Impact Shakers

With Impact Shakers we tackle complex societal challenges through inclusive entrepreneurship. We believe entrepreneurship is the best vehicle for change and people are the best at solving problems they know through experience. To tackle more complex problems through entrepreneurship we need more diverse entrepreneurs and we need to activate all of this underused problem-solving potential. 

The problem is complex and the change we want to see is systemic. The lack of diversity has roots in the historical wealth gap, lack of social mobility, systemic poverty and inequality, the venture capital model, neoliberal capitalism, company governance structures, monoculture of decision makers, and an inadequate entrepreneurial support system. As Thomas Piketty puts it: ‘Inequality is a political choice’.

As a winner of the Elevate Prize, we could grow so much faster! Not only the funding, but the exposure for our work would be fantastic. We have big ambitions and motivation to close the wealth gap through entrepreneurship, and are eager for help. 

We are the target group we work with. Me and my co-founder check so many of the underrepresented boxes that we are statistical anomalies. 

I am a queer woman, second generation immigrant, raised by a single mom, first in the family to get a degree, coming from a low income background with personal experiences with violence and drugs. Chances that I would graduate from university were in the 0.0000 percentile.

Weirdly enough, being the target group you’re working with seems to be a rare phenomenon. Seeing how few people with my background succeed in taking all the hurdles that our so-called current equal opportunities offer, I decided to do better and help make real change.

Our entire mission is to elevate issues and people. We are building an ecosystem, because we believe it's so important to work on different pieces of the puzzle. Complex problems need complex solutions. We are not afraid of complexity, we embrace it.

We envision a future with more successful and sustainable businesses by underrepresented founders. They will get the opportunity to serve as role models and give back to their communities. 

Impact Shakers is a global impact ecosystem designed to beat the odds.

We are founded to grow and connect the global ecosystem of impact or social entrepreneurship. We do this through our global community of impact entrepreneurs, by organising (online) events to educate, inspire and amplify the voices of impact entrepreneurs and through an academy for impact entrepreneurs. Besides, we are working on a first microfund targeting underrepresented founders. In our entrepreneurship programmes (‘labs’) we work with those who have beaten the odds before and will do again in the future. This includes specific programming focused on vulnerable youth, to whom we prefer to refer as ‘opportunity’ youth. 

It is our vision to close the wealth gap by providing opportunities to the underrepresented and opening up investment opportunities for those who long thought that they were excluded from financial empowerment. We are guided by a strong “having a seat at the table” conviction, and by this, we mean not only women or people of colour, but also founders with a migration background, first-time entrepreneurs, low-income households, single parents or ex-convicts. There are more challenging situations than we can list, unfortunately, so our listing is far from exhaustive.

Our ecosystem approach differentiates us from many initiatives which tackle only one of the aspects we tackle from one perspective where we tackle multiple from different perspectives. We focus on the entire lifecycle of a company as well as on assuring the financing piece will be in place and work from the entrepreneur’s as well as investor’s perspective.

Our programme ‘Raise alternative funding’ was a first of its kind and attracted a global audience. We are at the forefront of this ‘everything but vc’ movement and want to use revenue-based financing for impact businesses with underrepresented founders. We are also using a new business model for an accelerator programme as well as developing a new investment vehicle. 

We will be the first impact fund operating in a cooperative model in Europe. We will open the opportunity to anyone wishing to be part of our collective from as little as 1000 EUR investment. Financial markets are traditionally a closed industry excluding the underrepresented from investment opportunities and gaining financial freedom. We will make our first fund a community initiative to prove that our model is worth the effort and can become a new standard for funds in other countries as well.

We have developed a hybrid organisation under the brand Impact Shakers. We work on different aspects of the entrepreneurship system, but our key offering and future plans focus on financing and bridging the wealth gap. 

Through the non-profit ‘Impact Shakers Labs’ we work on quantity, on getting more people to see entrepreneurship as their potential future. Through our flagship programme ‘Odds’ we empower the underestimated by building confidence and developing the skills enabling them to get started. We take them through a 3 step programme providing small grants since we see financing as one of the key elements in systems change. 

The for-profit ‘Impact Shakers’ runs the educational and acceleration programming. It has functioned as a venture studio over the past 2 years, but we will transform it into a revenue-based accelerator programme. The first of its kind in Europe, making sure that the businesses we support are not only mentored, which is a common problem when it comes to underrepresented founders, but that there is follow through with financing.

With the ‘Impact Shakers Coop’ we’re launching a pioneering investment vehicle that will not only work on financing underrepresented founders but also on diversifying investors and closing the wealth gap.