My First Million

#25 - Mission Driven: Bringing Solar Power to 1M People in Africa

Share this episode
Anyone with this link can open it.
Share Link
Start at 0:00

This episode isn’t summarized yet

Create a free account and summarize it. In a few minutes you’ll have the key takeaways and a section-by-section summary.

Show notes

He's not on a mission to make money, quite the opposite. Xavier Helgesen is a mission driven founder, who uses money to do more good in the world. His first company, Better World Books sells 10 million used books a year that's collected by leftover books at libraries - in and shares revenues with literacy partners (Over $25M given to non-profits). This business lead him to Africa, where he noticed 20,000 people in a village had no electricity - so he decided to change that. He created Zola Electric, the largest solar power company in Africa, providing 1 million people with electricity per day. He talks to us about how he turned his college side hustle into a $70M biz, moving next to his customers in Tanzania, selling electricity to people who never used electricity and how ‘Mutual Improvement Societies’ could help you 10x your life. 
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Couldn't load the audio. A blocker may be stopping the show's tracking links. Open the file