Ben Kolesar: Launching Mobile Money in Africa One Country at a Time #25
Can mobile money really save whole percentage points of a nation's GDP, and unlock an economy in the process? JD explores this with Ben Kolesar, Operations Lead at Wave Mobile Money, whose unlikely path from Congressional staffer to fintech pioneer brought him to the front lines of financial inclusion across Sub-Saharan Africa. Ben unpacks the painstaking work of launching mobile payments from scratch in a new country, the fish traders who became Wave's unlikely first customers in Senegal, and why the most powerful thing a tech company can offer the world's poorest people is simply a cheaper, more reliable way to move money.
Articles, Scripture, organisations, and other media discussed in this episode
Wave Mobile Money - The mobile money company Ben has worked at since its early days, operating across 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing low-cost digital financial services to people without bank accounts.
SendWave - The remittance company that preceded Wave, founded by Drew and Lincoln, which allowed diaspora users to send money directly to mobile wallets in Africa, starting with Kenya.
M-Pesa - The pioneering mobile money network in Kenya launched by Safaricom, which inspired the founding of SendWave.
GiveWell - The effective altruism-aligned charity evaluator referenced throughout the episode as a benchmark for high-impact giving, particularly in the discussion of earn-to-give versus direct work.
Talent Safari - A job board and headhunting organisation for up-and-coming tech companies in Africa, founded by Ben Hyman, referenced in the discussion of how to break into the African tech sector.
Open Philanthropy - Now known as Coefficient Giving. Referenced as having recently started a fund researching export-oriented development and industrialisation as a path out of poverty in the developing world.
Episode Highlights:
Why Mobile Money Matters
“If you're cutting down the cost of doing that, then you can actually save people whole percentage points of GDP in terms of the fees that they're paying.”
More Than Saving Money
“When you're saving people money, when you're making something easier and cheaper to do, you're also causing transactions to happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And that way, you're also enabling businesses and livelihoods that wouldn't have happened otherwise.”
The Power of Infrastructure
“Now that Wave is widespread, ride-hailing is possible in a way that it wasn't before. E-commerce and social commerce are possible in a way that they weren't before. And so it is a platform, a piece of infrastructure that other people can build on top of.”
The Secret to Breaking New Markets
“You're trying to find initial use cases that will allow you to get usage with a limited number of agents.”
On Effective Altruism at Its Best
“At its best, effective altruism has this rare combination of ambition and humility that you don't find in a lot of places.”
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JD (00:04.824) Great. Okay, Ben, thanks so much for coming on.
Ben Kolesar (00:08.647) Yeah, thanks for having me.
JD (00:10.936) Why don't you take a moment to share a little bit about yourself, what it is you do to impact the world.
Ben Kolesar (00:16.411) Yeah, so we work for Wave Mobile Money. We are a mobile money company that works across 10 different countries in Africa. And I guess I should start just by explaining what mobile money is for people who aren't familiar. So it's basically the kind of the base layer of financial infrastructure in probably most sub-Saharan African countries. You know, most people in most countries there don't have bank accounts. So instead they have a digital wallet that's associated with their phone number. And you can send money between the wallets. You can use them to pay your bills, pay for things in the shop. And then, so it's a little bit like sort of Venmo or Cash App with some more features. But there's also a network of agents where people can cash in and cash out. And so there's a real kind of physical presence on the ground as well, because a lot of these countries are still primarily cash-based, and that's how you get money in and out of the system. But they are large, and in the more mature mobile money markets, whatever the leading mobile money system that's there, that can be moving a substantial fraction of the GDP and sometimes even more than 100 % of the GDP.
JD (01:39.618) Yeah, the organization that you work at moves what more than the entire GDP of Senegal every single year, right? I mean, most of the money, at least in GDP terms, is flowing through a country like Senegal is through Wave Mobile Money, is that right?
Ben Kolesar (01:53.981) Yeah, I mean, so there's a lot of movement of money that doesn't get counted in GDP. Obviously, that's why it's possible to go above 100%. But yeah, like that means that a lot of economic activity is going through Wave. Senegal is our most mature market. And a lot more other markets were just starting out or were sort of on track to reach that point. I believe Kenya and M-Pesa in Kenya is moving 200 % of the GDP. So we have a lot of headroom even in our more mature markets. And the basic premise for impact here is that if you're cutting down the cost of doing that, then you can actually save people whole percentage points of GDP in terms of the fees that they're paying. So when we first started out in Senegal, for example, the incumbents there were charging for the size of transaction that people do most often. They were charging anywhere from three to 7 % and we were 1 % across the board. And so that adds up very quickly and presumably compounds over a year to year and can have a lot of impact just in the amount of money that you're sending people.
