 This is by far my favorite convening because the truth is when we have conversations all of us lead with values. There's a conference next week happening in Vegas where I'd argue that most are not leading with values, coupled with financial returns, interest, and obviously impact, which correlates to values. So I'm just really, really excited to be back after a couple years. My name is Nassir Khadri and we'll get into our spill here soon. But the temperature check here, in the spirit of really understanding the diverse stakeholders that really elevate the impact investing ecosystem here in the U.S. and around the globe, I want to get a sense of who's in the room. So if you're an entrepreneur, raise your hand. Entrepreneurs in the house, raise your hand, awesome, awesome, awesome. If you are a venture, if you're a fund manager running or part of a venture capital firm, private equity firm, okay, not many, okay, just, okay, there is, there it is, you're a little late. They like to hide a little bit. Hide a little bit. Awesome, awesome. Who else? If you're the money behind the money and you're really, aka the limited partners, you are obviously very critical to this ecosystem. Raise your hand. I love that. If I was like 10 years ago, you wouldn't have raised your hand because it's given the discretion of most LPs and what about other stakeholders, heads of accelerator programs, think tanks, academia, raise your hand. Yes, ESOs, yes, entrepreneur support organizations, raise your hand, awesome, awesome. So as we can all see a diverse group of stakeholders that all play a role in elevating the impact investing ecosystem. I mean the truth is like, this is a clear indication that everyone can help, whether you're on the funding side, the entrepreneur support organization side or the investing side. It's really exciting. So just really excited to have this conversation led by my good friend Jason Palmer here. And I want to turn it over to my other brother, Brian Dixon, to kick us off and share the scope of what we hear about, why we're here. Excellent, excellent. Well, one excited to be here, Brian Dixon, and this year we decided we're going to do something a little bit different. And so we're not doing a panel this year, we're going to do a workshop. And so you see the whiteboards coming out at everybody's table, we'll set up some groups and we'll have good discussion. And so we're going to keep this brief on stage so we can get to the real work which is going to happen at the tables. Kind of state our goals. And so our goals are pretty simple this year. We wanted to create connections, we wanted to share ideas, we wanted to help motivate and really get closer to what is radical collaboration and how do we build better systems inside of impact investing. And so it really comes out to three questions that will prompt you to go to your tables and we'll kind of discuss at the tables. You know the first is what does collaboration look like alongside your investments to make it more valuable and impactful for people, for relationships, for system change, and really creative allocations of capital. The second, what criterias do you use to evaluate impact in your investments and how does that improve accountability? You know in short, do the ideas that we'll talk about today, do they have better outcomes for historically excluded groups for instance? And last, what are some of the best practices that you're undertaking, whether it be on long-term action models or plans? And what are some new ways we can kind of change impact investing for the better? And so this is a goal to share what you're doing, whether it be from a founder perspective or from a venture perspective or from an LP perspective as well. And so we're going to jump into some quick intros and some case studies and then we're going to do some breakouts. Yeah. And so I'll start off. I'm Brian Dixon from Caper Capital. We've been investing for the last 10 years. We're focused on investing in companies that are helping low-income communities and communities of color. We really don't believe that there's this trade-off between getting top quartile returns and investing in impact companies. In fact, we've proven it. We invest in over 178 companies. We've done it by investing in extremely diverse founders. 59% of our founders identify as a woman and are a person of color. That's by design, casting a wide net. And from a TV PI perspective and IR perspective, we've outperformed Pitchbook and Cambridge Associates as well. And these are all public numbers that we released in our impact report. But I want to talk today about a case study called the Upside Tech Alliance. And it's really a way that we thought about radical collaboration internally. And it all started with the former president Barack Obama meeting some of our founders. And really, his question was, you all are doing great work. Why aren't you working together? And so we took that as a challenge. And the founders took it as a challenge, really, and started Upside Alliance. And so you have four companies, ACLIMA, which is focused on your quality. You have Block Power focused on energy. You have Bitwise focused on education. And you've Promise focused on fintech. And so all these founders have something in common, which is they come from underserved communities and they're serving communities of color and low-income communities. And this is a way for them to work together to really revitalize cities and think differently as a group rather than an