Who should we invest in next?
Welcome to the community-driven adventure to democratize money and power.
Last year, our team at Impact Collective took a big leap of faith and invested in 8 startups by asking a community of 350+ people who we should pick. We also tokenized part of the fund’s carry and gave it to the startup teams to give away the financial upside with active community members who supported them the most during and after the program.
It was scary and uncomfortable to give up power. But we learned great lessons, and we are doing it again this year. This time, we’re going even bolder.
The Impact Collective team was made of an incredibly talented group of people who checked many of the diversity boxes. We were mainly run by women, and included people from Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand and Malaysia. We were funders, founders, lawyers, community builders, consultants, ecosystem developers, impact experts, and more.
However, when we shared power with the community to inform our investment decisions, they elevated teams who were not on our radar. 400 startup teams from all over the world applied, and 84 teams from 35 countries participated in the virtual acceleration program. We were not exposed to some Asian markets, and some startups were just overlooked because we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
Some of the amazing teams that we ended up investing in that we might have completely missed without the community include Sehat Kahani from Pakistan, aims to democratize healthcare by building an all female health provider network to deliver quality healthcare solutions using tele-health, and Shuttle from Bangladesh, a renowned app-based transportation solution for women and now to the business for employee’s safe commute during COVID.
We not only invested in these teams, but we learned of untapped markets that have huge potential and are overlooked by most VCs.
This shows the power of community. Regardless of how diverse your operating team is and looks on paper, you will always have blind spots. We became smarter, more effective, more efficient, and made better investment decisions because we shared power with our community.
Our V1 of Impact Collective has shown results beyond any of our expectations [read our 2020 program report].
Impact Collective is back for V2. We are iterating on our model, honing our focus, and expanding our experiment as a community driven platform.We are taking an even bigger step towards betting on the community. This year, we will rely 100% on community voting to make our investment decisions on the final 10 teams. It’s more uncomfortable to give up 100% power. But we are convinced that we will make better decisions as a result.
Do you want to be part of this adventure?
👉 Join us as a startup to accelerate your work and grow your impact boosted by the community.
👉 Become an expert to support a diverse group of startups and grow together with them.
👉 Join as a community voter to vote and give our team your unique perspective.
Let us build collective impact, together.
🪐 Learn more about the Impact Collective : http://impactcollective.earth
⚡️Applications for Cohort 2 close at 15th August : Apply Now!
