Better Money Better World
56 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 days ago - ★★★★★ - 57 ratingsHost Daniel Pianko of Achieve Partners (www.achievepartners.com) talks with the top impact investors driving market-leading returns while bending the arc of human history toward sustainability and justice. A podcast project of Impact Capital Managers.
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Episodes
# 56 | Unveiling Blackhorn Ventures: Transforming Industries Through Digitization and Technology
April 08, 2024 13:00 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBIn this episode, Daniel delves into the thesis and track record of Blackhorn Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in founders transforming how we build, power, and move our world. Melissa Cheong, Managing Director at Blackhorn, sheds light on the company's transformative role in reshaping legacy industries. Melissa has a long career in impact investing and in addition to her role as General Partner at Blackhorn, she’s an investment committee member of Blue Earth Capital, ...
#55 | Money Matters: H/L Ventures Holistic Approach to Impactful Company Building
March 20, 2024 13:00 - 24 minutes - 22.7 MBH/L Ventures integrates venture studio and investment fund strategies for purpose-driven businesses and was founded 16 years ago. Now, H/L Ventures stands out as a trailblazer in holistic company building, home to entities like H/L Studios and City Rock Ventures. Diverging from conventional venture firms, H/L Ventures is most differentiated for pioneering a deeply hands-on approach, actively participating in the daily operations of portfolio companies showcasing a profound commitment to thei...
#54 | Profit with Purpose: Nuveen's Approach to Global Impact Investing
February 16, 2024 11:00 - 32 minutes - 30.1 MBNuveen, the wholly-owned asset manager of TIAA, a renowned financial services company specializing in retirement savings, manages over a trillion dollars of AUM, with TIAA's capital exceeding $350 billion. Rekha Unnithan leads Nuveen Private Equity Impact in the alternative asset class, managing over $1 billion. Focusing on climate and inclusion within the growth equity space, Nuveen Private Equity Impact has thrived, resulting in the creation of Nuveen Climate Inclusion strategy, following ...
#53 | GCM Grosvenor: Driving Returns While Making an Impact
February 01, 2024 11:00 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBGCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset manager with over 50 years of experience investing across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit, and absolute return strategies. They are a pioneer in customized solutions and a leader in providing innovative turn-key multi-client products. They provide clients with flexible access to alternative investments through a range of implementation strategies, including funds, co-investments, secondary transactions, and direct investments. ...
#52 | Ford Foundation Impact Investing Initiative Generating 28% Compound Annual Return (As of Dec 2021)
February 01, 2023 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MBIn 2017, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker embarked on an ambitious proposal to invest 8% of its then $12.5bn endowment – or roughly $1 billion – into impact investing and hired Roy Swan to run the effort. What could one of the most well-known foundations in the world do with the “other 95%” of their assets? The Foundation recently released a report on their efforts – highlighting a 28% compound annual return. Listen as head of Mission Investments Roy Swan describes the journey.
#51 | Tiedeman Advisors: Jed Emerson Becomes Global Impact Lead of Tiedeman Advisors
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBJed Emerson co-authored the first book on impact investing and led a “portfolio lifestyle” with academic appointments at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford business schools while helping to start leading organizations like ImpactAssets and Pacific Community Ventures. He currently serves as Global Lead, Impact Investing for Tiedeman Advisors, a wealth manager with over $25bn of assets under management. Jed quotes wisdom from Buddhist scriptures to Martin Luther King to lead the impact investing i...
#50 | Autism Impact Fund: Funding Venture Returning Innovation for Neurodiverse Challenges
September 27, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBAutism Impact Fund (“AIF”) Founder Chris Male aims to become the investment and innovation arm of the autism community. AIF's mission is to revolutionize diagnosing, treating and living with autism through a venture capital model. With 1 in 44 children in the US diagnosed on the autism spectrum, over $350 billion in direct spend (over $60,000 per child with autism) and an 85% unemployment rate for autistic adults, AIF hopes to harness the power of the capital markets to create transformation...
#49 | Equilibrium Capital: The Most Successful Impact Investor Without the Label
September 15, 2022 08:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBEquilibrium Capital has gathered over $4.5 billion across its platform of sustainability driven investment strategies. Equilibrium became one of the largest impact native investment firms by not referring to itself as an impact investor, but instead by developing strategies for institutional investors wherein sustainability drove the financial returns. Equilibrium created a series of thematic financial “products” that appealed to institutional investors – such as Equilibrium’s Carbon Transi...
