🎙️ EP68: Radical Truth: Robert Rubinstein Exposes the Impact Investing Illusion | InvestHer Podcast

Hi there. Welcome or welcome back to InvestHer Podcast. I'm Anne Ravanona, your host and funding friend, and I'm so glad you're here. InvestHer Podcast exists for one reason: to share the real, unfiltered stories of funded women founders, investors, and ecosystem changemakers from around the world, and to give them the visibility and airtime they deserve. Because here's what we know: women are building extraordinary businesses. And yet their stories are still too often missing from the conversation. We're here to change that. Every episode, I sit down with someone who's in the trenches of building, funding, or backing women-founded ventures, and we talk about the real stuff— the pivots, the rejections, the fundraising lessons nobody tells you about, and the wins, because there are plenty of those too. Now, I can't wait for you to hear this. Let's dive in. Boy, did I enjoy this conversation, and I think you will too. We're told that trillions of dollars are finally flowing towards a better world and that impact investing is fixing what capitalism broke. Robert Rubenstein has spent 28 years inside that story, and he'll tell you that most of it is about the fees. From Amsterdam, he built TBLI Group, ran 40 international summits teaching the world's largest assets owners what triple bottom line investing actually means, And founded Trust VC, a Glassdoor for venture capital where founders review the funds that ghosted them. His essay on the Impact Mafia reached 150,000 people, and he's only getting started. And his advice to founders raising money right now, in one word, don't. Enjoy. Welcome everybody to this latest InvestHer podcast episode. I am thrilled. I know I always say thrilled, but I'm especially thrilled to have with me our very special guest, Robert Rubenstein. He is the founder and CEO of TBLI Group, which means Triple Bottom Line Investing. He's going to tell you more about that. And he's based in Amsterdam. And I would like to say you're a 28-year elder in the field of sustainable impact investing world, and you've been pushing the needle forward for 28 years. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Robert.

Thank you, thank you. We're an overnight success after 28 years. And thank you for inviting me and also for the really important the thankless, often, work that you do. So, and you're, you know, still rolling the stone up the hill. So congratulations on that too.

Thank you. And I wanna kind of flip the mic because what our listeners and viewers don't know is that yesterday, yesterday, only yesterday, you had me on your podcast, The Radical Truth. And now this is my turn. So I want to kick us off with what's something fun that people don't know about you?

I worked on oil rigs in Iran for 2 years.

Whoa, that's cool! That is a fun fact. Let me see.

I worked in the North Sea, France, in Pau, in the south of France, in Iran, and in Texas on oil rigs.

Wow.

So I know what it is to make a hole in the ground.

That's super cool. I like that. You're the first person I've ever interviewed who has worked on an oil rig, so I really like that. That's fun. And I want to say yesterday we bonded We bonded over Dolly, Dolly Parton, the wonderful Dolly. She passed away yesterday and you gave me honestly the biggest compliment of my life where you kindly compared me in part to Dolly. But I wanna say why you mentioned something about her. You mentioned she was not a ribbon cutter. What do you mean about that? I think that's a nice intro to our whole discussion today.

Well, you know, most people, particularly in the sector where I've been working, the financial sector, Our work has been trying to change the financial sector so it works for all stakeholders. And most in there are obsessed about cutting a ribbon, getting their name out there, creating these nonsensical awards, which are basically awards to the sponsor of the event.

Yeah.

They're not really critically analyzed with a professional, you know, team. And too many people are so obsessed in cutting the ribbon, but not doing the work. And that's why, I mean, Dolly was not interested in cutting the ribbon. She was interested in getting shit done.

Yeah.

And she was very good at that and was very humble. And if the billionaire tech bros and all these other characters who are driven by donating $100 million to university because they can get their name on there. You know, that's fine if that's going to, you know, get your, you know, float your boat. But the approach that Dolly took, I mean, she even refused 2 medal, peace medals from the, what are they, Congressional Medal of Peace or something like that? name, because, well, it was offered by Donald Trump twice. She turned it down.

Yeah.

And she would give donations and then nobody knew who did that. She just wanted to help people. And it's very rare, very rare. If you research anybody, Bill Gates, anyone, any celebrity, everyone has a dark side. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. But if you research everything with ChatGPT, Claude, everything you can find, you can't find anything bad.

There's not a bad word about her out there, and rightly so. And I bet that's kind of true for you, Robert, even though if you wouldn't say it, I'm pretty sure that's true for you.

No, no. Well, nobody's actually written that I used to work on oil rigs, although I've posted photos of myself on the oil rigs working with these French cowboys Boys in Iran. And people, I was invited to speak, to give a comedy monologue about the impact mafia from the article that I had written at this event in Antwerp. And one of their supporters is a network which are part of the impact mafia. They're one of the many. So they started to panic that I'm going to embarrass them and they're a supporter and that. I said, I'm not naming individual names over here, so you don't have to worry about that. But that's— I think that's what people, you know, say. They can— they'll say, oh, he's such a pain in the ass about constantly pushing and telling people that their children are ugly. But he's authentic.

Yeah.

So people often don't like to be confronted with you know, confrontation that what they're saying is not what they're doing, or what they're doing is not what they're saying. So I get that. I think, you know, when people look it up and say, oh no, we can't invite Robert, he's going to create trouble with our sponsors. So I would say that's more the negative side.

And I like that. I like that about you. I know you are truly authentic and I like it. And that's why you don't call your your own podcast, The Radical Truth, randomly, okay? It's because you value the truth and being radical and being a catalyst, being someone who's nudging, nudging, nudging, nudging, always with the objective to move things forward. So for, for the people who don't know a lot about TBLI, triple bottom line impact investing, can you tell us your untold story? Tell us a little bit about it, how you— how it all started 28 years ago. Oh my God. Let's go back and then we'll go to where we are But let's start from where it began.

So I had left the United States in 1974 just to go traveling to Myanmar. It took me a lot longer to get there. I liked Amsterdam, so I kind of kept it as a base. I was traveling, got a job in the North Sea cleaning dishes on an oil rig, and I spoke French. So they were desperate for people who spoke French and English for training them to come in in the exploration industry. I did that training course in Poe. Then they said, well, we're not going to send you on rigs to work for exploration. We're going to put you in a subsidiary air drilling in Iran. And I said to them, but I don't know anything about air drilling at all. And they said, don't worry, you'll learn it as you're going along. And I said, well, if it's that easy, why don't you just hire local people? Oh, no, the Iranians, they could never do that. They're too ignorant. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I did that for a couple of years and it wasn't exactly the career direction I wanted. It was a good experience. I was able to travel a bit, 4 weeks on, 4 weeks off, and could travel along the way.

