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Jaqueline Novogratz & Fred Wilson to Lead Panel on Public Service Potential of Private Capital

GoodCompany Ventures Announces Call for Applicants for Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs

Jaqueline Novogratz & Fred Wilson to Lead Panel on Public Service Potential of Private Capital

GoodCompany Ventures Announces Call for Applicants for Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs

Published 02-26-10

Submitted by GoodCompany Group

GoodCompany Ventures will announce its 2010 Venture Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs with a launch event March 4th from 6-8 pm in New York City.

The highlight of this event is a panel that brings together the nation's most prominent advocates for both early stage investment and social enterprise. These panelists reach directly over half a million followers through their social media outlets.

Fred Wilson, founder of Union Square Ventures, is an advocate for early stage investment and the single most read blogger in the venture capital community. Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder of the AcumenFund, a global nonprofit venture philanthropy fund that hat uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.

They are joined by venture investors, Roger Ehrenberg, founder of IA Venture Strategies, one of the most active angel investors in New York, and Jacob Gray, a partner at Murex Investments, a leading double-bottom-line venture fund. The panel will be moderated by Scott Edward Anderson, founder of the thegreenskeptic.com and a frequent commentator on FoxBusiness Network.

"Our mission is to help entrepreneurs and investors reconcile purpose and profit", said Garrett Melby, CEO of GoodCompany Ventures. "We are excited to have four such influential and innovative investors come together to highlight new models for harnessing private capital to drive lasting social impact"

GCV's 2009 pilot program in Philadelphia was the first incubator in the country to adopt venture capital strategies to the needs of social enterprises. The 2009 program attracted social entrepreneurs from around the globe, in fields such as CleanTech, Education, Public Health, Social Finance and Community Development, highlights of which will be presented at the launch event. Applications for the 2010 Program will be accepted beginning March 5th.

The launch event is being hosted by GoodCompany Ventures, in partnership with Green Spaces, at their Tribeca co-working facility located at 394 Broadway, New York NY 10013. Green Spaces forwards the sustainability movement globally through widespread local hubs that incubate social and environmental entrepreneurs. The Green Spaces network represents nearly 5,000 people in NYC and thousands more nationwide.

Advance tickets are required for this event and are available at http://gcvpanel.eventbrite.com.

About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both purpose and profit. GoodCompany Ventures is a nonprofit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GCV Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.

About Green Spaces
Green Spaces’ vision is to forward the sustainability movement globally through widespread local hubs that incubate environmental entrepreneurs. As a platform for "social change", Green Spaces not only thrives as the stomping grounds for the city’s cutting edge entrepreneurs, but it spurs connections among companies who share a passion for sustainable and ethical business and lifestyle. The Green Spaces network represents nearly 5,000 people in NYC and thousands more nationwide. It has become a catalyst to thousands of global conversations and is also partner to more than 100 local and global organizations. Visit www.greenspaceshome.com to learn more.

About the Panelists
Jacqueline Novogratz

As Founder and CEO, Jacqueline Novogratz has led the Acumen Fund to invest $40 million in over 35 companies serving 25 million low-income customers in the developing world.

Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program at the Rockefeller Foundation. She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank.

Jacqueline currently serves on the Board of the Aspen Institute as well as the advisory councils of Stanford Graduate School of Business and MIT's Legatum Center. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow and has received honors including Ernst & Young's 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the 2009 CASE Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award and AWNY's 2009 Changing the Game Award.

Jacqueline is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and TED. She is the author of the bestselling memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, published in early 2009. Jacqueline's Twitter stream is followed by 315,000 people around the globe.

Fred Wilson

Fred is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, which has invested in many of the companies that are responsible for building the social media environment, including Twitter, Tumblr, Disqus, Delicious, Feedburner. Foursquare, Meetup, and Boxee.

Fred Wilson has been a venture capitalist since 1987. In 1996, Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with partner Jerry Colonna. Prior to Flatiron, he was at Euclid Partners.

Fred's has become the most prominent voice for early stage investing. His blog, A VC, is the number one most read blog in the national venture community, with over 100,000 monthly visitors.

Roger Ehrenberg

Roger is the Founder of IA Venture Strategies, an early-stage investment firm focused on innovative companies in the "big data" arena. Additionally, Roger is an active angel investor whose investments include TheLadders.com, Clickable, Buddy Media, Tweetdeck and bit.ly, among others.

Roger is also the Founder and Managing Director of Kinetic Trading Strategies, a trading firm that applies computational finance techniques to massive amounts of textual data to extract valuable semantic information.

Prior to founding IA Venture Strategies, Roger served as president and chief executive officer of DB Advisors, LLC, Deutsche Bank's internal hedge fund trading platform. His 130-person team managed $6 billion in capital across multiple strategies. Earlier, Roger was global co-head of Deutsche Bank's Strategic Equity Transactions Group.

Roger is the author of the financial blog Information Arbitrage, which was recently named one of the "Top 25 Financial Blogs". He has appeared in numerous media outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, Reuters, Wall Street Journal and more.

Jacob Gray

Jacob Gray is co-Founder and Partner of Murex Investments, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on extraordinary entrepreneurs in mobile payments, learning and energy efficiency technologies. Murex Investments III, LP is a $50M fund now in formation. Jacob has ten years of private equity experience and is a partner in the prior Murex funds. Right now, Jacob is particularly excited about investment opportunities in learning technologies that leverage the power of mobile devices, social media and other nimble platforms that can reach learners far more efficiently than traditional institutions can.

His most recent transaction is AnySource Media, LLC, a digital media software and services company that was successfully sold to Divx (Nasdaq: DIVX.) He represents Murex on a number of boards, including Advanced Workstations in Education (AWE), a high-growth early-education technology development and marketing company. Before joining Murex, Jacob provided strategy and marketing services to social entrepreneurs in a variety of industries.

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GoodCompany Group

GoodCompany Group

For entrepreneurs and investors who believe there is a better way, GoodCompany helps the most promising social innovators realize their full impact through applying rigorous analysis, deploying proven growth strategies and matching capital resources from the business and venture community.

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