholder value maximization, you know, ideology, I guess that's been around for a while. Interestingly, up here in Scotland, we've had a couple of unicorns, not many. One is maintained itself as a great place to work. It's now owned by Chinese private ownership. And the other, interestingly, was bought out. But it was bought out in such a way that the original founders. Left with nothing. So they've gone on to set up another thing, and they grew a giant organization, and it didn't work out for them, right? And then, you know, the rumors are of it, in some ways, they're quite happy doing what they're doing now, but that must be a really difficult,

right, difficult situation to be, yeah, I mean, I think that it's, it's a risk that people come in, you know, willing to take, right? I think entrepreneurs in general, like I at least, I hope most people know that. You know the odds are not necessarily in your favor, not every business makes it, but are also kind of arbitrarily optimizing for certain kinds of activities and criteria and ways of thinking about how you grow a good business that's really, again, driven by that sort of, like, shareholder return, investor LP, return, infinite growth kind of thinking. And it's just, I mean, I think that, you know, it worked for a while. I think it in some cases actually, like there's, there is a narrow band of opportunities where maybe that is the right thing and the right way to think about it, but we have expanded that thinking to, you know, virtually every business that's getting created in the startup ecosystem today, and it's just not serving us. It's not

so talk to me a little bit more about for zebra zebra since so in terms of the approach for zebras as organizations, what is it that they're really looking to do. How do they differentiate themselves?

What are the impacts, what they want to have?

Yeah, it's interesting, because there are, there's kind of a spectrum of different things that that come up depending on who you're talking to. I'd say that the one thing that really unites all of the zebras is that they are companies that care about more than just, you know, shareholder returns and and profit, that they're looking beyond profit and that they believe fundamentally that purpose and profit do not have to be mutually exclusive, is how I would really categorize that. And I think that, you know, the characteristics like, you know, we have this, this sort of diagram where we juxtapose zebras and unicorns, and kind of talk about these different factors when you're looking at one versus the other. And I think that those different factors kind of come about as an extension of the kind of values and beliefs that the founders who start these zebras companies have. And in some cases, we have some folks in the community who maybe started off, you know, building they had a venture backed business, and for whatever reason, you know, they very much soured on the idea of what that meant to them, whether it be, you know, ethical concerns, or whether that be, you know, feeling like they got shafted On on ownership and optionality in their own business, whether that be just a matter of having more control over, you know, the end point that they're trying to reach with their business. There's all these different reasons. And I think the real tragedy of it is that I there's still money to be made by investing in zebra companies. Like lots of it, and like, just because it's not a shoot for the moon concept every time should not be like a negative thing. And then the other part, I would say, is that, you know, these are, these are people who actually want to use business as a vehicle to create change in the world, that they are using their businesses to try to solve problems for communities that they represent or that they see issues in that need to be met and can be addressed through a model that does return profits, but that it is not the only measure of success for that business.

And from your experience, are there organizations out there that you think are doing this well, or who can be role models for some of the new organizations that are approaching the world this way? Yeah,

I think a lot of the popular ones that come up a lot is, well, base camp is one I think people love to talk about, you know, Rei Patagonia, like, there's a lot of things, of companies that that even have started off as venture backed and kind of bought back their their investors interest in the business, so that they can kind of regain control. That's something that actually, I shouldn't say a lot of companies. It's pretty rare, but it's also a thing that has happened, like Buffer is an example of that. And so I think the interesting thing is that there's still so many kind of zebra folds out there that want to, you know, really grow up into being a fully fledged business that can can actually show, you know, a more of a life cycle of how this happens in business. But the reality is, we're still very much at the vanguard of it, which, to me, is the most exciting part, right? Like being in the place, like being the Silicon Valley, parts of me very much love, like the kind of limitless opportunities and imagining what what that future can be like. But I think it's interesting. It's a very brave, courageous group. Of founders as well, because it feels very, very frequently like there is not a charted path that we're trying to take and and, you know, that's a blessing and a curse, because we get to kind of make the rules and define the culture of what that should look like, but at the same time, it makes it harder to kind of galvanize the support of institutions and people who have kind of long been aligned with the status quo, because they still very much have a if it ain't broke, don't fix it, kind of mentality about it, and are kind of overlooking what I think is a really fantastic opportunity. It's really interesting.

