Impact

Yesterday, I wrote about the upcoming CO Impact Days . In it, I pointed to a Medium post titled Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break , which turns out to be the Zebra Manifesto. Per the manifesto, a Zebra (unlike Unicorns) are real: Zebra companies are both black and white: they are profitable and improve society. They won’t sacrifice one for the other. Zebras are also mutualistic: by banding together in groups, they protect and preserve one another. Their individual input results in stronger collective output. ...

VCs love to talk about Unicorns, where a giant return is possible. Some friends in the impact investing world have recently started talking about generating giant returns by investing in Zebras (such as a nonprofit building in rural Colorado) and Ponies (an immigrant restaurant in Seattle currently using payday lending at 35% for their working capital). While these returns have an economic component, they can also have dramatic impact on our society. ...