Episode 29: Little Phil — Transforming Philanthropy Through Crypto & Blockchain Technology
In this episode, I sat down with Little Phil co-founders Joshua Murchie & Mathew Sayed to talk about Cryptocurrency, Blockchain technology, philanthropy, start-ups, and where they got the name of their revolutionary giving platform, in this, the 29th episode of Justice Matters.
Little Phil is a platform and charity aggregator which leverages social sharing and applies blockchain technology to enable transparency, efficiency, and accountability not otherwise possible.
People will be able to handily find a cause which they care about and give small amounts of money, which they can track and watch reach their intended destination so they experience the real joy of giving — which they call a Little Phil good moment.
Typically the value proposition around giving is weak as people are guilted into giving and can’t see where their money is going, so Little Phil is poised to radically transform the giving experience and allow charities to focus on what they’re great at.
You Belong Australia has experienced first-hand the innovative methods and generous support that Little Phil has to offer charities that team up with their donor platform.
To learn more about how Little Phil works visit their website littlephil.org. You can also follow Little Phil on Instagram & Facebook, and you can always reach out to Joshua & Mathew through their LinkedIn profiles.
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Full Transcript
Mathew Sayed
The power of blockchain is you can create a large amount of transparency that's always going to be there. And it can never be changed. It's it's computationally infeasible. So when we were sort of looking at the problem within the philanthropy spaces, there's trust issues. And we were sort of like we knew that blockchain was his big thing. And I studied blockchain at university and Josh and I were sort of like bouncing off these ideas on what we could do. And we figured that if we could do large relief funds and have an engine that was tied to a current blockchain like the Bitcoin, or the Ethereum chains, then we can start showing impact and traceability on how funds are being used.
Tim Buxton
G'day listeners, just a quick disclaimer at the top of this episode. In this interview, I talk about cryptocurrency with my guests, and other forms of financial investment. And as you probably know, I am not an expert in those fields. And none of what is discussed is meant to be seen in any way as a form of guidance or investment advice. So please make sure you do your own due diligence before you get involved in any kind of investment strategies. And with that being said, I cannot wait for you to listen to this episode. Here is my introduction to my interview with the Little Phil guys on today's episode.
Tim Buxton
Hi there, guys. Well, what a cracking interview I just had with the founders of little Phil, in today's episode, I sit down with Josh and Matt, who are the co founders of this incredibly new innovative giving platform that uses blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, all of that stuff. So if you want to learn more about that, and the ways that they are using it, to transforming the philanthropy industry, to engage people in giving again, then you are going to want to listen to this episode, I had such a fun time talking about that with them learning a stack. Guys, it seems incredible to see that there. Young people out there taking a risk launching out on a journey that they're passionate about, you get to know a bit about their stories and why they are so passionate, passionate about making a difference in the world. And yeah, excited to share this episode with a you are gonna love it. Thanks, guys.
Tim Buxton
Congratulations, guys, on what the last month or so you guys have just been kicking goals launching $50,000 giveaway campaign on your amazing platform and signing some contracts and partnerships. Well done.
Joshua Murchie
Thank you. Yeah. It's been a busy, busy month or two.
Tim Buxton
Thanks for coming to the studio to and sitting down with us. We've been wanting to do that Josh, and I've been bouncing back and forth for a while. And this is like your third podcast this week.
Joshua Murchie
It's a hot topic at the moment, I guess.
Tim Buxton
Yeah. Well, let's talk about some of the reasons why you've been on podcast and some of those announcements. I've do have I did bring along some cheap champagne. So afterwards, we'll crack this open and, and celebrate the amazing achievements, but a lot of people going to be having a lot of questions about what Little Phil is, you know, project that you guys have birthed -- co-founders. Is there another co-founder in in the mix that couldn't quite make it?
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, yeah. We have a couple of others actually. So they're working hard. Today, unlike us, I guess hardly working.
Joshua Murchie
Yeah. So so we're quite busy, as you'd know, a continual development. So yeah, unfortunately, they couldn't make it. But at least Matt could get down here
Mathew Sayed
we have Chippy, which , our software engineer at lead software engineer and we have Craig which denotes himself as Fizz creative designer as well.
Joshua Murchie
Did you meet Fizz?
Tim Buxton
I've just met you two guys say you've been..