But then obviously when you're saving people money, when you're making something easier and cheaper to do, you're also causing transactions to happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And that way, you're also enabling businesses and livelihoods that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And so that's the piece that's harder to measure, but probably has more impact than just the direct savings from lowering fees.
JD (03:43.212) Nice. So I want to talk all about that. I want to talk about how mobile money serves those everyday folk in the countries where you're working. I want to talk about you and your story, how you got into this. Maybe we'll start there. How did you get into this? Right? You've been on board for a while.
Ben Kolesar (04:00.155) Yeah. Well, I joined when it was quite small, so I don't have great career advice. I kind of joined at the point where they were looking for warm bodies and it was not yet really a prestigious thing to be a part of. Yeah, it was maybe about a dozen at the time that I joined. So it might be good to tell sort of the history, because when I joined, it was mostly a remittance company called SendWave.
JD (04:12.952) Like a couple dozen people or not even?
Ben Kolesar (04:29.629) So basically the genesis of that was M-Pesa had just started in Kenya. That's the again, the mobile money system there. And our CEO Drew realized, you know, rather than doing what most remittance companies were doing at the time of like having a shop in say the US where people get in line and fill out a form and hand over cash that then the receiver in Kenya has to do the same thing to retrieve, it should be possible to have an app that pulls money from somebody's bank account in the US and then pays out to him and pays into the wallet in Kenya. So that's what he built with his co-founder Lincoln. And that ended up being very successful. And then they tried to port it to different countries. So after Kenya went to Uganda, then Tanzania, and then pretty quickly realized that they were running out of really strong mobile money networks on the order of M-Pesa in Kenya and realized that actually it might be more compelling to be the mobile money rather than be the people sending to the mobile money. Basically for the reasons that I mentioned, there is more money moving within countries than between them. And you have the opportunity to build that kind of base layer of financial infrastructure that other people and companies can build off of.
JD (05:59.31) So that's like instead of being the Venmo or the PayPal, like becoming sort of like a bank, a digital wallet for the senders and the receivers themselves as well.
Ben Kolesar (06:10.607) Yeah, basically, I mean, it's, you know, there are sort of similarities and differences to a bank. You know, banks are able to offer a different suite of products, I guess. But one of the things that's compelling — not at this point anyway — is that it is like a network effect business in a way that
JD (06:24.204) I guess, because what Wave isn't doing lending, right? It's not part of the, yeah.
Ben Kolesar (06:38.705) banks typically aren't. And so it is possible to actually be the tool that is in pretty much everybody's pocket in the countries where it's successful.
JD (06:51.074) Yes, yes. And so you got involved, why? Just because it looked interesting? Did you work a different job before? What was the story that got you on that team of a dozen people that's now what, 3,000? Or it's quite a few people at Wave now.
Ben Kolesar (06:58.49) Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (07:04.989) Yeah, thereabouts. I mean, at the time I just needed a job. So that was my reason. And I had worked for a member of Congress for a few years. He retired. I was doing a bunch of different odd jobs. Happened to — well, I was childhood friends with somebody who was roommates with the founders. And so it was a very random connection in that way.
So as I tell people, we've raised the bar on hiring since I joined, but that was the point in time when I joined.
JD (07:39.5) Yeah, yeah. And describe your role right now. How it is that you stay busy? Like what's your title and what's your day to day like?
Ben Kolesar (07:47.015) Yeah, so I manage launches, specifically the operations side of launches. So we have other people who work on getting the licenses to launch in new countries. So my job used to be like going in person and figuring out, where are we going to add the first agents? How are we going to go from zero users to hopefully thousands and then tens of thousands, a hundred thousand users. And now we have a team of people doing that in a few different launch countries going on at the same time. So I'm mostly helping out from a distance.
JD (08:25.102) What do you mean by agent?
Ben Kolesar (08:28.187) Yeah, so the agents are the cash in and cash out points. So when you...
JD (08:31.896) Are those like the guys on the bikes that have the banks that you can get cash from with your mobile money app on your phone?
Ben Kolesar (08:36.813) Yeah, some of them. Yeah, there are sometimes ones on bikes. Normally, it's just like a shop that is often doing some other type of business. And they also offer a cash in and cash out. And they have a special app that they do that with. They take cash and then disperse for people withdrawing. And yeah, when you
JD (09:00.214) So walk me through what that looks like when you're rolling out in a new country, right? It sounds like you guys started in Kenya competing against M-Pesa, and now you've spread to what, eight or more countries now, or 10 countries now. When you're coming to a new country, what does it look like to do that rollout? How do you know it's a good country? And then what are all the boxes you have to check that they throw in your field and your inbox to get done?
