S2E15 - Georgia Stewart, Co-Founder @ Tumelo

Georgia Stewart is the co-founder and CEO at Tumelo, a start-up which provides investment platforms and pension providers increased transparency on the companies they own. Georgia grew up in Edinburgh and was originally keen on pursuing a career as a vet. Whilst studying at Cambridge University Georgia became exposed to just how little transparency there was in the investment sector and made a mental note to circle back to this when the time was right. After a number of years working in asset management Georgia decided that it was time to revisit a topic that she had become thoroughly passionate about. In January 2018 Tumelo was launched in the hope of helping every investor have a positive impact. 

James and Hector sat down with Georgia to discuss what led her to pursue a career in ESG, the importance of continually evolving your hiring process and why there is no such thing as a perfectly ethical company. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Riding Unicorns. The podcast about growth startups. I'm James Pringle and my co-host is Hector Mason from Episode One Ventures. This week, we're delighted to have Georgia Stewart co-founder of Tumelo on. Tumelo helps investment and pension platforms transform ESG into positive retention, acquisition, and brand opportunities.

[00:00:35] They're at the cutting edge of finance and sustainability. So it's going to be a really great conversation. Without further ado, let's bring in Georgia.

[00:00:46] James: So welcome to Riding Unicorns, Georgia. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:49] Georgia Stewart: Thanks very much, James. It's good to be here.

[00:00:52] James: Awesome. So maybe you could just start by giving us your background career today on how you started Tumelo.

[00:00:59] Georgia Stewart: [00:01:00] Okay, so I went to Cambridge, I, studied natural sciences and within that I focused on conservation and climate change. So I'm super passionate about sustainability. And the role that finance has to play in that conversation, or I guess in, the sustainable transition, when I was at uni, we were part of, this campaign called positive investment Cambridge. And it was all about getting the university to be a more proactive shareholder. So Cambridge as a uni has got 6 billion times invested into the stock market. And we were trying to make sure that they knew where that money was being invested. I E which companies were they buying shares in. And, that once they were invested in those companies, they were being a responsible shareholder because companies answer to their shareholders. And so if you're a shareholder, you have a, opportunity to influence change on issues like climate change or human rights or gender equality. And so we were working really closely with the uni to get them to do. And when we then left university, me and my two co-founders, Ben, and Will set up Tumelo to [00:02:00] give that opportunity to individual investors, people who are invested through their pensions, although they may not know it. And people who are invested as retail investors, through investment apps through financial advisors, et cetera, basically money is power. But at the moment, people who have money are not super empowered and that's what we're trying to change.

[00:02:17] James: Awesome. And how long have you guys been going now?

[00:02:21] Georgia Stewart: So we've been running tomorrow for three years. We, um, had a couple of pivots along the way, although it's always been raised sustainable investment focused. and we actually launched our first product, in June last year. So we launched with a trial with legal and general, which is now a longterm partnership. So we've been in the market for about a year.

[00:02:42] James: Awesome. And did you know that you were going to be a founder when you went to university? Do you have anyone in your family who has founded a business in the past?

[00:02:51] Georgia Stewart: Well, no, the answer to that is no, I wanted to be a vet. and I went to uni to do biology thinking I might apply to that or medicine afterwards. I couldn't [00:03:00] decide hence I did biology. but then I got really swept away in the whole climate change debate as one does. obviously it's very important issue. So I was passionate about that. ended up knowing that I'd definitely focus on sustainability. And I guess through the uni campaign, it just became apparent that this was a massive problem and it's a trillion pound industry. And there's just a lot of people that are very clueless as to the power that they could have with their money. And we saw an opportunity to change that from a mission perspective, but also that that could be, business opportunity as well. And then in terms of. Entrepreneurs and the family and my dad's side that will entrepreneurs, but it's very different. Like my dad runs it, marquee company, you know, like the white tents for weddings and stuff. my uncles have a self storage business. And so it's, it's different type of business, but they're all entrepreneurs.

[00:03:47] Hector: I had to look at your LinkedIn earlier on. And, it looked like you said. Had a go or thought about dabbling with corporate life few times. And then let us start. You say, being an entrepreneur pretty quickly, is that the case?

