Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have 1 request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Tanya Beja, and our topic is how to launch and grow an impact fund.

Tanya is a senior leader who's passionate about for profits with a social conscience and nonprofits with a sustainable business model. She is a general partner at Alicorp where she leads the social impact team. Tanya, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Paul. Super happy to be here.

And, Yeah. I think you've you're a speaker. You've been doing that stuff, but I think I can also say welcome to your 1st podcast interview. Is that right?

That's exactly right.

Yeah. So welcome to the world ball? Yeah. Welcome to the world of welcome to the world of podcasting. I hope you'll do many, many more interviews because you're doing incredible work. So Okay. Tanya, before we get into all the great things that you're doing at Alicorp and how our listeners can find out about an impact fund and what it is and how you start 1 and all that kind of stuff. Let's wind back a little bit. If somebody wanted to know just the short version of your backstory, like, where did this interest had 4 impact investing and impact funds come from.

What would somebody need to know about how you got started in this work?

Yeah. Absolutely. So I grew up in Mexico City, Paul, and saw poverty day in and day out. And since I was a small child, I I Really ask myself the question of how can you alleviate poverty the fastest and most efficient way? And that drove me to public policy school. And after going through public policy school, I shifted towards businesses as a force For social change. And I've spent by and large my entire career, in this impact investing space. I I started investing and supporting for profits at one of the largest impact investing funds, out there called Ignium. I then shifted gears slightly and invested and supported nonprofits at Robinhood Foundation, who's the largest philanthropic funder of pretty much all social services in New York City.

And most recently, I spent some time building businesses from the ground up at Blue Marble, piloting and scaling commercially viable and socially impactful New ventures in the financial inclusion space. And I was really lucky to get a call from Aliecorp where I get To do all 3, which is investing in for profits, investing in non profits, and incubating at the same time, with a really fantastic team. But I I think I think my motivation really started with the question of how can we alleviate poverty in the fastest this way, and I think businesses as a force for social change can be

incredibly powerful. Yeah. And this space of impact investing has grown tremendously. Like, I've been in the social entrepreneur space for 16 years and definitely on the entrepreneur side. And a different call, but I also got a call. I've told you listeners about it before, but I don't know. A little less than a year ago, I got a call from a had colleague of mine, Drew Tolchin, who was the 1st chief financial officer at Meow Wolf, one of the largest b corps just ever come out of New Mexico and out of the Southwest. We knew each other from the impact world here in New Mexico, and Drew said, hey.

Come be a consultant with, thought a group called New Mexico Angels, which is, pretty much the only group that's focused on early investing in New Mexico, and, not explicitly social impact in the organization's mission, but everybody who works there including me is very much oriented that way, and, I've been learning a ton about investing as well. It's been something that, listeners, you've seen me kind of bring more people on the show because as I'm learning about, oh, if you channel capital into the hands of entrepreneurs like you listeners, good things happen. So this conversation is coming up more and more, and part of that is it's more robust in the space. And also, personally, I have more of an interest, especially over the year, because suddenly I'm, like, deep into conversations here in New Mexico. We are called the 1st majority minority state in the US. In other words, because of our large proportion of populations like Latinx and Native Americans, indigenous folks, and other populations. There are a majority of people of color in New Mexico, and this is the 1st state, in America where that's the case. So, anyway, just a little background for anybody's like, say, you're talking about investing on an entrepreneurship show.

Why is that? Because they're really tied together.

Absolutely.

So talk to us a little bit about, like, what what was that change, like, going to Alicorp, where you're doing, like, a bunch of different things. A matter of fact, we were talking before we hit record. Your 4 verticals. Tell us what those 4 verticals are at Alicorp.

Yeah. Sure. So Alicorp, just taking a a bit of a step back, is a New York based venture capital firm that invests in and incubates transformative companies across tech, health care, robotics, and social impact. And so I lead the social impact vertical. It's founded by serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, who's the cofounder of Zola, Nomad Health, Business Insider, Guild Group, MongoDB, etcetera, And others. And and Alicorp really sits at the center of New York's growing tech and VC ecosystem. Alicorp Impact is a vertical founded by Kevin and Pascaline Servant Schreiber, Kevin's wife, and is dedicated to supporting early stage for profit, and nonprofit enterprises in the social impact space. And so we incubate and invest ventures that provide solutions to address the hardships faced by low income We're traditionally underserved families across industries.

