Did you know that there is a virtual reality language tutoring platform that allows you to learn a new language by conversing live with real people while combining language, cultural awareness, and community? Ever heard of the life science company that adopted an equitable business model to provide life-saving products and medical services to people in low-income countries? What about the SaaS application that brings transparency to modern-day slavery in supply chains and protects people by showing which suppliers are high risk for human rights abuses?
These are just some of the products of entrepreneurs that are changing the world. In this episode, Wes Lyons of Eagle Venture Fund talks about helping audacious entrepreneurs launch and scale companies that move the world forward. Through a proven venture builder model, entrepreneurs who embark on helping solve tough issues like modern-day slavery, healthcare for the poor, and financial inclusion, find support and resources from Eagle Venture. Click now and find out how Wes and his partners are changing the world one entrepreneur at a time.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“As investors, we are part of a movement to discover something more whole and beautiful than just growing wealth. We have power that we can deploy on behalf of the vulnerable, the weak, and the suffering.”
“It takes a lot longer to build anything of value than I think most people give it any credit for.”
“It is fun to change the world. It's brilliantly fun to do it with friends.”
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Strong and Weak by Andy Crouch
Becoming Whole by Brian Fikkert
Completing Capitalism by Bruno Roche
Click to Find out more about our upcoming event: "Crafting Your Kingdom Investing Thesis"
Did you know that there is a virtual reality language tutoring platform that allows you to learn a new language by conversing live with real people while combining language, cultural awareness, and community? Ever heard of the life science company that adopted an equitable business model to provide life-saving products and medical services to people in low-income countries? What about the SaaS application that brings transparency to modern-day slavery in supply chains and protects people by showing which suppliers are high risk for human rights abuses?
These are just some of the products of entrepreneurs that are changing the world. In this episode, Wes Lyons of Eagle Venture Fund talks about helping audacious entrepreneurs launch and scale companies that move the world forward. Through a proven venture builder model, entrepreneurs who embark on helping solve tough issues like modern-day slavery, healthcare for the poor, and financial inclusion, find support and resources from Eagle Venture. Click now and find out how Wes and his partners are changing the world one entrepreneur at a time.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“As investors, we are part of a movement to discover something more whole and beautiful than just growing wealth. We have power that we can deploy on behalf of the vulnerable, the weak, and the suffering.”
“It takes a lot longer to build anything of value than I think most people give it any credit for.”
“It is fun to change the world. It's brilliantly fun to do it with friends.”
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Strong and Weak by Andy Crouch
Becoming Whole by Brian Fikkert
Completing Capitalism by Bruno Roche
Click to Find out more about our upcoming event: "Crafting Your Kingdom Investing Thesis"
EPISODE 24
[INTRODUCTION]
ANNOUNCER: Imagine taking your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives, and leaving a godly legacy for generations to come. Get ideas and strategies to do just that when you listen to these personal stories from high-level Kingdom champions.
The Kingdom Investor Podcast showcases business leaders who have moved from success to significance, sharing how they use worldly wealth for Kingdom impact. Discover how they grew in generosity, impacted more lives, and built godly legacies. You'll find motivation, inspiration, and practical steps to grow as a Kingdom Investor.
Daniel White (DW): Welcome to the Kingdom Investor Podcast. I'm your host Daniel White, and today I'm interviewing my friend, Wes Lyons. Wes is a general partner in the Eagle Venture Fund, a private equity fund that invests in early-stage companies with a focus on creating significant financial returns and significant impact for all stakeholders. Prior to working in the investing space, Wes served as a naval officer in both active duty and later in the reserves. Today, we talk with Wes about coming alongside impactful entrepreneurs and companies and how to make a difference with your investing while generating a substantial return. And now let's get right into the show.
[INTERVIEW]
DW: Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. Today I get the pleasure of interviewing Wes Lyons. Wes, how're you doing today?
Wes Lyons (WL): Doing well, thank you so much for having me on today.
DW: Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Would you tell the audience a little bit about where you're coming from and who you are?
WL: So, calling from Dallas, Texas here today. I’m one of the founding partners at Eagle Venture Fund. For just high level, we invest in purpose-driven entrepreneurs that are at the intersection of financial performance and positive impact, focusing mostly on the underserved, the vulnerable, the suffering, but also involves investing to scalable businesses that are shaping a better future. That's what we do.
