Visionary Investment is the Key to Solving Big Problems

Visionary Investment is the Key to Solving Big Problems
By: Joe J. Wallace, Managing Director
Coachella Valley Innovation Hub
and Editor of the CCO

Venture-backed entrepreneurship is essential to the development and commercialization of technological innovations. In ‘Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems” Jason Pontin writing for the MIT Technology Review called out both timidity in government research and a recently developed aversion to risk of the venture capital community for the shortage of big solutions being introduced into the marketplace since the turn of the 21st century. With banks still shying away from making loans that are not securely collateralized by hard assets and positive cash flow and the venture capital industry enamored with funding incremental problems over fundamental problems the opportunities for visionary entrepreneurs who aspire to the greatness that comes with solving big problems are diminished. Bruce Gibney, a venture capitalist at the San Francisco-based Founders Fund offers an even harsher critique of his own industry simply stating that “Venture Capital has ceased to be the funder of the future, and instead has become a funder of features, widgets, irrelevances.”

Investors from friends and family to Angels and even VCs respond that they’re still looking for the big ideas, so long as they are attached to a reasonable business model. Visionary George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him…The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself…All progress depends on the unreasonable man” is a pretty good description of why our ability to solve big problems seems to have been afflicted with a case of arrested development of late. Visionary entrepreneurs of the late 70’s like Bill Gates who just wanted to ““put a computer in every home and on every desktop,” and Apple’s Steve Jobs who wanted to make the “best computers in the world” may find themselves with no funding options in the absence of investors with the vision and courage to match their own.

The missing link in the options for funding a start-up or emerging businesses is the visionary investor that looks at what can be as opposed to what can be audited, underwritten, and proved beyond the shadow of a doubt through past performance. The personal traits of a vision investor are closer to those of an entrepreneur than they are to the bankers masquerading as venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. The vision investor sees opportunities where others see obstacles to shy away from. The vision investor embraces change and seeks out ways to step up to the plate and get their hands dirty participating in the entrepreneurial process. The vision investor is eager to learn new things on a daily basis and is an early adopter of new technologies. Finally, the vision investor seeks out deals that will either make a mint like Apple and Microsoft did for early investors or a big financial flop. Vision investing is no place for the faint of heart or a disengaged mind.

At the Coachella Valley iHub we have a saying that “we are not just about mentoring companies that create jobs; we are really wanting to mentor more Steve Jobs”. Part of the necessary mix for the success of the next Steve Jobs who comes along are access to capital and talent to support good original ideas. There is no shortage of opportunities in this world that visionary entrepreneurs can tackle. The Coachella Valley is geographically at the nexus of the best natural laboratory for renewable energy and earthquake detection, while offering easy access to the massive Southern California markets. The plethora of big problems in need of solutions creates a continuous need for visionary people and investors with vision to match.

A billion people on this earth need electricity, millions are without clean water, the climate is changing; manufacturing is inefficient, traffic snarls cities, education is a luxury, and dementia or cancer will strike almost all of us if we live long enough. If you are a visionary or a visionary investor with the knowledge, courage, and work ethic to tackle problems like these wherever you are, please get on about the visionary business of doing what our governments, our companies, and our financial institutions no longer have the vision, know how, or courage to do. The American way of life may just depend on it.