New venture fund of Silicon Valley, who wants to save the world and earn money to boot

By: Mike Butcher

It is time to stop growing the whole chicken mindlessly to eat a breast or wings, and to grow individual parts in a suitable environment. Synthetic food will undoubtedly be an attribute of the future. There is no need to abandon the usual dishes. Dark pictures of the tabloids about our future food should not become a reality. At first, new products will be almost indistinguishable from natural products, and any differences will be invisible to the eye.

So predicted Winston Churchill in March 1932 in the article "After fifty years," published in Popular Mechanics. The future prime minister of England in World War II predicted test tube meat, atomic energy, mobile phones, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. in 1932 year.

But what struck Seth Bannon most in the article was how far-sighted predictions echoed the mission of his company, Impact VC, which at that time he planned to launch with his partner Eloy Madey . These two (partners not only in business) wanted to create companies that would successfully exist for 50 years. Therefore, they felt that it would be reasonable to borrow the name of Churchill's article for their company.
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The Foundation of the Years ( Facebook , Twitter ) sets itself the task of addressing some of the problems that hinder the interaction of entrepreneurs and investors, taking into account the requirements of the capitalist world.

Being entrepreneurs themselves, they faced with how difficult it is to find savvy investors who could help them scale up the business, and also contribute to the company's main mission. At first investors are eager, but not at second.

They also found that “the maximum increase in shareholder value” does not correspond either to their values ​​or to the values ​​of the “zero” generation, who are often interested in setting up a standing business that does not adversely affect either society or the environment.

Therefore, they decided to found the company Fifty Years. To support entrepreneurs trying to solve the most global problems in the world with the help of technology. On the other hand, they also did not plan to turn into a charitable organization. They wanted to support companies that could generate significant profits while helping to solve serious problems related to climate change, education, health care, etc.

The company plans to invest at the seed stage, on the basis of the created product, and ideally, a product with a certain market value. The company is now engaged in synthetic biology and food technology, but is not limited to investing in a particular area. The project only needs to have great potential and solve world problems.

These two are an interesting couple.

Madeya was once a technology tech entrepreneur, a graduate of the Y Combinator (YC S12) incubator, a vegan, a skier and a dancer.

Except for a short break in the summer of 2013, when she was engaged in modern dance in New York, Madejah has been spinning in technology since 2006. She was co-founder and CEO of Applicake (Ruby on Rails) in Krakow, in her native Poland, which was bought out in 2013, and also founded Base CRM with partners. She also played a prominent role in the Polish and European technical sphere, becoming a partner in the leading Eastern European Innovation Nest Foundation, until she moved to the USA in 2014. She became interested in transformative investments when she realized that technologies are usually developed for a privileged society.

Bannon, an avid chess player, founded and managed Amicus. The startup was engaged in digital organizational tools for non-profit and political campaigns. A graduate of the Y Combinator, he twice got on the Forbes 30 list, which is less than 30 in the field of social entrepreneurship. He caught fire with the idea, after Mom-public figure and activist, who became disabled. He subsequently worked for Obama and created digital organizing tools.

He says: “Thinking about the future, we pay more attention to the question“ why ”, and not“ how ”. In other words, one should not think about the delivery method (for example, with the help of unmanned drones), and why a startup exists at all.

Bannon believes that society should strive not only to earn money, but also to solve pressing problems. The world will not change from the fact that the leakage of customers of the enterprise will decrease, or we will learn how to choose socks for trousers. The world will change if you solve the problems of global warming, access to education, etc. We believe that in ten years our projects will reach their maximum value. And those who do not deal with global problems will fall out of competition.

He recognizes that the motivation comes from a generation of "zero" (although not only from them), but this year more and more people are changing their attitudes towards these problems. “We want Fifty Years to become a source of capital for such people,” he says.