Mathew Sayed
The face of Phil. We often get asked who's Phil? Yes. Generally the first question which one which one are you to is Phil we're still yet to hire a few. We should hire one.
Tim Buxton
Yeah. That'd be great list. Oh, I just from the get go. Who can give the elevator pitch for what you guys aren't and and what you do, who's who's going to jump in for that?
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, I'll give you a quick rundown. So basically a little fell short for little finance. First micro philanthropy platform, trying to connect people, businesses, brands, more directly to charities, causes and beneficiaries. So we've been working on this work, coming up to three, four years now. And it really came out of a few reasons. But, you know, we we truly believe that the charitable giving industries broken. No one's really innovated much in last few years, 510 plus at least. Whereas, we can see that the next generation, or should I say, our generation, yeah, are probably the most socially conscious to have ever walked the earth. What they don't usually like is being hassled in supermarkets by people riding around like charities. Being guilt tripped all the time, and a constant ask. So something that we found, and we started to move more into, from, from the initial stages of just trying to increase trust and transparency was that people don't like that experience. You know, if I give, and then you come back to me in a day, or in a week, or 10 days or something, really Oh, great, you know. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for giving. And can you give again, Hey, can you give again, Hey, can you give again, the experience kind of is not. It's not great. There's no feedback loop? Yeah. Like you're putting your money into a black hole, praying for the best they've made you feel guilty or something. And now you're going to put money in. We believe that the process of giving and not experience should be more transparent, more engaging, so that you can give to something or someone you care about, know where the money's going and actually have have that feedback loop of videos, images, messages,
Tim Buxton
You're on a journey basically with that, cause that organization Exactly.
Mathew Sayed
And we've, when we first started we this how many pivots have we had? No, we keep waiting evolution? Yeah, we're evolutions where we think we've, we've honed in on on the product and what we think the donors want, and then we will start working more with some clients. And then the clients like, Oh, hey, have you thought about this? And we're like, really should have thought about that. And we start doing these evolutions, I guess, you know, even huge pivots. But and now it's getting to this point, where we have some pretty interesting corporations that are wanting to do some partnerships with us. We're getting a lot of feedback from donors that are excited about what we're doing. And young people in the space, I can't begin to tell you how many notifications I get on LinkedIn these days. It's like becoming spam. Almost. Wow. Yeah, it is cool. We are getting recognized. We're winning awards and, and making some good changes.
Tim Buxton
It's phenomenal. And what I love about it, and we move along, sign on with you guys, just recently, and that's been a great journey for us. And we've already benefited from that, from that partnership with you guys. But what I love is, is it's recognizing that that giving philanthropy it might the system might be broken. But the concept and the idea of it is still such an important part of being human isn't it to want to give when you see a need to want to have that opportunity. So I love the fact that it's you know, there's a lot of I've interviewed a lot of people that are doing social enterprises and mixing business with, you know, sustainability, which is really an another, I think, significant important shift. But let's not neglect the fact that there's a lot of people that still just do really want to give their resources and as well as being a conscious consumer. So I love that you've resurrected, giving new life and meaning to philanthropy.
Mathew Sayed
I think you're really nailed that as well. I'm reading a very interesting book called The happiest man in the world or on the planet, and it's by an author, Edie Jakku is a German Jew, and he went through the Holocaust. So he's 102 or so goodness, wow. And he talks about the early stages of his life before the rise of the Nazis. And he was talking about how his father that there were like a medium class, sort of family. And he was saying how his dad would always make on special occasions, these extra bits of bread is this really nice bread? And and he'd asked him, Why are you making these extra ones? And you say, Well, I want to give it to the people that don't have anything. And he said, life isn't worth worth living unless you're giving if you if you're lucky enough to be able to give and provide for people then then that's truly where it is. And he talks about the dark history of his past and how those words sort of cemented to provide or to tell himself that he's even the happiest person after going through all that darkness.
Tim Buxton
Wow,
Mathew Sayed
Yeah, it's a it's an awesome book, I'd highly recommend it. Again, the happiest man in the world. I think just double checking it once Looking,
Tim Buxton
Happiest man in the world? I mean that I think what you've said
Mathew Sayed
"Happiest Man on Earth" by Eddie Jakku. Here we go. It's amazing. It's truly amazing story.
