In June, I wrote about IGNIA, a social venture capital (“impact investing”) firm that has just closed on its first fund. In some exciting news, yesterday IGNIA announced an investment in a Mexican company called Barafon, a “provider of public telephony and related services to low income populations in Mexico through a network of independently [...]
Entries Tagged as 'social entrepreneurship'
IGNIA, a Social VC Firm, Closes its First Fund
June 23rd, 2010 · View Comments · VC, socent
If you’ve followed this blog for awhile (or just thought about this blog’s URL) you probably know that one of my passions is the intersection of investing and social impact. I’ve written at length about what I learned about for-profit social entrepreneurship from Nathaniel Whittemore and StartingBloc, new incubation initiatives like the Unreasonable Institute, why [...]
Tags:base of the pyramid·BoP·Ignia·impact investing·JP Morgan·Omidyar·rockefeller·social entrepreneurship·social VC·Soros·venture capital
Why U.S. Billionaires Should Create a Social PE Firm
June 18th, 2010 · View Comments · VC, socent
If you read CNN.com or the Wall Street Journal, you’ve likely run across a headline this week about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates (who have already given away a significant portion of their fortunes) issuing a challenge to the wealthiest individuals to do the same and give away 50% of their wealth. This challenge, called [...]
Tags:Berkshire Hathaway·Bill Gates·Gates Foundation·Giving Pledge·Melinda Gates·Microsoft·PE·private equity·social entrepreneurship·VC·venture capital·Warren Buffett
What’s Next Beta Launch
May 24th, 2010 · View Comments · Personal, socent
Remember that e-book I wrote about a couple months ago? The one titled “What’s Next: Big Ideas from 25 Gen-Yers Under 25”? Well, the beta of the e-book is out to the public! Here’s the blurb: “Inspired by Seth Godin’s What Matters Now, it showcases the stories & insights of 25 bright young voices from [...]
All Entrepreneurship is Social. Or is It?
April 12th, 2010 · View Comments · socent
In a recent article from Stanford Social Innovation Review, Carl Schram made the assertion that “All Entrepreneurship Is Social.” To wit: “Over the past decade or so, the term social entrepreneur has become a fashionable way of describing individuals and organizations that, in their attempts at large-scale change, blur the traditional boundaries between the for-profit [...]
Tags:Carl Schram·Chris Dixon·entrepreneurship·socent·social entrepreneurship·SSIR
A New Paradigm of Investing
April 8th, 2010 · View Comments · Personal, VC, socent
Just a few weeks ago, I received a call from a friend I met through StartingBloc, Kim Scheinberg. We had only briefly met before, so I was very honored to be on the receiving end of a phone call from her about a new project she was working on, one that was directly in the [...]
Tags:angel investing·Kim Scheinberg·Presumed Abundance·Rafe Furst·socent·social entrepreneurship·StartingBloc·venture capital
The Value of the VC Model for Social Enterprises
March 29th, 2010 · View Comments · VC, socent
This past weekend was the second installment of the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation (held at NYU again), and it has been a great experience once again, especially as it relates to the refining of some of my previous thoughts regarding “social venture capital” and what value-add it has to the existing world of (mainly [...]
Tags:socent·social enterprise·social entrepreneurship·StartingBloc·VC·venture capital
