From Solar Pumps to Everything: Building a Market from Scratch

Summary

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Podcast Summary: What's Your Problem?

Episode: From Solar Pumps to Everything: Building a Market from Scratch
Host: Jacob Goldstein
Guest: Samir Ibrahim, CEO & Co-founder, SunCulture
Date: January 22, 2026

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Overview

This episode delves into the story of SunCulture, a company founded by Samir Ibrahim with the mission of improving the lives of smallholder farmers in Africa through affordable solar irrigation technology. Host Jacob Goldstein explores how SunCulture transitioned from simply selling solar water pumps to building a multi-faceted business addressing deeper issues of access, affordability, and prosperity for rural farmers. The conversation touches on climate change, the challenges of building a market from scratch, financial innovation, and the untapped consumer potential of the developing world’s farmers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing the Problem (01:39–03:45)

• Two Perspectives:
  • The challenge: Climate change makes weather unpredictable, hurting farmers who depend on rain for crops.
  • The opportunity: Hundreds of millions of poor farmers may be the world's largest untapped consumer market.
• Jacob Goldstein: “...a company that helps those farmers earn more money and move into the formal economy could be huge.” (02:06)

2. SunCulture’s Origins & Mission (03:13–06:45)

• Samir’s Background: Not a farmer by upbringing (consultant at PwC), but driven by personal ties to Kenya and a desire to solve a large-scale problem.
• Rationale for Focus on Water: Reliable water access is the most significant variable affecting farm output.
  • Samir Ibrahim: “Having reliable water can increase your yields by up to five times. It’s pretty crazy.” (06:11)

3. The Challenge of Affordability and Access

• Status Quo: 96% of African farmers rely solely on rain; irrigation is prohibitively expensive.
• Barriers: Diesel pumps are costly, both upfront and in fuel ($40–$80/month for farmers earning ~$1,500/year).
  • Manual irrigation using buckets is highly inefficient.

4. The “Naive Confidence” of Founders (08:18–09:03)

• Samir Ibrahim: Starting out at age 23 was an advantage (“dumb kid confidence”)—didn't realize the scale of the challenge.
  • Quote: "The dumb kid advantage...I call it naive confidence." (08:46)

5. Building the Solution: Technology, Finance, and Infrastructure (09:03–13:13)

• Technological Leap: Solar-powered pumps became cost competitive (grid parity).
• Cost Reduction: Initial systems cost $25,000 (NGO-delivered); SunCulture reduced cost to $5,000, eventually reaching $350.
  • Majority of price reduction came from engineering, not just cheaper solar panels. (15:34)
• Barriers Beyond Cost: No financial infrastructure for rural farmers; commercial banks require pay slips or collateral, which farmers can’t provide.
• SunCulture's Expansion: Had to manage the full stack: hardware, finance, installation, maintenance, digital engagement, and carbon credits.

6. Building Trust & “Everything Company” (13:13–23:44)

• Customer Engagement: 90% collection rate and 90% digital engagement—high for an “unbankable” customer demographic. (14:17)
• Bundling Other Services:
  • Health insurance, agricultural inputs, and weather insurance are now bundled.
  • Farmers ask SunCulture to distribute these products due to established trust and efficient payment mechanisms.
  • Samir Ibrahim: “They trust us. We can get them discounts because we’re buying in bulk.” (22:28)

Notable Story: The Impact on Farmers

• Samir recalls a customer’s reaction to the newly installed solar pump:
  • "She looked at me in the face and she said, 'I'm going to get fat.' With a huge grin on her face." (17:38)
• Transformative effect: From manual, backbreaking labor to being able to expand farms, diversify crops, and provide for their families.

7. Carbon Credits: Financing Innovation (18:03–20:06)

• Business Model: SunCulture generates carbon credits by replacing diesel pumps with solar; sells credits to fund customer discounts (at least 20% reduction in price).
  • Small price reductions can dramatically increase uptake: “We reduced our price by 28%. Our sales went up by four and a half times.” (19:44)

8. Rethinking Agricultural Development and Market Creation (27:30–30:40)

• Comparison to U.S. Farm Mechanization:
  • U.S. farm consolidation was driven by need for economies of scale; technology now allows profitable mechanization of even very small farms in Africa.
  • Samir envisions a “menu” of farm models—some consolidated, some family-run—with technology enabling more options.

9. The Future Vision (31:04–35:06)

• Growth Goals:
  • Scaling SunCulture to hundreds of thousands of farmers; possibly extending to larger farms and other geographies over time.
  • Worried about scaling organizational structure and maintaining culture as they grow (31:12).
• Potential Global Reach:
  • Open to expansion to Central Asia, South Asia, Latin America when the team is ready.
  • Balancing speed of growth with sustainability: “...there is a moral question of like, if you can do this in other places, why not just go balls to the wall...” (34:04)