And the pay is usually very good on oil rigs.

Well, you can save money. I mean, the best paid people are the directional drillers, people who drill a hole that kind of goes like that. But we were just kind of air drilling maintenance people, uh, because the, the formations there were terrible. So when they drill a hole and they pour bentonite and chemicals and water, it doesn't come up because the formation is very fractured. So they use soap and air to create a shaving cream, which was very light and clean that up.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I, I did that and then I, I didn't want to do that anymore. And I just liked, um, Amsterdam. And then I started with an English guy, a pillow furniture business, which was rather strange because my father was a tailor. He made custom-made clothes for women. And I was never interested in being behind a sewing machine to make anything. And here I was in Amsterdam making covers for pillow furniture. And fortunately, that wasn't a great financial success, but it was a spiritual success. And then we started to do import of quality bicycle products, like bicycle locks that you couldn't cut. And there were a lot of theft of bicycles.

Yeah.

So that led me into the bicycle industry. And I saw, well, there's no real publication in— for hobby bicycle. And there were a lot of hobby bicyclists. So I started the first hobby bicycle magazine called Fiets, which is a noun and a verb in Dutch. And that was a very— that was a big financial success, and I sold it to a large publisher. It gave me great pleasure. And I foolishly started another magazine after that, which was only a spiritual success called Menu. It was a kind of an A5 format, TV Guide-sized magazine of how to make meals within 30 minutes.

Oh, doing the Jamie Oliver before he got all a big break on it. Yeah, I love it. Go on.

Unfortunately, our thesis was making wholesome meals within 30 minutes for working people using fresh fruits and vegetables. But the only people who advertise are processed foods. Tomatoes don't advertise unless it's a campaign from the EU.

Yeah.

So we were pushing the thesis of wholesome food quickly and easily for working people, but we're adding these horrible salad dressing sachets in plastic.

On top, yeah.

So I just, oh, this is terrible. And I didn't raise enough money to do the magazine. So eventually, It went bust. I lost all the money that I got from the bicycle magazine, Fiets, which was a lot, and with a big hole in there. And during that time, I was very disappointed with the cooking magazine, Menu, that was the name of the magazine, because it— there was no purpose in there. There was just— and basically, you're dealing with supermarkets.

Mm-hmm.

And you're dealing with product managers who think their life's purpose is selling peanut butter.

Yeah.

And they think they're brilliant and how important they are selling peanut butter. And there's just no purpose. And then I heard of this organization, Social Venture Network, went to that, said, oh, wow, this is more, much more interesting. Because I was, my parents always read me about purpose and values and honesty and integrity. And that's when the idea of creating a management magazine on sustainability called Source started, was planted, and I published that in 1998.

Wow.

Unfortunately, I asked for an X amount of money with some investors, and I only got a quarter of that. And I stupidly said, all right, I'll do it anyway. And so we were close to break even after about 18, 24 months, but the investors pulled the plug while I was on holiday. So when we came back and, you know, the magazine was bankrupt, I still wanted to create an economy based on wellbeing. And I figured, how can I do that? So I needed the business community on my side, but they would only respond, remember 1998, it was a different time. They would only respond if they felt excruciating pain continuing in the direction they're going. So I looked at, okay, what are the 3 pain buttons that I could press with no money. And, you know, my wife just gave birth. And so the desk was under my son's bed in a very small apartment. And how could we influence them? So I, you know, I saw that it was the 3 pain buttons were finance, personnel, and reputation. So which one could I influence? Reputation is very hard to influence, even if you have money and you're a big NGO. I tried with personnel teaching MBA students about sustainability. ability. But that was very disappointing in that time because most of the students kept saying, yeah, I want to have more purpose and sustainability, but they all went to McKinsey and A.T. Kearney.

They all still want to do the consulting arc.

Yeah, they were worried about their student loans. And then I looked at finance, and this was not a PhD study. I looked at the list of the largest asset owners/managers, and I added up the top 100 and I said, oh, they have about got 15 to 20% access, direct or indirect control of the assets. So I figure I only have to convince 100 guys because there were no women in 1998. I mean, even the sovereign fund of Norway was nothing then. So Japanese pension fund and UBS and AXA, et cetera. So that's when I started the conference, TBLI, basically trying to educate those 100 asset owners primarily. And over the years, I think we, maybe we didn't get the 100, but we got the number of assets that the financial elite controlled coming through there. We did 40 international summits in Europe, Asia, Latin America, North America. And it was going really well until the financial crisis hit.

Mm-hmm.

Then after that, I had a heart operation a day before we were doing a conference in Bangkok.

Wow.

And I didn't have any money because I was sick for quite a while. And then the doc, you got to go to the hospital now and you're going to be here and you're going to have to have a new heart valve. And my wife went with my son and couldn't pay the bill of the hotel. And our friend, Julia, Came to the rescue. And then COVID hit, we had to retool again. So it's been quite a challenge. But over those 25, 28 years, we built up a network and a reputation. And, you know, it's like your work. It's farming. It's not hunting.

Yeah.

It takes the time that it needs.

Yeah.

And particularly if you want to do it in an authentic way. If you want to cut corners and you want to be fake, okay, you can get some success. So that's pretty much the story. My career has been more like a pinball machine.

Actually, I've read other books say, and articles say that for diverse founders, that's also the case. They feel that their careers are like pinball because they don't know if they're going to— they're depending on resources or opportunities or networks, and, and they're kind of thrown in different directions. But what I love about your story is, as you say, it's the pinball, it's the winding road. So interesting, because in each of those experiences, A, you were very entrepreneurial all along. So you, you were already an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur in the different places that you went. And yet you gathered all the skills and learned about different sectors and industries along that. And you were already a system—

Systematic thinker.

systemic thinker because you were trying to figure out, okay, how does this game play? Who are the players? Who are the key people I need to be talking to in order to have more leverage because they, they control more of the assets? And I think that's very smart because especially when you're doing this long-term work, that, that helps you gain more traction. So, so tell us then, where— what is TBLI today? So that's been your path up until now, and you've had the 40 summits. You tens of thousands of members. Tell us more about your work, all about it, like that you're a not-for-loss, the not-for-loss side, and also the for-profit advisory side. So tell us about those 2 hats.

