In this episode of the Sustainable Views podcast, host Silvia Pavoni interviews Paul van Zyl, co‑founder of The Conduit, a private members’ club that unites people and businesses focused on sustainability. Paul explains the club’s three‑fold mission—building community, delivering high‑quality education, and channeling capital to impact‑driven enterprises—and why aligning these elements is challenging, likening it to “doing the tango backwards in high heels.” He describes how the COVID‑19 pandemic forced a relocation to a historic Covent Garden building owned by the Mercers, reinforcing the club’s belief in proximity and the African philosophy of Ubuntu ("I am because we are"). The conversation delves into The Conduit’s multi‑vertical revenue model: membership fees, coworking space rentals, and corporate partnerships are the three high‑margin streams, while food‑and‑beverage and events provide additional engagement but lower margins. Paul shares early performance metrics—over 100,000 visitors, 200 talks, and a thriving events program in the first year. Looking ahead, The Conduit plans a selective global rollout, with a new venue under construction in Oslo and pipelines in cities such as Zurich, Lisbon, Washington DC, and New York. Expansion relies on local partners to de‑risk the business and embed the club in existing impact‑focused ecosystems. Paul also outlines Conduit Connect, a sister venture that has already mobilised roughly £22 million of investment into double‑bottom‑line businesses, which collectively have raised over £700 million and created thousands of jobs. He stresses that capital alone is insufficient; networks, trust, and policy alignment are essential. The club engages with governments, citing the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and UK refugee‑settlement legislation as examples of constructive policy. A notable case study involves a board member, Nick Vetch, who leveraged The Conduit’s network to develop a tech platform matching Ukrainian refugees with UK hosts, earning a CBE for the effort. The club now runs a refugee‑integration programme, arguing that welcoming refugees addresses demographic challenges and yields economic benefits. Throughout, Paul argues that purpose and profit are increasingly aligned, driven by consumer demand for values‑aligned brands and investors seeking impact‑scaled returns. The episode closes with reflections on the club’s ethos, its differentiation from traditional private clubs, and its ambition to catalyse systemic change through proximity, trust, and capital.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Sustainable Views, the podcast. I'm Silvia Pavoni, your host. We continue our Business Activist series where we talk to entrepreneurs tackling environmental and social challenges and aiming to turn a profit while doing so. In this episode, I talked to Paul van Zyl, who has a long experience in tackling human rights and broader social issues. Among his many roles, he served as executive secretary of South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In 2018, he co-founded The Conduit, a private members club for people and businesses involved in sustainability. Here is my chat with Paul. Well, welcome, Paul. Lovely to have you on the show.
Delighted to be here.
So let's talk about The Conduit. It's a physical place. It's a club for people, but also businesses interested in sustainability. And I know that you want to bring people together, to connect them, to tap into each other's networks, to educate them, but also to facilitate money flowing towards those companies. So which of these three elements is harder to achieve?
If you're trying to build a business that is in the trying to achieve positive social change, and your theory is that that will be accelerated by bringing people into proximity with each other, you have to do a bunch of things. So you have to build trust and networking and communication. You have to inspire them with high-quality content, and you have to deliver world-class food and beverage and hospitality. And then you have to allow the networking effects to kick in. And getting all of those three right is like, you know, doing the tango backwards wearing high heels. It's complicated, but when it occurs, it's magical.
So let me start by asking about the physical side of these connections, because of course, the conduit you co-founded the Condit in 2018. Then a few years later, the pandemic struck. You lost access to the building where the Condit was hosted before. You had to find a new building. And of course, you had to navigate through the challenges of actually not being able to bring people together. So how hard is it still, if it is still hard, to work in this sector and host all these big events and get people to, you know, flow back into connecting physically and also to do so as an ethical business because of course you yourself want to live by those standards.
Well, if there's anything that's going to demonstrate the importance of proximity and relationships and placemaking, it's a pandemic, right? So, during the pandemic, we found an additional venue for The Conduit and we found this extraordinary building in Covent Garden on Langley Street, right next to Pineapple Dance Studios. Our landlord is the Mercers, which is a 700-year-old institution, but which is a philanthropy. So the rent that we pay actually accelerates our social mission. But I think what the pandemic did was demonstrate that we as humans are a fundamental social species and we want to be in proximity with each other. So one of the kind of organizing principles of The Conduit is is this African notion of Ubuntu. And Ubuntu means, um, I am because we are. And it's really a rather simple concept. It stipulates that we are more productive, more creative, more entrepreneurial, happier when we are networked together as a species. Um, and I think we see that in a lot of data, right? The highest trust societies in the world are more productive because the friction that occurs with an absence of trust in relationships slows you down. Whereas if you can build networks and relationships and trust, things happen quicker. And so The Conduit is inspired by this idea of bringing together people who are passionate about positive social change, um, and then using a rather sophisticated multi-vertical series of revenue streams to be able to build a really strong and dynamic business on top of that. And in so doing, to achieve our social goals, which is to create economic opportunity, accelerate a path to net zero, try and build societies which are more healthy and inclusive and democratic, less racist, more accommodating to the interests and needs of women. And I think those things can actually be achieved. And in our first full year of operations, we have begun to demonstrate that.