Tim Buxton
Good, good recommendations out of that. You alluded to just before you've been kicking some goals, getting some great partnerships, the uniqueness that we haven't touched on yet Is this the way that you're bringing philanthropy into the future is tapping into the most current of technologies out there that is hugely, you know, in the news all the time for controversial but I think now becoming more accepted means of financial transactions is Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general and behind that blockchain so could you unpack like how one for those people who, you know, are curious as to what is blockchain technology and how it is undergirds this whole cryptocurrency farming,
Mathew Sayed
I guess I can sort of cover that from a simple point of view, like a blockchain ledger is essentially like an Excel spreadsheet. And once a data entry goes into the row, it can never be changed, but it can be viewed by anyone in the world. So the power of blockchain is you can create a large amount of transparency that's always going to be there. And it can never be changed. It's it's computationally infeasible. So when we were sort of looking at the problem within the philanthropy space is there's trust issues, and we were sort of like we knew that blockchain was his big thing. And I studied blockchain at university and Josh and I were sort of like bouncing off these ideas on what we could do. And we figured that if we could do large relief funds and have an engine that was tied to a current blockchain like the Bitcoin or aetherium chains, then we can start showing impact and traceability on how funds are being used. And then it started evolving into this huge base, we released our own cryptocurrency, like a little fuel coin that we could use, and like there's this huge hype and pumping these radicals. People thought we were crazy.
Tim Buxton
I didn't know that you ever, I just like literally started buying a few little coins. I had dabble in not much at all. But if I'd known there was a Little Phil coin I would have I would have been on it.
Mathew Sayed
Well, we when we were getting to the height of it, we were having these really cool ideas like around using blockchain. I don't know. Like there's a huge phase at the moment called NFTs tokens, where you have this concept to use NFT's to create digital passports for asylum seekers or people without government ID wanting to go into our countries. And, and so like we were talking about this years ago, back in 27 years ago, and like we built concepts of it, I haven't built like a like a Pokemon copy of it just to see what it would look like from an eidetic identity side of things. And it was like, it's super easy to use it was on chain, you could see it. And you can see how you could use a digital passport these days. Like when you travel, your passport is your, your everything right like don't leave your bags, get a photocopy it if you go to a dodgy place, and then just take out the photocopy. If you lose it, you're really stuck, but you can't lose it. If it's on chain, it can be checked everywhere. So we had like these crazy cool ideas. And we're in this fast paced moving environment, and they're trashed, or whatever. And then we went to what heaps of countries
Joshua Murchie
we presented in San Fran, Korea, Singapore,
Tim Buxton
you guys are traveling and presenting this concept... wow!
Mathew Sayed
We traveled on pretty much for a whole year, we were we were just constantly living out of a suitcase. And it was cool. We got invited to some really cool things. We went to a 16th century family bank. We got invited to so many different places and cool things. So we were sort of like really on the cutting edge. And I remember when I first started talking about crypto as well, before a little field was sort of ventured people like, what are you doing? What are you talking about? I was like, I seriously,
Tim Buxton
I haven't remember. So it's just those just a sense of illegitimacy. At least I've always heard this idea of you know, it's just going to be used for nefarious means and that's the that's the end of it, the dark side of, of crypto and, and of the great resistance within establishment because well, we all know that. They don't tend to benefit maybe as much right?
Joshua Murchie
I mean, funny to watch now that they're all coming in,
Mathew Sayed
Even in my last year of uni. So I'd finished all my curriculum pretty quickly. And I graduated with a major in network security. So we did a lot of cryptography. I understand cryptography quite well, which is the underlying component of a blockchain. And I said to Josh, I was like, Josh, would you like to buy some Bitcoin with me? It's $300. And he's like, I think it's over overbought. I think it's gonna crash. So we didn't do anything about it at that time. And bitcoins is absolute juggernaut worth more than country's GDP. So it's funny how things progress
Tim Buxton
We've all got. We've all got day stories I bought, I bought some Dogecoin when it was seven cents, but I only got like $30. Like, I'm like, dang it. I wish I had, like, a couple days ago with 200 bucks. But anyway, yeah, it is all in hindsight. So tell me about now some of the maybe Josh, you could talk to some of the partnerships now that you've you've forged legends of crypto have just signed on with you. And you might even have some others in the works, you could share? Like, how does that relate that whole world of crypto then relate to? You've kind of touched on a bit map but relate to now some of the partnerships in the ways you're moving forward?
