Future Capital

Daniel Guelen is an international undergraduate student from The Netherlands and Spain studying a double major in Economics and Political Science at Columbia University. Besides his studies at Columbia, he was a visiting student at Stanford University and was invited to participate in Harvard University’s Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership as one of their select 'high-potential emerging leaders'. Before dedicating himself to this project, he was the cofounder of the start-up Global Impact Network which is focussed on tackling global sustainability issues by incentivizing, rewarding, and highlighting positive action. Moreover, he acted as the Managing-Editor of the International Policy Review, a student-run journal that he grew to a team of over 30 editors and contributors. Additionally, he worked for the United Nations as a Business Intelligence intern focussed on implementing the management reform under Secretary-General António Guterres to make the UN more effective, accountable, transparent, and sustainable.

There is an inefficient industry for donations that fails to create a value for impact, or a lasting and meaningful connection between donors and recipients.

We offer users the ability to create a SDG portfolio by buying into impact projects or simply one of the 17 different SDG funds. Buying into an SDG fund allocates shares for projects within the fund(s) chosen. Users have impact portfolios to manage and track their shares; to buy and sell impact shares with a goal to generate the most impact. The portfolios align all projects toward SDGs, tracking the growing impact over time.

Our project elevates humanity by making impact a fun and easy financial product. Our project elevates humanity by incentivizing non-financial public offerings toward sustainable development. By doing so, more capital will flow towards those who need it most and finance the Decade Of Action to achieve the UN SDGs.

Just like in the 20th century people stared measuring GDP and the total value of economic production, we are now in need of a system that values social and environmental impact creation. This is a global problem and stands at the center of the issue of 'financing the decade of action' to achieve the SDGs. In 2018 Global Sustainable Investment was a $30.683 trillion market- and will double in 2020- however, there is currently still no way to know what the aggregate impact of this money is. We are still using old measurements of value to allocate capital. This results in an ineffective impact investing and donation industry in which both people and organizations invest in inefficient ways. There is no ownership, with no ethical stake, of projects for the SDG investors financing them. In other words, there is no attachment or relationship between investors and beneficiaries which makes it difficult to track total investments and impact, and we have no way to see the return of impact on the money invested. By tokenizing investments and the resulting impact, we create 'impact shares' that solve this issue, as they are based on the value of the impact the investments created.

We provide a platform where users can find SDG projects that they can buy into. These projects are carried out by NGOs/charities, creating an easy way for them to fundraise. Once the project is funded we allocate tokenized 'impact-shares' through blockchain technology based on someone's investment in that project. The shares represent the up-to-the-minute impact that has been created and the user's stake in that. The greater the impact of that project, the greater the value of its shares. The shares are organized in an impact portfolio that users can easily manage and where they can track the impact creation of the projects they invested in. This impact portfolio is a real-time dynamic dashboard that can be used to meet regulations, satisfy market demands, or showcase your impact with others. Users can monitor their aggregate impact over time. It will be organized between the SDG indicators to follow and facilitate the UN SDG framework. The projects that are long-term and durable grow impact over time, meaning that their shares can grow in value over time. We allow users to trade the shares, transferring the ownership of the created impact. Essentially, we designed an incentive-structure for social and environmental investments.

NGOs and charities are the victims of markets that pursue profits over people. We help them by creating an innovative financial framework that works in their favor and helps the people they serve. By making it socially and financially attractive to fund their projects, these organizations can expand their reach and help millions of people worldwide. Our users who fund their projects, organizations and individuals alike, can easily contribute to global sustainability, track and grow their impact creation, and spend their dollars where it counts. Additionally, by creating 17 SDG funds, we are able to help users invest quickly and easily in the causes they care about, with minimum maintenance, whilst increasing transparency for financing the UN SDGs. Regardless if our users are sophisticated investors who want to track their impact and bet on the projects with the largest potential, or simply people or organizations who want to invest in social and environmental impact, we facilitate both customers' needs. 

We are building the infrastructure to finance the decade of action. By using financial systems to create a value for impact, all stakeholders will be incentivized to act or invest in the SDGs. That means sustainable investors, organizations, or households.

We elevate charities and NGOs that create the most impact by creating an incentive structure for people and companies to buy into their projects. This raises their projects and brings attention to their causes. 

As capital allocation pursues higher returns, our impact-shares and the financial engineering of sustainability can channel financial resources to those that need it the most and can create the largest impact. This quite literally drives action (or more straightforward: money) to the most difficult problems of our world.

We seek to become the financing arm of the SDGs to solve the world's most difficult problems.

The World Economic Forum recently stated that the most important issue was to finance the decade of action to achieve the SDGs by 2030. This spurred us to rethink current donation and investment structures to find new creative and innovative frameworks to finance sustainable and social impact. I have experience in economics, politics, business, international organizations, and start-ups and my team brings a diverse international background in finance, legal and law, NGOs, venture capital, and startups. 

My team and I know each other from a previous startup I cofounded from a class at Stanford University. As we grew that company, we began to see the lack of transparency between money donated and impact created, which initiated our pivot into this project. We started our own project after some fundamental disagreements with the founding team of our previous start-up about our values. We realized the need for a financial framework and saw how our skills, experiences, and networks would be best allocated here.

After a year's work of primary research, we found that there was no infrastructure dedicated to what we believe to be the most important area to solve our biggest issues and achieve the UN SDGs: sustainable (impact) finance.

As I previously mentioned, there is a great need to re-think value in the 21st century. We need to create a system through which we can measure and value impact, similarly to how Simon Kuznets came up with a framework for GDP in 1934. 

