Cissy Ma On Investing In Female Founded Regenerative Enterprises Led By Impact

Cissy is the Founder & MD of Grow and Sell Your Biz, a one-stop shop helping clients raise capital and buy and sell businesses, connecting the right investors and partners with the right businesses.

She leads diverse transactions ($2m-$500m), including EdTech, RegTech, FinTech, AgTech, HealthTech, AI, ClimateTech, PropTech, education and manufacturing companies etc. During her 20+ year senior executive career for large corporates, she led $17B of M&A deals across 20+ industries.

She is a mentor with Inspiring Rare Birds, River City Labs, Brisbane Business Hub, Mentoring for Growth, Business in Heels (160k members), CPA Australia (170k members), Mentor Walks, UQ BEL, Export Council of Australia, APAC Women’s Mentoring Circle.

Cissy speaks regularly on international stages, in places such as USA, China, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. She is well sought after on topics such as diversity, mentoring, leadership, capital raising as well as buying and selling businesses.

Cissy discusses her global experience in investment, mergers & acquisitions and how she is supporting female entrepreneurs leading impact focused ventures.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

[Cissy Ma] - Thank you for the invite, Sarah. I looked at the people you have interviewed in the past, and I feel like I'm not quite there. But I got the invite, so I'm here! I've been in Australia 32 years now, and basically, I started in a corporate finance career about 27 years ago. I've done large-scale transactions in mergers and acquisitions and buy and sell businesses. I have done quite a few transactions, worth now approximately $17 billion. When I work for a large organisation, I sometimes feel like there are things I want to do to make a bigger impact, but there are various politics in the organisation or organisational guidelines that make it difficult. What triggered me to start my own business Grow and Sell Your Biz was the last role I had as an employee. I was the head of M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) for a large Chinese accounting firm that started a new business here in Australia. They had a threshold of $10 million for any business, so basically if a business has a revenue of $10 million and above, then they can help them. If their revenue was below $10 million, then they couldn’t. A lot of people came to me to asking, "can you help us? We're starting and growing our business, we've got a great product, but we are not generating $10 million of revenue yet.” I had to say no because of a criterion my employer had. I wanted to help these people because some of them are working on climate, health, and education technology. I think from my perspective of impact; how much impact ideas might have on the world. I started my own business back in 2018, and then here I am 5 years later. I'm increasingly more focused on what kind of client I take on, and I always make sure the client is values aligned and impact driven.

You work with impact led enterprises but also in the investment space. Could you share more about your investment work and what drives you?

The business I'm in is helping businesses to grow by getting them the right investors, partners and then path to exit down the road if they want to sell.

In selecting the businesses, I can help, I ask, "is this a business that will make a positive impact on the world?" What drives me is by doing that, I'm making a positive impact by helping my clients make a positive impact.

All of this is impact investment. For example, I'm helping education technology clients improve schools across Australia by helping students learn better. There are several UN SDGs this technology client covers. I also look at investments to say, "is that an area which will be detrimental to the welfare or negatively impact the world?" For example, I had quite a few online gambling businesses presented to me. It's a great business from an ROI perspective (Return on Investment), but that's not an area I want to be involved in. I always say no to that kind of investment. Personally, I always say no to anything connected with drugs, tobacco, and things like that; negative things I would not invest in. I define what projects I get involved in by what impact I want to have on the world.

As a female leader in that purpose led business space, can you share with us any challenges or opportunities you're seeing right now?

You've mentioned I've been one of the inaugural Activators of Coralus (formerly known as SheEO) in Australia since 2018. Venture capital investments in female tech or founded companies universally is under 3%, which is quite abysmal. The challenge for us is to change not only the actual value of investments and the number of females founded start-ups that get funded. It’s creating a whole overall framework to produce systems change. In Coralus, we're doing it from a ground up. We're trying to make a new framework. It is going from one country to the other and growing organically.

The challenge is the rest of the world; a lot of people are talking about giving female founders more funding. But, in practice, when you pitch a female founded venture, because we're more focused on impact driven type businesses, it gets less attention.

