Nii Koney ’11Journal #1
Jalia Ventures provides seed and growth capital to entrepreneurs of color who have developed a business model with an inherent social or environmental impact. The fund falls under the impact investing category as defined recently by the Rockefeller Foundation. Jalia Ventures was founded by Kesha Cash ’10 and Josh Mailman, a prolific early stage social enterprise investor.
My classmate, Ben Brown ’11, and I interned with Jalia Ventures during the break between J-term summer classes and the beginning of the fall term. So far, this has been a great opportunity to get some experience in the impact investing and venture capital world. Most of our time has been spent analyzing potential investments, therefore doing the necessary due diligence — analyzing potential social impact, market potential, product offering viability, financial projections, talking to the founders, and other potential investors.
With my background in healthcare and start-up biotechnology and Ben’s in entrepreneurship (mostly in the energy space as well as in statistics and software design), we came into this from nontraditional angles. The diversity of our experiences played an important role in the complementary way in which we analyzed potential investments, even those that fell in areas in which we had no direct experience. It was interesting to see how easily one can transfer deep experience in a single sector to newer areas of study. Although I looked at healthcare clinics which fell more directly in my realm, I also had the opportunity to explore other areas such as mobile services and application development, all of which required a similar level of detail in order to truly assess the potential investment both from a financial and social benefit perspective. Overall, it has been a great summer internship thus far, and I look forward to what the next week holds in store. I am due to present one of the companies I have been researching in an approval memorandum to the group at the end of the week.
Journal #2
Today is my final day at Jalia Ventures. Although it has been a short gig, it has been good to be back in the working world. As much as I like school, I miss the day-to-day life of the working environment. Today, we have a meeting lined up with one more entrepreneur who is in the journalism space. This is a tough space to operate in this day and age — there are a lot of moving parts as people try to figure out the right business model to move forward. Relying on advertising alone is proving fatal, and the advent of the internet and now mobile technology has really turned the space on its head. But someone will find the right model, or at least one that is sustainable. The question is what concept to place your bets on. In general this is the type of thought process that one must go through. Of course just as important is the question of who you are investing in and what that person has done or is capable of doing to make you believe that they will make it. In class, I have learned that this may actually be the most important thing to assess, and I would have to agree with that notion. A great entrepreneur with a bad idea is better than a bad entrepreneur with a great idea. Working with someone like Josh Mailman, with his pedigree and history of investing all types of industries, has been a very special experience. His ability to recall details of all his past investments is mind boggling, and his passion to truly make a difference in this world is contagious. This has definitely been a great learning experience.
