Fledge Accelerators have helped 95 companies from 27 countries since 2012. Their goal is to help foster a wave of companies that make a measurable impact in the world, collectively improving in the lives of everyone on the planet.
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Episode Summary
Listen in to hear the founder of Fledge talk through their learning-focused accelerator model and the community of impact businesses they are building across the globe.
What is the mission and vision of Fledge?
Can you share why you started Fledge?
Can you share more about how you structure the business model for Fledge?
What does the ideal business for Fledge look like?
Do you work with exponential tech companies? Why or why not?
Can you share more on the methodology to scale?
How are you measuring the impact?
What do you think it’ll take to solve the Global Goals?
Any final challenges to the audience?
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Introducing Luni Libes, founder of Fledge and Managing Director at the Seattle Fledge headquarters.
Luni’s Quick Bio from the Fledge.co website:
“Luni is a 25+ year serial entrepreneur, founder of six startups; Entrepreneur in Residence and instructor at Presidio Graduate School; and Entrepreneur in Residence Emeritus at the University of Washington’s CoMotion, the center for impact and innovation.
Luni is the author of The Next Step, a series of book and classes guiding entrepreneurs from idea to reality; plus blogger and incessant answerer of entrepreneurs’ questions on Quora.
If the pattern is not obvious, Luni spends most of his waking hours helping entrepreneurs.”
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What is the mission and vision of Fledge?
Fledge exists to help entrepreneurs who agree that the only way we can make an impact in the world at scale is through for-profit means.
After 20 years of building tech startups (5 total), Luni went back to the drawing board. “In talking with others and pondering what could I do for the next 20 years of my life, I realized that the most fun I’d ever had across those 20 years was taking an idea and turning it into the first dollar of revenue.”
“The first million in revenue was pretty fun too. But really the idea to the first dollar was with the absolute most fun I ever had. And I got to do that for seven of the 20 years. So I asked, how can I do that for a living? How can I get paid to help others or work with others to do that over and over and over again? And the answer is a business accelerator.”
Can you share more about how you structure the business model for Fledge?
“Well, it’s not by growing fast. It’s growing at whatever speed they think is the right speed. So we’re working with what others are calling zebras instead of Unicorns.
So, the idea that we were looking at was, ‘how do you invest in a company that will never exit?’ At the time there were two options for a startup to get funding,: go into debt or hope for an exit, which is the California capitalism model, which has been around for about 40 years. But many of the entrepreneurs I talked to didn’t want to exit or sell their company.”
We use a 3rd option, called a revenue-based loan. And the terms are simple. The loan company hands over some money to a company. You just take round numbers, call it $100,000. And in return, the company actually promises something. They promise to pay back. Lighter capital three, four, five, 6% of their top line revenues until a 150 to $200,000 has been paid back. So once one and a half to two times revenue has been paid back, then they’re done. No equities changed hands, no, no interest rate is there. No timeframe is set ahead of time.
That’s how it works for companies doing about a million in revenue. Fledge.co-created a way to offer similar loans to new companies, too: “We buy shares of a company and they buy back half of those shares for twice what we paid.”
What does the ideal business for Fledge look like?
In terms of sector or ideas and whatnot, now we don’t have anything in mind. We just look through the applications in and see the ones that pop out as promising and interesting.
Could you just be growing chickens? We do have two chicken companies in Africa because they need a lot of chickens and they’re just not getting grown enough. Or it could be novelty, like on Zirconia or our client down in Latin America, which is recycling plastics. Sometimes it’s a business model that pops out like a crop. It’ll on the Philippines, which is crowdfunding funding for farmers. MMM. Uh, in terms of sectors, uh, we use the UN’s sustainable development goals as, as an ontology. And, uh, we’re covering 16 out of 17. So far we’re missing education.
Do you work with exponential tech companies? Why or why not?
“Well, we’re not a tech accelerator,” Luni says.
“We don’t get excited by high tech solutions. We get excited by big, important problems of the world.”
“So if you have a solution to world poverty, it uses a blockchain. Yeah. We might bring you in and if you have a solution to solving hunger that uses AI, we might bring you in. But it’s, we’re problem first, not technology first.”
How does Fledge help companies scale?
