Roots To Foods Podcast

Episode 5 — Building the Ecosystem That Absorbs Capital: The Entrepreneur's Perspective To close Wave 1, host Ovidiu Bujorean sits down with Jeff Hoffman - co-founder of Priceline and Booking.com, Chairman of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, and a member of the OviBees Ventures Global Advisory Board. The two go back over a decade, to Jakarta and the GIST Initiative, where a young founder named Natali Ardianto was in the room - his startup Tiket.com went on to become one of Indonesia's leading travel platforms, later acquired by Blibli. This time, the question is different: after four episodes on the capital side, what does it actually take to build ventures that can absorb it? Hoffman brings the founder's view to a series that's mostly looked from the investor's chair. Why product-market fit is found in the field, not the office. Why coachability beats intelligence. Why the "missing middle" is really a communication gap, not a capital gap. Sharp, practical, and a fitting way to close out Wave 1's five-part arc from deployment gap to ecosystem building. Listen now, and subscribe to the Capital Deployment newsletter on LinkedIn for corridor intelligence and key insights from every episode - Wave 2 returns in September 2026: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7454225038356013056/

Titre: ÉP 04 Mobiliser Les Capitaux Africains pour L'Afrique - Dre Frannie Léautier - RootsToFoods Capital Series (1er épisode en français) Nouveau partenariat: la RootsToFoods Capital Series s'associe à AllAfrica Global Media, la plus grande plateforme d'information du continent, pour diffuser chaque épisode, Capital Insight et newsletter en anglais et en français. Pour marquer cette étape, voici le premier épisode entièrement en français : Dre Frannie Léautier, PDG de SouthBridge Investments et ancienne Directrice des opérations de la TDB, de la Banque mondiale et de la BAD. Au programme: pourquoi l'Afrique n'a pas un problème de capital mais un problème d'acheminement - environ 4 000 milliards de dollars d'épargne institutionnelle africaine restent sous-déployés ; pourquoi les gestionnaires de capital sont rationnels et c'est le système qu'il faut changer; pourquoi la finance mixte doit devenir une industrie, pas un art ; et ce que les données d'investissement ne captent jamais — le risque relationnel, la capacité d'exécution, l'économie politique. «Le plus grand risque pour l'Afrique aujourd'hui n'est pas l'absence de capital -  c'est qu'il ne soit pas déployé assez vite.» Dre Frannie Léautier 🎧 Une production d'OviBees Ventures. Partenaire Médias : AllAfrica Global Media. 📩 Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter LinkedIn Capital Deployment pour recevoir chaque Capital Insight et Capital Signal : https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/capital-deployment-7454225038356013056 📰 Capital Insight complet sur rootstofoods.com

In this episode of the Roots to Food Podcast, host Ovidiu Bujorean, CEO of OviBees Ventures, speaks with Dr. Frannie Léautier, Senior Partner and CEO of SouthBridge Investments, about the opportunities and challenges of mobilizing African capital for investment across the continent. Their discussion focuses on the role of domestic wealth in financing infrastructure, supporting economic growth, and reducing dependence on external funding. Dr. Léautier reflects on the potential of pension funds, institutional investors, and other sources of capital to contribute to Africa's development agenda, while highlighting the reforms and partnerships needed to attract and sustain investment. The conversation also explores the relationship between infrastructure and economic development, the importance of strong institutions, and what it will take to create an environment where African capital can be effectively deployed to support long-term growth.

Guest: Jenn Kenning, Co-Founder & Former CEO, Align Impact Why does philanthropic capital stay stuck even when the intent is genuine and the money exists? Jenn Kenning has spent 25 years at the intersection of wealth management and impact — partnering with financial advisors, institutions, foundations, and families to turn values into capital strategy. Her answer to the deployment gap is not structural. It is human. In this conversation, Jenn and host Ovidiu Bujorean unpack three key things: → The biggest myth: that impact investing requires sacrificing returns or taking more risk. It does not. → The gap is not products or instruments. The most powerful unlock in impact investing is a client who has found their own why — and an advisor with the capacity to ask the question that surfaces it. When those two things meet, capital moves. → Just 5–10% of global philanthropic giving redirected toward impact unlocks $115–230 billion annually. The donor intent is already there. The roadmap is not. Jenn introduces the quarterback co-pilot model, goals-based planning as the unlock for scarcity psychology, and the one question that changes everything in an advisor-client conversation. This is Episode 3 of the RootsToFoods Capital Series — a five-episode practitioner series on the mechanics of capital deployment, hosted by Ovidiu Bujorean, CEO of OviBees Ventures. The series brings together senior practitioners across blended finance, impact capital, and emerging market development to talk honestly about why capital does not move even when the intent is there. Capital Series Wave 1 · Episode Arc ✅ EP01 · Nathaniel Heller, EVP · Geneva Global — The conditions problem ✅ EP02 · Joan Larrea, CEO · Convergence Finance — The blended finance instrument 🎙 EP03 · Jenn Kenning, Co-Founder · Align Impact - The human dynamic ← YOU ARE HERE 🔜 EP04 · June 16, 2026 · Dr. Frannie Léautier, CEO · SouthBridge Investments - Mobilizing African Capital: Domestic Wealth, Infrastructure & Change 🔜 EP05 · June 30, 2026 · Jeff Hoffman, Chairman · Global Entrepreneurship Network - Building the Ecosystem That Absorbs Capital: The Entrepreneur's Lens. Stay Inside the Capital Series: Subscribe to Capital Deployment LinkedIn newsletter - publishing one practitioner issue per episode — three key insights, the data, and an editorial frame. 👉 linkedin.com/newsletters/capital-deployment-7454225038356013056  Download the Capital Insight — EP03 A free two-page practitioner brief with key insights, data, and verbatim takeaways from this conversation. 👉 https://www.rootstofoods.com/episodes Follow the full series: Website: www. rootstofoods.com Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roots-to-foods-podcast/id1712747151  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6bodsZnw1IEGcf3KLdmxif  RootsToFoods Capital Series ·Host: Ovidiu Bujorean, CEO, OviBees Ventures

Wave 1, Episode 2 of RootstoFoods Capital Series interviewed Joan Larrea, CEO of Convergence Finance - the world's leading data platform on blended finance. Joan brings three decades of evidence to one of the most important questions in impact investing: how do you structure capital to actually move? In Episode 2 of the RootsToFoods Capital Series, she maps the anatomy of deals that work, where catalytic capital creates the greatest leverage, and why the right structure can turn $1 of concessional investment into $4 of private capital deployed in emerging markets. 

A new episode of the RootsToFoods Podcast part of the newly launched Capital Series explores “Capital Deployment in Practice: What Gets Funded and Why,” featuring Nathaniel Heller, Executive Vice President at Geneva Global and Global Impact Ventures, in conversation with host Ovidiu Bujorean, CEO of OviBees Ventures. The discussion examines how capital is actually deployed in practice — including the conditions that enable high-impact opportunities to attract funding, how investors balance impact and risk, and the institutional and relational dynamics that shape capital allocation decisions. The episode offers practical insights for foundations, family offices, and institutional investors, as well as advisors, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders, seeking to better understand how funding decisions are made and how to deploy and position capital and opportunities more effectively. Each episode is accompanied by a Capital Insight Brief, providing a concise, practitioner-grade synthesis of key takeaways.