#48 | JP Morgan Private Bank: Sustainable Investment Platform Enabling Client Sustainable Investing
August 17, 2022 08:00 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBJPMorgan Chase is America’s largest bank and its Private Banking business, the firm’s wealth management arm for high and ultra-high net worth clients, is committed to building a sustainable investment platform that enables clients to direct dollars towards sustainable investing. Global Head of Sustainable Investing at J.P. Morgan Private Bank drills down on how to then measure that impact in both the public and private markets. J.P. Morgan’s Global Impact Fund represents a portfolio of impac...
#47 | INNovateHers: Overcoming Adversity to Build Network of Female Entrepreneurship
August 03, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBLess than 3% of venture capital funding goes to women founders. Yet studies show that women founders drive two times as much revenue as male founders and have better IRRs. Bobbi Kurshan and Kathy Hurley wrote InnovateHERs to highlight female business leaders and discover how women can leverage their entrepreneurial mindset to advance their careers. The book features the stories 29 entrepreneurial women, including those that overcame immense adversity including abject poverty, to achieve succ...
#46 | Apollo Global: Bringing Scale to Impact
July 27, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBAs there will never be enough philanthropy dollars to solve major problems and opportunities driven by global crises like climate change, Apollo Global Management is looking to invest in large, scaled companies where growing profits is directly tied to impact. Apollo named Lisa Hall Impact Chairperson in 2020. Hall has been a leader in impact investing since the 1990s when she joined Calvert Impact Capital. Since then, she has been at the forefront of impact trend setting from serving as C...
#45 | Builders Fund: Purpose as a Competitive Advantage
July 20, 2022 08:00 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBPurpose is a competitive advantage for the Builders Fund, which leads growth equity and buyouts of lower middle market companies driven by impact. Builders has invested in companies like PosiGen Solar, bringing solar power to low income homeowners; Traditional Medicinals, the leading wellness tea brand in North America; and Mixt, a plant-based restaurant chain. Mike Dutton and Tripp Baird founded Builders to fill a gap for impact-focused capital for emerging growth stage companies, and to b...
#44 | Wireframe Ventures: Backing Early-stage Founders Focused on the Health of People and the Planet
June 22, 2022 08:00 - 39 minutes - 54.2 MBWireframe Ventures backs early-stage founders focused on the health of people and the planet. Co-founders Harsh Patel and Paul Straub make initial investments of $500K to $2m at the seed or pre-seed stage, and then work closely with founders to turn their world changing ideas into scaled companies. For example, Wireframe led the seed round in Span.io, to reinvent the hundred year old electric panel, and has since raised over $120M to bring his vision from concept to commercial deployment, an...
#43 | Lumos Capital: Technology Enabled Growth Companies in EdTech
June 15, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutes - 52.4 MBLumos Capital Group invests $10-30M into growing companies defining the future of learning and work. Founded by Victor Hu and James Tieng, Lumos looks to partner deeply with companies that are growing impactful tech-enabled products and services in the global education sector. With the digital transformation of education, traditional products and distribution channels are being disrupted by a new category of customer-centric platforms and services, which in turn has created a new class of hi...
#42 | UBS: World’s Largest Truly Global Wealth Manager Goes Long Sustainability and Impact
June 08, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 56.3 MBUBS, the world’s largest truly global wealth manager, has a long history in sustainability and is taking a lead in providing sustainable and impact investing advice and solutions to its clients. The firm has a view that wealth managers and advisors play a critical role in helping clients to deploy their philanthropic and investment capital for a better world. Andrew Lee, Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing for UBS Global Wealth Management, estimates that 1 in...
#41 | Align Impact: Finding Impact for Clients from Master Limited Partnerships to Art Funds
June 01, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 55.2 MBJennifer Kenning tells her inspiring story of founding Align Impact after struggling with severe depression which led her to volunteer with the homeless. These experiences led her to found Align Impact – a $2.3 Billion under advisement impact investing firm. Named 40 under 40 by Investment News and amongst the 50 most influential women in private wealth by Private Asset Management, Kenning believes that capitalism can be a force for good bringing people centered solutions to global issues r...