[00:03:59] Georgia Stewart: [00:04:00] Yeah, I mean, I did do internships and asset management. actually mostly that was because when I joined the campaign at uni, everyone was like a PhD studying climate finance and de-carbonization and stuff. They really didn't understand. And I was so fed up of not understanding anything and our Monday night meetings that I thought, oh, I should go and do an internship in asset management. And that became three internships in asset management. But yeah, I think it was quite obvious that while that's quite an interesting space, I kind of wanted to create change in the industry rather than be in the industry itself.

[00:04:33] James: if anyone's looking at their own portfolio and thinking about ESG as a filter on what they invest in, what are like the big things to avoid at the moment?

[00:04:44] Georgia Stewart: So there's two parts to investing for me. And there's been a lot of focus on the first and not nearly enough focus on the second. So when you're talking about ESG environmental, social governance, investing, it is seemingly all about asset allocation so where are you going to put your money and where are you not going to put your [00:05:00] money? So you're going to avoid fossil fuels and avoid arms companies and avoid companies that treat their labourers badly. And you're going to invest in companies that are doing good things all over the world, like renewables or secular economy type businesses, for example, But after you've put your money into a business, people kind of forget that as a shareholder you have all this power and that is called stewardship and it goes on and on kind of massive scale. So big asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, who have trillions of pounds invested in these companies on behalf of all the tiny investors who put their money in the first place. those asset managers are making decisions or are forcing companies to make decisions on really important issues. So I think if you're looking yourself to get invested in ESG funds, you want to be invested in with an asset manager. who Understands the importance of stewardship and is going to like back your values when it comes to voting on climate change at fossil fuel companies or gender equality at tech companies or whatever the issue that's close to your heart might be. And the trouble is it's [00:06:00] kind of hard to wipe that out at the moment. There's so little transparency about where a fund manager's investing or how they're voting I mean, that's what Tumelo does. So that's the problem we're trying to solve, but at the moment it's still quite.

[00:06:10] difficult

[00:06:11] Hector: Very cool. So you're giving the power to the people. it kind of sounds like a B2B to C model. I think I'm right in saying, so it'd be good to hear in your words, what the model is and who you actually charge for your service.

[00:06:26] Georgia Stewart: Yeah, so that's exactly right. We have B to B to C, so we basically provide API. Two investment platforms and pension platforms, so that they can give transparency to that. And. There are investors who are pension members or return investors investing through an Elisa, for example, or workplace pension. So what our technology Ally's is for that end investor to see which companies are inside any of the funds that they've chosen to put their money in, or that their money is getting put in for them, if it was a pension. and not only that, but also to have a voice on the [00:07:00] environmental and social issues that those companies are facing. So if you're invested in. Then tomatoes tack means you'll get a notification in your investment app saying, Hey, Tesla's AGM is coming up at the end of October, there's a human rights vote. What do you think should happen as the investor in Tesla, we take your opinion and we feed it through to the people who are actually voting on that AGM so that they can take your values into account. So basically means that you can be like a mini activist investor within your investment app and have much more control and transparency about where your money's going and how it's being used to influence change.

[00:07:34] Hector: And do you find that the fund managers, asset managers listen to the voice of these people? have you got some examples of where, these votes have led to change?

[00:07:45] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. So that's definitely changing. I guess our challenge as a company is not just to create the tech, but also to change the narrative and change mindsets, which is quite a lot to bite off, especially when you're tackling an industry that, you know, most people we're talking to about [00:08:00] changing the way they do things have been in their role for like 30 years. So, there are some pretty interesting conversations, but sure we have assets. On, all kind of partnership books like legal and general investment management, for example, and even investors who are thinking super progressively about the role that the underlying investor, the person who actually puts the money in, should play in that conversation. And they absolutely listening to, you know, what are the priorities of our investors? Do they care more about climate change or is it animal welfare or is it health care, which agenda and how does that change across demographic of customer and the different companies that they might be focused on? So they're using that in their own stewardship processes and conversations. And there are definitely votes like in October last year, Proctor and gamble who make like bounty paper towels and other like household products. They had a vote on deforestation in their supplies. And that was the first time that a fund manager, like BlackRock for example, had, voted, pro uh, deforestation issue. and it's the first time about like that past. And [00:09:00] that's really due to pressure from underlying retail investors and pension members, who are just putting much more focused on this finally. So yeah, I would definitely say that it's, changing and fast. Like we've only been in the market for a year. We've got maybe 14 investment platforms as customers. and in asset management, like it's quite a revolutionary concept. Things don't necessarily change that fast around here. yeah, it's been, it's been really great progress, I think.

