“The Missing Middle” is what we call the gap in finance the majority of entrepreneurs face in getting from a viable prototype or early customers to a full-scale proven business. In Part 1, Luni explains who he is, and how he came to fill in this otherwise missing middle. In Part 2, Luni jumps back to the history of venture capital to explain the pervasive paradigm that leads to...
As foundations and mission-aligned investors swiftly shift their investments into ESG funds and direct investments in values-aligned companies and entrepreneurs, they overlook many visionary funds and fund managers who are forging the future that we need. These funds are myth-busters and courageous innovations. More than rethinking our financial system, they are creating viable alternatives to...
Everyone thinks there are entrepreneurs everywhere (and that seems true), and everyone thinks there are Angels everywhere too (and that seems not as true). The Angel Accelerator makes more Angel investors, teaching people how to invest in startups by having them invest in startups in a safe, controlled, curated program. EDUCATION The program teaches a variety of topics. Participants meet weekly...
An unprecedented 842 applications arrived to Fledge at the start of 2020. We unfortunately can’t provide our investment and training to everyone who applies, but we can at least provide some insights that we see from our view reviewing all these startup applications. Trend 1: Traction When Fledge began in 2012, applicants for accelerators were nearly all idea-stage companies. Maybe a rough...
Twelve years ago TechStars was born. Eight years ago, we discovered Bainbridge Graduate Institute. A few months later, we were introduced to the co-founder of what today is Impact Hub Seattle. Without the existence of these three organizations, Fledge never have been founded. The mashup in hindsight is obvious. TechStars taught us how to efficiently help startups. BGI taught us that it is...
Conscious (a.k.a. impact) entrepreneurship is not unique to any one country. It is a global phenomenon. The same is true for impact investing. And yet, the global reach of Fledge continues to amaze us and our followers. For example: Top 14 countries watching videos on youtube.com/fledgellc Only 15% of the Fledge videos are watched by Americans. Peru is #2, which is not surprising as the first...
My friend Ross Baird over at Village Capital posted a great bit of advice for the “tech” crowd in TechCrunch today: Dear Silicon Valley, You used to be the envy of the world. Over the last decade I’ve seen countless cities try to become you, from the Silicon Savannah to the Silicon Bayou. At last year’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Stanford’s campus, hundreds of entrepreneurs...
The Global Impact Accelerator Program is the first accelerator helping global impact businesses move to Canada under its Startup-Visa Program. This is a comprehensive, 4-month program powered by Fledge, operated by Spring.is targeting companies in healthcare, progressive food, sustainability, creative economy, and cleantech. Based in Vancouver, the Canadian leader for impact entrepreneurship, and...
Fledge is over five years old, and for that half decade and more the industry has been debating how to measure the impact of a company and a portfolio. Using the Pinchot Impact Index, Fledge is able to not only do that, but also to show how that measure changes from session to session. More specifically, we measure three levels of impact for our portfolio of fledglings: the potential of the idea...
Do accelerators really help is the second most asked question in the industry after how do I apply? That would seem an odd question almost twelve years after the birth of the modern business accelerator, except for the fact that there were hundreds of useless business incubators back in the dot com boom. This is an industry with a multi-decade history of big promises. And industry with...