291 | Impact Crowdfunding with Devin Thorpe
Our guest this week on the pod is Devin Thorpe. Devin is a champion of social good, a coach for social enterprise leaders, and the host of the Superpowers for Good Podcast. He is also the organizer for SuperCrowd23 a virtual conference at the intersection of investment crowdfunding and impact investing.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
CODE: awarepreneurshalfoff
Impact Crowdfunding - an interview with Devin Thorpe
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Devin Thorpe
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app that helps more people learn how to have positive impact through values based business. Thanks so much for considering it. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Devin Thorpe, and our topic is Impact Crowdfunding. Devin is a champion of social good a code for social enterprise leaders, and the host of the superpowers for good podcast where he's interviewed something like 1000 plus people. He's also the organizer of super crowd 23, a virtual conference at the intersection of investment, crowdfunding and impact investing. Devin, welcome to the show.
Devin Thorpe 00:57
It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Paul Zelizer 01:00
You've been thinking about how to get money in the hands of people do good work, and how to help them have more impact for I don't know, at least a week, right? Or a decade? I don't how many decades? Have you been passionate about all that?
Devin Thorpe 01:15
Well, so you know, it's it's it's morphed slowly over time, but I am, you know, my whole career has been in finance. And so what's happened is slowly over time, I've become more and more focused on impact investing and, and that and related areas. And I become just really passionate about this kind of subset within impact investing around impact crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is proven to be kind of magical, in some ways, right? African American women who get virtually no venture capital, are getting their fair share of or nearly their fair share of crowdfunding. And that's an exciting change, right? We want to scale up, we want to grow a system that allocates capital fairly, right instead of one that doesn't and, and so I really am eager to see a shift more and more resources into this model. But But yeah, I kind of grew up as a finance guy. And, and this transition has been slow. But for the last decade or so I've been really focused on this.
Paul Zelizer 02:34
And so for somebody who's not familiar, like maybe they've heard the term crowdfunding, and maybe they've even heard somebody, we funder or one of the big platforms, but like, if somebody doesn't need to, like 92nd version, like, here's what you need to know about crowd funding to help us move forward. You know, like, what's the basics?
Devin Thorpe 02:58
Well, you know, there are two sides to this. And I find myself focusing more and more on the investor side. And so from that standpoint, the key is to understand that you don't have to be affluent you can be if you have enough to eat, you should be thinking about putting some money into crowdfund investments, because of the impact you can have on other people. As well as the returns, you have the opportunity to earn, this is a great thing to do and you so visit a website like we funder and just begin to browse. There are hundreds of companies raising on just that one website, we funder right now, browse through, you'll find some that are doing some amazing high impact things, you're gonna get excited about the technology they're bringing about and you can put in, oftentimes as little as $100, occasionally even less than that. And it's just really fun. And it really, it's only a tiny bit more complicated than opening an account on a typical retail website. Like if you're opening a Land's End account for the first time on on lands n.com. You know, it takes you a minute, it might take two minutes to set up your we funder account, it really is easy, you can do it. And, and the reason i Now, Paul, I like to talk about the investor side. Because if we don't talk about the investor site and encourage more people to invest, our entrepreneur friends won't have the capital there that they need that's there. The real problem we're facing in crowdfunding is not that it doesn't work but that we just don't have enough capital flowing yet into this space. So that's what I'm working to address for the sake of our crowd for our, you know, our entrepreneur friends. And you know, if If I were to summarize, you know, the the challenge for entrepreneurs, right? You'd say, okay, so you you need capital, you're gonna visit a website like we funder and there are dozens, dozens of the many good ones. You're gonna visit a website, like we funder and you're going to submit an application and they'll walk you through. And it's, it's a much more complicated thing than Kickstarter or Indiegogo, right, you're going to have to submit a lot more information. And so typically, that process is going to take somewhere between 30 and 90 days to really get ready. Once you begin preparing for a crowdfund offering. And then, once you've got it live, you have to file a Form see with the SEC, and typically you're the the website that you're hosting on, we'll, we'll help you with that, they'll get that form submitted for you, and and then you then it's about raising money, right, getting out and talking to all your friends, and your customers, your other relationships and helping people understand what the offering is. And in a compliant way, that's a little bit of a trick. And then, you know, he raised that money. And it's, you know, it's work, but it's one of the things I like to point out about crowdfunding for entrepreneurs, is that it's about the only the only capital that's really guaranteed, you can apply for 100 bank loans and 100 banks, you know, may tell, you know, if the first three do the next 97, are likely to, if you go to venture capital, and you apply to three venture firms, and they say no, chances are the next 97 Will too. But you do crowdfunding, some amount of money, some modest amount of money is virtually guaranteed your friends and family, and customers close to you, they're going to support you, they will give you some money, they will invest. It's It's proven over and over again, if you have a network, you can raise money. So okay, I've taken way more than 90 seconds, you should get a new guest, Paul.
