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3 Ways to Get the Attention of Impact Investors


For any startup, the pathway to sustainability is tough, but add the pressure of a product that makes a difference to people or planet, and it is really tough – you’re balancing building your product or service, navigating the legal minefield of setting up a company, building a team, embedding systems and processes, creating awareness of your product and trying to pay your bills. Sometimes you will need outside investment to get there. Enter impact investors – they are a growing number of investors looking for a return through both social impact and financial return.

So what’s the best way to get the attention of impact investors? Here are 3 tips for making sure you’re on the right track…

1 | Be Uber Clear on Your Impact

From the inception of your organisation’s public profile there should be an understanding of how your offering will solving a problem in society. This impact should be at the centre of all communications and sung loud and clear! It’s not just about the size of the problem (although it doesn’t hurt if you’re solving a big problem), but it’s about the extent to which your solution brings sizeable relief to a well articulated problem.

Professor Alnoor Ebrahim from the Harvard Business Review stated the importance of utilising evidence in showing the difference your organisation is making, rather than simply making grand, but general claims. So instead of reiterating mission statements, use community feedback, data and research to demonstrate the impact you’re making.

Sound Scouts, a startup who was part of Remarkable’s first cohort, is focused on improving children’s experience with education by creating accessible and easy-to-use hearing tests. Sound Scouts noticed that children were slipping through the cracks in getting their hearing properly assessed, often being “diagnosed” as behavioural issues at school. Sound Scouts is both clinically proven (published in the International Journal of Audiology) and they are super clear on their impact, leading to the Federal Government recently announcing support for making Sound Scouts accessible to more than 600,000 Australian school children over the next 4-5 years. Not only is this a huge success for Sound Scouts, but it will change the lives of thousands of kids. How’s that for clear impact?!

2 | Have a Sense of Urgency

There are countless good causes out there – all doing really important work, and sadly that creates a level of “noise” that if you’re to get the attention of impact investors, you need to rise above. A sense of urgency is helping to show people that “the time is now” for this impact. There is little incentive for people who are unaffected to engage with the issue and ultimately the service. Therefore, in order to encourage action it’s crucial to drive necessity and to relate this issue back to something a greater audience cares about.

Xceptional, a tech company that harnesses the unique talents of people with autism and assists them in finding employment, use a personal story that affects the founder to create a sense of urgency. Founder, Mike Tozer’s driving force is his young son, who has autism and will be entering the workforce in ten years time. By 2028, they aim to make Xceptional the rule, rather than the exception. It’s not a niche problem either. In Australia, 1 in 70 people have autism, and the unemployment rate for people with autism is almost six times the rate of people without disability (31.6% vs 5.3%). Without a discernible way to change this pattern this number will only increase. Xceptional has recently been awarded $1m from the Google Impact Challenge which will fast-track development of their anxiety-reducing recruitment app. Not only is this an outstanding achievement for Xceptional, but it shows the effectiveness of urgent communications in attracting support from investors.

3 | Use Story to Move People

As emotional beings, stories which engage us emotionally tie us together, help us understand each other, and are what make us human. They are also more easily remembered and shared.

Testimonials are a good way for companies to appeal to consumer emotions: having someone telling their story of how your product/ service changed their life is significantly more compelling than listing off the functional attributes of the product. This is particularly important for a social enterprise, where the product/service can have a genuinely life-changing effect on someone’s life.

Autism Swim use this technique very effectively in their communications. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are 160 times more likely to drown, according to Columbia University research, a statistic which shocked Founder Erika Gleeson into action. Not only does Autism Swim provide the necessary training for instructors, but allows children with ASD to experience swimming and have fun in the water in the way all children should. Erika has heard the shocking stories of children with ASD who have sadly drowned (watch the video on their homepage), but she uses the positive stories of those who now know how to swim to encourage support from the public and investors.

So if you’re clear on your impact, have created a sense of urgency and use story to motivate – you will be guaranteed to be closer to having successful conversations with impact investors.

