I spent this afternoon talking with a young scion of an old family in London. He is smart and charming, well mannered and financially very astute. At a young age, he has turned a laborious estate into a healthy enterprise, and made some intelligent venture investments. He’d heard Pymwymic was organizing a conference, but he hadn’t yet heard of SOCAP. So we met for tea.I passed the scones and the terms together: impact investing, social capital, blended return, clotted cream and jam. He asked was it solar incentives, and I said not really. He apologized that while he knows doing good is important, he really does enjoy making money. And I said me too. Then I told stories: about mobile technologies in India that support healthcare and bank access; about SME funds in Africa, who predicate their investment in a company on acceptance of social and measurable benefits; about bednets and dlights and the size of the market; and how this wave is coming, that we are living a sea change in evolution about use of money.
We are not a flatscreen anymore, the concept of money is now dimensional. His generation knows we are all connected.
He’s intrigued, and will be at SOCAPEurope.
