Entrepreneurship | CLC Advisors

CLC Advisors, LLC is honored to be invited to the U.S.-China High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange, CPE2016 in Beijing, China this month running concurrently with the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel. CEO Cindy Chin joined members of the Secretary’s Office of Women’s Global Issues (S/GWI) as a delegate of the U.S. Women’s Pillar, presented on women’s entrepreneurship, and a speaker and mentor at the U.S.-China Women’s Leadership Exchange and Dialogue (WE-LEAD) in partnership with Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Initiative.

During the Working Session with the All-China Women’s Federation 中华全国妇女联合会she reported on the state of women’s entrepreneurship in the United States and potential impact and the importance of collaborations between the U.S. and China in the private and public sectors:

“The presence of American companies in China will play an important role in empowering women and girls in both entrepreneurship and anti-domestic violence issues in both countries. Strategically looking for global ecosystems that can support high-impact work by fine tuning strategies across several cross-functional industries and sectors to solidify foundations and stakeholders in a company’s growth as well as GDP.

Venture funds now look for women entrepreneurs and diversity. After studies from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and McKinsey Global Institute report, we know that advancing gender equality and the advancement of women can increase the annual global GDP by $12 trillion, or 11% by 2025. The public, private, and social sectors need to act together to close the gender gaps. In a full potential scenario where women play an identical role in labor markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion or 26 percent could be added to global annual GDP by 2025. In China alone, the figure is even greater at 12% increase by 2025 or $2.5 trillion than any other country. Startups with at least one woman co-founder outperform all-male teams. In some VCs, that could mean as much as 62% in better performance and investor returns.

We need to support multi-lateral and multi-national organizations that require private-public sector partnerships, strength regional norms and intellectual property rights, cooperation on human rights, domestic violence, and gender equality.

The potential for innovation in China is tremendous. Global entrepreneurs who are starting businesses must have a China strategy if they want to obtain scaleable global growth. Currently, China’s long-term market potential is ripely positioned to have greater impact in global GDP growth than other parts of the world and can learn from the mistakes of the West an innovate with great scale. Such examples include the realm of Fintech and mobile payments, agricultural business innovations, and the potential to leapfrog growth in these areas.

As global business and industry leaders are advocating the support of women, I want to emphasize the importance that as women, we have a wonderful opportunity for continued collaboration, dialogue, and communications that can have higher impact for female entrepreneurs beyond the support of mentorship of businesses and the borders of both countries.” – Cindy Chin, CEO CLC Advisors, LLC

This blog post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Sir Ronald Cohen, widely regarded as the father of British venture capital, caused a stir with a recent post on the HBR-Bridgespan Insight Center: “Social Impact Investing is the New Venture Capital.” The piece, co-authored with Harvard Business School’s William Sahlman, argued that impact investing (the practice of investing for both profit and social impact) will be as transformative for society as the institution of venture capital has been for the state of entrepreneurship globally.

This point of view, part of a series on scaling social impact supported by the Omidyar Network (ON), provoked a conversation so rich that it begged for an encore. ON Knowledge and Advocacy Director Paula Goldman’s following interview with Sir Ronald portends his webinar discussion on Friday, April 19 at noon on HBR.org.

Q. We’re intrigued by the parallel you draw between the early days of venture capital and the early days of impact investing. It took roughly 30 years for Silicon Valley to establish itself (from the time people starting doing venture deals to 1980 when Apple’s IPO proved the model.) Do you think impact investing will take the same amount of time to prove the case?

Sir Ronald: I feel impact investing is where venture capital was in 1983, 30 years ago. My experience of the growth of venture capital suggests that social impact investment will be established in the next seven years. I would hope by the end of the decade a significant number of institutions would have made an allocation from their investment pools to impact investing. These institutional investors are likely to include charitable foundations’ endowments, pension funds and family offices.

Q. What’s the number one obstacle preventing the impact investing market from taking off?

Sir Ronald: In my view the first challenge is to get charitable foundations to accept that the fulfilment of their mission would be aided by impact investments made from their balance sheets. I believe the asset class of impact investment should be able to deliver a 7-percent return, uncorrelated with equity markets. If I am right, this would enable charitable foundations to pay out 5 percent of assets each year and maintain the value of their endowment while achieving significant social returns.

Q. There are some who fear that impact investing will divert money from worthy nonprofits because wealthy individuals will believe that grants are no longer necessary. What’s your take on this?

Sir Ronald: Impact investment focuses on releasing assets from balance sheets, not grant allocations. If successful, this will significantly increase, perhaps even double, the flow of money into nonprofits. The discipline that comes from measuring social performance or evidencing it in other ways should hugely increase the impact that the social sector achieves.

Q. You’ve been the driving force behind social impact bonds. Tell us about one of the currently outstanding bonds you’re most excited about and why.

Sir Ronald: At this stage all social impact bonds are exciting. I think the one launched by the Private Equity Foundation to equip vulnerable teenagers for employment is particularly exciting. It is very focused on improving their lives and measuring the results it achieves. It combines passion for the mission with the management skills required to achieve scale in tackling such a widespread social issue.

Q. Paint us a picture of what the impact investing market looks like 10 years from today.

Sir Ronald: Ten years from now, a social investment firm will be a recognised entity and social investment a recognisable asset class. Social entrepreneurs of every age will have innovated in the ways we tackle different social issues and they will be admired for it.

Q. So many young people are looking to start their careers in impact investing—what advice do you have for them?

Sir Ronald: Impact investing is the next Big Thing. Society cannot continue to cope with prevailing social issues in the traditional way. We need to harness entrepreneurship, innovation and capital to achieve in the social area what they have achieved in the creation and growth of entrepreneurial firms in general, and technology firms in particular.

(Interviewer Paula Goldman, director of knowledge and advocacy for the Omidyar Network, is an advisor to the HBR-Bridgespan Insight Center on Scaling Social Impact)
Follow Paula Goldman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pdgoldman

CLC Advisors

Create change. Make an impact. Moving ideas and innovating to impact business globally.

Tag Archives: Entrepreneurship