Better Money Better World

This 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.

Community 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 credit to transform lives when he provided micro-credit loans in Azerbaijan. Today, CIM’s capital helps transformative companies demonstrate and scale in responsible lending innovation to reach the underserved.

The 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 to making the social safety net work.

American 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 organization – and the shift towards impact investing logically followed. Listen as Jean and Larry describe how they hired outside consultants, built their internal team, and are now deploying capital into mission aligned funds that embrace impact as a core part of their DNA.

The 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 more in revenue.

Impact 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’s Corporation global and US sustainable sourcing strategies to immersing herself into becoming CEO of leading impact investment firm where 3 of 4 partners are female and non-white creates.

Peter 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 like OpenInvest and follow on investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Founders Fund, Silicon Valley is taking note of Social Impact Capital’s uncanny ability to identify seed stage companies driven by the 21st Century transition to an ESG driven economy that can represent outsized returns through structural revolutions in our society.

Arborview 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 results like turning a metal roofing company from a 19 GIIRS rating to over 90 while tripling revenue and gross margins.

Arif 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 perspective on what the impact investing community to wrestle with the potential underbelly of the enlightened capitalism we preach.

Claudine 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 vendor relationships with Salesforce itself in key focus areas: education & workforce development, sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion, and social sector technology.