Ben Kolesar (09:04.485) Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (09:22.949) Yeah. So we were never actually competing with M-Pesa. They were our payout partner for the remittance business, SendWave. Yeah, SendWave was the remittance business. Wave now is the mobile money business. And so we split those into two companies. And then Wave, we started in Senegal. And whenever we start in a new country, we're
JD (09:29.696) Okay.
JD (09:38.164) Okay, okay.
Ben Kolesar (09:49.713) You know, we're starting out very small and there's normally a very large incumbent. That's typically run by the telcos there. And so, you know, we start out — yeah, the SIM providers, the telecommunications companies there. So, yeah. So for example, M-Pesa in Kenya was started by Safaricom,
JD (10:04.174) The tel... they're run by the what?
JD (10:13.515) Okay.
Ben Kolesar (10:19.485) which would be the equivalent of, I don't know, Verizon or someone like that in the US. And so, you know, we're starting at a real disadvantage in terms of like the distribution. We don't have the on-the-ground presence that they do. And so a lot of what we're trying to do in those earliest stages is figure out what is our wedge to get in.
So one thing that doesn't work is just to add agents all over the place and then hope that customers show up. Because basically by the time you finish adding your last agent, your first agent will have forgotten how to process the deposits and the withdrawals. And so what you're trying to do is find initial use cases that will allow you to get usage with a limited number of agents. So in Senegal, we focused on fish traders because you had fish markets. Well, fish is a big part of Senegal's economy. You had fish markets in the major cities where traders had to send money to the coast every day to buy more fish. And so we added agents in those fish markets, added agents along the coast. And people were, like I said, paying 3 to 7 % for these transfers.
They weren't always able to withdraw everything they needed on the receiving side. And so it took a while to build the trust to get those initial users. But once we did, it took off pretty quickly within that community of fishermen and fish traders. And then, so the launch work is trying to find on-ramps like that and initial use cases. And then from there kind of expanding to adjacent use cases until you get to a point where you have enough momentum and you have enough word of mouth that you can actually just go and open up agents and kind of let that tailwind take you to winning the market as a whole.
JD (12:23.384) So how do you go from zero to one with fish traders? So you have an agent that's close by. They can exchange the mobile money for cash. And then how do you get the people to start using — I presume it's an app or some kind of user interface with Wave — to begin buying and selling or trading with Wave Mobile Money?
Ben Kolesar (12:49.499) Yeah, so we have an app. We also have a card that — got one here. A card that has a QR code on the back. Yeah, so yeah, that's our logo there. And then so the app, the agent has an app. Yeah, download — well, it'll be a few more steps than that, but yeah. So basically we get people to download the app. We get people to register with the card.
JD (12:57.186) Get it real close, get it real close. I like that penguin, yeah, yeah. Can I send you money now if I scan that QR code? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.
Ben Kolesar (13:19.357) And that part is generally pretty easy. The very hard part is getting people to actually deposit cash and trust us enough to believe that their receiver, who is often their business partner, their supplier, is actually going to receive that money on their phone and be able to withdraw it wherever they are. And so in Senegal...
JD (13:41.688) So how do you get that going with the fish traders, for instance?
Ben Kolesar (13:44.637) Yeah. So in the fish market in Senegal, we just went back every day for a month until somebody was willing to try it. I think it was literally a month. I got tasked with finding some alternative.
JD (13:55.766) Is that you? Do you hire someone to do that and you're just kind of looking over their shoulder for a month? Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (13:59.951) Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it is the country launchers who are doing that. And we hire people who are from that country to do the same thing, who have often done something sort of similar for the telcos who run the incumbent mobile money networks, but often they haven't taken something from zero to one. So it's a learning curve for everybody.
But it is just a ton of trust-building. And then once you get those initial users, you're trying to get them to tell their friends, get them to tell their business partners. And eventually, word spreads, and you build the trust, and you get some momentum behind you. So it's a very slow process. Yeah. Yeah, it's 1 % to send, free to cash in, free to cash out.
JD (14:44.29) So do you start right away at 1 %?
JD (14:55.502) Yeah, yeah. And that's a big deal if somebody is living on 400 bucks a year, right? I mean, going from 5 % to 1 % is like saving $20 a year, which to us maybe doesn't sound like much, but to them, that's like 5 % of their entire income, right? Maybe to somebody who earns 60 grand a year in the US, it's like saving $3,000 a year, right? And that's like — it matters even more perhaps because if you're living
Ben Kolesar (15:02.746) Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (15:16.379) Yeah.
JD (15:22.126) much closer to subsistence, every dollar is just so make or break.