10. Big-Picture Impact: Farmers as a Consumer Market (35:06–37:22)

• Reframing Development:
  • Helping farmers earn money turns them into consumers, redefining “development work” as market creation.
  • Africa as a massive, emerging workforce and consumer market.
    • “One in four people on earth will be African [by 2050]… Half of all new entrants into the global workforce will come from sub-Saharan Africa.” (36:50)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Having reliable water can increase your yields by up to five times. It’s pretty crazy.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (06:11)
• “The dumb kid advantage...I call it naive confidence.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (08:46)
• “We have a 90% collection rate from the quote unquote, worst unbankable people in the world.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (14:17)
• “If someone gets sick … the family has insurance to be able to take care of that need.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (22:14)
• Transformed life: “She looked at me in the face and she said, ‘I’m going to get fat.’ With a huge grin on her face.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (17:38)
• “Reducing the price by 28% [led to] sales going up by four and a half times.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (19:44)
• “Smallholder farmers… are now becoming real consumers. And it’s almost, in Silicon Valley talk, we’re almost increasing wallet size and taking a share of wallet.”
  — Samir Ibrahim (35:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:39] – Episode framing: climate change & untapped markets
• [03:13] – SunCulture’s founding & water access issues
• [06:43] – African irrigation market landscape
• [09:03] – The “dumb kid confidence” & market tailwinds
• [10:47] – Affordability vs. availability challenge; full-stack company
• [13:13] – Why not to give up; iterative discovery
• [14:17] – Digital engagement and farmer trust
• [15:14] – Dramatic reduction in technology cost and its drivers
• [17:38] – Customer stories: personal transformation
• [18:03] – Monetizing carbon credits for affordability
• [22:14] – Bundling new products: insurance, agricultural inputs
• [27:30] – Comparing to the US's farm consolidation story
• [31:12] – Scaling challenges and future goals
• [35:12] – Farmers as a new consumer market and macro demographic shifts

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Lightning Round & Personal Reflections (40:30–46:24)

• Samir’s Family Journey: Parents' initial apprehension about his return to East Africa transitions to pride as the company succeeds.
• Personal and Cultural Ties: Living in East Africa helped Samir understand his family's resilience and cultural identity.
• Random Fun: A fondness for Publix’s Buffalo Ranch sub.

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Conclusion

This episode illustrates how addressing deeply rooted structural problems—like irrigation for smallholder farmers—demands innovation in technology, business models, and finance. SunCulture’s journey, as told by Samir Ibrahim, shows that unlocking prosperity at the farmer level can catalyze the emergence of an enormous new consumer market, with global significance for economic development and the fight against climate change.

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Transcript

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[Jacob Goldstein]

Pushkin. There are at least two ways that you can frame today's show. One frame climate change, makes the weather more unpredictable, and the people who suffer most from this are the hundreds of millions of poor farmers in the developing world who rely on rain to irrigate their crops. The second frame is a little less familiar. Poor farmers in the developing world may be the world's biggest untapped consumer market, and a company that helps those farmers earn more money and and move into the formal economy could be huge. Today's show is about a company that started out with that first problem, helping poor farmers deal with climate change. And now, after more than a decade, the company is addressing the second they're helping poor farmers get richer and starting to sell them things they can now afford. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's yous Problem? The show where I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress. What's your name in your job? My name is starting easy. It's gonna get hard.

[Samir Ibrahim]

My name is so funny. No one said, no one's actually asked me, what's your name in your job before? Just like that. Bam. Coming at you, Coming at me. Hot. My name is Samir Ibrahim. I'm the CEO and a co founder at Sun Culture.

[Jacob Goldstein]

When Samir Co founded SunCulture back in 2012, he was trying to solve the problem of helping poor farmers irrigate their land. Wanted to sell them solar powered water pumps. But it soon became clear that selling pumps wasn't going to work on its own. To make solar irrigation work, Sun Culture had to become a tech company and a carbon credit company and a finance company. Ultimately, Samir realized that Sun Culture really needed to solve a deeper problem. How do you help poor farmers get richer?

[Samir Ibrahim]

A human sized solar panel on the roof of a household completely changes someone's and someone's family's life in a way that people who are living with disposable income may never experience. That change, like it's, it's a huge change. It's like from someone going and saying like, I literally have nothing to, like I can now pay school fees. I mean it's just, it's wild.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Sun Culture is based in Kenya, which happens to be where Samir's parents grew up before he was born. They immigrated first to Canada and then to Florida. And Samir was working as a consultant at PwC in Manhattan in his early 20s when he and a friend decided to start Sun Culture.

[Samir Ibrahim]

It's no surprise that we weren't farmers. I didn't grow up in a farming household, so I didn't know anything about farming. So when we started thinking about how to solve this problem, we first started exploring where this problem was very big. And it just so happens that Africa is where this problem is really prevalent. It's really prevalent because 2/3 of the workforce are farmers that live on 1 or 2 acres of land and they live off grid and they live in rural areas. So they're the most affected by this problem.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And the problem is narrowly, as climate change makes it harder to grow food.

