🎙️ Rohit Gupta — Founder and Impact Investor @ Future Communities Capital 💵

Happy New Year! 🎉 2022 has been an exciting one! Markets have had their ups and downs and 2023 looks like it’s going to be as wild a ride. Thankfully, the goodness of humanity is a beacon of light and the number of companies Doing Well by Doing Good continues to increase 🚀!

In 2023 we’re re-committing to chat with as many founders and investors to learn how they do it and to inspire others to do the same. 2022 saw much of the market and the technology industry drop but many companies committed to strong missions, showing strong growth and sober valuations survive. Much like the 2008 crash, many of the best companies thrived by embracing frugality and focus and went on to become behemoths — Dropbox, Airbnb and many others!

In this episode recorded in March 2022 we chatted with Rohit Gupta, founder and impact investor at Future Communities Capital (FCC) focused on mission-driven companies across all industries with a slight bend toward healthcare because of how the fund started and Rohit’s own background in the biotech space. As always, if you’re interested in the whole episode peruse the Spotify preview below, or cruise over to the bullet points below for specific points of the conversation and the TLDR; Enjoy!

Check out the episode on Spotify!

Background and Journey

[1:15] What was your journey and how did you get into impact investing?

• Worked in genetic labs in undergrad and met the Counsyl (acq. by Myriad Genetics in 2018) team 14 years ago which lead to the first investment.
• Future Communities Capital came out of this desire to invest in healthtech, biotech and finding opportunities for large-scale change (e.g. Counsyl’s vision was to eliminate inherited diseases)
• Unique differentiator — focused on mission-driven companies primarily but not exclusively in healthcare and committed to delivering value via high-value intros to accelerate sales (e.g. a novel healthtech looking to sell to health systems)

Portfolio Companies — Growth and Mission

[8:45] How do your portfolio companies sustain growth and evolve business models?

• Example: Akido Labs started as a platform to make ineffectual unstructured healthcare data valuable. FCC introduced them to customers to accelerate growth. They doubled down on their vulnerable patient population and decided to become a complete care delivery platform for that vertical.

[13:01] How do you ensure multiple stakeholders are on the same page as the company grows and shifts directions to maintain the mission?

• Growth and making money solves all problems, but a strong mission-driven company culture that perpetuates through growth can ensure stakeholders are on board throughout.

[15:40] How do you determine stickiness of the product or service of a potential portfolio company and how assess the metrics at the early stage?

• Key is to identify that the founder knows the industry they are selling to, have built trusted relationships with customers and are able and willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.
• Example: Znest facilitates finding the right senior community living by making pricing more transparent. The founder is an expert in real estate and can call on REIT owners to put their senior housing facilities on the platform.

Measuring Doing Well and Doing Good

[19:45] How do you measure doing well and doing good?

• Prior to Series B / A, the metrics are often off anyways so it’s best to look at the model rather than the absolute numbers.
• Goal setting and plan-making is more important than the absolute numbers at the early stage.

[21:50] Conflicts between Doing Well and Doing Good

• Public companies have a much harder time than private companies because public markets provide more scrutiny than private companies
• Private companies face challenges only when the board doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the founders. Board formation is critical at the early stage for that reason.
• Building trust with vulnerable customers is hard to build and conflicts with the mission could hamper that. It’s important to not undermine it. E.g. 70 million jobs — training and finding employment for formerly incarcerated people. the founder Richard is focused on maintaining trust with that community

Sustaining Doing Good as Companies Grow

[28:55] How do companies sustain Doing Good as they grow (esp. after becoming public)?

• Healthcare companies have an easier time as long as they are focused on patients but for housing or fintech companies it’s much harder
• B-corp, ESG and non-profit arms are some ways public companies are already committing to Doing Good but hard to point to many public companies doing incrementally more good for every unit of additional revenue earned.
• Private companies and public companies have to balance demands of customers, stakeholders and the broader market (including potential future customers).

[37:25] How are portfolio companies thinking about this?

• PlenOptika — affordable and portable optometry care for vulnerable populations. Early care gets them 90% to where they need to be and preventative for downstream diseases — e.g. early onset dementia
• Akido Labs — healthcare for vulnerable populations is a critical but only providing services isn’t enough — building clinics to serve these populations closes the clinical loop and better solves the root issues.

Advice for Listeners

[40:45] Advice for to-be DWDG founders

• Be mission driven — make sure the company is something you care about deeply. Ideally if the company’s mission is your life’s work and you could not imagine doing anything else it will be hard for you to fail
• Be a great person — Being a good person enables you to afford opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Surround yourself with good people and emulate that, you are who you surround yourself with

[44:00] Advice for DWDG professionals

• Don’t burn yourself out — you are your hardest critic. Use a reliable technique, meditation, gratitude or reflection journals or other calming techniques
• Extend your network — often by the time you realize you need a network is much later than you really needed it.

[47:55] Advice for “people in power” (e.g. VCs, successful founders, influencers, etc.)

• Open up your network — When you have a network connect people to help those who could benefit from it. It can never hurt and is always a win-win

Thanks for listening and tuning in to the latest episode and our first for 2023! Wishing you an amazing new year full of Doing Welland Doing Good! Until the next time just remember as you start the new year that…

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✌🏽Anand

Originally published at https://dwdg.substack.com on January 17, 2023.