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Time: 30 October 2002, 13:30-14:30 Location: A Chair: Cheryll Gerelle, CEO IBEX Presenters/ Participants: Jan-Olaf Willums, President of InSpire Reporter: Zhenying Wu (ICVolunteers) Languages: English Key words: Start-up, incubator, financing, sustainable development, social impact
Turning "sustainable development" into reality implies the ability to find the necessary funding for implementing good projects. Mr. Willums gives us with his presentation of the InSpire Initiative an example where public and private funding are both implicated to make possible projects that are sustainable socially and economically.
InSpire, launched in 2000 by the Foundation for Business and Society, is a non-profit incubator of promising start-ups in the New Energy, Health or IT sectors. It provides initial funding (seed money), advice and contacts in private and public sectors to a selected number of young companies. The companies are selected based on economic and social criteria. That is, a project needs to be both economically sustainable in the long term (profitable) and have potential to bring about a significant social or environmental impact in order to be accepted. The fund manages a volume of about million, with average initial funding for a single company standing around 5-million. Private partners are encouraged to co-invest or take over additional investment in the companies in subsequent funding rounds. This follow-up money ensures the financial sustainability of the start-ups while freeing up funds controlled directly by InSpire to enable other projects.Present in Norway and London, InSpire is starting operations in Maroc, South Africa and India.Some typical projects involve for instance solar energy technology, fuel cells, improving access to health services or IT as enabling technology.Mr. Willums gave as an example OptiNose, a small company funded by InSpire that designed a revolutionary nasal vaccination technology that could prove to be a better alternative to syringes (syringes are a major health problem and generate very high costs in side-effects). In that case InSpire provided seed funding, arranged for introduction to pharmaceutical companies, private investors and the Red Cross organisation, and pushed through an agreement with the WHO (World Health Organisation). This proves that small seed capital invested into promising technology can have a big social impact.
Interesting Questions
Mr Willums was asked about what criteria InSpire sets out for applying start-ups (for instance, whether these are ethical, environmental, or social (worker compensation)), and his answer was that InSpire works rather with a set of rough guidelines to judge projects. The selection process however is very systematic, out of 300 submitted projects, only 63 made it to the final selection phase, and even less were implemented in reality.Mrs. Gerelle asked about whether InSpire also works outside of the fields of Energy, Health and IT. Mr Willums answered that whenever such projects are submitted to InSpire they are recommended to other organisations. InSpire limits its work to the fields where it feels it has the necessary expertise.A member of the audience asked what kind of services beyond financing is provided by InSpire to the companies it funds. The answer is that InSpire provides its counsel, acts as a networking organisation, offers training programs for entrepreneurs and a standardized website. It also has at least one member sitting on the board of each company.