DW: Awesome. So, what is a highlight from this week or last week?
WL: That's a good question. We got to hang out with the guys from Amplio in person. Are you familiar with them? They're doing job placements for refugees. Chris and their team is amazing. They've placed 10,000 refugees into jobs over the last few years, trying to innovate some cutting edge solutions with them, and just had a lot of fun hanging out with them.
DW: Awesome. I'll definitely have to look into that. That sounds really cool. So would you pray for us and our listeners, before we get started?
WL: Absolutely. Lord, you said, where two or three come together in your name, you're there in our midst. And we just acknowledge that digitally, we've come together here and we do come under your name. And we just bring everything that we're doing under your immense and complete authority. And we just ask that Your kingdom would come and Your will be done here in this hour as we talk and through the things that we're doing as well. Thank you so much for the blessing of getting to work in such an exciting sphere with amazing people. We just invite you to be the wave that we ride as we see what you're doing around us. In Jesus' name, amen.
DW: Amen. Wes, would you give us just a snapshot of how you got into what you're doing, a little bit of background on you and your family?
WL: Absolutely. Grew up as a missionary kid but domestically here in the US. In The Navigators organization. They're all about discipleship and memorizing the Bible. So got an amazingly deep foundation as a kid, went to the Naval Academy and flew. Got to be an aviator in the navy for about eight years before I got into financial services. Got to work for an amazing man of God that loved the Lord. And we were serving a hundred-something high-net-worth families. And we actually formed a private equity fund for our clients because we had a passion for that. Wealth is built in the private markets and liquidity is actually provided by the public.
WL: So I got to be part of building a private equity fund with him and with a couple of guys out of Zurich, Switzerland that we brought on to be the investment team together. We loved working together, and I'm crashing a lot of fun stories into a very short period of time. But that blossomed into Raffy and Ray who are the general partners out of Zurich and Wade Myers and myself launching Eagle Venture Fund originally with one other partner. But for the last four years or so, it's been four general partners that launched in 2017, really tiny fund with 12 portfolio companies. But the Lord really blessed it and the track record are really thankful for got to do a fund two which was quite a bit larger. And now we're on our fund three.
WL: Primarily, I love relating with people like kind of these type of one-on-one interactions like what we're having right now. Obviously, a lot of people listening, but the small group interactions and relating, and strength finder is my number one strength. And I love getting to walk with entrepreneurs that are audaciously trying to change the world. Whether it's combating human trafficking, or even if it's more just let's make the world a better place. Let's write a future for what the metaverse is going to be getting to walk with them through their journey. It's been just, it's an absolute joy getting to be part of what the Lord's blossoming at Eagle. It’s been a really fun journey over the last five years.
DW: Wow, that sounds so cool. And I'm excited to dig more into it. But before we do, would you talk a little bit about just your own story, and maybe some of the formative experiences that you've been through that either shaped you or really kind of put you on this trajectory?
WL: I mean, one that really, really shaped me, I was in the reserves wall in financial services for a number of years. And learning to walk with the Holy Spirit, learning to at first when I came into the financial industry, I knew that the Lord was saying, hey, come get into finance. And I assumed the only reason was to make money to give to the gospel movement, because that's the only framework that I had that was useful for kingdom business was to make money to give to the gospel movement. But he started giving exposure to companies like LivFul that were kind of sharing the gospel in the way that they just in the context of their business, bringing health and what their business is bringing health access to poor and middle-income countries. Like the very workings of the business as it grew, flourishing, was just expanding and seeing even tide in the public markets doing some really redemptive things.
WL: In the midst of that, I got deployed in the reserves and got to actually lead a group of 55 folks in a couple of aircraft to go help the Filipino military take a city back from ISIS. ISIS had taken over the center city of Marawi and we're overhead trying to stream in, there's embedded Green Berets on the ground, and we're trying to stream in data and video and just helping them win the city back. One day when I checked in, for tasking, the tasking that I got, just for context, picture the moment you're like coming through the clouds and it looks like just a bombed-out post-World War II city. Like it's just absolute carnage, they've been bombing everything, trying to get all the guys routed out of their little tunnels and things like that. But the tasking I got that day was that ISIS was going to be using children as bait in a trap. And our job was to spend the day trying to find those kids before ISIS use them in a trap.