[00:09:24] Hector: Yeah. I was going to say it's a really powerful thing because there are like two parts to it. One, I guess is that the asset managers can use this as a way to sell basically tomorrow. Customers, because it's like, we've got a better product than our competitors in a way you actually get a say in the companies we're investing yet. but then there's also the part, which is like these companies, if they truly are, yes, focused, then they should want to do that themselves. So what, what do you hear from these asset managers around? Do you think it's sort of lip service? Do you think it's a tool to get more customers or do you think. These people really actually care [00:10:00] about making positive change.

[00:10:02] Georgia Stewart: I think, it depends on the asset manager, but most asset managers care about making positive change. I mean that they're humans at the end of the day and they have grandchildren and all that. Yeah. Fears that we have around climate change and gender diversity or whatever issues all close to your heart. there's also a theory called universal owner theory, which suggests that like legal and general and BlackRock and Vanguard have got so much money invested in the system. That actually the only way they can do well is by the system doing well. Which means that we need positive change. It's not like they can hedge their bets by investing in renewables only they've got so much wealth. They have to invest across the entire spectrum, both in fossil fuel companies and renewable companies. So unless everyone moves in a positive direction, they're going to always be kind of netting themselves off. If that makes sense. So for many reasons, I do think as a managers care, I think though that like ESG companies. What does an ESG company that's where the problem with ESG is. It's [00:11:00] like, there's not an ethical company. You can have companies that have purposes that are cool, which I think is great. And all companies should have a social, environmental purpose, but they can't take all boxes. Like some people will think Tesla's fantastic, but other people will have taken major issue with their supply chain. and how they do a precious minerals. Other people, obviously Amazon has revolutionized technology and access to goods, but there's other issues like data and tax and, instructor on delivery. And that goes on and on and on. Sorry. You know, we can have an ESG fund, but there's always going to be areas which we think are more important. And we've seen that with COVID as well. Like climate change was on top of the agenda and thankfully he still is at the top of the agenda, but health care and like workers' rights has just risen massively up the agenda in the last year. Whereas that wasn't really something that got talked about that much surprise surprise two years ago.

[00:11:52] James: No go you're in big a team. And how have you found Harding and how much does having a [00:12:00] sort of positive impact help with attracting the right talent?

[00:12:04] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. Hiring is just so difficult. especially now I have some reason, not sure why, but, I mean, we've got great team. We've got 25 people, based in Bristol, but pretty, it's pretty flexible. We're having a fast kind of everyone in the office day on Thursday, which would be safe. but hiring is a kind of ongoing challenge trying to find amazing people, but it would definitely how it find the fact that it's, positive change. Like we've got loads of people that are looking for the roles and are interested in the roles. It's just about finding people that fit the culture, and I'm going to bring something special to the team and, know, have the skills I'm going to push us forward. As I guess everyone's struggling with that same challenge, but having a positive angle definitely does.

[00:12:46] Hector: I think that mission driven element is so valuable and it's almost like a flywheel where, the more we become aware of these things, the more amazing people want to join [00:13:00] companies who are making a positive impact. So hopefully the more incentive there is for the best people to join those companies. I think it's a cool flywheel potentially.

[00:13:08] Georgia Stewart: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And especially now, like everyone wants again, sustainable finance as well. I guess it's like the one area of sustainability where you can actually expect to be paid well. it feels like some really nice conference between finance and sustainable. So yeah, for that reason, we're not, I guess sure. Of, applicants. It's just a question of Finding great people. And I agree that having that mission is critically important. And now, especially, we've got students coming out of university who have spent three years campaigning for divestment and are super passionate about this issue. So when we meet people like that, it's amazing because you know, we don't have to tell them anything. They already know exactly what we're about and they're ready to hit the ground running and they come with all these ideas. So, it's very exciting.

