>> Announcer: Live, from Washington, D.C. it's CUBEConversations with John Furrier. >> Hello, everyone, and welcome to special on the ground here with theCUBE in Washington, D.C. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, and co-founder of SiliconANGLE, as we explore the disruption in Washington, D.C. with cloud computing and all the hot stories we have Timothy Kotin who is the founder of SuperFluid Labs. Thanks for joining me today. >> Thanks so much, John. >> So you guys are doing some pretty disruptive stuff, obviously, societal change, and ventures for good. Social change is a big part of the stories we're covering. You're in the middle of it here at PeaceTech Accelerator. We're here at the United States Peace Institute. What's your story? >> Thanks for having me. SuperFluid Labs, my organization, is a data analytics firm working in Africa. What we do is we help small businesses to unlock their potential using the power of data. For some organizations, this means being able to deliver essential services to millions more people, so for some organizations, it means increasing revenues, and for some organizations, it means understanding opportunities for greater efficiency and productivity. >> Y'know, PeaceTech Labs and PeaceTech Accelerator as part of this global movement where people want to apply AI for good, data for good, and in some cases good is just business, right? Economists, economies are thriving with big data and cloud. You guys are are using the cloud to bring new business models to Africa, to start. You're going to land and expand and take over the world. What's the key thing for you? >> Great, thanks. So the key thing for us is really that in the last few years, there's been an explosion in data, globally. 90% of the data in the world was created in just the last two years, and this presents a huge opportunity to unlock impact for businesses, and so some of the clients that we work with, for example, one of our clients is providing off-grid solar systems for households in sub-Saharan Africa, and they innovate, the innovation, the key innovation behind this model is the ability to deliver energy access as a service, where individuals pay on a pay-as-you-go basis. >> It's interesting, you know, helping society is not just donating money, but enabling entrepreneurs to be successful. You're an entrepreneur, you're here at the Accelerator. How do you get off the ground? I mean, what's great about the cloud is you don't need to provision all these servers, you're using the cloud. How are you guys going from a zero-stage start to getting into the market? What technology are you using, what strategy are you deplyong? >> Excellent. I think innovations such as the cloud have really been essential to our business model. A decade ago, it would have been impossible to launch a business similar to ours, so we use several cloud providers. Obviously, Amazon Web Services is one of them and many others, and what these services have allowed us to do is they've allowed us to focus on the innovation that we are delivering, the solutions that we are delivering, and less on infrastructure, provisions, and worrying about power outages, networking and all of that. >> In Africa, what's the conditions there? I mean, obviously, mobile is everywhere, but there's no telephone lines, and you've got mobile RF flying all over the world. >> Mobile is huge in Africa. I'm going to tell you an interesting stat. In the next three years, there are going to be an additional three hundred million smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa. That's more than the population of the U.S. and that's just in the next three years. >> Huge growth market. >> Huge growth market. >> How are businesses adapting, 'cause this is there you're taking your angle, right, using data, and how does that connect to the proliferation of phones, and how do business folks use it? Is that where you want to target in terms of your solution. >> Excellent question. So, the most innovational businesses that we have seen have taken advantage of access to mobile phones to develop innovative business models. So we have banks, for example, in Kenya, that have developed mobile-only lending and savings products, and they've expanded from 40,000 customers in 2012, to over twenty million customers at the end of last year. >> What's the ecosystem like in Africa, and what's the entrepreneurial cross-over when you go outside the borders of Africa? Obviously, you know in other continents, other economies. How does it all working together? Is it Bitcoin, is it blockchain, is it just standard cloud, how is the emerging landscape in tech impacting the emerging growth inside Africa. >> It's really phenomenonal, and what is most exciting, especially for me, given my experience in the U.S. and in the West and also in Africa is that a lot of the patented technologies, whether that is AI or cryptocurrency, or blockchain, is actually being used to good effect, it's actually being used to deliver essential services in Africa, and you'd be shocked. I was telling someone the other day that when you talk about payments, money-transfer innovation, Africa is really the hotbed for this. >> So you see crypto and blockchain hot in Africa right now. >> It is, and it's being applied in many other use cases beyond payment. So, you have some companies are innovating in land title administration, using that for growth tech and many other use cases. >> Great for property, great for store of value. Talk about your journey here at the PeaceTech Accelerator. How is that working, obviously they're helping you guys, with they're providing a lot of services. Tell us about what those guys are doing. >> Great, well the time here, this is actually the third week of our time here, it's really been very interesting. We've been exposed to mentors who have generously given their time to come and share their experience as other previous or experienced entrepreneurs, or executives that run large corporations, and there's mentoring sessions, we're exposed to investors, we're exposed to a cohort of other similarly minded entrepreneurs. >> That's great because you've