[Samir Ibrahim]

That problem. Yeah, exactly.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

But then they're also potentially a big part of the solution to the second problem, which is we need to grow more food to feed a growing population.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Africa has 60% of the world's unused farmable land. It's the only continent with an economic water scarcity versus a physical water scarcity. So we have enough groundwater to use it for growing crops and keeping animals. Just people can't afford to draw it. And you have a massive unemployed workforce that is Also agrarian. So you have all the resources to sort of think this through. Because I'm not a farmer. I looked at farming as just an algorithm. You have a bunch of inputs and variables and you have an output. So I looked at it and said, what are the variables that have the most outsized impact on the outcome? And when you look at all the farming inputs, it is very clear that water has the most outsized impact on the output. Having access to reliable water.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Makes sense.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Makes sense.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I might even have guessed that one not knowing anything. Exactly.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Having reliable water can increase your yields by up to five times. It's pretty crazy. And it is coincidentally the variable that changes the most. Because water for agriculture in many parts of the world comes from the rain, which is increasingly more inconsistent and unreliable. Yeah. So we said, great, Africa, water, that's where we have to start. Irrigation in Africa is a $65 billion opportunity because only 4% of African farmers irrigate versus close to 40% in Asia.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So the other 96% are just relying on rain.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Rain. That's why African farmers are some of the poorest in the world. Because imagine you don't know when the rain is going to come. So we were like, okay, why do so few farmers irrigate? And we're like, oh, duh. You'll probably guess the answer as well. It's just too expensive. Not only is the water pump too expensive, but the recurring cost for fuel, which is 40 to 80 bucks a month, is too expensive for a farmer that's making a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a year.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And so the fuel is this like a diesel generator. I mean, is that the way petrol.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Exactly. A diesel generator. Diesel powered or petrol powered water pump to move the water to get to their crops was a problem because irrigation is just moving water from one place to the other. Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So like there's a river over there, not that far away, but the farmer doesn't have. Can't afford to buy the gas to run the generator to move the water from the river. And by the way, if they could buy the gas to run the generator, then you're making climate change worse again.

[Samir Ibrahim]

But we don't have to worry about that. We don't have to worry about that. That's not even, that's not even. That's just like, they're just like, we need to be able to afford something, right?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, right, sure.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Or then what happens is they just take buckets and they fill up those buckets with 20 liters of water, which is 45 pounds, which is those big weight plates in the gym and then they, they walk to their farm or they, they pull it up from the well and just this super inefficient.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

So we said, okay, we need to figure out a way to first make irrigation affordable. Then we need to figure out a way to get it to people. So from an affordability standpoint, do you

[Jacob Goldstein]

ever stop and think like this is too much like, I mean as you're like at the time we were talking about these things, you're just like a college kid.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah, we were 23 and I think that was the advantage.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You had. Basically never had a job. Like it wasn't like you had like run some company or done some big thing. Right.

[Samir Ibrahim]

I think that was the advantage. I think that's why we probably didn't stop and say this is going to be really hard. I think really that was it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The dumb kid advantage. Yeah, yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

I call it, what did I call it? Sort of naive confidence or just. Yeah, one of those. But I like the dumb kid confidence is probably more accurate.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

So we're just sitting there, we're like, oh yeah, obviously we're just going to make irrigation cheaper, no problem. So okay. To do that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's like 2011 ish. Right?

[Samir Ibrahim]

This is why 2011. 2012. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What's really interesting about that time is we reached grid parity in a number of African countries. So the cost to connect your power with, to power your household with solar became cheaper than the grid. So you have these tailwinds in terms of cost reductions kind of happening. So let's figure out to make the fixed cost reasonable and a fixed cost and then let's finance it. So we spread that fixed cost over time because no matter what, the upfront cost is still too expensive, which is why only 4% of African farmers irrigate with diesel petrol pumps. So we said let's take an old technology, water pumps, irrigation, decarbonize it, figure out how to make it solar powered and then deployed in a resource rich environment like Africa. That's like the summary framework. So we went and developed and made Africa's first solar irrigation company and we the original price of the system. If you were to go and try to buy one of these before from like an NGO, it would cost 25 grand. We managed to get it down to five grand.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay, $25,000. So that's like that, that. So $25,000 is completely out of the question. Presumably for a small farmer who can't afford a diesel generator.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah. Okay. When we started, we managed to, without really any technical innovation, just buying the right things from the right places and putting it together. For our pilot project, we got it down to $5,000. And at that point we're like, you know what, I'm sure over time we can get this to be cheaper. Like, let's just accept we can do that and let's figure out the other things. I need to go around this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay.

[Samir Ibrahim]

And that's, that's when we learned that affordability was one part, but availability was the other part. Because. And that's the harder part. And it's because. Because smallholder farmers don't have disposable income. No one's really selling them a bunch of stuff, which means the infrastructure to be able to get them things doesn't exist.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Like to some significant degree, they're not in the kind of monetized, financialized economy.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Right, exactly.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They're growing food for themselves, they're trading some amount of food, whatever at the market, but they're just not in the cash economy the way we think of it.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Right, exactly. They're in the informal economy and it's

[Jacob Goldstein]

very

[Samir Ibrahim]

isolated and acute, so very village level, etc. Yeah. So we went from thinking we could drop ship these products from China and just like Johnny Appleseed, get a bunch of these things out really quickly to then realizing we had to figure out how to manage our own supply chain. We had to. First we had to do a bunch of innovation on the power electronics.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, wait, why didn't your first idea work? So your idea is like, we can make these things at, you know, whatever, 80, cheaper than they exist now. They'll be a good deal for farmers. Like, you know, we'll order parts from China like everybody does. Why didn't that work?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Because financing wasn't part of the original idea. It was, we thought we'd be able to do it with banks.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Uhhuh.