WL: And a number of other personal experiences helped me to just kind of come to grips with. I think when we grew up in kind of relatively tame environment in the US, sometimes we don't really engage with, evil is really evil, that we actually live in this world that Satan has claimed every inch of it, and God counterclaims every inch of it in the CS Lewis quote, sort of language. And it's just really put a fire in me to find entrepreneurs that are actually going after the darkest, most broken things in society, and to try to find mass ways to go, alright, there's 50 million slaves in the world, how do we build systems to like reverse, to actually strategically see things like that change? That and I find the clue as I pursue intimacy with God and pursue connecting with God, the closer I get to him, the more my heart actually cares a little bit. Like, if I'm truly honest, I think there's part of me that's just learning to care about people that are hurting. And the more I get to know him, the more I actually legitimately care and not just try to make myself feel better [09:07] if that makes sense.
DW: Yeah, absolutely. So where do you find your meaning in life? Where do you find your significance in life?
WL: 100% from experiencing the Lord, I think I've had enough taste of experiencing the presence of the Lord and the satisfaction I get from knowing I'm loved knowing he's satisfied with me, and knowing that he's really pleased with what he made in me. That I know that's actually what my heart cries for. And it can't actually, I think sometimes we can replace pursuing finances with pursuing impact, and it almost is trading out to different idols when they own there's only one thing that can like hint to the desires of my heart. And like if you kind of domino through and go, alright Lord, what if it all works? What if we're massively impactful? What if like, we're able to cut modern-day slavery in half and kind of fast forward through it and picture that moment down the road of like, what if the things that Lord's put on your calling all work, and then kind of the Lord, then it will ask me or you can ask yourself like, and then what I like, and then it kind of hits you like, oh, actually, what I want is you are so 100% pursuing connection with the Lord.
WL: And then it radically shifts how you go try to do things if you come from a platform. And this is aspirational. I'm barely learning to do this myself. But on the days when I can come pursue impact from a platform of knowing I'm radically loved, knowing that he's very, very pleased with me, and, and it's really just a playground of what does he love, he loves faith, and you kind of gotta go try crazy things and like, step out in faith, to really please and that's what he gets excited about. It's, it's his it's the family DNA of the Lord. He took a massive risk on humanity as like, let's go try crazy things, you know.
DW: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And he uses the most unique people, the most unexpected choices of people to use. Yeah, yeah. Just example, after example, in the Bible of him using just people that you would, would have been your last pick probably, or my last pick, so. So can you share a little bit about the vision that God's really put on your heart?
WL: I think at its core, if, if we're wildly successful, we'd love to almost reframe what success means as a faith-driven investor. If you read the book "Strong and Weak" by Andy Crouch, he frames flourishing as this combination of authority and vulnerability. And it takes the whole book to unpack this idea, but kind of reframing that when we're given, we're given significant authority as investors when we get to where we get to deploy what effectively is power. And when we get to deploy it on behalf of the vulnerable, the weak and the suffering, if we get a chance to, one reframe that highly impactful investments perform a ton, perform really well that would be I hope, someday to to be answering how much of our performance came from the fact that we were doing high impact things. If those questions start coming on interview, that I know we've, we've won part of that.
WL: But to reframe why we invest, because I think Henry Case asked a really good question this summer at the Christian Economic Forum, like, we talked about risk a lot, of like losing, and we reframe it as volatility. We basically talked about it as if the primary risk is losing capital. Any reframe the question is the primary risk is getting in front of the Lord and him kind of saying, oh, you had more opportunity that you left on the table there, you know. So, if we're able to be part of a movement that's able to corporately discover something much more whole, much more beautiful, much more, much more fun than just trying to grow wealth. And probably, if we, if I understand what the purpose of business is correctly, which I think is to love people well through building incredible systems, and that the fruit of that is, is financial performance sometimes, it probably will perform really, really well.