So we recorded an interview a couple of weeks ago with a CTO of Todoist or do it, sorry. And they were taught they were talking about the the importance, the growing importance for some organizations about work playing an appropriate role in people's life, so somewhat being counter to the obsessive, immersive you know, I live at work. I work 20 hours a week, and I'm part of this incredible culture, and trying to act, in some senses, like a counter culture against that. And it sounds from the organizations you've just mentioned, there is a, there's an overlap there about both the organization's purpose, but also about how those owners or those leaders want their employees to experience work. So there does it feels almost like, you know, they're fighting for organizations to be better citizens of the world in every sense. Is that, is that? How you see it, that they organizations want to be better at being a part of this world?

Yeah, yeah. There is this thing that I kind of like to say in in talks that I give a lot, which is like, you know, they're looking at a quadruple bottom line, and that's creating value for customers, employees, society and shareholders. Oh, I

love that. So we we talk, when we had this conversation, one of the things they were saying was that that that kind of organization really needs, like, a big, loud winner at the moment, because, like you said, it's fighting upstream, right? You're fighting against a culture that's that's celebrating big, massive, huge, scalable profit. And I didn't, it feels very much like it's emerged out of the I'm old enough to remember the 90s. And it feels like it's emerged out of that period, certainly in the UK, where we were very we were glorifying money and the deregulation of the financial markets. I don't know there feels like this, this tiny little ripple. You called them foals, which I love, this idea of little zebra folds that are going to grow up. But this idea that we have to nurture these businesses if we want them to perform a an important function for society, but also be good to our people and our customers and our workers, absolutely.

And it's, it's so interesting because, you know, there's something that that I've been kind of working on behind the scenes, and I'm really excited to unveil very soon, but it's very deeply rooted in ecosystem work and building up an ecosystem, and zebras is, is, you know, obviously very much aligned and related, like the work that is happening on the zebras front is very much related to that as well. Where it's there are all these kind of factors that are, I think, are coming to play and starting to converge, all at the same time. And as much as I absolutely hate. You know a lot about this moment in history and all of the the pain and the danger and the violence and the hate that's happening, it like, I don't know the silver lining, I guess, like, I'm like, I don't know what to how to even try to frame this, but is that it's, it's creating like that reckoning is actually kind of opening up an opportunity. And that part of that is, is is real, like having everyone kind of come to this, like, very stark realization that things are so incredibly broken, and that it's not just like, oh, like, pop a band aid on it, and like, we'll just keep it moving. It's need to, like, maybe amputate some limbs and, like, completely tried, like, this is a real thing. And so I think, you know, the again, the opportunity, I think, is really about, like, what does it look like to really redesign entire systems? And so I think, so, I think that that is, a very important conversation. But there are also these things that have to exist as conditions to kind of make that, something that isn't going to just put us back in the place where we are replicating the harm with, like, just a new flavor, or a new kind of like, you know, costume on it of what has been happening for decades or centuries, even. And so I think it requires a lot of intention, and I think that it requires the right compass, and most importantly, it requires people to be able to have conversations with each other like in good faith. And that is in very, very rare supply. Nowadays, I think there's a lot to be said about that. And so there are all these these things that I find myself thinking about as themes, both in how, like, these harmful behaviors get kind of perpetuated and sort of propagate throughout the system, but also, what does it look like to kind of have the sort of the forces that that are, you know, battling that in some ways. If that makes sense, it

absolutely makes sense. I love the idea of creating a sort of a community or toolkit or ecosystem to support that. I think that's really interesting. I've got many different thoughts. One thing that I had a conversation with somebody earlier this week that they mentioned was the fact that they, in senior roles and organizations, would have one to one conversations with the other members of their executive committee, and on a one to one basis, everyone would talk about the right thing and say, Yes, I value the right thing. Yes, I agree it. I'd like to do it. However, when you get into that sort of performative nature of a board meeting and you feel aligned to your shareholders, nobody would speak up and do the right thing there. So I think that separation from the self and what we want versus what we see our sort of performative role in organizations is interesting. Yeah.