Ben Kolesar (15:26.525) Yeah, exactly. And there are, you know, in some cases, particularly with these fish traders, the reliability was maybe even more important than the cost savings they were making. So we had people who sometimes it took a day for them to withdraw the money that they needed in order to buy more fish to send to the fish trader in Dakar, for example. And with Wave, we just worked very hard to make sure there was always enough cash at the agents.
Ben Kolesar (15:55.449) And that meant that, you know, rather than waiting a day to buy more fish and send it, they were able to basically recycle their capital the same day and then end up in effect doubling their income because they were able to basically just turn over their working capital twice as fast.
JD (16:15.96) So what makes you good at doing this, right? You've done this well, you've expanded to 10 countries, you're in charge of the launch, you have to try all these different things to gain trust, to break into these markets. What makes you specialized at doing this? And I mean, you, Ben, but also explain a bit about Wave and how Wave gets that competitive edge, but yeah.
Ben Kolesar (16:33.019) Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think for me personally, a lot just does come down to curiosity. Like in the beginning stages, you're really just trying to understand, okay, you know, in the example of Senegal, how does the fish business work? And you need to understand that in a lot of detail to be able to serve — to give customers what they want. And so I would say that for me and for the country launchers in general, that's one of the main things that makes it different from the sort of operations where you know exactly what you need to do and you're just executing on it. And then I would say for Wave, it's a combination of things. Obviously, just having the best product, having the lowest price is a big piece of it. And then there's also, I think, within the company DNA, there is this curiosity. We have a value around maximizing our rate of learning, like make sure we're solving a real problem for people. And then there is just an understanding about how exponential growth works, which is it looks very slow at the beginning and then it can pick up — exactly. Yeah, don't neglect the small beginnings. And that is how each of these
JD (17:56.258) It's like the faith of a mustard seed, yes? Yes.
Ben Kolesar (18:06.407) countries, including the ones where we're serving millions of people, start out.
JD (18:10.488) But yeah, it sounds like grueling work at times if you're trying to break in and you've tried so many things and it's not working and no one's done it before and the stakes are high. Can you share a bit about some of the challenges or obstacles that you faced in your work over the last five plus years?
Ben Kolesar (18:29.681) Yeah, I mean, every launch is hard. Every new country is hard, pretty much. They all have their own challenges. You would think that after a while, you would have enough momentum from one country to carry over to the next. But for the most part, you are starting over each time. And it's not always clear from the outset where we're going to be successful and where it's going to be a lot harder.
And so the biggest challenges — well, a couple of big challenges we always have — are the trust issue and then the sort of chicken and egg problem where you need those cash in and cash out agents in order to get users, but you also need users to retain those agents. And so every new country is a puzzle.
JD (19:19.758) Give me an example. We talked about Senegal and the fish traders. Give me another example.
Ben Kolesar (19:24.303) Yeah. So I would say that one of the other interesting markets that was in some ways — well, in many ways quite different — was the Gambia, where we had a particular challenge. We were trying to get transfers from the Gambia to Senegal because we already had a pretty big group of users in Senegal. We got to the Gambia and found that there were actually already a bunch of Wave agents there that we didn't know about. They were essentially using the Senegal app in order to help people send money from the Gambia to Senegal. And so we had to then convince these people who were charging quite a lot to charge a lot less in order to do Wave in the proper formal way. And then there were all of these challenges around the exchange rate that we set and basically the Treasury side of running that business. So that was a whole other set of problems.
JD (20:43.214) So to convince people to use the right country app, you had to give them incentives because they were creating black markets using apps from the Senegal country or something?
Ben Kolesar (20:52.143) Well, we had to get the agents who were already there to basically do it properly. Yeah, that was a case where getting the customers on our side was not as hard. Getting the agents on our side was harder. And so there was a lot of basically having to build relationships with those agents, convince them.
JD (21:15.638) Is it because they'd already like — they were already using your app and stuff, they had a fixed structure mechanism. They had anchored on a higher fee than you wanted them to be charging in the Gambia. And so you had to somehow kind of strong-arm them into the lower fee? Yeah. How'd you do that?
Ben Kolesar (21:24.914) Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (21:30.173) Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And there are other countries where we've had similar situations. I mean, we just launched in the DRC. And there, we're not well known the way that we were in the Gambia. But part of the reason mobile money is so expensive there is that agents are informally charging a lot on top of the already high fees that the existing mobile money players have.
And so we are doing various things to make sure that they offer the actual low fees and get the commission that they're supposed to get from that. And part of that is just adding agents who are not already working with the competition, which is its own challenge because people who are already mobile money agents for another system pick up what we're doing a lot faster. And it's going to be so in some ways easier, in some ways harder in the DRC.