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, yeah, good. Question. So um, basically all of that, us working in that industry and, you know, presenting an events and all this kind of stuff. That length of time obviously led us to have pretty good networks in that industry. So we had to turn down all our communications because if you're associated with crypto over the last couple of years has been a door closer, not a door opener. So, externally, we've had to really tone that down. Whereas was we've always had that core, I guess, and that it's always been there. The legends of crypto project that we're partnered with, it's basically a trading card game on on blockchain and it uses what they call NFT's. So non fungible tokens, which basically you know, the difference between a non fungible token and a fungible token, say Bitcoins, a fungible token, I can give you on Mat one part of one, you know, whatever, but it's all just, you know, Bitcoin
Tim Buxton
What does fungible? So is that what fungible means?
Joshua Murchie
Sorry, um, basically non fungible means it's unique. Sounds like x one. So like you having a, an iPhone, that serialized, and you're the only one with that serialized iPhone
Mathew Sayed
We both can have an iPhone, but your serial number will be different to my serial number.
Tim Buxton
Yeah. So carbon copy that's in general. Yeah.
Joshua Murchie
Yeah. So it's provably real provably scarce. So you can see how many copies were made? Yeah, you can see the original creator, or they call it mint, when you intern, and so on. So yeah, a good friend of ours was working on this project, legends of crypto trading card game using NF T's. And we've always wanted to work together, they got some really good backing. So I've been advising and partner with the project, and they got people like the CEO of bitcoin.com is invested in them. Wow. Yeah, some really good, good players in there. And Mick McHale is the CEO, he, you know, the conversation was, you know, anything that we advise on or work with a partner with has to be generating impact for the charities and causes a platform where we just won't put out our time and effort and skills into it. Yeah. And he fully agreed, and he loved the concept that, you know, he or his project could be making an impact. So we came to an agreement, where 10% of all the NFT trading card sales will come back to charities and causes on little Phil,
Tim Buxton
Can you believe it? That's awesome. So for guys, like, you know, our charity, you belong, that's exciting news, you know, we get to then see a real, you know, so for charities that are out there looking for ways to, you know, expand and venture into new ways of fundraising principles and fundraising strategies, partnering with you guys, the benefit, then can can really be seen an impact for them without me actually having to be an expert and me actually being able to have to kind of understand or, or work with it,
Mathew Sayed
And it's something that hasn't been done. So we're like, on the bleeding edge. the frontiers of this change in, in how corporate giving essentially has had this metamorphosis in in a way of giving
Tim Buxton
Touch on that, because traditionally corporates giving is like hey, we're a massive big company, and we're going to decide as a board or at some CEO leadership that we're going to get behind and sponsor this, um, right now, running a bike to belong campaign, a peer to peer fundraising fundraising campaign to raise awareness, for our charity, you belong empowering refugees, and, and I've tried to reach out to other bike companies to say, Hey, would you sponsor us would you get on board with us? And they just go, you know what, you know, I won't name the companies. We have to go to our board and our head office to determine whether we can donate a bike to help you or we can do this as Like that level of control at the top, where is your what you're saying? Like explain how that actually can be revolutionized through through your, your platform, or it doesn't have to be a high level decision.
Mathew Sayed
Yeah, exactly. So modern or traditional corporate giving pieces, you'll get one big entity that will give a large sum of money to one thing, and that's their impact. But I've done a fair bit of research now into what the modern or new generational workforce is after, and they don't want to see, or they want to see impact, but not on just one thing that one board of directors decide on, they want to be able to choose and have a flair on that. And this is where another sort of revolutionary part of Little Phil is coming into it, where corporations can come in and give pools of money that credits out to their employees that allow them to give to hundreds of different organizations on our platform. And this is a similar thing to what the the royalties are such that the 10% that could come back in instead of just going to to one item that can be broken up and used on how people want to use it. So they can choose where it wants to go, they can see their impact. And these pillars of organizations can get deeper and expand without actually just following into one pot. Like I think Westpac give what $20 million also.
Joshua Murchie
So we use that as a use case. It's like okay, if you you're working for Westpac and Westpac if 10 $20 million were raised to lifelight. Yep. Okay, but what if I don't care about Lifeline? Yeah. So an employee, how can we empower them?