I mean, I think moving past that is actually going to be quite a big challenge, absolutely. But sorry, you can go ahead and finish. I was going to kind of rabbit hole. But please go

ahead. Yeah, there's just lots of my mind. And I love the way that you describe where we are at this moment in time. Obviously, we echo the angst and upsetness about the way things are in the world, but, but I also find it hard to speak about, but I feel a sense of opportunity and excitement within it as well. That feels like we are either in or entering the, you know, the depth of the trough meaning that we might be able to change and you know, in your word amputate. And one of the things I'm really curious about is whether or not things like the legal entity structures that we use for our organizations are fit for purpose as they are, or whether we need to even break things down to more fundamental levels and define what an organization is, and how do we collect for it, and who are our owners? And can owners be beyond people? Or what does that look like? Oh

my gosh, you were speaking my language. Yes. I'm like, same. Oh my gosh, yes. So we have these conversations a lot too, like the four co founders, especially the four of us, talk about this all the time. When zebras was first kind of being, when we first started it, right at an inception. We started it off as a nonprofit and and we kind of started to come up against some, some obstacles in terms of how we were thinking about our activities as an organization, and what things we were constrained by in that, in that, that corporate structure, and then also thinking, Okay, well, we don't want to flat out, you know, C corporation either, because that kind of still is, it's in service of, you know, a few people at the top kind of benefiting more than everyone who's involved. And so we were, we had lots of conversations about this, and we kind of always kind of knew, I think, too, from the beginning, that that Co Op was like the direction that we wanted to move into. But we hadn't really had many examples, if any, that we felt like we could point to that we're like, that's the we want to do it like that. And so it's been this, this kind of exercise, I think, over time, as we've started to just do the different projects and initiatives that zebras has pushed forward and and grown this community that has been very active in communicating with each other and expressing what problems they have and what their desires are, that we have been able to kind of say, Okay, we kind of need To build a container that looks like this. This is what we want it to do, um, and then just getting aligned with with legal professionals who can, like, help us put that on paper, like, you know? And it's so funny to me too, because I think there's so much that feel like the the things that that keep us in this kind of status quo type of position. When we think about all these systems and the way that the world works today, there's so much like, can't, where really, like, it's a won't. And I think if there's any that I learned from COVID and the Coronavirus, just like uprooting everything that we know as like normal in the past few months, it's is, how much of those can't we're actually won't like, just feeling empowered with the like, okay, so all this shit is made up and like, we can design whatever the hell we want, like, most of the stuff contracts on paper. So if we can say that this is what we're expecting to happen. This is what we want to reward. This is how we think this should function. This is where people get moved from here to here. This is where resources get moved from here to here. This is how we produce value. This is how we measure whether we're being successful at what we're doing. This is our plan for if it fails completely. This is our plan for if. It actually is quite successful, and that it doesn't have to look like it's looked in the past, right? And it also doesn't have to happen overnight, like it can happen in stages, but the can't needs to go away. I think we need to, like, really acknowledge when we're actually just being unwilling to accept and imagine what something alternate can be, and just start doing it.

So I it's just the word that used. I've been fitting with my head since, since you started talking at that last piece, the word imagine has been stuck in my head of that quote. You know, if you can imagine it, it can be done, right? And I think our businesses are so built on scalable our businesses every economies of scale has become so important over the last 30 years that there's a fight against doing anything that's unique or bespoke. And then when you come up with a completely different way of doing things, everyone's like, No, you can't do that. It doesn't fit any of our templates. It doesn't fit any of our systems. And it's the bottom line is, if you or your group of people, or any group people can imagine how it might work. There will be a legal structure. There will be a system and a process that you can build around it, because that humans can only imagine what's possible and plausible. So I just, I get, I find it incredibly frustrating that just because other people can't imagine or envisage what that might be like or why people might want to do it. It doesn't mean it's not doable,

absolutely. And I keep saying that there's a war on imagination right now. I think we've, we've done so much to discourage people from bringing creativity into the world of business. We talk about innovation, right? And which is essentially, you know, the embodiment of creativity, but, but we're, we're only allowed to innovate in as much as it's like disrupting something that isn't fundamentally like our domain, right? And I'm saying, like, just in the ways in which, you know, humans are so self interested. It's like, yeah, go ahead. Disrupt the, you know, the camera industry. Let's, like, completely upend and, like, did it with your innovative solution. But then soon as we start talking about funding vehicles, it's like, oh no, no, no. But not that though. That's, that's fine. That's working, yeah,