This means we should create a meaningful economy in which value is represented by the impact something has on our world and our communities. This brought me to re-imagine the role of finance in our societies and put impact and social value at the center of our decision-making. Rather than fighting against capitalism or financial systems, we should use what makes it so great and direct it towards more purposeful causes. 

That is why I am so passionate about this project. We have the chance to structure how impact creation can be monetized by tokenizing our impact-shares and allowing people to own the impact created by a project. Using human nature and self-interest, we can grow this to create a global framework for how social and environmental impact can play a central role in investment and finance, leading to unprecedented action towards the SDGs.

I am an entrepreneur with a background in management, data analysis, and business. Having been part of building several organizations from the ground up, I have extensive knowledge in how to effectively launch projects such as these. I am a Senior at Columbia University pursuing a double major in Economics and Political Science. Before this current project I was the cofounder of the startup Global Impact Network and also led the academic journal IE International Policy Review from just the 2 founders when I took over as managing-editor, to a well-functioning organization with over 30 contributors and editors and an academic board of over 20 field experts and professors. On top of that, I am uniquely positioned to deliver the project through a network spanning the globe from various endeavors such as being a visiting student at Stanford University, having been invited to Harvard University's Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership as their 'high-potential emerging leader', as well as deep investor relations through winning various simulations and business plan challenges in both Spain and the Netherlands. 

Most importantly, I have never been afraid to take a leap of faith to what I believe to be promising opportunities. From moving across the world by myself to unknown destinations various times to new projects and challenges. There is always a solution to the problems we face, and it is exciting. That is why, rather than seeing or complaining about the obstacles, I approach every situation by coming up with solutions or alternatives.

As I worked on my prior startup, issues with a co-founder arose, as many of my team did not believe our values were represented. It was tremendously difficult as that cofounder had a majority stake and was unwilling to budge. It was difficult to not be frustrated or angry. But instead of holding a grudge or sacrificing our values and ideals, I approached it as an opportunity for us to start-up in what we believed to be the 'right' way. So, I gathered most of the team and pursued this venture, leaving behind a year of hard work and sacrifice, $115.000 in funding, a working prototype, and an entire network, to focus on the pressing issue we knew we could solve. Initially it left us with conflicting emotions, and it was tough to restart, but our confidence payed off. We were right to believe that with the right values and approach we could achieve quick and meaningful progress. We gained traction within weeks. Rather than giving in to setbacks, becoming resentful, or allowing failures to bring us down, we rose as a team and as individuals, learned from our previous experiences, and created greater value and chemistry than ever before.

When I was merely 10 years old I wanted to organize a Children's Olympics in my neighborhood. I loved sports and valued the mental and physical stimulation of being active. I think I saw the Olympics on tv and thought to myself, I want to do that too. Without knowing it then, I did the extremely valuable thing to immediately get people involved. I spoke to my parents, my teachers, and my friends. Rather than waiting for them to think about it I started gathering everyone around so that people were talking about it constantly, and I started already building the prizes, the medals, the schedules, and the sports. When people saw traction they joined and helped me ideate fabulous new things to do. I became the first one ever to organize such an event in my community and still until today nobody has replicated that. All it takes is to inspire people and get them excited, involve them to get the best ideas and collaboration, and then just start acting so that they see traction and see the possibilities. This is something I have always continued in my academic and professional life. 

We are revolutionizing the Finance industry. We are changing the way people invest by creating a new type of securities for positive impact.

We are fueling the green revolution. We build our solution around innovative technologies such as Blockchain and AI on a FinTech platform to maximize positive impact.

By creating the infrastructure to incentivize philanthropy we make it easier and better for people and organizations to donate to projects that have an impact on humanity. We solve the missing aspects of meaningful relationships by create a stake for investors through the allocation of ownership shares for the projects they invest in. We become the facilitators for capital to flow to the places it can have the highest return of impact. This results directly in projects across the world being funded, interacted with, and tracked by us and our users. As if that was not enough on its own, we are engineering a system in which social and environmental impact becomes the value behind the shares, so that growing impact over time from funded projects means those shares grow in value too. This encourages recurring and continuous impact creation rather than one-time solutions that become useless over time.

The linkages go like this: our platform makes it easy, fun, and rewarding for users to invest in impact projects → NGOs and charities get more funding → by allocating shares for those projects, we create an incentive structure for more users to own part of the impact created → this incentivizes NGOs and charities to build lasting and growing impact over time as that will grow the value of their project shares → this leads to more people being helped and more environmental action across the world that is lasting and meaningful as our users are incentivized to fund projects based on the impact they create.

• Currently: N/A
• 1 year: 20,000
• 5 years: 3,000,000

Next year: onboard 500+ NGOs so they can start publishing projects on a centralized platform, invite ESG investors for Beta testing.

Next 5 years: focus on user growth and improve the selection of NGOs' projects. Consolidate the algorithm for investment recommendations, customized for each investor.

Financial: we need funding to build a simple and beautiful platform running and on robust algorithms.

Technical: we need to partner with the best advisors and engineers to build a scalable and efficient FinTech platform.

Legal: we must be careful to get the best legal advice in the process of launching a green security, working as an tradable ownership right of sustainable projects.

Partner with the Solve network and gather advisors

Get more funding from family and invest our personal money (+- 100,000 - 300,000 dollars)

Work hard on launching the beta version of our platform before the end of 2021

Columbia University as a member of the startup accelerator