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Social Venture Capital
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as venture philanthropy, Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit) that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause. Investment criteria Apart from the traditional venture capitalists focusing on just the financial profit, social venture capitalists believe in achieving financia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Investment Fund
An investment fund is a way of investment, investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to: * hire professional investment managers, who may offer better returns and more adequate risk management; * benefit from economies of scale, i.e., lower transaction costs; * increase the asset diversification (finance), diversification to reduce some unsystematic risk. It remains unclear whether professional active investment managers can reliably enhance risk adjusted returns by an amount that exceeds fees and expenses of investment management. Terminology varies with country but investment funds are often referred to as investment pools, collective investment vehicles, collective investment schemes, managed funds, or simply funds. The regulatory term is undertaking for collective investment in transferable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Community Interest Company
A community interest company (CIC, pronounced "see-eye-see", or colloquially, "kick") is a form of social enterprise in the United Kingdom intended "for people wishing to establish businesses which trade with a social purpose..., or to carry on other activities for the benefit of the community". CICs were introduced by the UK government in 2005 under Part 2 of the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004. They enjoy the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with statutory provisions to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. The Regulator of Community Interest Companies provides oversight, which is intended to be "light touch". CICs have proved popular, with some 10,000 registered in the first ten years of the status being available. CICs tackle a wide range of social and environmental issues and operate in all parts of the economy. By using business methods to achieve public good, it is believed that CICs have a distinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venture Capital
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for Equity (finance), equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because Startup company, startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovation, innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology. Pre-seed and seed money, seed rounds are the initial stages of funding for a startup company, typically occurring earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socially Responsible Investing
Socially responsible investing (SRI) is any investment strategy which seeks to consider financial return alongside ethical, social or environmental goals. The areas of concern recognized by SRI practitioners are often linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics. '' Impact investing'' can be considered a subset of SRI that is generally more proactive and focused on the conscious creation of social or environmental impact through investment. '' Eco-investing'' (or ''green investing'') is SRI with a focus on environmentalism. In general, socially responsible investors encourage corporate practices that they believe promote environmental stewardship, consumer protection, human rights, and racial or gender diversity. Some SRIs avoid investing in businesses perceived to have negative social effects such as alcohol, tobacco, fast food, gambling, pornography, weapons, fossil fuel production or the military. Socially responsible investing is one of several related con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microfinance
Microfinance consists of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses (SMEs) who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings account, savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services. Microfinance product and services in MFI include: # Savings # Microcredit # Microinsurance # Microleasing and # Fund transfer/remittance. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually low income population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient.Peck Christen, Robert; Rosenberg, Richard; Jayadeva, Veena. ''Financial institutions with a double-bottom line: Implications for the future of microfinance''. CGAP, Occasional Papers series, July 2004, pp. 2–3. ID Ghana is an example of a microfinance institution. Microfinance initially had a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporate Venture Capital
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies.Chesbrough, Henry''Making Sense of Corporate Venture Capital''. Harvard Business Review, 2002. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital. Definition CVC refers to the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. The definition of CVC may also be outlined by explaining what it is not. An investment made through an external fund managed by a third party, even when the investment vehicle is funded by a single investing company, is not considered CVC.Chesbrough, Making Sense of Corporate Venture Capital Most importantly, CVC is not synonymous with venture capital (VC); rather, it i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angel Capital
An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage (when the risk of their failure is relatively high), once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ev Williams
Evan Clark Williams (born March 31, 1972) is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Twitter, and was its CEO from 2008 to 2010, and a member of its board from 2007 to 2019. He founded Blogger and Medium. In 2014, he co-founded the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures. As of May 2025, his net worth is estimated at US$2 billion, according to ''Forbes''. Early life and education Williams was born in Clarks, Nebraska, as the third child of Laurie Howe and Monte Williams. He grew up on a farm in Clarks, where he assisted with crop irrigation during the summers. He attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for a year and a half, where he joined FarmHouse fraternity, then left the school to pursue his career. Career Early career After departing from college, Williams took on various technology jobs and start-up firms in Key West, Florida, and in Dallas and Austin, Texas, before returning to his family farm in Nebraska. In 1996 Williams moved to Sebastopol, Cali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obvious Ventures
Obvious may refer to: __NOTOC__ Music Albums * ''Obvious'' (4Him album), 1998 * ''Obvious'' (Plus One album), 2002 Songs *"Obvious", a song by Christina Aguilera from the album ''Christina Aguilera'', 1999 *"Obvious", a song by Blink-182 from the album ''Blink-182'', 2003 *"The Obvious", a song by Orgy from ''Punk Statik Paranoia'', 2003 * "Obvious" (Westlife song), 2004 * "Obvious" (LeToya song), 2006 *"Obvious", a song by The Operation M.D. from the album ''We Have an Emergency'', 2007 * "Obvious" (Charlee song), 2011 *"Obvious", a song by Ariana Grande from the album '' Positions'', 2020 *"Obvious", a song by Craig David from the album '' 22'' (2022) *"Obvious", a song by the Drums from the album ''Jonny'' (2023) Other uses *Obvious, an art collective that created the 2018 painting ''Edmond de Belamy ''Edmond de Belamy'', sometimes referred to as ''Portrait of Edmond de Belamy'', is a generative adversarial network (GAN) portrait painting constructed by Paris-based arts colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassroots Business Fund
The Grassroots Business Fund is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC. It has field offices in Kenya, Peru, and India. History The origins of GBF can be traced back as far as 2000 at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), when Harold Rosen founded the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) department, a joint IFC/World Bank department. In 2004, Mr. Rosen started the Grassroots Business Initiatives (GBI), which aimed to build sustainable, non-financial intermediaries that would empower large numbers of High Impact Businesses and individual producers, consumers, and entrepreneurs. GBI worked directly with High Impact Businesses to strengthen their business performance, scale up their operations, and improve their sustainability. From 2004 to 2007, GBI implemented over 40 technical assistance projects and investments impacting the lives of over 3.4 million direct and indirect beneficiaries at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. In 2008, the GBI department was tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AgDevCo
AgDevCo is a social impact investor and project developer working in the African agriculture sector. The company supports small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in farming, agriprocessing, and logistics, with the aim of creating jobs and income-earning opportunities for African farmers. With a portfolio of more than 50 debt and equity investments across ten countries (average investment size of US$3m), AgDevCo is one of the most active SME investors in the African agriculture sector. AgDevCo is backed by the UK government, and operates on a not-for-profit basis; all investment return In finance, return is a Profit (accounting), profit on an investment. It comprises any change in value of the investment, and/or cash flows (or securities, or other investments) which the investor receives from that investment over a specified tim ...s are recycled into new projects. References Social finance Agriculture in Africa Agricultural economics Development organization ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing". In contrast to outsourcing, crowdsourcing usually involves less specific and more public groups of participants. Advantages of using crowdsourcing include lowered costs, improved speed, improved quality, increased flexibility, and/or increased scalability of the work, as well as promoting diversity. Crowdsourcing methods include competitions, virtual labor markets, open online collaboration and data donation. Some forms of crowdsourcing, such as in "idea competiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
