Host Lisa Kiefer interviews John Kuhry from Economic Development & Financing Corp. on how to connect money and ideas with entrepreneurs to create sustainable prosperity by providing gap financing and acting as lender-of-last-resort for small businesses.
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next.
Speaker 2:We're listening to method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show fun, k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Keifer. And today we're talking with John Kuri, the executive director of the economic development and financing corporation, [00:00:30] also known as e d f c
Speaker 3:[inaudible].
Speaker 4:Welcome to the program, John. Hi, you're the executive director of economic development and financing corporation. What is that and what is the problem you're trying to solve? Okay, so we are a nonprofit five oh one c three economic development corporation. And we are also [00:01:00] certified as a community development financial institution. And what we do is we provide financing to people that can't get money, act as a lender of last resort, primarily to businesses. And we do economic development, which is basically diversifying the economy. And where are you located? Oh, we're located in Mendocino county. We do business in [inaudible], Mendocino Lake counties. We focused on rural economic development. How did this get started? Uh, in 1994 partners in the, in our community of Mendocino, um, the four city and the county [00:01:30] itself looked at how can we better utilize our resources to try and diversify our economy.
Speaker 4:So they formed this organization and we were supported by the county and each of the four incorporated cities. And from there we went out and were able to get funding and uh, apply for loans from the USDA. And what we are is an intermediary re lending partner, which is, we borrowed the money from the USDA and then we lend it out to two projects that have economic development. The biggest issue, especially in rural communities [00:02:00] is the lack of population density and just the lack of economic activity really, there needs to be support for businesses that are trying to bring income into the economy. And so this was noted in the 90s when things were kind of going well, right? Our economy supposedly, and one of the big projects that came out was the city of Ukiah. It was looking to do a infrastructure development of a bridge.
Speaker 4:And we're tapped out in the terms of resources. So ESC is a nonprofit, was able to work with the economic development administration to [00:02:30] bring in funds through our nonprofit status to help build a bridge that was important for development in the community. From there, you know, we were pretty much just doing financing because redevelopment agencies existed and then about six or seven years ago, redevelopment dissolve. And so all the communities in California are looking at ways to address the funding issue. So what's going on with funding and where are the banks right now? The big thing that's happening, at least in lake and Mendocino counties, is we're forming an economic development district for communities to receive [00:03:00] funding, especially from the economic development industry. [inaudible] they need comprehensive economic development strategies put together and if counties or our communities can come together and do it, an economic development district, the uh, matching requirements, cause usually grant funding is required to match one for one.
Speaker 4:A, it reduces significantly when there's, when there's an economic development district. So this is one way that the economic development administration is trying to address the issue. Um, we, we try to approach something a little bit differently. Up where we're at. We worked with cutting edge capital to do a direct public offering [00:03:30] to address a problem for nonprofits like ourselves who are eligible for grant funding but have difficulty coming up with matching funds. We received a grant from the EDA to study small scale meat processing and our award was cut down because we didn't have the matching funds. The other undercurrent that we were addressing was that the desire for local investors to move their money off of Wall Street into their community. So we work with cutting edge capital to create a direct public offering. I believe the first of its kind, which is a economic development [00:04:00] corporation allowing non-accredited investors to invest in their community.
Speaker 4:How does this work? What is the process? You know, first thing we would say is we work in conjunction with our banking partners because banking will offer a overall low lower interest rates. But in the case of where you aren't eligible for financing or you don't get enough financing, that interest rate will be higher or you may not even get it at all. So you come to us. But there are instances where we found that there was a community benefit. We were looking at small scale meat processing. That project which we received grants funding for culminated with a peace ability [00:04:30] study and a business plan. And the next step is to build out. But there were three pieces missing. One was finding an operator, second was finding a piece of land and third was financing. So we, we think we've found the operator and found the land.
