October 5, 2025 • 12 mins
Samuel Morgan Wiseman is based in Scottsdale Arizona where he is a principal at Protopian Capital. On today's show we are talking about how to structure deals involving blended capital from private foundations as part of the capital structure. To connect with Samuel or to learn more, visit https://protopiancapital.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the WEEKEND edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Scottsdale, AZ Welcome
to the show, Samuel Morgan Wiseman.
Victor, thank you so much for having me.
Well, great to have you here. Now, Sammy, you've been at this
(00:23):
game a while and I'm excited to have this conversation because
we've not talked a whole ton about what we're going to talk
about. But before we do, perhaps give a
little bit of your back story and how you got to this point in
your journey. Yeah, Long story short, I was a
Eagle Scout growing up, always wanted to help save the world
best I can, and one day discovered the massive amounts
(00:48):
of capital and resources flowingin and out of the private equity
space. I was in effectively event
marketing in the music space prior to COVID and it read in
the order of 400 bucks over the course of a few years.
Taught myself mergers and acquisitions, bought a company
(01:09):
for no money down, did an 8 figure merger, and now we're
doing a nine figure roll up. So that's kind of how I got
here. I love it.
Well, you're speaking to someonewho has done one IPO, 5 M and A
transactions and done a lot of work with private equity firms
and and venture capital. My prior career prior to real
(01:30):
estate was in the tech industry.So really, that's where I
learned all of these skills. Yes, you've raised hundreds of
millions, haven't you? Yeah, yeah, over a period of
time, yeah, absolutely. So it's been, it's been a great
school and it's not something that frankly is taught in the
normal academic programs. No.
And, and such a shame because itreally is the progenitor of all
(01:54):
capitalism. I mean, back in the 1600's, the
East India Trading Company effectively created the first
ever corporation ever, the firstventure capitalist system.
And it was all about raising capital to go out and, and to
seize. And, and we don't learn any of
that. It's all minor derivatives for
people to take these little bitsand pieces.
(02:14):
But more people need to know thesource of how all of this works.
Yeah. I mean, most of the dialogue, at
least the public dialogue is, you know, is NVIDIA going to go
up in price like? Who?
Cares how? Much your portfolio.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So when look, when in certainly
(02:34):
in real estate, there's three main levers, right?
There's your revenue stream. What does that look like?
Meaning, you know the rents thatare coming in, do you control
that? No, not really.
But what's your cost of capital?Do you control that?
Not really, but you can influence it based on the
choices you make. And then #3 what's the cost of
the underlying product? You know, what's your
construction cost and replacement cost?
(02:56):
Do you control that a little bitbased on choices you make?
But for the most part, not really.
But there are some choices in there and the one that I think a
lot of people overlook, which I think is your specialty, is the
choices on how to structure the capital.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and you know, Speaking of of
cost of capital, you know, the very first most powerful tool
(03:20):
that I have in my arsenal if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I
hope everybody knows about this,is blinded finance.
Not only can you reduce the costof your capital, but you can
actually get insurance on your capital by helping nonprofits to
strengthen their impact effectively in the community.
(03:42):
So how that works is the kind ofthe classic story is that there
was a village in Africa where they had a hospital and a school
and a bunch of homes that neededpower.
But it's a risky investment and investors aren't super willing
to to make that jump. So what happened was this, the
(04:06):
village said that, look, investors, you know, we've got
$2,000,000, we could power the hospital, we could power the
school, but if you come in with your full 10 million, we will
provide a $2,000,000 buffer. If anything goes S, we will also
guarantee that you'll make at least 15% returns before we make
anything. And you can actually take from
(04:28):
our $2,000,000. And it sounds like, oh, why
would any nonprofit, you know, just give up their money for
this? Well, the nonprofit got the
entire village powered. And while this was originated in
Africa, while it is is is mostlydominant on that continent, we
are starting to see it here in America, especially with power
(04:50):
on reservations, low income communities, affordable housing,
largely taking these sorts of capital stacks.
So if we translate that to let'ssay the simplest case we're
talking about, you know, the typical capital stack at its
most basic level is OK, 100% equity.
Now you start to layer debt on top of that.
