Many investors say they invest in people, not ideas. Everyone has great ideas, but not everyone has the right mix of intelligence, resourcefulness and determination to execute the idea.
Enter Pave, an impact-investing site that need not be compared to Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Pave is a platform where individuals can back young people's careers (the average funding goal is $27,000). The idea isn't new — patrons and angel investors have been around for a while — but the technological tactics are new, and the platform helps to level the playing for people with big ideas and passion to match. The site launched in December 2012 and has 4,500 prospects and 1,700 backers to date.
Pave prides itself on people, not projects, and the setup enables investors to back someone based on aligned interests, such as business, education and environment. It's not a traditional loan, and it's not a donation — the point isn't for the prospect to pay the investor back quickly. The financial backing is a way for established individuals to help young, ambitious people build sustainable careers and projects over the next 10 years — and the prospects can spend money how they see fit. Backers earn financial returns for supporting successful prospects, and they often evolve into mentors for the prospect, though that's not written into the funding agreement.
The mission of Pave is idealistic: "We feel that the people who are solving important problems and making an important contribution to the world will also be the ones who enjoy financial success in the future." Pave helps people do well by doing good.
To date, 44 people have been funded, with average investments of $2,000 per backer. Admittedly, 44 is not that many, but the Pave team says it intentionally throttled prospect signups so the platform could scale responsibly (it opened the platform to everyone this summer).
Watch the video above to learn more about Pave from co-founders Sal Lahoud and Oren Bass and meet David Krevitt, one of the site's first prospects.