Our investments so far have concentrated around the future of work, Fintech, health care, gov tech, And access to social services. And the common thread and the emphasis really is on that target demographic. We're looking for tech enabled businesses that that can be Formative to low income or under under, served families in the US.

And what would be an example of a company that Aliecorp has made an investment in, and you feel like that was a really good investment in our impact vertical.

Yeah. So the 1st, investment we made was in a company called Up Wage. We ended up investing a tiny, Check-in the pre seed round, incredible founder, Diana Tsai. And Up Wage uses AI to empower the 44% of Americans making less than $16 an hour, who, as you know, are disproportionately women and people of color, To secure better paying jobs in their immediate geographical area and for employers on the other side of which uses AI to certain screen their candidates in 6 and a half minutes or so so they can hire quicker and better. And so we made a tiny bet on UpWage In the pre seed round, we recently led a really incredibly oversubscribed seed round, And the company is doing really well, and and we're we're excited to see what comes out of of wage with the bed being really Matching, low income Americans to sort of higher paying jobs.

And listeners, as always, I'll put links in the show notes to UpAge, to AliCorp, to some of the other organizations that Tanya's mentioning. So you don't have to well, what did she say? Just look in the show notes. It's there. So, Tanya, so now that we have a little bit of sense of kinda your background and Alliecorp, let's widen back a little bit tune today's title and talk to us a little bit about let's start really basic. Like, what is an impact define, and why might somebody consider starting 1 or being part of 1?

Yeah. I mean, we At at Aliecorp, we we define impact as, supporting ventures that are that are deliberately building for this low income demographic that I mentioned Earlier, impact is such a broad category, and impact can mean so many different things for so many different people that I think Having a focus on what impact means to you and to your fund is actually really, really important. And for us, that's that's the The center of our axis and and and how we sort of view all the different investment opportunities that we look at. But I think there's a there's an incredible opportunity for impact and strong financial returns to to come together, for several reasons. One is funding and willingness to pay. Solutions to hard social chain challenges are Well financed by government. Think of Medicaid or Medicare, Department of Education, etcetera, and even employers through benefit spend, but but they are still overlooked. Secondly, competition and and tech opportunity.

I think social problems are often left to analog solutions delivered by government, NGOs, or legacy companies. And there's the real desperation by end users for something better, Which leaves a massive room for technological disruption. And 3rd, I would mention, and there's many reasons I could articulate, but the 3rd 1 I'll mention is founder quality. Entrepreneurs building the social space are tenacious and mission aligned, and they're obsessed with tackling a problem whose Solution means more than just a financial action, and they're often acutely experience the problem personally themselves. And so we're finding Extraordinary founders doing extraordinary things that that should be, supported. And so I think there's a lot of reasons why Sort of, capital needs to be flowing into sort of the intersection of impact and and financial returns.

Nice. So I think what I hear you saying, Tanya, is the first step if you're really seriously considering an impact fund is define impact for you, because I agree with you. That social impact, that word is tossed around. Those 2 words are tossed around so much that I'm not sure they mean anything anymore. Like, 2 people could be using those same terms and mean completely different things and not at all be values aligned and maybe shouldn't, you know, invest in each other or collaborate in any sort of very robust way because they're not talking about the same thing. So you're saying, start with defining what impact means for you. Is that fair to say?

That that's totally fair to say. So think about the big picture and define sort of the mission envision of the fund, from a high level, but then also tease out the criteria that you'll use to judge, the pipeline that you'll be that will be coming through your doors. And so we specifically, for example, look for good business fundamentals with a model that works at scale and is sustainable. We look for experienced founders that know the problem, know the system, know the breaking points, Know the financial incentives, etcetera. We look for a large TAM, a total addressable market with an opportunity to become a very large company. And we, of course, especially look for impact that meaningfully improves the lives of 80% of Americans who are low and moderate income. And then you can go a step further, right, in terms of impact and and think about the specific KPIs that are important to you and that you'll be tracking, in your portfolio companies, in your investments so that you can judge whether you're doing a good job or or not so good job at at, selecting and ultimately porting your portfolio. But it starts with a big vision for sure.

