I have come out of 5 meetings in the last 2 days, where I’ve listened to people, some as young as Grade 12, tell me about their businesses. I’m sitting there thinking, please be more than back of a napkin. Because I want to be polite, starting your own business is probably one of the hardest things to accomplish in one’s life. Seriously. In this current economic environment, a disappearing middle class (which is a huge market), and now AI just around the corner making many of us nervous about futures, and when that happens, the purses and wallets don’t open.
So here I am. Listening and wondering if social impact investors really have their hearts into this. One person I know, a prominent CEO of an incubator, claimed there is absolutely no difference between Venture Capitalists and Social Impact Investors. I hope he’s wrong. My meetings with these people yesterday and one today. They all deserve not only an investment, but ongoing patient capital infusions to their operations.
February 18, 2026
