By Emmanuelle Larroque
[Note on the author: Emmanuelle supports young social entrepreneurs at a French NGO in Paris called Entrepreneurs Sans Frontières (ESF, or Entrepreneurs Without Borders). She visited the Bay Area recently and reached out to YWSE-SF. Below is her report on the 2009 Social Capital Markets Conference held in San Francisco this September. She notes that this is her perspective as a French woman with degrees in business and innovation and a background in IT consulting and CSR. It's fascinating to think about the differences in social entrepreneurship around the world, and encouraging to be reminded this is a worldwide movement.]
I was thrilled to be part of a meeting of major players in mission-driven investments. An international foundation for the promotion of social business, Artemisia International, had invited Entrepreneurs Sans Frontières to participate in SOCAP to get an understanding of how the social capital market was being shaped.
What I understood immediately was that the investment market for social entrepreneurship is more advanced than in France. The different sectors are talking to each other and making deals. The market is attracting traditional venture capitalists, and government wants to get involved too. All that is possible because there are some proven successes that are generating enough returns to get more people interested. Let's just say that in France, the double- or triple-bottom-line approach is not highly regarded: You are either business-driven OR mission-driven.
There was a major similarity between both countries: the lack of those "good" projects which can give enough returns to be attractive to venture capital.
Finally, what struck me most was the absence of social entrepreneurs themselves! We were talking about how to get them to scale up, to stabilize their business models, to get more audience, but they seemed to be somewhere else! It was great to be there, as a part of this new, trendy, movement, but I wished I had a chance to get to meet some of you.
Please, get in touch with me if you want to know more about what is going on in France with social entrepreneurs and what role young women play in it. Bons baisers de France.
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