This post was written by Matt Hendren, a first year Duke MBA student and Associate in the CASE Initiative on Impact Investing (CASE i3) program.
We welcomed Mike Dorsey, CASE i3 Advisory Board member, to Fuqua in November as part of the CASE i3 Speaker Series. Mike is a venture capitalist who transitioned from his 20-year tenure as an investment banker into a serial co-founder of several highly successful impact funds. During Mike’s visit, he spoke to students about his work as the founder of the Bay Area Equity Fund (BAEF), a $75MM double bottom line venture capital fund which invested in firms such as SolarCity, Tesla, and Pandora. In addition to its social returns, the firm was very financially successful and achieved a 25.5% IRR.
His talk focused on the practical concerns of running an impact fund, and two main themes emerged: the nature of the relationship between impact investors and their portfolio firms, and the current and future landscape of investors in impact investing funds.
Read more on our blog: Impact Investing in Practice: CASE i3 Speaker Series Guest Mike Dorsey
