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John Simon

Former US Ambassador to the African Union and co-founder & Managing Partner of impact investing firm Total Impact Capital.

Oct 21, 2026

4:21
So John, maybe can you walk us through one structure you built? What was the financing problem, how you structured it, and all these mechanics?
4:30
Yeah.
4:31
So the problem usually starts with not a financing problem, but a delivery problem.
4:36
So, for instance, in Central America, if people outside of the urban areas typically get their water from water cooperatives that provide piped water to people's homes through relatively... poorly managed and underinvested systems.
4:54
And the problem with this dynamic is because they buy the water on a sporadic basis, because it's not necessarily clean water, people aren't willing to pay that much.
5:06
So they don't have enough money coming in to invest in systems that would provide the water more efficiently.
5:13
Often because water isn't provided on a regular basis, people in the homes keep their taps open, which makes it much more expensive to pump the water through the system.

8 MINS LATER

13:05
How does that work? Does that feed into any of your structures? Is that a key innovation or is that, you know, less in your sub stacks of

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