Paul Zelizer 07:19
No, you're the right person for this topic. So. So what I'm hearing listeners on on the two sides of the aisle here, for investors, one of the things that's really important is that crowdfunding has opened up in this sense, it's democratized who can invest. So in the investing world, if you're not familiar with it, there's something called an accredited investor basically means that you have at least a million dollars of assets. And before you can become accredited, because it is high risk, high reward traditionally investing in startups. So you know, not everybody that's not a Democratic, you know, inclusive way of being, it's important. And I'm glad there are VC firms and other kinds of impact investors. But what crowdfunding does is means that those of us who don't, who aren't accredited investors, we have the opportunity to really put our money where our mouth is, in addition to what we're doing in our own work as social entrepreneurs, we can get great returns. And we can have that outsize effect by giving somebody with a great idea fairly early on in their journey. Most typically, not always, but most typically crowdfunding is on the early end of the spectrum where we can really give somebody a left, who can go on to do amazing things, and we can get returns for it. So that's something I'm going to highlight on the investor side, it's much more inclusive. On the entrepreneur side, when I'm hearing Devin and also some other research that I've done. One is, like you said, if we lean in wholeheartedly, we're almost guaranteed to get something back. Right? Very, very rare that a crowdfunding where the you know, people who organized it, put in a lot of care and attention get zero, that's almost unheard of. It may not be millions of dollars, but it's the zero that just says to mean these folks haven't gone all in, right? Yes, um, in most cases. And the other thing I'm hearing Devin is that in terms of inclusion and more equitable distribution of capital use the example of African American women founders. I just got off the phone and introduced you. I'm going to do an episode A few weeks after this one with Pierre Laveau, the second at seat at the table, a platform that just about getting brown and black founders really leveraging crowdfunding can't wait for that episode. But the research that's coming back is that compared to more traditional forms of capital, founders communities of color and other marginalized communities do much, much better than the one or 2% that we see in the traditional VC ecosystem. Is that fair to say, Devon?
Devin Thorpe 10:10
Yeah, it is, you know, for for a long time venture capitalists have used and I think, to some extent that they're moving away from this, but it's hard for them to break the habit. Right. But the test was to get venture capitalists attention, you had to have a quality introduction. That was the test. And of course, that on its base doesn't sound like a biased process, right? Anyone could get a quality introduction. But the honest truth is, when we start to think about that kind of peel back the onion just a little bit, you begin to appreciate that if I am a black woman in Baltimore, the odds of knowing a venture capitalist or someone who knows a venture capitalist are very different than if I am a tech guy in San Francisco.
Paul Zelizer 11:05
Right? Somebody who graduated from Stanford, or Harvard Business School, they probably know quite a few folks in their network who can make that intro.
Devin Thorpe 11:13
That's right. And so it's it was and is a highly biased system. And to the extent that venture capitalists rely on it subtly, or otherwise, today, it really is problematic. The problem with that, and I used to be in the business of making those introductions, right, that was my business for nearly a decade, I ran a little investment banking firm called Thorpe capital. And that's what that was our primary business, right was helping people raise capital for their businesses, often startups. And so even having been the one that could make money doing that, making those introductions, I now see the deep flaw, really, almost a moral flaw in that system. And so kudos to the venture capitalists who have begun to work formally to create alternative processes, so that that black woman in in Baltimore has just as much chance of having her business plan read, reviewed, and considered thoughtfully, as, you know, a more classic entrepreneur, you know, in Silicon Valley.
Paul Zelizer 12:30
So that makes sense. If I'm the listener, I'm saying okay, I get why crowdfunding is really making capital more equitable and more inclusive, that conversation. So walk me through let's let's start on the entrepreneur side, because I think like you said, it's a little more complicated, a little more layers, but also makes a little more sense. And that's who our audience is. We welcome impact investors, we love you. We're really glad you're here. But we're a social entrepreneur podcast. So let's start there, Devin. So you know, what do I need to know? Like, as I'm starting to like, assess, is my startup a good fit for crowdfunding?
