Funder Boot Camp

Session Leaders

Rich Hoops: A former executive at Dell, Rich has spend the last 10 years dedicated to helping organizations and entrepreneurs tackling our world’s greatest problems. He is an active investor and supporter of ventures both locally (as a partner of Social Venture Partners Boulder County) and in East Africa. He actively supports ventures in a variety of sectors including agriculture and mobile technology, water and HIV/AIDs, and entrepreneurship support services. Rich has been on the ground for what works and what doesn’t in international investing for good and has a ton to share. Yet he remains humble and doesn’t pretend to know everything. A perfect leader for the Boot Camp.


Morgan Simon: A serial social entrepreneur with expertise in impact investment and international development, Morgan has been actively involved in sourcing and the diligence of hundreds of impact deals as the co-founder and CEO of Toniic, a global network of early-stage social investors whose members share deal flow, due diligence and monitoring on global investments. She is also the co-founder of Innovacion Investments, Texas’s first community development venture capital fund. She was the founding executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, where she brought together 100 colleges and universities from across the country, helping to move their $200 billion in endowment dollars towards impact investment. Morgan has also worked with grassroots organizations and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Mexico, Honduras and Sierra Leone, and in domestic microfinance with Women’s Initiative for Self Employment.


John Kohler: After a career in the middle of Silicon Valley’s tech scene with HP and a variety of successful startups that included mergers and sales of companies, John now works tirelessly to make impact investing work for both investors and entrepreneurs alike. He is a co-founder and Board Chair of Toniic and is an Executive Fellow and Director of Social Capital Programs at Santa Clara University (home of venture accelerator program GSBI, of which John is very active). He also spends time coming up with new and underutilized funding structures such as the demand dividend structure which returns to investors based on a companies free cash flows.


Eva Helene Yazhari: Eva is CEO of Beyond Capital Fund. She has been involved in management and investment efforts in both non-profit and corporate settings and was previously a VP at EnTrust Capital Inc., an asset management firm where she worked on the fund of hedge fund investment team and specialized in due diligence and portfolio construction. Eva leverages her experience at EnTrust in ensuring that the capital allocated from the Beyond Capital Fund portfolio is put to effective use in accordance with due diligence best practices. She holds regular roundtables in Switzerland for banks, foundations and individuals and recently gave a keynote speech at the Elite Summit in Montreux, Switzerland which described how family offices can use the same skills they apply in their asset management work to impact investing.


Paul Hudnut: Paul is co-director of CSU Global Innovation Center for Energy, Environment and Health, and is on the Faculty Council for the Center for Financial Inclusion. His background and interest is in building companies, technology transfer, and intellectual property in the bioscience, energy and information services industries. He is particularly interested in business models which emphasize an entrepreneurial approach to global issues of environment and health. He is a founder and director of Envirofit International and now an advisor at Bohemian Foundation. Paul earned his B.A. from Colorado College and his law degree from University of Virginia and completed the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School in 1991.


Wes Selke: Wes has a history in M&A Corporate Finance at Ernst & Young, sat on the board of Latin American micro-finance supporter NamasteDirect, is the Investment Manager for Good Capital (investor in BetterWorldBooks, AlterEco and Root Capital, as well as founders of SoCap and Hub Bay Area), and is the Founding Director of Hub Ventures (accelerator program for companies tackling global problems). Wes' diverse background in dealing with investment as lead investor, co-investor, and follow on investor, as well as his leadership in a program that works to make early stage entrepreneurs more investment ready, allows him to come at training new investors from an amazing couple of angles.


Bruce Campbell: With 15 years of experience as a corporate attorney, representing ventures from the smallest startups to Fortune 100 companies, Bruce brings a true depth of expertise to serve social impact funds and entrepreneurs. Bruce leads a global network of lawyers that assist businesses operating in over 15 countries on 6 of 7 continents. He enjoys working as a partner and a facilitator while working with clients on all sides of the table – representing entrepreneurs, NGOs, and investors in over $80 million of transactions in the last two years. His practice regularly brings him to India and Africa, where he visits clients working in sectors ranging from housing and renewable energy to healthcare, agriculture and poverty alleviation. Bruce is a founding member and director of the HUB here in Boulder.


Andy Lower: Andy is the Executive Director of The Eleos Foundation and Eleos Investment Management LLC. Eleos invests in and partners with social entrepreneurs who effectively implement high-impact, early stage, pioneering market based solutions in the fight to eradicate extreme poverty. He moved to Eleos from the international philanthropic advisory firm Geneva Global Inc, where he served as North American Advisory Manager and provided philanthropic investment advice to the firm’s key U.S. and Middle East-based clients and spearheaded a number of multi-million dollar international partnership initiatives. He has worked in a variety of different sectors in the developing world throughout his career, and maintains special interest in working with community based organizations. He has worked with national partners throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Andy is a British national, holding a Masters Degree in International Development from London-based Middlesex University, and a Degree in Law from University of Southampton, UK.


