A Systems Change Investment Collaborative

Accelerating UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

We seed cohorts of startups to advance root-cause solutions to inequality, poverty, waste, and climate change.

Cohorts launch in a pioneering collaborative designed to build unicorn capacity and scale systems change.

Our 21st-Century Ethos

Circular Climate+ Planet

  • 2.01 billion metric tons of solid waste are produced annually worldwide with an estimated increase by 70% if current conditions persist.

    The U.S. produces more than 33 percent of the planet’s solid waste, and landfills are emit 36% of methane emissions

    NYC alone exports 12,000 tons of waste a day.

    In 2020, greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture economic sector accounted for 11% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Cohorts are launched in a regenerative farming collaborative to build supply and value chain capacity

    Our core AgTech partner processes various waste streams with zero emissions and transforms waste into organic composts, bio-fertilizers, and biochars.

    Nutritious foods, beverages, plant-based consumer products, fibers, dyes, bio-materials and energies are all dependent on regenerative agriculture and are launched alongside capacity building startups.

Collective Prosperity

  • The 1% owns 45% of the world’s wealth while the middle class is hollowing out and poverty is increasing.

    Housing markets have grown 1.5 times faster than the household median income. Health care and education costs are also outpacing inflation.

    The US is 5% of the world’s population yet incarcerates 25% of the world’s prisoners.

    Black males aged 18-19 are 9 times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers.

    There is also a direct link to School-Poverty to Prison Pipelines

  • We use broad-based company ownership plto empower economic mobility and wealth creation for every employee.

    We hire large talent pools of persons facing employment barriers and work closely with nonprofits, educational institutions, and prisons to manage social services and provide baseline education and skills training to pre-screen qualified candidates that are ready, willing and able to work.

    Common sense dictates wealth-generating employment will end poverty, build productive capacity, provide a stable/secure future, and revitalize and rehabilitate distressed communities.

Diverse Top Talent

  • Of the $69 trillion in assets under management in the US investment industry, 98.7% is managed by firms owned by white males.

    Women and minorities are shut out from the funding required to achieve their dreams.

    Women receive a token 2.2% of venture funding though women-led companies achieve 35% higher ROI, and 12% higher revenue than male-led startups.

    Most minorities get even less:

    -Asians - 17%

    -Middle Easterners - 2%,

    -Latinx - 1.8%

    -Blacks - 1%

    In Europe 93% of funding went to tech startups with all male teams.

    When vast populations and their innovations are de-valued, societies and economies become weak.

  • While we are an inclusive and equitable accelerator and accept promising startups from all walks of life, we actively recruit women and minority-led startups and build our enabling ecosystem to support their empowerment.

Our collaborative solves why 80% of startups fail to build pre-unicorn capacity.

The Top Ten Reasons Startups Fail

CB Insights -Analysis of 101 Startup Post Mortems

  • To achieve systems change we had to solve why 80% of startups fail.

    Our solution is groundbreaking but simple. We launch agile, lean industry supply-value-chains, not startups.

    We launch cohorts that are filled with siloed startups that build out key functions in the chain and meet the business needs of the other. Together they are building one another’s capacity creating a virtuous circle of mutual benefits, gains, and opportunities.

    This approach builds capacity to dominate whole markets.

  • Startups within the collaborative are both producers and consumers of one another - monetizing an interdependency that grows when new cohorts are launched.

  • Founders become interdependent high-performing teams. They expand their business acumen by learning from the experts that meet their capacity-building needs.

  • it is hard to get outcompeted when you are part of a collaborative that fuels a network of competitive advantages, agility, and speed.

    Network effect formula: In F(x)F(x), the Function doubles every time you add one to its input xx.

    The presence of this doubling time is characteristic of exponential functions, indicating how fast they grow.

    70% of tech value comes from network effects.

  • We built lean into our DNA by integrating cloud-based shared services into the collaborative.

    A shared approach is both economic and strategic:

    Across the portfolio operating costs are reduced by 20-30% and capital investment on technology and infrastructure by 30-40%.

    Shared infrastructure enables turnkey rollups, centralized reporting, planning, strategy, policy setting, and KPIs.

    We blend outsourcing with cohort-enabled services to optimize efficiencies.

  • Startups design reliable, easy-to-use-and-learn products that meet the growing business requirements and needs of their cohort customers. As new startups are launched functionality expands.

    There is no need to waste money, months, or years on research and effort into figuring out what might work.

  • Cohorts are launched in an innovation model that solves their barriers-to-success and builds pre-Unicorn capacity…all while solving the world’s most complex problems. Can you think of a better business model than that?

  • We do not expect our multi-disciplinarian startups to be experts at sales and marketing or other critical areas of expertise. Every cohort launches marketing and visual storytelling innovators so startups can focus on their core competency while sales and marketing pros perform their magic too.

  • Interdependency is contractually monetized and designed to enhance, expand and build each other’s capacity not ignore it.

  • We leverage Village Capital’s approach to peer investment to ensure startups get selected that fit the collaborative’s immediate and prioritized needs. No mistimed products here!

  • How It All Fits

    Siloed startups launch in a unifying collaborative to build an ESG-centric supply-value chain with startups like these:

    • Clean transportation and bio-fuels / energies

    • Eco-packaging

    • SaaS infrastructure/shared services

    • AG Tech products and services

    • Bio-based packaging

    • Lean manufacturing and recycling systems

    • Plant-based consumer goods

    • B2B-B2C-D2C sales and marketing technologies

    • Visual storytelling artists

    • Organizational development technologies (leadership, high-powered teams, career skill-building, financial literacy)

  • The Whole > Sum of Parts

    Our investment approach solves why 80% of startups fail and empowers startups with pre-unicorn capacity building.

    We build interdependency where each startup becomes both a producer and consumer of the other. This approach guarantees market fit, optimizes expertise, fills in weaknesses, reduces costs, maximizes efficiencies, generates revenue streams, and builds enterprise capacity and scale.

    Subsequent cohorts continue to expand functionality and deepen value. powering an unprecedented competitive advantage fueled by a network effect of mutual benefits, gains, and opportunities.

  • The Startups We Seek

    We fund women and minority-led startups to untether their world-changing dreams and help them succeed.

    We screen startups for systems change passion and they must agree to contractually adopt the SDG DNA we seed.

    We love and use Village Capital’s peer-selected investment approach where founders participate in investment decision-making based on their priorities and needs.

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Transformation Is Our End Game

We seed with mission-aligned capital to remove conflicts of interest.

In exchange for investment, all startups are embedded with standardized, cost-effective SDG-DNA, bylaws, governance, policies, and broad-based ownership structures to:

  • Build wealth from the bottom-up and middle-out.

  • Spur productive-ownership-mentality.

  • Transform whole communities.

We partner with high-value stakeholders to mentor and prepare talent facing employment barriers to be ready, willing, and able to work.

We adopt transparent practices and provide the public with audited reports of our impacts, outcomes, and future plans.

Our Protections and Ethos