When COVID hit, obviously, like everyone, we had to stop doing face-to-face events and shut, you know, stop that completely. But I still wanted to create an economy based on wellbeing by changing the mindset of the investor. And as you know, the financial sector is just a very predictable group of alpha males that are all overpaid by a factor of 4 and underperform. So it was never really hard getting buy-in. It wasn't. The hard part was access. Do you actually have access to the asset owner, the decision maker. So when COVID hit and we kind of retooled, okay, how are we going to keep the lights on? So focused on 2 things. One, continue the educational outreach through podcasts, masterclasses, virtual mixers. Like today, we have a mixer where people are connected for an 8-minute video chat And then they get an overview of everybody they met. So it's very efficient. We did investor salons. We did, as I said, podcasts, masterclasses, a lot of different things. But that's pretty much a not-for-loss. You can't really make money doing that unless you lie. And you say, oh, Anna, just give me $40,000, and I'm gonna put you in front of 100 family offices.

Mm-hmm.

Who never show up. and everybody you meet is asking you for money. But the reason why a lot of these family office events get away with that is because the budget to bring in a high net worth is so high that if I find one, you know, we'll do that. So that's why they still, you know, exist. But most of them don't deliver on what they promise. And I foolishly helped a few of them. So we had, as I said, 2 companies TBLI, which is more of a not-for-loss of basically the education helps build the brand and the network. And we have a TBLI Weekly and we started Trust VC, another not-for-loss, which is a kind of Glassdoor review site about VCs and PE. Then a couple years ago, we started the first open-source database comparing all the different ESG and impact measurement and systems, frameworks and systems.

Nice.

So that we had 44 independent companies. Still, anybody can watch it online at tvlightgroup.com. It's called the Better World Prize. And of course, all of the well-funded ones, PRI, Principal Responsible Investing, Carbon Disclosure Project, B Corp, Ecovadis, World Benchmark Alliance, all of those that are well-funded, they refuse to participate because they never wanted comparability, which is how they operated when they wanted to speak at our conference. Don't put me on the thing.

Yeah.

So that's the not-for-loss. What sometimes keeps the lights on is the advisory where we built a kind of, we took a match, a dating engine, which was used to match men and women, women and men, and use that to match buy side and sell side. So whether it was a fund, fund of fund, industrial holding, or a direct deal, and then we would be hired by organizations to help them put them in front of those potential investors. And we use AI not so much for the outreach or selection, but just the toilet cleaning work, meaning the automatic— I'll send a different email after a couple days and a WhatsApp, then a LinkedIn message, then SMS. And that work and the advisory work for family offices or asset owners that are serious, not curious. Most are curious.

Mm-hmm.

And most pretend that they're big investors in the space, but they're not. If they were, You know, there would be no problem for all of the startups in raising money and finding investors. And Bloomberg claimed a few years ago there would be $50 trillion going into ESG. If that was true, then what happened in Nepal would have never happened.

Yeah.

So it's a nice story, but it's not based in reality. So That we do the for-profit. And then all of the work that I did in the last 28, 30 years had helped me finish my book. And hopefully we'll get that out this year or Q1 next year. Hopefully that will generate some income. But I was never really motivated by dying rich quickly.

Yeah.

It didn't grab me. It didn't grab my wife. You know, we're okay. You know, we don't need a lot. We live simply. And it's always funny listening to people in the financial sector. They can talk for hours and hours and hours about these M&A deals and this deal and that. And I remember I was visiting a public school friend when I was very young, and I was visiting in New York and we went for lunch. And my wife is really, I said she has honesty Tourette's. She just doesn't have any filter. And she said, he worked at Cantor Fitzgerald's. And she said to him, tell me, what is the fun of trading money?

Hmm.

And he said, well, you can make millions of dollars in 10 minutes and blah, blah, blah. And she repeated, I repeat, what is the fun of trading money. Where's the soul? Where is anything of culture or anything? So it's the thing with what I like about the financials is the predictability of them. They never surprise ever. I've never gotten in the 30 years ever a well-funded, so well thought articulated reason why should you not invest in companies or funds that provide you with a financial return as well as a social environmental added value. And I mean, when we started, we were dealing with irresponsible investors and criminals.

Yeah.

You know, they weren't really criminal, but they weren't interested in the subject.

Yeah.

And I found if you ask And if you ask any of them, whether it's a family office or a pension fund, do you want a financial return with a social and environmental added value? No one ever said to me, no, I want all my money to make—

But it's all blah, blah, blah.

Everybody. And they're working at that 24/7. They don't think like— it's always been education. It's always been kind of capacity building.

Yeah.

Get access to the actual asset owner or the decision maker, getting buy-in is not hard. It's quite easy. But you do— don't shout loudly in French to someone who speaks Mandarin. You have to really communicate in their language. And if you do that, then you'll And you get that behavioral change, which has been happening, as we discussed yesterday. It has been happening, it is happening, it will accelerate. Things like what's going on in Nepal hopefully will wake people up even more.

Well, and you've just, without even knowing it, you have segued beautifully into my next question, which was actually referring back to the past 28, 30 years. Has ESG impact actually changed the system or not, even in a little bit, in those past 28 years that you've seen? Has it changed anything? And if so, what?

Well, it's changed— when we started, we were trying to sell Coke Classic, and most people wanted Diet Coke. Because it's always been about the fees. It's never been— because even the whole measurement system, I remember when we started, the model that was used was what I call jokingly the O.J. Simpson method, which basically you fill in a form, a self-assessment, and then you send that to the research providers, the ESG research And they would use control by ignorance. So they'd look, is there a news item about this company and bad behavior in Manila or whatever? And the press can find a forest fire burning. They can't see a cigarette next to a can of gasoline that might explode.

Yeah.

So it's gotten better. There is much more money going into it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of money going into the wrong things, like in climate tech, which is a terrible name for it because they don't really impact climate in the short term. They're unicorn chasers. And that's okay. But don't pretend that you are restoring the biosphere Because you're not investing in things that actually restore the biosphere are cheaper and more reliable, like conservation. Everybody wants to do carbon removal because they can charge a lot. Amazon raised or created a fund of $93 million for 50,000 hectares in South Africa planting trees, which sounds wonderful. However, you got to wait 15 years for the trees To grow. They could be fires, they could be floods, they could be pests, anything.

