Loved the panel today on The Funding Landscape for Impact Entrepreneurs with @princeton_PEC!

Here's a thread of a few key points I wrote down: https://twitter.com/princeton_PEC/status/1303472378375278600

1/ Impact investors want to see how the impact and financial performance of the venture reinforce each other.

Is the business model tightly aligned to the impact?

Is there a low-level of trade-off between returns?

This is especially important as the business scales.

2/ It is less about corporate governance structure (i.e PBC, B-Corp Cert). These structures determine *how* you do business, not what the business is. Most impact investors are agnostic to the type of charter/governance model.

3/ Impact entrepreneurs may need the amount of capital or partnerships that VCs provide. However, ventures may not fit the VC deal structure or “hockey-stick” growth model.

Before entering the for-profit world, impact entrepreneurs should think about how to better finance their venture with other sources of capital to start (govt. grants, non-profits).

EX. In the first wave of investment in CleanTech/Deep Tech Sustainability, the profile of innovation did not match the source of capital (initial R&D too capital intensive for VC $).

http://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MITEI-WP-2016-06.pdf

4/ Some problems are harder to square with a for-profit model (like poverty alleviation) than others. These problems may be easier to square with a non-profit model.

I'm left with questions on the systematic limitations of both.

5/ Lastly, the panelists kindly shared this non-exhaustive resource list of accelerators, investors and partners for impact entrepreneurs! Check it out:

https://entrepreneurs.princeton.edu/sites/entrepreneurship/files/impact_entrepreneur_funding_resource_list.pdf

Thank you to Annarie Lyles, Eliza Golden Roady, @HeidiPatelSF, @soicyishaka, and @ElizWash