Another year, another 2,200+ impact investors, foundations, nonprofits, and social entrepreneurs gathered together at SOCAP, the social capital conference, the intersection of of money + meaning. With up to 11 simultaneous sessions over multiple days, plus a dozen scheduled meetings, and two dozen unscheduled, I barely scratched the surface of the event. In this post, I summarize a few of my...
Early stage impact investors face a market that has few acquisitions, fewer IPOs, and is filled with entrepreneurs who liken selling their companies to selling out. How can investors earn a reasonable (or market rate) return? This workshop will share the investment structure used by Fledge – the conscious-company accelerator – as a framework for discussing and sharing our ideas for investing in a...
Time again for the annual visit to San Francisco to attend and present at SOCAP, the social capital conference. Once again this year, I’ll be running a workshop, “Investing without Exits“, Wednesday, 2:20pm in the Fleet Room. Early stage impact investors face a market that has few acquisitions, fewer IPOs, and is filled with entrepreneurs who liken selling their companies to...
One often misunderstood topic of entrepreneurship is “sustainable competitive advantage“, and specifically, the advantage from a “network effect“. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, and many other modern technologies succeeded due to this effect, but the anecdote I like to use is almost 150 years old, the telephone. The anecdote goes this like: One telephone has...