[Samir Ibrahim]

And we thought we'd be able to work with banks to finance. And banks in Africa will ask farmers for two things. One is a pay slip. And they're like, well, I'm a farmer, I don't have a, a pay slip job or, or collateral. And banks aren't willing to take irrigation or a cow as collateral because they don't know how to repossess and resell them so farmers can't get access to loans. So we realized we had to figure out financing. We're like, okay, that's interesting. And then we figured out, we realized we had to figure out the installation because there's no third party installers, the maintenance, the ongoing after sale support. We had to figure out the digital engagement. We had to figure out supply chain, we had to figure out R and D from the power electronics side. We had to figure out how to monetize carbon credits to give them further discounts. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So what we thought was going to be just a drop shipping company ended up being a company that has to build this entire physical and digital infrastructure to get these irrigation systems to farmers. And that's where the journey started.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Why didn't you give up when you realized that?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Because we only realized it over time. It wasn't all in one wham, bam, thank you ma' am kind of thing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You kept being like, oh, we just gotta solve this one thing.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah, truly. And that's. And we kept uncovering the next step over and over and over again until finally a few in 2021, this is almost 10 years later, we figured out one of the last remaining pieces in terms of making this truly affordable and locked in for a large group of people, which is monetizing carbon credits and giving our customers discounts with those revenues. And at that point we have a business that has shown that you can collect repayments from farmers. We have a 90% collection rate from the quote unquote, worst unbankable people in the world. Yeah, we have 90% digital engagement from people who most of the world writes off as not being technologically literate like,

[Jacob Goldstein]

but via text message or something. What does it mean?

[Samir Ibrahim]

They're checking their balance through our app. How much do I have left? They're asking, they're asking questions, raising tickets. They're referring friends via our mobile app. They're like really like engaging. And we get to this point where finally we said, okay, in order to make this affordable to the mass market. Not just the, at that point, I don't know, some tens of thousands of farmers we worked with.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So it was the sort of like better off farmers. Presumably $5,000 where you started is still very expensive for a farmer who's farming a few acres and can't afford irrigation.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah. And even, even, even getting down to $700, which is where we got to is. And even if we spread that cost over, over a finance period of two or three years, even paying something like 60 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month is too expensive for most people. And we have to keep figuring out how do you make this more affordable?

[Jacob Goldstein]

So the price has gone from $5,000 to $350. And those are phenomenal prices. Right. And real prices. It will have fallen even more. How much of that decline in price is the decline in the price of solar panels?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Some of it. Some of it? Most of it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Half?

[Samir Ibrahim]

No, less. Way less. Way less.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Interesting. Interesting.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Way less.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Tell me all the things you did to make it cheaper. Tell me some of the things you did to make it.

[Samir Ibrahim]

A lot of it was working on the power electronics. So figuring out how to take a small amount of power to power a high powered appliance. So we need less solar to power a water pump.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I read, I think it was a Bloomberg News article that your pumps use something like 300 or 400 watts, which is crazy, right? Like, it's like four incandescent light bulbs.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah. It's like you can't see me, but it's like a human size.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Like the idea that that can be transformational for a farmer.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Is, is really something to, to think about.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah. It's like there was one of our, One of the stories are so incredible. One of our customers give a TED Talk and in that talk she, she talks about like talking to her plants and promising them water is going to come because they're dying. And literally not like just going to everything she can think of and bring in her being to try to convince her plants to stay alive. You go from that to her saying, my cow didn't die. I expanded my farm. I'm making kombucha. Like, I mean, it's really transformational stuff. And there's one story that will always stick with me that summarizes and really humanizes this. We went to see a farmer who was getting an installation. I love visiting installations when they're happening, especially for those who are using the manual buckets before because once they realize that they don't have to spend three or four hours a day physically pulling a bucket of water from underground to the surface, whether it's a hundred feet down or beyond. And they can do that with a flick of a button. The look on their face will change your life. It is unreal. And we asked this customer in particular said, now what are you going to do? You're not going to, you know, use your muscles to pull this bucket up. And she looked at me in the face and she said, I'm going to get fat. With a huge grin on her face. She was just like, that's what I'm going to do. I was like, that's right. It's amazing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So, okay, so let's go back to, you know, you got more than 90% out of the price of this thing. Right. Which seems like the fundamental thing you did. Right. So one of the things you did to get the price down was start using carbon credits.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And I don't. I kind. I mean, I can sort of guess at that, but I also have some questions about that. So tell me about how carbon credits work in your business.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Okay, so there is a. There are official verification bodies that create methodologies that count how carbon credits are avoided or removed from the atmosphere. And it just so happens that there's an existing methodology under the UN framework that talks about a displacement of diesel or petrol pumps.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay.

