Capital has a kind of waterfall, globally, that goes something like this;
Limited Partners — Family offices, High Net Worth Individuals, Trusts, Pension Funds, Fund of Funds, Other accredited investors.
General Partners — Venture Capital Firms, Private Equity Firms, Hedge Funds
Companies — Startups, Growth Companies, Limited Profit Companies, Public Companies
The money tends to flow down from the Limited Partners through a General partner (who manages the investments) into companies that actually create and build value.
What flows back from the companies is most often equity or shares in the businesses. With this equity flows power.
Much has been made of the #MeToo movement and as someone who has lived through being bullied for racial inequality first hand (or more unfortunately first fist) it especially enrages me that we have not yet grown out of the biases and bigotry that pollute our enlightenment.
Working for both a Limited Partner in Social Tech Trust and a General Partner in SOSV and as a former startup founder has made it clear that we want the smartest people running the companies we invest in.
Sexism, Racism, Bigotry, Abuse and Bullying are not smart they are just plain stupid and companies that foster cultures that accept this kind or moronic behaviour are going to be worth less than the smart companies who rightly abhor such disgustingly inappropriate activity.
Having the #MeToo movement show up yet again how endemic abuse still is led Sean O’Sullivan Managing Partner at SOSV and myself to wonder how can investors make a genuine difference here?
We are exploring ways to give investors some teeth as companies who fall foul of successful lawsuits against them and or criminal convictions take significant hits in their value and currently its the investors who suffer.
So we are working to figure out how to make this work as simply as possible so that more and more investors can easily use their power to nudge companies into permanently ridding themselves of this kind of stupidity.
We are not seeking to bypass the law just to genuinely give some sting to allowing bad behaviour. We are looking for more supporters and you can let us know what you think and you can sign up for more information.
Its going to take a while to figure out a legal and appropriate means to achieve this goal and we can use all the assistance we can get because despite #MeToo and many other initiatives this problem has not gone away.
So lets see if we can get more Equality through Equity. www.equalityforequity.com