(05:11):
You've got senior debt, OK, that's pretty common.
Now you're going to put one morelayer, you've got mezzanine debt
of some form, some secondary financing, whether that's mezz
money or whether it is preferredequity.
Those are just similar things, tomato versus tomato, you know,
different language to describe asimilar concept.
(05:33):
Are you just talking about the waterfall?
Are you talking about mezzanine financing in general?
Yeah. So this goes in the waterfall
and often blended finance capital will actually be the
First Capital in the capital stack.
If you can align your capital raise with some sort of social
good, then firms like the Bill Gates Foundation, the
(05:54):
Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. Bank all very heavily involved
in this kind of finance. Because you are helping them to
achieve their their corporate social goals, they will often be
the first money in and additionally because they have
money set aside for both nonprofit and for profit work.
(06:16):
Sometimes if their for profit work needs to be the insurance
or has to get rid of them off, they can't write it off as the
nonprofit money. So you will get a lower cost of
capital, maybe by utilizing, youknow, 2%, you know, capital rate
or again, being able to use their capital as what's called
conciliatory capital, not lose your money first in, in, in the,
(06:41):
in the case of any sort of downturn.
So it it will often be the firstand the last money that you deal
with in your capital stack blended finance.
So 82% of our listeners are US based so the the village in
Africa is probably not going to connect for most.
Do you have AUS example? Right, right.
So, so, so maybe a better example would be, let's say, you
(07:04):
know, hiring veterans is, is, isa real great one, right?
You know, if you're going to go out and, and, and provide
veterans jobs, maybe it's just the thing you're going to do
anyways. But there are a lot of
nonprofits out there that set upservices to hire veterans.
So if you, if you set up your company that it can do such a
thing or, or, you know, any permutation of, of, of said
thing, then you would be able topotentially get that First
(07:28):
Capital in from these nonprofitsto help spark your startup to
help go buy a couple low income houses, couple halfway houses
potentially staffed by by veterans.
I don't know. I'm just kind of thinking, you
know, real kind of starter real estate here, but the capital and
then if it's lost, the nonprofitwill say, hey, you know, the for
(07:49):
profit people get out. You hired enough veterans that
we can say we accomplished our goals.
If we make anything on this, that's gravy.
Got it, got it. So to what an extent are these
reliant on government programs or are these just straight
private agencies that are doing this within their mandate?
Yeah. These are these are all private.
There are public private partnerships.
(08:10):
This is not that. They are somewhat structured in
a similar way in that you are reaching out for social good,
but these alignments are are strictly with nonprofits and for
profits, non government related.Fascinating.
Now when you say throw names like the Gates Foundation, they
are obviously inundated with requests.
(08:32):
I don't imagine you would start there necessarily.
Not necessarily. If you're if you're going to go
after a project like this, it's best to have someone in the
industry that you are attemptingto raise capital for.
If you're if you're an energy company, that's great.
If you're not an energy company but you're working on an energy
project, go partner with an energy company.
(08:53):
My favorite book of all time is called Crossing the Chasm.
It was written in 1991. Jeffrey Moore.
You see? The smile, you know it great.
And it the gist of it is that. You can't cross the Grand Canyon
in one in two hops. It's got to be in one.
That's right, that's right. You got to get your you got to
get your steady steps in. So, so the blended finance
investors are really going to beyour visionary investors and
(09:15):
you're going to want to have your innovators well before
going into those conversations, you're going to have very smart
people. Ideally, friends and family have
invested if if it's, you know, venture capital or at least
innovators, board members are are putting their time, their
stamp, their capital in. Yeah, absolutely.
Now, when we think about capital, so, you know, you can
see the book Over my Left shoulder.
(09:36):
I wrote the book Magnetic Capital.
And one of the things that I learned in my career raising
money is that there has to be that fundamental alignment
between the goals for the money and the goals for the project,
because money always has an agenda associated with it.
And if that alignment doesn't exist, it's not going to work.
It's, there's something about itthat's going to be forced and
(09:58):
it's not going to work. So when we talk about matching
up that alignment, there's a whole bunch of criteria.