So you start with your mission and your values, and then you start looking at things like take what are your criteria, who are you how are you gonna base your funding decisions, and I heard you mentioned thing that AllyCorp, you're looking at things like the entrepreneurs, the founders' experience, and kind of aptitude understanding of the issues. You're looking at things like total addressable market. In other words, how scalable is this? You're looking at the business model. Is this gonna be sustainable? And you're looking at returns both from an impact, so social impact or the, return on impact. Right? Internal investment from an impact lens, but also is this sustainably financially. So those would be some of Alicorp's like, how are we gonna decide who we fund or not. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. That's absolutely fair to say. And and in general, we really try very hard to back, Business models where the social impact is almost intrinsic to the business model, and and they're mutually reinforcing In the sense where you get more financial returns if you get more social impact, then you get more social impact if you get more financial returns. And that's not always easy, but there are business models out there. And and we've we've been we've been relatively successful since launch in in sort of building that pipeline of opportunities where where impact and and returns are are aligned and reinforcing.

Awesome. So we've got some of the basic questions like, you know, where do you start? Start with defining your mission, your values, attend how are you gonna what are your criteria for making, investments? One of the questions I'm known for asking, though, like, such an obvious, duh, question, Tanya. But one of the questions, if I'm a listener and I don't know a whole lot about impact funds, I gotta ask the question, where does the money come from that a fund invests?

Yep. That's a great question. Funds are typically funded by high network individuals or institutions or endowments. They're called limited partners, LPs, and they they invest for for different reasons, but typically in impact funds because they they believe in the mission of the fund, and they wanna see a return to their capital as well. So at at Aliecorp, I was very lucky in that I did not have to fundraise. The fund was already ceded for the first, like, 2 years of its operations. So I started out with capital to deploy, which I feel very lucky about. And for me, the task was really defining What success looked like, in terms of deploying that capital and how we were gonna operationalize it so that The work was was done sort of the most efficiently possible as as an initial team of 1.

So usually the funding comes from high net worth individuals, institutions. Sometimes, potentially, I've seen it happen in the social impact world that there could be a grant or some sort of government, investment to get it going because they're excited talk about innovation in how impact happens. So I've seen a variety of things, but, yeah, that's that's also what I'm seeing. Seeing and then the other thing I was just thinking about, Tanya, is let's think a little together. Like, there's the initial funding, and then, you know, so you said, for instance, the did social impact. Vertical at Ally Corp was funded for 2 years, and then there's always like, well, wait a second. Do you go out of business? You stop making, you know, investments after 2 years, and and typically no. Either there's a return, you know, because when these investments are made, there's arrangements for people to get paid back when a company sells or sharing a profits in various ways.

So let's talk a little bit about the ongoing financial relationships between the fund and the companies.

Yeah. Absolutely. The expectation is for money to be returned to the fund. And that's that's where sort of the The the profits are made. Alicorp traditionally has been an evergreen fund, which means that the the money that we get back, we redeploy back out. And it's it's sort of sort of a a virtuous cycle in that sense, but it takes time. It takes time to for companies to be successful and grow and get an exit. And so having having a a a good capitalization from the beginning is is pretty helpful.

There's more than one way that that sustainability happens. There's the return on the investments that a fund makes. I know in New Mexico Angels, there's like a sibling organization called the Vintage Fund, the New Mexico Vintage Fund, and vintage refers to wine. Right? And what that means is, like, every year, like, right now, closing out the 2nd year, and there's conversations about who's you know, wants to finally get in. It's time to decide people. You know, every year, there's a new raise of funds, and those funds would get deployed during that year. And then there's another raise, and then another raise. So there's lots of ways that people build in sustainability, and thanks for sharing that with us, Tanya.

So talk to us a little bit about, like, the impact part of impact investing or an impact fund. What what kinds of things are you seeing at AllyCorp? And I know you're very active. For instance, I was doing my homework, and I saw you did, you're on a panel in July talking about impact vest investing in New York City. Right? So I know you're talking to other took funds and funds with very robust commitments to social impact. Like, what are some examples of when a fund invests in a social enterprise, for profit, nonprofit, whatever the structure is. What are we starting to see as there's more momentum in the impact investing space, what are we learning about return on investment from an impact, lens?