Theoretically, the short-term performance of most enterprises works against the Fifty Years model, but Bannon does not worry about this: “This is a problem for the entire industry, and we suffer from it no more than others. We simply sponsor companies that use their revenues to transform the modern world. ”

Investors who invest in social projects did not appear yesterday. They, for example, invest in projects in Kenya. But we are sponsoring fast-growing companies that are working on serious problems, mostly in Silicon Valley. ”

According to him, in Silicon Valley, they misunderstand the meaning of the phrase “change the world”. “We often joke about the start-up door knob that connects you and your home.” We are constantly experiencing difficulties precisely with the terms that operate in Silicon Valley.

Madeya says: The biggest contribution we can make is to find more money to build regular Tesla machines. Over time, we want to change the orientation of the business world, so that they deal more with the social and environmental factors associated with their activities. If people are supplied with products of poor quality, then more money will have to be spent on the expensive treatment of these people.

But how to measure these factors? How can they assess the value of the social impact of their projects?

“Now we do not have enough computing power to simulate the actual value of the dollar, but we will have them.

As approximate criteria we use the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We are exploring a company that has the potential to make big money and work on some of our problems. We have high hopes for this fund, and we hope to earn money to create other funds in the future, ”says Madea.

“We were engaged in technical startups as entrepreneurs and are quite competent to advise other entrepreneurs. We already know what can create a larger fund in the future. We just want to study the basics first, ”she adds.

It turns out that investment partnerships are interested in our undertaking, since we manage our fund like any other traditional one.

Bannon says that they quickly started, raised enough money for several investments, and then got the rest. "And then it became much easier."

Their investment policy is that they do not make a difference for startups in different areas. The main thing is that the founder should ensure the profitability of the enterprise, achieve the goals of sustainable development, and as a result, provide both.

Madeya: “All our companies have the potential to solve global problems, but they are initially focused on the US market, so it’s easier to start here.”

11 of the 15 investments were made in the framework of the Y Combinator incubator, which suggests that although Madei and Bannon do not have any secret data from this organization, they are close enough to this ecosystem to select companies that are suitable for their purposes.

Will other organizations follow your example? They admit that now they are a bit lonely, but Obvious Corp., founded by Evan Williams, is the closest to their philosophy.

“We want a whole ecosystem of funds like ours. We need other funds for financing rounds, etc., ”says Madea.

“For us, this is a very urgent problem. There are many non-profit organizations that are not capable of solving global scalable tasks, and technical companies are capable. But there must be a lot more interested people in the field, ”Brannon says.

Next year, the couple plans to double the size of their portfolio and work on an Impact.Tech seminar, which already attracts 500 participants, and has enough potential to hold it in several places.

It is held every month in order to study all areas of business activity in which technical enterprises can solve social and environmental problems.

“Our goal is to reach Alov Horov and Obama and bring them to our movement,” says Bannon.

With such enthusiasm, they are likely to succeed.

Portfolio Fund "Fifty Years" at the moment

Astranis : Small, cheap communications satellites. Their goal is to give Internet access to 4 billion people who do not have it.
Cofactor Genomics : Diagnosing Diseases with Next Generation RNA.
Geltor : They use biologics to safely produce products like gelatin.
Lygos : Yeast is genetically modified to produce safe chemicals without petroleum products.
Maderight : Simplify and reduce the cost of the processes of fashion brands seeking to more humane methods of clothing production.
Medella Health : They work on a contact lens that non-invasively and continuously measures the level of glucose through the eye’s interstitial fluid.
Memphis Meats : Grow natural meat without animals. The goal is to provide the market with tasty, healthy, environmentally friendly meat without killing animals.
Nurx : Delivers contraceptive means to your door.
Oolusolar : Affordable solar energy for people living in regions without electricity.
Opentrons : Cheap lab robots to speed research.
ExVivo : Non-invasive skin patches for allergy testing. The task is to facilitate and reduce the cost of identifying allergic reactions.

Source: Fifty Years