Fledge has 3 parts to their scaling methodology.
MBA program: Luni teaches the curriculum he developed that is in his Next Step books, and licenses the curriculum for other professors to teach as well.
Mentors: Fledge has 660 mentors, and each company meets 12-20 of them face to face.
Storytelling: Fledge doesn’t do pitches, they teach Ted-talk style storytelling. Companies present their stories on demo day.
What do you think it’ll take to solve the Global Goals?
“The anecdote I like to say is, you can blindfold me, stick me in an airplane, fly me anywhere in the world, drop me off in a village and within two hours I have a coca cola in my hand. Why? Why is that true? The answer is because Coca Cola makes money by making that trip. And that is not true at the moment for solar power in every home or good health care or even just food on the table to stop hunger.”
“When we have businesses who every day worry about how to get the next customer to earn more profits, thoseproducts solve a problem of hunger, poverty, inequality, whatever you like on that list of 17 goals, then we will have these things link and it will simply take a trillion or $2 trillion of investment to get all those companies up and running to scale. Then that’ll turn into four, eight, $10 trillion of returns for investors. So it’s a good thing for investors, but there’s just not woken up to it yet or not. Enough of them are woken up.
Any final challenges to the audience?
Do impact investment!
“We just need to find more ways to deploy more capital in more mission-driven businesses. We need to stop worrying about maximizing returns so we can give a little bit of way to do good in the world… like, every dollar of every investor should be focused on doing good in the world.”
2. We need more fund managers to educate investors who were never entrepreneurs
“The other struggle that we see is that since most investors didn’t make their money as entrepreneurs so they don’t know how to support entrepreneurs as investors. They know how to do public stock market trading because that’s been going on forever, and they made money there. They know how to buy bonds because they’ve made money there.
But you know, if you’ve never been an entrepreneur, if you never worked for a startup, the idea of a lending or investing money in an early company early being less than a million in revenues are less than 10 million revenue a, it’s scary and they just don’t understand it.
So we need them to do more of that investment, which really means we need more funds and fund managers to help them do it. It’s changing the flow of capital, right? Changing where it goes.
In this mini-episode, our Global Goals Project host Katy Ward shares her top takeaways from the Social Capital Markets Conference this past October.
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You’ll hear:
What were some of the hottest topics of conversation at the conference?
What was top-of-mind for impact investors at the conference?
Why was the storytelling track popular… and important?
What is the experience of attending SOCAP like?
Who should go next year?
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Below is the post-event press release with details to watch the digital experience recap for free and check out some of the awesome event highlights.
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Global Changemakers Gather at Social Capital Markets’ Influential Impact Investing Conference, SOCAP19
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SOCAP19’s Digital Experience will provide video recaps and an ongoing community for social impact leaders to collaborate and address the world’s toughest challenges.
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San Francisco, CA (October 25, 2019)– At the 12th annual SOCAP19conference,more than 3,000 impact investors, social entrepreneurs and cross-sector professionals committed to increasing the flow of capital toward social good gathered for four days of convening, conversing, and collaboration, at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco.
The influential gathering that took place October 22-25, 2019 from Social Capital Markets(SOCAP) — dedicated to accelerating a new global market at the intersection of money and meaning — featured 12 themes, over 150 sessions and more than 500 speakers. In addition, 130+ recipients of SOCAP’s Social Entrepreneur Scholarship attended SOCAP19.
“Since we began our conference more than a decade ago, what once felt like a secret — this vibrant place in between the nonprofit world and the finance world —is now woven throughout the global economy,” said Lindsay Smalling, Chief Executive Officer of SOCAP. “Despite the $500+ billion size of the impact investing market and the millions of lives that have been improved by social entrepreneurship, the potential of global markets to accelerate impact is largely unknown to most people. Beyond our flagship conference, SOCAP is driving growth of the global impact community by sharing these inspiring stories through year-round SOCAP 365 events in cities across America; through our podcast, Money + Meaning; and through offering the ‘SOCAP19 Digital Experience.’ In 2020 and beyond, we will increase our focus on accessible storytelling across live events and digital content to engage cross-sector changemakers across the globe to solve the world’s toughest problems.”
