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Casey van der Stricht talks about MIT Solve’s new philanthropic venture fund, Solve Innovation Future
On launching Solve Innovation Future:
“Even with over $25mm of grant capital brokered by Solve and directed to our Solver teams over the last 3-4 years, funding continues to be their main constraint…We recognized that the investment opportunity was huge in terms of better positioning our Solver teams to grow and move across a capital continuum. We can connect to them with grant funding to help support the innovation and the exploration, and then we can participate to help get them over the hump or what has often been referred to as the Pioneer Gap – that sort of post-philanthropy, pre-growth capital.”
– Casey van der Stricht, Principal of Solve Innovation Future
MIT Solve is a marketplace that connects social entrepreneurs around the world with both the MIT innovation ecosystem and an extensive network of member organizations such as Nike, the Gates Foundation, and Microsoft. Last year, MIT Solve launched Solve Innovation Future, a philanthropic venture fund. The first-of-its-kind donor-advised venture fund is structured as an evergreen vehicle where proceeds are paid forward into future “Solvers” – social entrepreneurs in their program. The evergreen nature allows the fund to provide appropriate forms of capital tailored to each entrepreneur’s unique situation and to better align the incentives of investor and entrepreneur. Using various forms of capital – grant funding, equity, and debt – MIT Solve is able to support Solvers tackling the world’s toughest challenges at multiple points in their entrepreneurial journey.
Leading Solve Innovation Future is Casey van der Stricht, formerly the Vice President of Social Investments at Social Finance. In this episode, Casey sits down with Alex to talk about how they landed on the unique fund structure, the innovative types of funding they are providing to entrepreneurs, and her advice for entrepreneurs looking to raise capital.
Featured Voices
Principal
Solve Innovation Future
Host
Additional Resources
- ‘MIT Solve rallies to provide bridge loans and revenue-based financing’, Casey van der Stricht in ImpactAlpha
- ‘Using Donor-Advised Funds to Invest in Early-Stage Entrepreneurs’ Alex Amouyel and Casey van der Stricht in Stanford Social Innovation Review
- Check out the MIT Solve web series ‘Solving from Anywhere’ and their recent webinar, ‘Impact Investing to Solve World Challenges’
- Read about the first investments made from the fund: ‘MIT Solve Announces Initial Solve Innovation Future Investments’
About Money + Meaning
Money + Meaning is the official podcast of SOCAP. The series aims to expand the conversation around impact investing and strategies to finance and support social change while stimulating innovative and valuable new partnerships across sectors.