#40 | Achieve Partners: High Growth and High Impact Education Technology Investing
May 24, 2022 08:00 - 39 minutes - 53.6 MBNote: Better Money Better World host Daniel Pianko is co-Founder and Managing Director of Achieve Partners. Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information. Achieve Partners is re...
#39 | Mosaic Fellow: Transformative Summer Internships for Diverse Impact Investors
May 18, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 56 MBThe Mosiac Fellowship brings a skilled and diverse pool of talented young professionals into the world of impact investing through a summer internship program – to help create the impact investing leaders of tomorrow. Meet four Mosaic fellows from top graduate programs who spent 10 week summers embedded with ICM members and are now bringing their diverse experiences to impact investing and entrepreneurship. The Mosaic Fellows is a fully paid fellowship that you can apply to on the ICM websit...
#38 | Ballentine Partners: Multi-Generational Wealth Value Aligned Advisors
April 27, 2022 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBBallentine Partners is a multi-family office with $20 billion under advisement across 270 client families. Ballentine was one of the early pioneers in private impact investing given their long-term view on wealth management and their goal of helping clients to align their values and their practices through allocation of capital. While clients often start seeking alpha creation, Ballentine’s clients derive the most value from work to ensure healthy family relationships around money. In parti...
#37 | Caprock: Backing Impact Managers at Scale
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBCaprock has invested in over 100 private impact investments with 40 fund managers, including 20 Impact Capital Managers. Mark Berryman, leads Caprock’s Impact Investing and previously served as co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Global Social Investment Funds Group. Berryman is a recovering camel rider, which he learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali at the start of his career 25 years ago. Caprock has provided catalytic capital across strategies ranging from sustainable infrastructure to fint...
#36 | Blue Highway: Investing in the Rural Economy
April 05, 2022 08:30 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBRural America is underserved by traditional investors. Blue Highway Capital is investing in cash flow positive business with strong management teams in niche markets where there is little (or frequently no) competition for deals. Karin Gregory has been investing in the rural economy for over 20 years. Gregory and her colleagues have backed companies like Aryv, the Uber for non-emergency medical appointments and LED Dynamics, manufacturing smart lighting solutions to reduce energy costs. ...
#35 | Capricorn: Backing Impact Native Investment Firms
March 22, 2022 07:30 - 44 minutes - 41 MBCapricorn, originally formed to manage the assets of Jeff Skoll and his foundation, created the Sustainable Investment Fund to investing in impact native general partners to accelerate the growth of missioned aligned capital. By growing investment firms, Capricorn is catalyzing private sector capital to close the gap between the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals’ unmet needs. Bill Orum and Michaela Edwards, partners at Capricorn, have backed 11 managers ranging from impact-driven carbon fi...
#34 | Third Sphere: Pre-customer Climate Tech VC Delivering Top Quartile Returns
March 15, 2022 07:30 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBThird Sphere funds are top quartile or decile on a net TVPI basis backing pre-customer companies that are transforming global energy systems. Ranked by Techcrunch as one of the top 10 VCs founders love the most, co-founder Shaun Abrahamson describes how he backs Climatetech Superheroes and then leverages his vast network of advisors and angel investors to build a full stack early-stage climate investing platform.
#33 | Citi Impact Fund: For-profit, For-purpose Venture Scaleable Businesses
February 22, 2022 08:30 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBJeff Meyers is a lifelong Citi banker and founding member of Citi’s $200 million Citi Impact Fund, investing in for profit, for purpose venture scaleable businesses driving impact. Jeff’s volunteer role with StreetWise Partners, a NYC-based nonprofit – bringing job skills to the unemployed – served as the impetus to bring impact into his role at Citi. The Fund invests in four areas: Environment/Sustainability, Financial Inclusion, Physical and Social Infrastructure and Workforce Development ...
#32 | ECMC Group: Philanthropy, Operating Companies and Impact Investing Under One Organization
February 08, 2022 08:30 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBECMC Group (“ECMC”) is a non-profit that grew out of a Student Loan guarantor focused on empowering underserved communities to thrive through education with a mission to help students succeed. ECMC recently doubled its commitment to its Education Impact Fund to $250M, including a growing direct investment portfolio and commitments to a number of Impact Capital Managers, including Achieve Partners, New Markets Venture Partners and ReThink Education, to invest across the full spectrum of capit...