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The 12 themes explored at SOCAP19 included Catalytic Capital, Future of Work, Impact Investing, Impact Tech, Indigenous Communities, LatAm, Meaning, Opportunity Zones, Power of Story, Racial Equity, Refugees and Sustainable Agriculture. For additional details on the themes, visit https://socialcapitalmarkets.net/socap19/themes/
Highlights of the SOCAP19 plenary sessions livestreamed and to be part of the post “Digital Experience” footage included:
Tuesday, October 22, Nick Glicher, COO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, revealed results of its second global survey of the “Best Countries for Social Entrepreneurs”; The Rockefeller Foundation announced a new initiative on the future of food; Rodrigo Villar, Founding Partner of New Ventures, and Raúl Pomares, Founder of Sonen Capital, discussed emerging impact investing landscape in Latin America.
Wednesday, October 23, Morgan Simon of Candide Group discussed building a movement with recently retired NFL player and impact investor Derrick Morgan of KNGDM Impact Fund; Bonnie Glick, Deputy Administrator of USAID, and David Bohigian, CEO of OPIC on government agency-led efforts to catalyze economic development in emerging markets.
Thursday, October 24, Jennifer Eberhardt of Stanford SPARQ, Ashby Monk of Stanford Global Projects Center and Daryn Dodson of Illumen Capital, discuss research on unconscious racial bias of investors; Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard of Democracy Collaborative on their proposal for a new democratic economy to address deep, systemic economic inequality; and inspiration from Lynne Twist, Founder of The Soul of Money Institute, an early pioneer of thinking differently about money.
Kate Byrne, President of Intentional Media, the purpose-driven media platform whose brands include SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact, closed the last day of plenary sessions speaking about the future of the impact space. Said Byrne: “Intentional Media’s purpose is the amplify the great work being done in the impact space, and help people understand how to participate and with whom. When SOCAP started 12 years ago it was a pioneer, now there are so many more organizations in the space. We take our years of experience and street cred and put it to work for the community. Programs such as our inaugural, When Women Lead: A World-Changing Women Workshop, expand the conversation and empower those hoping to play a bigger role in the years to come; while our Total Impact platform has helped further mainstream impact investing. SOCAP serves as the gathering space for all to learn, share best practices and connect. As a result, the Intentional platform serves the entire impact landscape.”
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SOCAP19 was made possible with the support of the following partners in change: Bush Foundation (Success Partner); Prudential, The Rockefeller Foundation, Korean International Cooperation Agency (Investment Partners); MacArthur Foundation (Presentation Partner); Autodesk Foundation, Bain Capital Double Impact, e180, JB Media Group, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Tides, Walton Family Foundation (Innovation Partner); Big Path Capital, Capital Impact, Celo, Domini, ImpactAssets, Kate Spade, Korn Ferry, Korean Delegation, Powering Agriculture, REDF, SoPro CFO, Working Capital (Pitch Partner); Aeris, Avivar Capital, Blue Shield of California Foundation, Catholic Relief Services, Cooley, DAI, Oweesta, Fondo de Fondos, Schwab Charitable, Rockies Impact Fund, Seeding Sovereignty, Sonen Capital, Stasher (Idea Partner); Alliance Partners, Asian NGO, Conscious Company Media, Corporate Knights, Devex, Dumbo Feather, Impact Alpha, Karma, Next Billion, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Plug, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Wharton Social Impact Initiative (Media Partner).
The “SOCAP19 Digital Experience,” which anyone from around the world can still join for free, will give passholders curated recaps of livestreams all the plenary sessions and main stage breakout sessions. The pass includes exclusive interviews and coverage of the conference from SOCAP19 media partners including NextBillion, Devex and ImpactAlpha; a digital SOCAP19 program book; a list of all companies and organizations at SOCAP19; and links to the full SOCAP19 video and online content library. To sign up visit: https://socialcapitalmarkets.net/socap19/digital-experience/
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About SOCAP (Social Capital Markets):
SOCAP is the largest and most diverse impact investing community in the world. We convene a global ecosystem and marketplace – social entrepreneurs, investors, foundation and nonprofit leaders, government and policy leaders, creators, corporations, academics and beyond – through live and digital content experiences that educate, spur conversation, and inspire investment in positive impact. Our programming includes the annual SOCAP conference, SOCAP 365 regional events, SPECTRUM conference, and Money + Meaning podcasts. For more information, go to SocialCapitalMarkets.net; follow on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube; as well as #SOCAP19 and #SOCAPStories for this year’s conference. SOCAP19 is an Intentional Media company, the purpose-driven media platform whose brands include SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact.
