Announcing Conscious Innovation: Connecting with early stage entrepreneurs
Bridge Builders Collaborative and Evolve Ventures have been teaming up to offer entrepreneurs an opportunity to connect with us at an earlier stage than we normally invest. We are calling it “Conscious Innovation.”
Julius Mokrauer (Managing Director of Evolve Ventures) and I (Managing Partner of Bridge Builders Collaborative) lead impact focused venture capital investment groups in similar areas of interest. We believe that through collaboration with entrepreneurs, we can co-create a world where humans are more deeply connected to themselves, to something greater than themselves, and to authentic communities. We intend for a world where there is less inner suffering and greater human flourishing. We support invitations for people to transform or awaken to their authentic selves.
We intentionally invest in areas that spur revolutionary ideas. For example, we invested in bringing mindfulness to scale in the modern age — more than 100 million are now meditating on platforms where we invested. We’ve supported the emergence of digital therapeutics as a new form of FDA approved application to treat mental health conditions. We’ve fueled efforts to create conscious parenting applications and to generate the largest EEG database on the planet. And more… To ignite these movements, it takes great entrepreneurs and it is our passion to support them.
Bridge Builders and Evolve are both typically Series A investors. And, we both share a goal of supporting healthy ecosystems of highly skilled and passionate entrepreneurs that can create invitations for people to Go Deeper.
Our intention with the “Conscious Innovation” initiative is to both support earlier stage entrepreneurs in the Going Deeper space and also stay current on the innovations being created. We think the initiative is an efficient way to accomplish this and provide earlier stage entrepreneurs the opportunity to speak with us well before we’d normally consider an investment.
We have begun scheduling these 15 minute Zoom sessions with early stage entrepreneurs, and we invite relevant entrepreneurs to reach out to us. Our goal is to hear the company’s pitch, provide feedback, and develop relationships that can be fostered as businesses grow. The format is simple: we each quickly introduce ourselves, invite the entrepreneur to briefly pitch their start-up, and carve out 3–4 minutes at the end for us to ask questions or provide feedback.
We will speak with just about any entrepreneur anywhere in the world who have the following criteria and speak English:
Have a for-profit business that is focused in the spaces that we serve. These can include:
Alleviating inner suffering
Improving mental health outcomes
Providing tools that help expand human awareness or support human transformation
Expanding of social wellness or more conscious, authentic communities
Committing to expansion of human consciousness
2. Are interested in developing relationships with Evolve and Bridge Builders Collaborative.
3. Have a deck developed outlining the opportunity.
4. Are open to feedback on their ideas.
5. Are committed to their own conscious development and are on the self-discovery journey.
If you meet these criteria, you can email either Nelly at pa@shiftitcom or Margaret Ann at margaretann@evolvevf.com. Please send them a deck, ask to be included in Conscious Innovation, and tell us in a sentence or two why your start-up fits the criteria.
We believe we can scale more conscious endeavors through collaboration and communities of support. We look forward to continuing to provide encouragement, practical advice, connections, and capital to early stage entrepreneurs in our areas of focus.
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For background, Evolve Ventures is an early-stage $100M impact fund with a presence in the Bay Area, New York and Shanghai. The fund focuses on Series A investments to support conscious, mission-driven visionaries creating platforms, applications and initiatives focused on alleviating inner suffering and facilitating personal transformation. The principals of Evolve co-founded one of China’s most successful venture capital funds and co-managed one of the first large early-stage impact venture funds in the U.S.
Bridge Builders Collaborative is currently a group of 10 investment partners that have have been supporting early stage (normally Series A) investments in the space of consciousness, mental health, and spirituality since 2012. Partners are located in several major cities across the US. The principals of Evolve Ventures are partners of BBC.