And as an ethical business, how challenging is it to turn a profit while also bearing in mind those considerations? And I'm imagining that you might say, well, actually, that's just how things have to be. Or am I putting words in your mouth? But also, do you feel that investors potentially are seeing this as a risk, maybe in terms of the impact of those considerations on the profitability of a business?
I think never before in human history have purpose and profit been more aligned. Um, and I think we see it in our business all the time. So there are just data after data after data shows that citizens and consumers are wildly concerned about climate, um, are concerned about good governance, are concerned about conflict. The war in Ukraine, I think, has brought the consequences of conflict into the homes of Europeans in ways that arguably it hasn't done before. And so people, if you rank what people care about in the brands they associate with, the companies they invest in, what they want their pensions to be allocated to, increasingly they want those to be values aligned. So The Conduit has, as a business, has to be founded, well, is founded on a trend that consumers want. People thirst for information. They want solutions to the world's biggest problems. They don't want us to harp on problems. And we do that. So we have 200 talks a year. Those convene people, but in the talks that we do and in convening people and bringing over 100,000 people through our doors in our first year of operation. We also then collected membership dues. We sold food and beverage. We built a thriving events business. We have a very active set of corporate partners who support us, and we have a coworking business where people work in our space. And 3 of those 5 revenue lines are high margin. Um, and so that's very valuable.
Which are the three?
Membership, coworking, and corporate partnerships. So food and beverage is a challenging business to run, which is, as everybody who ran a restaurant during the pandemic will tell you. Um, and events businesses are slightly better because you can achieve economies of scale and efficiencies if you run events. Um, but that blend of five revenue streams has meant that When investors look at a business like ours, they are excited by the percentage of EBITDA, of profit that you get from top-line revenue, but also, and most fundamentally, the core of what we do is about trying to achieve positive social change by assembling people together. And that is a white space. You know, up to now, there is no global membership club that gathers people together for the explicit purpose of trying to address the world's big challenges. And so that's differentiating. And, you know, we're not Soho House, we're not Annabel's.
You're anticipating my—
We're not Five Hartford. And good for them. I'm not being critical of those businesses. I'm just saying that's not us. We've chosen a different path and a different segment, and that's a valuable segment to be in. I'd rather be in that than any other.
So you mentioned potentially global ambition. You also talked about Soho House, but I would imagine that you may not follow down that path of actually having conduit venues across the world, or maybe you are. I know that you're obviously about to open a new space in Norway.
We are. We're not going to have 100, but we will have, you know, perhaps 2 dozen venues around the world. So, we have a wonderful club in Covent Garden in London, a club in Oslo is under construction. I just spent last week there and it's a very, very exciting opportunity. We have a beautiful building in the heart of Oslo, fantastic impact partners in the form of a wonderful firm called Catapult, which has a long track record in impact investing and social entrepreneurship. Incredible set of food and beverage entrepreneurs known as Flott and a wonderful ethical landlord by the name of Entra. So it's built on solid foundations. And I think one of the things we're doing as we roll out The Conduit across the globe is to make sure that we do so based on a solid foundation, that we have local partners who both de-risk the business, but also put wind in our sails. Um, we are actively, uh, looking and have some very good leads in, in Switzerland, um, in Portugal, uh, in Lisbon, uh, in Washington, DC, and in New York. Um, and in each of those cities, as different as they are, there is a strong community of people who want to use entrepreneurship and capital to build businesses that address the world's biggest challenges. And if you zoom back for a moment, there is no way we will produce an economically equitable world or a sustainable world unless we allocate capital at scale and with speed to tackling these problems. And we want to be part of that solution-making.
Are you looking at emerging markets as well?
Yes. I think that emerging markets offer enormous possibilities. So I think that there's, you know, Brazil, South Africa, India, and I think, you know, each of these countries may in different ways recoil a little bit at the emerging market tag. But I think these are places where you have equal trends at play. You know, there are countries like Singapore, which are not an emerging market, but in Asia where you're seeing a greater interest in impact investing and social entrepreneurship. So, you know, we'll go to those places, but do so carefully and methodically based on solid foundations.