About Intentional Media:
Intentional Media is a purpose-driven media and events platform, catalyzing our transition to an economy that ensures that social, environmental and economic systems thrive together. Home to properties including SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact – through the power of storytelling and networks, we connect, educate, and inspire people, transforming moments to movements, thoughts to action. For more information, go to https://intentional.co/; follow on https://intentional.co/social/
The Conveners team believes it is critically important that people come together to address the greatest challenges facing the planet. Conveners host events, connect businesses to accelerators and gather technology tools to help impact companies navigate the changing economy.
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Episode Summary
We talk to Executive Director Avary Kent about their organization for catalyzing collaboration. In this episode, we talk about:
What is Conveners.org and what are you set out to solve?
Why are these different components important to an ecosystem?
What are some of your favorite accelerators?
How do you address Global Goal #17?
Can you share the business model?
How do you see the future of partnerships playing into getting these goals done?
What’s next for Conveners.org?
See their top recommended accelerators, hear about their platform for finding accelerators, and experience a mindset-shift around collaboration for impact businesses.
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What is Conveners.org and what are you set out to solve?
Well, I would say we’re the meta-meta. We are a global association of impact-focused conferences, accelerators, and mappers. So, anybody who is trying to build a more robust ecosystem, we love to build peer networks to serve them.
There are 3 major segments:
Conveners Events
Accelerators and Incubators
Mappers
Why are these different components important to an ecosystem?
Group 1: Conveners Events
So when we see the conveners, these are the folks who aren’t doing conferences, they’re doing gatherings, they’re doing dinners, they’re doing meetings. But at the end of the day, they believe it is critically important that people come together, oftentimes in person to be able to address the greatest challenges facing the planet. And so, we think this is absolutely critical because every challenge we see from hunger to education, to poverty, to climate change, these are all really complex issues, which means that there’s a lot of pieces that are moving. You don’t know what they all are. And honestly you can only predict cause and effect in hindsight.
And so no one person, organization or even country is just going to fix these things overnight. It requires all of us to come together and to work together and to collaborate.
And so conveners believe that bringing people together is a critical ingredient to achieving their mission.
Group 2: Accelerators and Incubators
These are organizations that are enhancing the ability of enterprises and entrepreneurs to build organizations that are both doing well and doing good at the same time. Especially with social entrepreneurs, there’s a lot of help you need from your business model to your product market fit, how you’re going to run, how to grow your team and build your organization, and how to scale.
The incubators and accelerators have different curricula and most importantly relationships that they bring to the table with mentors and potential teammates and investors. We bring program managers together to learn from each other, share best practices, and hopefully identify ways that they can enhance one another’s programming and skills.
Group 3: Mappers
The third group are mappers, some of whom are incubators and accelerators themselves. Some are research institutions, some are conveners, but these are our people in organizations that are building tools and resources that help people navigate the impact ecosystem. It can be really hard to find your way around!
Can you share with us the background of how you got started?
I was working at SoCap at the time and co-founding what became Impact Alpha and impact space, the media site and was just really shocked by the number of accelerator program folks who didn’t already know each other.
I had been really inspired by Ian Fisk, the Executive Director of the Mentor Capital Network and the work he’d done on ecosystem building. I took the banner from him to help bring together program managers from incubators and accelerators around the world to help create a common application and create a cross promotion directory.
So when Topher (CEO of Opportunity Collaboration) and I teamed up after an Agora meeting, he was showing his new conversations with conveners. I was exploring my years of conversations with accelerators and we realize that we were serving different audiences who are doing the same thing, which was building peer circles and pure connection for communities that are oftentimes really isolated. At the time I was exploring what to do next and had left my last startup, but Topher really didn’t want to leave Opportunity Collaboration. So conveners.org was born a few months later.
We focused on what happens when you listen to the communities that need help and design your programming to be really responsive to that.
