Kevin Jones, Producer of SOCAP10 and founder of Good Capital talks about What’s Next in the social capital markets space at SOCAP10!
The money will be in the house when Socap10 opens its doors October 4 in San Francisco. One new angel investor group will be launching at Socap, while another venerable angle circle is being revived. In addition the founding GIIRS group of the top 25 valid, impact investment funds, called the Pioneer Funds, will be announced, and at least one new seed fund is expected to be announced as well.
I’m not sure whether the new, more collaborative Investor’s Circle, focused on deeper service to its angel investor circle, under the leadership of the amazing and enlightened Suzanne Biegel is bigger news than the formation and ambitious launch of Toniic, the angel investor circle led by Charly and Lisa Kleissner along with Morgan Simon and Sean Foote.
Toniic is similar in profile to the new Investors Circle (circles of people who can handle deals from $250,000 to $2 million) but is internationally focused. Based in San Francisco, it already has people talking about forming chapters from Amsterdam to London to points in between and beyond.
The best news, I think, is that both the new and revived angel circles are cooperating on their online due diligence platform. That means they are deciding on the front end, in the information and process architecture, that there will not be silos; that they can share deals and their evaluation and the way they engage after the transaction. Some think those two groups should merge. Others think they can sketch out a viable set of parallel but complementary niches.
It’s a sign of a healthy market that new intermediaries are arising or old ones are coming back to life, and that questions of who provides what value are being considered as both groups pursue their goals, in response to what the market is telling them. There are a multitude of niches to fill as the money comes into the social capital market and wants to get smart fast.
People are going around the old would be gatekeepers. As happens when markets emerge and translators like Sean Stannard Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy arise, barriers that seemed to be set in stone turn out to be written in gold and are fungible. Groups continuing to focus on exclusive gatherings of just the right people, or who they think are the major players in the room are just ensuring they will be out of the loop. Markets are messy, but create more value for all when information flows freely and everybody is let into the room where the decisions are made and the designs are drawn.
Some might want more coordination, but capital as it starts to flow in a new market has a fractal quantity. The more it fractures, the more valuable facets it reveals. It’s kind of like turning coal into a diamond.
-By Kevin Jones (Good Capital Newsletter)
