Category Archives: Investment

Jacqueline Novogratz – Legatum Lecture at MIT

We are a connected world said Jacqueline as she described the story of her blue sweater, also the title of her recently published book. Once discarded by her at Goodwill, it turned up 25 years later in Rwanda where she found it on a boy in the countryside.

Speaking at the Legatum Center’s Lecture series at MIT, she described the innovative work of Acumen fund and how it helps build social solutions through its venture philanthropy.

She prefaced her talk by some of her observations from her work helping to build enterprises around the world that she undertook since her time in Rwanda.

  • Dignity is more important than wealth for the human spirit.
  • Traditional models of charity won’t solve problems of poverty.
  • Markets can’t solve poverty. 100 Million people went back into poverty last year and that is what happens when you only rely on market forces to solve these problems.
  • What is needed is patient capital that will address these problems

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Chuck Lacy speaks about Raising Venture Capital for Socially Responsible Businesses

Earlier last month, I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Chuck Lacy former President of Ben & Jerry’s and currently President of Barred Rock Fund. He was a guest of the Legatum Center at MIT and spoke about raising funds as a social business.  It was interesting hearing him speak since he really did not focus on the fund raising part as much as some basic precepts that most entrepreneurs should keep in mind – whether you are growing a socially responsible business or a plain old fashioned technology startup.

I thought I would try to distill the essence of what he said as I think it is very relevant especially in these tougher economic times.

  • Don’t raise money. Sounds counterintuitive but it makes sense. You should run as long as you can on your own money. You should think about working part time and keeping 100% of your company instead of working 100% and giving up 50% of the company to raise cash. Raising money means you are giving your company away. There are many ways to raise money without diluting your stake in the company – Grants, state funds, PRI funds. Continue reading