There could be a president who chopped them all down.

Exactly. And a third to a half of that money is for fees.

Yeah.

And for $10 million, not $93 million, for $10 million, you could conserve 500,000 hectares of trees Trees already there and prevent them from cutting down, but no fees. So very little money goes into true conservation.

Hmm.

And most of it goes into carbon removal with, I think the worst one is Climeworks, a vacuum cleaner in Switzerland and in Iceland that supposedly sucks CO2 out of the air. When they admitted and it was proven they produce more CO2 than they're withdrawing. And it will do an IPO and they raised over $1 billion. I mean, it's ridiculous. But the people who invested realized, oh, we'll get an IPO, we'll get our 10x. And so I think we just have to be honest. And I did that in a debate in London at an impact investing summit. I said to them, listen, it's about the fees.

Yeah.

Just be honest.

Yeah.

You're doing this about the fees. And if you're so serious about restoring the biosphere and sustainability, then tie your fees to the output. So if you don't hit it, then your fees go down.

Well, how did they react? They were like, get him out of here now. The door is here, Robert. Thank you so much for coming.

Bye. What was funny, I invited a Ukrainian friend, a family office friend of mine. And we had 2 big fund managers, one from the US and one from London. And the moderator was completely biased. He took like 15 minutes saying how great impact investing was. And the thesis was how impact investing lost its way, has it lost its way, which was a polite way of us saying impact investing is bullshit the And in the end, we won the debate. We won the debate. And I think mainly by getting through to people, they know the bullshit they're selling.

Yeah.

But it's about the fees.

Yeah.

And just be honest enough because some of the investors, maybe some of the retail investors, maybe some of the family office investors, maybe even some of the pension funds, actually believe you're addressing the challenge of climate with your fund, and you're not. Yeah.

Ooh, ooh, this is the radical truth. This is the radical truth coming out. Real quick, Anne here. InvestHer Summit 2026 is coming to Paris in October, connecting global scaling women entrepreneurs with investors, corporates, and others to scale faster. Save 20% with early bird tickets at investhersummit.com. That's investhersummit.com. So now I want to move on into your next vehicle, which you mentioned earlier on, is that you have a new book coming out on the extraction machine of VC, private equity, and philanthrocapitalism. So, tell us a little bit more about the extraction machine, and then we'll go on about the Impact Mafia and how that went viral.

Well, I mean, after doing TBI 28 years, I saw a lot of abuses, fraudsters, people pretending, and also some wonderful people doing phenomenal things. But unfortunately, the ones that were doing the most, they talked the least. And the ones doing the least, they talk the most.

Mm-hmm.

So people actually believe all of these stories. So I just started to make an outline. Okay, all of my— I taught MBA students, which was a bit disappointing. Of all the— in the 4 years, only one actually pursued his big purpose and became a professor on sustainability. And we were attacked by pre-MAGA. There was a group before MAGA. There was another group that tried to destroy our conference when we held it in Frankfurt. And we just, you know, it was a punk, so we just pushed back. So all of the things that I had experienced from the philanthrocapitalists, the MBA students, the strategy consultants, the political fairy tales, The networks of wealthy individuals who created these kind of networks of supposedly fixing impact, some starting training courses at universities. Let's go to Ghana and make a photo op with some tribal village that is putting up solar panels when the real money is not going in. environmental social restoration. So I took, I started publishing a couple of the chapters on LinkedIn to see how it would respond. And I published one called The Impact Mafia, which kind of covered all of the networks, all of the organizations in this space with, you know, massive abuses from like GIN, the Global Impact Investing Network. We were the ones that helped get institutional investors to join GIN when nobody ever heard of them. And it was originally focused on true impact investing to focus on social entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Now pay $100,000 as sponsor and you can be— and you have a hedge fund and you can be a keynote speaker there. So, but that's, you know, that's because that generates income for the network to do that, which is cool. So we, I published that article and it went viral. I think we got like 150,000 people responding to it with like 98% were in full agreement because they experienced what I had experienced, except I didn't put it in a polite way.

And, you know— Did you name names or did you kind of blanket it?

Yes, yes.

Kind of just by places and organizations.

Names of networks that were not, which they were not happy to hear that. But it was funny, there was one particular gentleman who was really very aggressive in his pushback. But when I first met him, I didn't have a good feeling. He seemed very non-authentic. But he was part of the impact mafia. Then I think it was last week, I was speaking to a woman who's starting a family office in New York. I didn't know the family. I never ask. It's none of my business. And she was really passionate. And she said, that article resonated so much because I knew exactly who the guy was because we had dealt with him and he was awful. He was truly awful.

Yeah.

So it's basically a lot of, if you're not in the financial sector, The financial alpha males always say to their clients or their retail customers, Anne, just leave it to me. You don't understand.

And that's the danger zone. You know you're in trouble, which happens, I think, also coming back to wealth managers and at that level, also for a lot of women who are wealthy, high net worth, part of family offices, they have often in the past felt very intimidated because they didn't know the ins and outs. And they would have these male wealth managers who would say exactly what you said, Anne, let me handle it, I'll look after that. Until she started to learn a bit more about it, get curious in the investments, and then figure out, hold on, this is not doing exactly what you've just been calling out. This isn't doing what you said it's doing, and it's not giving the return. There's probably peacocking. And by the way, you're making a lot of money. a lot of money off my money, but it's not actually helping the people we're supposed to be. And I think there are more and more wealthy individuals, including a lot of wealthy high net worth women who have copped on to that as well and who are now like, well, if you don't get it, mister, I'm going to find a great woman wealth manager in particular who will understand how I approach things, my vision of ESG, my vision of— And of impact, what I want to accomplish with my wealth, my family's wealth that we have built, that we really want to contribute to have real impact, not just financial return and a big fat bonus for you at Christmas or over the year. So, so yeah, so the impact, I can't wait. So the, the Impact Mafia exploded. Are you going to be releasing a couple more chapters or are we going to have to—

Yeah. I try every week to release an article, maybe not always a chapter from the book. Sometimes it's a bad hair day, sometimes it's a good hair day. Sometimes it's very little things. I mean, people think that we're waiting for multi-billion dollar checks to land in the door and that we're only waiting for these massive ribbon cutting stories. And this one woman who's a member of the Tbilisi Circle, very nice woman, Tessie. And she is working in Haiti, of all places, with a community. She's working in Ghana. She's working in Latin America. And I connected her with a couple of people. She came to our mixer and met some people. And then I said, You know, you should speak to this guy because what he's doing, I think what you could help him. So they met and it clicked. And she wrote me a thank you because very few people come back to you saying, Anne, you remember that person you introduced me to?