JD (22:31.564) Yeah, yeah. So can I ask some rapid fire questions about working in tech startups in Africa and somebody who wants to get into this, what they should do and just some kind of quick and ready advice and your takes on some of these things. So yeah, if somebody wants to work for an organization like Wave, are there really that many organizations to apply to, to work for? There's only like eight unicorns, depending on how you count in Africa, tech unicorns.
Ben Kolesar (22:47.131) Yeah.
JD (23:00.814) billion dollar plus companies. So if somebody really believes in this model, where do they go? We have this article from a guy named Ben Hyman on our website who has this job board called Talent Safari, which is sort of like a job board or headhunting organization for up and coming tech companies in Africa. And he was just saying so much of it is networks, just being in the place where you want to work, having a very specific angle and interest, and then meeting people. If you're in the first couple of years of your career, even if you're from a great school, and he was coming from an MA at Harvard, it's very hard to be taken seriously without just actually going and meeting people. So that's kind of the extent of my understanding — like,
yes, look at what's out there and network with the people at the existing organizations, but you might just have to go to the city, see some of the problems on the ground, find opportunities, and then see who's working on that and see if you can get paid to join them or found something yourself. But what am I missing here from this picture? What would you add to this advice?
Ben Kolesar (24:16.475) No, I think that's true. Like if you want to work in Africa, you have to go to Africa. I would say like if you're coming from say the US or UK, it is very possible to — people are very friendly basically. And you can go and talk to people, you know, you can talk to people about ideas that you have. You can talk to people about problems about the businesses that they're doing, et cetera. And I think there's just no substitute for that.
JD (24:53.944) So how do you do it? Say you're 25, maybe you graduated from uni, you worked in consulting for two years, and now you want to go work at a place like Wave, but not Wave, right? How would you go about doing that if you were 25?
Ben Kolesar (25:10.223) Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a difference between starting your own thing and working for a pre-existing business. Like you said, there aren't that many like Wave, so you can see what's open. But I would say, if you are — I think that you can in fact just show up. And I think particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, this is more possible than in other parts of the world. Even in Northern Africa — I at one point scouted Morocco, and it was just much harder to get anybody to talk to me and open up about what was going on there. That baseline openness was harder. I think it was just a cultural thing and, you know, we've been to
JD (25:57.811) Just because the markets are so much more formal, the culture is more... Yeah, the culture is more formal or...
Ben Kolesar (26:06.919) kind of all corners of Sub-Saharan Africa, but pretty uniformly people have been very helpful and open. Just talking to people really does work.
JD (26:18.222) Yeah. So what would you — okay, so I want to ask, you know, how to think about joining a more established thing like Wave versus starting your own thing or joining a team very, very early on. Maybe those are like three different paths someone could take. And how would you think about at a high level, a good fit for each of those paths?
Ben Kolesar (26:39.771) Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down largely to personality and what you're trying to accomplish. I would say, in each of these cases, the best thing to do is to kind of fall in love with a problem and try to figure out how can I contribute to a solution to this problem rather than trying to think this company sounds cool or that company sounds cool. And I think that yeah, if you're starting from that, then you can just have more honest conversations with people who are working in that space about how you can contribute.
JD (27:26.038) Yeah. And compensation wise, what is this like? Because a lot of the job postings from really cool organizations working in this space are for locals or nationals of the countries where you're working. And so those obviously aren't the kinds of jobs that most people listening to this podcast would be interested in. I imagine it's pretty risky business to start an African tech startup. And I would expect there would be some kind of like hits — not just to the security but also in real wages. So is that the case among peers you've seen that joined tech companies early on or are starting tech companies in Africa?
Ben Kolesar (28:15.687) Yeah, I'm not too familiar with what other companies do. I mean, yeah, salaries are competitive, but they're competitive for the country that you're working in. So you could see a hit in your real wages, even moving to a place that has a lower cost of living. The salaries are going to be proportionately lower. And yeah, I think that there is yeah, there are sort of different ways of having an impact, obviously. And even though Wave salaries are competitive, it's not an earn-to-give sort of model. It's having the direct impact.
JD (28:51.33) Yeah.
JD (28:58.264) So we'll talk about EA in a bit here. I guess it's a good lead-in. But how do you think about somebody who is 25, maybe has like two years of working experience, and is thinking about how best they can serve the poor through their work? And they're wondering, should I earn to give and then give to a GiveWell charity, right? I can buy a bunch of malaria nets and prevent a death from malaria for every $4,000 versus they could go work for a place like Wave or start their own thing. Do you have thoughts on how to compare those paths in terms of impact, not just in terms of personal fit? How do you think about it?