Tim Buxton
Yeah, sounds values aligned to giving, which represents the values and brings everyone into that experience, again, brings everyone into the journey of my givings having an impact in a cause that actually on value, I value that alliances, makers. I've understood this with some of my philanthropy, philanthropy studies is that he people think that you don't you when you give, or donate, you don't get anything, or you're not getting a service. But what you're arguing is you are getting in and getting something you're getting a good moment. Yeah, you're getting a feeling. And, and that sense of meaning of purpose, the happiest man on earth, that sense of value is actually a tangible service, you get an exchange when you give, and it's not to say you give with those ulterior motives, but you you do you we all do give about what we care about,
Mathew Sayed
Diloitte's done a huge study where it's even showing that the millennials and the Gen Z, the modern, or the New Age workforce is what 53% Now also, in what they're looking for now is not a salary that's higher than other corporations, or not an organization or a corporation that's well renowned. They're looking for people that are making huge impact now, and Deloitte have shown that these people these these new workforce are going to go where they want to see impact. So huge organizations and corporations, if they're not changing with these modern times, they're gonna lose out on recruiting the best house people. Yeah, and the three, three best organized companies in the world that are having radical changes. And if you go have a look for that, like what job availability is it have, you won't really find them. It's Disney, Lego, and Rolex. Yeah, you wouldn't really think like Lego plastic, they now don't use plastic they use plant based. They did a huge transition, Disney have given over 400 million US dollars into an protecting conservation and Rolex actually have a Rolex like Disney, and Rolex have rolex.org which actually work with the pillars of environment. So they see the mountains, and they work with National Geographics to generate these amazing documentaries on how to conserve protect and, and bring the world back into balance. So things like that are really, really starting to make a big impact in where people want to put their time.
Tim Buxton
Man,that that that's that So, so powerful, so true. What about you guys personally? How? Like, how did you kind of like, get into it? Now you both kind of got business tech kind of background in studying. But like, it's more than just like what makes you want to use your interests and your passions? To You know, in the world of Philanthropy In the world of this. I will recognize you as a winner of I think volunteering Volunteer of the Year. Yeah, in Australia. I mean, that's part of part of your DNA. But where did that come from? Where does it spring from? Can Can you? I'll start with you, Josh. And then maybe Matt Yeah,
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, sure. I think I'm really early on. So coming from Lotus medium, I guess income family and then always seeing people try and take advantage of, you know, the under educated or, you know, not so wealthy people always there was something within me that was like, Well, you know, if I can do something to help, I will, yeah. And then really moving down, like, can see that we have the right skills, anyone could go off and set up a loan company, you know, people are gonna want to borrow money, it's there forever. Yeah, I don't see that being a great use of my skills. So you know, there's a bunch of businesses that we could have gone into in like FinTech and all this kind of stuff, where it's just a money grab, but that's doesn't really fulfill me. Whereas, you know, the, the idea that we could go out, help the people that are trying to do good by a cause. So I admire people like yourself, people that are hands on on the ground, you know, I appreciate how much time and effort and work goes into you trying to to fix or support your cause. So much so that I'm like, Okay, cool. How can we make such a big impact? You know, how can we empower all the teams around the world to be focusing on their cause rather than Going shit, I need to go and figure out how to get money to be able to do this. And because that's not fun, it's not,
Tim Buxton
it shouldn't be music to my ear, your music to people's ear, you know that they their best spending their time and energy focusing on fixing the problem, then trying to find a way to put food on the table so that they can help the people that they know are in desperate need. So yeah, makes? Yeah.
Joshua Murchie
Yeah. 100%. So I mean, that's kind of where I think it's led into, and then seeing a few pivotal moments that we could see. So when I was back at university, and my Masters you know, most of the, my peers there, compared to when I went from my undergrad was much more socially conscious. So, you know, I went on a volunteer trip over to South America with them, and just seeing to the extent in which they were going out of their way to be more conscious of their impact. So I was pretty bad. I was using bottled water in South America, they brought a little filtration system, bottled water, things with them, and I'm singing out Well, that's something that I wouldn't have gone out of my way thinking I'd be like, Alright, go on. I can't drink the water here. I'll have to make sure I only drink bottled water with all travelers usually do. But you know, they're going out doing that they're using keyed cups, they're, you know, supporting brands that are not mainstream brands that, you know, have an impact or, you know, their environmental policies. Right. So that was a big eye opener. And then seeing news, like expose a on some of these third party marketing companies just take advantage of people's generosity and, you know, really can tarnish the charities brand reputation, right? Yeah. Like, I don't want someone coming in lying to me telling all the money's going to a charity. Yeah, when most of its sitting in your pocket,
Tim Buxton
And that that not only can prevent them from from giving to that charity again, but can also prevent them from giving to charity in general. Right. So Wow.