Lewis Hower: Lewis is the Managing Director of the University Impact Fund. Prior to this he served as the Marketing Manager for the Sorenson Housing Opportunity Fund, an affiliate of Huntsman Gay Capital Impact, where he focused on fundraising and finance operations for the project which invests in the creation of affordable housing and finance products for the working poor of India. He has managed finance and operations for Unitus Investment Group where he worked in the development of innovative for-profit approaches to solving some of the worlds most profound social challenges. Today Unitus Capital is the worlds first private and independent financial advisory and investment banking firm specializing in arranging capital for microfinance institutions and other social enterprises and has successfully arranged over $700 million in debt and equity financing for social enterprises to date. He also currently serves on the Board of Directors at the Community Foundation of Utah where he is the co-director of the committee for entrepreneurship.


David Jeromin: David is the founder of Golden Mean Capital, a venture capital firm that makes investments in early-stage sub-Saharan African companies (currently in Ghana, Kenya, and Liberia) and assists entrepreneurs in building profitable companies while helping to alleviate poverty through the strengthening of economic systems that embrace Africa’s rural farmers. Before creating Golden Mean, David spent over 10 years of working in the financial markets; spending time on Wall Street as a trader with Oppenheimer & Company as well as with San Francisco based, Darwin Ventures, a venture capital fund of funds. David is also an Advisor to both, the African Diaspora Network, and the Diaspora Angel Investment Network (DAIN), a network focused on getting Africans in the Diaspora engaged with entrepreneurship in the agriculture sectors – to help alleviate the food crisis in Africa.


Other Organizations Represented at These Unreasonable Funder Events

Sessions

What To Expect from Sessions.
We realize that it’s quite an effort and a commitment to attend the Funder Boot Camp. Thus, we will work tirelessly to make sure that this is something you will rave about and take maximum value from attending. Sessions at the Funder Boot Camp will be:

• Tangible: You will walk away with hard skills, actionable next steps, and direct contacts.
• Flexible: If a topic the group wants is not there, we will add it. If no one is interested in another, we will take it away. If a great idea for a new way to host a session comes up we will try it!
• Active and interactive: We’ve been to conferences. We’ve watched endless amounts of panels. We know a day watching panels is tiring and, dare we say, boring. This will be the opposite. We want you to be energized. So we will make sure the sessions are fun, memorable, and have you actively involved in the content and with others!

Types of Sessions.
You will learn things at the Boot Camp in one of 4 types of sessions you will have the opportunity to be involved in.

• No-Session-Needed Sessions: For some things, it’s best to just read a 1-pager or watch a quick video. When applicable, these sorts of things can and will be sent you you before you arrive so that time here can be spent getting into the real meat of the topics at hand!
• Main Sessions: Core, fundamental things that every impact investor should know to have a strong foundation.
• Deep Dive Sessions: Diving deep into a more specific topics for people who want to know more.
• Unreasonable Sessions: Happy hours, dinners with entrepreneurs, round tables with other Boot Camp attendees, etc. These Unreasonable Sessions are intentional open time for you to connect more with others in the room.

Session Topics:

• How to Think About Impact: “Impact is a change in the state of the world brought about by an intervention.” This session is inspired by this post by Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation. It says, “We measure impact because it’s the only way to know whether our money is doing any good. In fact, we don’t invest in organizations that don’t measure impact – they’re flying blind and we would be too. Those organizations that do measure impact perform better and evolve faster, and discussions around measuring impact almost always lead to new ideas about effectiveness and efficiency.
• Allocating Your Portfolio for Impact: How much should you do in direct investments and how much should you put in other vehicles such as impact-focused mutual funds, real estate and fund of funds. This session will help you understand how you want to allocate your portfolio, show you where you can take the next steps, and assure even more of your portfolio has impact!
• Aligning Incentives: Entrepreneurs+Funder, Profit+Impact: Balancing the needs and incentives of an entrepreneur and a funder is no easy task, but it is the single most important one. Learn how to treat entrepreneurs well while getting what you need, align incentives in a deal so everyone benefits fairly, and work towards a healthy return while having incredible impact.
• Direct Investment Capital Structures: It’s not just equity and loans in impact investing! Learn the basics on funding vehicles: grants, debt, revenue share agreements, demand dividend, convertible notes and equity. This session will be high level, but we will offer deeper dive sessions for the various forms of investment. To save time, we may even send this capital structures information ahead of time and focus only on the deeper dives at the Boot Camp.
• Blended Capital: When for profit and non-profit funders work together to “blend” capital, you can get some incredibly interesting funding structures and relationships that create win-win-wins for all those involved – entrepreneur, funders, and customers!
• Due Diligence (Basics): Learn very clearly and tangibly the basics and most important steps in the due diligence process. Learn questions to ask, what things to look for and when to pull the trigger either way when doing due diligence on a venture.
• Due Diligence from Thousands of Miles Away: Imagine having to travel to India to see the on the ground operations of an Indian education venture, then flying to Kenya to meet the management team of a mobile tech company and then flying to Peru to see the true impact created by a third . Diligence of international startups is time consuming, costly and inefficient. This session will focus on how to tangible and effectively do due diligence of companies around the world even if you are across the globe.
• Sharing the Load / Making Syndication Work: Imagine trying to diversify your direct investments in 5 different companies. You have to communication with 5 different entrepreneurs, deal with 5 lawyers and structure 5 deals, do 5 rounds of due diligence, and have a long term seat on 5 boards. It’s a full time job plus some! Syndication with other funders can help you have better results with less time and energy. Plus, synidcation makes diversification far more feasible. Learn shortfalls and successes and how you can apply them to making syndication work for you.
• Valuation methods: Valuing early stage companies, especially ones working in other countries is far from easy. This session will work to make valuation more manageable.
• Maintaining Mission: How to maintain mission and impact as the company grows, management loses control, and new owners enter the company with needs that differ from the original motives of the company.
• Investment Structure Deep Dives: Individual sessions will dive into various investment structures such as quasi-equity, demand dividends, convertible debt, equity, working capital financing, recoverable-grants and community-based lending.
• Creating New Capital Structures: The exciting thing about the impact investing space is that since it is so young, innovation in investment vehicles is happening quite a bit. Participants will then take their new knowledge to brainstorm more new structures.
• Realistic exits: Selling a company after a year, 100x returns, and IPO’s. These things may happen in the tech space but are far less common in impact investing. Get a realistic view on what is happening exit-wise in the impact world how innovations and correctly structuring your deals is helping return more money.
• Adding Value Beyond Money and Ongoing Support for Your Investments: Money is just a fraction of the value a funder provides. Additionally, the work is not over when you place investment. Discuss what key things to do to provide on going support and value for the ventures you fund, including how to reduce risk and increase support by leveraging in-country resources.
• Other Advanced Topics: Setting up as an employee owned company, shifting from a non-profit to a for profit, and more! If you have ideas of session you would want led, please let us know.
• Want something else? Let us know!

Learn, Then Immediately Apply!:
The Boot Camp will instantly be followed by high-energy presentations from entrepreneurs at the Unreasonable Climax (VIP ticket included with Boot Camp ticket) and then a chance to help move those ventures forward at Unreasonable Investors Days (additional cost of just $100 for Boot Camp attendees) so that funders can tangibly apply their new skills whether they place funds or not.

Schedule

The Boot Camp will officially start at 3pm in the afternoon of July 9th, so we suggest that Boot Camp attendees fly in on that day, ideally landing by noon in Denver. Those who arrive on July 9th will also get to do a special dinner with the Unreasonable Fellows! If you cannot make it until later that is ok and it will be well worth it to come for just the 10th if that is all you can do – a great amount of the value will come from the sessions on the 10th.

The Boot Camp will be done by 5pm on Wednesday, and will be followed that evening by the Unreasonable Climax where the Unreasonable Entrepreneurs will present their ideas in front of a crowd of 1,000 people (your ticket includes this!).

Some of you will want to join us for Unreasonable Investor Days which begins on Thursday and will concluded on Friday at noon (allowing Investor Days attendees to get home for the weekend!).

Our goal is to create as much of an “all in one” experience as possible. Although we hope you attend everything, because we know people’s schedules and commitments vary, we encourage people to attend whichever aspects of this series of events that they want. That said, its your schedule to fill in as you please!

Traveling to Boulder?

Here are some resources to help you in your travels to Boulder including hotel and airport transport options. Additionally, we are working to try to secure local Boulder community members to host people at their homes (something that is not uncommon in this tight knit community). Why? Our goal is to make this as darn easy and inexpensive on you as possible so you can focus on the important stuff, connecting with Unreasonable Entrepreneurs. More details on that once it is secured.

Location

The majority of the event will take place at Hub Boulder, ATLAS Institute on the CU-Boulder Campus, or CU’s Law School thanks to Silicon Flatirons. We must give special thanks to these folks for graciously providing the space to make this event happen. Without them, we really don’t know how we could bring together such an Unreasonable group of people.

Join Us

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Click here to get signed up!

Who is behind this glorious gathering?

Unreasonable has started the flow by uniting the partners and selecting the entrepreneurs and will be handling the logistics for this event. The investment and training expertise and curriculum is led by Toniic. NextGen Engage is the lead sponsor for this event and allows it to happen. A variety of other people and partners are essential to this event being a success –scroll over the logos below to read about how these organizations are making this event happen!.