This week the Social Capital Markets conference is in full swing in San Francisco. This multi-displinary conference pulls together perspectives from philanthropy, faith, investing, measurement, social enterprise, business, technology, design – and likely ones that I haven’t yet noticed. As you might imagine, not everyone agrees with one another. (There was an honest moment of tension between entrepreneur and investor in one of the investing panels today.).
Impossible to fully digest all of the sentiments from today – and only day one – I wanted to share three thoughts:
*Without a well-supported, well-resourced base of entrepreneurs who are creating social enterprises and businesses – we don’t even need to talk about products for investing. Even more, entreprenuers might be better (or at least good as) judges of their peers’ business plans than investors and funding committees.
*”Entreprenuer” is a term we need to start encouraging usage of among the charities and non-profits who are going into social enterprise. Entreprenuer is a characteristic that rises above incorporation status and we need to value this characteristic when we see it, even in the charaitable and non-profit sectors.
*And my favorite, a quote from Kevin Starr of Mulago Foundation, “you can’t overcome market failure without subsidy.” Philanthropy and impact investing act as this subsidy to get social enterprises and businesses started, when the market won’t get the job done.
The sun is shining and a drumming circle just started right next to me. Undoubtedly, day two will present new nuggets to ponder.