CEO Chat: JUSTLY and Ideanomics

i would love to get started with you

telling us a little bit about how you

even got involved with justly

uh yes thank you aruna and uh it’s good

to be your guinea pig i guess for the

first one here

um

yeah i was i was lucky enough

as you know i’ve been in the business

financial services business now for 38

years and

i was lucky enough to

make some really good friends in the

business and one of those tapped me on

the shoulder

back in june of last year and said hey

we have a broker dealer sitting on a

shelf and

we really would like to um get it up and

running and

my first question is like okay what is

it right you know what are you planning

to do and

they explained that they wanted to set

up a

a brokered data funding platform that

focused on social impact

and

basically as soon as they say social

impact i’m like okay i’m in

um and so we discussed what that that

that meant and

a lot of it was around

issuers um that uh are looking to raise

money uh for

making a social difference um be it

either with um governance being around

pollution

um but the other thing that

um we were able to do was uh they agreed

with me that there are going to be deals

out there that

may not be

esg focused or socially focused but are

still uh companies that people would

want to invest in

and so we i got them to agree before i

signed up that 20

of that

profits from those those deals would uh

actually go to a non-profit that focused

on esg

so

for me now it was it was a no-brainer um

it goes in with a lot of uh the things

that have

been highlights of my life working with

the likes of special olympics and

and uh doug flutie foundation and the

mdsc so

it’s nice to actually

be doing something now that i don’t

classes work anymore and actually

something that’s a passion

um that that’s really fascinating i mean

i think

um being able to combine your

passions along with work is a really

unique space to be when you decided you

actually wanted to do this how did you

put the business together to make sure

that you were surrounded by the right

people and that you were actually doing

the right thing by means of yourself and

the business

yeah that’s a great question um

you know as i say i i’m a bit of an old

dog in this space all right so

i’ve kind of seen uh businesses

that have been successful i’ve been in

various coaches um

i’ve seen really good people um

not used correctly um

and and it really is true when

if you if you have good people and you

enable them to

be successful and be who they are

because that’s why you employ them right

i mean the reason i employ you is that

you’re great right i’ve known you in the

past um i trust you right

um

and

that’s no different from the rest of the

team so we’ve brought in um people that

in some cases are coming in the past as

i say like yourself and peter who runs

the operations

um

and

the idea behind that is to enable

the people to be successful and i have

enough work on on on my plate

to be able

to

certainly take up 12 14 hour days

um and so what i don’t want to be doing

is the head of marketing’s role or the

the the head of capital markets and so

forth so i think that’s one of the key

things is is

putting together a team that

uh are self-sufficient um the other

aspect of it is

everyone understanding everybody else’s

role um that doesn’t normally happen in

a lot of businesses everyone thinks that

the world revolves around them

um so i’ve certainly tried as much as i

can to make sure that

the team as you know meets every morning

and everyone understands your role

everyone understands compliance’s role

capital markets as well so

everyone understands that nothing gets

done without the other people uh

in the group uh and i think that’s

important too

um because you do need everyone needs to

respect each other uh for their opinions

and and their points of view

and then it’s the passion right i mean

you can’t teach passion you’ve got to

you’ve got to have people that want to

come in every day and

feel good about working 10 hours 12

hours if they have to and and it’s nice

because uh

you know you you’ve dealt with eugenio

who’s our uh vice president of capital

markets very new

um i’m trying to get him to stop working

and he’s like i’m not working i love

what i do i’m happy to get this contract

out at 12 30 at night and there’s like

uh okay then

um but don’t expect me to be answering

it at 12 30 at night but

what i like about it is

it shows that he loves being here and

i think that’s the key element if we’ve

got a group of people that are

passionate and love being here and

believe in what just these messages

and what the impact that we’re trying to

make

i think um i think that’s the key

element and so far touchwood

um the team the team is is like a family

right now and and working as well

well um being a startup is very

you are very passionate

there is a lot of work we you know the

team we are cross-functional but you’re

in an in um

in a unique situation because you’re

also part of ideonomics and so

that probably has a lot of benefits and

maybe some drawbacks too can can you

talk to us a little bit more about how

that’s working

yeah i mean

ideonomics is is a great company um i

love the vision um

alfpoor was one of the reasons i joined

the company uh joined justly um he does

have an exceptionally good vision and

um you know the interesting thing with

ideonomics is they their real focus is

electronic vehicles uh as we all know

they’re

they’re listed on nasdaq as id ex

um and and they’re trying to make um

the world a better place through the

electronic vehicles be it uh tractors

um it’s the italian motorcycle company

is amazing i mean they’re they’re

absolutely uh beautiful

and so one of the reasons that justly

come about um was that there was the