Highlights from the San Francisco Tech Summit


Ever get the sense you’re on the verge of something truly incredible? I had a palpable sense of this last week when I arrived in San Francisco for the Summit on Advancing Innovation in Assistive Technology. I was there as part of the team from Cerebral Palsy Alliance who hosted a Summit on Advancing Innovation in Assistive Technology in San Francisco.

Roadmap planning for communication stream

It was a gathering of some of the world’s top scientists, technologists and engineers from universities like Harvard, Cornell, and Brown, as well as corporate representatives from Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, as well as other technologists from across the globe (Israel, Europe, Japan, Canada, etc).

Over the two and a half days, presenters shared 15min lightning talks on their technology and on the final day, we worked out a road map for future collaboration and action. I also had the opportunity to chair a session of industry leaders including experts from Facebook and Microsoft speaking about their push for technology that is inclusive of people with disability.

Some of the most impressive businesses I met were:

Dr Walid Soussou from Wearable Sensing with Pete Horsley
Dr Walid Soussou from Wearable Sensing with Pete Horsley

Voiceitt – the world’s first speech recognition technology designed to understand non-standard speech.

Seismic – a new integration of apparel and robotics called Powered Clothing – think exoskeleton that goes under your clothes.

Embodied Labs – creates embodied, virtual reality patient experience labs for healthcare trainees and professionals.

Facebook’s Silent Interfacenon-implanted devices that allow you to type directly from your brain without using a keyboard at 5 times the speed of what we type into our smart phones.

Dr Leigh Hochberg from Harvard explaining BrainGate
Dr Leigh Hochberg from Harvard explaining BrainGate

HAL – (or Hybrid Assistive Limb) this exoskeleton assists those with physically disabilities to move enhancing the users own thoughts.

Microsoft – developed standardised protocol for eye tracking devices and have developed a wheelchair controller that utilises eye-tracking.

Over the coming months the plan is to develop out a road map and build a global strategy around disability technology.

 

Building the Ultimate Learning Engine for Empathetic Understanding


As hard as it might be to admit, we as humans, are unconsciously biased. Our brains are hardwired to make unconscious decisions. And we instinctively categorise people using easily observed criteria such as age, gender, disability, culture and sexuality.

Sydney-based startup Equal Reality are building an unconscious bias app using Virtual Reality to put you in the position of minorities receiving unconscious bias; to experience and understand what it looks and feels like to receive that prejudice.

Interactive Diversity and Inclusion Training through VR

With over 10 years of research and development, co-founders Annie Harper, Brennan Hatton & Rick Martin are experts in VR user experience.

“Virtual Reality has allowed us to unlock a new type of learning,” Brennan said. “By having technology like Virtual Reality we can actually put you in the shoes of someone else – put you in new experiences, experiences from other people’s perspective.”

Equal Reality’s interactive VR app teaches you to recognise unconscious bias by putting you in a scenario where you are on the receiving end unconscious bias. Immersed in the scenario, you’re required to signal when you think you’re receiving this bias. The whole experience is designed to trigger empathy, then reflect on your experience.

“We engage the head and the heart,” Annie said.

Being a huge believer in social justice, Annie wanted to use her skills with machine-to-mind communication to tackle some of society’s tougher challenges.

“In the past, humanity has really focused on intellectual training and you can see trends where every generation does increase slightly in their IQ capacity,” Annie said. “But there’s been equal studies that show emotional intelligence and social intelligence are not increasing.”

Already thinking beyond, Equal Reality are creating a powerful social learning tool using VR to improve workplace diversity and inclusion.

“Diversity in the workforce improves financial performance and innovation,” Rick said.

“It’s not just a feel good issue; it’s simply good business.”

Successful Launch of Demo Product

Equal Reality have released a Beta Demo – the first module of their app, which focuses on gender bias. Less than one week after launching on Viveport they achieved #1 most popular VR Business App in Australia, the UK and the US.

The next modules released will explore age and disability biases.

Currently in the 2nd Cohort of the Remarkable Accelerator program, they have been working closely with our Entrepreneur in residence, Ben Reid.

“The beta shows just the tip of the iceberg in what could be possible in using VR for diversity and inclusion training,” Ben said.

The Demo App is now available to download free on Viveport.