[Samir Ibrahim]

So because solar is an alternate to diesel and petrol, we generate carbon credits for the systems that we install.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So how much do you get paid in carbon credits for, you know, the sort of median pump that you sell?

[Samir Ibrahim]

So the way to think about this is we generate carbon credits. The system generates carbon credits for seven years. We give customers a discount upfront, and we sell those carbon credits over the remaining year. So we raise debt to be able to do that. We're able to give our farmers about a 20% discount at minimum on the monthly cost because we're able to sell carbon. Now, it might sound like a little bit of just a small discount, but we ran a pilot when we were launching our carbon business and we reduced the price of our system by 10% and our sales went up by something like, I think it was like two times, something like that. We reduced our price by 28%. Our sales went up by four and a half times.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Wow.

[Samir Ibrahim]

So small adjustments in the monthly price make a huge difference. So we use those carbon revenues to directly subsidize our farmers. We're not a carbon business, so we. It's a pass through to our customers, which has enabled us now to grow more. You know, half of our customer base was added in the last two years because of that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So you're, you know, lending the farmers money to buy the pump. Obviously you're borrowing against seven years of carbon credits and passing that through. Like you're a finance company to some significant degree. Like you're in the finance business.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah, we're sort of an everything company. And that's just because it's funny. It's like, it's really hard to describe what type of company we are to many people because we have to do so many things in order to give people access to these products.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And I guess it goes back to what you were saying, which is your customers, these small farmers, are just not in a market Economy the way we are so used to thinking of being in a market economy, right. There's not access to capital or to financing, obviously. What else is there? Not that we might take for granted? Like what else do you have to provide that you might not have thought?

[Samir Ibrahim]

I mean, you know, when you're, if your cable breaks, you call a third party installer maintenance person. You go on TaskRabbit to find someone to do it that doesn't exist. So we do all of the installation ourself, all the maintenance, all the ongoing after sales support. What's been really interesting now is, and this will answer the question of what else might you not think about? Our customers are making more money like we talked about. And just like us, when they make money, they want to buy more stuff.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They want to get fat.

[Samir Ibrahim]

They want to get fat, but they also want to buy things like health insurance and they want to buy things like weather insurance. They want to buy things like high quality seeds and fertilizer. So they're coming at us and they're saying, hey, you know, I've been paying you well, I'm paying my 20, 30 bucks a month. I'm doing what I'm paying. Can you just add a little bit more to my monthly and give me these other things? So we said, okay. So about a year ago we started a pilot where we bundled in health insurance. So if someone gets sick and goes to the hospital, if someone passes away, the family has insurance to be able to take care of that need.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Now let me ask you, are there, you can't be a health insurance company too, right? Presumably there are health insurance companies in these countries. You are just selling insurance and taking some.

[Samir Ibrahim]

We're starting to bundle it to the monthly because again, the reason they come to us is because they trust us. They get duped by not good products. They trust us. We can get them discounts because we're buying in bulk basically, right? Because we just added to the monthly payments and then they don't have to go and try to figure out themselves, right? So we did that. We made an investment into a company that allows us to now finance agriculture inputs. So let's say you're Jacob, as a farmer, you're paying well for 10 months and you, you come to us and you're like, I want some seeds. Well, cool. Here's a voucher that we sent to your phone. You can go to any of these right now in Kenya, 1,000 approved shops. You can get your seeds and what is added to your monthly payments, huh? And last month we started a pilot with parametric weather insurance. If it floods in your area, you get paid out as well. So we're starting to think about, okay, how do we now provide access to services that helps people protect themselves from shocks? And go back to the same thesis, right? How do you increase prosperity at a smallholder farmer level in rural areas to increase food supply and reduce climate migration? All of these things help farmers protect themselves against the risk of not paying for their irrigation system.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Which is good for your business, which

[Samir Ibrahim]

is good for our business, for sure, which is good for our business. And that's also just a bunch of things that will help them not have to worry about where they're going to spend money and figure that out. So it's kind of all bundled together. And we're in the phase of thinking about how do we continue to provide services for our customers for things that they want? Does this become an ongoing subscription that they are able to access if they want to? Do they want extended warranty? So we're in this discovery phase where our customers are pulling us to offer more products and services because we have a credit relationship with them, because we have their location, because we have payment history, all these things. This digital engagement, we're now realizing that we can be the access point for people trying to get services and products to farmers and the access point for farmers who want to get access to high qualify, high, high quality, verified products and services versus going to go buying a bag of seeds that never actually sprout, which is often their experience.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We'll be back in just a minute. I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perc, though. This is an ad for Perc. I really did think the coffee was delicious. Perk has lots of different coffees to choose from and they color code their bags. The blue bags are mild coffee, the pink bags are wild coffee. You can find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code [e-mail] that's P E R C coffee.com promo code problem.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why we make your business growth our priority. Our team takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now, and where you want to go. Our broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with our digital tools. Looking for tips and advice? Our online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive. See how your business can go farther with Chase for Business. Learn [e-mail] business chase for business Make More of what's Yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Message and data rates may apply JP

[Samir Ibrahim]

Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright

[Jacob Goldstein]