WL: Kind of like, if you asked me why I married my wife, I could answer like, well, I wanted four beautiful blue-eyed boys. I wanted a home that was going to be a beacon of light to the community around it, I could, I could list off all the fruit of what has come from our marriage, but you kind of crack your head a little bit and you go, Wes, that's not a very good reason to get married. And at its core, I think we have fruit and root confusion sometime in the church because I've married her because I'm desperately in love with her. The fruit of our intimacy is that there are boy, four beautiful boys. And so to reframe the purpose of investing would be the Holy Grail, like real, like what we have to do we do that through investing in purpose-driven entrepreneurs that are shaping a better future, if that makes sense.
DW: Yes, absolutely. So give us an overview of Eagle Venture Fund, and what you do with that.
WL: So at Eagle Venture Fund, we're an early-stage investing group that we have labs that we're creating. We're co-founding about a quarter of our portfolio, and then about a third of the portfolio to date, we've kind of brought into the garage and taken off the tires and maybe changed out a transmission, if you will, where our business model actually shifted. And then roughly half of the portfolio is more of a traditional early stage. early stage investing firm where we're in a seed or a Series A, if you're familiar with that language from venture capital investing. Usually, it's almost always a business-to-business company, where they're doing something better, faster, cheaper for businesses in a tech-enabled way. That's usually the type of businesses that we play in, mostly here in the US with and in Europe where we have offices, because we're trying to go very deeply with those founders, and then trying to innovate ways to just pour into the founders that we get a chance to walk with Eagle University, where we're teaching them a lot of the lessons learned. The four of us general partners have founded 67 companies between the four of us we have. We've made a lot of mistakes, over hundred or so years of experience. And, just passing those on. And then Eagle leadership development where we're trying to just teach prayer practices and have somebody that's really there to walk with them through the tough moments and building a foundation to try to build ecosystems around the causes that we're going after. But trying to build as many tailwinds as we can around the entrepreneurs so that they can achieve their dreams.
DW: Absolutely. So it sounds like you do a lot of the functioning of an accelerator and providing the capital. So you're providing a lot more than the capital it sounds like. Is that accurate?
WL: Yeah, some of it accelerator usually doesn't found. So we're almost earlier than that on the lab where we're actually can founding things from concepts. And then playing accelerator role for maybe a third, and then more traditional investor. But yeah, we kind of have the, the spectrum of what we can do for a company. And sometimes you meet companies, and they don't need anybody added to their their team, they have their product market fit, and really all they need is capital. But plenty, it's not not every company.
DW: Sure, sure. So can you tell us a little bit more about how that translates into impact?
WL: So like any good answer, it depends, it depends on the company. A couple of examples are a company named FRDM, a software platform that helps purchasing agents at say, like a Boeing or Target, see into their supply chains with the job stand back. The theory is that there's 50 million slaves in the world, a good chunk of them really are labor trafficking. And a huge percentage of those are actually the money ultimately comes from the American or European consumer, there's just a lack of transparency into who the supplier to the supplier to the supplier is to where the phone sitting on my desk. The person who made them are the makers of the phone don't know whether the cobalt was mined by an adult that paid a fair wage, they just don't. So FRDM is trying to produce the transparency into those supply chains.
WL: And we've got a couple other, there's actually a couple others in the portfolio and others that we're looking at to there's a whole bunch of pieces of building the transparency from consumer all the way to the person mining the cobalt, to really go after labor trafficking in today's world. So that's an example where, Justin was is he's a really interesting person, he was a rock star and then he was a pastor. He made a movie. But in expressing his faith, the next thing over the last eight years or so it's been building the software company has tried to produce something very redemptive in the world. And he's also trying to build it with a very cool culture and, and do something special in the way that he built it. But our favorite is when the very mechanism of the churn of the flywheel of the business is producing something beautiful, like transparency. And it looks different from any for each company. But, but those are, that's the top tier in our mind is these companies that just the very churning of the business that we're in, there's a little bit of the kingdom of God that coming through it.
DW: Yeah, that example is a really good one. Do you have another story like that or another example that you might be able to share to help us kind of understand this?