Joshua Murchie
And I guess it was set up for the right reason at the start, you know, charities need to get money in and they use that it's just too expensive and inefficient way to do it. Yeah. So how can we do that? Oh,
Tim Buxton
Yeah. 100%. Matt, how about you where do you fit in to all of this.
Mathew Sayed
So I came from a very low income family. So my parents divorced when I was about three. So my mom did a exceptional job of raising five kids, by myself. So I sort of knew what it's like to struggle and like I, when I was going to primary schools, I had second hand clothes, things like that. So and we even had help from Smith Family at one stage. So I very much on
Tim Buxton
The Smith family for international audiences and Australian charity that focus on Yeah, poor. Yeah, yeah.
Mathew Sayed
So just to make sure that the kids can go to school with food in their bellies, things like that. They have clothes, I have school, school stuff,
Tim Buxton
Just wanted to clarify that. But yeah.
Mathew Sayed
So when I finished school, I didn't really have a huge desire to do an educational piece, I have a few chefs in the family. And that's sort of what I was pretty keen to do. love cooking. And anybody else talked out of that one. So I ended up going to university to actually study for conservation, environmental science in marine biology. And because, like, I care about the oceans, I hate seeing plastic on beaches, and like you go to Asia, and it's just, it's so bad. And the water is so bad. You look at India and places like that. Yeah. And so as I thought I'd really enjoy doing something in that in that area. me having a little bit of foresight, looked into job prospects and availability and what I could possibly do and is quite low. I had a pretty high aptitude for mathematics. And my math professor told me to go look at doing something with cryptography. So I switched from environmental science into a Bachelor of it and and majored in network security and, and databases. And I didn't really think much more in the social impact and social enterprise world, I went to delight sat in my cubicle and did some work. And it was it was pretty painful. Actually. It was one of those things where you had I sort of had this great idea of working for a corporate and like these, these core events that you go to and and the flights and stuff like that. And it wasn't until that Deloitte had this thing called an impact day and you got to give away some of your time to go help an organization of your choice. Yes. So I did that. And I went and helped an organization that was very much like the Smith family, but just getting started up. So we built up their cloud infrastructure, we set up their designs and things like that to get them started. So through that, I went to a few various other careers and I was sort of taken on a path, I was like, poached from Deloitte by a couple of directors and went into a cloud privacy company. And Josh was talking to me about this, this idea that he had, and I've always known Josh to be a bit of a go getter. So I love his opportunistic nature that he has. And yeah, I love the idea even as rough as it was. I felt that if we could do something that could change how things how things are run, and, like cut out those. I used to hate getting approached by the tin can jakers Oh, yeah. I think what the pivotal point for me was as well, when I was like, sorry, mate only got card and he's like, got Netflix machine. Yeah, so and I knew these guys were getting paid. Because do I do a large amount of study on this and as a, as a data analyst, you do you punch all those numbers in Josh asked me when I was actually still as a data analyst to punch the numbers for him and had a look at some things and, and the numbers were pretty wild, like, how much of $1 was being used, and the percentages could go all the way up to 90%. So 10 cents out of $1 is pretty bad. And if we could change that and get and flip that entirely, then that's a world that I'd like to live in.
Tim Buxton
Phenomenal. And you guys have teamed up? It's three and a half years or so. Right? almost four years, right for you Just last week, coming up to you for the anniversary. And it's how does it feel now? Like, is it has it been just like the more recent days you're feeling like you're starting to like, change your default? Oh, what's it? What's it like at the moment?