individual startup. And it really came down to four main things. One, they want to increase economic mobility, really expand digital equity, employ a diverse and a local workforce. And I can't see my number four, which is develop a healthier and thriving communities, which is the goal of all these companies individually. But as a group, they can actually tackle more and actually sell and have a bigger impact as a group. And it's really exciting to see. It's the first time we've ever done anything like this in our portfolio. I think for all the founders in the room, you know how hard it is as a founder, just trying to build your business. Let alone to build it with another company or sell with another company. And this is one case where it actually works. And here are a couple of success stories. I'll pick Ithaca New York, for example. This is an example where we had Block Power, who was already in Ithaca. And the thought was, well, how do we bring some of these other companies, such as EurQuality? And so they're not only electrifying, but decarbonizing the entire city. And this is a contract where three out of those four companies now have business in Ithaca. And so it's a different model. It's one that I think sometimes you look at these small companies, you're like, well, how is this going to work? But I would say for the investors in the room, really look across your portfolio. A lot of times there's companies that could peer up and go for a larger contract to have more impact in the city. And these are a couple of examples of how it worked out for us. Still a work in progress, but really trying to do something new, something exciting, and something radical. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Brian. So I'm Jason Palmer. I'm a general partner at New Markets Venture Partners. And if I'd been in the audience when you asked those questions, I would have raised my hand for the entrepreneur. I would have raised my hand for being an LP. I'm an LP in K-Port Capital and a couple other funds. I would have raised my hand for working with an organization that supports ESOs, Village Capital. I'm the board chair of Village Capital. And I'm also a GP at New Markets. New Markets basically is investing in trying to close the education to employment divide. Go ahead and flip that so I have the time. You did that for me already or? Because we're going to try to go fast. And one of the things that was really important to us and why I really wanted to pull together this group for this discussion about how impact investing and radical collaboration can lead to systemic change is there's not a clarity among all of us about what systemic change is and how it can come about. And at New Markets, we have a pretty clear philosophy of that that's driven by the fact that we've worked in all four of these sectors ourselves. This is our investment strategy. In education, there are 10 research-based milestones that determine if you will actually get to a $50,000 a year good quality job by age 30 or not. And they start early. Kindergarten readiness, do you have the executive function to focus and learn? Do you get to literacy by grade three or four? Do you have mathematical fluency in the middle school years? Do you develop the social and emotional learning that you need to? Do you graduate from high school? Do you get a post-secondary credential with labor market value? Each of these is very carefully determined because these are very important milestones on your journey. And we look for companies that are disrupting or improving in an evidence-based way the ability of millions or maybe possibly billions of people to achieve those milestones with greater efficiency and with greater equity. The case study that I picked for this is American prison data systems. Also now goes by APDS. It's a company we invested in that provides education, social emotional learning, and reentry services to people in our incarceration system here in the U.S. I won't go into it at great length because I want to keep things moving. But as you can guess, this is a really big challenge to solve. Justice impacted individuals, very few of them end up employed in good quality jobs. But there are evidence-based solutions that this company is employing to try to get more of them into those jobs after they exit. We're going to talk a little bit more about impact measurement. New markets is very focused on figuring out ways to measure the impact of our companies along that journey. Nassir. Again, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Nassir Khadry. I'm the founder and managing partner at a bit of a newer franchise called Zeal Capital Partners. We're headquartered out of Washington, D.C. Our focus is quite simple, very targeted. We're a category of civic fund focused on backing exceptional, diverse management teams that are rethinking the building blocks of wealth from education to employment pathways to financial wellness. And I can publicly say, given that we are in the midst of Zeal 2 fundraise, we are scaling our lens to a third category, health equity. We cannot discount the role that health care plays as we think about turbocharging economic mobility across the country. And we will underwrite and look at companies also in Canada as well. We are investing out of Zeal 1. We focus on seed stage companies and just really excited to be one of the newer franchises and across the private markets VC landscape. The case study I chose was, it really goes into the crux of this