There's, you know, what's the size of the investment, what's
the term of the investment, what's the rate of return,
what's the risk, what's the tax consequence, what's the control
structure? There's just so many of these
that actually become important. How do these agencies articulate
(10:23):
their investment mandate so thatthe project sponsor is able to
even figure out from a distance?Is there even potentially a
conversation worth having? They're pretty clear about it.
The, the, in fact, they, they want to give their money away.
I mean, they, they, they have itso they can spend it.
It is a part of their process. I, I believe the Gates
(10:44):
Foundation. There's also, I want to say
blended dot or I want to say convergence dot finance.
I, I believe is, is a nonprofit dedicated to spreading blended
finance. So these, these folks who who do
invest in blended finance projects are, are actually very
public about it. They, they're trying to get
their names out there. There are all kinds of
directories. The funniest thing I realized
(11:06):
honestly about raising capital was that there's, there's
billions of dollars everywhere. There is money everywhere you
look, you, you throw a stick, there's money, right?
But it's really aligning the deal.
And so if you can, if you can gothrough their mandates and, and
find you've got a deal, then then you approach them.
I even my preferred way to go about it is, is what are
(11:26):
investors investing in? And then you go in and you
develop your project around. That makes life a lot simpler.
I love it. So presumably each of these
groups have one or two mandates that they specialize in.
It's never one-size-fits-all. Are there folks that are better
at matching capital with are there clearing houses, brokers,
(11:47):
folks that really specialize in matching projects with the with
the capital sources? Grant writers in particular are
are adept at this OK, because itis effectively a grant.
You're asking for a grant and itand it then becomes an
investment. So the very best grant writers
in the game are are the best people to go for this with.
The best one I know is is John Luther out here of Phoenix, AZ.
(12:10):
I love it. Well, Sam, if if folks want to
connect, if they want to learn more, what's the best way?
Protopiancapital.com would be the best way to reach out.
My e-mail is on there. Samuel at protopiancapital.com.
Fantastic. Well, Samuel, great to connect.
And for the listeners at home, you definitely want to connect
with samuelandmorganwiseman@protopiancapital.com.
(12:32):
The links will be in the show notes.
And in the meantime, have an awesome rest of your weekend.
Go make some great things happenand we'll talk to you again
tomorrow.
Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the WEEKEND edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Scottsdale, AZ Welcome
to the show, Samuel Morgan Wiseman.
Victor, thank you so much for having me.
Well, great to have you here. Now, Sammy, you've been at this
(00:23):
game a while and I'm excited to have this conversation because
we've not talked a whole ton about what we're going to talk
about. But before we do, perhaps give a
little bit of your back story and how you got to this point in
your journey. Yeah, Long story short, I was a
Eagle Scout growing up, always wanted to help save the world
best I can, and one day discovered the massive amounts
(00:48):
of capital and resources flowingin and out of the private equity
space. I was in effectively event
marketing in the music space prior to COVID and it read in
the order of 400 bucks over the course of a few years.
Taught myself mergers and acquisitions, bought a company
(01:09):
for no money down, did an 8 figure merger, and now we're
doing a nine figure roll up. So that's kind of how I got
here. I love it.
Well, you're speaking to someonewho has done one IPO, 5 M and A
transactions and done a lot of work with private equity firms
and and venture capital. My prior career prior to real
(01:30):
estate was in the tech industry.So really, that's where I
learned all of these skills. Yes, you've raised hundreds of
millions, haven't you? Yeah, yeah, over a period of
time, yeah, absolutely. So it's been, it's been a great
school and it's not something that frankly is taught in the
normal academic programs. No.
And, and such a shame because itreally is the progenitor of all
(01:54):
capitalism. I mean, back in the 1600's, the
East India Trading Company effectively created the first
ever corporation ever, the firstventure capitalist system.
And it was all about raising capital to go out and, and to
seize. And, and we don't learn any of
that. It's all minor derivatives for
people to take these little bitsand pieces.
(02:14):
But more people need to know thesource of how all of this works.
Yeah. I mean, most of the dialogue, at
least the public dialogue is, you know, is NVIDIA going to go
up in price like? Who?
Cares how? Much your portfolio.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So when look, when in certainly
(02:34):
in real estate, there's three main levers, right?
