The last few years have seen the emergence of so-called "tech for good". Observers have dismissed these efforts as small. They are attracting some of the world's best talent because they want to solve some of the planet's biggest problems. Money and backing will follow the talent wherever he goes. In Europe, Entrepreneur First and Antler have tried to scale their models astalent investors, while the Bethnal Green Venture fund was even acquired and recapitalized by its new owners.
This approach is on a roll.
The London School of Economics invested in Zinc when it was founded by Paul Kirby and Saul Klein. It backs over 220 diverse founders who built more than 60 ventures, such as Pexxi and Untangle. You can see that it is possible to create businesses that address problems that might seem intractable.
Zinc has hit the first close of a new fund and is aiming for a final close of $33 million to invest in startups. Each of the companies will get up to 250,000 dollars from zinc.
The Zinc 2 Fund will back talent that is pre-team and pre-idea to build the startup. The cohort draws in talent focused on four missions: mental health, the environment, improving the quality of later life and helping people impacted by automation and globalization. Zinc and the entrepreneurs agree that each of the missions has a big opportunity for both social impact and commercial success.
The co- founder of Zinc said in a statement.
Rather than waiting for good companies to appear, Zinc helps individuals (before they have a business idea or a team) to build from scratch a new commercially ambitious company to solve the social challenge that they are most passionate about.
Zinc brings these groups together to combine social impact and she says that those individuals are 10 to 20 years into their career but are frustrated that they are not having the social impact they want.
The individuals chosen by Zinc join a cohort of up to 70 people who all share the same mission and access a 12 month program of support and investment. Each program has a network of partners.
Zinc thinks it will attract people who are rethinking their careers.
Paul Kirby, co-founder of Zinc, says that their missions are a call to arms.
Dr. Rebecca Love, the co- founder of Vira Health, has raised over 14 million dollars in venture capital funding, and Alex Howes, the co- founder of Tandem, has raised over 2 million dollars.
Big Society Capital is one of the investors in Zinc's new fund.
Over 50% of the Zinc founders are women, 15% are black and the average age is 38.
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