WL: Yeah, another example. LivFul is a company whose platform is bringing health access to low and middle-income countries. Their lead product is a natural solution to prevent bugs from even landing on you much less biting you trying to save. There's about a million people dying every year from malaria and Zika, dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases. So, the product is very redemptive, and is trying to save lives and it's also replacing DEET, a neurotoxin that stays in the bloodstream for 180 days. So, if you live in a place where you always have to have a bug repellent on, it's not so much of a big deal for you if we go camping for a weekend, and we spray some DEET on, because it'll get out of our bloodstream relatively quickly. But if it's every day, all day, now the neurotoxin is kind of a thing in, in your, in your overall health. And so being able to replace it with a more natural product that works a lot better, and save a bunch of lives, it's inherently redemptive. They've taken that product and said, let's build distribution mechanisms to try to really rethink how health access solutions are getting into countries like Nigeria, Uganda, India, and the Philippines. So they, they'd be probably in our top level of impact just because they're saving lives and doing it that way. And they're taking it a step further and trying to really build the mechanisms of distribution into in the mechanisms of innovation, because most of health innovation is happening for the top kind of 10% of purchasers in the world. And it's actually kind of a different product, when they're literally designing for people living on $3 a day, you package it differently, you think differently about the innovation around it, when you're trying to get it to like a five cent product that's a one time use or something like that. So that's a it's a really good example of a deeply redemptive, starting with a different question like, how do I save lives in a $3-day context.
DW: Yeah, so this reminds me of the interview with the Oceans programs, and, you know, talking about how it's, it's almost more about building the entrepreneur and, and investing in the entrepreneur as far as developing them and helping them to develop than it is about even the company that they're building it. Does that resonate with you at all?
WL: Yes, and no. There's one part of it, that's very true. Like it's developing this team and helping them really gain strength over time. They're one of the ones that actually came in, and we, we challenged them, and they listened to really change the business model. Because sometimes when the business model isn't right, it's not actually highly scalable. So when they came into our process, we challenged them, hey, if you reformat most of the values in this section, it would allow you to grow way faster through channel partners. They enter their credit, they totally reformatted the business model, and kind of went after this business model they're going after right now. So yes, and that it's, it is primarily a people, people growing journey. But there's also it takes all, you got to be really good at business as well, if that makes sense. And the business model really matters. If your cash cycle is it doesn't work, then you can blow your business up by growing too fast, if that makes sense, and which is why we so often do a tech-enabled service or a SaaS or a fintech model. Because if you can't get paid on the front end of a 12-month contract, then they don't kill themselves as it's relatively cash efficient, to really scale up quickly. So yes, it's all about the team but then the business model matters a ton.
DW: Wes, what is the - I don't want to make you pick a favorite - but what's the favorite company that you've invested with?
WL: Oh, they might be listening. I mean, one that comes to mind, just because I've gotten to be part of the journey for so long is a company named Evidencity and my good friend, Sam Logan. And when we met and started just we had a chance, we're praying together for years, actually, before we started talking business. And when we started talking about his company Evidencity, we're like, is there any way to make an impact really? Don't really know. We have this network in 129 countries of people pulling due diligence records, like it's a pretty cool business. I have no idea if we can make an impact. And today, it is just kind of spewing impact at every angle, if that makes sense. Where they're getting to bring their part of the supply chain transparency. By over there, you can imagine actually, it gets down as you get into that supply chain, you need somebody in 120, 81 countries or 129 countries who can actually get in and like pull a record that in, in language due diligence, and just the way that they're, they're building a grace-field culture there is extraordinary. So I think getting to watch and go on a prayer rock with Sam and go, Lord, we have no idea how this can be impactful. Would you do something cool? We'd like to work together and being able to watch it year over year just kind of like layer in more and more excellence, more and more successes, financially and more and more impact in everything that they're doing has been it's been fun to see it grow if that man makes sense?
DW: Yeah, that's really good. So what is the greatest investment that you have personally made?
