Investors’ Circle – Patient Capital for a Sustainable Future

?Online Audio Interview! The Investors’ Circle mission is to galvanize the flow of capital to entrepreneurial companies that enhance bioregional, cultural and economic health and diversity. Now that’s goodnews! Woody shares the vision in the following letter: Dear Friend, Get out your magnifying glass, a reverse zoom lens and a pair of binoculars. We are going to look, for a few moments, at this pioneering effort called “Investors’ Circle.” With the magnifying glass, we see nearly 3,500 individual stories. There are the 2,400 companies that have come through the Investors’ Circle (IC) portal since 1992. There are the 480 that have been selected to present their case for capital at IC venture fairs. There are the 171 that have received capital – more than $100 million dollars in total. And, then, there are the 450 or so individuals who have been IC members during this period. This is the story of IC up close. But zoom out, and you see the bigger story: the extraordinary risk-taking of a community of for-profit social entrepreneurs and the investors who provide them with patient capital. We are beginning to see how angel investors, venture fund managers, foundations and financial institutions can, linked together, become a significant force for social change, supporting entrepreneurial companies that are accelerating the transition to a sustainable economy. There is much to celebrate in this story. And there is much that remains to be done. We invite you to join us. Sincerely, Woody Tasch Chairman & CEO “To IRR is human, to ERR* divine.” * As in “External Rate of Return”. We use the term generally to refer to the long-term social and environmental costs that companies typically externalize as they seek to grow and maximize return to shareholders. Gazing at a flip-chart upon which two circles were drawn beside one another, one with “IRR” and the other with “ERR”, one of our members once exclaimed, “IRR and ERR: it’s a pair of binoculars!” http://www.goodnewstalks.com/audio/2006/03/woody_tasch/woody_tasch.mp3″>Click Here to download the interview as an mp3 file.?