Ben Kolesar (29:34.461) Yeah, I would say — yeah, I mean, I do think that there's no substitute for going and seeing — even if your long-term plan is to earn to give, I think you will probably be more motivated and much more informed if you go and see where that money is going to be going. And you know, you may find that that sort of complicates your worldview in a way that causes you to change paths, or maybe it doesn't, but you're still doing what you do in a more informed way.
JD (30:12.418) Was that the case for you? Did it complicate your worldview? Because you've been everywhere, right? You've been to almost every sub-Saharan African country. And you've been there quite often. In fact, every time I email you, you're in some other country.
Ben Kolesar (30:25.157) Yeah, yeah, that's a question I have to think about — in what ways it changed my worldview. But I do — yeah, like I would say that I know that there are a lot of amazing, effective charities out there. But things can look very clean on a website and simple and straightforward. And then often the full picture is something a bit different, even if everything's above board and it's an effective charity and everything else. And I do think that yeah, you can sometimes be of more service, even just as a donor, if you have a little bit of an understanding of just kind of how the sausage is made on that side. And maybe that's through something as simple as giving unrestricted rather than trying to pinpoint the exact destination of funds that sounds best on the website, whatever it might be. But I think that's just sort of worth doing if you're going to be giving away a substantial amount of your income — just to kind of live a full life and not compartmentalize your work in that way.
JD (32:02.606) But for you, have you thought about pursuing — I imagine your path's been quite lucrative since you were in the first dozen folks on the team and I think Wave is valued at, I don't know, quite a lot of money. Billion dollar company or at least one of the parts of it has been valued as such. So I imagine what you've done has been impactful in both senses, through your giving but also through direct impact. Do you think of it that way or do you? I imagine you would feel most of your impact though is through the direct impact of building up the infrastructure and institutions of the nations where you're working.
Ben Kolesar (32:39.995) Yeah, that's the hope. I think one of the arguments for doing business as a means of impact is that there's no real cap to the upside on the impact that you can have. And so like I was saying before, there are different ways to measure Wave's impact. And the most concrete one is just in dollars saved for people. But then the...
JD (33:07.086) Do you know what that comes out to? Even that figure?
Ben Kolesar (33:10.009) No, I mean, so yeah, in our mature markets where we are talking about — it sort of depends how you count it — but arguably it's whole percentage points of GDP per year that we're saving people. But then there's also the fact that once you have — I mean, if you imagine if you could only use cash, the number of businesses that you could interact with or start would be very different. And so now that Wave is widespread, ride-hailing is possible in a way that it wasn't before. E-commerce and social commerce are possible in a way that they weren't before. And so it is a platform, a piece of infrastructure that other people can build on top of. And so just as you won't ever really know the full value of a road that you build, it's hard to know exactly the full value of a piece of financial infrastructure that you build. But when you see what's going on on the ground, it does sort of bring home that this person in front of you — you can multiply that by the user count and the impact is really big.
JD (34:34.478) Yes, yes. It's like — I don't know, it's like a bottom pillar of a Jenga tower where there's like a wider base that people can live on now, but it's just a much more stable base so people can build for the future. The Jenga tower is like the flourishing of the society, right? You don't love it. What's wrong with the Jenga analogy? Yeah. But it's...
Ben Kolesar (34:42.748) Yeah.
Yeah, I don't love the Jenga analogy, but I think I know what you mean. Well, Jenga falls down eventually, but apart from that, I like it.
JD (34:54.868) Yeah, there you go. But that's very real, right? And that's a very big concern, I think, that some people have about nonprofit and business in countries where institutions are not as stable. If the basis of the institutions of finance and rights and law and enforcement and contracts, if that was really stable, it wouldn't be a Jenga tower. It would just be a pyramid. It would just be a tower, a strong tower. So I guess maybe what you're doing is helping it really be solid, not be something that one pillar can get knocked off of, but provides this basis that you can build a society upon. And that's really hard to measure. But it seems hugely, hugely important. How do you think about impact investing as a space? So I'll show my cards a little bit. I think sometimes when people talk about impact investing in emerging markets, they talk about it in terms of like, all these other aspects that I feel like are very far removed from just providing jobs and security for people desperately in need of jobs and security. Like to me, it seems like plausibly the greatest impact you can have at impact investing in general is just providing jobs for people who would otherwise be in very dire straits. But.
Yeah, and I think Ben Hyman sees it a very similar way. How do you think about impact investing in the African context and what you're most excited about or least excited about?