WL: Well, all of these are team sports. It depends on how you want to measure. I mean, from a financial perspective, there's one out of fund, one that we came in very early stage kind of like $4 million valuation, and it's an insure tech that is, I don't know that we'll get to 100x but it's just screaming north and getting ready to sell. That's really pretty incredibly thankful. I don't know how much I'm allowed to talk about performance on a podcast. But from a financial perspective so far, that we have a couple of the VR-XR space has really done incredibly well. There's a language learning platform called Immerse that we got to be a part of, from the early days. And it was really fun to think the summer of 2020, we were diving deep with Quinn Tabor and his team, and kind of saying, you know what, I think that this might be the best use of augmented or virtual reality, like, everybody knoWL that you learn language more effectively in an immersive environment, or a digital immersive environment. Like this might be the best use of VR. And it was so validating to see Mr. Zuckerberg and his team come out and basically say, we think this might be the best use of virtual reality. And we think Quinn Tabor is the guy that's gonna run it. We're like, yes. So that might be an overstatement. That's what I heard. I don't remember what the exact quote was, but they are kind of highlighting. I think in a couple of days. Mark is going to do his State of the Union for Meta, I mean, it's gonna be highlighting Immerse. It’s one of the cool things happening in in the Metaverse. So it's been really fun to ride that journey from like, hey, this is a cool concept with a couple of customers to where they are today as well.
DW: Yeah, that is really exciting. Thanks for sharing that. So along the journey, what is something that you learned that you didn't expect?
WL: Something that I learned that I didn't expect. It takes a lot longer to build anything of value than I think most people give it any credit for. And Ron Blue, shared this from this stage, at the Kingdom Advisor Conference this year, like, I think his quote was something effective, "It takes you 10 years to build anything worth anything of value". And I think when we started, it was a, it's been a really slow journey. Actually, I went zero for 60 on my first 60 Eagle pitches. We didn't get paid for four or five years, there was a lot of slow and hard. And now that it's rockin' and rollin', and the Lord's really blessed, and there's just kind of the snowball effect is coming around us. One, we just praise the Lord, it didn't have to happen. We're incredibly thankful. But realizing and looking back, like it actually has been kind of on cadence and moving quite quickly the whole time. I just should have talked to a bunch of people to find out how long does it take to build a venture capital firm, to end base rates when I think we need to talk to people around the industry are actually closer to five or 10 years to end. We're kind of on cadence with averages.
WL: But we tend to think oh, yeah, like this is a very cool idea. Probably takes maybe a year or two will be up and rockin', like that's, that sounds like a conservative estimate. And then walking that with our entrepreneurs as well, where they, as visionaries, we can see a future that doesn't exist. And we need the integrators that help us really get things rockin and rollin. But when we can see the future that already exists, we assume it'll only take a year or two to get there. And sometimes a very healthy cadence, it's five years to get there, maybe ten. So I think that's one of the big like, wow, I, but I'm thankful for the ignorance, I would have been very hard. If you had told me how, how hard it was going to be like, hey, you're not going to get paid for years, you're gonna go zero for 60. You're gonna have all these, all this challenge, it would have been hard to be like, okay, I'm signing up. Let's go.
DW: So how did you persevere through all of that, and how did you how did you get through the first several years?
WL: I think part of it was that we were all working, like financially at work because we all had other jobs, too. It was part-time for all of us until the beginning of 2020 when I went full-time on it. Primarily, it was the four of us became really good friends and had a lot of fun spending time together. So I think primarily it was a chance to hang out with friends. And we just found that we really loved working together, we see the world similarly in this kind of battlefield context. And the Lord has been teaching us bit by bit, and has kept speaking that he wants to do something big and extraordinary and kept holding on. It's kind of kind of a faith journey to be like, I think the Lord is still speaking, let's keep going. And it matters an immense amount that you've got to love people and enjoy being around each other a ton to work for four or five years without a penny, and have it be really hard. But there's a purifying element to that if we know that none of us is here for the money. We're here because we love the Lord and we, and we love hanging out together.
DW: So we learn a lot from success. But we learn even more from failure. Is there a particular failure that you don't mind sharing? Maybe, taught you a lot, or you learned a lot from it?
