Co-founder Gary White, an engineer, realized the issue wasn't a lack of technology, but misaligned capital. The poor were already paying high prices for water. By creating a microfinance model, Water.org redirected existing cash flows to fund sustainable solutions, unlocking a vastly more scalable approach.

The Queens Night Market's success in launching 500+ businesses stems from a simple principle: lowering the cost of failure. By structuring the market so a vendor's maximum potential loss is only a grand or two, it creates a low-risk testbed for aspiring entrepreneurs who couldn't otherwise afford to fail.

Contrary to Econ 101's labor-leisure tradeoff, unconditional cash transfers consistently lead to an increase in work in low-income countries. Recipients are capital-constrained, and the cash enables them to start small businesses, leading to a zero or positive effect on labor supply.

Companies like Optasia leverage mobile phone usage data from telecom partners to provide small loans to millions of unbanked individuals. This model of financial inclusion has created highly valuable "unicorn" companies on the continent.

On Australia's driest continent, water is a scarcer and more valuable asset than land. By owning water rights, an investor can capture upside from the agricultural sector's shift to higher-margin crops—which can afford higher water lease rates—without taking direct farming risk, creating a more efficient investment.

A Norwegian-backed project in the Congo Basin treats conservation like venture capital. It provides small grants (~$5k) to communities who pitch development ideas, like a pigsty or farm tools. In return for the seed funding, the community pledges to protect a portion of their forest from development, aligning financial prosperity with environmental protection.

India's nationwide Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), like the UPI payments system, generates vast transactional data for populations previously outside the formal economy. An AI overlay on this data can assess creditworthiness for small vendors, solving a major barrier to financial inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity.

A key driver of Africa's recent agricultural success is not large-scale government projects, which historically failed, but a micro-level, farmer-led revolution. Millions of hectares have been irrigated by individual farmers buying their own pumps and digging boreholes, representing a significant, decentralized, and private-sector-driven improvement in productivity.

The strategy involves acquiring multiple small, local businesses (e.g., laundromats) and applying principles like operational efficiency and economies of scale, mirroring the playbook of large private equity firms but at an accessible level for individual entrepreneurs.