Yeah. I think what we're learning is that impact and returns can be mutually reinforcing. And so we've we've done Nine investments so far in the year and a half that we've been since our launch. Over the 9 investments, I would tell you that 8, we are investing alongside traditional VC funds that that are not necessarily labeled or don't necessarily think of themselves as impact funds, But see the the the incredible opportunity that it is to invest in underserved Families and and in neglected industries and tackling really, in really systemic problems that need to be solved, but haven't yet been solved. And so I think we're seeing traditional VCs interested in the space. And I think, candidly, we're also seeing that it takes time. It takes time for companies to grow and scale and have an exit. And I think That's that we we do need to, as an industry, for certain problems, exercise, a bit more patience In in getting sort of getting it right.

Yeah. One of the questions that comes up when I talk to people about talked investing, Tonya, is the question of, like, how are the returns compared to more traditional investing where impact is not on the table? Do you have any sense of that?

I think there's a wide variety of funds out there that define impact differently and that seek different kinds of returns. And, Ali, could the impact vertical operates with a very similar criteria and very similar return expectations as the rest of the verticals. That said, outside of the of the of the fun, but within Ali Garp, we also have philanthropic funding, Which I think is really, really important and really interesting because it gives us the ability to back things that might not be Or turn into a a multibillion dollar business, but we think that from an impact perspective should absolutely be funded and should exist. And so having those sort of, 2 pockets, if you will, 1 seeking good healthy returns, And 1, making potentially concessionary investments or grants, which we have done, is actually really, really important because I think that the field in general lacks flexible capital. And so we frequently have, specific tools in our toolbox that we deploy over and over again. And I think having flexible capital allows us to take a step back And really look at a problem and look at the different solutions and then figure out what the right instrument is and then deploy it appropriately. And so I feel really lucky to be In the place where, yes, most of what I do and the bread and butter of what I do is return seeking, but I also have philanthropic capital for for things that that we strongly believe should be funded.

Well, I love that model. That's that I I remember interviewing Tom Bozzo, who is the CEO of Homeboy Industries, one of the, early social enterprises is for people who are coming out of prison and transitioning into life and, helping people build a sustainable life after coming out of prison. Remember him talking about how important it is to have a business mindset even though they're run as a nonprofit need to really make sure they're paying attention to things like their cost, things like their efficiency, having good systems not get lazy. He didn't use that word. That's my being blunt. But, basically, he was saying don't get lazy just because you're a nonprofit. You wanna run it well, but because they needed a lot of extra support for folks who are coming out of prison, they it was never gonna be exactly, equal to a business that didn't have some of those needs, but they're nonprofit and they use their funding for donors and grants to kind of do that extra support that's needed, but they're not they're they're still very respectful of trying to earn everything they can as an enterprise to keep it sustainable and to make sure that every dollar that comes in from a donation or a grant stretches as far as humanly possible so they can sustain it and grow it and help more people, and that helps them actually get more donations because people feel there a lot of trust, they're very accountable in what they're doing with their money and how much they try to generate their own revenue and not over, depend. That was he he had such a great articulation.

I'll put a link in the show notes listeners so you can listen to what Tom Bozzo had to say about that.

So I think the strongest nonprofits are run like these businesses. Yeah. Yep.

He had so much good stuff to say. So let's do this. In a moment, I wanna come here where Ally Corp is now and, more importantly, where you're going and also a few other tips just let you have for people interested in impact funds, Tanya. But before we do that, just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan talk about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, we refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life.

You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back everybody. In the 2nd part of the show. We are here with Tanya Beja. We're talking about impact funds and what they are and how you launch 1 and how you grow 1. So here you are, Tanya. You were saying in the 1st part of the show, 9 investments starting to get some great returns, seeing really good things coming from Alicorp's impact vertical and the investments you've made about a year and a half in. Like, where are things now? And and another question I have is, like, how do you track things as a fund that is really interested did an impact as well as returns.