WL: So we've had two of our companies, we've marked to zero out of the 24. And one of them really catalyzed us to both we really did post-mortems of what the lessons learned here, but one of them was a wireless power company. And it was really on the bleeding edge of technology. We knew that it was a swing-for-the-fences investment, but it went to zero. And obviously, there's a lot of questions about like, okay, is this was this a great decision. And looking back realizing what we're great at is software as a service, tech-enabled services and fintech. We should probably stay really tight in those. And we've experienced a lot more success in things that we found it in our lab or got really involved in. And in both elements of looking at where we're seeing success, this fell outside, we weren't deeply involved with this company. And it was outside of our core, SaaS, fintech and tech-enabled services and healthcare that we have a lot of expertise in.
WL: And so it helped us to just really kind of steel our spine to say, no matter how exciting something is, we need to just know what's our, what's ours, our horse to ride on, if that makes sense, to really, and it's helped us to just really get very, very quick at nose on anything that isn't in our sweet spot. And it's also helpful the entire, like the faith-driven investing industry is getting much more mature to where you're not. So we, I guess when we found it, it was like sovereigns and us and like, couple angels buying this game, if that makes sense. And so if you're saying no to faith-driven entrepreneurs almost like you're not gonna get values line capital period is what you were telling them. Now, with so many people playing in the field, we can just say no, our, our specialty is B2B in these business models. If you're not here, go over to Eleven Tribes or go over to Talent-in, or one of the really great other investment firms, they have a better chance of finding investment capital. So it's just taught us to narrow down to only do the things that we feel like we're actually kind of have uniquely talented and called to do.
DW: So you mentioned a couple of times your lab where you develop different businesses. Can you talk a little bit about that? Or what is that?
WL: Yeah. So it really grew out of our first fund. We invested in a company called or created an investment in a company called Capital Works. It was basically tech-enabling the process of a lower middle market company getting ready for sale, and got to sell it to JP Morgan. And they're turning it into something called Capital Connect. That's really cool. It should help a lot of lower-middle market companies get financing. But that team stayed intact and is now building three companies that are all data fintech analytics plays, that they're able to leverage all the lessons learned from that first, first one. And they realized as they rolled it into the second play, what had taken two years took nine months. And then in the third company that they did together as taking like three months, and just realized in this hyperfocused, fintech, SaaS analytics, types of companies, they're just getting faster and faster at being able to build these companies. And so they're actually quite laser-focused on fintech analytics place where they and then wait is a serial entrepreneur. I was flipping through a book last night, but it's an old book, it is highlighting Wade, and one of his success, successes from quite a while ago. He's been written about and successful for a very long time. But he has a list of fintech plays that that group is working through and then we're actually just launching another lab that's working on social platforms. And some, it's just a second really skilled set of folks that want to build together as well.
DW: Talking about generosity and, and really, you know, investing in things that are creating impact and thinking as far as how to leave your mark on the world. And can you talk a little bit more about the impact investing space, and really just how some of that's developing, you talked about, you know, the faith-driven space, the faith-driven investing space is really growing and kind of maturing, can you talk about that?
WL: It's been one, just kudos to Henry and the faith-driven investing team into the practices and the language that they poured into this and Ocean and the work that they've done building, building up entrepreneurs and Lion's Den, there have been quite a few folks who have just kind of poured their heart and soul to where we have an ecosystem on our hands. And it's one that's growing fast, I think. And we see that and just pure, like the rod deal flow coming in the door, is, it's gone from like, 50 a month to 100 a month to we're not telling it live, but it's probably 200 a month right now. There's coming in the door, just deal flow, we're seeing a ton. I think we're also where we're investing quite a bit about we see the puck moving towards people really focusing on places and causes. So, while we have our Eagle 3, we also are doing subsets of that wrapped around the flourishing of places Dallas Fort Worth, flourishing fund and a combating human trafficking fund.
WL: Because we believe that we're gonna see a heavier kind of interplay between people's philanthropy and their investing, as we move deeper and deeper into producing the change we want to see in the world both with our investing pocket and our and our philanthropy pocket. So at the Eagle Foundation, we're kind of pouring into connecting the pieces of the ecosystems around those movements, around alleviating systemic poverty and, and combating trafficking, which is, it's a ton of fun to really just acknowledge that we're only one capital provider and much bigger movements. But in serving we also get in the room with and are part of the conversation and deal flow works as well, we just want to do it for the right reason. But there is some good cool fruit that comes from that as well. So that's where we really see the puck going in faith-driven investing is deeper impact, deeper articulation of investors saying this is the way I want to change the world, where maybe five years ago, the cutting edge was we can make a really powerful impact and have a great financial return. Now people are wanting to choose their impact and have a great financial return, If that makes sense.