Devin Thorpe 13:11
Yeah. So you you've already said this, but I it bears repeating, it's important to remember that in this new world, we're all investors, right? So we don't ever want to forget that I don't want to ever feel have anyone feel like Oh, I'm an entrepreneur, not an investor, you can be both. In fact, you are both, even if you haven't done it yet. You are an investor. But let's talk about you know, your question, how do you know if your business is good? The great thing is, one of the key things that people are looking for is impact. So almost by definition, if you can identify some social impact, no matter how arcane or technical or business to business, your business may be. If you have social impact that you can clearly articulate, you are in the game. Now. It is easier if you are selling a more consumer centric product than if you're selling a business to business product. It is easier if the what you're doing is easy to understand, even if it's hard to do. So for instance, it may be hard to make better solar panels. But people get what solar panels do now, right? It's easy to communicate. So those are the key things I think impact first remember that and to have if you have impact you're in the game. But consumer products tend to be easier than the not and look for relatively simple things to explain you Even if they're not, it is easy to do.
Paul Zelizer 15:03
Right? So let's say I'm nodding my head as a founder, okay? Impact Yelp. I've been listening to a word printers for a while because I'm obsessed about that, right? I have something that makes sense in the marketplace to consumers, not just like, the largest 200 companies in the planet is the only folks who are, you know, SAS platform. And that's who my ideal customer is, okay? Maybe then crowdfunding might be a little bit less interesting or available to me. So I'm nodding my head. So give me like, What are some of the first steps as I'm starting to? If I want to do it? Well, what if I want to get a lot of return for my time and energy and money invested in to doing a crowd fund? What do I want to do right from the start to really ensure that I get the absolute most return on my time, energy and money?
Devin Thorpe 15:58
Yeah. Among the very first things is to begin thinking about the portal or platform you'll use. And it's interesting, there are dozens out there, and many of them are good. If you're new ish to the space, you may feel familiar with it, because you have visited we funder maybe you've also visited start engine, and Republic, those are kind of the biggest three in terms of brand, but there are a lot more. And depending on the kind of thing you're doing. Finding the right one is really important. The honest truth is at we funder until and unless you have raised 50, grand, you're probably not going to get much personal support. Which means you're you're dealing with the interface, not not a face. And if you're going to raise money, if you're confident that you can raise 3 million bucks, well, that's not a problem, you'll raise 50 grand on the first week, first day, maybe maybe you've got that already lined up. So we've under might be the perfect site for you. On the other hand, if you're trying to figure out how on earth you can raise 100 grand for your enterprise. We funder may not be the right fit for you. Because there are other sites that routinely help people raise 50 or $100,000. And they're giving you personalized attention, because that's what they kind of specialize in. And then there's also consideration around the kind of offering you have. So for instance, small change does impact real estate development stuff. And so you know, affordable housing kinds of things. So if that's your space, you really want to be looking closely at small change, rather than we funder is it for instance, if you're doing something that is really climate focused climate centric, you probably want to look at one of the platforms that's doing almost exclusively stuff in the green space. So raise green energy shares are a couple of the companies in that space. So it really is kind of really, the first thing is to figure out where what platform or portal you want to be using for your offering. And to then begin to look at, you know, the other companies that are raising on those websites, I'd encourage you to invest a little bit. Again, get familiar with that process, make sure that you know, how to look at a deal through the investor lens before you start raising money.
Paul Zelizer 18:56
So looking at the platforms that are out there, both through the lens of the size of your net, your raise, like what's your anticipated return, when you put it out to your network. Maybe you're one of those folks who went to Harvard Business School, and you know, what a early you know, friends and family round among your peers look like? And there's a lot of zeros there. Maybe you're from a community where your close people, you know, love you and we'll give it they can, but it's going to be different numbers. And you know, so you're thinking about that in terms of the kind of support and how it's gonna sit in the ecosystem of other campaigns that are on that platform. I'm now asking you about Devin, how much you know comes from your network and how much might come from the platform itself, giving you a left and bringing you to the attention of folks who are cruising around that platform looking for investment to hold that thought just for a second. And then you want to think about the space I loved I didn't even know about, you know, raise green or I do quite a bit of work. In the climate space, I'm actively taking notes here of some of the clap eyes. So of course, I've heard we ponder and, you know, the start engine and some of these others, but I'm learning things already. So, listeners, please know, I'll get as much as I can and put it in the show notes. You'll see the links, but don't worry about trying to write it down yourself. And so that all makes sense. Now. Now give me some of the what are some of the strategies to come strong out of the gate, I have done my homework, I tried it out. As an investor, I put 100 or 250 or $1,000 into something walk through that process. I'm shaking my head. Okay, great. What's going to help my campaign come once I've found the right platform, right for us platform that's going to help me come out of the gate really strongly my crowdfunding campaign?