Like, talk to us a little bit about what are some of the metrics you're looking at? How do you, think about that sustainability. You want returns, but also sometimes with Impact Ventures, given we're working with things like marginalized communities many times. Sometimes it's not a 6 month turnaround time to, you know, 300 x in 6 months. Like, it doesn't always work that way. So how do you balance some of that, and what are you tracking need to define for yourself whether the investments that Alicorp's investment vertical you know, what does success mean like, and what are you measuring to determine that?

So when I when I look at, I think your the first part of your question was, How do you how do you make sense of of all the information? How do you track? And and when it comes to pipeline, We we track and use it using different softwares, whether it's it's affinity or Adio, we log into a system everything we're seeing, and and that helps us, you know, get organized and figure out who we're talking to, when we should be pinging folks that we're tracking, and interested in having a follow-up conversation with etcetera. Once we invest, we have our own sort of spreadsheets and our own way of Keeping track of our portfolio. Typically, what we what we look at quite closely is growth and how they're doing in terms of new business, people served, revenue. We look at Berne quite closely as well, given that fundraising is the fundraising environment right now is is a little bit difficult, Especially if you're raising a series a or a series b. And so we we look at how many months of runway you have. We look at semblances of product market fit. We look at renewal rates within your existing customer base. We look at a variety of things, and And some things are more important to look at in some investments versus others, and so we try to tailor what we're looking at depending on the investment Opportunity that we're talking about.

And that's especially true on the social impact side. We try our best to align ourselves with founders that are already tracking social impact KPIs. And so rather than add or additional requirements to the social impact tracking. We rely on what what they're already measuring, which is Critical for their business to work, and we keep track of that. And and it generally has to do with number of people served, with up with the example of that I gave of a wage Earlier, it would have to be also the increase in wages that we are, being able to materialize for the folks we're serving, etcetera.

So one of the things when I talk to entrepreneurs who are either getting funding and or are in discussions from funds, from VCs. One of the things that I've heard more talk about is the fit, but it's so it's not just about the money. A matter of fact, an entrepreneur that I was talking to today is Friday as we're recording this. This was on Wednesday. Saw it just 2 days ago. I had a great conversation with an entrepreneur who was saying, you know, it was great to get the money from the VC that invested in us, but what I didn't realize, I had no idea the money was actually the one of the least valuable things they gave us even though we're super grateful for it. They have been incredible at opening doors and mentoring and just intellectual capital. They shared things that they didn't even that this entrepreneur had no idea they were gonna get when they inked this deal.

And he's like, I am so grateful. And then we both started talking about, you know, some of the horror stories when there's not a good fit. Talk to us a little bit about yeah. What have you seen in the, like this is a really great match, and here's how a fund fund or an investor can provide nonfinancial resources that can help a company succeed. And where have you seen some, oh, ouch. That was a train wreck. Entrepreneurs try to learn from this train wreck about some things not to do.

Yeah. I think I think that's a great point, Paul, because I I absolutely think that Capital is super important. But it's but it's the, fall on support and the portfolio support after the capital is deployed. That's the most important And and we really, you know, writing the 1st check is is is important, but it's it's the 10 year relationship thereafter that that is really important, and it's it's the funds opportunity to really add value to the business. And so I think, you know, by and large, Aligorp's team is composed of operators. Right? We don't come from, the PE world or the banking world, we're we're builders and we've operated businesses before, and we think that that's critically important to add value to our portfolio. Because once you've been there, you know, the kind of questions you ask and and are are different than than if you are just an investor And approaching a business sort of from a more academic perspective. And so when I look at how we add value to our I think it tends to be concentrated, in 3 areas, but it obviously depends on sort of the business.

One is fundraising. I think every company that's doing well needs to be continuously mindful about fundraising. And so I think building good relationships with our fellow investors and and being able to make introductions and direct our companies The funds that are a good fit for them for their next stage is is really, really important. The 2nd area where where we we end up, you know, rolling our sleeves quite a bit is on the network piece, on Making introductions to our portfolio companies that can really dramatically accelerate growth. And those are typically partnerships potential clients or potential new business, to to the venture. And then the third1 is kind of like the other bucket, Which which is like revolves around, like, strategy, honestly, and helping our founders navigate Specific questions or specific or any issues they are they are going through, and really lending sort of our our our strategic expertise and then track record in the specific industry that they're building around, to help sort of, Yeah. Ease ease, the path to growth.

