Ripple Effects

What happens when you step so far outside your normal life that you’re forced to see it differently? For Bill Gates, it was “Think Weeks” - two weeks alone in a cabin with nothing but time to just sit and think. For our group, it was two weeks in Tanzania: disconnected from society while hiking Mt Kilimanjaro and acutely present while visiting the businesses of women creating sustainable lives for...

Some stories don’t just move you, they rewire something in you. Week two of the trip, on the ground at the Forever Projects site, one of the clearest truths of emerges: when you invest in a woman, the impact multiplies. This episode explores that transformation, from crisis to stability, from survival to self-actualisation, and why empowering women creates ripple effects that extend far beyond any...

There are few moments in life that pull you so far out of your day-to-day that you can’t help but see everything differently. Summiting Mount Kilimanjaro is one of those moments. A 12-hour, all-night climb that pushes every limit: physical, emotional, and mental. But it’s also a perspective reset. A reminder that without our physical wellbeing, the other forms of wealth - mental clarity, time, rel...

It’s 6:00pm at Kibo Huts (4,700m) - the last stop before our midnight summit push. The air is thin; the nerves are real. The fear isn’t just about failing to reach the top - it’s about what failure might mean after coming this far, with so many people cheering us on. Before any big climb (career, company, or mountain), the biggest inhibitor often isn’t fear itself, but the anticipation of it and t...

Night four under Mawenzi Peak, 4,300m - the question that keeps surfacing: what really sustains you when the climb gets hard? This episode reframes success not as individual grind, but as collective growth. From Tanzanian reciprocity (“I help you today, you help me tomorrow”) to founder circles back home, we explore how community, built on shared values, generosity, and presence - becomes the true...

Altitude creates literal and physical friction - as the air thins, each step comes with more resistance as you climb. Friction on a climb translates to the barriers and hurdles you face as you build in business and as so many have noted before - if you’d known how hard entrepreneurship is, would you have started in the first place? In the third episode of Ripple Effects, we use the mountain as a l...

A decade ago, Mark Dombkins and his wife Anna moved to Tanzania with their family, driven by a desire to adopt. During the process, they was confronted with a hard reality - stories of women having to seperate from their babies because of circumstances outside their control, such as the inability to lactate, illness or poverty. Mark and Anna found themselves asking a critical question: “What would...

Today we begin the ascent of the world’s highest free-standing peak, Mount Kilimanjaro. At any true starting line - launching a company or scaling a mountain - the same question surfaces: What is your why? In other words, what’s the purpose that will keep you moving when the air gets thin? In this episode, we look at why the startup ecosystem is so rich in purpose, why purpose matters, and how to...