Nothing is wrong with the concept of doing good by doing business. What’s wrong are all the connotations and assumptions that come with the term “social enterprise”. Decades ago, all social enterprises were non-profit organizations which earned some revenues from the services they provided, instead of relying 100% on donations. Goodwill is a great example of a traditional social enterprise. Most...
First-time entrepreneurs don’t always understand that outside investments come with a whole new slew of responsibilities and relationships. This is made quite clear by venture capitalists, where the norm is monthly board meetings for the first year or two after an investment closes. For Angel-backed startups, too often the investors’ expectations for communications are not met by the...
In general, driven by regulations and risks, standard legal contracts grow and grow in complexity until they become unworkable. In the world of private investments, we’re at, if not past, that point. In the U.S. (and most of the developing world), private investments into startups and funds is regulated, allowed only by rich and/or experienced investors. “Private” in contrast to the public...
Sitting here at Impact Hub Seattle, a member of Toniic and Investors Circle, and a teacher at Pinchot, I’m surrounded by thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropist, and employees who all work for mission-driven organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit. The one commonality across all of that is that everyone has a mission. Back in my days in tech, this wasn’t true, at...
My 2016 is shaping up to be quite exciting: Aviary.vc – To keep up with the growth of impact-oriented entrepreneurs, Aviary is a new venture capital seed fund, focused on mission-driven for-profit conscious companies, i.e. companies that do good by doing business. If you are an accredited impact investor (or wondering how to do that), we’re building a community of co-investors. Contact us for...
Outside of California, where it feels like all investors are professional investors, and following up on last week’s post about one difference between Angel and professional investors, another difference is the way the deal terms get set, especially valuation. First-time entrepreneurs don’t understand how startups gets valued. Neither do first-time startup investors. In my MBA class...
As an entrepreneur, I’m well experienced at wearing multiple hats and in such, in viewing companies through a multitude of lenses: production, marketing, sales, finance, etc. The same is true as an investor, where I swap between two distinct hats: Personal and Professional investor. You’d think these two hats were identical, but they are not. They are complimentary, but are two quite...
Bouncing down an unpaved road in a far western Kenya (1 2 3 4 5 6), in the Rift Valley, I had a profound thought… There have been people living here for over four million years! That is an incredibly long history. An unfathomable depth of experience living off that land. In comparison, the Puget Sound region where I live wasn’t seen by human beings until about 6,000 years ago, when the last ice...
An ongoing discussion during the Investors Circle trip to Nairobi was about the tradeoffs between the companies founded by Africans and those founded by Americans, Europeans, and Indians. We met a few of both, and thus had a first-hand look to make (anecdotal) comparisons. Overall, the consensus was that natives like GreenChar and Totohealth had the advantage of deeply understanding their market...
The last site visit for Investors Circle in Nairobi was SunCulture, seller of solar-powered pumps and drop-irrigation systems for small farms across Kenya. Speaking of culture, one learning on this trip about East Africa was the blended nature of the populace. Not only are there dozens of tribes within Kenya alone, but added to that are the 100+ year old history of Europeans and Indians living in...