Very few.

Yeah. We're married, we have 6 kids, and he's a multimillionaire.

Oh, and by the way, you introduced us.

Yeah. Yeah. And because most don't. And she was so nice. she did that. So inspired me an article. But I will, I've just gone through a rewrite of the book because it was too much about the experts, the MBA students, the financial fund managers, the wealth managers, all of that kind of upper echelon. And I needed to make, how does it relate to you as a retail investor, as an average person?

Yeah.

And what can you do? How can you push Yeah. You know, because they're extracting everything from you. And that was A.

And I mean, it's important that we know about them. So I'm sure whichever way you have reworked it, it's still necessary. We need to understand the game, which you're explaining. We need to understand the players. So it's like, you know, just toning up and down whatever you're writing about the players, so that then we can see where we fit in and not feel— again, not feel intimidated because we have more power, in our own way we spend money, way we invest money, way we support projects. We have so much more power. It's just that certain people in the upper echelons don't want us to realize that we have that power because they like being the puppeteers.

Yeah.

And I must say, I haven't had a chance yet to read that chapter on the impact mafia. I will. What I did read of the article that you shared with me yesterday, Um, you write beautifully. You write very well, and it's compelling, and it's, it's, um, makes you think. And that's what I like about it— makes you think. It's well structured. Like, even in that short article, I was like, this is very well written. I really enjoyed it. And it's, you know, I read a lot of stuff, but you made me want to keep— it was like, oh, more, more. Yes, the topic I was interested in, but it's like, more, more, more, give me more. So that was great. So I'm sure it's going to be a great success. Thank you.

I enjoyed writing it because I didn't have to do a lot of research. You know, some facts. When did this thing happen? When did this crash happen? Okay. But because there was a lot of things that I experienced and I used to get invited by a lot of the big wealth managers, like I was, it was very seductive. I remember UBS invited me in Hong Kong.

Hmm.

We're going to have a global conference call, video conference with all the senior people. And it was very seductive. And people telling, oh, we want to hear your thoughts on this. And so I was in Hong Kong visiting my son. No, no, it was before he moved. I was traveling in Hong Kong. And then I realized they just wanted to learn tricks.

Yeah.

They wanted to learn tricks to fool their clients that they were the thought leader. And that's when And then I stopped going and visiting all of these wealth managers and also stopped several years before that of strategy consultants who just wanna suck PowerPoint slides out of your brain and then repackage it.

Oh, and that happened to me. One client in a big corporate, and I had done a big project and gender diversity, blah, blah, blah, built a framework. They hired me as a consultant, da, da, da, da. And then a person moved on to another organization. I was talking to people in the organization, they said, oh yes, and this person, look at this framework they built. And I was like, that was my framework. They went and sold it off elsewhere and blah, blah, blah, which happens to people who, like, you're a systemic thinker, you're a systems thinker, so you can see the patterns, you can call it out. So yes, people want to take shortcuts. So I'm glad. And it's just another example, what you've just described, of your authenticity and standing in your own power and your truth, again, going back to the radical truth and say, okay, I called you out. You were using me. I'm not going to let you do that anymore. And I'm pulling back.

And if more people, like the students feel always powerless.

Yes.

And I used to, there was a TV show before which I really loved watching called Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Hmm.

Larry David. And there was a scene in there where he gave advice to Leon, who was living in his house, how to get this job.

Hmm.

And I would use that for the students. You're not powerless. If a recruiter comes to interview you, you have power then. Refuse to work for the company. Let them know why, if it doesn't align with your values.

Exactly.

You'll get a job anywhere.

Yes.

And most of them feel powerless. So they all take on, take these jobs at companies that they really don't like and doesn't fulfill their purpose. But if a few, these are all from ranked MBA schools. So if a few students from a ranked MBA say, sorry, I don't want to work for you. Your children are ugly and it doesn't align with my values. That goes back to the board and say, hey, The students we want are not excited about a red BMW anymore.

Yeah.

And these little things can make a massive difference.

Yeah.

If everyone has some form of a pension, either through Social Security or private pension, voting your stock and having your pension fund vote them and pressuring them, these are little things. Yeah. That the survey of the Gen Z and Gen Y, that most of the wealthy next gen and millennials who will be inheriting all these tens of trillions of dollars, I don't know if it's true. They all say the first thing I'm going to do is fire my wealth manager and either set up my own family office, but I'm pulling that money out because I'm not happy with what— maybe they will, but I think there will be a significant amount of moving out. And the private banks, particularly the large private wealth banks, you know, I've been dealing with them for a long time. They don't get it.

Hmm.

You know, if impact investing is so important, as they say, for clients, then why is it no major private bank, not BNP Paribas, not UBS, not JPMorgan, Morgan, not Morgan, none of them dominate the impact story because they don't allocate the resources to actually internally or externally build up that capacity. So they all, they don't want to be seen as the impact bank, but they don't want to be not seen as the impact bank.

Yeah.

Again, it boils down— So they want to be partly pregnant without making the commitment.

Well, this is it. And it boils down to something we both discussed on your podcast yesterday, which is about peacocking. Everything you've described boils down to peacocking. It's like, look at me, I'm the prettiest, I'm the smartest, I'm great. Oh, and there's a whole row of us and how we're brilliant and how we bolster ourselves up. And unfortunately, the global economy is run by these peacocks at the moment.

That's right.

Until I think, harping back to the French Revolution, until the people realize they have the power and we actually are the people, we the people, and we do have more power. And so this brings me nicely into one of the things that you offer in your suite of products and services, which is you mentioned your Glassdoor for VC/PE. Tell us a bit more about that. And what did you learn about the bad actors in that? So what is the name of that? And tell us more.

I knew there were many bad actors, having dealt with many of them. And I kept hearing from startups, founders, emerging managers, and sometimes LPs, that we— I met a fund or family office or whatever, and we had a great conversation. And then we would have 6 months of foreplay, no sex. And then they would ghost me, never hear back from them.