Speaker 4:And so we looked at a direct public offering but the project was not ready to move forward. So we decided to, to address, um, this community benefit need by creating a social benefit revolving loan fund, which local investors can invest in. And Luckily a project came forward, which was a wool mill and that wool mill had social benefit enough [00:05:00] to where we said, okay, we what gave it social benefit. Oh, that had been there a long time ago. The wool mill was a startup and it was a young family. That principal, Matt Gilbert was a sheep shear and he actually is a forester by trade but been sheep shearing. It really got uh, impassioned with wool mill and there's a burgeoning local fiber movement in the bay area. That's amazing. If I ever shut up Marin created a locally sourced jeans can be a CSA Jean blue jeans.
Speaker 4:Yeah, cotton cotton that was grown in the KP valley indigo that was got done in the KP valley. Unfortunately the milling, it had to be done [00:05:30] out in the east coast and there's a, again, a local, you know, wool movement in this happening and there's no fine spun fiber. So Matt came up with a business plan, but given the startup nature of it, the tech intensive capital needs and just his lack of capital was not turned. It was turned down by a bank. And we've, we thought this is a great resource. Wool was an important industry in Mendocino back in the day, but subsequently died out. A lot of people have animals on their property to comply with William Snack, which has tax status. And so they're shearing the sheep [00:06:00] and it's a cost center for them. Whereas Makin to aggregate this stuff that's normally taken to the dump or sold off for pennies on the dollar and turn into a value added product.
Speaker 4:By definition, what we do is we do social benefit, we create jobs and jobs, create wealth in our community. Our mission statement is connecting money and ideas with entrepreneurs to create sustainable prosperity in lake and Mendocino counties. So by definition we have a mission, but we've expanded that mission to incorporate the social benefit, which in Matt's case would be adding value to a resource, which unfortunately in our community, a lot of our resources are extracted [00:06:30] and then the value that is added elsewhere. And so the people who were producing those resources aren't able to get to have a sustainable lifestyle. What other kinds of things besides like will extraction that you are looking at? Um, you know, again, we were, we're an agricultural community, um, and you've look go north of San Francisco. A lot of prime agricultural real estate has been turned over to grape growing, but Mendocino county and parts of northern Sonoma County, we built San Francisco with our redwood product.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, the redwood market has changed and and the need [00:07:00] for redwood and just the, the extractive nature of that business. We don't like to say extraction our community more because that means that we're not renewing. But with the wool you already renewing projects that we'd like to see come back would be, you know, how do we create more sustainable fisheries? Farming is is important and we up in where our area consider farming a social entrepreneurship type of endeavor because Mincey has a very large county, but when you actually look at how much row crops are being grown, there's probably less than a hundred acres that have grown crops that are being grown commercially. [00:07:30] And that's just a function of the other competitive resources which are being grown, which are grapes, timber, and of course our illegal economy. Cannabis. How much money do you want to ultimately be in this fund?
Speaker 4:Or have you already reached that goal? We, yeah, we reached that goal. I mean really this was a kind of a Beta test. You know, we chose a local impact investing because we were, we wanted to try and be as conservative as possible and when we batch or in the community social benefits, it would mean that we could offset that with a lower financial return, which would then [00:08:00] build in some sustainability of the project. We had a minimum raise of $250,000 we needed to reach and we were had a maximum of a million. And that idea was maybe we would have the meat processing plant come online and we didn't have a project designated for this. In the process of doing this direct public offering to say to someone, would you invest in economic development? It's a little esoteric, but do you want to invest in a wool mill?
Speaker 4:Was a much more tangible kind of ask. So we, the board of directors approved [00:08:30] the wool mill for a loan and so we were then we were able to use the [inaudible] mill as our flagship project to be a fundraise for. So we reached out to our minimum of 250,000 in January and in February we raised 350,000 which was the exact amount that's needed upon the wool mill. Isn't the goal to have a lot of money, so it's not just one, uh, you know, we'll mail, but many different companies could come to you and say, many local entrepreneurs could come and say, oh, I want to start this restaurant or I want to, isn't [00:09:00] that the goal of it or is it project by project? The intention of course is to have a larger fund, but given the time constraints and limited capacity that we had and also the brand recognition of the wasn't there.