Mathew Sayed
I guess from my perspective, it's been wild, to me to be honest, like, yeah, there's times where you got these huge pushes, like I remember we're doing production, relational seating in a park in San Francisco, in some little Italian soda sector of San Fran and we're doing a production release. So it's been like this huge portion and the sort of like, where do we go now? Like, what's your vision now and in the visions would change and and as we're evolving? So I don't know if you've ever seen that. It's sort of reminds me of like, when you look out over the horizon, and you see like your your mountains, and you got lucky outs and downs, you peaks, it's eventually going up and down. And that's sort of what it meant Bitcoin. Yeah, pretty much. So. To me, that's what it felt like. But in the law over the last year, we've had a huge, like a really aggressive push, I, I migrated from Josh, step off tech for a bit. Once the cloud was set up, and we had another software guy, come on, so he asked me for a bit of help in, in talking to some people because I have a, I have a pretty good strong sales background and and stop bringing people on board and really give a good, a good whack at it. So in doing that, we've we've really made some headway. And it's been pretty cool to see. So it's sort of exponentially shot up over the last year and a half.
Tim Buxton
So what about you? What have been some what are some of the challenges in doing this? Because like, you get a great idea. And you are passionate believe it and I'm probably it's that passion and drive and that belief that keeps you through the ups not like Usually, it's never like that. It's always like, yeah, like rollercoaster. Yeah. But, you know, if you persevere and if you if you make it through those days, you wake up and you got that knot in your stomach, and you just don't even know if you're even gonna make it if you're hanging there enough. So what what have for you have been some of the challenges? What, what gives you hope, as well,
Joshua Murchie
I think we've always kept our Northstar. And so like we have that end goal, how we get there is not, you know, that's gonna change. Yeah, I could change week to week really how we get there. But, you know, as long as we stay focused on that North, so
Tim Buxton
What is that North Star? Can you summarize it?
Joshua Murchie
So from a north star point of view, it's really trying to the overall goal is to fix the charitable giving industry,
Tim Buxton
Fix philanthropy, I like that
Joshua Murchie
pretty much and it's okay, hashtag fix philanthropy. Yeah. We want to bring in all those different streams of impact and impact tracking and, you know, funding alternative fundraising solution so that you don't have to run out there being like donate Yeah, all of a sudden, it's just, it's all just coming in, you know, you can breathe easy knowing that brilliant, it's kind of taken care of. So that's really our North Star. We've had a heap of ups and downs. Yeah. So working in the crypto space, you know, we had multimillion dollar commitments that vanished, overnight disappeared. Wow. So you know, we had a team of like, 15 or so people. And, you know, these guys who are super wealthy in China had committed to us, put us on their website, introduce to all of their friends, their networks, you know, we've invested blah, blah, blah, no worry, Francisco for them. And then just when the crypto market tanked,
Tim Buxton
Left you high and dry.
Joshua Murchie
Oh, 100%. Yeah. So that was, you know, that was naive on our behalf. just trusting. I guess. And, you know, that's one thing we learned, it's not a deal until money's in the bank. Another thing
Tim Buxton
I heard it once said, If you partner right, the rest is details. And it's that idea of, you know, having that trust in partnership and make getting that right. But anyway,
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, so that was pretty disappointing. And that was difficult to recover from. But we did, we recovered. And we got through, which was good. And then more recently, the whole COVID thing. Yeah, you know, we had a large deal with a large ESX company, which would have brought a bunch more impact in Yeah, ready to go. I'm in Sydney One Two weeks before locked in. And doing the technical deep dive, figuring out how we can integrate and all this kind of subtle lockdown happens. Everything's just pushed back. So you know, those conversations are still happening. But that's a deal. Let's move back 1314 months, compared to when it should have been, should have been closed? Yeah. So I think things like that. always happen. always seem to happen.
Tim Buxton
Yeah. But the future's looking bright now. Yeah. Very bright. What, as we kind of wrap things up, I know, we're kind of running out of time here. What? What would you want to, you know, tell people about, you know, where you guys are heading? What's on the what's on the horizon? how, you know, how can, how can people jump on board and be part of what you're doing?
Joshua Murchie
Yeah. Great question. So right now, we're really focused on partnerships. So legends of crypto, we have another partnership project in the NF t space as well. So a way that celebrities, artists, creators can embed a piece of perpetual impact into an NF t. So another cool feature with NF T's is that it's changing the royalties and licensing game. So, you know, Imagine being able to come to a famous artist or celebrity and say, You know what, if you create this NFT, you can set a percentage that you want to go back to a charity cause that you care about forever. So every single time it gets traded, changes hands, a percentage automatically comes back. So that that's another partnership deal that we've done. And that project, we announced very soon,
Tim Buxton
Very cool.