[00:13:46] James: And what's one thing that you do now in your hiring process that you didn't at the beginning, that you've kind of learned and you would recommend other founders do.

[00:13:56] Georgia Stewart: gosh, our hiring process is constantly evolving.

[00:13:59] James: [00:14:00] maybe that's it maybe to constantly evolve the hiring process.

[00:14:04] Georgia Stewart: Let's go with that. So we have like a single person. Laura queen is coordinating, hiring with the help of automated system. but it's quite decentralized. So a lot of the team Cambodian hiring like brand new grads and people that have been in since the beginning. And then I tend to meet everyone during the hiring process at some point or whether, but it's not like I'm digging with hiring anymore, which is great.

[00:14:26] Hector: So that's one of the hard things about being a founder is that at some point you have to relinquish control to the people around you. how do you think about doing that in terms of, you mentioned, meeting every person at some stage who's going to join, tomorrow. how do you think about giving that up and actually starting to see people roaming the office here?

[00:14:48] Georgia Stewart: we're not there yet. I mean, we're only 25 people say it's really realistic that your team can recommend someone and I can meet them. But we've always put loads of work as a mission driven organization, you might expect it, but we've always [00:15:00] put loads of work into like values and mission and vision and why we're doing what we're doing and make sure any hire people that really care why we're doing what we're doing. And that then really comes back to help you because obviously I trust that people doing hiring and not just trying to get bomb on a seat, they want people in the team who are going to help them drive it forward. And their hiring is a reflection of the values that we've created together. And I didn't really see that they would do the hiring process, any different needs than I might mean. They might see different things in someone, which is the whole point. But, I guess we have a process. I mean, We knew it was important to us. So, yeah, I'm not too worried about that. I think as a team, as you quite, it's quite autonomous and people are quite empowered or at least I would hope that that's the case.

[00:15:38] James: and you've raised a couple of funding rounds. How did you approach that? all right. I'm thinking you've got a famous investor and how did that come about?

[00:15:48] Georgia Stewart: Yeah, that was always what gets reported. So my auntie gets really annoyed because she put in like 5k and she never gets mentioned in the newspapers, but, yes we have, and I was a shy at [00:16:00] Yukon. You couldn't play that. we have raised three rounds of funding. so we raised a pre-seed Brian when Mr. Out of uni, and then we right. 900 K angel Ryan. And then we raised last November, another round of funding from our angels and one other, A guy called Jeremy Kohler. Who's a very, established private equity investor. I guess, are you referring to Peter Gabriel? Is I hear referring to you? Yeah, he was one of my messages. He actually lives in box, which is just that bath, which is why we were originally based. So, I think someone connected to me, to him over email and, that's how it was quite cool. Going to the studios to have that conversation

[00:16:39] Hector: one minute then we'll probably have actually invested thought that he was being cool to rockstar. Yeah. I'm sure he was celebrating.

[00:16:45] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. Well, they're actually good friends, so I guess money. And like we came up, you need knowing apps, you know, the idea of fundraising was so daunting. And then I realized it's just all about them that work. And we find one guy, my painting card. If people know him, [00:17:00] introduce us to some of his network who introduced us to them at work. And yeah, Peter Gabriel introduced me to Jeremy Cola who ended up investing a million times in November last year. So. Yeah, it really is all about the network and, telling people what you're passionate about and why, and finding people also LinkedIn, I can, our second fundraise, we use LinkedIn heavily and that really worked as well towards the end when we kind of already had a lot of money secured.

[00:17:26] Hector: What what's do you use LinkedIn for? How did that work?

[00:17:29] Georgia Stewart: I literally just looked up people who were established in Fintac or, and the space that we needed to be in. I know user psychology, like things that we were interested in and then messaged them and said, would you like to invest in them? People did. that was great. We find some really good investors that way, like people who have gone on to add significant value in our advisors, and we're much closer to them than some of the investors that we kind of have known for much longer. So. Yeah, I would definitely say to people to try and take advantage of LinkedIn.