#31 | Laird Norton Wealth Management: Counseling High Net Worth Individuals to Optimize the Financial and Social Returns From Capital
February 01, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutes - 42.9 MBLaird Norton Wealth Management (“LNWM”) serves as long-term partners for families wanting to achieve their greatest impact through their investments, legacy planning and philanthropy. Ron Albahary is the Chief Investment officer of LNWM. He started his career at Merrill Lynch when stockbrokers called clients around dinner time to sell a specific stock or financial product. Today, Ron and his team of client advisors work with families, foundations, and non-profits to allocate capital in an i...
#30 | Impact Alpha: The Watercooler of the Impact Investing World
January 25, 2022 11:00 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBThis week is unique as veteran Wall Street Journal writer David Bank starts by asking your normal Better Money Better World podcast host Daniel Pianko some questions about Achieve Partners and the founding of Impact Capital Managers. Then your host gets to turn the tables and ask some tough questions of David’s role moderating the impact conversation on the pages of ImpactAlpha, the water cooler of the impact investing industry.
#29 | CIM: Technology Can Reset 1970s era Lending Rules Expanding Access to Credit
December 15, 2021 08:30 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBCommunity Investment Manager (“CIM”) provides credit facilities to help solve structural challenges that women and people from disadvantaged communities often face when accessing capital. According to co-founder Jacob Haar, CIM thinks about how small, incremental changes to the 1970s banking model of lending based on assets and inventory can be evolved for the modern age by bringing a technology and data driven impact lens to underwriting. Jacob realized the power of even a little bit of cre...
#28 |The Social Entrepreneurship Fund: Alpha Creation by Putting the Needs of Low Income Americans First
November 30, 2021 08:30 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBThe Social Entrepreneurship Fund (“TSEF”) invests in business that that tap into previously underserved markets to generate returns while improving quality of life for everyday Americans in the process. For example, Cushion uses AI to negotiate down bank overdraft fees. Alice helps hourly workers get access to thousands of dollars of federal benefits like flexible spending accounts and Transitchecks. Together this bottom of the pyramid approach to investing is creating a free market approach ...
#27 | ASA: Transitioning Billion Dollar Balance Sheets to Mission Driven Impact Investing
November 23, 2021 08:30 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBAmerican Student Assistance (ASA) is a 65-year-old student loan guarantor run by CEO Jean Eddy and board Chair Larry Gennari. Jean and her team are reconstituting ASA’s billion-dollar asset base towards impact investing in support of ASA’s mission: to provide tools and resources so students can have a plan for their future as they leave high school. While historically ASA has focused on grant making, Jean and Larry have worked with the board to think of ASA as an advocacy and innovation orga...
#26 | Leeds Illuminate: Scaling Education and Workforce Companies Post-Covid
November 17, 2021 08:30 - 41 minutes - 37.9 MBThe Covid pandemic has accelerated education delivery model trends – effectively collapsing 15 years of growth into 15 months – creating a global market for the future of learning. Susan Cates and Elizabeth Chou co-founded Leeds Illuminate to partner with entrepreneurs passionate about scaling positive outcomes for learners, workers and investors. The all-female investment team is backing growth-oriented, primarily minority investments in high quality, rapidly growing companies with $10M or...
#25 | Impact Engine: Building the Field of Impact Investing
October 20, 2021 07:30 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBImpact Engine backs transformative companies across the investment life cycle – from early-stage VC style investing to a PE/funds strategy. With the flexibility up and down the capital stack, Impact Engine is able to back companies like Workit Health, an online addiction resource center which has 84% of its clients in treatment 30 for over 30 days, from its earliest stages up through a growth investment. Jessica Droste Yagan describes her evolution from leading the creation of the McDonald’...
#24 | Social Impact Capital: Solving the World’s Most Challenging Problems Through Technology
October 13, 2021 07:30 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBPeter Bruce-Clark describes backing transformative companies that some traditional venture capital firms pass on because at first glance the startup appears to be a charity rather than an industry changing unicorn. Social Impact Capital dives deep through its network of advisors to identify contrarian breakthrough technologies that have the chance to transform the world – from covalent drug therapies to DARPA backed IP that could cut deaths in automobile collisions by over 80%. With exits l...