Mm-hmm.

And I heard that a lot. And one, uh, um, so I said, you know, let me create a platform where people can post reviews, what it was like Glassdoor, working with this particular fund, or that I was trying to raise money from them or whatever, to help LPs better decide if that's important to you, the values of the organization, how they treat founders and emerging managers.

Yeah.

You should know. And to help founders and emerging managers avoid certain bad actors, because I also found Size of assets had nothing to do with good social skills.

Yes.

Some of the biggest fund managers, like my friend at General Atlantic or the one at H&M Family Office, were, you know, they would apologize if they don't respond quickly. And they'd say, I'm sorry, it's too small or whatever. But that's, it's not about getting a yes, it's about getting an answer.

Yes.

You said no because of what? So that I know that.

Yeah.

And there was one situation that was rather shocking. There was someone who posted a story that they were like a nutraceutical cosmetic company out of the UK, and they signed a term sheet with a Swiss fund manager. And they signed off. Okay, the money's coming. So the company was really excited because they were struggling without cash, and they started to expand the company because the money was coming. And then I think it was several months later, the money still hadn't come, and they kept bugging them. When I say, "No, don't worry, it's coming, it's coming," we have to sort out some legal stuff. And several months later, the money still had not come, and ultimately. That company in the UK went bankrupt.

Of course.

What was the story is that the funder who signed the term sheet never had the money to invest, and they used that company as a portfolio company to convince their potential investors, this is in our portfolio.

That's disgusting.

And I got a very angry email from one of the staff over there. This Well, let me check. And I contacted the CEO and he said, it's not only true, it's much, much worse than what's there. What I have found is many founders are afraid to post a negative review because they're afraid, oh, there's still a chance that I can still get them. And if I post a negative review, even a non- Yeah. About this fund, somebody will look it up and it'll hurt me. So that's a bit frustrating. However, this week I caught up with a friend of mine who for 10 years or more, he was in— his podcast will also be coming out soon. He was an So he had 3,000 connectors, and he just connected people and helped them based on purpose and values and that. And he had— and Madoff screwed— stole a lot of the money that his foundation— anyway. And he's now created— he said, that's one thing, relationships, that AI cannot replace.

Yeah.

And so he's created this model of using technology, but putting a soul in it that all, who's on the shit list or who didn't act and who acted in an honorable way, as a way also to help those avoid and also give a poor reputation to those that deserve it.

Deserve it. Because the hard truth, the hard truth is that those bad peacocks still win. They don't get put in jail. They don't get the major fines. They always manage to wrangle their way, like the snakes in the grass, as Dolly would say in one of her songs. They manage their way to wriggle out of stuff. So, and what is the name of your product that is this Glassdoor for VCs?

TrustVC.org.

TrustVC.org.

TrustVC.org. And there's quite a large number of fund managers there. I have a lot of people like on our TV Live Circle, they use it to filter out who not to go to. I don't want to bother. I only want 5-star reviews. But I would like more and more people to post their experiences. And it's very easy to add a fund that's not there. Because the more transparency, the more people share their experiences, the more time you're helping others avoid.

Exactly.

And there's some wonderful, honorable, fantastic individuals. And there's some really horrible ones I experienced. I was approached by one company who was doing— was localizing traditional Chinese medicine in a pill form. And they were tired of raising money. And through a friend, they engaged us and they were willing to give me a very good commission. I got them an investor within a week or two, and they signed off on everything on the term sheet except one. Rubenstein doesn't get paid. Yeah, that was the demand of the VC.

Whoa.

Because if we put money in and some of that money is going to Rudy, it's not going to the company. So I said to the company, listen, I'll go find you another one. They were so tired. So they broke the contract. And of course, yeah, I could go to the court and sue for 5 years. And I didn't have the money for that. And ultimately, that VC was put on the shit list and I never brought them any.

That's awesome.

Instead of being happy, that here's the deal, exactly what you're looking for. And it's a good company. And you do that. But that shows the lack of values of individuals.

Yep.

And it's important with startups and founders, it's important that it never goes according to plan, as I think I said the other day, that it's always worse for If it's better, any investor is fine. If it's worse, are they going to throw you under the bus and blame everything on you? And, or are they going to grab a shovel and dig you out?

Or kick you out of the— of your own company. And so that comes in nicely, um, into my next kind of area to talk about, which is around your funding advice to those founders who are out there fundraising. In our conversation on your podcast, you said, don't raise money, bootstrap the hell out of it. And you talked about Banks and Mailchimp. So tell us a bit more about that. Why would you suggest to, to founders nowadays, you have this big, you have this bad list, the ick list, um, but yeah, why would you, or tell us more about what you're saying about to founders to bootstrap the hell out of it as far if you can go without getting external funding, do it.

First of all, all founders completely underestimate the time it takes to raise money.

Yeah.

Because they see this press release, this fund, this company just raised $100 million, valuation of $5 billion. They haven't sold anything. And they read about all these funds and those are aberrations. That is not the norm.

No.

But that's what gets the attention.

It's glorified.

And Mailchimp never raised external money, was sold for many billions into it. Spanx was also never raised external money, was sold, I think, to Blackstone for many billions.

For billions. And what she did, what Sara did, is that she paid, she gave checks to everybody in the company with the money she raised. Part of it, she paid everybody. They all got a payout and they weren't expecting it. And I thought, that is fantastic.

Yeah.

It's also, when you look at in a different industry, Taylor Swift has done that with her team. You know, that's— Dolly invested massively in her local area in the Imagination Library. You know, that's what a good virtuous circle looks like. And we need to see much more of that. And that's why it's great to see, yeah, they're all self-made, They didn't get the external help.

And it's the amount of— if you just think of it rationally, how much time it takes. First, do you already have a big network of investors? You don't? Okay, you got to research, then you got to filter, then you got to try to get a meeting. And that's the toilet cleaning part because people don't respond and you got to keep chasing them and you finally get a meeting. And then they wanna meet you face to face. So, you know, we're talking about many, many months going by.

Mm-hmm.

Then you have several weeks or months of negotiation for the contract, arm wrestling back and forth, valuation. I think it's worth more. You think it's worth less, more arm wrestling. Then you finally get them to sign, you get the legals to go through, then you get the money finally to come in or part of the money. And then you have to spend a lot of time in investor relations to keep them happy and then ultimately get rid of them.