So let's talk about The Conduit's work in channeling capital from investors to businesses. You were saying that it's so important to get close to each other physically for to foster that trust and so on. Does this work also for investors? Have you seen a change during the pandemic of investors not actually, or rather businesses perhaps not being able to pitch to investors face-to-face? And have you seen what are the implications of this lack of face-to-face time?
Well, if you zoom back for a moment, one of the things that the perhaps ineptly named Inflation Reduction Act passed by Joe Biden has done is demonstrate that there is a massive and decades-long commitment to investing in sustainable businesses. And indeed, it's sort of produced a bit of an arms race with the European Union, with the UK, in respect of China, to see who is going to own the clean tech businesses of the future. Now, if you take that kind of macro trend and, you know, that preexisted the passage of the IRA, but there is a gigantic flow of capital towards businesses that are trying to tackle the climate crisis, but also to try and find more inclusive pathways to economic growth. And so The Conduit on a much smaller scale through our sister company Conduit Connect brings together entrepreneurs who have double bottom line businesses, that are capable of attracting capital. So in our first year of operation, Conduit Connect has gathered roughly £22 million of investments. Those businesses themselves have raised over £700 million and employed thousands and thousands of people. And I think what The Conduit and Conduit Connect try to do is not just invest and allocate capital, but also bring to bear relationships because any entrepreneur will tell you that getting your investment round closed is the start of your worries, not the end, because you have to execute against a business plan. And that requires product-market fit. It requires a marketing strategy, a world-class team, good finances, fantastic supply chain, all the, all the breaks, either earned or lucky, that entrepreneurs need. And your chances of getting those breaks increase exponentially if you are placed into a network of people who care about those issues and who are hardwired to help. And that is what we try and do through Conduit Connect. And it's been a remarkable company with incredible success even in its early days.
So you're working with businesses, you're working with individuals, well, with me as well. I have to, you know, to say that I'm a member as well of the Conduit, so full disclosure. And of course, I've been enjoying the vast array of programs and workshops, fantastic venue. You're working with predominantly then businesses and investors, so the so-called private sector. There may be also some non-government, non-NGOs involved. What about governments? Are you talking to policymakers as well? Should you be talking to policymakers?
Absolutely. You will never solve any of the great existential challenges we face by go-it-alone approach just with investment capital. You need policymakers to align the arms of government, the arms of law, the incentive structures that governments are capable of putting in place, the regulations that stop abuse and excess, and they need to be crafted in a smart and intelligent way. So I'm a great believer in engaging with governments. The Inflation Reduction Act is an example of government playing a constructive role. I'll give you another example, refugees. So we, when the war in Ukraine commenced and the huge refugee exodus started, The Conduit held a series of events to try and focus on not the problem, but on the solution. One of our board members started an initiative from within The Conduit that sought to create a tech platform that would help Ukrainians who wanted to come to the UK to find homes that they could settle in, something that the government enabled through the passage of legislation. But there was a real systemic gap in finding a platform which could readily and easily connect refugees to UK citizens who had opened their homes to them. And that was a really remarkable success. He will blush when I say this, but he was awarded a CBE for that work in the annual honors list.
Do you want to share his name as well?
Well, his name is Nick Vetch, and he's the founder of The Big Yellow and is a remarkable, remarkable business person, but also somebody who cares deeply about the world. And so I don't want to take any credit for his initiative, but what he's able to do is develop a solution using parts of the network of The Conduit and then all his formidable commercial expertise. From that, we have now developed a whole line of programming around refugees. And this year, we will do a series of events and conferences that try and focus on the question of refugee settlement because I think far too often refugees are incorrectly regarded as burdens and not really thought of as benefits to a society. And I think if you can find ways to quickly integrate refugees into their host countries to allow them to be economically productive, to allow them to live with dignity, to allow them to have decent homes and housing and schools, we will quickly see that they are a net benefit to our societies. And the West has a massive demographic and fertility problem. It needs people to cross borders and come into the West. So the idea that we wall ourselves off is a tremendous act of self-harm. So what we're trying to do at The Conduit is focus on practical solutions that harness the entrepreneurial powers of refugees. Some of them, you have to be incredibly entrepreneurial to lift up your home and your family and move from one place to another in circumstances of tremendous duress and to turn people into productive contributors to societies. And I think we've shown a track record of doing that, and we will do more of that in the years to come.
Very well. Thank you so much, Paul, and best of luck for the future.
Thank you so much for having me.
That's it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you, as always, to my producer, John Rogers. We will find each other again in 2 weeks for the next episode of Sustainable Views, the podcast.