Lu Li, founder of Blooming Founders, a community of female founders, freelancers in London, Bonnie Foley-Wong, author of a new book on Integrated Investing and Servane Mouazan is the founder of Ogunte, talk about their work, and thoughtful approaches with questions about what impact investing truly is, expected outcomes and how best to choose impact investing opportunities.
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“Lu asked me [Bonnie Foley-Wong] what was the impetus for writing the book. I had already been developing resources and tools to make better investment decisions. When I started in impact investing, I found that many people were just transferring investment approaches from the conventional, but broken way of thinking about business and investing.
I learned that everything from why we invest to the mindsets that affect our decisions had to shift.
Practically speaking, I needed to develop new ways to evaluate businesses, the impact outcomes they could achieve, and communicate why we should invest in them. As my thinking progressed, I was approached with questions about what is impact and how to choose impact investment opportunities. I always felt these questions couldn’t be answered in 2 or 3 minutes and that people inquiring weren’t getting the whole picture. So I wrote it all down – as a resource, compass, and guide for new and experienced impact investors looking for better ways to make investment decisions.
Another question from Lu which I found interesting was whether people dismissed impact investing or didn’t take it as seriously. I shared a story of how I’m at the intersection of a number of communities including the impact community and more traditional angel investors and venture capitalists. I talk about the impact I’m having as an investor and angel fund manager, that it’s not just the impact of the ventures we invest in, but also how we invest and who invests with us.
Pique Fund applies Integrated Investing in its evaluation of ventures and its decision-making and it was created to be more inclusive to a diverse community of investors. Pique Fund now has 29 investors, 24 of which are women, representing 80% of the fund’s capital. The mix of accredited investors and non-accredited investors is about 50:50.
I also talk about where Pique Fund is on the spectrum of impact and how our portfolio companies have an impact in various parts of their business model. It could be directly through their value proposition, with direct positive impact on their customers, or it could be elsewhere in their business model, such as having a more ethical supply chain or more inclusive hiring practices than their non-impact oriented counterparts and competitors.
When I communicate this information to other investors, who might not consider themselves impact investors or might be a bit skeptical about impact investing, I see them embracing the idea of impact investing. I can see them start to think about the impact they could have or maybe even the impact already in their portfolio. The point is impact is starting to permeate the mainstream. I hope one day impact becomes a natural, obvious consideration when evaluating investment opportunities, choosing what businesses grow, and supporting those to flourish.”
Source: piqueventures.com