Speaker 4:A lot of people said, I want this to go to the wool mill. Given the time frame of when we had to fundraise, the wool mill was the only project. But now we've got credibility and if we're able to, you know, successfully pay back all the investors, then we can go back to a larger question of how do we fund projects to revitalize, you know, uh, manufacturing [00:09:30] and in Mendocino county, how do we revitalize the know your harbor? Okay, well how do we fund social entrepreneurs which need a lower interest rate and need more patient capital? So we created a fund to deploy it. But one of the things, as a community development financial institution, we are able to access grants and portfolio insurance programs. So if you were to go invest the wool mill, you're, you're, you're risking your investment and you're basing it on the intrinsic value of the project.
Speaker 4:By us taking in that investment, we are then able to insure that loan and be able to service that loan or an intermediary. Exactly, [00:10:00] exactly. And we're nonprofit intermediaries, so a lot of intermediaries, when you look in the financial world, take a a return based on, you know, paying CEOs and things like that. What is EDF? See what EDF sees fulfilling its mission. I've got, you know, we're a nonprofit. For us, what we're doing is we're building sustainability to our mission. We're also fulfilling our mission in creating new markets for our community to be able to, to bring entrepreneurs in. So we look at it as a multi-tiered facet. So you're, if you're an existing business that needs, or a startup business that needs capital, there's a loan fund, but [00:10:30] there are projects such as the meat processing facility, which doesn't have an entrepreneur yet.
Speaker 4:We're able to leverage grant funding because of our nonprofit status to be able to then develop those markets. And how will you do that? We also do direct public offerings or what is your plan for that? Well, the meat processing, ideally, you know, EFC does not want to be in the business of running other businesses. But what we are willing to do is kind of shepherd them and incubate them to the next level. So when we explored the meat processing facility, we wanted it to be owned by producers. But the producers that exist right now, the, [00:11:00] the mainstream producers are pretty satisfied with their existing contracts. And it'd be hard for them to move away. And so it's also a very controversial subject in our community. We had a lot of people who were back to landers. We have a Buddhist monastery and Buddhist school up there, so it's been tough to figure out whether this project can move forward.
Speaker 4:But that being said, the producers that haven't been really wanting to take on this project, even though I've had talked to several prominent wine producers who have this problem breaking the Napa cache [00:11:30] like we made, we produced some of the best wines and grape juice in Mendocino county and a lot of it goes into Napa valley wines, but there's a good understanding that we could become the Napa Valley of grass fed organic beef and some of the proofs that we have are making that kind of impact. So the idea of value added processing is important. That being said, nobody really wants to take the risk. This is a risky endeavor. The returns don't justify venture capital. So in that question of how do finance this ETFs, he said, well, let's create a direct public offering model to lipper local investment. Then what we [00:12:00] would do is maybe start it, there's a, there's an economic development corporation, Taos who operates a meat processing facility.
Speaker 4:And we would do it to start it off and then spin it off as a worker owned cooperative. But because we don't want to be in the business of running business or cu it sounds like, yeah, you're helping businesses stay in the community. And our other big project we're doing is we're doing a coworking facility and that's really brought up from a project we took on, which was broadband. You know, when we talk about rural communities, we are, you know, we're very behind the um, in the, in terms [00:12:30] of creating 21st century infrastructure for these information based economy. I feel like that in Berkeley, when I lived in Berkeley, I was really happy with my internet. I ran a brewery up in Mendocino on a satellite internet and that was really tough. So we came together with the community foundation and started talking about it and created the broadband alliance for Mendocino County.
Speaker 4:And through that process we become really vocal and, and have gone to the congress and talked about the issues of the incumbents taking away copper and the importance for nine one one emergency services. [00:13:00] So we've become this very much a, a figurehead for this, this rural community. Cause when you look at the northern California rural communities where less than 5% of the population of California, so that's the margin of error for a lot of companies. Unless you make a lot of noise, they're not gonna be interested. Now that Mendocino is partnered with Sonoma and Marin, we've, we've created so much noise now that ATNT starting to take, take voice, but you really a region, right? You know, it's unreasonable if you're living up in a rural community that you have of highway up to your house. I also think that it's unreasonable that you're going to have fiber out in the middle of [00:13:30] nowhere.
