Project: Identify Green Investors

[Brian H]

[Admin note: this post was moved from this thread on accredited investors]

Interesting point about the charities’ investments; they can try to increase their assets and resources by investing in anything — even the DOW Index, e.g. But the Abell Foundation invested in LPP both as an income-generating prospect and as a push towards its fundamental mission: the improvement of living conditions and opportunites for Baltimorians.

Which brings up a possibility: there are a number of investment firms and initiatives which concentrate on “Green” and “ethical” investment. They are certainly “qualified”, both in terms of assets and sophistication. Selling investment in LPP as a small, marginal, but potentially game-changing slice of one of their pies would probably do the trick.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Which brings up a possibility: there are a number of investment firms and initiatives which concentrate on “Green” and “ethical” investment. They are certainly “qualified”, both in terms of assets and sophistication. Selling investment in LPP as a small, marginal, but potentially game-changing slice of one of their pies would probably do the trick.

Great project idea. Let’s break that down into action steps, a pipeline, procedure.

“identify investment firms”
“find a warm contact” (email is the most useless approach)
“find out how they feel about fusion”
“develop ways to pitch fusion to them”
“pitch”

But there must be other steps.

I’m at step 3 with a few groups. I’ll let you know what I learn from the process.

[Tulse]

I know I’ve been offering a lot of critical comments of late, and I really don’t want to come off negative, as I have enormous hopes for LPP and focus fusion. All of my comments are solely intended to be helpful and advance the likelihood of success of the project. That said:

Does LPP want an outside group not under their direct control approaching potential investors? I really do understand both the tremendous enthusiasm and the anxiety about funding (both of which I share), but I think that if FFS is not actually a legally authorized agent of LPP, trolling for potential investors may do far more harm than good, and simply serve to, at best, confuse things terribly.

I would suggest that if the goal is to get investors for LPP, the FFS should be at most researching potential leads, and then passing on those leads (without contacting them) to the folks at LPP. If the issue is that LPP isn’t currently set up to actively pursue investors, then I would strongly suggest getting them to take individuals with the appropriate expertise (perhaps even volunteers) into LPP as official staff. I’m afraid that using FFS as the marketing arm of LPP will scare off potential funders who are confused about the relationship between the organizations, and put off by what may seem a lack of professionalism and serious business orientation on the part of LPP. (I say this as someone who was involved in a minor capacity with a few startups that had those exact problems — needless to say, things did not turn out well.)

[Aeronaut]

Agreed, Tulse. Nobody “buys” confusion.

[Rezwan]

Tulse wrote: Does LPP want an outside group not under their direct control approaching potential investors? I really do understand both the tremendous enthusiasm and the anxiety about funding (both of which I share), but I think that if FFS is not actually a legally authorized agent of LPP, trolling for potential investors may do far more harm than good, and simply serve to, at best, confuse things terribly.

I would suggest that if the goal is to get investors for LPP, the FFS should be at most researching potential leads, and then passing on those leads (without contacting them) to the folks at LPP. If the issue is that LPP isn’t currently set up to actively pursue investors, then I would strongly suggest getting them to take individuals with the appropriate expertise (perhaps even volunteers) into LPP as official staff. I’m afraid that using FFS as the marketing arm of LPP will scare off potential funders who are confused about the relationship between the organizations, and put off by what may seem a lack of professionalism and serious business orientation on the part of LPP. (I say this as someone who was involved in a minor capacity with a few startups that had those exact problems — needless to say, things did not turn out well.)

I agree with this. Thank you for the eloquent distinctions!

So, the 2 issues here are:
* what is FFS function (we’ve been needing to rewrite the bylaws for some time now as the purpose seems to be too closely welded with LPP marketing and research for comfort); and
* LPP needs a stronger official marketing arm and advisors.

Will set up a separate FFS bylaws post.

Back to this topic – identifying green investors – as you say here, there’s no conflict to crowd-source researching potential leads, which we can pass on to LPP.

Also keep in mind, a lot of these leads would be good for FFS fundraising for itself. A green org might want to fund LPP’s research project, it might also want to fund FFS’s educational projects on aneutronic fusion or the panel discussions and other activities we want to host, or the policy and lobbying activities we want to pursue, or the pro-fusion cultural activities we want to develop. There’s a lot of room for growth for FFS which requires funding.

As to LPP’s board of advisors. For a for profit company like LPP, boards expect to be paid. That might be an issue that has kept things from moving forward. One supposes they could be paid in stock options?

In any case, it’s not our place to set that up. For the purposes of this post we could say if you have expertise, and you’re interested in officially advising or actively pursuing investors on behalf of LPP, you need to contact them directly.

[Author]

Posts