Mike Galgon knows a few things about successful entrepreneurs.
As co-founder and former chief strategy officer of aQuantive, the online advertising giant that Microsoft bought for $6 billion, he was one. Helping launch the Seattle startup studio and investor Pioneer Square Labs, Galgon has worked with numerous founders in the Pacific Northwest.
“Entrepreneurship is really the human spirit at its best,” Galgon said. “It’s seeking opportunities. It’s gathering people and resources around those opportunities, and then it’s working relentlessly to get those done.”
But the innovators who most impress him aren’t those you might expect.
Galgon this month took over as CEO of Global Partnerships, an impact-first investor based in Seattle that provides capital to impoverished people and their businesses in South America and Africa.
The entrepreneurs benefiting from Global Partnerships are operating at a level neither aQuantive nor PSL “could come even close to,” Galgon said.
A woman who’s a coffee farmer, for example, supporting her kids’ education and the community’s economy has a commitment to innovation and hard work that’s unmatched, he said. “One hundred percent of entrepreneurs who visited the field with us have said, ‘We’re nothing as entrepreneurs compared to these women.'”
Galgon’s involvement with Global Partnerships dates back more than 22 years when he traveled with the nonprofit to Guatemala to see its impact.
The people the organization helped “didn’t want a handout,” he said. “They just wanted access to credit like you and I were born with. So for me, a light flipped [on], realizing actually how extreme poverty is on the ground — and how life changing and transformative small bits of capital can be.”
Galgon joined Global Partnerships’ board of directors after the trip and in recent years has served as chair of the board. When former CEO Rick Beckett announced his impending retirement after 18 years, the organization asked Galgon to apply for the role. The timing, he said, was perfect.
Bill Richter, co-chair of the Global Partnerships board and former CEO of Seattle’s Qumulo, praised Galgon’s commitment to the organization and called him “a proven and growth-oriented executive, a strategic thinker who thrives in nascent and emergent markets, an innovative and successful investor, a leader of high performing teams, and an effective resource developer.”
Global Partnerships has offices in Seattle; Bogotá, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Since its founding in 1994 and the launch of the nonprofit’s first fund in 2005, Global Partnerships and its affiliated funds have deployed more than $770 million in investment capital to social enterprises in developing countries that serve people living on less than $5.50 per day.
Global Partnerships’ funds provide low-cost loans that enable investee partners to provide basic goods and services. For example, microfinance institutions provide working capital loans with financial education to female “microentrepreneurs” running informal businesses. Health clinics provide preventative screening and treatment to low-income communities. Agricultural cooperatives provide better prices for smallholder farmers.
The nonprofit works with investees to collect data and report on the customer-level impact of GP fund loans. Galgon is eager to show the benefits of an “impact-first” approach to investing via loans so others will engage in the sector. He drew a comparison to aQuantive’s approach to meticulously documenting the returns for online advertising customers, which stoked the company’s success. He thinks the same can happen with Global Partnerships.
Galgon also believes the loans will lead to successful companies in low-income countries, motivating other businesses to serve these often overlooked and underestimated economies.
The challenges facing the entrepreneurs are daunting, and the worsening effects of climate change make their struggle harder. But the resilience and indefatigable drive to improve life for themselves and their families is inspiring, Galgon said.
“We’re not creating solutions, we’re just providing fuel for their fires,” he said. “And so that’s where the hope comes from.”
https://ift.tt/lKTPYdj July 31, 2024 at 01:00PM GeekWire
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