Yeah.

Because what—

It's true.

What a lot of founders keep forgetting, what's the first thing, first thing that should be a signal to you that a VC or an investor says to you before they even get to know you? Well, what's the exit? So it's like you invite me over for dinner.

Yeah.

And the first thing you say before I come in the door is, when are you leaving?

Yeah.

And people take that, oh, well, that's just normal behavior. No.

No.

Are we building this company together or are you just an extractive person who's trying to flip the company like many private equity firms who invested in companies like Toys R Us, saddled them with massive debt. And then when it went bankrupt, you know, they got all their fees.

Mm-hmm.

So is it a partner that will help you build the company? Will they share their network? Do they actually have an understanding? I remember when I had a venture fund from a bank that invested when I started the bicycle And he kept asking me, what is the circulation of Playboy? And I said to him, what does Playboy have to do with a bicycle magazine? With bikes.

Yeah.

And he thinks, oh, magazine, magazine, you know, same thing. And they never brought any really talent. I think the only positive thing, they brought me my accountant, and her mother was the first registered accountant in the Netherlands, and she was fantastic. But that was the only thing. So often they don't bring anything. They don't always ha— open up their network. So you have to really think, okay, I'm giving away a lot.

Hmm.

Uh, um, it's costing me a lot of time and it's gonna cost me a lot of time to, you know, keep them on board.

Hmm.

And maybe it's gonna go according to plan, but if you can do it on bootstrapping, as long as, I mean, if you're building a, steel mill, I get it. Okay.

Yeah.

You can't do that on a— but if you're building a small company and you can try to keep your costs really, really low, you will have massive benefit because the value of your company will be at a much more realistic, higher value later if you do decide to take on external investing. And it's just a lot Yeah. It's a lot of time, even if you do know a lot of people, because people don't respond. Everyone is busy being busy. So that's why I say, even though our main activity is fundraising, I tell them, don't raise money. Do it if you avoid it, if you can. You know, obviously a steel mill or electric car manufacturer or whatever, you need more capital investment. But, um, if you can avoid it, you'll be much, much happier and you'll be able to spend much more time on building your company.

Yeah, instead of wasting that time placating to the investors. So how do you develop that if you do take on some investors for part of your growth? How do you build that radar to weed out the bad guys? That's not easy.

Well, well, that's why we created Trust VC, but it's dependent on people putting in reviews. What I always do is, I also said that to my wife. I said, you always ask 3 questions. Do you have money?

Yes, that's true. Because often, like you gave the example earlier, they didn't have the money and they were just—

There's a lot of pseudo-billionaires, a lot pretending to be investors. So find out, do that check. money? And do you invest in the area where I am in? If so, who are the 3 companies where you have invested? Then you go to those 3 or 4 or 5 companies and call them. How is this investor as a partner?

Yeah. In the good and the bad and the ugly. That's—

Yeah. Find out from Some will be a bit reluctant, particularly if they just closed a deal with them. But ask around, because remember, there's 5 times more wealth than global GDP. So there's €5 chasing €1, approximately. So there's far more money than great deals. So if you have, as you think, a great company and you're doing great things, and be very selective.

Yeah.

Be willing to walk away. I mean, Nina Simone said it so beautifully. You have to know to walk away from the table when love is no longer being served.

Yeah.

And if it's a partner for a startup has lots of challenges, Lots of pressure on the family if you're a very small company.

Mm-hmm.

No money coming in and all of that. So you have to, you have to be very determined. You have to have a lot of grit to do that. And things won't go well. But at the same time, you have to be very selective who you take on as investors. Uh, because it can be a disaster and they don't even have to have the majority share. Try— if you cannot do anything, make sure that you maintain majority ownership.

Yeah.

As long as you can.

As you can. Mm-hmm.

Because you know what's best for the company. Those are— most are hunters.

Yeah.

They have a timeframe that they need to get a return. for their investors. And there's, I mean, I've had some wonderful French VCs that have been spectacular in, we looked at it, I like what they were doing, but it's too early for us. I could not get approval from the investment committee. That's fine. That's okay. But if you can avoid it, that's why I say bootstrap forever.

Hmm.

And don't— and be very selective. You know, don't jump in, you know, even everybody, if you've had 98% nos and finally somebody says yes, find out if that's a good fit. You know, you, because you, you have to be able to work together. And will they open up their network? Not always.

Yes.

Not a lot of VCs or investors are willing to share their network.

Yeah.

Or they don't really have a network to share.

Yeah.

You know, you're, you're another, you're a model for extraction. Yeah. What can I get out of that? But there are some wonderful VCs and wonderful companies. You can look on TrustVC, just look up for 4 or 5-star reviews.

Reviews.

Um, and please, you know, post, but, um, and try really as hard as it It can be even harder chasing and finding an external investor and getting them on board and keeping them on board.

What would you say needs to change for the women founders out there looking for funding in this ecosystem that you know very well? And particularly, I would say, in the impact investing ecosystem, because there are, there can be a lot of women founders or co-founders in that ecosystem. Yeah, you know, building things. So yeah, what, what, what needs to change, do you think, when it comes to the women founders and accessing capital?

Well, I don't— they just also have to be very selective, um, because I, I know women fund the funds that look for, uh, funds, and I know, um, women-run, uh, funds. Like, we had one What was it called? Femtech. I think it was called Femtech.

Yep.

So, and they were a very good team. And I said, I'll try, I'll reach out to a couple of people. And I found actually the women high net worth investors were not that much better than the guy high net worth investors, you know, not responding and things like that. So you have to be very, very selective. There are networks of organizations like yours and FEM Invest. And in the US, there's quite a few. I mean, even our nature-based solution is women-owned and women-run company. Fortunately, we're lucky that there is a family office run by a woman who has been funding this. There's no simple solution because if you're dependent on the present system with the alpha males, it hasn't moved much of a needle over there.

Mm-hmm.

Which is why I like the idea of crowdfunding for women startups because there's a lot of, of crowdfunding institutions in Europe, in North America. And the timeframe is much faster than a traditional investment. If you, you know, if you're approved, it can really happen in a couple months that you get your money. So I would love to see a lot more crowdfunding vehicles, which would then allow women retail investors, you know, they could put in small amounts. They could put in €100 or €1,000 or €500, but collectively it's a lot. And if you can, maybe your organization, that's an idea of creating a crowdfunding platform with all of the regulatory nonsense that you have to go through for women entrepreneurs. Because I think that's a faster track. than trying to convince the alpha males unless they get many women LPs or GPs who say, hey, you want money from me? I want to see 10 or 15% of your companies are women-led. Yeah.