conversation, is if we're truly going to unbundle or democratize entrepreneurship, access to capital, we have to rethink how we think about investment strategies. And we know the numbers. We know the numbers in terms of where capital has flow from gender, ethnicity, geo. But what does that look like when you include those data points? And so what we did was we said, inclusive investing. Inclusive investing is a five prong market back approach. And we actually trademark that allows us to widen our lens and allows us to also keep alpha and impact front and center. And we believe that the gold standard of every private markets, whether you're a story franchise or you're an emerging manager. If you implement this five prong approach, we will see more venture funds level in the playing field, seeing more capital getting flowed into women and people of color and founders of all abilities, LGBTQ plus. And of course founders also from non-traditional tech hotbeds. And I have a track record, started my career off at Village Capital. And then more recently at AT&T, intentionally focusing on these five buckets. But we see much like actually all of us are having interest in these categories. But the fourth bucket focusing on the role that fintech and the future of work size, future of learning and soon to be health equity play in tearing out systemic barriers for patients and students and workers and the underbank consumer. For example, we, and here's just some data points. I'm getting tapped as you can hear me. Anyway, this is public and just really excited to be here and unpack and really learn from you. And how you guys all think about systemic change as it relates to capital allocation. Thank you. Clicker guess. So my name is Rheem Gusus. I'm with Village Capital. I'm the chief growth officer. So Village Capital is a global organization and our main focus is to unlock social and financial capital for early stage impact creating startups and especially those with underrepresented founders who have lived experience with systemic problems. Our approach is we take an ecosystem approach. So we work with all the critical elements within an ecosystem. So we work directly with founders. We help accelerate their investment readiness through a variety of tools. We work with accelerators. We also help make them more effective, efficient, sustainable and inclusive. We work with investors. We help them with the deal flow so that they can unlock capital towards the entrepreneurs that we are supporting. And we also work with a wide variety of capital providers. We help them structure, manage and support funds so that they can offer a wide spectrum of financial tools as well. And our approach to unlocking capital is very much centered and focused on inclusiveness. So building an inclusive system is something we're very intentional and focused on. And over the years we've developed a number of very unique tools that we've had the chance to test all over the world in a variety of programs across various sectors as well. And the one that I want to focus on today and quickly talk about it is the peer selected investment model. So as you all know, venture capital basically flows into a homogeneous, let's say group of founders with a bias towards men and the major tech hub. So what we've done with this model is that we've shifted the power dynamics and we've placed them in the hands of entrepreneurs. So entrepreneurs are going through our accelerator programs, actually get to select who gets or who receives the investment at the end of the acceleration program. So and we've tested this in over 150 programs over the past since our establishment in close to 30 countries around the world. And we've found out that this methodology is not extremely effective in identifying profitable ventures. But also our portfolio is extremely inclusive and diverse. Okay, so these are the results of being tough. Peer selected companies went on to raise the most capital. And you can see how inclusive also it is. So from the selection process until the investments are being made, the gender representation pretty much stays the same. We don't have that funnel effect where you have more female founders at the beginning of the application process and then it just funnels down to a small percentage. And this has been basically the results of the portfolio much more diverse, both geographically and demographically. Happy to talk more about it afterwards. Excellent. All right, before we turn it over to you all in the audience and start to get your energy levels up because on most of the tables, but not all the tables, you'll see worksheets in the center. We're gonna ask you to meet the fellows that are at your table and then actually work individually on these questions about how to increase the quality of collaboration and to make that collaboration more radical. To transform the systems that invest in and scale innovations that are changing the world. That's why we're here in the first place. But before I turn it over to all of you, I wanna ask the panelists in kind of a free flowing style. What does systemic change mean to you? And why do you think it's important? So prior to joining Village Capital, so I'm originally from Jordan. And Jordan is as a whole an unrepresented country. And I work directly with entrepreneurs. So I know firsthand what it is to be overseen. And to have a challenge that you want to overcome and not to have the opportunity to really access the type of funding or the type of support