accelerated. I've got to ask you a question, as the entrepreneur, you're always seeking for, most entrepreneurs are always seeking for that data edge, y'know, trying to understand the market force, there's all that good stuff. What have you learned here at the PeaceTech Accelerator? What was the something that you said, "Wow, that's something that I never would have gotten." >> Very interesting. So one of the things that has really stood out during my time here is really the emphasis on the fact that business, that delivering great business, or delivering business for good can cut across multiple sectors, I mean, for profit businesses like mine, and I think that is very reassuring, to know that there's a growing recognition globally around the impact and the social good that businesses can deliver. >> So you're using mobile as your backbone for your connectivity, how is the Internet of Things, or IOT, and AI going to be part of your plan? You see that consuming most of your IP and lots of property? >> Very much so. So given the stats I gave earlier on around the growth and explosive growth of data, and the explosive growth of mobile access, that is going to be essential to our IP and our patents, and we thing that's what will really give us the edge in this market. >> Great, final question for you, does D.C. get this? I mean, D.C. certainly is trying to be more global, you're actually here in D.C. at Accelerator, what's your assessment of the Washington, D.C. culture here? >> I think D.C. really gets it. I mean I think D.C. is really the hub of a lot of international development, international outreach by the U.S. government and many other international organizations. So, my being here is actually of the fact that D.C. gets it, and I'm originally from Ghana and from Africa, and we have other members of our cohorts who are flying in from all over the world, and that's the true evidence. >> How's the cloud impacting you? The U.S. is helping you to bring that innovation, what kind of edge are you bringing with cloud computing? >> It's providing speed, it's providing cost-effectiveness, and it's also providing scalability, rapid scalability. >> All right, I'm John Furrier on the ground in Washington, D.C. where all the innovation's happening here, in the United States Peace Institute, we're here with PeaceTech Accelerator, I see great stuff happening, entrepreneurship in social sectors are really happening, AI is a big part of that, IOT, cloud, all the trends are helping out a new generation of start-ups. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Washington, D.C. It's Cube Conversations with John Furrier. (techno music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to our special on the ground presentations, The Cube coverage in Washington, D.C. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGEL, the host of the Cube. We are getting all the stories on what's happening with the innovation and entrepenuership in our societal nonprofits and/or innovation in government. We hear Peter Prix is the OneRelief app founder, onereliefapp.com, OneRelief is your venture. You're part of the PeaceTech Accelerator. We're here at the United States Peace Institute in D.C. Tell us about your opportunity. >> Great pleasure. Yes, my name is Peter, CEO and founder of OneRelief, the OneRelief app. What we do is let people like you and me make quick donations, micro donations to disaster relief aid. So after emergency has struck, Hurricane Maria, last year in September, approaching the Caribbean Islands. We all knew about it, we all saw those pictures on TV. And we all felt empathy and wanted to help and wanted to gift, but there's no easy way. So what we do with the OneRelief web app is we let people like you and me easily, with the click of a button, make quick donations that supports certified disaster relief agencies on the ground. >> And you guys are a start up here at the PeaceTech Accelerator. >> Exactly, we're a startup here at the PeaceTech Accelerator. >> Great, well I'm really bullish and I think crowdsourcing has opened up the democratization of giving, which has been phenomenal. But there's some scale issues, now there's ten zillion apps, certainly GoFundMe, we know about those things. They're kind of peer-to-peer. You know, friend has to socialize with that but you know, a lot of folks are wondering, hey, if I donate to that Haiti situation, or hurricane, where does the money go? We heard in Puerto Rico, half the stuff didn't even get there. This is a big fear, cognitive dissonance from the giver. Do you guys solve that problem? >> Yes, so absolutely. When it comes to giving at the moment you can choose between giving to the big players, the big charities that we don't trust, as we know. Or you can go on a platform like GoFundMe and there's actually 12,000 fundraisers for Hurricane Maria. And you don't know who to trust either. So what we do in OneRelief is we provide a marketplace, a platform that is certifying charities with confirmed people on the ground. And when you make a donation through the platform you actually get an update. You get a status notification, help has been embarked, help has arrived in a community. You get visuals, you get video of what's happening on the ground. And you get feedback at the end of the disaster of what has actually been achieved with the money you've donated. >> So you close in the loop from the giver, from the journey of the money to the destination, and seeing the impact of it. >> Absolutely. From the second you press the donate button and you donate and you share a fundraiser, you can see how the money is getting to the country, how the money's being used, what it's being used for, and what the progress of that is, providing you information on the impact of your donation and closing the loop and encouraging you the next time another disaster happens to donate again. >> Create some reliability. You're essentially verifying the end points of where the cash goes. >> Peter: Absolutely. >> How's it going? How far along are you guys? Sounds like a great idea, I think it's an awesome idea. Getting a little dashboard, seeing the impact, make