Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well

On todays episode, Brenda speaks with Marcia Dawood. Marcia is a passionate advocate for positive change in empowering and educating everyone on how to invest. Her book "Do Good While Doing Well – Invest For Change, Reap Financial Rewards and Increase Your Happiness", is due out in September 2024 and this episode provides previews to our listeners. 

Brenda and Marcia speak about Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well. How Marcia lives her purpose is as an author, host of the podcast The Angel Next Door, Chair Emeritus of (ACA)Angel Capital Association, the global professional society for angel investors, and on the board of Stella, a non-profit that supports female entrepreneurs. She is also a Venture partner at Mindshift Capital, and she currently serves on the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. 

You can find out more about Marcia at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciadawood/

marcia@marciadawood.com

Watch her Tedx Talk here

Order her Book here

Interview with Catherine Gray host of She Angels Series- Invest in Her:

You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription.

Transcript:

00:04 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're going to make some changes. Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke

00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors.

01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you.

01:18 So welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, host of this monthly podcast now in its third season. This monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilience, scalable and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And by way of

01:47 inviting guests to the podcast who are themselves founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers who also share my mission, which is using the power of the private enterprise, be that small meeting at large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that are going to include resilience, purpose-driven, and sustainable growth,

02:16 My goal through this podcast is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. I'm absolutely delighted today. My guest is Marsha Dalwood. She's joining the podcast. She checks a lot of boxes, but she's today joining as a passionate advocate for positive change by empowering and educating

02:45 everyone on how to invest. So when I met Marcia back in February through one of our events with Ty So Kow, she had launched or was speaking about launching her book that's coming out on September 10th, Do Good While Doing Well, Invest for Change, Reap Financial Rewards, and Increase Your Happiness. I couldn't help but ask her to be a guest because she also has

03:14 passion or a mission, and that is for positive change. And one of many things she's done is authoring this book, which we'll get into a sneak preview of the contents of this book before its launch on September 10th, 2024. I like to choose a title with my guests that are around purpose or sustainability or resilience. And we chose a title for this episode

03:43 which is purpose, do good while doing well. So thank you today for joining me, Marcia. So happy to have you here in the Founder Sandbox. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Excellent. So, you know, our paths crossed, I mentioned it earlier at the Thai SoCal chapter, the Indus Entrepreneurs SoCal chapter, where you spoke recently on some of the data coming out

04:13 the Angel Capital Association, as well as your role with the SEC. Before I get into my first question, I did want to give my listeners your entire background, your biography. It's very impressive and very extensive. You live your purpose as a multifaceted professional, your author of the book that I just mentioned, Do Good While Doing Well.

04:43 You are also a host of a podcast, The Angel Next Door. You are chair emeritus of Angel Capital Association, ACA. It's a global professional society for angel investors. And you're on the board of Stella, a nonprofit that supports female entrepreneurs. You're also a venture partner at MindShift Capital, and you currently serve on the SEC.

05:10 Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. So thank you for bringing your expertise here into this podcast today. Well, thank you for having me. So can you share for my listeners some of the highlights you walked us through in February while distinguishing the role of an angel investor, a range of fund groups versus VC?

05:37 I mean, some of the trends you're seeing in the markets. Sure. Well, to put it very basically, an angel investor is somebody who writes checks out of their own checkbook. A venture capitalist will pool funds from other people, so they're using other people's money. And therefore, they're held to certain standards, and they're held to certain financial returns that their investors are expecting.

06:06 So angels, while we also of course would love and expect a financial return, we invest in the things that we really care about and are very passionate about. And we don't necessarily have the same time horizons and the same guidelines that venture capitalists do, which makes us a little bit more plausible for being immutable for being able to do certain things and invest in the way that we want to. So,

06:34 Over the last two years, especially maybe even going on two and a half now, the market has been very challenging for entrepreneurs to fundraise at any stage. The market has been very challenging for exits and liquidity. So angel investing or investing in early stage private companies means that you're investing in a company that is not.

07:01 publicly traded on the stock market, like you would see a stock like Apple or something like that. Got it. In order for the investor to have any type of liquidity, there has to be an event. Either the company is sold, or in rare instances, the company would go onto a public stock market, or an IPO, as we call it. So in those particular instances, when there is liquidity, then that money can in a way

07:30 can oftentimes be put back into the startup scene, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, as we call it. And a lot of times, investors will take any money that they do get as a gain from a previous investment and put it into other startup companies so that that capital can keep flowing. That's kind of the whole idea behind as people are getting returns. So that's really the biggest difference between an angel investor and a venture capitalist.

08:00 But right now it's been challenging for everyone because of this lack of liquidity that we've been seeing in the marketplace for the last two and a half years. Now we do think that there's been some talk that that market is gonna start to open up a little bit more. We will see more M&A activity. And if that's the case, then hopefully we will start to see more liquidity and then there will be more capital for investing. And

08:26 as an asset class, right? Angel investing. And with your role as chair emeritus and while you were also chair of ACA, what spurred you to write about angel investing, right? Is this the culmination of your years of experience? Walk my listeners through what made you take the time to actually write a book, do good while doing well.

08:52 Yeah, I think it was out of frustration more than anything. I would talk to people, even neighbors, friends, people I would meet at an event. And I would say, yeah, I'm an angel investor. I help early stage companies. And they were like, wow, that seems really interesting. And I would say, well, you could be an angel investor too. And they would be like, me? I could be an angel investor? I thought that was only for the rich and well-connected.

09:22 that isn't something I could do. I don't know anything about that. I don't have a degree in finance. I don't really think that's for me. So it wasn't that they didn't want to do it. They really just didn't believe that it was something that they were able to do in a way, either from a wealth or income standpoint or from a knowledge standpoint. So I thought, wait a minute, I think there's an awareness problem here because we have all these amazing entrepreneurs. They're building incredible innovations that the world needs.

09:52 But they're really struggling. I mean, struggling with fundraising. And it's one of the hardest things t