Devin Thorpe 20:51
Yeah. The next phase is really going to be all about that. And it's, it's telling the story. And that is going to be if you do it fast, it's 30 days of intense work. You know, I'm about to launch my own crowdfunding campaign. So now I'm speaking from a little bit of personal experience.
Paul Zelizer 21:16
Well, you got some skin in the game. Ha, yeah.
Devin Thorpe 21:18
Yeah, yeah. So no messing around. So you know, it's taken 90 days, for me to get it done. busy entrepreneur wasn't bored looking for things to do. And I've had to work this around on the side, I spent, most of you know, the holiday break, sitting at my desk working on all of this stuff. And yet, here, we now are in March, and it's still not live, it takes a lot of effort to get all of this done all the storytelling done, and then get it into a format for submitting to the SEC on the form, see, and also getting it in a beautiful format, and a page set up on the crowdfunding site. And doing all of that in coordination with attorneys, and maybe accountants. And so it's a lot of work, it takes a lot of time. And you have to keep reminding yourself to remember it's not just about complying, there's a tendency, a temptation to sort of give yourself over to the legalistic approach. And just thinking about this from the adequacy side, you really want to stay strategic and thoughtful, and you got to produce a video as well, to tell the story, in the most story compelling way. And I'll give you an example. To help make the point but there is a company called Pink bench distilling, in Montana, little town up in northwestern Montana called Troy. And they developed a distillery as a business. And what they're doing is they're, they are harvesting fruit, out of fruit trees, primarily apples, that grew up in that area, so that the bears don't eat them. Because when the bears come in to kind of the human environment, bad things happen, right? They, they break the trees, that's the least of the problem, but they can break the little fruit trees, they also then can have negative interactions with humans, and then the the bears need to be moved, which is expensive, or in worst case that something might happen to where there needs to be killed. So you don't want any of that happening. Well, that's a very compelling story that the organizers of the campaign have done a brilliant job, they even have some video of a bear in a tree eating the apples. And so it becomes a really compelling social impact story that just has this narrative that just moves you to action. Because you want to protect the bears. And for a lot of people, you know, having a drink sounds like a really good, a really fun thing. So they're just having a Gonzo raise because of that story. So, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into all of this from a compliance standpoint, but I would just highlight the need to find that story, the message and be able to share that in a compelling way.
Paul Zelizer 24:31
Or that skill set again, listeners storytelling, you know, me I'm pretty excited and passionate about storytelling. It just comes up over and over again. So. So let's do this in a moment. Devin, I want to come back and hear about what you're doing with this incredible impact crowdfunding event coming up in a couple of months and a little bit about how your kind of world works as a social entrepreneur and the different revenue streams and you got A whole bunch of different projects and how you manage all that. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing one or more important decisions in your impact business, and you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's going to cost you many 1000s of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted and time efficient type of support. Through Paul zelizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 123 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure. So it's both inclusive, and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below. And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. In the second part of the show, Devin, we like to joke about putting on our social entrepreneur glasses. So I think I think we have a sense of some of the top level why crowdfunding can be really helpful to social entrepreneurs, particularly those of us who care about diversity, equity and inclusion issues and how it can help us have access to capital in an almost guaranteed way. Even if it's not all the capital we need, we were very likely to be able to access at least some of what we're looking for. So tell us a little bit about your kind of echo system as Devin and social enterprise leader, Coach podcaster, you know, event coordinator, like give us a little bit just like what, what are some of the different projects that you personally have? And how does that equate to revenue in your world for taking care of yourself and getting your own needs, Matt?