[00:17:59] Hector: Yeah, I think it's [00:18:00] really underutilized. and we've made an investment as episode one into a company, some cold outreach on LinkedIn where the guy had found, basically a bunch of people with investor in their profile, who had done the same university courses here, of which there were many because it was PPA Oxford. Um, It's also just show some, good hustle, but any of the listeners who have found that it should definitely make good use of LinkedIn search tools and sales navigator as well. It's just another LinkedIn tool which can be used.

[00:18:27] Georgia Stewart: Yeah, we had two approaches me and my K finest Bishop. This was like for the last 200 K of a million pine Ray. So I wouldn't recommend maybe starting from scratch on LinkedIn could take a while, but well had the scattergun approach where he just messaged everyone on anyone. And I find targeted investors. I think both of them came up.

[00:18:43] James: And then what's next for Tumalo what's the big vision. what are your plans over the next year? 12 to 24 months,

[00:18:52] Georgia Stewart: 12 to 24, I guess. from that perspective, it's more of the same. Some will gamble uses [00:19:00] onboarded gross of the us. just keep expanding long time. I mean, over the next 10 years, mission is to give every invested at a shareholder rights, whether they're invested through a fund, whether they're invested directly. They should be empowered to know where their money is and to have a say and potentially other shareholder rights, which they also don't have access to. And there is kind of a ream of them either. So, yeah, I guess that's kind of 12 months feels quite short time. We've got a lot to do and there's a lot of people in the world, so, yeah, that's the long-term plan

[00:19:32] Hector: for me and probably James, all the same. As invested, I think we've seen, just so much more climate in particular focused, tech over the last 12 months even. but certainly ESG, it's just so front and center at the moment, which is fantastic. but interested speaking to you to hear whether. since you've started, have you noticed change, have you noticed, that kind of momentum getting behind [00:20:00] USG and have conversations with investors become easier conversations with customers, prospective customers?

[00:20:07] Georgia Stewart: Yes. I think conversations with customers. are, great. And especially when we can find people inside who are kind of evangelists for the product. I mean, it's hard to argue against giving people transparency and a voice. When is that money going into the system? So Germany, we can find people that reading back what we do and our customers are reading aligned from a mission perspective, all of them, I would say. so that's never really been a challenge and I think that's only going to accelerate. Probably our biggest problem at the moment is just delivering to customers it's not really a customer challenge. So I think from that perspective is great. from the perspective of investors. Yeah. Like certainly we have a lot of interest and I don't know whether that's because of what we're doing. We're no longer a tiny baby company that everyone's kind of terrified to put money in. So it's probably a combination of both. we've kind of proven that we can deliver on the things that we say we will. [00:21:00] So I guess that also helps with the investment side of things. and yeah, there's a lot more climate startups, but I think There needs to be more focused on stewardship. I sound like a broken record, but I think this idea of analyzing stocks and working out wise for money or not, is there any going to take us so far? I think something like 40% of the world's assets, maybe more ESG assets, but if that much money was really in ESG and doing good, then we wouldn't have the program that we currently do. So there's something missing that about falling through or, or, or or whatever it is that needs to be picked up. This can't be a marketing game and obviously this is business, but it's also more than that, you know, cop 26, the third goal is mobilized finance. And, last we do that. We honestly have no hope of, reaching any of the ITCC recommendations for 1.5 degrees, even if that is still possible. So there's a lot to be done.

[00:21:52] James: Yeah, really. I've got a question around when you sort of became a tech company it's obviously, whilst you were studying, you were [00:22:00] putting pressure on your own university to kind of look at this more seriously. At what point when you founded the business, you say, right, we're going to take attack angle. Can they go down an API route? We're going to sell software. And how did you make that transition? I think one of your team is the tech co-founder. So was he always involved? Like how did that process.