The Accelerator Selection Tool
An Accelerator Directory was one of the collective impact projects that came out of conversations with Ian Fisk of Mentor Capital Network and Andy Lieberman from Miller Center for social entrepreneurship. Uh, and I worked together to start to map out like what are the fields, what does the information that people actually need to make these kinds of decisions? And at the time enable impact, uh, actually was building an accelerator directory.
However, the problem was that the data was out of date all the time, and the platform would be expensive to run and offer it we kept it up to date. So The Accelerator Selection Tool works a little differently in two main ways:
They don’t list individual programs, but list groups that have websites. That way, the company’s website will be adding updated information on its own.
They offer an embed code for websites to offer for free, to outsource distribution.
What are some of your favorite accelerators?
I would say Miller Center for social entrepreneurship, as they have incredible longevity. They’ve been going for over 15 years. In terms of working in emerging markets, they’re amazing and they have a great mix of both virtual and in-person programming, especially around investment readiness.
Mentor Capital Network is also exceptional. Anyone who applies is going to get an incredible amount of feedback from hundreds of mentors from all over the world, if not thousands.
I would say Unchartedis also incredible. You may have known them as the unreasonable institute in Boulder back in the day, but they had a rebrand last year and they are really at representing the next iteration of impact accelerators. So they’re really focused on solving a specific problem.
What do you think the role of an impact ecosystem plays into a city?
I actually love the metaphor of ‘the roadies who make that awesome concert a reality.’
It’s the folks behind the scenes who are connecting the dots who are helping you see and meet the people that you might not otherwise have access to, and to gain the answers to your questions. I mean, Google is awesome. Obviously, they’re gonna rule the world one day, but at the end of the day that’s not necessarily how you’re going to find, not just the answer to your question, but the person behind it who you can really build a relationship with.
I think especially when you look at how silo-ed government is from everything else, how siloed corporations are from everything else, how siloed corporations are internally, how hard it is for universities to connect across things. These that were coordinators are the glue that’s holding things together, and they are the catalysts. From a true chemistry sense of the word, they are speeding up the reactions that are creating an impact because they’re connecting pieces more quickly.
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How do you see Global Goal #17 going?
“So, partnerships for the goals (SDG #17) is obviously what we think we embody the most. There’s a lot of money and time and energy and focus going into ending hunger or improving education or fixing climate change and partnerships, many argue, is the most important ingredient.
You’re not going to achieve any of the other SDGs without it. And yet, there are very few funders and very few folks who are actually really prioritizing #17. It is overhead: it is salaries, it is people’s time. That is at the heart of the program that’s being delivered and it’s really hard to measure. You cannot attribute your impact nearly as easily as when you say, “Oh look, we, you know, sold x number of copies of this app serving x number of customers or we’ve delivered, why gallons of clean water to z communities.”
But there are metrics for it. They exist. They’re just much harder and take a lot more time to measure. We’ve been really focused on SDG 17 through our initiative convening 17 and this is bringing all of the parts of our work into one coherent strategy.”
“We’re a 501C3 nonprofit, but it’s the first nonprofit I’ve run. Everything else has been for profit. So, no surprise, about 75% of our income is actually earned at revenue level.
We do a mix of a lot of training, a lot of capacity development, working with foundations to help improve the capability of their team to facilitate a very participant-focused design with many of these folks and over time we also designed and ran full events for them that use this methodology.”
How do you see the future of partnerships playing into getting these goals done?
“I think we need to get ego out of the way.
There is a lot when you look at collaboration, there are a lot of challenges that honestly emerge because people need the credit and they think they can do it better than anyone else. And I think to some extent that’s true. Kickstarter is always going to go faster and be able to do more because they don’t partner. They just know what they do, they do it well and that’s the thing that they’re going to do.
But when you are trying to tackle a complex challenge, you can’t go it alone because too often the intervention that you’re trying to have is going to have unintended consequences and you can’t predict what those are going to be in advance. Then, the only way to address them is through relationship.”
What’s next for Conveners.org?
Avary talks about partnerships and building their accelerator pipeline moving forward.