yeah, yeah, exactly. We don't know in my backyard, right? We don't want that at all. Yeah, there's, um, something else that's massive in my mind, and I'm not going to start it as a conversation, because I think we go off too long. Is the concept of externalities. And for me, one of the fundamental problems that we have with organizations is that a huge number of organizations profit from generating costs that are absorbed by others, be they individuals of estates or other stakeholders, be that through the well being of their employees or environmental outputs that are very detrimental to communities, all that stuff. So, I mean, I think there's a huge flow there, but I'm not going to do that, because we don't, I think have space to do. But what I would like to speak about a little bit is some of the existing stuff that's out there. So you're on an exciting journey of reimagining some of the ways that organizations can be and some of the ways that funding could be obtained for those organizations in some ways, that would be used and guidance around that and things like that. Could you speak to me a little bit about two things that are out there a minute, which are things like B Corporations and then the impact investment community, because I know that these are two current vehicles that are used to try and move in some, some way towards the direction that you're aiming to head. Have you got thoughts about that? Yes,

yeah, so I heard B Corporation, and then what was the other one?

Impact investment vehicles?

Okay, yeah. So I'd say the B Corps are definitely something that that a lot of people are latching on to. And I think, you know, it's very symbolic of, it's a way to I think it's interesting, because I feel like so much of this is so when we think about what's happening in business, right, and what is happening with people, these business decisions and identities are actually so closely entwined in ways that we don't talk about a lot explicitly. But I think that B Corps are actually a really interesting example of that, because I feel like every business owner that I have talked to who's gone through the process of, you know, getting that certification has definitely had, you know, really a core part of of their identity that that felt like it was associated with And they wanted their business to kind of be branded that way, too. And so I think that it's, it's a, it's a really beautiful like signal and values that that, you know, also seeing a growing support for that is also indicative of, I think, the kind of society people want and want to be living in, the kind of world of business people want to be operating in. But I also think, like you know, what's interesting is watching the rise of cooperatives as well, which I think is also starting to become very popular, even though a lot of people are still kind of trying to figure out how to navigate that from kind of a power dynamic of. Perspective, but, um, but I think that it's a really beautiful thing, and I think it's going to kind of be, like, a little bit awkward for a while where, like, it's like, going through puberty, and you're just like, Wait, I didn't know that that was gonna pop up. Like, that's part of the process, right? That, like, if people are navigated by the right compass, then then they'll arrive at the right solutions. And then the other thing I was going to say is about impact investing, yeah,

or even just more broadly, I mean, about the difficulties of raising finance when you're operating in this ethical space. Part of reason I ask is we had a conversation with somebody who's now got a successful big corporation that's across the UK. But they're maybe 25 years into this journey, 30 years into this journey, and their funding processes were hugely difficult, very difficult for them to make any any progress and to get money. And they needed to make money in a more conventional way before they could then transform into this and so they're active and passionate, and they've gone on to set up an impact investment company to try and change that. That's awesome, but their ability to raise, yeah, it's cool, isn't it? They're called snowball, but their ability to set this up early on was really difficult. So I'd just like to hear how people can,

yeah, we see that a lot, and I think, you know, there's just too few investors that are out there by comparison. And I think there's, there's not enough capital that's being deployed in these other kinds of ways and towards, you know, more socially focused endeavors. The other thing I was going to say too is that, you know, there, I think part of the problem that zebras set up has set out to solve, like we have three kind of core pillars of how we center our activities, and that's around community, culture and capital, not necessarily in that order, but those are the three kind of main things and and on the capital front, I think what's, what's really interesting is that there's just no, there's no commonly accepted funding vehicle for businesses that don't know what their growth trajectory is going to end up. Like, being right like that. They they won't. They know that there's an opportunity. They know that there is money to be made. They're confident that a stable, sustainable business can be built on this, but they can't, like, do the like this is going to like, have an exit of $1.35 million on January 2 and 2050 Right? Like, I mean, no one who can do that, right. We can all say that, right. But, like, what's coming right,