DW: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Wes, before we enter the Mentor Minute where we get really practical, do you have anything else that you want to share with our listeners?
WL: I think it's a really fun journey. I guess I would encourage everybody to just read books and dive into whatever is catching their attention. I believe the Holy Spirit really speaks through our curiosity, if that makes sense. So like, right now, I'm just really enjoying Brian Fikkert's Becoming Whole and really thinking about what is a Christ-informed way to look at how to do poverty alleviation, but just pulling the threads of whatever the Holy Spirit's lighting up in your heart, diving into the books, going into the conferences and meeting the people of like-minded passion, because actually doing this in community with others is where it's really fun. It is fun to change the world. It's brilliantly fun to do it with friends.
DW: Yeah, we're hearing that a lot from a lot of our guests is, you know, given community, do it in community, invest in community. And it's just more joyful, but share to share the joy. All right, so let's go into the mentor minute, who is the most influential person, you know, personally, and how that has impacted you?
WL: I've been hugely blessed by Henry Kisner. He's taken the time to have conversations and speak into even just speak into how we're building like the city funds and it's just encouraged me, encouraged me deeply with just kind of looking me in the eyes and saying you can do this Wes, those type of moments. So, if this gets back to Henry, just thanks to him for those conversations that he's had. It's, there's a credibility that he has to be able to encourage. That's extraordinary. And I think he has a calling in that too. It's just gifted him as an encourager.
DW: What book or podcast has changed the course of your life?
WL: Oh, "Completing Capitalism" is probably the most the final chapter or two that is the most powerful articulation of what I think capitalism can become. And what we're what we're running towards. Brian Fikkert’s "Becoming Whole", I'm loving right now. I don't know if it's gonna be obvious still be talking about it in five years but Randy Alcorn's, it's not “The Treasure Principle”, I'm blanking on the name of one of his books that just kind of felt like it was the sum up of about five years of journey of trying to figure out how to integrate money and money and investing. But I can't remember the title of it right now.
DW: What is the greatest lesson that you've learned about leadership?
WL: Humility is actually what's coming to mind of learning to realize how much, I went to a leadership school at the Naval Academy where they just kind of just drill into you again and again, and again, this is how to lead, this is how to lead, this is how to lead, and then they threw me into combat and got to lead teams of like up to 60-something relatively young. So have lots of context for leadership and led that deployment to the Philippines. And, now getting to play a leadership role in growing multiple companies here at Eagle. And, just being able to slow down and just listen to the Lord and get humble, I think is, is what I'm striving for and feels like when I'm able to get humble and listen to the way that he's speaking to me. I just took a weekend of like a 24 hours of prayer this weekend. And in a chunk of that was just getting quiet enough to identify my emotions and for the Lord to be able to speak like, hey, your heart's not right on this. You're doing this because you're greedy. Hey, what's not right on this, you're doing this because you think the people think you're successful, like, okay, all right, Lord. You give me a new heart and either drop it or find a new heart attitude towards it. And just the humility to striving for the humility to let him identify our heart attitudes because it's hard to understand our own hearts.
DW: Absolutely, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. So, last question we have is, is there anything that we or our listeners can do to help you accomplish your vision or move the ball forward?
WL: I mean, most powerfully, pray for us. We are engaged in it truly as a spiritual, I mean, we talk about it being a spiritual battle when you talk about things like human trafficking. I mean, it's demonic to just control people and use them and the despicable things that happen, but praying for us. And then if you know people are interested in investing at the intersection of impact and returns, we're always happy to talk to them as well.
DW: Absolutely. Thank you, Wes, for coming on. It's been a pleasure interviewing you. And it was a really great episode. Thank you, Kingdom Investors for listening to the show and sharing with your friends. Let's take what we've learned and invest in God's kingdom. See you next time for another episode of the Kingdom Investor.
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ANNNOUNCER: What if you could take your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives in your community and around the world, creating a godly legacy for generations to come?
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