Innovator Insights: Kesha Cash, Founder and General Partner at Impact America Fund
Dubbed a “Top Five Gamechanger” by Forbes and a “Power Investor” by Essence, Kesha Cash is a General Partner at Impact America Fund (IAF), a $10M venture capital fund that harnesses market opportunities overlooked by traditional investors. IAF invests in technology driven companies with a mission to enhance the wellbeing of underserved communities in America.
In 2016, Stanford Graduate School of Business published a case study on IAF to teach students about the structure of an impact venture fund, and how to analyze the social and economic impact of high-growth technology investments.
Kesha’s personal mission is to transform the economic livelihoods of marginalized communities in America. A Columbia MBA and applied mathematics student from UC Berkeley, Kesha spent the first decade of her career as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Merrill Lynch in NYC, an operational consultant to inner-city small businesses in Los Angeles, and an impact investments associate at Bridges Ventures in the UK. In 2010, Kesha co-founded a $5M initiative focused on investing in mission-driven entrepreneurs of color, Jalia Ventures, with serial impact investor, Josh Mailman. She also supported Josh with managing Serious Change, LP, at that time a $50 million global impact investment fund. Kesha took her vision to the next level by founding IAF. Kesha grew up in economic hardship and is her family’s first college graduate. Her lived experience and abiding belief in human potential inspire her life’s work. Kesha tells Forbes her vision for the future: “We identify as one human race and deeply consider the impact of our actions on other human beings, the environment and future generations.”
Kesha spoke with Invested Impact about what it’s like to work on — then leave Wall Street, what relationships with investors can and should be like, and the vision and heroes that guide her work.
II: What’s your North Star?
KC: From very early on my goals and my thinking have been, “How do I help others gain access who may not have it otherwise?” That’s what drives me every day. I don’t think I’m a genius by any means. But I’m a hustler and I know how to navigate landscapes and get access to resources. And so I think I’m honestly — until I figure out otherwise — I think I’m here to break down some of the barriers that prevent people from gaining access and exposing people to opportunities that they may otherwise not have been familiar with.
II: What/who has the greatest impact on your work? Who are your heroes?
KC: I think a big influence on my thinking comes from my mother and hearing stories about unfair treatment, injustices, and how she grew up. She and two of her sisters were raised by their grandmother in a really, really small town in North Carolina and they were dirt poor; they lived in a shack and had an outhouse. She was young at the time of integration and sat in at the lunch counters. Unfortunately, we’re still fighting very similar fights today, but in different ways. Part of my work is carrying on what I’ve learned from my mother and also being a change agent when there’s an opportunity to be that.
II: Tell me about your experience of dropping pieces of your identity to navigate corporate structures and dominant culture.
KC: Truly, I think it’s an evolution of identity. Having grown up in Orange County, California, which was predominantly white at the time and attending a public school that was also predominantly white, we had great moms who were active supporters of the black student union at our predominantly white public school education and today we are all really grateful for it. Each black history month we had a black history assembly, which was fantastic. I think it broke boundaries and created camaraderie between all of us. I carried that identity forward into UC Berkeley. There I gravitated towards the other black students, joined the black society and got really involved in black and minority issues . That was sort of the Berkeley experience — digging deeper into my blackness.
From there, I transitioned to Wall Street. During college, I participated in a program called Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and interned on Wall Street. Thank God for that program, I think they are probably single-handedly responsible for diversifying Wall Street. I remember showing up at the summer session to do internship training- which was absolutely necessary. Some of my fellow students were horrified that I had shown up with a nose ring, which was the first piece of me that I had to remove. In this new environment, what I felt was really difficult was figuring out how to adapt to certain, often unspoken, rules.
I had to adapt in order to survive as a woman of color on Wall Street because the culture of that environment is very rigorous in its established norms. Often times, especially for women and minorities, it’s not a holistic way of being. Then I transitioned from New York to Los Angeles and I sort of lost it. I had to figure out who I was and I had to find myself.
I was really trying to adapt as much as I could to that environment or that culture so that I wasn’t seen as different but it was hard being the only black female- and one of the two black people on my entire group. My goal at that point was to fit in. Now my hair is natural all the time and while I may straighten it when I want to now, during my time on Wall Street I wouldn’t have thought about actually wearing my hair curly or afro style. Straight hair is the norm because most people in that group have straight hair. I had to adapt in order to survive as a woman of color in Wall Street because the culture of that environment is very rigorous in its established norms. Often times, especially for women and minorities, it’s not a holistic way of being.
Then I transitioned from New York to Los Angeles and I sort of lost it. I was like, “what is happening here? What is going on? I’m completely losing myself.” I’m an extreme person; I ended up going to the other extreme and I cut all my hair off. My parents thought I had lost my mind. I probably had lost a part of my mind. I had to figure out who I was and I had to find myself.