exactly. And so it's like, you know, if you're not out there, kind of talking up the fact that you're going to eat the world, then it's just like, Oh, your vision is too small, and funding for that, we'll see a bank loan or something. But banks don't want a loan to start up. So it's just, it's, it's a hot mess. And so kind of part of what, um, you know, in the back to the the kind of capital piece of what zebras does in, when we talk about it internally, it's like we talk about, you know, we need to share with people like, what, what options are existing today, right? We need to make sure that people know what funding options exist across the spectrum and where there are none. We that like, are meeting a need. Like people have a need, but there is not a vehicle for that. We need to create one and where there is a vehicle that, like, is there, but it's like, not quite right, like, we need to figure out what kind of iterations need to be made to make that more accommodating to the kinds of goals that people have for their businesses. And so I think, like, if I, if I, if I was looking at kind of, you know, I keep using this word compass to talking a lot about just like, these ideas of like, what are like, these kind of deeply pragmatic concepts that can just unite large groups of people to, like, just move in the same direction, right? Like, we don't have to all hold hands and like big cupcakes for each other, but how can we just, like, be aligned enough to just swim in the same direction. And I feel like, right now that like, it's kind of just pointing at like, more like, that's, that's what it's pointing at industry, just more like, that's what it's pointing at and like, I think it just, it needs to kind of be redirected to point more at like, collective good. I think that, like the kind of corrections that we need to see across the board, especially in the world of business, because that is, like the main driver of human activity, and it shapes a lot of our cultural norms and behaviors, is that, you know, we need to kind of really shift incentives to be aligned to how people are contributing to to the common good, right? And not just this very individualistic kind of view of like, I'm going to get mine, and I'm going to get as much as I can, because I don't know when they're going to close the portal when I can't grab anymore. Yeah, and I keep a lot of the stuff that we're talking about now, I long time.

Same commitment to the practice of learning and growing like that is the we live in the information age. And the Information Age demands that you are constantly learning like that is actually the, probably one of the most primary ways of surviving that that is now like marking this next phase of human civilization, and that in that it's like, learning about yourself is, like, so important. I just realized, like, how many decisions are getting made? Like, when I'm when I'm able to kind of get a little peek behind the curtain, I'm seeing how sausage is made, and I'm just like, you don't want to do that. Like, noticing the ways in which people are are just, you know, like, they're very much gonna be driven by their self interest, but like, when you're driven by your self interest and you don't actually, like, you haven't even been able to explicitly identify, like, what your motivations are, it just makes you so much more likely to do harm to other people and to perpetuate like harmful behaviors, and to like vote and optimize for harmful things. And I think that, you know, even very well intentioned people find themselves in that situation. And so I just think, like, I don't know, I it probably sounds like very Woo, woo, and a little bit of a departure from this entire we're all over this. We're 100%

Yeah, like, people need to learn how to be introspective and how to really think critically about what drives them and what do they want. And like, who do they want to show up to be in this world? And like, what is the distance between that and like, where they are right now, and how do they close that distance?

If that's Woo, woo, I'm all okay with Woo, woo, because I think James and I, if you, if you can fight the prevailing narrative of what the world tells you you should be in one and figure out for yourself what you should be in one, you're winning. You're winning against everything, because you're able to challenge that prevailing narrative of what you're being successful is. And as soon as you do that, all the scales start dropping from your eyes about how influenced you are by those sort of societal expectations of you will do this, and you will do this, and this is what success looked like. So knowing yourself is like, it's the gold dust. That's the real gold dust for me. Anyway, yeah, and it sounds

so simple, but it is. It's and, well, one it's hard. It is, actually it's way harder. It's easier said than done. But also, I mean, just most people are not given the tools to be able to do that, and so it, it seems like a very simple thing, but it's, it's actually like we're not even in the universe. I think of most people doing that kind of work with themselves, yeah. I

mean, education's got to change. We don't. We don't give young people the skills to have introspection or critical thinking or emotional awareness to the level needed, I believe, to get us to where we need to be. And

we also treat education like it is. It finishes when you start working right except specific CPD or, you know, if I know one thing about getting to know yourself and getting to understand yourself is a it's really hard, really quite painful at times, because you realize just how utterly flawed we are as humans. Takes time and effort, and if your work and your family is filling that time, how on earth do you make the space in your life to step back and do all the work you need to do in order to take a sort of helicopter view of your life and say, Hang on, where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I on this treadmill?