And it's starting. It's starting. It's starting. We're not there yet, 100%, of course, but it's starting. And that's a good thing.

And we all want to go faster than the music. And it's important also, don't be afraid to call people out. Everybody wants to be so politically correct and kind in that, and that only stimulates the present system of abuse and extraction.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I like it. So what's next for TBLI, Robert? You said you want to get out of the fundraising side of things. So what's next for you?

No, it's mainly become Because I want to do it because we do it very scientifically and select, but people are very disorganized and everyone is obsessed with data centers and AI. That's the new flavor of the month or climate tech. And I know quite a lot of, we have a very, very big network, but I'm tired of constantly chasing people. How many times, you know, after 15 reminders, and then you finally remind and you say, hey, Robert, what's going on? Hey, I've been writing you for 6 or 7 months. You know, just say it's not for you.

That's all. Yeah.

You know, it's, it's not that hard.

Yeah.

So that kind of, um, like having your kids when they were young clean up their room.

How many times— It's a manner. It's like good manners. Let's teach them good manners.

Yes. So I was approached also by an organization. Maybe you know them, Tiger 21. Do you know them? Fascinating organization. It's a network of very wealthy individuals. So you have YPO, which you've probably heard of. They have 35,000 members. Tiger 21 is 2,000 members, but very wealthy clients. And they were looking for someone to host a chapter in the Netherlands. So I said, yeah, I've been doing that and I have a big network. So maybe I'll, if I get through their process, maybe I'll do that. I want to do much more on the podcast and trying to get—

Yeah.

find the right algorithm trick for YouTube to get the story out there. And then do I want to do much more on speaking as it relates to the launch of the book? That gives me great pleasure. Like these types of podcasts cost me no energy, gives me energy.

Mm-hmm.

So I only want to really do things that give me energy. and expand TBI Circle, which is our private community, and getting more people to come and engage with that. That doesn't cost me, I mean, it doesn't generate a lot of income, but it gives me great pleasure. So hopefully the book will do well. Hopefully I'll get more speaking. I'm looking forward to speaking at You're summit or moderating, whatever works best for you either way. And because that's just fun. And it's, the connecting is easy for me. The challenge is chasing down the toilet cleaning.

Yeah.

I say, hey, you should speak to so-and-so.

And that's easy.

The hard part is getting them to respond.

Yeah.

Maybe they'll respond to you very quickly because of your position. But I just want to focus on doing things and avoid extractive, non-authentic eccentrics because they're just, They're just so debilitating.

And draining, and draining in every sense of the word. In every sense of the word. I get that.

We're not asking anyone to climb Mount Everest barefoot.

No.

Call me back.

No, it's not a big ask. It's true.

We don't have a big ask. We have a small ask.

So where can our listeners and viewers find you, Robert? Where is the best place to find you, the podcast?

I mean, the book, quite accessible on, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find Radical Truth on YouTube. That's our channel. You can find Radical Truth on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. So all of those in our website, tbelagroup.com. If anybody's actually looking to find, posting reviews of VCs or wanting to find VCs that are a bit more civilized, Otherwise, just go to trustvc.org. But all of that you can find on our website, tvlivegroup.com. We have our YouTube channel there. We've got our virtual mixers on there. We've got the Trust VC. So a lot of the things are all can be found there. And you can find me personally on LinkedIn. I'm near the maximum of the 30,000 connections because—

Amazing.

Amazing. So I turn down quite a few, particularly if it's strategy consultants and things like that, or coaches. I mean, there's a movie called The School of Rock.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember there's a scene, he said, those who can't teach, those who can't teach, teach gym. And those who can't do anything are coaches.

Yep.

Yep. So I usually turn those down because I really need to focus on mobilizing more capital toward things that actually restore the social environmental balance.

I love it. How can we put more fun into funding and into impact investing?

Oh, well, I think they're going to do the Chatham House Rules Again, but I'm speaking at a church from the— a network of Impact Family offices in Antwerp, in a church. And they wanted, because they were inspired by the Radical Truth article, they want a comedy evening. They want a comedy monologue.

Yeah.

So I wrote a comedy monologue that 25 minutes was a long time. And I'm going And it'll be quite funny, but also quite telling for those in the impact mafia. It'll resonate with them. They might not like hearing it. So that, I'm looking forward to that and just constantly planting seeds. It's just little stuff. There's no big ribbon-cutting story.

Yeah.

It's just everyday waking up, doing what you do with all of the various parts, it can be exhausting and tiring. And I think my biggest challenge is not getting— is not convincing the financial sector, it's convincing my wife that we're on the right path. She says, okay, I keep hearing this for 30 years. When is it finally going to happen?

Oh yeah, my family, same thing. Same thing. What would be your parting message to our audience today, Robert? What would you want people to—

Absolutely follow your heart. If it doesn't feel right, just don't do it. And it's not for everyone to be an entrepreneur. Don't take it as a failure because it's not about genius, it's about grit. In some cases, it's also about abuse. I mean, look at Elon Musk. He never created anything. He just kicked everybody out of the companies that he joined.

Yeah.

So if it, you know, if it doesn't feel right, leave your job. Don't work for companies that are just extracting your soul and not giving you, not pursuing your purpose. Life is too short, and you'll always find something. Everybody's always worried about the money. Yeah, if you're making 400,000 euro a year working for a bank as a wealth manager, and you only want to work and earn that, okay, then it's the money that you're interested in. You're not interested in the purpose.

Robert Rubenstein, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your radical truth, sharing your vision about this extractive economy and how we can do better in impact investing and just ESG and in the world and as good people, good mensch, as we say. Thank you for sharing your vision with us today. I look forward to having you as a speaker at the summit. Hopefully that's all going to work out. And if not, we'll find other ways to play. We will. And Yeah, just thank you so much for what you do. Can't wait for the book to come out. I'm giving you what I give some of my guests, an open invitation to have another podcast episode when the time's right, when the book's out and we need to go more into it. I love that.

Thank you for all the work that, um, that you're doing.