Beautiful. So 9 investments in 18 months see an AllyCorp's impact vertical. Where are things now? And when you look ahead the next 2 to 3 years. Where do you see this part of AllyCorp going?

Yep. Yeah. We've done Nine investments. We've done 6 small grants. So so the the majority of what we've done from a dollar The 85% of it is is on the for profit side. But as I said, really interest really, really grateful to have philanthropic Funding to to do stuff that we think is really meaningful. I think going forward, incubating might be an area that as we build the team up might be really interesting for us to explore. You know, Ally Group is known for incubating really iconic companies.

And And there's several sort of, hypotheses that we have, in in in the impact space that we wanna explore. In recent weeks, we've been really thinking about today distribution and whether we can really changed the landscape by enabling grocers to donate food that's not selling that has already hit their shelves. Grocers are generally well aware and proficient at donating food from their warehouses. But once it hits their store shelves, If that food is not sold, it goes straight to the garbage can. And that's 10% of their inventory. So it's not a trivial number. It's £15,000,000,000 of food. So the question is, you know, can we enable donations of food to food insecure folks, directly from grocery stores? So that's 1 area that I think we'll explore in the coming weeks, months.

But we're constantly ideating and thinking, you know, Where will the world be in 10 years? And based off of those trends, we ask ourselves what kind of businesses need to exist. And I think As we build the impact team, I think we'll have a lot more bandwidth to think about incubating as well. The other program that we launched really recently is called Impact Engine. And so at Alley Crooked, we've got 70 engineers, split between Montreal and Bogota, Colombia. And in thinking, you know, how can we move the needle in the social impact Space, we we as it pertains to nonprofits, we became acutely aware that nonprofits that are tech enabled, because all the stuff that we're doing is by and large tech enabled. So so nonprofits that extend the tech enabled product or service Are having a lot of, trouble, retaining and and recruiting top notch tech talent, don't necessarily have the budget to pay for it. And even if they can recruit and retain and pay for, top notch tech talent, Sometimes they don't even have the in house capabilities to oversee the tech build and tech work that needs to be done. And so we We launched, Impact Engine, which is a collaboration between the impact vertical and and our Ali Corp our engineering teams to support nonprofits, in their tech bills.

And so we've, go through well, we've had 1 nonprofit, and we're onboarding a 2nd nonprofit into our program. And I think that's another area that that could potentially Grow in the next few, years.

I was just in Bogota 3, 4 weeks ago. Tell my brother and sister-in-law live in Medellin, Colombia, and I was at Medellin and, in Bogota. And so we need to get you plugged into my brother and sister-in-law who have a big podcast around impact, so we'll we'll we'll talk after the after the show. Big shout out to my brother, Craig Zelizer, and my sister-in-law, Catalina Rojas, who are the cohost of the social change, career podcast. So we're gonna get you plugged into them, Tanya, because I think you all would have a lot to talk about. So there's your 2nd podcast already.

That's great.

When the so this is where, AliCorp is and thank you for that great information. And, oh, let me just wind back and say, I love that you're being proactive. We wanna do something with the food that is sitting on the shelves that isn't gonna make it into somebody's kitchen. I I love that you're being proactive like that. That's just fabulous. I wanna celebrate that. That's I just love seeing when funders are, you know, helping to understand the landscape and sculpt it and not just, sitting there waiting for pitches, so good good on y'all. So this is where Alicorp is.

Talk to us about again, we were saying earlier, the impact space as a whole and impact funds or something. You know, that wasn't so much a thing. If you go back 25 years ago or even 10, we've seen a very significant growth in the space, conversations about impact investing. Friend of mine here who's an impact investor. We we have a new, you know, New Mexico only has 2,200,000 people in the whole state. We have a day long Impact Investing, retreat coming up in in November, that wasn't happening in places like New Mexico or maybe even places like New York City in not too long ago. And we've seen this space really grow. So what could you say about, like, the ecosystem of impact funds and impact investing? What have you seen in your time? How is it different now? And, again, where do you think the space might be going in 2 or 3 years?