Because there are less female VCs, it just doesn't get the same level of attention and future focus as well. The opportunity is that we can only get better. Every day we can get better, from 3%, to 4%, to 5%. We want to be 50%. It's a long way to go, but we need to start doing something so it will get there. I can see there are more female focused funds out there from a government, private equity, and venture capital perspective. I'm still yet to be convinced that enough is being done. There’s a lot more opportunity for us to focus on that. I see everyone is talking about it, and that's a good thing! You can't be what you can't see! On top of that, as a female from an Asian background, there is a double whammy as well. I don't know if you have heard about the bamboo ceiling. For people with an Asian background, there is a bamboo ceiling.

It was I believe coined by an American lady back in 1995, so it's been around for a very long time. But still in the Western world, a lot of people don't know about it. For example, in Australia, about 12% of people have an Asian background. But when you look at top-level executives, less than 2-3% are Asian. In the judiciary, only 0.3 percent have an Asian background. It's getting better, this year we had quite a few Asian politicians voted in, and this is the first time we have had that many Asian politicians in parliament. I’ve been invited to speak on Asian Australian business leadership and women leadership in Canberra next month regarding this topic. This is interesting because it's not just the female side. It's also about the Asian background, we all think English is a second language and therefore our English is not good enough. In Asian culture, we always think we just need to put our head down and do our work to get noticed, but in the Western world, if you don't talk about what you do, people don't know about it, and so you won't get promoted. There's almost a parallel when you hear people say, “if there is a job vacancy, females will think they need to check 10 out of 10 boxes to apply for it while men will do 2 out of 10 and still apply for it." For an Asian lady, they must check 12 out of the 10 boxes to apply for it! I'm just exaggerating a bit, but that is the reality. As Asian leaders, we need to help Asian people in Australia break out their shell and break the bamboo ceiling. This is Episode 410 of Impact Boom; you can count how many Asians were on this podcast. I haven't checked, but I would say it would be much less than 12% of the population.

What are some inspiring projects or initiatives you've come across lately which you think are making an amazing difference?

All the projects I take on I think are making a huge impact. For example, there is this climate technology project I'm working on called Carbon Asset Solutions in Brisbane, Australia. We know that in carbon credits for example, there is a lot of greenwashing, and that carbon credits are not what they seem to be. Some carbon credits must be forfeited. This start-up I'm helping, they’ve worked on a MRV technology that is much better. It's the world's best. I know all start-ups say that they're the world's best, but Microsoft have written a story on them on Microsoft's website, and the CEO of Microsoft talked about them as one of the upcoming climate technologies in the annual tech forum late last year. They presented at AIM for Climate, which is basically the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s invitation only forum where Al Gore spoke about them as well. They had the Ministers of Agriculture from 40 countries. They were talking about climate change and what people are doing about climate change, and these guys basically presented there. They had their own keynote and demonstration, and as a result, they got invited to COP28 to present later this year.

If they grow as quickly as they're anticipating, they will take out something like 40 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere in the next few years. That's their climate impact. It's not going to be enough, but what they're doing is measuring carbon in the soil, and then paying armers up front so they can do regeneration through regen farming.

Then farmers have the money to work on regeneration, and the actual benefit will result in a couple of years’ time. They're looking at all the issues people are having with carbon credits measurement and dealing with it one on one. They’re using technology that deals with and solves it so much better than traditional technology. We are also working on a mental health app that is helping veterans with mental health issues or PTSD. There are a huge number of veterans who have undiagnosed or not properly treated PTSD. When they did the launch last year, they helped save a veteran from suicide because the veteran was feeling down. They have a red button (on their app), which then sent notices to three of his close friends and other veterans as well. They went to his home, found him, and saved him. Now he's on social media playing the guitar and feeling better now. Those are the types of things solving problems. There are others out there helping veterans, but this project looked at all the things that need to be done by working with veterans to find a solution.

To finish off, what books or resources that you would recommend to our listeners?

I went and looked at the books I'm reading and they’re very business related; one is on exit strategy and the other is a M&A business private equity playbook. Another book I’m reading is Blue Ocean Strategy, but I haven't finished it because it's very detailed. The very first book I would recommend, which I read many years ago is the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I always remember one of the first things is start with the end in mind. That is true still nowadays with anything. I'm presenting to the Export Council of Australia on pitch training, and at the beginning of my presentation I said start with the end in mind. Think about who you're presenting to and the outcome you want to get to at the end? When the audience receives your pitch, what do you want them to learn? What will the outcome be? That’s a very good lesson in that book.