2026 JP Morgan Chase Co.

[iHeart Podcast Host]

Member Run a business and Not Thinking about Podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers are into true crime, sports, comedy, culture, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. And all this reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for you. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show you at iheartadvertising.com that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844-844 iHeart one more time, call 844-844-IHEART and get podcasting working for you.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Part of the way agriculture has become profoundly more productive in the United States and other countries has been consolidation, right? It used to be the case in this country that 80% of the people were farmers, then it was 50%, and now it's 2%. And that is because farm basically we have substituted capital and technology for labor. And that has worked out great in many ways. And yes, there are problems with like, you know, monoculture farming, et cetera, et cetera. But fundamentally, the way we have grown so much food is with more and more machines and fewer and fewer people. How does that idea map to the places where you're working?

[Samir Ibrahim]

I think about this a lot, and one of the big differences for the consolidation of land in the US and how mechanization took 50% down to 2% in terms of farmers is because at that time it wasn't profitable to mechanize a small farm. That's like one of the things now consolidation and economies of scale is a really good thing. So that is 100% part of the story, but also you couldn't mechanize a small farm profitably. What we're doing now is you can mechanize an eighth of an acre profitably, which means that you don't require consolidation in order for your farm to be able to produce food. I don't think there's going to be one solution for the future of African farmers. I think there's going to be a mix of consolidation. I think there's going to small. I think it's going to be a whole mix of it. But the differences are that you can mechanize a small farm and culturally, sometimes the only asset that families own is the farm and it gets passed down generation after generation. So it's, it's a challenge to culturally switch people from giving up their only asset that they have in their family to pass down as an inheritance to being able to sell that off. Now there are companies who are doing that. I think they're going to do a very good job. I think there's no one size fits all. I think there will be some consolidation. I think there'll be farming as a service. I think there'll be what we're doing. I think there's going to be a whole mix of things, but it's not going to be because you can't mechanize a profitable and make a small farm profitable. It will be because people like to buy, rent, or lease cars. It's just going to be an option. In the US it was because you had to.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right. Because there was no way to be a profitable small farmer. I mean, you're making profitable, not profitable, this sort of binary thing.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But it could be the case that you can make money as a small farmer, but that land would be, would produce more food, let's say, with the same amount of inputs if it were consolidated. Right. Like that seems very plausible to me. And so while at the level of the individual and as you say, culturally, people might want to keep their farms, you could imagine there being a pressure. You know, somebody might offer them a lot of money because it would be not because they're some evil capitalist, but because like their farm could be worth more if someone with more access to capital and more consolidation bought it and started growing food on it. Right. And that doesn't seem like necessarily an unhappy story, Although I take your point that culturally it might be complicated.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Not a bad thing at all. I, I think it's great.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

I, it's just, it's an option and it's. It. I think, I think it's going to be. I don't think there's a. There's a better or worse here. I think there's. It's just. It's an option. Yeah, I feel like it's going to be. All these models have to exist at the same time in order to figure out how to solve the problems we're talking about. So I'm totally for it. It's just not our business, but I'm totally for it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So let's talk about the future of sun culture. When you look at it over the next few years, what do you worry about?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Biggest worry is we've added about 40% of the people that we have today just in the last two years. And we're growing quite fast. And that's only started about two years ago. So two years ago we started growing quicker than we ever have. We went from 10 retail locations to 30 retail locations in Kenya. So it's really just like building all of the. I hate the physical digital infrastructure to support that scale.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I never heard that before.

[Samir Ibrahim]

I don't like Kenya, but I can't unhear it. I'm so sorry that I put that in your life, but you're going to thank me one day when you use it at a party and someone laughs. So it's all having all that in place, but we're growing faster and it's just making sure that we continue to bring on people that align with our culture to make sure that we have the right people in place. And it's just like I think I always think about it in terms of a sports team. I used to play a lot of soccer and you just gotta sometimes change the formation based off of who your opponent is. And we just have to make sure we continue to iterate on our org structure where people are, who we have in place to make sure we can continue to scale. And that is a big focus of mine.

[Jacob Goldstein]

If things go well, where will the company be in five years?

[Samir Ibrahim]

If things go well, there's different levels of well. So level one of well is we're at few hundred thousand farmers all paying us this dollar a day to get access to services that they need. They're happy, they're making more money. Our net promoter score for our customers is 78. It's so high. Our customers are so happy and that continues to stay there level. Level two is we're able to then potentially move what we're doing into different farm sizes. So maybe we help with the folks who are operating larger plots of land. To your point, maybe the tens of acres, to become more efficient, to be able to produce more food, to be able to hire people and create jobs around them. And I think that's something we're really interested in. How do we take what we've learned around renewable energy and agriculture and financing and bring that to larger farms in different geographies? So can we take what we're doing and bring it elsewhere, not only from a geography perspective, but also from a

[Jacob Goldstein]

size perspective geographically, do you think you might grow the business outside of Africa?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah, not for the next few years. But we've looked at, we've looked actively at places in Central Asia, we've looked actively at places in South Asia, we've looked at places in Latin America. So it's not a now thing, it's not a 20, 27 thing, but it's a thing. And it's just again, going back to team. Do we have the right team in place to be able to do this and can we replicate this in other markets with the right people? It's less now about a viability thing. It's more, can we manage it as a team? That's really the question. We don't necessarily want to spread ourselves too thin right now, but there is a moral question of like, if you can do this in other places, why not just go balls to the wall, right? Like it's a necessary, needed thing. You can build your business much bigger. And there's this sort of, how do we make sure we do that sustainably? We don't want to run into the situation where we grow too fast and the wheels fall off. So it's this delicate balance of what that looks like. And it is a definite yes, we will. It's just the question is when? So your five year timeframe seems, seems possible.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Now gaze off into the distance and give me your big endery thoughts.

