nuance intelligence

One of our good friends and advisors, Jed Emerson, has been on the front lines of the intersection of sustainable investing and traditional capital markets.  For the past year, Jed was a partner at Uhuru, a hedge fund play with a sustainability bent, created by Peter Kellner, of Endeavor fame.  Although the fund failed to reach its own sustainability, and shut the doors in the December, it provided Jed with the material for another chapter in his long-running experiment of transforming traditional finance.

In his new paper — Hedge Fund Investing, Capital Markets and The Sustainability Challenge (PDF download)– Jed sets out with this premise:

“As I learned more about how he approached hedge fund investing, I was struck by how many of the aspects of Fundamental investing (as described to me) were similar to investing practices of Sustainable finance. Not the same, mind you, yet quite similar nevertheless. Simultaneous to this internal dialogue, an external dialogue evolved with investors Uhuru was engaged with around our work. These investors raised a related question: While they appreciated the attributes of our core Fundamental strategy, they asked if we couldn’t create a truly “sustainable” fund of hedge funds product. What they sought was a “Long/Short” investment strategy pursued in a manner consistent with an investor’s commitment to Sustainability. Was such a thing possible?

These conversations became the genesis of this current paper—a basic exploration of that question.”

Jed’s intro alone is brilliant and entertaining, and puts to rest the simplistic “good vs. evil” frame of reference in this complicated issue.  The rest of the paper is a unique view on the evolution of sustainable finance and the current equity and debt markets that will shed light on the issue for even the most sophisticated investor, while providing great grounding for those us who don’t live and die by the valuation of a group of securities.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll know more than you do today.  What more could you want?

This picture of me is worth one thousand words, at the minimum. Taken at Berthoud Pass, CO, while skiing with some very good friends.

With that, my midwinter haitus ends, and it’s back to a regular schedule of posts on the intersection of transformative IT, impact investing and sustainable business.

Looking down the page, it’s clear I’ve gotten behind on the blogging.

It’s a workload thing — so much exciting, impactful, time-consuming work and work travel going on that I’m in total overwhelmsion.

Soon, more reports and updates from the oddventures.  Until then, happy holidaze.

Our friends and collaborators Peter van Geldern and David Marks have re-launched their Shades of Green Network (SGN) this week.  SGN is a network of advisors and investors who are focusing on building green businesses in the New York metro area.  Their network has professionals of all disciplines (accountants, lawyers, grant writers, marketers and more), and engagement begins with a gap analysis that helps early-stage entrepreneurs figure out their next steps on the path to a sustainable enterprise.  Once a business is ready, SGN has an investor network with venture capitalists, angel investors and other forms of private equity. Continue reading

Colorado State University has an incredible program within the Business School — Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise — that “seeks to provide sustainable enterprise solutions to some of the most stubborn issues of our time including poverty, disease, malnutrition and environmental degradation… [equipping students] with the tools and network to become a global social entrepreneur, where the bottom lines are people, planet and profit.  This concentration is in the business of creating a better world, improving the lives of people, while building profitable ventures.”

One of many laudable aspects of the program is the 50/50 ratio of US and domestic students in each cohort.  As we learned recently at their annual kickoff celebration — hosted at sustainable business paragon New Belgium Brewery, this translates into teams with experience on multiple continents, often boasting 10 languages spoken on an individual project.

Six prospective companies presented their plans as the program’s second cohort.  We expect one or two of these to become strong companies after graduation, if not before.  Here are very brief summaries of the concepts: Continue reading

We just posted an updated agenda for the Sustainable Enterprise Business Models meetup, scheduled for 5:30pm, October 12th in Boulder.

The participant contribution and encouraging feedback has significantly shaped this month’s agenda, which will address the need for a common taxonomy that provides common language, and also discuss our high-level goals, outcomes and simple metrics we can use to guide the evolution of the program and discussion.

The goals for the rest of the year’s meetups include:

• Add a monthly Denver meetup (November).
• Begin a more technical review of metrics
• Begin in-depth reviews of leading sustainable enterprises in the Front Range, as we intended from the beginning.
  • we can’t confirm it yet, but could have one of Colorado’s favorite sustainable companies talking about how to participate
• Support the Angel Capital Summit on November 17th with a lunchtime mini-meetup brownbag lunch session.  (more to be announced on this shortly)

We hope to see you there, and encourage the collective wisdom of this community to continue guiding our actions.

Welcome to our report of what happened at the inaugural Sustainable Business Models Collective meetup in Boulder. Here’s what we set out to do:

PURPOSE
The purpose of this meetup is to provide a place to discuss the specifics of funding, creating and running a sustainable social enterprise. This emerging sector, which spans the for-profit and non-profit worlds, is still taking shape, and there is no silver bullet solution for people who want to create socially- and environmentally-impactful organizations that can thrive for generations. So we need to create the framework in which we operate.

Continue reading

The Angel Capital Summit (ACS) is scheduled for November 17th, with last week’s call for presenters, and an application deadline on October 15th.  The ACS runs on a more-or-less traditional pitch format, with 40 organizations pitching in a day.  Dozens of partner organizations nominate businesses into the semi-final judging round (run on Business Catapult services) that identifies the 40 organizations who will pitch live at the event.

Setting aside the vagaries of what social entrpreneurism is and isn’t (we discuss that at the dedicated meetup), the ACS is encouraging both non-profit and for-profit mission-driven organizations to apply for the opportunity to present their enterprise at the event.

Continue reading

In partnership with many awesome Colorado change-makers, we are happy to announce a new monthly meetup.

The Sustainable Business Models Meetup has been hatched in pursuit of building a stronger ecology of social enterprise in Colorado.

Continue reading

Not only did I have a great flight on Virgin on my last trip overseas, but this image from the Virgin mothership is one of my favorites in a long time.  The image comes from their page about running a sustainable company, which is worthy of your attention, as well. (Amazing what an image search can turn up, eh?)