Ben Kolesar (36:28.741) Yeah, I would say that the biggest impact you can have probably is just helping a business that wouldn't exist, or would have stayed small, to get big. And I think one failure mode that you sometimes see is people investing in businesses that maybe shouldn't exist or maybe shouldn't try to scale, because there just isn't a market for them. And so yeah, I think that it can sometimes sort of have the worst of both worlds between business and nonprofits. Yeah, investing in Africa is hard because disposable income is low. But I think the goal should be similar to doing it in other places.
JD (37:23.254) Do you think folks should invest in African businesses, even if they expect lower risk-adjusted returns? Do you think the impact case of that is compelling? Or would you say it's better to give that money to GiveWell, for instance, or some highly impactful nonprofit? Or otherwise just invest in risk-adjusted premium returns, like in the market, in the S&P or something?
Ben Kolesar (37:41.605) Yeah, that's a good question.
Ben Kolesar (37:48.687) Yeah. I don't know — I mean, it's very hard to compare GiveWell charities to investing. I mean, I would say that part of the reason to invest in businesses that you think are actually going to do well is because I'm sure that giving to GiveWell is more impactful than losing your money in an investment that you shouldn't have been making. And so yeah, I would probably say like again, either give to GiveWell or try to invest in a business that's going to give you a strong return, because something in the middle is the worst of both.
JD (38:26.63) It seems like people try to split the baby and they try to say, well, we can accept subpar returns or risk-adjusted returns because we're having impact. But then they never benchmark against cash or against GiveWell. They just say, we should accept the higher. And this is actually something that is growing in the Christian space around Christian impact investors. And I think it's better to do that than nothing. If the counterfactual is you're just going to invest in the US economy and the US economy gets bigger and bigger,
Ben Kolesar (38:39.932) Right.
JD (38:56.366) and under-capitalized markets and the folks living in those countries never see investment and never raise capital and never develop companies or build jobs. Like, that's bad. I don't want that kind of outcome. But if people are thinking about impact, it seems to me like they should be benchmarking against cash or against GiveWell.
Ben Kolesar (39:16.669) Yeah. I mean, one of the things I like about working for a business — and one that is tech-savvy, I guess — is that every day we are able to see on a screen how useful we are to people. Like, did they come back and use the app again today? And that forces us — I guess it doesn't force us because a lot of people have metrics that they don't follow — but it means that we have the opportunity to be brutally honest with ourselves about what's working and what isn't. And as an investor, hopefully you are also being brutally honest with yourself and with companies that you invest in about what's working and what isn't.
JD (40:00.748) Yeah, yeah. So I want to ask about effective altruism more directly. So you came to the Christians for Impact Conference and there's a big emphasis on effective altruism at the conference. I hope you liked it, by the way. You had a lot of great conversations there and I enjoyed chatting with you there. It's where I met you in person for the first time, I think. Yeah, what are your thoughts on effective altruism, positive or negative? I'm not offended, fire away.
Ben Kolesar (40:13.757) Yeah, that's great.
Ben Kolesar (40:28.765) Yeah, I mean, I would say like at its best, effective altruism has this rare combination of ambition and humility that you don't find in a lot of places. And so yeah, I'm very glad that it exists. I don't know if I myself — I don't know how much that is exactly my worldview, but yeah, I'm definitely EA adjacent.
JD (40:53.198) It's okay, you're EA adjacent. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's fine.
Ben Kolesar (40:57.949) And so yeah, and then, you know, at its worst, people can kind of get stuck in their own heads or be too utilitarian or whatever else. But yeah, I think it's a...
JD (41:10.794) Give me examples of both. Yeah. What do you like and what's the counter example? What do you want to avoid?
Ben Kolesar (41:17.429) Well, yeah, I mean, I think that the overall framework makes a lot of sense, but the conversations that I enjoyed the most — this is maybe going against what I was saying just before — but I guess the conversations that I enjoyed the most at the conference were with people who were maybe a little bit in their own heads about things, but were very earnest and sincere about trying to make a difference in the world. And so yeah, I'm glad that exists. I think that
JD (41:57.106) What's an example of a view that's in somebody's head that tracks with — you don't have to name a person, but...
Ben Kolesar (42:00.049) I should — I'm not sure I want to describe it because people will know who I'm talking about. But yeah, I mean, I think there are...
Ben Kolesar (42:14.971) I don't know, I've — you know, working for an EA adjacent startup that works in Africa, I've gotten to overhear and participate in a lot of conversations between EA type people and some of the people who EA is ostensibly supposed to help serve. So I remember like at one work retreat, one of my coworkers was trying to explain how the argument for working on insect well-being — because maybe an individual insect has a lot less moral worth than a human being, but there are so many insects in the world. There is maybe an argument there that you multiply that out, and this really makes sense. And so I would say that that is probably a failure mode and that our moral intuitions, yeah.
