Ask HN: Fast way to find socially responsible investors?

8 points by nfc 5 years ago | 4 comments

The product the company I founded is selling has found market fit. It has some advantages that will be difficult to replicate by our competitors. But to make it grow fast investment would be needed.

However, I'd prefer to avoid this company becoming a traditional one, focused on maximizing profit. I'd like to dedicate my energies to make it create as much "social value" as possible, but going through the traditional investor route would mean closing this path.

What I'd like to do is to give most benefits of the company back to society rather than the owners [1]. Because of this, I'd need to find socially conscious investors that would be ok with capped returns.

How I could find in a short notice this kind of sources of investment? I don't live in a country where there's an abundance of investors, let alone "socially responsible investors".

[1] How to do this in the most effective way is out of the scope of this Ask HN, even if I think it's the most interesting part of what we'd be doing

maxired 5 years ago |

I guess the first question you want to answer, is to define which kind of company you want to build ?

As a founder, as you say, you want to optimize the impact of your company. I am not sure what you mean by traditional companies, but startups are not about maximizing profit. At least not in the short term.

VCs are looking at maximizing their returns on investement when the company exits, not based on dividends.

If you don't want create a startup, but what I would call a traditional company, ie not looking for hypergrowth, but that your company is profitable, then lots of people are probably willing to invest in it.

send_it_breh 5 years ago |

There exist investment firms where some measure of return to society is incorporated into investment decisions (see e.g. https://acumen.org/). If your business is creating some sort of positive externality, then seeking these sorts of investors (whose problem interests are aligned with your company's) may be a good fit.

It sounds like what you actually want to do, however, is just create a vanilla business and put a cap on what is returned to investors. You can do this -- in fact, you can do whatever you want, the world is your oyster. The only question is if anyone will invest. VCs who want an unbounded or very large upside won't, but there exist investors who will probably waive the right to any unlikely windfalls for more certainty of low-level gains. See e.g. https://earnestcapital.com/about/.

alltakendamned 5 years ago |

I believe you will not find this with classic VCs. I would attempt to look for funding with sources that support NGOs and other social enterprises.

Short notice? well...good luck

Jugurtha 5 years ago |

>How I could find in a short notice this kind of sources of investment? I don't live in a country where there's an abundance of investors, let alone "socially responsible investors".

Congratulations for product market fit. Have you considered debt and going to banks? There may also be organizations, either governmental or not, that promote entrepreneurship/startups/small businesses.