“I think doubling down on how to build collaboration between conveners and how to really catalyze action. On the collaboration side we are working on a number of core partnerships for 2019 and 2020 that will enable us to take on more SDGs like SDG 2, hunger, and SDG 5, gender equality, and start really building the playbook so more folks can leverage conversations or cost conflicts to achieve really specific and measurable outcomes.
We’re also really excited to be doing more to integrate the accelerator community into that process because they are such a valuable pipeline partner in this.
MIT solve has been doing incredible work for the last few years in identifying core challenges and connecting to a global network to find solvers from around the world, and we’re excited to be talking to them about ways we can connect into the accelerator network that we’ve built.”
~ Digital Pass Experience offers live community connections and insight into what is working in social impact today during Social Capital Markets influential annual conference~
San Francisco, CA – Social Capital Markets(SOCAP), dedicated to accelerating a new global market at the intersection of money and meaning, will livestream all mainstage content from the 12th annual SOCAP19, October 22-25, 2019 at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco. The influential four-day conference convenes more than 3,000 impact investors, social entrepreneurs and innovative cross-sector practitioners committed to increasing the flow of capital toward social good.
FEATURE IMAGE: Lindsay Smalling, CEO of Social Capital Markets, last year addressing audience at SOCAP’s annual impact investing conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco.
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“Anyone from around the world can join the SOCAP19 Digital Experience and watch livestreamed sessions of leading perspectives from across the global impact ecosystem,”
said Lindsay Smalling, Chief Executive Officer of SOCAP. “Our mission is to unlock the potential of markets to accelerate impact. By offering free digital access we expand this community to those who are unable to make it to Fort Mason this year. It will take all of us exploring ideas and solutions, to solve the world’s toughest problems and participation shouldn’t be limited to only attendees.”
Signing up for the SOCAP19 Digital Experience will grant full access to online coverage of the conference including:
All SOCAP19 livestreams – including all plenary sessions and main stage breakout sessions happening on the Cowell Theater stage at Fort Mason
Exclusive interviews and coverage of the conference from our impact media partners including NextBillion, Devex and ImpactAlpha
Curated recaps of conference sessions and major takeaways
A digital SOCAP19 program book
A list of all companies and organizations represented at SOCAP19
Post-event, pass holders will receive an email with links to the full SOCAP19 video and online content library
Here are more details of the livestreamed sessions during SOCAP19 plenary sessions from 4:00-6:00pm Pacific:
On Tuesday, October 22:
“A Global Movement that Matters to Millions,” explores solutions to solve the world’s toughest problems from feeding 10 billion people by 2050 to pursuing equity and justice for all. Highlights include:
💥 Nick Glicher, COO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reveals surprising results of second global survey of the “Best Countries for Social Entrepreneurs.”
💥 Roy Steiner and Sara Farley of The Rockefeller Foundation announce a new initiative on the future of food and host a panel with leading innovators in food systems and sustainable agriculture: Anna Lappé, Co-Director of Real Food Media, and Debra Eschmeyer, Senior Fellow and Head of Innovation at the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at the Arizona State University.
💥 Native Land Acknowledgement by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, CEO of Kanyon Konsulting
Fireside Chats:
🔥 Jennifer Schorsch, President of Water.org, and Tom Ferguson, Vice President of Programming of Imagine H2O share their work on accelerating solutions in water and sanitation.
🔥 Rodrigo Villar, Founding Partner of New Ventures, and Raúl Pomares, Founder of Sonen Capital, discuss opportunities and challenges of the emerging impact investing landscape in Latin America.
🔥 Marcos Gonzalez, Founder of Vamos Ventures and Rod Robinson, Founder and CEO of ConnXus highlight the business case for leading with a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Lens, moderated by Andrew Brower, Program Officer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Wednesday, October 23:
“New Approaches to Expand the Impact Economy,” brings a range of experts explaining new approaches to strengthen and expand the impact economy. Highlights include:
📈 Neville Crawley, CEO of Kiva, is interviewed by Helen Avery, Sustainable Finance Editor for Euromoney, on the expanded mission of Kiva and the Refugee Investment Fund.