Devin Thorpe 27:07
Yeah, well, thank you for asking. So yeah, I've got a little portfolio of things that I do. So forever, I've had the podcast, I've been doing this now for fully a decade. In fact, I think it'll technically be my 10th anniversary here in May. And just, uh, just in the last six months, I had my first guest back on, and he's been on the show about four times. But it's been, it's been a real joy, connecting with people. And so I'm now hosting the podcast on the with the brand, superpowers for good superpowers for good.com. It's hosted on substack. And on substack, I distribute this as a newsletter slash podcast, and there's a revenue generating option there for me, so subscribers have the option to pay, they get a variety of perks, if they pay, the free subscribers don't get that everyone still gets all the content. So that's one revenue stream. I do some speaking, I still do some journalism. So that's a little piece of it. And then I launched the super crowd effort last year, and I'm really proud of what we pulled off. Super crowd 22 featured nearly 100 businesses or 100 speakers. We had a live pitch session where we brought real social entrepreneurs forward to pitch their crowdfunding campaigns. We require that they be live campaigns on regulated impact crowdfunding websites and so they had to be live and brought them forward, let them pitch in. And you know, we just had a great diverse group of entrepreneurs present and and that went well. The event didn't make me rich, but it did make a profit which was nice. And so I decided to incorporate the business and build this out. And so the super crowd Inc is a new business that I own and that we'll be doing the crowdfunding raise for I'm sure by the time you put this podcast out, Paul, it will the crowdfunding campaign will be live so people can join that it's on crowdfund Main Street. Crowd on Main street.com is where you can find that crowdfunding campaign but the The business will not only continue to do this vert annual Virtual Conference, which I think it was as sort of that, that national or international conference, we're also going to be doing some local pop up conferences. And I think we'll do some periodic webinars as well. And so we'll just have a lot going on with that business. And that may come to sort of dominate my, my workflow. Whereas now the podcast really kind of dominates my workflow, I find myself looking for ways now to to simplify, automate, organize, and make my podcast a little more efficient, so that I can continue to put more and more energy into the super crowd stuff. But I see an opportunity to help entrepreneurs raise more money with this by by helping and training them. But more importantly, coming back to this theme, trying to help everyone see themselves as investors, right, I want. I really want to get people thinking actively proactively about investing in and for impact in via crowdfunding, because we can all do it now. I did a quiz on my pot on my newsletter a couple of weeks ago that said he completed this quiz to see if you're eligible to invest in a crowdfunding deal. Right? And, of course, the quiz was one question. It basically is, are you alive? We're just we've got to convince people that they can and, and can have a lot of fun. It's fun thing. Like if you've ever thought it would be fun to be a venture capitalist. We'll Shazam. Basically, you are a venture capitalist. Now in this new world, you can pick and choose the things to invest in. And it's fun. So I'm having fun. Helping people have fun investing and raising money and doing good and my gosh, it's just, it's just a joy. Because pa out all I ever do I ever do for work is talk to people like you. It's just a joy.
Devin Thorpe 32:19
Just wonderful. It's all I do is deal with great people like you.
Paul Zelizer 32:26
Thanks so much. So Devin is the event is called Super crowd. 23 is this version of it that we're talking about the main virtual conference? May 10, and 11th 2023. So obviously, it's virtual. So, you know, anybody can participate? Like, if somebody were to come? What would they find in both of these categories? What somebody who is an entrepreneur who's like, wow, yeah, this makes sense. I'd like to learn more about crowdfunding, what would happen for somebody with that kind of mindset? And what would somebody learn who's like, huh, I never thought of myself, like, I'm looking at the homepage right now. And it says, with $1.4 billion invested, and this is the important part in chunks of as little as $100. Right. So we're, again, we're not talking about the kinds of pools of money that a VC would typically have, right? Where you need just bare minimum million, you need seven figures to get in the game, or at least have assets, right? We were talking about. And there might even be crowdfunding platforms these days, where it's even less than $100. I'm not, I think I might have gone down from that. We're not talking about seven figures. We're talking about either two or three figures, maybe even one figure, I don't know. But it's Yeah. Right. So So talk to us about those two buckets. What am I going to learn if I come to super crowd as an entrepreneur thinking about capital to grow and scale? And what am I going to learn? Or how is it going to help me as somebody who's like, Well, I never really thought of myself as much of an investor or as an investor at all. What's that person gonna get?
