In this conversation I connected with Ella Goldner. Ella is a co-founder of Zinc - a fund that backs entrepreneurs, pre-team and pre-idea, to build new tech-enabled & mission-driven commercial ventures. She is also the co-founder of Alma Angels, a network that brings together new and existing angel investors who are committed to actively supporting female founders.
In this conversation we talked about:
The Zinc venture builder missions and how/why the best way to foster entrepreneurship in response to social challenges?
How to mitigate the challenges of co-founder relationships, especially given that some people say that too much or too little co-founder conflict is the #1 cause of start up failure.
A deep dive into the latest Zinc environment mission which just went live - to mobilise the climate innovation ecosystem through cross-sector collaboration and scale up capital, and shifting narrative from climate being (only) a big problem to (also) a huge opportunity.
OpenCo/newCo?
So I started out by asking her, What is a venture builder mission and who is it for? Enjoy!
"The core components (of Zinc) are; can we get the talent to do that if we give them the right missions, can we build an ecosystem around them, an army of people who care about what they do and help them, and can we make that really powerful by underpinning with good research."
"Every moment you hear the news (about climate) there is a reason to feel despair, so how do you turn that around and remind people of the opportunities and the covid an industry-led vaccine task force is a really good example of how to do that."
"We want (Zinc) to be the best place in the world for anybody who wants to experiment and have impact at scale... if you are really talented and ambitious."
https://www.zinc.vc/
https://apply.workable.com/zinc-ventures-limited/j/D79DBD1FC7/
https://www.zinc.vc/missions/environment/
https://gosupercritical.com/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172206/
https://newco.co/
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/jabbed-inside-britains-vaccine-triumph
https://www.weareliminal.co/