📈 Mega-panel on the maturing landscape of Impact Measurement and Management with Ben Thornley of Tideline; Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen of UNDP; Diane Carol Damskey of IFC; Leticia Emme of IRIS; Sasha Dichter of 60 Decibels; Maria Mähl of Arabesque S-Ray; Cathy Clark of Duke University; Adam Heltzer of Partners Group; Lauren Booker of Jordan Park; Kate Cochran of Upaya Social Ventures and Andrew Lee of UBS.
Fireside chats:
🔥 Morgan Simon of Candide Group discusses building a movement with recently retired NFL player and impact investor Derrick Morgan of KNGDM Impact Fund.
🔥 Bonnie Glick, Deputy Administrator of USAID, and David Bohigian, CEO of OPIC in conversation on government agency-led efforts to catalyze economic development in emerging markets.
🔥 Tim Freundlich, CEO of ImpactAssets, discusses donor advised funds and the role of policy and regulation for guiding impact in financial services with Kat Taylor, CEO of Beneficial State Bank, and Christie George, Director of New Media Ventures.
Thursday, October 24:
“The Numbers Matter,” offers leading researchers showing how data reveals hidden patterns and truths; evidence supporting what is working and the essential guideposts for directing the passion and persistence of this field. Highlights include:
🔥 Rip Rapson, president of The Kresge Foundation, and Susan Taylor Batten, president and CEO of ABFE, talk about Kresge’s “25% by ’25” commitment to diverse managers.
Interviews and talks:
📣 Marjorie Kelly, Executive Vice President & Senior Fellow, and Ted Howard, President and Co-Founder of Democracy Collaborative, interviewed by Oscar Perry Abello, Senior Economics Correspondent at Next City, on their proposal for a new democratic economy to address deep, systemic economic inequality.
📣 Lynne Twist, Founder of The Soul of Money Institute and early pioneer of thinking differently about money, takes the SOCAP stage for the first time.
📣 Brent Kessel, CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners on eight financial archetypes that shape our relationship with money.
📣 Neil Buddy Shah, CEO and Founding Partner of IDinsight, on the appropriate role of rigorous impact measurement in the context of impact investing.
📣 Closing: Kate Byrne, President of Intentional Media, the purpose-driven media platform whose brands include SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact, speaks to the future of the impact space and announces upcoming initiatives.
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Overview of Social Capital Market’s SOCAP19
SOCAP19’s 12th annual conference of influential changemakers, which features over 500 speakers contributing to more than 150 sessions, is organized into 12 themes: Catalytic Capital, Future of Work, Impact Investing, Impact Tech, Indigenous Communities, LatAm, Meaning, Opportunity Zones, Power of Story, Racial Equity, Refugees and Sustainable Agriculture.
Conscious Company Media is also partnering with SOCAP to produce When Women Lead: A World-Changing Women Workshop, an exclusive gathering of female investors and entrepreneurs, as a separate pre-event at Fort Mason on October 22.
SOCAP19 is made possible with the support of the following partners in change: Bush Foundation (Success Partner); Prudential, The Rockefeller Foundation, Korean International Cooperation Agency (Investment Partners); MacArthur Foundation (Presentation Partner); Autodesk Foundation, Bain Capital Double Impact, e180, JB Media Group, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Tides, Walton Family Foundation (Innovation Partner); Big Path Capital, Capital Impact, Celo, Domini, ImpactAssets, Kate Spade, Korn Ferry, Korean Delegation, Powering Agriculture, REDF, SoPro CFO, Working Capital (Pitch Partner); Aeris, Avivar Capital, Blue Shield of California Foundation, Catholic Relief Services, Cooley, DAI, Oweesta, Fondo de Fondos, Schwab Charitable, Rockies Impact Fund, Seeding Sovereignty, Sonen Capital, Stasher (Idea Partner); Alliance Partners, Asian NGO, Conscious Company Media, Corporate Knights, Devex, Dumbo Feather, Impact Alpha, Karma, Next Billion, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Plug, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Wharton Social Impact Initiative (Media Partner)*.