#23 | Niche Businesses That Grow Fast and Drive Impact
October 05, 2021 07:30 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBArborview co-founder Karl Khoury realized that investing in niche services and consumer businesses at the lower end of the middle market can often drive more impact and alpha than a cool app. Karl left a successful venture career to start an impact fund after realizing how wasteful consumer products were after the birth of his first child. There had to be a better way. Since then, Karl has been backing entrepreneurs often overlooked by impact investors and venture capitalists alike – with ...
#22 | Key Man: Unpacking the Greatest Fraud in Impact Investing History
September 28, 2021 07:30 - 49 minutes - 45 MBArif Naqvi used the language of impact investing to attract luminary limited partners like the Gates Foundation, CDC Group, and Bank of America to invest in his multi-billion dollar private equity firm Abraaj partners that turned out to be a fraud. Naqvi was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars to support his lavish personal spending. Simon Clark broke the story for the Wall Street Journal wrote the definitive book Key Man about the fall of Abraaj (available here) and provides a unique ...
#21 | Salesforce Ventures Impact: Corporate Venture Fund Investing Goes Impact
September 21, 2021 07:30 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBClaudine Emeott leads Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund – a $100M vehicle targeting venture capital returns in impactful companies that partner within the Salesforce ecosystem. With over 30 companies, Salesforce Ventures Impact is part of a growing number of corporate venture arms that are embracing impact to drive their balance sheet investing. A unique investor, Salesforce employees advise and mentor portfolio companies and often make joint introductions to key customers or even to potential...
#20 Zeal Capital | How a Sole, Diverse GP Raised an Oversubscribed First Fund During COVID
September 14, 2021 07:30 - 46 minutes - 42.1 MBNasir Qadree raised an oversubscribed first fund through Covid from large institutional capital sources like PayPal, Bank of America and Truist Bank to rethink the building blocks of wealth in our society. Nasir’s pathway into venture was not a straight line. After starting his career at Goldman Sachs, Nasir found his way to the private markets after opening a coffee shop in the West Village and discovering that many of his patrons were venture capitalists. Today, Nasir is building a new ty...
#19 | Blue Haven Initiative: Impact Investing with Your Children's Children in Mind
August 24, 2021 07:30 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MBLiesel Pritzker Simmons and Ian Simmons challenged orthodoxy when they invested 100% of their family wealth into impact investing by creating a new type of family office -- Blue Haven Initiative. Blue Haven invests through third party managers with an impact lens across asset classes, from public equities to private equity to early-stage VC to hedge funds. The only in-house invested platform is Blue Haven’s $50M allocation to an evergreen fund to support mission-driven, tech enabled startup...
#18 | Bain Double Impact: Rethinking the Traditional Buyout Firm
August 10, 2021 06:00 - 47 minutes - 43.9 MBMassachusetts Governor Deval Patrick partnered in impact with buyout behemoth Bain Capital. Together, they created Bain Double Impact which was recently selected by PEI as the top impact fund in the world. By investing in mission-driven, scaled middle market companies operating in traditional industries with clear impact metrics, the Bain Double Impact team is bringing impact into middle market private equity. With three major exits already under their belt, Governor Patrick believes that ...
#17 | Two Sigma Impact: Big Data, Big Impact
August 04, 2021 03:30 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBWith over 1,000 data scientists and engineers and 70 petabytes of data, Two Sigma is uniquely positioned to seek to bring data science to impact investing. Warren Valdmanis co-founded the Two Sigma Impact team after 14 years at Bain Capital, including a role in creating Bain Double Impact. Warren is focused on solving two threats to our economy: companies and executives prioritizing short term profits over long term growth and and the hollowing out of the middle-class workforce. Both topics ...
#16 | Bridges US Sustainable Growth Fund: Distilling Impact to a Single Robert Parker-like Score
July 27, 2021 03:30 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBBrian Trelstad has been a driving force of virtually every innovation in impact investing for the last 20 years. He helped start the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs when Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund and Brian helped lead the creation of the widely used Impact Reporting and Investing Standards (“IRIS”). Now, he’s telling the impact investing community to stop innovating and start implementing to provide a clear, concise description of what impact is and how to judge it....
#15 | Closed Loop Partners: Reshaping the Circular Economy From Poop To High Fashion
July 20, 2021 03:30 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MBClosed Loop Partners invests in products and services that don’t depend on natural resource extraction or the disposal of those products in land fill to be successful. Closed Loop is a VC through buyout stage investor in the circular economy – proving that the circular economy is much more economical and higher quality than the companies of the last century. Through their investments, Closed Loop is showing that “those that profited in the previous era will be consigned to their rightful pla...
