Insight analysis of the competitive and ever-changing environment in where entrepreneurs must labor rigorously. The same paradigm holds true for impact entrepreneurs who must be measured by both economic and social metrics. Sadly, thousands if not tens of thousands of startups fail before one can succeed. Case in point: there were incalculable social network communities started from 1997 to 2013, but only Facebook dominated this sector. It’s always the survival of the fitness that rules in capitalistic marketplace.
Impact entrepreneurs, investors, supporters and stakeholders can collaborate intelligently to select the most promising candidates to succeed in such a marketplace. Building a dedicated ecosystem to support impact startups would be ideal but highly impractical in a free-market, capital driven world. As much as I admire this concept, I question its rationale. Please prove me wrong!
Interesting article that raises many good points about achieving social impact and scaling. As a portfolio manager, we invested in a highly innovative web-based remittance platform. For many developing countries, receiving overseas remittances are one of the biggest areas of their economies. As we competed against Western Union and MoneyGram in this highly fragmented industry, our platform helped bring down the costs of remitting funds to South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. We were eventually able to get a strong exit.
Very interesting post. I’ve thinking about funding solutions to scaling early stage impact startups for a fews years since reading Omidyar post on Priming the pump. The key to identifying which path a startup might have is the evaluarion of it’s intangibles for example the direct path might be the startup ability to create “network effect” or an innovate business model that destroys profits of incumbents or competitors. Evaluating indirect paths requires looking at startups as part of an ecosystem low barriers to entry. We have some solutions we are considering to prime the pump.
COMMENTS
BY Sifu, Paul Lee
ON September 4, 2014 03:35 PM
Insight analysis of the competitive and ever-changing environment in where entrepreneurs must labor rigorously. The same paradigm holds true for impact entrepreneurs who must be measured by both economic and social metrics. Sadly, thousands if not tens of thousands of startups fail before one can succeed. Case in point: there were incalculable social network communities started from 1997 to 2013, but only Facebook dominated this sector. It’s always the survival of the fitness that rules in capitalistic marketplace.
Impact entrepreneurs, investors, supporters and stakeholders can collaborate intelligently to select the most promising candidates to succeed in such a marketplace. Building a dedicated ecosystem to support impact startups would be ideal but highly impractical in a free-market, capital driven world. As much as I admire this concept, I question its rationale. Please prove me wrong!
BY Joel Steiker
ON September 16, 2014 07:36 AM
Interesting article that raises many good points about achieving social impact and scaling. As a portfolio manager, we invested in a highly innovative web-based remittance platform. For many developing countries, receiving overseas remittances are one of the biggest areas of their economies. As we competed against Western Union and MoneyGram in this highly fragmented industry, our platform helped bring down the costs of remitting funds to South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. We were eventually able to get a strong exit.
BY Terry J Leach
ON October 8, 2014 08:03 PM
Very interesting post. I’ve thinking about funding solutions to scaling early stage impact startups for a fews years since reading Omidyar post on Priming the pump. The key to identifying which path a startup might have is the evaluarion of it’s intangibles for example the direct path might be the startup ability to create “network effect” or an innovate business model that destroys profits of incumbents or competitors. Evaluating indirect paths requires looking at startups as part of an ecosystem low barriers to entry. We have some solutions we are considering to prime the pump.