Exactly. I mean, it's, honestly, it's, I couldn't agree more with both of you, and it's, it's really like, the most powerful, you know, weapon and form of protection that you can have, like, to your point, like, you know, when we live in this, like, very disordered, like, information environment, right? So, you know, we're talking about information and learning and all of that stuff, like the environment in which we're learning. In fact, there is this, there's this, um, there's like, a tweet storm that I have where I was kind of talking about misinformation, and I shared this link to an article where this woman, I think her name is Claire Wardle, sort of said something like, you know, in the way that we had to kind of learn how to wear sunscreen when we go outside to not get like hurt by sunlight, right? We have to kind of figure out, like a way to protect ourselves from misinformation in like on the internet, and where we're looking all the time, where our attention is all the time, there's, there's misleading information there that informs people's decisions and has them out here doing crazy, yeah,

for somebody's benefit, not for their own benefit, right? I mean, that's what it comes down, right,

exactly like, for exactly whose benefit. And so I think, you know, it's that, that that strong anchor of knowing yourself and really understanding how that connects to the world around you. It's just, it's such a powerful, like, source of of strength and protect. Action, you know. So I think it's really important. Cool.

Well, let's, let's leave it there. Just in the interest of time, we could take this into a whole nother series of podcasts, I'm sure. But just in the interest of time, let's wrap up just before we go though, is there anything that people could do to learn more about zebras and the work that you're doing or your own work as well?

Yeah, absolutely. Go to zebras, unite.com and look up what we're doing. Join the community there. We have a wonderful community of incredible founders who are doing incredible things, and other you know, practitioners and investors in the community as well. And if you want to learn more about me in the shenanigans that I'm up to, you can go to my website, aniya.com, a n, i y, I a.com and, yeah, great. Or find me on Twitter at opera, Queenie, cool. All right, yeah, fantastic. Thank you. That was a really pleasurable conversation. So thank you for coming along. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Okay, so you are back in the room with Jane and myself. I save a room. You're back in the socially distant space where we're in separate rooms and doing it virtually with Jane and myself. That was our conversation with Ania, where we were speaking about the zebras movement and all things to do with, I guess, increased responsibility, that quadruple bottom line, but you can have in the startup space specifically. And I thought it was a really fun conversation. And I love the energy and the entire sort of ambition and scope of what we spoke about on that James, do you have any key takeaways that you want to reflect on? I

don't know so much about takeaways, because when I speak to someone, and we've spoken to a couple of people like this Now recently, where I feel that their values and the way that they vision the world is similar to where you and I see things. So I don't know so much takeaways. There's more points that I need to go and weigh and mull over, which is this idea that there is this resistance to a vision of a different way of doing things, and a discomfort. And I don't know if that's coming from the idea that those who don't subscribe to it feel like in some way, it's a criticism of the way they're doing it, which, of course, it is, from our perspective. But there's definitely a resistance and a discomfort with the idea that, when we talk about these ideas, that maybe the way that business in the world is working in business sense isn't great. Yeah,

it's interesting, I guess. And from the other side. Some people maybe think that the types of conversations we enjoy and the types of change we're looking to drive are somewhat naive. Is the way that a pejorative view of us would be. I think there's lots of great stuff in there. I'm, you know, as you know, I'm totally behind all of this. And one of the things that I'd like to just touch on is the fact that at the heart of this is so much of a focus on the individual and for personal development. And I think that's such a great takeaway from this conversation. You know, we want to change the way businesses work. We want to change the way our organizations work. But what's really the starting point of that? Well, maybe one of the starting points is to do self reflection, understand our values, understand ourselves, understand our thinking and our emotions and the way that we operate as individuals in the world. And then from there, we can build out and make change to other aspects, and do that from an informed position. Yes,

I think, I think I sometimes I'm challenge myself around the idea is, is it really just all about the individual? Because, of course, we also are passionate about the idea of externalities on society and things like that. But fundamentally, whether it is all about the individual or not, it definitely starts there, right? It has, just like you say, it has to start with you being comfortable as an individual about what you are and aren't willing to accept in your life and in the lives of those around you and in your society. And if you can't get really clear on that, it's always going to be an uphill battle moving to a different normal.

Yeah, cool. Well, let's leave it there, all right. Well, thank you very much. We'll draw the line under that conversation, and we'll be back with you again in another week with another episode. So until then, thank you very much. And goodbye from me. Bye. Everyone. Stay safe. You.