Chicago-based Impact Engine, a venture fund that invests in early-stage, for-profit edtech, health care, enterprise software, IT, energy efficiency startups, concluded on Tuesday its 5th annual impact investing event.
The showcase this year was well-attended by a captive audience of 250 investors and entrepreneurs, and which included for the first time, a number of other impact investing funds to share its stage.
The companies that presented on Tuesday night have supported over 80 local organizations with at least $130 million. CEO Yagan attributes this growth to an increasing awareness of governments’ failures to provide social innovation and a shift in mindset, in which social and financial returns are no longer seen as mutually exclusive.
“There’s a lot more happening in impact investing in Chicago than there was in 2012 when we started,” Yagan said to the crowd. “In 2012, it would have been hard to find a whole lineup of impact funds and entrepreneurs to present that weren’t ours.”
Over a period of an hour and a half, six fund representatives and founders of the businesses they sponsor spoke successively to the gathered crowd. Some funds have industry-specific missions, like Ekistic Ventures, which invests in urban-centric companies like Kaizen Health, a business that connects patients with transportation to their doctors’ appointments. Others, like Impact Engine, broadly fund technology businesses with a social mission like Edovo, a company that reduces recidivism by bringing tech-based educational tools to jails.
“The people here are solving hard problems. Most of the excitement [in investing] isn’t around solving hard problems, it’s around code.” […]
Founded in 2011, Impact Engine in June 2016 last year closed a $10 million fund to help shift its focus from hosting bootcamp accelerator events to investing in startups as a seed fund.
Source: Medill Northwestern Chicago, Techcrunch, Impact Engine