[Samir Ibrahim]

What I find really inspirational from a business perspective is that smallholder farmers, who are often written off as very poor people, you can't sell to them, et cetera, are now becoming real consumers. And it's almost, in Silicon Valley talk, we're almost increasing wallet size and taking a share of wallet. Like you get people to make more money and then you sell them stuff. It just so happens that the things we sell them are like insurance and access to inputs, but we're selling them more stuff. And when you start looking at smallholder farmers as a consumer market, there is a view that they're one of the largest untapped consumer markets in the world. We have all of this interesting data of who they are, what they're growing, how they use their irrigation system, what their payments are like. And we can now start to layer on with the demographic and geographic and payment data the types of things they're asking for. And we now start to become sort of the entry point for an emerging consumer market. I think what we're doing is a way to do that. It's not the only way, but it is enabling the largest group of consumers or potential consumers to make more money. And I think that might be a transition. And instead of looking at this work only as impact and development work, but you think about it as sort of a way to build the consumer industry. Things get really interesting, especially if you look at the trajectory that East Asia had in Southeast Asia that Africa hasn't necessarily had, because you have like 80% of their jobs are informal. And by 2050, one in four people on earth will be African. One in three working age people by 2050 will be African. Half of all new entrants into the global workforce will come from sub Saharan Africa. Like, it's just like really big consumer opportunity. But instead of starting with the ride sharing or a delivery app, I believe it needs to start with helping people increase incomes. And that's where the irrigation comes in.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perc, though. This is an ad for Perc. I really did think the coffee was delicious. The bag I'm drinking at the moment was grown in Peru. Perc sources coffee from all over the world. They have lots of different kinds of coffee to choose from and they color code their bags. Blue bags are more mild coffee and pink bags are more wild coffee. That Peruvian coffee I'm drinking now is wild. And if you're on the fence, I recommend trying wild. The other morning I had my first sip and I thought of that Will Ferrell line in old school where he hits the beer bong and then he says once it hits your lips, it's so good. Find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code [e-mail] that's P E R C coffee.com promo code problem.

[Commercial Announcer]

Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make your business growth their priority. The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now and where you want to go. Their broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive. See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn [e-mail] business chase for business make more of what's yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Co. Run a business

[iHeart Podcast Host]

in not thinking about Radio, Think again. Because more people are listening to the radio on iHeart today than they were 20 years ago. And only iHeart broadcast radio connects with Americans than TV, digital, social, any other media, even twice as many teens than TikTok. And that reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for your business. Radio's here now more than ever, and iheart's leading the way. Think radio can help your business. Think iheart streaming, podcasting and radio where the reach is real. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844 844, iheart one more time. Just call 844-844, iheart and get radio working for you.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Let's finish with a lightning round. So your parents, is it right? Your parents are from East Africa?

[Samir Ibrahim]

That's right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They moved first to Canada and then to the United States.

[Samir Ibrahim]

That's right. That's right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Presumably. I'm making a guess here, but it's sort of the classic immigrant story of wanting to give their family a better life. You moved back to East Africa?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So was that like a disappointment to them? Were they like, come on, man, My,

[Samir Ibrahim]

my parents are really good at not telling me when they're, when things, when they think it's going to put pressure or like, put me down. So I didn't, I didn't find out that until a few years later that they were like, what the hell is this guy doing? They told me, they told me later that they were like, you know what, we're just gonna Think about it as an mba, he's gonna go for a year or two. It's just like, he's going to school and that's fine. And then like later they're like, you're still there. Like, oh, cool. Now they're super proud and stuff. But, you know, I was living their immigrant dream. I was self sufficient in Manhattan. I just started working in PwC. They were like, we win. We left East Africa.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The accounting firm PwC, the big accounting firm.

[Samir Ibrahim]

I was doing consulting there for them. They were like, we won. We won the game. We won the immigrant game. We left. IDI Amin was causing problems. We left and like, we won. And then I'm like, so I need to go to East Africa and I need to figure out how to borrow some money from people. So they went and borrowed money from two uncles, a grandparent themselves lent it. They never told me where they got it from, which would have also stressed me out. We paid it back and I think after we paid it back, they're like, oh, wow, you're, you're there. Like, this is what you're doing. Cool. And now obviously they're really, they're really happy and proud and.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. Do they have equity?

[Samir Ibrahim]

They don't have equity in the company. They don't. Oh, they have.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Maybe you should give them some after all that.