There's your revenue stream. What does that look like?
Meaning, you know the rents thatare coming in, do you control
that? No, not really.
But what's your cost of capital?Do you control that?
Not really, but you can influence it based on the
choices you make. And then #3 what's the cost of
the underlying product? You know, what's your
construction cost and replacement cost?
(02:56):
Do you control that a little bitbased on choices you make?
But for the most part, not really.
But there are some choices in there and the one that I think a
lot of people overlook, which I think is your specialty, is the
choices on how to structure the capital.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and you know, Speaking of of
cost of capital, you know, the very first most powerful tool
(03:20):
that I have in my arsenal if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I
hope everybody knows about this,is blinded finance.
Not only can you reduce the costof your capital, but you can
actually get insurance on your capital by helping nonprofits to
strengthen their impact effectively in the community.
(03:42):
So how that works is the kind ofthe classic story is that there
was a village in Africa where they had a hospital and a school
and a bunch of homes that neededpower.
But it's a risky investment and investors aren't super willing
to to make that jump. So what happened was this, the
(04:06):
village said that, look, investors, you know, we've got
$2,000,000, we could power the hospital, we could power the
school, but if you come in with your full 10 million, we will
provide a $2,000,000 buffer. If anything goes S, we will also
guarantee that you'll make at least 15% returns before we make
anything. And you can actually take from
(04:28):
our $2,000,000. And it sounds like, oh, why
would any nonprofit, you know, just give up their money for
this? Well, the nonprofit got the
entire village powered. And while this was originated in
Africa, while it is is is mostlydominant on that continent, we
are starting to see it here in America, especially with power
(04:50):
on reservations, low income communities, affordable housing,
largely taking these sorts of capital stacks.
So if we translate that to let'ssay the simplest case we're
talking about, you know, the typical capital stack at its
most basic level is OK, 100% equity.
Now you start to layer debt on top of that.
(05:11):
You've got senior debt, OK, that's pretty common.
Now you're going to put one morelayer, you've got mezzanine debt
of some form, some secondary financing, whether that's mezz
money or whether it is preferredequity.
Those are just similar things, tomato versus tomato, you know,
different language to describe asimilar concept.
(05:33):
Are you just talking about the waterfall?
Are you talking about mezzanine financing in general?
Yeah. So this goes in the waterfall
and often blended finance capital will actually be the
First Capital in the capital stack.
If you can align your capital raise with some sort of social
good, then firms like the Bill Gates Foundation, the
(05:54):
Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. Bank all very heavily involved
in this kind of finance. Because you are helping them to
achieve their their corporate social goals, they will often be
the first money in and additionally because they have
money set aside for both nonprofit and for profit work.
(06:16):
Sometimes if their for profit work needs to be the insurance
or has to get rid of them off, they can't write it off as the
nonprofit money. So you will get a lower cost of
capital, maybe by utilizing, youknow, 2%, you know, capital rate
or again, being able to use their capital as what's called
conciliatory capital, not lose your money first in, in, in the,
(06:41):
in the case of any sort of downturn.
So it it will often be the firstand the last money that you deal
with in your capital stack blended finance.
So 82% of our listeners are US based so the the village in
Africa is probably not going to connect for most.
Do you have AUS example? Right, right.
So, so, so maybe a better example would be, let's say, you
(07:04):
know, hiring veterans is, is, isa real great one, right?
You know, if you're going to go out and, and, and provide
veterans jobs, maybe it's just the thing you're going to do
anyways. But there are a lot of
nonprofits out there that set upservices to hire veterans.
So if you, if you set up your company that it can do such a
thing or, or, you know, any permutation of, of, of said
thing, then you would be able topotentially get that First
(07:28):
Capital in from these nonprofitsto help spark your startup to
help go buy a couple low income houses, couple halfway houses
potentially staffed by by veterans.
I don't know. I'm just kind of thinking, you
know, real kind of starter real estate here, but the capital and
then if it's lost, the nonprofitwill say, hey, you know, the for
(07:49):
profit people get out. You hired enough veterans that
we can say we accomplished our goals.
If we make anything on this, that's gravy.