broker dealer sitting on the shelf that

uh ideonomics had bought

two or three years ago

and

the feeling was that if we become an

impact broker dealer as we have

that the shareholders of

ideonomics and this 350 000 retail

shareholders of of videonomics the

reason they invest in ideonomics is they

believe in evie right and they believe

in um

trying to make a social impact and and

the world a better place

and so justly is all about that and so

i think the feeling is that we should be

with what we’re bringing as an impact

broker dealer should speak to

that shareholder client base it’s very

much with what ideonomics overall stands

for we may not be in the uv space but we

are in the impact space

and there are companies that we will

have on our platform that will be ev

companies and we’re speaking to

to one right now that hopefully will

come on the platform and in the next few

weeks um as well as uh other power

solutions for the ev world so there is a

good connection between us and and

ideonomics and as i say alfpor

does know what he’s doing he does have a

great vision and and i’m glad to be part

of that

i love that because i think there’s some

real incredible synergies there

i also like the way you talked about

companies on the platform on the justly

platform that are that that

our investors can look at um maybe you

can tell us a little bit about

if i were a company that was looking for

investment how would i go about

approaching justly

let’s start there and then we can talk

about on the investor side of things

yeah i mean

it’s interesting because as you know

we’ve really only had

the website the business up and running

now for

four or five weeks

that we’ve we’ve truly been live and

um we’ve had issuers find us we haven’t

even advertised them and we’ve had had

them find us

across various businesses

lines or industries

um

and and i think that speaks well to

again

what we’re trying to do and and

the

types of issuer that are out there and

as i say it’s everything from eevee to

recycling

um to bio cashew um i mean there’s

there’s some interesting companies out

there and and i think um one of the

reasons they they want to work with

justly is

they understand our mission they

understand that impact element they also

understand that because we have um the

the shareholder base of ideonomics

therefore um again we have a shareholder

base that would be interested in their

product

uh or what they are doing um

so so i think i think that’s that’s good

news

um i think that’s going to continue to

grow um that demand and those issue is

finding us and again with your help

we’ll be out there uh in a lot of

different ways uh interacting with those

issuers and making sure they know that

uh we’re there to support them

um

on the investor side again we’re talking

about uh the shareholders uh of

ideonomics but we’ve also had other

broker dealers

that have reached our client bases

globally

that are looking to team up with us and

give their clients access to our

platform

again there is that

demand

out there that’s growing for retail

investors now to get into private equity

which is something that they hadn’t been

able to do before the jobs act

um so that’s you know your crowdfunding

and your reg a

uh your uh

traditional retail investor can now

invest via those uh those different

regulations where in the past they

weren’t able to do that so i think

there’s a good growth there um as well

as you’re seeing a lot of vc companies

and and family offices and wealth

managers now

um looking to start funds in the vc

space as starting funds that are now

focused on esg

and that can mean various things to

various people

um and those funds will

have their own criteria or what they

call that but also um the wealth

managers and and um family offices

and and now got clients that are looking

at this as a an opportunity to

invest in something that’s going to make

a difference to society but also there

is the ability to profit from that as

well so it’s exciting times and and this

marketplace is is definitely growing and

the rules changed last year for cf for

instance where it used to be a million

that was the maximum and now is five

million um reg a is now up to 75 million

so it’s definitely giving a lot of

people a lot of smaller companies the

opportunity to raise money and also

a lot of people to get involved in these

companies

before we wrap up why don’t you

there will be people that want to know

more so

how can people reach you or who should

they reach out to if they want to get

more information on you and or justin

and what we do

um i think the first thing is

go to our website investjustly.com

that gives you a good idea both if

you’re an investor or an issuer and

you’re looking to raise money they give

you it gives you a good idea of who we

are

and what we’re trying to do

um and to see our deals you would need

to register online on that website which

is very very quick and easy

and then again following justly and

myself on

social media via twitter or

linkedin as you know you work very very

hard in that space for us

um and again one of the things that you

people will see

is that we spend more time talking about

other people and other opportunities and

other businesses and what’s going on in

that social impact space than we

actually do about ourselves um and

there’s a reason for that because that’s

who we are right we we really believe

that

uh there are a lot of people out there

making an impact we’re just part of that

process

uh and we want to be a big part of that

process but we certainly want people to

be aware of what other organizations are

doing uh in their space and and and

doing well

excellent thanks very much let’s wrap

this up and we’ll we’ll pick up um

another series all right thanks paul

thanks thank you bye

bye

you