I'm glad that you joined. Thank you so much. My name is Nasta Criado. I'm a managing partner of Get Funded Tools. And today we will be talking about a very interesting subject that is very dear to my heart.And there is a lot of interest and insights that I hope will inspire you to create profitable and impact positive businesses to start. I would like to ask you a question that I asked my network on linkedin. I've asked if you have a million dollars to invest, this is your first million dollars and you can't really make a mistake. So you want to make the best investment possible with this $1 million. Where would you put it? Would you invest it into impact with less potential return? That's an option. A option B is, would you invest it into the no return but high profitability deal or would you buy a Lambo? And I've got very interesting responses to this question. And since you guys are here, now, I see a couple of people are joining. I would like to post me in a chat answer to the question. Would you invest your first million into impact positive but less return. That's an option B, option uh option A, option B is higher return but no impact. Or would you buy a Lambo? And while you are thinking about that, I want to share with you the interest and statistics that I've got doing that research within my network. OK?

I see from Hama option. Uh I personally would probably, if I would be asked, so I would probably say option A uh for you to understand where I'm coming from. I work with primarily tech founders and uh with venture capital investors, with fund managers. 80% of my clients are usually pursuing positive impact, both in their fund and in their start up. So when I asked this question in my linkedin, I received 41% towards option A which is impact positive less return, 39% voted towards option B that we want to get um high, high return, but we don't really care about impact. And that about 20% of the people went towards buying Lamba, which I think is very interesting and only two people out of almost 200 that filled out this questionnaire, send me question in direct messages asking Anna, why are you saying impact or high return? And the reason why these people ask these questions is because these two people are running emerging funds that are investing and in impact technology and they really know the numbers behind this question today. I will share these numbers with you and the drivers behind these numbers.

But before we dive into that, I always like to ask the question uh which is question that comes to in life of every entrepreneur and every investor do good or get rich. And that's the question that we as humanity have been asking ourselves for the past 100 years. And as we can see on the results that's happening right now with our planet, with our society, with the crisis we're undergoing. We've been choosing second, we've been choosing getting rich over doing good. At the same time, we've established charity organizations impact positive social organizations that are trying to do good without getting rich to balance out one over another. But is this the best strategy? This is something we will be discussing over today. So there are two types of founders and there are two types of investors. First type is the do good founders and the second type is the get rich founders. And since you guys are also here, and I'm sure a lot of you are either uh building something, you have a side hustle, you have a start up or you may even have a business or you're investing. I would love to know if you are a first or a second type, I would do good or I get rich. Nothing worse with either of those. But often we tend to one or another.

For me personally, it was a year 2015, I came to the Silicon Valley with my start up. I'm originally from Ukraine and the meditation was just getting popular. But now, and two years prior to coming to San Francisco, I've had massive burnout. It was so bad that I had to stop my entire work and then just go to India for four months. Don't work, don't do anything, just meditate and get myself together. I realized that meditation is extremely powerful tool that helps you not just overcome your burnout but also prevent it. I went into the studies, I went into the ancient scripts. I've done full circle research on the aspects of meditation. When it comes to stress relief. I came to San Francisco, the tech capital of the world and I decided that I need to change the world. I want to build on demand platform for meditation and I started raising capital for it as a start up CEO and for some reason, I couldn't raise it. I was like, but what do you mean? 70% of the entire world? Health problems are coming from stress. I'm addressing this primary problem. Why nobody wants to invest in this investors that I was pitching to been telling me Anna there is no business there. I was like, what do you mean on demand? You need the meditation. There is a teacher. Something I learned later is that I was the do good founder.

I was so obsessed was making a positive impact that I was not putting enough attention to the business model and to the numbers. And even though right now there are several meditation platforms. And one of them I will mention in detail today, I'm friends with their investor um that are doing good and getting rich. Uh But back then, I was too impact driven. I was only the do good founder. Obviously, it was a tough experience. So I flipped my life and I became a get rich founder. I it was a wave of uh chat bots back then and uh everybody were buying chat bots. You could like we could sell a chatbot for $40,000. Just a basic MVP. That would answer using the logic that we've created. So there was no A I, it was nothing but it was a hike. Everybody were buying it. I worked with Golden State Warriors. I, I worked with land crafters as a service provider and we were just on a roll. We were making money. We were working in a cool industry. We were riding the wave. But after some time, I realized that even though we have revenue, but there is something missing. And if you look into the statistics of the most rich people in the world, the depression rate is actually 20% higher than the depression rate among poor people and middle class. Why is that?