Got it, got it. So to what an extent are these
reliant on government programs or are these just straight
private agencies that are doing this within their mandate?
Yeah. These are these are all private.
There are public private partnerships.
(08:10):
This is not that. They are somewhat structured in
a similar way in that you are reaching out for social good,
but these alignments are are strictly with nonprofits and for
profits, non government related.Fascinating.
Now when you say throw names like the Gates Foundation, they
are obviously inundated with requests.
(08:32):
I don't imagine you would start there necessarily.
Not necessarily. If you're if you're going to go
after a project like this, it's best to have someone in the
industry that you are attemptingto raise capital for.
If you're if you're an energy company, that's great.
If you're not an energy company but you're working on an energy
project, go partner with an energy company.
(08:53):
My favorite book of all time is called Crossing the Chasm.
It was written in 1991. Jeffrey Moore.
You see? The smile, you know it great.
And it the gist of it is that. You can't cross the Grand Canyon
in one in two hops. It's got to be in one.
That's right, that's right. You got to get your you got to
get your steady steps in. So, so the blended finance
investors are really going to beyour visionary investors and
(09:15):
you're going to want to have your innovators well before
going into those conversations, you're going to have very smart
people. Ideally, friends and family have
invested if if it's, you know, venture capital or at least
innovators, board members are are putting their time, their
stamp, their capital in. Yeah, absolutely.
Now, when we think about capital, so, you know, you can
see the book Over my Left shoulder.
(09:36):
I wrote the book Magnetic Capital.
And one of the things that I learned in my career raising
money is that there has to be that fundamental alignment
between the goals for the money and the goals for the project,
because money always has an agenda associated with it.
And if that alignment doesn't exist, it's not going to work.
It's, there's something about itthat's going to be forced and
(09:58):
it's not going to work. So when we talk about matching
up that alignment, there's a whole bunch of criteria.
There's, you know, what's the size of the investment, what's
the term of the investment, what's the rate of return,
what's the risk, what's the tax consequence, what's the control
structure? There's just so many of these
that actually become important. How do these agencies articulate
(10:23):
their investment mandate so thatthe project sponsor is able to
even figure out from a distance?Is there even potentially a
conversation worth having? They're pretty clear about it.
The, the, in fact, they, they want to give their money away.
I mean, they, they, they have itso they can spend it.
It is a part of their process. I, I believe the Gates
(10:44):
Foundation. There's also, I want to say
blended dot or I want to say convergence dot finance.
I, I believe is, is a nonprofit dedicated to spreading blended
finance. So these, these folks who who do
invest in blended finance projects are, are actually very
public about it. They, they're trying to get
their names out there. There are all kinds of
directories. The funniest thing I realized
(11:06):
honestly about raising capital was that there's, there's
billions of dollars everywhere. There is money everywhere you
look, you, you throw a stick, there's money, right?
But it's really aligning the deal.
And so if you can, if you can gothrough their mandates and, and
find you've got a deal, then then you approach them.
I even my preferred way to go about it is, is what are
(11:26):
investors investing in? And then you go in and you
develop your project around. That makes life a lot simpler.
I love it. So presumably each of these
groups have one or two mandates that they specialize in.
It's never one-size-fits-all. Are there folks that are better
at matching capital with are there clearing houses, brokers,
(11:47):
folks that really specialize in matching projects with the with
the capital sources? Grant writers in particular are
are adept at this OK, because itis effectively a grant.
You're asking for a grant and itand it then becomes an
investment. So the very best grant writers
in the game are are the best people to go for this with.
The best one I know is is John Luther out here of Phoenix, AZ.
(12:10):
I love it. Well, Sam, if if folks want to
connect, if they want to learn more, what's the best way?
Protopiancapital.com would be the best way to reach out.
My e-mail is on there. Samuel at protopiancapital.com.
Fantastic. Well, Samuel, great to connect.
And for the listeners at home, you definitely want to connect
with samuelandmorganwiseman@protopiancapital.com.
(12:32):
The links will be in the show notes.
And in the meantime, have an awesome rest of your weekend.
Go make some great things happenand we'll talk to you again
tomorrow.
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