Last week I attended a great event called the SOURCE Forum, a joint venture by the Hitachi Foundation, Village Capital and Investors Circle. SOURCE stands for Solutions from OUR Countries Entrepreneurs. The concept of SOURCE is to provide more opportunities for investors to meet with early stage social entrepreneurs without the complications of discussing funding (not a Shark Tank!). Ten social entrepreneurs, all with innovative ideas in the health field, were invited to participate and meet with local investors including MI3 and our colleagues at Investors Circle Philadelphia, Gathering at the offices of Ben Franklin Technology Partners in the Navy Yard we shared and collaborated in various configurations and learned about the challenges of the sector (who is the client? who is the payer?) and some very interesting firms, one of which Lia Diagnostics, a start up making a women-designed, eco-friendly, flushable pregnancy test was selected to present to Investors Circle Philadelphia.
What does this have to do with the title? No, its not from the pregnancy test! Ross Baird, CEO of Village Capital has just written a very interesting blog about how easily early stage firms can be derailed by things beyond their control (an oil spill!) and how a community can come together to help early stage firms succeed. It describes Village Capital‘s collaborative model for the incubating and funding of early stage firms – and that is the source of the quote. You can find it here.
Prof Mudd