Speaker 4:But that being said, the real issue is how do you address our urban cores or our incorporated cities? How do you get the faster Internet and how do you address really the socioeconomic, digital divide of a cheaper access to people there? So those are some issues that we want to bring up. And this coworking facility that we're developing, we have a very, very large land area with a very large small population and we have some very, very creative people, you know, from battery pipe, which is a manufacturer of OEM exhaust systems for, you know, [00:14:00] motorcycles and ATVs and things like that. Operating on a, on a, on a global competitive scale in Mendocino county that started out from a local boy, two um, little startup c corporations. There's one up there, Peter Pucker, which is the main equipment for mixing ceramics and the primary equipment for Plato.
Speaker 4:These types of entrepreneurs are scattered around and sort of bring people together, which into a hub, to a hub and be able to network will help create a, a culture of entrepreneurship because we, and then you can also [00:14:30] get economies of scale on when it is they need, whether it's accounting, back office, deffer Internet, right? Yeah. And you know, the, the, the coworking movement has been phenomenal in the bay area and we are, you know, it takes someone like UTFC, which is a nonprofit and has access to partnerships and things like that to offset the costs. But we really believe that the next major employer industry in our community going to be homegrown. It's not going to be attracting a, you know, Mason [inaudible], which was, uh, the biggest industry when the biggest companies in Ukiah for a long time moved away [00:15:00] for environmental and cost issues.
Speaker 4:But we're not gonna attract another company like that or another Nike. And really what we are, what we're looking for is lifestyle businesses. I was in the bay area for 10 years and I'm up there for a much quieter lifestyle and it's artists and all things are, are very popular everywhere. Do you see this kind of thing happening elsewhere in the u s oh yeah. I mean, there are other EDF c type organizations, especially in rural communities. I mean, it's funny when you look at funding, um, criteria for grant [00:15:30] funding, there's two top of the list. One would be low income and the other one would be rural. So there are organizations that operate in, in Los Angeles, county of San Francisco County that are acts have access to funds and the rural communities are habit, but we don't have the population base. And so the impact is a little bit different.
Speaker 4:But that being said, economic development corporations are all around the state, all around the country. And then the community development financial institutions really CDFIs are really unique. They're a designation by the Department of Treasury and banking and insurance [00:16:00] companies have to comply with community reinvestment act dollars. And so they fund the CDFI Fund, which then gives out money. But we, I could go to a bank right now and get money and be able to deploy it into a low income and rural projects. As a matter of fact, that direct public offering we did, it was probably the hardest money that I could've gotten to $350,000 well, you know, we raised for the direct public offering. Why is that a, because he had to go out, I mean, I was on a road asking, your average investment was $4,000 the number of people we had [00:16:30] was 80 when I could have gone to a bank and said, okay, I'll offer you the same terms, but the value back to the community, it binds the community.
Speaker 4:Right, right. And also it was, it was important to to, I mean I think when we look at, you know, wealth inequality, it's really based on people having ownership of assets. And so this is a way that non-accredited investors can not only have ownership of assets but have it locally. And the conversation we have is, Berkeley's a good place for this. Where you talk about localization by local, where 45 cents of every dollar spent locally stays locally, whereas 15 cents of [00:17:00] a non local business stays locally. Well, if you look at that in a bigger scale, a scheme, if you go out and you buy apple stock, you're getting your dividend and apple. But if you put that same amount of money in, you know, Berkeley Bowl, you're not only getting that dollar back in div terms of dividends, but you're also getting that community benefit of those dollars circulating in the community.
