Jeffery: Welcome to Impact Investing, brought to you by the Supporters Fund from the most multicultural city in the world, Toronto, Canada. I’m your host, Jeffrey “JP” Potvin. And let’s please welcome from the largest exporter of raspberries in the world, Belgrade, Serbia. Keo Sar from Mattar Product Studios. Welcome, Keo. It’s a real pleasure having you join us today.

Keo: Thanks JP. It’s my pleasure to be here and really great to reconnect with you.

Jeffery: Likewise, man, I’m pretty excited about the conversation today, and not only because you’re all the way in Serbia, which I’m a big fan of. I did enjoy traveling Serbia, but because we got to connect on the other side of the world and of course all the great things that you’ve done. But I was so excited about your background because it’s almost like you were meant to just be a rockstar, because all of the things you’ve got to be part of, it’s been pretty exciting from an operational standpoint, and you’ve got to be part of some really cool exits and some great businesses. So I think a lot of people are going to learn a lot today from our conversation. Me included. So I’m pretty excited to dive in. So the way we like to, to jump into our show is we want to give you kind of a quick overview of where you’ve come from, all the great things you’ve done from your days in San Francisco all the way through, all the companies that you’ve participated in. And of course, one thing about you that nobody would know.

Keo: All right. Well, again, thanks for thanks for having me. Yeah. Like I said, like you mentioned, it’s been a long time since we connected. And, you know, I remember from the first time we met, it was just a vibe, as the cool kids call it these days. So, you know, really great to to be on the podcast and hopefully can share some, some things I’ve done and, you know, help people learn some things. And I, you know, also looking forward to learning some things as well. My but my story, really begins in a refugee camp in Thailand. So culturally, my background is Cambodian. Which I’m actually going back in a couple of weeks, actually, on Sunday, I’m flying back to Cambodia to do two weeks of work in ecosystems. So pretty excited about that. And we can chat a little bit about that later on in the podcast. But, My story starts in a refugee camp. So my, my parents, they escaped the the genocide and the war that was happening in Cambodia in the mid to late 70s. And you’re talking about because when I bring it up, a lot of people don’t know about what happened there. And without getting into too much of the details, there is a genocide that wiped out anywhere from a fourth to a third of the country over a four and a half year period. One of the consequences of that was people, you know, fleeing the country into Red cross camps in Thailand. And that’s where my, my parents fled to. My mom escaped first. My dad, because during that time, they were also splitting, you know, up families and men and women into different camps. He was actually scheduled to be executed the day that he escaped. The Vietnamese army invaded. Rescue you, depending on who you ask. But the point is, you know, they came all hell broke loose at the camp, and my dad was at. And that’s how he escaped. And somehow, amongst hundreds of thousands of refugees found my mom in a refugee camp in Thailand, which is, which is where I was born. So that’s where my life began. From there, you know, we spent a year in the Philippines, in the Bataan province, where there was a refugee processing center. We got sponsored by a family in the US, specifically in San Diego, California, where I grew up. So, you know, after we got the sponsorship paperwork, they sent us to this processing center to help us learn the language, get acclimated. And then, yeah, we moved to, San Diego after that, where I grew up. I still think it’s the best city in the world, weather wise, all year round on average. A little San Diego plug there. And then from from San Diego moved up to San Francisco to really just expand my wings, but also, start university. So I was my undergrad, was in creative writing. A lot of people actually don’t know that, because I’ve been working in tech for, for a very long time there, like, but, but I’ve always enjoyed love reading and writing. I try to write my first book in second grade, and then, after getting my degree in writing, I pursued my Masters in finance. And then my career started with two fortune 100 companies. One was one of the largest, the largest electronics retailer in the world at the time. Best buy. From there, I went to one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and quickly found that I’m just not a corporate person. And that’s when my startup career, really kicked off, first company. I was at a company called Learning Club of the senior manager there. Manage a team of, you know, at any given point, 150 to 200 people with 10 or 15 direct reports, we IPO this was in the fintech space. After that, I really wanted to get my hands dirty because when I joined Lending Club, we were at a later stage and, you know, the company was at that time, probably a year and a half, two years away from IPO. And when we did IPO, just as an aside, I was actually at the New York Stock Exchange for that, one of the coolest experiences in my life. What would love to to do that again at some point? But, but I really wanted to get the experience of building something from, you know, the ground up. So to, to, series a company, company called lender, we were to another fintech focus on mortgage, where I had headed sales and operations. Their company eventually got acquired. Which led me to, company called octane, another fintech building marketplace, lending platform, for Power Sports, which I did not know anything about when they approached me to to come help build out their customer success practice. And I also did not have a customer success background. So the first time I’m meeting, you know, the founders there and they’re describing to me what they want me to do. I’m like, you do realize I’ve never been involved in any sort of customer suc