Wow, this newsletter commitment has been humbling. So many people asked for it we thought sure, why not. We write all the time should be easy to fit it in....
Not easy!
Maybe it’s just Drea’s (not-so-secret ADHD). But we think maybe our accomplishments are perhaps just a weird combination of underestimating a challenge, then being too goddamn stubborn to admit we did. And completing it anyway on sheer grit.
So newsletters, turns out they’re not that easy in a high-growth startup. But particularly not in a startup that has authentic Indigenous friends, members, representatives and cofounders. Because a lot of below-canopy or off-grid culture, and problems, and negotiations, doesn’t really need to be shared.
It’s not secret, it’s intimate. And we like it that way.
We’ve been explaining to people all week that yes, our pipeline really is that big. And no, it won’t be public. And why not? It’s not just privacy, it’s a kind of appropriate level of cultural resonance and trust and comfort with exposure before you can talk about an authentic community partnership comfortably publicly.
We think maybe a lot of startups get this wrong, and hey most startups there’s a reason to talk about partnerships early, when “everyone knows” startups are just getting by.
But in OUR population, the population we were designed to serve and meaningfully employ, the 1 billion people who live in tropical forests, and now lots of friends from some oceans, and arctic, and a couple of deserts. (And hey why not a savannah? They’re cool and we just learned that’s a Taino word, although our first savanna friends are from Africa...)
...everyone DOESN’T know that.
Everyone DOESN’T know how tough it is to run a high-growth startup and really stick to your guns and build trust with low resources. So no, our pipeline isn’t public. We don’t claim community affiliations even after contracts are signed until we’re certain we’re a little ways into holding up our end of the bargain.
So newsletters are harder than we thought they would be.
Why we’re still writing
Our public channels were designed to be a duet from the beginning. In fact, we highly recommend you listen to the whole group so you can hear the harmony. Drea, Fernando, Jhony, and the jungle kids.
It’s hard to know how to describe a group that is divergent and yet united. We’ve been explaining that a lot lately when we get involved at the negotiating table with our Indigenous friends. How you need uniqueness for a collective voice to function properly.
There are a couple of ground rules for Savimbo negotiators and the tables they negotiate at. First, they only have to authentically represent their community. Second, they are always independent. They aren’t held to the Savimbo brand. Savimbo is the access, not a voice they are responsible to protect.
But for the responsibility of communicating the Savimbo voice, there is a similar level of difference. One of our internal mantras is “different but equal“, and that’s a core key to our success. We love each other’s differences, the different voices, ethnicities, genders, ages, backgrounds, skills, and nationalities on the team. It keeps things interesting and us curious about each other.
It’s like a stage crew and behind the scenes, very organized. We hire for conscientiousness, train on the job, and hold people accountable to their level of responsibility. A little like planet surgery, mostly. Probably. People get promoted, rewarded, or held accountable in small teams, usually. We’re still sorting it out. But we like The Culture Code and we try to stick to it as much as possible.
We think, if you want to solve hard problems like peace in a dangerous place with a sad history, or deforestation in the face of scary drivers, or protecting animals when people don’t have a good food supply — you really need to work as a team and be very clear on who does what when.
We’ve been proud of our team for a long time, and how they treat each other, and that pride is important. It’s the real juice in the engine.
So we’ll keep writing the newsletter so you can hear a little more about that. Because we think this internal fungus we’ve been brewing might have some cool funkadelic properties...🍄
What’s happening now
Soooo. Lots of pilots. But yep! Finally! Clients!!! Okay what can we say about clients.... they’re BIG. To gigantic for us. We’re scared. Its also going to take a while. But they seem pretty benign, like being a mongoose and suddenly finding yourself in a herd of elephants.
Maybe sort of like that. Everyone wants to know WHO and frankly we do too. But its just goign to take a while to announce that and when we do thats real news and probably won’t be newsletter but headlines.
Lets say that certifying the biodiversity credit took us to another level, one we really don’t have a lot of experience in yet, but people have been pretty understanding while we figure it out. Maybe this global business stuff isn’t that bad. We’ll let you know.
The biodiversity credits did their first OTC trading (yeah, it’s a big deal)
Jhony and Karen is starting a site in Peru
If we didn’t tell you already, we won the Caracol Awards for protection of the environment
Were scouting sites in Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Africa... more in Brazil.... a lot of sites.
The charity arm opened for real finance with permission to raise funds with 100% granting for the formal UNDP group IEG-LAC.
We have our first AfroDescendant site in Colombia and they rock
Drea will be at Economic Futures in San Francisco
Drea went to NY Climate week, Drea and Fernando covered CEIBA, and Drea and Robert covered Innovate 4 Nature event in LATAM to negotiate. (Too much Drea, more Jhony!)
How we feel about it
Sigh. Too much fame, not enough sales! We know, we know, attention brings resources, clients, positive feedback, and more importantly, community support.
But our favorite media from all of this was this article from Forbes Colombia with some of our favorite people that just said simply: Savimbo is doing its job.
Attention is one thing, doing a responsible job, that pays people who do great work is something else. And its far more important to use to accomplish the latter at scale.
So circling back to honestly the most successful and important and invested community in Savimbo (the first one, so don’t think we’re being unfair).
Cool stuff you probably didn’t see before
This is the smallfarmer community in Putumayo that started Savimbo and stuck with us through the really tough start. We think they are awesome.