As much as investing for both purpose and profit is in vogue these days, there's still a wide gap between the number of people talking about impact investing and those doing it. The fact that impact capital doesn't flow nearly as freely as traditional investment capital, makes scaling a social enterprise or raising an impact fund all the more difficult.
My guest today is Keith Ippel, CEO and Founder of Spring Activator in Vancouver, British Columbia. Spring Activator works with purpose-driven entrepreneurs at an early stage by providing incubation, acceleration, and investment readiness programming. The organization also works on the demand side of the impact investing equation by helping train impact investors to find and due diligence deals.
Keith founded the organization nearly eight years ago and is still incredibly passionate about building the entire impact investing ecosystem. Keith is a reformed Management Consultant who, after being raised by entrepreneurs, was dragged back into entrepreneurship through the opportunities he was seeing for technology to solve real-world problems. After a successful run leading a variety of technology-based businesses, Keith began seeing the opportunity to nurture the field of impact investing and launched Spring Activator.
During the episode, Keith and I discuss the state of the impact investing space globally and in Canada, what support early-stage social entrepreneurs need to scale their businesses, how to reduce the talk-action gap in impact investing, and how his organization helps investors learn how to become impact investors. And be sure to stay tuned to the very end where Keith discusses his outlook for impact investing over the next decade.
