Скачать или смотреть Black Owned Venture Capital Fund Impact X Capital Wants To Invest £100

Over the last few months in light of the Black Lives Matter movement we have seen many venture capital firms commit to funding underrepresented entrepreneurs realizing there are systemic issues that exist in the industry which means only 1% of venture capital funding goes to Black entrepreneurs. One venture capital firm that has been quietly working to address this issue long before the Black Lives Matter movement is Impact X Capital, a double bottom line, venture capital firm seeking to invest £100 million in underrepresented entrepreneurs across Europe. The idea for Impact X Capital was conceived by Eric Collins. Collins is originally from Alabama, son of a Swiss chemical company executive (Ciba Geigy became Novartis) and guidance counselor who later went to Princeton University and then Harvard Law School before starting his career as a strategy consultant. After managing his own consultancy firm he entered the tech industry in 2002 and in the years that followed held senior roles at several well-known tech companies, most notably SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft MSFT for $250 million) where he was Chief Revenue and Distribution Officer, a role which brought him to London and then he remained in the U. K. to be Chief Operating Officer of Touch Surgery (acquired by Medtronic MDT in 2020). Through his work in venture-backed companies, he quickly realized “only 1% of venture funding goes to Black entrepreneurs and only 4% goes to female entrepreneurs” something which intuitively did not make sense to him as “this market inefficiency means there is an opportunity to invest and make a significant financial return,” he says. Fixing this issue was the incentive to start Impact X Capital Partners. “I’ve long held an interest in double bottom line return, financial return but also the ability to deliver some sort of positive measurable social impact” he says. Collins's thesis that “investing in underrepresented entrepreneurs in Europe at the seed or series A stage, across digital technology, health, education, lifestyle, media, and entertainment” would lead to Impact X Capital Partners backing some of the most profitable and fast-growing companies was met with agreement from many. However, Collins was very intentional about the type of people he brought around the table in the early stages of forming the fund. “We wanted to go to an army of the willing and able because convincing institutional investors to understand a problem they can’t see would be too time-consuming” he says. The people who sat around the table included the following:With this team in place and the thesis intact Collins has since recruited a diverse set of limited partners who have invested in the fund and put together an impressive executive team that has successfully managed more than £12 billion, built large-scale companies that have had meaningful exits and generated solid returns for investors.


All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com
Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommywil...


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