Collaborative Fund

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= an investment vehicle for funding startups tapping into the collaborative consumption trend [1] i.e. "the shift from an ownership economy to peer-to-peer resource sharing" [2]

URL = http://collaborativefund.com/

Description

1.

"Collaborative aims to be the leading source of capital and strategic support for creative entrepreneurs who want to change the world. The fund focuses on two themes: the increasing importance of values as they relate to the decisions we make about who we work for, what we buy, and how we spend our time; and the shift from an economy based on hyper-consumption to one based on Collaborative Consumption. These two forces present a significant opportunity for new technologies, products, and services to reinvent how we do business and transform our daily lives."


2.

"Angel investor and entrepreneur Craig Shapiro is starting a new seed fund based in Los Angeles with the help of friends and advisors like YouTube founder Chad Hurley and Kiva co-founder and Profounder CEO Jessica Jackley. Investors in the relatively small $6 million fund include GM O’Connell, Nicholas Negroponte, Jason Krikorian (co-founder of Sling Media), Ben Goldhirsh (founder of Good and heir to the Inc. magazine fortune), and Brendan Synnot (founder of Bear Naked and RevelryBrands)

Called the Collaborative Fund, it will invest in startups focused on two themes: collaborative consumption and those which use their values as a competitive weapon. Collaborative consumption, explains Shapiro, is “this trend of businesses to extract value form existing resources.” Think of all the peer-to-peer sharing services out there that use the Internet to make existing economic resources more productive by making it easy to rent, share, or swap them. Examples include Zipcar (shared cars) and AirBnB (shared housing). The other related focus is on “brands that mean something.” The models here are companies like Zappos and Honest Tea that target Richard Florida calls the creative class. They live by values like happiness, authenticity, and transparency, which end up being a perfect way to market to consumers who don’t like to be marketed to." (http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/collaborative-fund-aims-to-seed-startups-that-compete-on-values-and-collaborative-consumption/)


3. Craig Shapiro:

"At Collaborative Fund, the fund I founded to invest in collaborative businesses, we are helping to support a cultural shift away from excess, hyper-consumption, and ownership, and toward access, sharing, and efficiency. We hear about new stories that exemplify this shift all the time, like programmer Avi Flombaum quitting his day job at a startup where he was CTO because his hobby teaching Skillshare classes earned him $100,000 in one year. Few teachers make that much in traditional schools.Or Curtis Chong, who earned $5,300 in a year letting others drive his Honda Civic worth $4,800 on RelayRides. These marketplaces enable people with excess supply to find demand, unlocking viable economic activity." (http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681009/whats-the-future-of-the-sharing-economy)


Investment Directory

Craig Shapiro writes:

"There is a common ethos among our portfolio: the more financially successful they become, the better it is for the world. They all lean more towards for-profit focused businesses that inherently create social impact versus more philanthropic, yet for-profit businesses. A subtle distinction, but a very big difference.

...

Right now, as you know, we have no institutional capital invested in the fund, only exceptional individuals. I believe this allows us to be more agile and aggressive in pursuing our mission.

We’ve recently added some new investors to the Collaborative family: Scott Heiferman, Ron Gonen, and Chuck Templeton. Scott has built an incredible company based on the very concept of collaboration - Meetup! Ron co-founded RecycleBank, and Chuck pioneered an Internet-based collaborative business (OpenTable) before there was such a thing. They are a great addition to the existing Collaborative team of investors." (http://tumblr.com/ZKtENwEFdlz2)


  1. BankSimple (better banking through a better UI), "Simple is redefining the relationship between banks and consumers."
  2. Profounder (crowdsourced funding),
  3. Gobble (an AirBnB for food),
  4. Groundcrew (organize mobile teams), and
  5. MindSnacks (learning games for touch devices).
  6. Massive Health is building tools and feedback systems to help us monitor and take better care of ourselves.

Peoplen

Bio of the founder, Craig Shapiro: is an entrepreneur and investor at Collaborative Fund. He helped pioneer several mobile and interactive television initiatives in the US, including the first multi-carrier live voting in Super Bowl XXXVI. Mr. Shapiro also served on the Board of Directors for the Mobile Marketing Association. Previously, he was President of GOOD Worldwide LLC and an angel investor in several new media and technology companies. Craig Shapiro received his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and is originally...

"Propelling the project is a formidable brain trust, including One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte, Kiva CEO Jessica Jackley, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, What's Mine Is Yours author Rachel Botsman, and GOOD magazine founder Ben Goldhirsh." [3]