Devin Thorpe 34:07
Yeah, so for the entrepreneurs, the key thing, it's like almost any conference, right? The one of the key things is the people you will meet the people we are hosting, it's super crowded 23 as speakers and experts, they are an amazing group of human beings, just tremendous people. And we're excited about the incredible brilliance. And so yes, you want to come listen and learn from these people. And you'll be able to get a better sense of you know, which, which portal to choose how to write and do the storytelling in a way that's compelling for your audience. All of that kind of stuff is going to be part of it. But maybe the more Important thing really, again is this idea of who you'll meet. And so we'll have for our VIP ticket holders will have a networking sessions kind of a facilitated networking session where you'll have an opportunity to meet people, we'll also have all of our CO hosts and and sponsors will be will have kind of a virtual trade show, and you can mix and mingle with them in the trade show as well. So there's just going to be all kinds of opportunities to actually interact with people at the conference, so that you're not just taking notes in a webinar kind of thing, right? You're gonna meet, connect, trade contact information, and build relationships that will help you raise money, right, you will meet attorneys and accountants and other people who, who can help you in the process, as well as the portal owner and operators. Like, we've got one panel where I think we're gonna have 10, CEOs on one panel, all of the portal CEOs, right, so we're just excited. And so if you're an entrepreneur interested in raising money, not only you're going to learn a ton about the process, you're gonna meet people who can help you, you need those relationships, those introductions, you will leave with new relationships that are worth money to you. Now, if you're an investor, which is everyone, right? Again, I want to reiterate this, if you are interested in learning how you can be an effective impact investor via crowdfunding, and we can all do it. And it's fun, I think, I think it's good to start out thinking of this as a hobby, right? Lots of people spend $3,000 a year on golf, or skiing or other hobbies,
Paul Zelizer 36:51
or trail running as the case may be or trail riding that's really know anybody who's a trail runner who spends 1000s of dollars, you know, I don't know anybody. Yeah, raise fees, new shoes, exactly the Airbnb for the night before and after. Yeah, exactly.
Devin Thorpe 37:09
So if, you know, even if you're not super rich, you begin to see, oh, my life does have this kind of budget over here, maybe I could figure out a way to start investing $100 at a time three or four times a year. Now if you do that consistently, over a decade, you'll find yourself having invested 1000s of dollars, you'll have a whole portfolio of investments, be sure to create a spreadsheet or something to track all these investments, that's important. And then eventually, it can become self funding. But not only can it be fun, and you can have, you can make money, but it's also high impact, right? Every time you invest for impact, you can see that your little bit of money helped a company launch and potentially have a perpetual impact result. And so it's just amazing. But come to the conference, meet some entrepreneurs see some pitches live where you can actually invest, you can see experts ask the pitching entrepreneurs questions, you can ask the entrepreneurs questions and begin to see how do others other investors think about investments? How are they thinking about these kinds of choices. And again, we'll have 10 portal executives talking in one panel discussion, plus all the other ways in which they'll be participating. So this is just one after another huge opportunity for you to learn about how you can make money. And there are so many wise ways to make money with crowdfunding. Of course, you can, you can genuinely speculate thoughtfully wisely for impact in startups that have high potential returns, you can also invest in, you know, real estate projects, oftentimes that are much lower risk, possibly lower returns, but oftentimes, they can have great returns. And you also have, you know, local restaurants, all kinds of things that are helping to build stronger communities making a huge difference. Maybe it's not your community, but it's still a community, and you may want to choose to invest. And so all of those opportunities become clear. You'll learn all about them at Super crowd 23. On May 10, and 11th.
Paul Zelizer 39:31
There, Paul, and I want to say, I'm going to start on the more investor side of things here, because I haven't done that yet. So I'll share the load with you a little bit down. I want to say to our listeners, you know, I see a lot of folks who miss one of the biggest impacts in a modern life to have positive impact because we're not think when we don't think the way you're encouraging us to think Devin and I'll give a very good example in a second, but is what we Do with whatever amount of funds like once you have roof over your head gas in the car, you pay for your entertainment, travel, running shoes or movies or you know, guitar, whatever you do, right? When, when that's all done if there's anything left over, and most of us have at least something many of us have at least something. This is the one of the biggest missed opportunities for impact is what we do with that extra miles. Typically, it's called your, you know, retirement planning or whatever. And many, I see many social entrepreneurs who will be incredibly passionate about impact in so many areas of their lives, get really lazy or just miss an opportunity to think about what do we do with that pool of money that we don't need to live today this month or even this year? Right? And I see a lot of folks that Yeah, but Paul, I have bill in the bank, right, a Vanguard sustainable, focused retirement fund. Well, news folks, newsflash, most of what's put out there as green or sustainable, or impact is actually not good for the planet, not good for you, it's less toxic, but it is not in any way up to the part of the kind of impact that most of us on this podcast want to have, when we are doing our work. But then we get a little lazy with our money. And the thing with our money is like, if you're like many people, there's at least a little bit at the end of each month that you haven't spent, you haven't spent it down some of us are not there. And I totally understand you can skip over this part of the show. And I'll get off my soapbox soon. But the vast majority of us are under leveraging one of the most powerful assets that a human can have in the modern economy, which is whatever that is extra, whether it's $10, or $10 million, there's not many of us here that fit that or $10,000. Right. But whatever's not spent at the end of the month is an incredibly powerful tool for impact. And most of us are under leveraging that can yet it's something we add to if we're wise, every single month that we're working for our entire adult lives. Or maybe if we invest smarter the even beyond when we're actively working through the power of compounding interest in Smart Investing. So I just want to like nudge us to be more intentional as investors the way you're talking about Devin. And whether that's in crowdfunding, I'm a scalpel disclosure for carbon collective, one of the most climate optimized retirement solutions I've ever seen, which is why I'm comfortable being a scout for them. There's lots of ways to do it. But the general idea of us in the entrepreneur space, looking at this other area of our life and getting much more intentional there. I do think it's one of the biggest missed opportunities in our space. We're so focused on the entrepreneur side of things, and I'm really passionate about it. But I think we miss an opportunity. So I want to like nudge us as a community to lean into what Devon's saying here and go take a look at some of these platforms and the incredible things that people are doing and how we can give a lift with that little bit of extra that we have each month, it doesn't take a lot to really make a difference.