Speaker 4:So as you make it a little lower percentage, right. In this case, in this case we did, but you get a, an intangible return in the community because if you like a business, you want to stay. Yeah. The [00:17:30] other thing is that this is a prototype. So when we look at rolling out a, a more general economic development fund, we'll be able to offer a risk adjusted return. What does that mean? The reason why the Mendocino Wall project couldn't get funded was that it was a startup. The lack of experience from the, um, from Matt. He's young. Yeah. He's young. You know, he was for sure by trade. So the risk was there at that, you know, if you talk about venture capitalists, they, they, one of the reasons why they justify a high stake, either equity or rate of return is that [00:18:00] these things are inherently risky.
Speaker 4:So when you look at the 2% return we asked for investors isn't quite risk adjusted. Then again, we are a nonprofit. And so because because of that and because we're a CFI, we're able to ensure this. So we mitigate a lot of that risk. But that being said, if it did, people would have been much more apt to invest that they were being offered a five, six, 7% rate of return, which would be more reflective of the risks that they're taking. So did you feel, um, is it something that you would recommend to others after going through this process of getting all of these investors locally? It was [00:18:30] CR. It was a great experience. I think that you're actually meeting face to face and with your invest. It was meme and sometimes I had to meet with them three times, you know? Well that's what the big, um, you know, IPO is they have to go around and do their dog and pony show too, right?
Speaker 4:Eh, you know, but when they're getting checks of 10 million, $100 million, I mean, relatively speaking, you still have to do that face to face. But that's, you know, if you look at the way our world is moving, we're moving from a way, we're moving to more of a transactional experience and people are missing [00:19:00] the relationship. And so one of the things I've been working on with, you know, on the side is with some high net worth investors talking about how do we create direct relationship driven investment. And this, this what we're, what I was doing was directly, I mean, I shook hands with everybody. Everyone talked to Matt. You know, the, one of the things that investors really wanted to have was this feeling of community. So we're having these investor meetings where we're having one coming up at a, a very nice retreat place up in Ukiah.
Speaker 4:I mean, this is a very unique, unique thing for you bring in the wool makers and [00:19:30] they give a presentation and went to the product. Yeah. So, you know, I think as our world gets more and more online and it goes from warm faster, it's that relationship that people are craving. And especially when you're talking about $1,000, I mean, you know, Michael Shuman talks about moving 1% of your income and what the impact that would make in our local communities. For some people $1,000 was what they would write a check for a philanthropic endeavor. But here they're going to build some sustainability into it. And this whole world of social, a social impact investing is [00:20:00] just growing leaps and bounds. Having learned about it five or six years ago, the market is just exploding and people wanting it. It is interesting. I feel like it's this whole other parallel universe going on outside of this crazy other financial market.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And in some ways it's more tangible. Even if you have your money in a large commercial mega bank, you know, you think is FDI seeing insured? And it is. But that bank's exposure to derivative instruments and things like that. Or even if you have it in a, in a, your money, in a, in a stock somewhere. But if you have your, your money at Joe's, [00:20:30] you know, fish market, you can go by there every day and you'll see whether he's got people coming in or he doesn't. Or if you are, you get to taste this product and you know, whether you know he's going to fail or not. Yeah. Cause you know, if you know this person, you have a different responsibility. What, what was really unique is not, you know, the money was definitely the focus. But what came out of this was some of the captains of industry in our community came together and said, we want to mentor this guy.
Speaker 4:Oh that's, so you're talking about another added [00:21:00] effect of like, wow, this guy, you know, this guy really, you know, we believe in him and we're gonna, we're going to take time out of our busy schedules running our multimillion dollar corporations to give him some mindshare. Yeah. So it's really, it was really community, you know, community focused. I was talking to a bank of America guy who specialized in CDFIs and he explained to me that, uh, he'd been working in the CDI Department at Bank of America for 25, 30 years and that he loved it and still financing. And if he wasn't doing that, he'd be working in a CDFI because CDFIs are [00:21:30] the most innovative and creative places where community capitalism is being deployed. And I think this place where CFIs like us are coming in and being able to take on that risk intermediary is really interesting because when we went out to the community and you know, in the bigger conversation of, in the wake of 2008 people were moving their money out of big banks and their communities like Willis economic localization, which was a group of people who came together and said, how do we invest locally?
