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Social Capital Index launches
We have launched the Social Capital Index, a timely tracking of investments in the social capital market, including social enterprise, (health, education and workforce development) fair trade, digital inclusion, and some clean tech and microfinance investments. Over time we will be able to size the Social Capital market and its growth trajectory in each sector.
We want to help investors and entrepreneurs keep up with what’s going, and create a place where both buyer and seller can go for research on competition and comparable investments. Emerging markets, where there is new money coming in, need a research hub to help people get smarter faster.
The SoCap Index has (in the center column on this site) three parts: an asset class fan, that goes from debt to equity to strategic grants, and a fund matrix, describing some of the funds in the Social Capital Market. We will be adding to the index on a monthly basis. They are pdf files for download now but once we are sure we know what form the market (you the readers) want the information, we will be turning it into a searchable online database.
We want the SoCap Index over time to create context so investors can discover potential co-investors and entrepreneurs can find investors and partners. The Social Capital Market has reached the point where we think it’s time to create it’s own index.
The SoCap Index will keep up with investments into funds, syndicators and relevant foundations, as well as investments gathered from individual and angel investors by social entrepreneurs. The monthly record of investments will be posted online and a searchable online database will be created. Investments will be searchable by investor, asset class, and market segment and social impact.
The goal of of the SoCap Index is to reach a critical mass of investment information in order for it to become a reliable, objective, third party validator of the social capital market’s growth, trajectory, variety and market size. Those clarifying elements typically allow more informed investments and increase the valuations that entrepreneurs are able to receive.
“Establishing a vehicle to size the market is a pivotal point in the development of a market, “said Gary Bolles of xigiMedia, which is creating the SoCap Index in a joint venture with Good Capital. It’s the point when mainstream media can actually start reporting on it with some consistency.”
VentureOne is a model for the kind of service envisioned, in which more than half the entrepreneurs and venture funds send in their information about each deal to VenturOne, lowering the cost for the entire ecosystem. Market sizing reports are often comprehensive in scope, like this one for the emerging bioinformatics market
At this point, the SoCap Index is not covering grants unless in the aggregate they total more than $500,000 from a single foundation, in order to reduce the “noise factor” of the multitude of small grants that are being done.
Next month we will be adding listings of enterprises that are looking for funding.
To get your deal included, contact SoCapIndex@goodcap.net
Trackback
February 22nd, 2008 um 11:03 pm
Hi Kevin, this is great news, I would love to look at the Index. It’d also be great to have a quantitative chart of the index, something simple like Reuters has on their homepage for monitoring the Second Life economy. http://secondlife.reuters.com/
February 23rd, 2008 um 8:06 am
yeah, once there is enough data we will chart it, Melanie, exactly the trajectory we plan. and then we can also compute growth rates of the market, by sector, etc. we’d want to give away that chart to mainstream media, too, of course.
February 23rd, 2008 um 9:18 am
Kevin,
Superb idea—I love this. As an internet entrepreneur in workforce development, I need comparable data on investments in the social capital space–valuation, other metrics, the space in general. Big thank you. Happy to help provide feedback from our perspective. Jenna
February 23rd, 2008 um 9:52 am
that’s great, Jenna. and the angel funding you have secured should go into the index as well, along with its sources, if they are open to it.
February 25th, 2008 um 11:24 pm
[…] xigi.net » Social Capital Index launches xigi.net launches the SoCap Index to reach a critical mass of investment information in order for it to become a reliable, objective, third party validator of the social capital market’s growth, trajectory, variety and market size. (tags: blog) […]
February 28th, 2008 um 9:26 am
[…] Social Capital Index Unveiled by Xigi.net Posted on February 28, 2008 by Vinay The other day, we posted an article by PSD Blog suggesting that the new development paradigm still suffers from the same shortcomings of the old guard. Today, we have come across one initiative to help address those concerns, as Xigi.net has released a new Social Capital Index that intends to be a tracking tool for investors to monitor and compare various blended value investments. We have launched the Social Capital Index, a timely tracking of investments in the social capital market, including social enterprise, (health, education and workforce development) fair trade, digital inclusion, and some clean tech and microfinance investments. Over time we will be able to size the Social Capital market and its growth trajectory in each sector […]
March 2nd, 2008 um 9:03 pm
[…] Xigi.net, an Internet-based platform that tracks so-called “blended value investing” - investments that create economic, social, and environmental value - has just launched a new Social Capital Index, which it hopes will provide a reliable and comprehensive bank of information to investors and entrepreneurs about social-capital investment instruments and transactions. […]
March 12th, 2008 um 4:46 pm
How will you go about charting the social value that each organization produces, including an assessment of the confidence investors can have that the “results” or “impacts” touted by an organization have any connection to reality?
March 13th, 2008 um 6:03 am
we’re going to rely on self reporting unless a under steps up. for good capital we are doing it for our portfolio companies ourselves. people say they want sroi metrics much more than they are willing to pay for them, in my experience.
March 16th, 2008 um 1:46 pm
Can you please speak about your indexing strategy? What affect will actions such as money flowing in to social funds and money flowing from funds in to social venture companies have on the trajectory of the index? What will make the index (hopefully not!) go down? Thank you.
March 16th, 2008 um 8:41 pm
the index will, if it performs like it does for other emerging markets, eliminate friction in due diligence, allow comparables research, and create higher valuations. the index itself is years away from being an investible product. it will validate the market itself, if it succeeds. that will cause more money to flow more quickly.
April 23rd, 2008 um 5:13 am
Kevin,
This is a GREAT concept and I commend you guys for thinking of it. It has the potential to revolutionize the way philantropy works. Are you planning to “back-date” the index to establish some standard of comparison with data from the past, say, 20 years or so?
April 23rd, 2008 um 6:54 am
we have no plans for backdating the index at this point. the markets are emerging. if we got funding we’d expand our reach first.