From Philanthropy to Profit - Innovating for Catalytic Pipeline

Catalytic capital is the driver that will allow us to transform impact initiatives into self sustaining and even scalable businesses. We started with understanding the impact investment landscape, but have since understood the need for the catalytic role of investors and the unique attributes of these funders in deeply understanding social issues as well as business models. Furthermore, when we look at technological innovation as the core enabler, we need to add another layer of expertise – technological innovation. These skill sets are not only critical for the catalytic capital allocators, but also required in the investees as well, as they navigate the complex nexus of tech, finance and impact. This leaves allocators with minimal investable pipeline. These challenges are further exacerbated by the asymmetry of access to these types of capital. In this session, we will dare the audience to examine these challenges, look at implementation models from the innovation ecosystem and hear from on platform founders how they are able to curate a pipeline of investible opportunities and how they think about catalytic allocation. We will dive into how they identify potential companies/solutions and work with them through the catalytic stages. These models crowd-in the required stakeholder by stage, supporting both the financial and operational needs of this unique segment of catalytic pipeline and aggregating the unique set of best practices needed in the catalytic impact space.