that can help you address that challenge. So I've seen it firsthand. It's a very real thing and there isn't enough support there. The gap is extremely wide and there's tremendous amount of money out there. But we need to be very intentional about really identifying where this Capital should be, we need to do more work in that arena, definitely. Yeah, I'll weigh in. I mean, I think we've gotta rethink the whole Capital Stack, right? And so systemic change is starting at the top from LPs and building in diversity and equity lens at the top with LPs, down to the GPs, then to the entrepreneurs and then to the communities that we serve and rethink it, right? I think we've been doing it for so long the same way. And now it's finally time that we're starting to see some changes of rethinking the whole model. And I think that begins in building on top of Brian, that begins with education. If we're truly going to change the face in representation and changing the face of the private markets and those who deploy the Capital. We have to train the next generation of investors who don't represent most venture capital funds out there. And so there's a lot of emerging non-profits, Black VC and what's another one? HBC, VC, I believe, Hayda is here tonight. I'm not sure she said she was going to join us. So there's a lot of non-profits that are focusing on training the next generation of investors. And I think they're getting internships and apprenticeship type models into Black VCC is another. And I think that's promising and hopefully in the next 10 plus years we'll see the face of who's deploying the Capital. 1.3% today still remains in terms of who is managing women and people of color are managing that private market capital. And we know that what happens when you have people of color who are managing the capital and where that funding is deployed. So. As we're saying that again, everybody in this room probably knows it. But 1.3% of capital allocators that have carry in their funds are people of color or women. That is unacceptable. And then we saw with the Village Capital model that was up there, numbers well in excess of 50% when founders are able to choose the other founders that they think have the most potential to change the world. So at your tables, and some of you are going to have to move around. So get ready to please move around. I'm sorry for making you kind of have to get up and move your cheese a little bit. But get to a table that has worksheets on it. And then for the first part of this exercise, I want you to take a worksheet and then read the questions. Now, some of the questions are written kind of assuming you might be an investor or assuming you might be an entrepreneur. So you kind of have to flip it around and say, if I'm at a table where the questions are about what should investors do, think about it from your perspective. What do you think investors should do? Go ahead, start moving around and we're going to fan out throughout the room. I'm going to start off with group one. And actually we're just going to be if somebody would like to volunteer to answer the second question. So the question is as follows. In the Village Capital case study, we showcased the peer selection model. What unique decision making models and tools have you seen used effectively to shift the allocation of power and capital? So if we can have a volunteer to from the five tables here, who can shed some light on this question, please. Have a mic here. So an example that came up at our table was involving community leaders who are already well respected by the community in deriving the initiative forward on how what the investment should be in the community and what that should look like. And so involving those key critical stakeholders who are trusted by the community in the process was the takeaway for number two. Go for it. Do you want to keep going? Yeah, would you like to? I'd love to hear your share your name and your organization and where you're from. I'm Bonnie Lin from Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund. And our group comes from both the private and public side, investment side. So a couple ideas are along the same lines. SV2, we've nominated community leaders and grantees to our board after three years of unrestricted funding and meeting our milestones on the public equity side of the ecofin. They talk about sector wide collaboration and transparent accountability through like the carbon disclosure pledge where they have all the industry named leaders who are working to clean themselves up, share their efforts in a transparent way. Criterion think tank here talked about how everyone's so focused on the outcomes, but we really need to look at the process behind all the talking. What's the process within those organizations? How are those processes actually managed? Great, great example. So including community stakeholders on boards talking to the process for group two tables. So one of the questions you all were asked to think about is what criteria should investors use to evaluate the impact of their investments in social enterprises? Does anybody wanna jump on that and tell investors how they should think about measuring? This is about eating the own dark food. As we are talking about diversity, equity and inclusion. So whether the investing or portfolio companies can listen on the diversity, equity, inclusion issues. The ethics reporting process of those issues on their own organizations may be better manner and also investigating. So if they are able to kind of set up a right process to listen to their own employees and even other stakeholders, that can be a great method. In fact, I'm on the other side of the world, I'm an entrepreneur. I've built a blockchain to enable this. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from a group two table about criteria investors should use other than just financial performance? Yes? Hi, stand up. Hi, my name is Amrita Vandari. I'm at Acumen fund. So we look at, I mean social impact is at the core of what we look at. And the criteria that is the most important for us is to ensure that the customers that we're looking to serve are the primary focus of the impact focus. So for us, it's about addressing the needs of people in poverty. And so that is one of the number one criteria that we look at. But to your point about inclusion. Inclusion and include going level deeper into who is a part of that group and how do we include them in is a bigger and bigger part of what matters to us in terms of who the capital is going to, but also who the capital is addressing. So we look at and but we also recognize where global organizations. So the definition of inclusion varies based on the geography that you're focused on. So in the US, it's important to identify what matters and what is the needle that we're looking to move. It's on the underrepresented minority side. In East Africa, our primary focus is on building capital and ensuring that we're supporting local entrepreneurs. In India, we look at gender as a primary example. So those are some of the ways that we look at it. Super. I love the regional variation. Group three. Yeah, one more for group two. All right, we're going to group three. For group three, we're going to go with question one. What best practices have you observed that drive long term sustainability for a social enterprise as well as creates the impact it creates? And we're going to start right here. Got to volunteer. Thank you so much for having us. And I come from the City University of New York. I organized an organization called Firefly Innovations that supports early stage entrepreneurs in developing public health focused ventures and I definitely focused a little bit more on the academic support of how this can contribute to growing the entrepreneurship ecosystem. And the first thing that we mentioned as a group was thinking about what it takes to grow an entrepreneur is really thinking about a village. And coming from academia, you're thinking about professors, incubators, accelerators, hackathons. You need the different structures of programs like what village capital is doing that are really, really creative to encourage a lot more diversity. And we need investment in this. Coming from the City University of New York, we can't do this by ourselves. You're seeing a University of Utah do it. So well, seeing MIT, different institutions here. But we need more. And that's something that we've definitely seen a call for throughout this conference. And engaging academia in investing in this can be done in so many different ways through investment, through entrepreneurs, through philanthropic support, through family offices. So we're all looking for your type of support. And I think that investing in us can be the most upstream way of doing this and building the foundation that we really need for sustainable and long-term growth. Come over to this table. Blue right here, Maureen. Being called out here. I'm Maureen Coleman from Upmetrics. Great to see everybody. We talked about a couple different things here. First, entrepreneurs need to be supported from the beginning. And what does that look like? This takes real resources. We were lucky to have Brian sit with us for a while and talk about the work that's happening at K-Pore to sort of set people up for success even prior to investment when it comes to determining impact metrics. And then we talked about how we can ultimately always tie it back to the community and the beneficiaries, those we wish to serve. What does that actually look like? How can we stay in touch and create transparency, sharing information back with those folks? And ultimately then came to a conversation around, like, certainly there needs to be partnerships and multi-sector collaboration. But what does that look like? And who are those people? And sometimes those organizations can be at odds with each other and have different agendas in mind, motivations at the heart of what they're doing. So how do you sort of overcome that? And I can't answer that question right now in this short amount of time. Thank you. Thank you. And last but not least. Hi. Rowan Kahlweig and I'm just here at a personal interest right now. So we talked a lot about transparency. As you were mentioning, talked a lot about needing to share data, achieving kind of scale and sharing resources through various kind of associations, the importance of early alignment on the mission. And even if you can't get exact alignment on the mission, making sure that you have an understanding of how each party relates to the mission. And that was broadly what we spoke about. Thank you. Thank you. Over to you, Nassir. All right. Awesome. Last breakout session, ensuring systemic change. What are the key levers available to impact the impact investing ecosystem to drive systemic change aside from financial capital? Who would like to take the first? Hi. Erin Epps. I'm with Sichanguko, which is the economic development arm