JD (43:15.458) Yeah, you've hopped off the crazy train several stops before. Maybe it makes you think of the fish market — I mean, there's a fish welfare project and concern for animal welfare that seems in some level to cut against some of the — man, you know. So yeah, that's a helpful example. When it comes to global development, do you think effective altruism is a helpful corrective? Do you think it
Ben Kolesar (43:26.875) Right. I know we probably shouldn't have been helping these guys. Yeah.
JD (43:44.18) undervalues the power of innovation and building institutions. This I guess gets into pretty weedy arguments about development. But how would you summarize your stance on that?
Ben Kolesar (43:55.687) Yeah.
Yeah, I do think that the GiveWell effective charities are almost certainly very effective. I mean, when we had that conversation where we were talking about insect well-being, my joke was, well, you should see the ineffective altruists. And I think there's truth to that. There's a lot that's even less effective. I do think I believe that what brings most people out of poverty is countries industrializing. And that has largely happened through exporting things to the world market in a way that kind of forces businesses to level up. And so I think that the argument against — even the argument against the effectiveness of what Wave is doing — would be to say, you know, in addition to an argument against some of these effective charities, would just be to say, okay, the only thing that matters is building up your industrial base, export-oriented manufacturing, and anything besides that is a distraction. And I'm sort of open to that argument, though I also think that it's important just to get richer.
JD (45:22.348) Yeah, who do you read for that?
Yeah, no, I agree with the sentiment that that's plausible, that's possible. I don't know who's working on that. I mean, I know Open Philanthropy has recently started a fund researching that and opportunities to give to support that. I mean, there's this famous example of the Ford Foundation funding certain liberalizations of exports back in the 90s and unlocking plausibly like a trillion dollars of future GDP in India, which is just amazing, right? I mean, that's effective outsourcing, right? But like,
Ben Kolesar (45:53.137) Yeah.
JD (45:55.84) Where are the opportunities for that today? Do you have ideas?
Ben Kolesar (46:00.145) Yeah, I mean, I think it probably does come through thought leadership and in some cases, relationships with developing country governments. And probably by its nature, that work can't be super publicized. And it has to be somewhat subtle to be effective.
And so I don't know of a webpage you can go to to donate to that.
JD (46:33.014) Yeah, yeah. We're wrapping up here in a bit, but we haven't talked tremendously about faith, but do you want to share how it is that faith undergirds what you do and how you interpret your vocation in light of the cross?
Ben Kolesar (46:47.771) Yeah, I mean, I would say part of it is just that, yeah, it does sort of put the work in perspective — a great company can last for a century or sometimes more, but a human soul lasts forever. And so there is a way in which every employee, every user, is more valuable than the company itself. And I guess I'm lucky in a sense that because I have worked at the launch phase, I have gotten to meet individual users and spend more time with them than people who work at later stages are able to do. But I do think that there is also something in the company DNA that does tie back to individual users and trying to be of value to them that's very important. And so Wave has no religious affiliation, but there is a lot of resonance there.
JD (47:56.876) Yes, any closing thoughts and parting career advice for Christians that want to transform the world and serve the marginalized through their careers?
Ben Kolesar (48:08.027) Yeah, I mean, I think along the lines of what we were talking about before, just going to the places that you're interested in, trying to do the work you want to be doing, skipping right to that step. I see a lot of people who kind of have a multi-step plan where they want to be a consultant for a few years so they can learn the business skills, so they can start an impactful startup. And you should just go and do the thing as soon as you can, I would say. One, because tomorrow isn't promised, but also because there is so much that you will pick up — the unknown unknowns there — that will be very different than whatever you've pictured in your head.
JD (48:37.262) Just go now, just like go during undergrad, go right after you graduate.
JD (48:58.158) Ben, so we provide one-on-one career advising, and I'm going to ask you in a second — if you say no, that's totally fine, I'll cut this out. Are you in principle open to talking to young, promising, aspiring Christians who are looking to pursue a similar career path as you? Is that something you'd be open to? And how would somebody get in touch with you? Should they just apply through us, or is there an email they can reach you at?
Ben Kolesar (49:16.551) Sure, yeah.
Ben Kolesar (49:24.35) Yeah, why don't — well, how do you normally do it? You think you can...
JD (49:28.534) Normally people apply, you can get one-on-one advising at the ChristiansForImpact.org website. So if you say you would like to pursue this career path and we think it makes sense, then we can get in touch and make that connection.
Ben Kolesar (49:32.988) Yeah.
Ben Kolesar (49:41.596) Yeah, let's do that.
JD (49:43.148) Sounds good. Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
Ben Kolesar (49:46.673) Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. It's fun.
JD (49:49.934) Awesome.
