Capital-as-a-service will run over-the-top and allow us to scale to new geographies and sectors. We’ve modeled our approach to capital-as-a-service much the same as the startups we admire. Six months ago we kicked off a stealth experiment to develop an MVP, both assembling the underpinnings of an infrastructure platform and developing the basic customer experience for the entrepreneur. In our pilot, we evaluated nearly 3,000 companies and committed to funding several dozen of those, across 12 countries and many sectors, without a single traditional venture pitch. In fact, in most cases the data-driven approach allowed us to reach conviction around an investment opportunity before we ever even spoke to the founders. Worth noting that when we recently looked at CEO demographics, we found that 42% were female and the majority nonwhite
Ashley Carroll, Partner at Social Capital: “Capital-as-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing.”
Amazing what happens when you remove the majority of the human element out of investment decision-making. Read the whole article, it is a great read on a data-driven approach to venture capital and the efforts of Social Capital to go beyond the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
