Impact Promises

This chapter zooms into the final stage of the acceleration process, when entrepreneurs have tested and refined their product and business model, defined a marketing strategy, created an impact thesis and indicators, and produced a compelling story around impact. Picking up on the investment committees, I examine how impact investors capture and evaluate the credibility of entrepreneurs’ impact promises. By zooming into their evaluation practices, I show how investors move beyond self-reported intention, social mission, and visible characteristics, to examine entrepreneurs’ impact promise in a way that is both analytical and subjective. Their evaluation centers on four interrelated aspects of entrepreneur’s behavior: entrepreneurs’ proven awareness and use of impact indicators and methodologies, selected biographical aspects that connect to their social goals, entrepreneurs’ management of their venture and social impact, and their views about the future of the latter. In doing so, investors strive to detect opportunistic entrepreneurs while creating beliefs about the credibility of entrepreneurs’ promises that embolden investment decisions.