Collaborative Fund: Visionary New Investing Model for Pro-Social Startups

Collaborative Fund is a new kind of investment fund that bridges the disconnect between doing good and doing well in business, providing the financial foundation for creativity and innovation that will shape our shared future.

The brainchild of entrepreneur and angel investor Craig Shapiro, the fund aims to support emerging technologies that promote collaborative consumption – the shift from an ownership economy to peer-to-peer resource sharing – and social enterprises that innovate through authenticity, transparency, a genuine drive for collective well-being, and other concepts that are in desperate need of reclaiming from the fluff-lined “corporate social responsibility” manifestos of Big Business.

Propelling the project is a formidable brain trust, including One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte, Kiva CEO Jessica Jackley, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, What’s Mine Is Yours author Rachel Botsman, and GOOD magazine founder Ben Goldhirsh.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, and Design Observer, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.