Devin Thorpe 43:24
That is so so true. You really hit the nail on the head. And I want to also make sure that we're absolutely explicit that you Powell will be on the program at Super crowd 23 We're thrilled to have you and and you're also aware of printers is one of our CO hosts. And as a result of being a co host, you have a 50% discount code that you can circulate to your audience. And of course, that's aware printers half off all one word, aware printers half off, gets you 50% off the price of a ticket. And the tickets are still early bird pricing now. And so the tickets are cheap, you get them at half price and you get to hear Paul at the conference. If you're unaware of her newer span, you don't want to miss super crowded 23.
Paul Zelizer 44:25
Great. And again, we'll put that link with the code, but a link to where you can get your tickets and also put that code in the show notes. And thank you so much for that generous offer for our listeners. Devin, I hope we are reducing any friction. I hope you understand why this is really exciting gathering and also hopefully we're reducing the friction Oh, but the cost well, we just cut that in half, right? So hopefully we're making like okay, I get it. I'm gonna learn things on both sides, both as an entrepreneur and as an impact investor. stir. And also, we're reducing some of the friction. So we're doing everything possible to make it feasible for our listeners to come. And thanks for that generous offer. Devin.
Devin Thorpe 45:11
Thank you. Thank you, we're excited to have you on the program.
Paul Zelizer 45:14
So talk to us a little bit about, you know, this space has really grown very quickly, the whole crowdfunding space, but particularly this impact crowdfunding conversation, like, and you've been at the forefront and or even like, throttling back and maybe even, you know, stopping some things you've done more of in the past to do more of this, you're leaning into the space. And I would say, you're somebody who's been on the front of this conversation around impact crowdfunding for quite a number of years now, Devin, like, as somebody who's got a front row seat, like what's happened and where the space is? Now, look a little bit ahead. Where do you think this space is going in the next three to five years?
Devin Thorpe 45:58
You know, we really need to put in a bend in this hockey stick, right? You we've got a line trending up in terms of the amount and volume of people raising and investing through kind of impact entrepreneurship, impact crowdfunding here. And, and the my passion here is about putting a band a kink, a sharp kink in that line to start driving it up. And I can't do that unilaterally. But I sort of came on this idea, this emphasis around collaboration for Super crowd 22. And it worked right when we came together, right? We had 100 people on the program. I mean, imagine putting together a program with 100 people on it. And it's 100, great, smart, amazing, impressive people, CEOs of big successful companies. I mean, it was an amazing program. And I'm sorry for talking about this that I happen to do. But it's not me. It's not me. It's It's It's the spirit of collaboration that pervades impact crowdfunding as a as an arena. It's just an amazing group of people that you're, you're joining us with Paul and, and so what I'm seeing is, in 2022, I estimate that about 100,000 people invested in an impact oriented investment via crowdfunding, I really think we need to get that number to 10 million over the next decade. And so to get there, we're not on that trajectory, I can't lie and tell you oh, we're right on that path, we're not on that path, we got to put a bend in the curve. And so that's what this is about. And it's again, it's not about me, it's about this great spirit of collaboration, right. And so you've joined this collaborative effort, Paul, and I'm sure many of your, your listeners are going to join this collaborative effort in one way or another. And we're going to help each other not just succeed as individuals, but succeed as a group as a space to dry in more people, is when we go from 100,000 to a million, and from a million to 10 million, we will create a flow of capital of at least $10 billion a year flowing into impact and that oh my gosh, that is seriously changemaking it will be a substantial if it isn't the primary source of impact investing capital for startup entrepreneurs, nothing else will be it you know, whatever is better and bigger will be will be amazing. But it is exciting. And that's what that's the future we're building together. Again, not me together in this great spirit of collaboration helping one another succeed, right, if a super crowd 23 is successful, and super crowd 24 is successful. It's because we're helping more entrepreneurs raise more money, it's because we're helping more investors invest more for impact. And that great circle is growing. That cycle is accelerating to include more and more people with more and more benefits. That's the world we're creating. And we're doing it together. This isn't about Devin, it's about coming together. And being part of this great movement, this huge collaboration.
