Episode eleven of season two of SOCAP’s podcast series, Money + Meaning: Unlikely Allies Building New Markets for Impact is now available!
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Episode 11, Season Two: Mitch Kapor on The Kapor Capital Experiment
“We decided to go all in on an experiment in which everything we did would have positive impact.”
–Mitch Kapor
Many people know him as the Founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, or the Co-founder of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, but in the social impact space Mitch Kapor has become most famous for investing in seed stage tech startups that are closing gaps of access, opportunity, or outcome for low-income communities and communities of color in the US.
Mitch and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, co-founded Kapor Capital over a decade ago. In 2011 the fund began investing exclusively in gap-closing impact startups. Eight years and over 100 investments into this “experiment”, the Oakland-based fund is seeing incredible success. In May of 2019 they released a report showing the impact their portfolio companies have achieved while still generating financial returns that rank in the top quartile of venture funds of comparable size.
Mitch, who is fond of saying, “genius is evenly distributed by ZIP Code, but opportunity is not,” sat down with Money + Meaning host Alex Kravitz to talk about his initial skepticism of a 100% impact portfolio, why this skepticism was unfounded, and his hope that Kapor Capital’s results will dispel many of the harmful biases still embedded in the VC community.
Featured Voices
Mitch Kapor
Co-founder of Kapor Capital
Host: Alex Kravitz
About Money + Meaning
Money + Meaning is the official podcast of SOCAP. This 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.
