>> 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)