[Samir Ibrahim]

One of the big drivers for me is to. I would like to retire them, so.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Oh, that's very sweet.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I mean, I didn't ask you about exiting. Like, is there some universe where you sell the company or sell part of the company?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Yeah, there's a universe. There's for sure a universe. I mean, my job as a CEO is to provide investors returns. Technically, that doesn't necessarily mean that it all has to go right. So there's a world in which we sell it. There's a world in which I. You have to pry it off of me. But there, there's a lot of different options going forward. The most important thing is how do you get to scale fastest? Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

What is the rate limiting step for you now in scaling?

[Samir Ibrahim]

There are two things that would change the game for us. One is in our control, one is not in our control. In our control, it's, can we have a thousand times more sales agents in the field? And if that's the case, then we can almost think about scaling linearly, but just by adding people and can we manage that growth? So that's one thing that is in our control. The thing not in our control is, does a multilateral institution come With a large subsidy and a time bound five year subsidy.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Does that mean the World bank for you? Does that mean the World Bank?

[Samir Ibrahim]

That does, yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Samir Ibrahim]

We have a subsidy in Uganda to the World Bank. But is there a large, Is there a larger scale multi country subsidy for access to electricity and what people call productive use of energy? So what we're doing basically productivity, turning water into food. Classic productivity. Classic productivity. That would be a huge. That would be a huge game changer if that. And it looks like it will happen. It's just when. But that's the moment at which we then push a lot of capital into the system and really hire those agents, scale to new markets, et cetera. And that's the moment. So it's just making sure we're ready for that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Back to your parents. Has living in East Africa helped you understand your parents better in any particular ways?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Nobody has ever asked me that question. And it is part of what I think about most as a theme. And there's, there's no question about why we started in East Africa versus anywhere else. I can tell you it's because Kenya is an English speaking country and because there's a port and blah blah, blah. But it's because my family's from there and like that's, that's. There's an affinity to it. So I learned a lot about. My parents are tough and smart and like charismatic and it's, it's very East African vibe. And kind of seeing how they grew up has helped me understand that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That last sentence was quite interesting when you say they're tough and smart and charismatic and that's an East African vibe. Like what do you mean by that?

[Samir Ibrahim]

Tough as in. My mom's dad died when she was seven and she had six older brothers and they moved from Belgium to Congo to then Kenya. And there's this sort of. And I, you know, I've met my. One of my mom's cousins still lives in Kenya and his mom who recently passed away, raised my mom, helped raise my mom for a few years. Meeting her and hearing the stories and seeing where my mom grew up helped me understand that toughness of her. But it's like you hear the stories but then you see it and you see them in that place and that really brings it together.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Tell me about the Buffalo Ranch sub at Publix.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Where did you get this shit?

[Jacob Goldstein]

The Internet. What?

[Commercial Announcer]

Where?

[Samir Ibrahim]

This is wild. That is so good. That's so good. Oh man, that's great. That is really good stuff. My wife's a journalist and I Have a lot of respect for that. That was awesome. I mean, it's, it is, it is delicious. It is also something that will change your life. It's, it's like, you know, we, I grew up in Orlando and Publix was the grocery store I went to. It's a regional grocery store.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And

[Samir Ibrahim]

it's, it's just. The buffalo sub there is just so, so delicious.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Samir Ibrahim is the co founder and CEO at Sun Culture. Please email us at problemushkinfm. We are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's show was produced by Trina Menino and Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by Alexandra Garrison and engineered by Sarah Bruguer. I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another episode of what's yous Problem? I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perk, though. This is an ad for Perk. I really did think the coffee was delicious. The bag I'm drinking at the moment was grown in Peru. Perk sources coffee from all over the world. They have lots of different kinds of coffee to choose from and they color code their bags. Blue bags are more mild coffee and pink bags are more wild coffee. That Peruvian coffee I'm drinking now is wild. And if you're on the fence, I recommend trying wild. The other morning I had my first sip and I thought of that Will Ferrell line in old school where he hits the beer bong and then he says, once it hits your lips, it's so good. Find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code [e-mail] that's P E R C-COFFEE.com promo code problem.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Service opens doors. And at American Military University, it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition.

[Jacob Goldstein]

AMU offers flexible online programs designed to

[Samir Ibrahim]

fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn more at amu.apus edu military open

[Jacob Goldstein]

doors to the future for you and

[Samir Ibrahim]

your family with the help of American Military University.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Are you running for office and have

[Samir Ibrahim]

a message you want every voter in your district to hear?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, that's where radio comes in. Radio is your direct line to morning commuters, midday grinders and late nighters. Radio puts your message right where your voters are. Plus, it's one tenth the time and cost of video.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Don't just campaign.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Connect with millions all over the country,

[Samir Ibrahim]

even thousands in the smallest communities.

[Jacob Goldstein]

With radio.

[Samir Ibrahim]

Call now and be on air in just 48 hours.

[Jacob Goldstein]

844-844-IHEART.

[Samir Ibrahim]

That's 844-844-iheart.

[iHeart Podcast Host]

This is an iHEART podcast. Guaranteed Human.