Tickets to SOCAP19 are $1,595 and to When Women Lead $199 (if purchased with the conference); $249 (workshop only). For more information and to register, please go tohttps://socialcapitalmarkets.net/register/
*List of sponsors as of press time
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About SOCAP (Social Capital Markets):
SOCAP is the largest and most diverse impact investing community in the world. We convene a global ecosystem and marketplace – social entrepreneurs, investors, foundation and nonprofit leaders, government and policy leaders, creators, corporations, academics and beyond – through live and digital content experiences that educate, spur conversation, and inspire investment in positive impact. Our programming includes the annual SOCAP conference, SOCAP 365 regional events, SPECTRUM conference, and Money + Meaning podcasts. For more information, go to SocialCapitalMarkets.net; follow on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube; as well as #SOCAP19 for this year’s conference. SOCAP19 is an Intentional Media company, the purpose-driven media platform whose brands include SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact.
About Intentional Media:
Intentional Media is a purpose-driven media and events platform, catalyzing our transition to an economy that ensures that social, environmental and economic systems thrive together. Home to properties including SOCAP, Conscious Company Media and Total Impact – through the power of storytelling and networks, we connect, educate, and inspire people, transforming moments to movements, thoughts to action. For more information, go to https://intentional.co/; follow on https://intentional.co/social/
About the Thomson Reuters Foundation:
We are the corporate foundation of Thomson Reuters, the global news and information services company. Established in 1982, the Foundation has 100 staff members in 17 locations around the world, and works to advance media freedom, raise awareness of human rights issues, and develop initiatives to support more inclusive economies. We believe in the power of information and collaboration to shape a more fair and equal world. Through global news coverage, media development, free legal assistance and our convening authority, we seek to inform, connect and empower people around the world. Our mission is to inspire collective leadership by building global awareness of the challenges facing humanity, and empowering others to shape free, fair and open societies.
Photos of SOCAP18 are by sreel photography, courtesy of Social Capital Markets (SOCAP)
In the SU series, we heard from some of the top minds at SU on how to leverage exponential technology and incorporate it into your own business. We saw some of the implications that exponential technology will have on our futures, and we saw the impact this technology will have in solving the Global Goals. Listen in to hear more about Chandler’s 5 biggest takeaways from the SU series.
In this podcast, our goal is to uncover some of the most innovative companies leveraging leading-edge technology, like Singularity University. Companies like SU are taking on the global goals with social-impact driven business models.
We want this podcast to be a resource for you to learn about the innovative tech of our time and integrate it into your business model.
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Top 5 SU Series Lessons
Take Away 1: Start by Building a Regular Company… Then Go Exponential
When you’re building out an exponential technology business, one of the best ways to start is just to focus on building a regular company and focusing on solving a problem that you think that you’re uniquely good at that you will be able to specialize in in the marketplace and watch how that company develops organically.
Take Away 2: Bring in an Outside Specialist to Integrate Exponential Tech
One of the best ways to bring technology into your business is to hire someone that specializes in the technology that you want to leverage. Then, they can help you gauge the timing and success rate when you’re building an ‘exponential’ solution… since solutions like these often seem slow to start, and then make great leaps in traction. Only a specialist would be able to gauge whether your pace is a problem or if you’re just days away from the next quantum leap.
Take Away 3: Learn About Exponential Tech Across Industries
Once you get into the technology game, it’s advantageous to actually study all the different kinds of exponential technologies so you can stay on top of the marketplace. The nature of exponential technology is that industries across the world will be disrupted more and more quickly, and you’ll need to keep your eyes on the horizon to keep up and innovate.
Take Away 4: The Data Will Tell You Where to Start Innovating
You don’t have to be a technologist to get into the business of exponential technology. The best way to start is just to become more data-centric. When you start to see patterns in buying habits, online habits, and gaps in the market, you can begin to innovate solutions.
Take Away 5: Seeing The Innovations in Tech and Business Through Singularity
Chandler says, “Maybe I’m a little bit biased on this, but I really enjoyed getting the inside scoop of the latest and greatest of what singularity is up to in the world and their game plan over the next 10 years.” Singularity has been collecting the most innovate companies and technologists all over the world, so following their work will keep you up to date on upcoming opportunities and trends.
We will be taking a short break and when we come back we will start a series Impact Venture Capital, Private Equity Firms and how to measure impact with your portfolio companies at scale. Stay tuned!
Listen in to hear more about my 5 biggest takeaways from the SU series.
Luni’s Quick Bio from the Fledge.co website:
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