Speaker 4:And when I went to those meetings, it was great cause you hear these people going, I wanted [00:22:00] us locally, but I don't want to take any risk. I don't want to find the deals. I don't want to vet the deals. I don't want to service the deals. And so that EFC as a [inaudible] is a economic development corporation. The CFI, we have the skill set, we have the tools, and then we had the risk mitigation things. So this, this is a technique now that there are a lot of CDFIs are looking at what we're doing. Yes, it's a great alternative to this donation based crowdfunding. I don't want a tee shirt. I want to invest in your company. Well until recently, you know, and that's not been able to be possible. The SCC rules have just [00:22:30] finally come down. I'll tell you what, I spent more money on Kickstarter.
Speaker 4:But that idea of having a relationship with an investment where you can go and you can meet and see and that it's in your community. I think I've done both too. And I just, I liked the connection that's made in the community. And there's also a bigger conversation that I'm having with people like in Berkeley or in San Francisco, is that places like Mendocino are your source of food, energy and water. And there has to be mechanisms that allow wealth building in those communities [00:23:00] so that families can continue to supply food, energy, water in an equitable way. And this is a great mechanism. You can people here investing. So these projects like meaning not Mendocino but you know, Berkeley, San Francisco and they did, they actually did. So because of the mechanism of the direct public offering is as a state exemption, as long as you register within the state, but it's open to all everyone in California.
Speaker 4:So we did our road show in Mendocino, but 30% of our investment came from the bay area. Well it makes sense like you say, I mean [00:23:30] that's where we get our right and dude. And the other side of it is that, you know, a $50,000 investment from someone in San Francisco is a lot different than a $50,000 investment in someone in Willets. And um, so that was one of our largest investments was a $50,000 investment. Do you find that, you know, getting a couple of those big ones makes the rest easier? No, I don't think the big investment was really it and it's a matter of fact, I, I would've preferred to get it all through small investors. But that being said, I'm not going to turn away money and it made things easier. But um, we were late. We had a year [00:24:00] to, to be able to fundraise and we were authorized in February of last year and so the state gives you one year.
Speaker 4:Okay. And then you can file an extension. But W we decided not to. We really didn't kick off our marketing effort until late, like six months later. And part of it was I was able to get grants from our local bank savings bank of Mendocino mental, a credit union, PGE gave us a grant, community foundation gave us a grant to be able to create a marketing campaign and a video or video was phenomenal. Really well done. I highly recommend you go to see it. It's think still, how would listeners go see [00:24:30] this video and you know your website? Yeah. Go to go to ww. Dot. E D F C. Dot. Org and state video about it. It's just the wool mill. It's really well done and just the local investment opportunity. But that really kind of kicked off the initial investment. And then once we started getting momentum and people saw this was for real, we'd brought Michael Shuman up to the community twice and everybody loved what he had to say, but nobody really believed that anyone was going to make this happen.
Speaker 4:And when they finally saw money [00:25:00] coming in and the amounts of money that was coming in, it created a snowball and it was just, it was amazing. Shit. Bode well for the future. What are some other things that you foresee or you're hoping to get done in the future? Well, you know, one of the things that you know, we look at is there's such a beautiful harbor and the [inaudible] harbor up in Mendocino county and there's other issues other than just financing. But you know, creating a, a community, revitalizing that fishing community and that timber community in Fort Bragg is so important. It's so isolated and it's so beautiful and such a great lifestyle. I also think that [00:25:30] if you look at what happened, as a lot of people went to back to land, they went up to those areas, Mendocino and Humboldt counties, and they bought land from timber companies that have been just raped and pillaged.
Speaker 4:These things were devastated and they were able to eke out a living and now they're looking at, hey, maybe I want to become a commercial cannabis grower and become legitimate and compliant, but they've got issues with erosion and road control, which can cast them, you know, anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and how do you get, how can they fund these things? So there needs to be a way, a mechanism to fund compliance [00:26:00] in this world. I'm not saying that we're ready to do that, but there is going to be a need to fund compliance in the future. In California, especially in rural areas, you couldn't probably get federal sources, but community capital could be raised to do that. And there's talk about trying, there's a bunch of people in the cannabis community we're talking about doing a direct public offering to create cooperative processing. Again, it's the issue of the people that make grow things don't make as much money as the people who distribute things.
