Okay. Well, given what we have discussed about the prospects for a crowdfunding investment to be a positive expected return investment and how there is challenges there, maybe not prohibitive challenges, but there certainly are challenges, it's possible that a better way to look at crowdfunding is that when people invest, it's not just about the expected return. It's not all about what's the expected profit here, and am I making money here relative to just putting in the market? If you think about it, it doesn't have to be just all about the money. If I'm investing in a crowdfunding site, maybe I see someone's trying to do something I think, "Okay, I like what you're trying to do that, I'm going to I'm going to help you try to do that." Or "I'll give you some money, I'd love to get it back. I'd love to get a return, but really, I just liked that you're trying to make a go with that, and I'll throw something your way to see if see if I can be helpful." So I could be doing that. Also, my goals here could be in the social impact of this startup. So I see the start-up and I like what I think your company can do for society. That it's going to throw off benefits for society from my point of view, and I like the idea of making that happen. So I'd like the idea that this is a company that they got a goal of making money and making money will be good, but making money in some sense is a virtue of them becoming profitable. Is that this means they can become a self-sustaining company that's throwing off as impact, get them to the point where their cash flows allow them to operate in perpetuity, and then they will they will generate this social benefit that I see as the big virtue. So this has become actually a big part of investing in this country and around the world. People call it impact investing. The actual phrase impact investing only goes back about a dozen years. The concept goes back maybe a little further than that, but the idea of impact investing is. So I'm investing dollars and I want to get a return, but I also have some other goal in mind and I'm investing in companies that I have explicitly stated as their purpose. That they are interested not only in the financial return, but also in this other goal, that they view as a social benefit. So if I like what they are pushing as a social benefit, then I say, "Okay, I'm going to invest with you and not just be looking for dollars, but also be looking for that social impact." So if you look around the economy these days, you see this impact investing playing out in the public capital markets where I might invest in a company because I like what they do or I might invest in a company because I don't like what they do, but I'm going to use my votes with the shares, and I'm going to use my vote. So I'm going to use my other influence as an investor to push the company in the direction that I think is this more socially beneficial direction for them to go. So you get that in the public capital markets, but you also get that in the startup market too. So these days, you have venture capital funds that are all about impact. Everything they do, they are looking for companies that, yes, have have profit potential. They definitely want the company to become self-sustaining, but they also have this social benefit goal in mind, and that's a big part of why they're investing. So it could be accompany where the product itself is the impact. So they're producing a new kind of stove to use in developing worlds that don't pollute so much or maybe they're producing a regular commodity product like coffee beans, but the way they source the coffee, the way they pay for the people picking the coffee beans is trying to ensure that they get a decent wage. So it could be the project, it could be the process, but whatever it is, they've got a social impact that they are angling for, and that's part of why you're investing. Not only could that be part of what's going on in the crowdfunding world. In fact, if you look at the websites of the crowdfunding portals, you'll see that they really specifically articulate this kind of goal as something they see as a virtual crowdfunding. So here's a quote. I'm just going to read you a quote. I got this off the Wefunder website. This is on the website as of just yesterday. It says that, "Our opinion is that investing should not be solely about earning a return. To invest in something as risky as a startup, you should feel something extra beyond just the business model. For us, that something extra is the personal fulfillment we get from helping a founder take their shot at making our world a slightly better place. We also think it's pretty cool to learn about different industries when we get updates from the founder." So they're adding their, not just the impact investing idea and giving someone their shot, but also once you invest in a company, you can just have a window onto being an entrepreneur. You might want to be an entrepreneur yourself. Maybe you want to quit the day job and do that, but before you do that, why not follow some companies from the ground up. Hopefully they go up from the ground and you will get the updates, you will hear from the founder and see what happens, and maybe that would guide you on your own journey. So just a couple of thoughts about if you want to be an impact investor, there are a couple guides that you can use to help you direct your money to such companies if that is your goal. There's two designations a company can have that you can look for, that I would look for as an impact investor. One question to ask is, is this company a B Corp? What's a B Corp? A B Corp is a corporation that has been designated a B Corp by a private outfit called B Lab, and B Lab is all about impact investing. A company applies to B Lab to be a B Corp, an then B Lab studies all their practices, how they pay their workers, do they pollute? What's their corporate governance structure? All the different things you might be thinking about. If you score high enough on their scorecard, then you're a B Corp. There's thousands of B Corps now. If you look on the crowdfunding websites, you'll see plenty of companies will proudly say, "We are a B Corp." So that's one thing to look for. Not just that they've been vetted by B Lab, but B Lab follows up. You tell them how to judge, how to measure your impact against a benchmark and they do that, and they will drop you if you don't come through. So besides B Corp, you also have benefit corps. A benefit corp, that's actually a legal designation. You register as a benefit corp with the state when you incorporate. What it means to register as a benefit corp is that you articulate what exactly your impact goal is. Most states will also make you not just articulate what it is, but also spell out how your progress against that goal can be measured. They will also make you designate a director on your board to be in charge of that impact goal, and you're also going to be liable to your investors. Investors could even sue you over not pursuing your impact goals. So they've made a real legal commitment to pursuing their impact goal. As opposed to just a B Corp that has got a stamp of approval from a private outfit, a benefit corp has actually legally exposed themselves to damages if they don't follow through on their impact goal. So those are two things to look for, B Corps and then also benefit corps. So just to summarize this piece. So crowdfunding, it can be hard to justify sometimes. Crowdfunding investment is just a purely financial basis that, "Yeah, I put in 2,000 bucks in, but my expected return is enough more than 2,000 bucks to justify the expense of making the investment." Yeah, maybe, but it can be hard story to tell. Maybe it's better to look at it as, "I'm getting some enjoyment here out of helping someone start a company that I think is a neat idea. I'm also getting some utility out of the social impact that I see the company have." Wefunder tosses in this third idea that, "I'm learning about being an entrepreneur by following this investment once I'm involved." When you put those things together, maybe that helps us explain why some people put money into crowdfunding when just from a pure financial point of view, it could be a hard thing to pencil out.
