Benjamin Brown ’11

Benjamin Brown ’11 worked at Jalia Ventures, a socially focused investment venture capital firm founded by Lakesha Cash ’10 that provides seed and growth capital to minority‐owned businesses, with a focus on healthcare, education, information technology, and environmentally friendly innovations. Ben worked on developing a strategic plan for an Impact Investing Fellows Group, which will work closely with Jalia Ventures on potential and completed investment deals.

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Journal #1

Today we met with a major distributor of ice cream and frozen desserts to New York City and the tri-state area to discuss a comprehensive energy management relationship. We did a walk-through of the site and visited the gymnasium-sized freezer where the company stores all the ice cream that will be distributed during a given week. We sat down with the owners and discussed an array of options they had to reduce their energy costs through a host of options, including:

The owners’ response was positive, and we look forward to working with them going forward on executing the following strategy.

Journal #2

Today we heard a pitch from a coupon technology company looking for a convertible debt investment to carry them to a Series A or sale. We went through a list of questions on due diligence about the company’s financing thus far, cap tables (i.e. break-down of the current ownership and investors), market opportunity, current contracts, and contracts in the pipeline. The entrepreneur was very compelling and made a solid case for his company and ability to grow it into large, profitable venture. He had a very strong narrative and was good at responding at length to the various questions we posed on the above topics.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon discussing our reactions to the presentation and follow-up tasks for due diligence. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what happens with them and what the final investment decision will be.