Speaker 4:And so you have to, in order to build equity in our community is to add value to it. All these regional [00:26:30] hubs are going to become more and more important. It's a redundant system. Yeah. And if you look at ancient Greece, right? Ancient Greece was not countries, they were nation, they're city states. And it's that aggregation, that economic activity that allowed them to weather the d vacation events that happened when I ran the Inner Sun Valley Brewing Company, which was a regional brewery when in a time it was in the top 50 craft breweries. Um, in terms of size and probably in the top two or three in terms of quality, but our core markets were San Francisco, Santa Rosa and Sacramento. [00:27:00] And even though we distributed out to Paris, China and Brazil and Sweden, if we lost market share in those areas, it was very concerning because those are your core markets.
Speaker 4:And there is an intrinsic relationship between, especially Mendocino, Lake County, Sonoma county as to the bay area, being tied in acres, the bay area in building those relationships was really important. I want to talk a little bit about you. You've said that you grew up in Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz. You were in that brewery industry. What drew you to this CDFC work? I would say I [00:27:30] grew up in Santa Cruz. I actually was born in Vietnam and spent some time in Saudi Arabia. My Dad was a civil engineer, but for the most part, most of my child who was grown, you know from high school on our junior high on was in Santa Cruz. So I never thought I'd leave, but then realized going back to Vietnam, I had an opportunity to get an education, so I got into school, got out really quickly with a master's in economics and finance and realized I didn't really want to be in a bank.
Speaker 4:Got Involved in Thai tech and so on and so forth and started some companies and then this opportunity to run the Anderson Valley [00:28:00] brewing company came up. When you go to a party, running a brewery was always, you know, popular. Yeah. You know, but I, I didn't, there were things in terms of things I didn't like about the business. One thing is I don't really drink that much. I don't enjoy drinking that much. And so that led to a clash. But at that time, being a very large employer in a very small area, I was asked to be on a lot of boards. And so being coming onto the economic development, financial risk and board of directors, which is 21 board members, uh, which includes two county supervisors, a city counselor from each of the four cities and then major employers [00:28:30] and things like that. I really liked the work.
Speaker 4:We funded a brewery up in Lake County and my brewing experience came into that. And, or going into the wool mill or going to talk to another restaurant tour, the community really opened up. And so I love the myriad of things I get to do and the questions, it's just you're really connected in a network and I really love what I do. And just the, the community impact of it. If somebody wants to get ahold of you and ask questions, yeah, they can either email me, uh, John j o h n at EDF C. Dot Org Echo David, [00:29:00] frank, Charlie, um, they can call me, um, (707) 684-4084. You know, and I'm actually presenting, I'm going up to Comcast up in, uh, in poor ladies, Comcast, it's community capital conference about people creating ways to fund, uh, socially beneficial organizations or small businesses. One of the speakers and, uh, Amy Pearl up there has done some amazing things in community capital legislation to allow crowdfunding of community benefit organizations.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I, I just loved the idea. I mean [00:29:30] I'm maybe growing up in Santa Cruz, but having that kind of social responsibility and I think that income inequality is solved through people taking ownership of assets and instead of redistribution, it's just basically able to be onerous of cooperatives or businesses. And being able to leverage that money. My next big passion is to create a mechanism for non-accredited people to put tax deferred investment away. Ultimately, like the litmus test for my job is healthy, happy kids. If families can live in [00:30:00] my community and are able to keep their kids here to have happy kids under themselves, then I've done my job. John, that's a nice way to end it. Thanks for being on the program. Oh, thank you very much. It's been pleasure. That was John Curry, the executive director of Ed FC Economic Development and financing corporation. This has been method to the madness. We'll be back again in two weeks.
Speaker 3:Him.
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