Take the riskiest category in finance (venture capital) and combine it with an investing strategy widely viewed with significant misgivings (impact investing), and what do you end up with? In the case of Sarah Cone, founder of the New York City–based VC firm Social Impact Investing, it is a formula for disrupting the venture capital business by focusing on “teams doing good with technology.”
“No one in the world believes impact investing can actually produce top-tier returns,” Cone said, though she obviously didn’t mean that literally, as she acknowledged to interviewer Barry Ritholtz on his Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg that her firm is backed by some of the biggest names in the investing business, and Social Impact Investing’s returns have been stellar, though neither investors’ names nor her VC returns could be shared because of privacy and regulatory strictures.
“VCs are always saying to me, ‘Sarah, you can just drop the social impac