So, so for the past 100 years, as I mentioned from the beginning, we've been focusing on getting rich and now we're experiencing highest rates of depression among richest people. Why is that? So, and then as a entrepreneur, I decided I want to help founders who are do good founders to find a way to get rich founders and combine both approaches in one because there is a way to do good and to get rich. And the two people that texted me on linkedin and asked why am I opposing one over another? And also as Graciela, I hope I'm saying your name correctly is asking why these two people can't be one, you can be and these investors, this venture funds, they learn it. So if we look at the returns of the impact funds uh done for the past 10 years, average venture capital impact Fund is overperforming in returns, simple fund, venture fund almost at 50%. So think about it when you are doing good and you're getting rich, you can make both happen. Then there is another problem arises. A lot of people who come into the impact investment and impact is a buzzword right now. There is a lot of people who come into the impact investment for the wrong reasons. They see the returns but they don't really participate in the cause. They just allocate their portfolio.

They don't really track uh they don't really get involved with the businesses or with their mission and they just get good returns from the impact investment then about uh 10 years ago, it was an entrepreneur. Uh Mohammad Jonas, I'm sure you guys, if you heard about impact, if you heard about social entrepreneurship, you know about him. Uh by the way, his net worth is uh about $10 million. Muhammad Yunus said, we don't need impact driven, we don't need profit driven founders. We need social impact driven founders. And he's created the around social entrepreneurship where profit is not the cornerstone of the business. The social impact is because he believes that if the founder will have investors that are pursuing profit, he will never be able to focus on the impact itself. I believe it's not true and the market proves that it's not right now. When we're looking into dynamics of the impact investing, we're seeing that in every 100 million right now, we're expected about $300 billion invested in the impact positive companies specifically in the private equity. I'm not talking about public companies in the private equity and that's just a fraction of the uh 20 billion sorry $20 trillion market that is being invested across other verticals. So it's still very small.

But the reason is getting so popular A is that it's obviously giving great returns. B is getting another type of return that regular investment doesn't give. So what is that saying that new investors and new entrepreneurs are chasing by starting profit driven, impact focused companies.

The answer is very simple, and very profound. At the same time, the return on investment that you get when you're running the business or you or you're investing in impact positive company is fulfillment. And it's something that you can't buy with any money. And it's something that any amount of return on investment can give you. And it's also something that I wasn't getting when I was running my chatbot business, money and wealth are not equal fulfillment. And since we're all seeing the rise of consciousness in the world right now, rise of consciousness, both among entrepreneurs and among investors and everybody else, obviously, uh in our society, we're seeing that fulfillment is becoming something more valuable than capital itself. I'm friends with Charlie Hartwell.

He is an incredible investor from bridge builders. I promise you to tell the story about uh mindfulness start ups that doing good. Uh He runs the fund that invests in uh impact positive companies that are increasing consciousness and eliminating human struggling uh in the world.

Tech companies, their premises is to find companies that are not chasing unicorn status, but the companies that are chasing sustainable business models and obviously return on investment. Their investment group is happy to have return on investment 4 to 5 X, which is actually half lower than the average venture fund would expect. This is their goal. They're not chasing the unicorn, but at the same time, 14 investments that they've made after eight years of existence are still alive all these companies that they've selected for sustainable business models, high uh average potential return and strong teams are still operating.

Two of them are approaching unicorn status, but that was not the goal, the goal was sustainable business model and positive impact. So I'm seeing a huge shift in the mindset of investors. They are looking for sustainable business models. They are looking for a return on investment and they are looking for fulfillment that they are getting from seeing teams that are not running out from seeing founders that are thinking impact from seeing beautiful technologies that are creating truly positive impact in the world.

The good news is that there are more and more people like Charlie Hartwell in the world that I'm lucky to meet every day and to work hand in hand on. And I am so grateful and so happy that we are entering the era where profit myths meets impact and we truly can create sustainability of businesses and sustainability of lifestyles. Funny fact for you guys uh after interviewing more than 10 impact investors, I've noticed that number one thing they look for in the founder is how do they structure their lifestyle? Because creating sustainable business starts from having sustainable lifestyle. The era of hustling and burning yourself to the ground. As a founder working seven nights in a row with nonstop is over. We need to see founders that are capable of managing their own life, their own energy building the team in the same way, creating similar business model and focusing at the same time on profitability, impact and fulfillment. So I'm so happy and grateful that you came here for this talk today and I want you to go back uh with one thought that doing good makes you rich and most importantly fulfilled. That's the end of everything I wanted to tell you today.

If you guys have any questions, we still have a couple of minutes left so please feel free to drop them in the comments. Um I do work with a lot of incredible start ups. I do work with amazing fund managers. Uh Our company helps with fundraising with um reaching out to investors, creating investor relations, building fundraising operations. Uh And we're just seeing incredible technologists and incredible people that are on the cutting edge of tech and this community. Uh the whole women in tech movement, I believe will create more and more impact, positive, fulfilling businesses that will be moving, not just the valuations forward, but also the quality of life for everybody on planet earth.