Yeah. You know, I I, was part of the sort of first impact investing way back in, like, 2010, when there were very, very few people just even thinking about impact. And and certainly, you know, the field has exploded quite a bit in terms of number of funds looking at the space and capital deployed, etcetera. But for me, the most interesting trend has been seeing really incredibly Socially minded entrepreneurs, being funded by traditional VC Funds that don't necessarily label themselves as impact, but recognize that that, that it's an that's that's Important to invest in these kind of businesses, and these kind of businesses can be big and can be large. And so so whether you call yourself an impact fund or you don't call yourself an impact fund what what I'm excited about is is more capital being being deployed, in companies that They can actually have a transformative effect on broad swaths of the population that are underserved.

Beautiful. So if there was something we haven't talked about yet when it comes to impact funds and starting and growing them or impact investing in general, and you're like, if I left this podcast and we didn't talk about this, I didn't do my job as a leader in this space. What what haven't we talked about yet?

The the the pandemic has brought about a real reckoning to folks in terms of what they wanna do with their lives. And I think we we've seen increasingly really, really talented folks building stuff that is meaningful and can really Change the world for the better, and I think capital will, by and large, follow these these Entrepreneurs or at least that's my hope. I mean, the only thing that I would add is that I think I think even though There's more capital flowing in the space. It still ends up being concentrated in founders that come from a a particular sort of demographic. And and I think we could do more to fund diverse founders that have learned experience and lived experience and are building around pain points that are in they're intimately, aware of and have experienced, as a way to really Solve problems that still have not been solved. And so I think there's an equity piece to the deployment of capital that I think Could certainly be better going forward, but I think, I'm an optimist when it comes to the space in general.

There certainly are some incredible leaders like yourself who are bringing that up, and I'm so grateful you brought that up, Tanya. The research I've seen is that less than 2% of all capital winds up in the hands of women founders, and if we start talking about women of color founders, it goes down to quite a bit less than 1%, although there was some movement before the pandemic, and then we lost ground. That's the research I saw. Now it's kind of a more robust conversation again. So I'm really grateful to folks like yourself who are just kind of leading that conversation, but I'm certainly on the same side. I really wanna see more attention in the, you know, investing space to wear founders who don't necessarily you know, not another white guy like me who came from I I didn't come from an Ivy League school or is that, you know, one of the top tier colleges and formally trained, but that's who where capital tends to concentrate. And yet the research tells us that the outcomes both financially and impact are higher when women are, you know, in charge of the companies or on the leadership teams and when people of color are. When you get women of color in leadership teams, like, it's the highest of all.

So it we'd say we're paying attention to metrics and we care about return, both impact and financial, thought the money doesn't quite track with the research right now. So I Yeah. I hope we can see a better, reckoning of the money and the research search because there's a lot of it by now for putting that up.

And and back to our topic that, you know, I think social impact and returns can can can absolutely be mutually reinforcing to your point. Like, diverse teams perform better than nondiverse teams. And so, Yeah. As you said, you know, if if we were to implement the research, we would have a very different concentration of, capital deployment, and and so that's that's the hope going forward. And, you know, to your question about what else do I wanna say, I think I would just, Wanna say, you know, if there are founders out there, that are early stage raising their pre seed or seed rounds, and they're building around a pinpoint that's experienced by low income Americans. Come to us. You know? Ping me. I'd be I'd be happy to chat and learn more about what you're building.

Will put a link again to the AllyCorp, both the main part of the site and also the impact part of the site. There's contact info right on the site, so know that's how you can get ahold of Tanya. Tanya, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's just been fabulous to have you. I hope you do many, many more podcasts. Thank you for the work you do, and thanks for sharing your knowledge with our listeners.

Absolutely, Paul. Thank you so much for having me.

So that's the end of today's interview. But before you go, just a reminder, we love listeners suggested topics think, yes, I'm a weirdo, it turns out, mostly. I'm a weirdo in a lot of ways, but one of the ways I'm weird is most podcast, hosts don't ask their listeners for suggestions. I don't know why you all send incredible ideas. So, just wanna remind you, we love hearing your suggestions. You can find out who we're looking for at the Awarepreneurs website. We have our contact page. We have 3 simple guidelines.

We try to be really transparent about the kinds of stories we're looking for. Take a look at those. And if you say, yeah. I got don't know that's a fit. Please send your ideas on it. So before we go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're looking for in our world.