II: What happened next? What type of work did you do after leaving New York?
KC: Here’s what I discovered when I cut off my hair and made a decision to live off my Wall Street bonuses and move into a really small apartment and start eating all natural foods: Going from Wall Street and the extreme corporate environment, where you are working on spreadsheets and billion dollar mergers and acquisitions, you are not engaging with the community. You are in the office most of the day and night. When I left, I became hands on, had my feet on the ground, and was always in the community.
The first entrepreneur that I met after leaving Wall Street was an African American fashion designer selling clothing and shoes at a flea market. This designer created really fabulous boots and he was making high end dresses that looked like dresses you could buy from a boutique in Beverly Hills. I was like, “My God, why don’t you have your own store? What is happening here? This dress does not belong in a flea market.” He was selling out of his products without even having a store but when you think about it, it’s like what the hell is going on here.
My motivation really came from my time working with entrepreneurs and watching them work just hard as my Wall Street colleagues, but seeming to run on a treadmill instead of making progress because of the resources and access they did not have.
Speaking to him about the path he had taken to get there… I was thinking the whole time, “we have to get you a store.” I became obsessed with that project: how can I help this man take create the environment he needs to grow his business. What I’m really passionate about is seeing the potential in someone or something and knowing that if they harness it in the right way they can actually take it to the next level themselves with the right support. We did.
I had a mentor from Wall Street who was the first investor in that project. We were able to open a boutique and get the designer’s work out of the flea market and into a boutique where people were willing to pay more for those dresses and stabilized and expanded his operation. For me it’s seeing him and meeting other entrepreneurs and it’s overwhelming, sort of like getting hit over the head: there is so much creativity and innovation in the communities. People were working just as hard as I was working, but they didn’t have any access to the resources that I had access to- and that isn’t fair in my opinion.
I had to figure out how I could use my skill sets to help these innovators and entrepreneurs. My motivation really came from my time working with entrepreneurs like the fashion designer and watching them work just hard as my Wall Street colleagues but seeming to run on a treadmill instead of making progress because of the resources and access they did not have. There are certain doors I just want opened for them.
II: How do you attract investment to promising entrepreneurs?
KC: Prior to having established Impact America Fund, it was my mentor who gave capital to help set up the shop for the fashion designer. Moving forward we raised (and continue to raise) funds from limited partners and investors. It really is about pitching our concept getting them on board and trusting that we are going to execute that mission. Interestingly enough, I think the investors in this space are ‘fast movers’ who kind of get it and appreciate a more nuanced explanation of what we mean when we talk about the intersection of technology in underserved communities and they are like “Absolutely! Of course there is a huge market opportunity there.” They just get it.
Our first round of investors were amazing people who were looking for these types of solutions immediately and who were also ready to help us gear up for round two when we would be speaking to larger institutional investors, like foundations (who are also actively looking for impact-oriented solutions). This required us to think deeply about where they were and what their goals are to achieve impact. Because we are so mission-aligned and so focused on financial terms as well as the impact that our investors do have to have a good sense of why they are participating in this mission and why they are involved specifically in this firm.
They are plenty of other firms that they can invest in if they just want financial returns and so that conversation becomes more about trying to figure out how we bring these investors in line with the energy of the organization. But I established the firm for that reason: we have our own investment committees and we make our investment decisions so we don’t have to convince our investors to invest in each deal that we do. They are trusting that we know something, that we are going to do the due diligence, and that we’ll take care of investing the capital and supporting these companies. It makes life a little bit easier by having this fund structure.
II: How has the increase in impact investing influenced traditional investing mindsets (on the part of entrepreneurs or investors)?
KC: All of our entrepreneurs are profit-driven but also extremely mission-minded. They wake up every day to grow their company but also to achieve a mission that they have set for themselves and the constituency that they serve. Most of our companies have this really embedded in their revenue models, but the investors have to appreciate that too. If they don’t appreciate that, they are not the right investor. Because our firm inherently understands that mission is tied to revenues and profits it possess less of a challenge in investing than I think it would otherwise.
Personally, it’s like I’m married to all my funders. It’s like we are completely in this to win this together which is beautiful.
We tell our entrepreneurs (and most of them know this already): make sure you have the right financial partners. To identify and work with the right investors is so important: do it the right way and it’s like a marriage, a partnership. It’s being in bed with somebody for about seven to 10 years and like any other relationship, there are ups and downs and there are battles.
Personally, it’s like I’m married to all my funders. They text me, I text them back, They call me, I call them back. And if they need my support and vice versa, it’s like we are completely in this to win this together which is beautiful.