people feel good, know their money's going to work. How do you get this off the ground? You're in the Accelerator, what's the status? >> Absolutely, we're about three weeks away from the launch of the platform, it will be launched on March 1st, so we are in the final push of getting the app off the ground. We have partners, we have contracts signed with, for example, Action Against Hunger, where agencies that have country offices that have been working in the countries that are very often struck by crises for many many years. So it's not that their money goes to a small charity that we've never heard of and are not able to get any accountability information, but it's going to certified agencies that have people on the ground. >> And they're excited by this, it sounds like. >> Oh they are more than excited. It's changing the entire industry. It's rather than the rich people signing big checks it's people like you and me small donations that have an impact of changing the world. And what the OneRelief app is really special and good at it's the speed at what this happens. So, a disaster strikes, within hours, the fundraiser's online on social media and people can donate. >> And one of the great things about us covering Gov Cloud, we've observed that bringing a modern stack like cloud you can actually radically transform these industries that have technology going in some cases so antiquated they don't know what's running on. >> Oh no, absolutely. So, the platform itself is running on AWS and we use serverless cloud technology that allows us to really scale the platform, whether a thousand people donate or a million people donate at the same time it's running on a serverless cloud. >> So you're providing critical infrastructure services for donations , big or small? >> Absolutely, and it's 100% scalable, which wasn't able a few years ago. >> How is the accelerator helping you, PeaceTech? >> Yeah, a really interesting question in multiple ways, both through mentoring support that we get through the partners that bring incredible support and help us really in getting the platform off the ground. AWS helps helps us with setting it up on lambda, that's wonderful. We have C5 who gives us some really interesting support in how we can operate this as a nonprofit with a tech startup mechanism. We have partners like the PeaceTech Lab that helps us really operate as a nonprofit. >> We've been covering AI for Social Good Intel among other partners. Really kind of look at this, not just as a philanthropy opportunity, real change. But what's interesting to us us we've reported on SiliconANGLE is the societal entrepreneurship market is booming in D.C. Can you comment about what it's like here? I mean, is that right? Obviously Silicon Valley where we live you get a lot of the tech alpha tech guys out there. But here it's like non-profits. What old ways of doing things are now kind of becoming more entrepreneurial because of cloud? What's your reaction to that? >> No, absolutely, I think Washington, D.C. Is the best place for us to be at. It's a mix of government, non-profits, and foundations that come in. There's a lot of, actually a lot of young startups coming up, impact startups. There's lots of coworking spaces. And we can really feel it. This is the most conducive environment for us as a startup to grow and to thrive getting support from partners that we need. >> Societal entrepreneurship as a category, I mean, I don't even know if that's the name of it, what do you call it, is booming. Can you share any anecdotes, is it booming, is it just emerging? What's your thoughts? >> Societal entrepreneurship. Yes, what the OneRelief platform really does, it allows everyone to give. It is enabling every citizen in the world to make a quick donation an amount that every one of us can afford. >> Final question, what's your core challenges as you get through the accelerator, look to go to market, is it the partnerships, is it the tech? What are your core challenges? >> I think it's really clearly communicating how OneRelief is different and how it is not like all the other platforms out there, how we are the one stop shop in a marketplace that is connecting people who want to do good with receiving charities on the ground. >> How do you compare and contrast to say these other crowdsourcing and crowdfunding platforms? >> Yes, on the one hand there's the big players, the big charities that we don't trust, that we want to give directly to because we don't know what happens with the money. And there's peer-to-peer fundraising that we don't trust either because they're tiny and we don't know who's setting up those fundraisers. We are right in between. We are a platform that is connecting the donor with a certified charity. >> How about emerging technologies like blockchain which has been very popular in supply chain-like things, because you're basically an end-to-end supply chain of money moving to the end point, the relief or whatever. >> Peter: Yeah! >> Good use of blockchain? No? Are you thinking about that? >> Oh no, absolutely. We actually have an innovation lab that is only purely looking at blockchain from different angles. One of them is for us to accept crypto donations and to be the first platform on the market that is accepting micro donations in cryptocurrency. And secondly, we are looking at blockchain technology and running a hyperledger project at the moment to see how we can accelerate the speed at how long it takes to get the donation from when a person makes it into the receiving bank account on the ground in country xyz in the world. >> A whole new infrastructure wave is coming, you're seeing it decentralize applications and hardened end-to-end apps like you guys. >> Yeah, no, absolutely. >> Well, congratulations Peter. Thanks for joining me here. This is the Cube Conversation on the ground here in Washington, D.C. where emerging markets and nonprofits and just ventures for good are now the new entrepreneurship craze in Washington, D.C. It's the center of the action and with cloud and modern software and blockchain and things of that nature you can make it happen. Thanks for watching. (techo music)