Joshua Murchie
But it's kind of leaving a legacy, you know, after that person passes away, usually the piece of art price appreciates significantly. And when it does transfer, it's continuous leave a legacy kind of thing. We're featured collision conference. So North America's largest tech conference at the moment. Wow. Which is cool. What else have we got on
Mathew Sayed
We've got, we're also bringing on traditional corporate partnerships, as well were organizations or corporate corporations that want to come in and actually start showing a more modern approach to impact then they can start partnering with us to allow for a better approach to employee giving. So we're reaching out with local state and national companies to come on board, do some partnerships, give it a trial, see how it goes. And you'll be surprised with the talent that you start bringing in, they'll start looking for you based on your impact as well. So that's a big piece that I'm working on.
Tim Buxton
Can I just say, you know, and I don't know if you would just put extra kind to me when we came on board with you guys. But I was just so impressed by the level of concern you even had for just partnering and making sure that we as a small little charity, trying to try to make a big impact and change the world for refugees and do disadvantage, the way that you spent time with us and an offering over and above what, you know, a lot of people would spend on on trying to hire, you know, you know, all the other companies that are out there that tend to exploit people. So if anybody is interested in learning more about it, I couldn't recommend you enough, you're not paying any money on this podcast is a it's a it's an unashamed plug for you guys. But it's great, because it's benefits you talking about corporates, and dealing with the big plays there, but your heart is for the little, little guys. They're the guys that are out there that can't do it. And that's the beautiful thing you've used, you've tapped into the future of, of, of technology and finance and the world we're living in to bridge that, that gap. And I love that.
Mathew Sayed
Thank you. I actually said to Josh, when we were when we were trying to figure out which where it was because we were sort of targeting everyone. I said, Josh, I think the guys that need our help, and most of the smaller medium guys. Because the big guys, they have their dev teams, they have their marketing teams that have large budgets. And when we figured that out, I created like my marketing calendar, and I left it open. So I was like, you can book me in any time here. So I was having meetings at like 10pm on a Sunday night, where small charities were like, Matt, how do I set up my email so we can start doing this. And it was funny, as hard as it was like doing having these wild meetings all over the place. That what we got back from that was people started recognizing that we're not just this faceless organization that that's trying to come in and take money off organizations, we're actually trying to get there, help them generate larger streams of income and actually get a name and an impact for themselves. Yeah. And thank you very much for your kind words, because that's really much our approach.
Tim Buxton
Yeah, you guys, you guys set us up with you know, you've shared your expertise and the people on your team that sit down with people on my team. And, and those 10 o'clock meetings are so important, because quite often many people are working during the day volunteering. I did an assignment recently. And I think it's something like 840 9% of charities on the acnc Australian charity network are completely run by volunteers. 50 50% of all of the grass root charities and small charities out there are run by volunteers. So and they're making a huge impact.
Joshua Murchie
Yeah, 100% I think it's also el allview. So we don't view a charity as a client, we view them as a partner. Yeah. So you know, your success is our success. So I think that's a different way that we look at it compared to just traditional software as a service and something.
Tim Buxton
Well, you guys are kicking goals. I cannot wait. I cannot wait. I'm cheering Bitcoin on. You guys. You know, but for all of for all of that, guys. Thanks for coming on, coming on in thanks for your passion, your heart. Thanks for leading the way. And if anybody wants to follow you find you. Where do they do that?
Mathew Sayed
You can littlephil.org and they can also go to Little Phil on Instagram.
Joshua Murchie
Instagram, LinkedIn, nice. Yeah,
Tim Buxton
I found you guys on LinkedIn, you guys were in in the local newspaper. And I kind of get in touch with these guys.
Mathew Sayed
We generally rank pretty well on Google. So if you type in Little Phil, you'll generally find us at the top. So you can reach out to us on LinkedIn, if you want to have a chat to us. Or you can even have a we have a chat window on our website. So that will link up to me and I'll respond generally within within the hour as well.
Tim Buxton
Yeah. Ah so good. Guys, thanks for sitting down. Thanks for this chat. Thanks for Yeah, for doing what you do.
Joshua Murchie
Thanks so much for having us. And thanks for jumping on board.