Paul Zelizer 49:48
One of the examples that I in the impact space. The best example I have right now Devin is in the climate space. I think the climate, community and the ecosystem not Data is perfect. But I'm seeing a level of willingness to bring as many people to the table to share ideas to D silo in in ways I have rarely seen and no bad intent. But I do see a little bit more siloing in some of the other impact areas. And then I wish and I'm just pointing that out, like, the climate spaces kind of looked at the evidence that wow, really smart people told us, we need to get this thing moving. And we don't have you know, hundreds of years to do it, we need to bend that kind of bend that you're talking about in the growth trajectory. We gotta do this. Now. We need all smart people on deck. And if somebody's got a good idea, let's crowdsource let's lift up, let's get people they need the capital to grow this thing or, you know, the talent or help amplifying great stories, etc, etc. So I'm hearing that kind of intentionality. And listeners, that's part of the reason I was like, you're like, How can I help Devin? Here's the AWARE printers logo. Yes, I'll you know, be one of the books who's sharing information. And that's, that's one of the ways I like to show up in the world. And I'm really excited to see another place in the impact space where people are saying, hey, collaboration is really important, let's de silo and let's really move this trajectory faster than any one of us can do alone. So both an example and also a celebration. Thanks for that spirit. Devin, I really appreciated how you show up in the world in that way.
Devin Thorpe 51:34
Well, thank you. And again, not about me, it's about us together. It's amazing. You know, we have already 30 co hosts signed up to help us build this community and accelerate it and and
Paul Zelizer 51:50
it's 31, because I just sent you a an email intro, and I hope you're good. I hope that at least 31 by now. Great. So Devin, I could hang out with you all day, you're doing such good work, and you're really busy, our listeners are really busy. We will put a link to Superfund 2023. And the code listeners as well as so many other there's gonna be a lot of links in the show notes. So know that our listeners will have access to how to get a hold of information and where they can sign up. If there was something Devin, you were hoping that we will get to today, and we haven't touched on it on this topic of impact crowdfunding, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with. As we start to say goodbye, our listeners being really dedicated, really passionate, social entrepreneurs. What would that thing be?
Devin Thorpe 52:42
Well, two things. First off, I want to thank you for having me on the show, you're you're incredibly generous. And it's an amazing show. Your wisdom and insights, as I listened to your show, are really profound. And so I'm honored to be included as a guest. And grateful for the wisdom that you share with me as a as a podcast host. But I also want to thank your listeners, because I recognize they're listening to you because they are anxious to do more good in the world, anxious to increase their impact. Some of that feeling manifests as a desire to be more successful in traditional ways. And that's great, because I suspect that all your listeners are focused on impact first. And you can only have impact to the extent at some level that you are successful. Right. And so they're listening to you to figure out how to optimize and and become more successful. And you're creating tremendous value for them. And so I'm grateful for all that they are doing to make the world a better place and want to express that to them.
Paul Zelizer 54:04
Well, Devin, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Devin Thorpe 54:08
Thank you,
Paul Zelizer 54:10
the listeners go check it out. Come join us come learn about impact crowdfunding on both sides of the aisle. Now that I got on my soapbox. Again, the code is aware of printers half up all one word, and that'll be in the show notes. Before we go, I just want to remind you, we love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea, go to the AWARE printers website, go to our contact page. And there's three simple guidelines we try to be really transparent about, you know what criteria we use to vet who would be a good fit for the show. We can't have everybody but we do try to be really transparent. Here's what we're here's what we're using to make decisions about who to have on so if you've got a great idea, please send that on it. And finally, I want to say thank you So much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.