[00:22:20] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. So it was always the three of us, which helped because I wouldn't have the foggiest. It's so hard to build a tech company if it wasn't for them then. Well, we think a couple of pivots, we started off trying to solve this problem by building the entire. So we were like, okay, we want to give people a shout out of eating. Let's build an investing app. So we built a robot advisor, went through the SCA, had rural customers investing. We're showing them where their money was, had this plan to build in shareholder rights actually ahead of voting. And then we thought, actually, we might be trying to do too much. And rather than actually build the platform itself, why don't we just take this transparency and voting to all the other platforms that exist? because there's already millions [00:23:00] of customers sitting on them that don't have any of these rights. And it's going to take us an awful long time to take over the market from an investing app side. So we had a chat to Eva about that and they said yeah, let's try it. And then we scrambled for like three weeks to separate our products so that we could just give them the kind of voting and transparency piece, which we did. It worked really well. And then we kind of kept the app for like six months, like, do we don't and we obviously, there was kind of a lot of heart and effort had gone into it, but then in the Andrew, like, you know, what, that's we really believe in this. So let's just push that as a software play at the time, but now you were super focused on the data, the interface and the API is really just a delivery mechanism for passing data through, from underlying investor to fund manager. And eventually I think to the end company,

[00:23:48] Hector: You guys do anything to measure the impact that you're making. Are there any statistics around, we've got X number of people voting on X number of matters and, X percentage of those, are reaching sort of [00:24:00] AGM, that we'll chat.

[00:24:02] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. So we can do that. We've got obviously the number of people that are. Seeing what companies are in their portfolio, which in and of itself, I think has impact on the asset allocation side, because we can see people using our software to analyze their own fund and then work out where else they might be putting their money, and trying to move their money essentially off the bat. so that's one aspect of impact in and of itself more on the kind of ESG allocation route. And then further from that, we can see high five managers have historically voted and then see how they voted as a result of understanding the member preferences. So that's what we call them, our vote preferences from underlying investors. So we have got a dashboard where we can see, okay, what was the vote preference? How have our barriers from managers very sit on these issues and how does that change over time? There's not really a way for us to say, okay, because these people voted best. This is why the fund manager voted for deforestation, but we have dialogue with the fund managers. So anecdotally we do know that they are taking, the vote preference into account and that they're [00:25:00] having conversations off the back of it. And I guess through our interface that we built for, of you've only got general and the other customers who to contact, audit APIs directly. we've done other cool, features where we've said, okay, your fund managers meeting, BP next week. What do you guys want to ask BP? And so that question has been taken from the fund manager taken to BP and the answer put back into the platform. So again, there's kind of a mechanism where actually underlying investors are speaking directly to come here. Or be it through quite a, convoluted channel, but they don't know that. and the, conversation is being had, and eventually the plan is actually, how can we make that much more direct?

[00:25:37] Hector: I loved the crowdsourcing of wisdom, not only in investment pay and everything.

[00:25:42] James: Yeah. So some, so, Georgia, we always end these conversations with asking our guests, if they could have three people for dinner, who would they be?

[00:25:52] Hector: They can be dead or alive.

[00:25:56] Georgia Stewart: Okay. I think I've got it. It's not tech related really, but [00:26:00] I think, if I was having three people over for dinner, just at least based on the conversation from today, I would like to have Jane Goodall and, Michael O'Leary and Exxon chairman, because I feel like that would be a great conversation to be a spectator on.

[00:26:20] Yeah. I just didn't know what he would say. I'm so intrigued.

[00:26:24] Hector: Yeah. I'd like to be a spectator at that dinner.

[00:26:27] James: Yeah, that the ExxonMobil chairman, there's a guy called Darren woods. He's in, he's in for quite the evening. It seems.

[00:26:35] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. Sorry, Darren, to be fine. You could replace him with like Glencore or anyone else. I mean, I'd be just as interested.

[00:26:41] James: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. You've got, three points there for three unique people, which is awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. I've learned quite a lot actually about the importance. Pension money within the overall fight against climate change. and it's great to you're writing unicorn story and tips around [00:27:00] hiring and things a lot. So thanks very much for doing a recording of us.

[00:27:03] Georgia Stewart: Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. It's been fun.

[00:27:05] Thanks for listening to if you haven't already please like, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to receive episodes direct to your inbox, go to riding unicorns dot sub stack.com and subscribe on there as well.

[00:27:20] Next week, we have Jeremy King from a test, great episode. So look out for that one. See you next time