SOCAP11 Panelist Spotlight: Win van der Beek, Goodwell Investments

What is your role in the Social Capital Market?
Our firm channels capital to scaleable business solutions in emerging markets, currently mainly in financial services (microfinance) and increasingly in other impact sectors that combine social and environmental impact with commercial financial returns. We have built and manage a family of investment companies with a total committed capital of around $ 70 million, in partnership with teams in India, Ghana and Nigeria. Our portfolio companies have provided over $ 1.2 billion in small loans to more than 6 million families. Our funds invest in early stages in scalable growth opportunities. In essence, Goodwell is a platform for launching and growing impact investment vehicles, and a network to support a family of impact investment teams.
What is the single most important step to creating a more established social capital market?
The main constraint in social capital markets is not financial capital but human capital. There is a shortage of experienced professionals that can select social businesses and channel the capital and support that they need to grow and scale up.
What does Money + Meaning = to you? What should the social capital market stand for?
Money + Meaning = Freedom.
The social capital market liberates capital providers and recipients. Recipients benefit from new economic opportunities, they are liberated from dependencies and lack of choice, lack of access. Development as freedom in the Amartya Sen sense.
Capital providers are liberated from the two dimensional surface of risk and return paradigms. By embracing the third dimension of meaning, returns and risks gain depth and height. The false dichotomy of return vs impact restricts capital providers to a limited range of investment or grant opportunities. The social capital market liberates them from these constraints, and opens up a whole new 3 dimensional universe of return and impact opportunities at different risk levels. Freedom of choice for the social capitalist!