of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. And one thing we really talked about as a key lever in addition to funding was education. And I think there's oftentimes a fear no one wants to be the first to do something, but oftentimes in this space it's already been done. So having those cross-cutting conversations and sharing successes and failures to be able to educate one another. And so a couple specific areas we talked about in that were around terms and just an understanding that terms on some ventures may not be what folks are used to. And also what does it mean to scale? Not every enterprise needs to scale to what an investor might be used to kind of seeing. Couple other aspects were around access to networks. So specifically in my context, I work for a native led organization. And we've historically been left out of those conversations. So being able to have organizations connect us within their network has been immensely helpful. And along with that, being able to provide additional supports through technical assistance or through a company in grants, a blended finance to be able to build the capacity of organizations as well. And also it's a great insurance policy on your investment. And then finally talking about policy, both at state, federal level, but then also internal policy. And having a more entrepreneur-centered due diligence process was one example that we talked about. Great job. I think we had an awesome conversation over here. My name is Paige Dickman. I'm with Align Impact. We're based in Santa Monica, California. And we had so many different areas of the industry at this table, which was phenomenal because we got to see what some of the shortfalls are in the industry. And in addition to those wraparound support, wraparound services that you mentioned, I think one of the other takeaways we had was more of a participatory design, figuring out what the entrepreneurs need. And having the entrepreneurs talking with the investors, I think that's also a theme I've heard a lot at SoCAP so far, connecting those two and bridging those two and having conversations, building those networks. Yeah, so that was another takeaway that I think we had, the participatory design aspect and building those networks. So we also talked about zebras. Did anyone go to the zebra session? OK, so I might not do the best job of describing a zebra. But the idea is that it's profit and purpose. And they have the ability to grow and expand, but they're not a unicorn. They don't need to grow massively. It is OK for them to be smaller. And that's part of their strength, is that there are multiple zebras out there, but they still need that capital and they don't have access to it. So one of the things we discussed was a lot of those zebras require decades to have the returns that investors are expecting in five, seven, 10 years. And so again, to the point was, how do we change those expectations if capital isn't the lever that we're using, building those expectations of investors and engaging in dialogue with investors and investees on those expectations as a part of supporting those zebras? That's great. We covered a lot of ground here. We're not quite done. We're in the last five minutes. So I want to share a thought that I had a couple of years ago while participating in a conversation with multiple stakeholders very much like this room. So I've been in VC now for about 20 years. And as we're becoming more successful and more impactful, we now have 20 companies that have successfully grown and exited to the next level. I realized that I'm raising money from pension funds. I'm raising money from university endowments. I'm raising money from foundations. These are all entities that exist to help workers and to improve human flourishing. There is no reason why they need to be investing their money only for financial gain. They exist for human flourishing. They just haven't got the message yet. That impact is the measurement tool they should be measuring their investments on. Any thoughts? I didn't mean to have clapping all around. I want others to build on that because that's just the beginning of this movement is when you realize this stack goes all the way up. And at the top are the people. Hi, Noel Brown, Conscious Wealth Management. I would argue it's not just pensions. It's not just educational institutions. It's corporations, too. They affect everyone. They are the commons of our society. So we should not stop at just nonprofit institutions. Excellent. I mean, I think the ideas of donut economics and generally that we expect exponential growth from everybody that does work and does important work has proven, and we can see it in every street of the city for sure that it's an unsustainable model for human growth as a mutual society. And so I think we can also look at who owns a company and what is a company. What does that mean? Yeah, I think that's. You get the last word. You get the last word. Make it great. My name is Nathan, and I'm coming in from the Ford Foundation. And I would say I would agree exactly with what you're saying. And I feel like the biggest thing is awareness and finding out that as someone with a pension or an insurance plan, it's really up to you to pressure your business to be like, hey, this is my money. I want that to be used to benefit workers as a whole. And so I feel like the biggest thing is giving people the awareness that the power is in their hands. Thank you. And thanks all of you for giving us this hour. We really appreciate it.