#14 | Ecosystem Integrity Fund: The Next Industrial Revolution is Built on Sustainability
July 13, 2021 03:30 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBElectric vehicles are superior to internal combustion powered cars. Distributed energy is superior to centralized energy. Sustainable agriculture is more profitable than dirty agriculture. Many trillions of dollars are flowing into recreating our 100 year old industrial infrastructure. The cost of solar power has dropped ~90% since the founding of the Ecosystem Integrity Fund which creates the opportunity to create venture like returns from deploying over 20,000 charging stations and savi...
#13 | SJF Ventures: High Growth, Positive Impact
July 06, 2021 03:30 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBSJF Ventures has pioneered venture-like growth in sustainable businesses since 1999. Co-founded by Dave Kirkpatrick, SJF was initially called the “Sustainable Jobs Fund” – founded with the belief that environmentally driven companies would create good jobs. But today, SJF has built deep expertise across verticals like healthcare, education, and the environment. Dave, and Emma Sissman, lead at SJF for implementing impact and growth strategies, talk about how SJF drives high impact and high gr...
#12 | TFX Capital: Can Veterans Fuel the Next Silicon Valley Boom?
June 29, 2021 03:30 - 50 minutes - 46 MBBrandon Shelton loved jumping out of airplanes as an airborne officer. After leaving the service and working on Wall Street, Brandon is now co-founder of TFX Capital which backs high performing veterans who are domain experts tackling nasty problems. Veterans make up 0.5% of the population but start 10% of the small businesses in America – making veterans an attractive demographic to invest behind. In the 1960s, US government funding helped create the first boom in Silicon Valley. TFX Cap...
#11 | Mission Possible: Decarbonize the Economy
June 22, 2021 03:30 - 49 minutes - 44.9 MBDBL Partners is renowned for leading early investments in companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. DBL Co-Founder Nancy Pfund built her career with a simple mission: to take on companies that are stifling innovation. From the Detroit Big 3 to Satellite companies that monopolized access to space, Nancy leads investments in startups that take on the incumbents and win. Listen to the story of how a young staffer at the Sierra Club in Washington DC became one of Fortune’s top 25 Eco-Innova...
#10 | HCAP Partners: Revolutionary Idea, Pay Workers Well to Drive Returns
June 15, 2021 03:30 - 38 minutes - 35 MBHCAP invests in service-oriented companies with large numbers of staff then pay that workforce a living wage and show them respect, trademarking the term “Gainful Jobs Approach”, which was created in conjunction with MIT’s Good Jobs Institute, to ensure that every employee has a “quality job”. Could HCAP be creating the actual “future of work” where sustainability for employees drives success on the bottom line? Hope Mago, Board Chair of Impact Capital Managers, continues to innovate at one...
#9 | Lime Rock New Energy: Changing How We Create and Transport Electricity
June 08, 2021 03:30 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MBEnergy is changing and our electricity grid technology is over 100 years old. Every day, new solar panels, windmills and cogeneration plants are transforming America’s electricity production – but our grid that carries electricity to those who use it is unable to keep up. Last year, there were over 700 gigawatts of power that were not hooked up to the grid. Lime Rock New Energy is on a mission to change how our energy is created and consumed by filling a hole in the market: growth equity. ...
#8 | Core Innovation Capital: It’s Expensive To Be Poor
June 01, 2021 03:30 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBArjan Schutte is democratizing prosperity by investing in technologies that dramatically reduce the cost of financial services. 17% of low income Americans' spending goes to things that are generally “free” for the middle class and wealthy – like having a bank account. Arjan has backed unicorns like blockchain-based international digital payments company Ripple, and out of left field concepts like Yotta that encourage savings through lottery-like winnings. Listen to how over the last decad...
#7 | CityLight Capital: The Machine Will Select Your Impact Investments Now
May 25, 2021 03:30 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBJosh Cohen created CityLight Capital after 9/11 and was an early backer of transformative companies like 2U (NASD: TWOU) and Shotspotter (NASD: SSTI). Today, CityLight is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to identify investments before innovative companies hit the radar screen of other investors. Leveraging the Machine allows CityLight to make about a seed stage investment almost every week with staggering results – of the 19 seed stage investments in their prior fund, 17 had fu...