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Thank You! Have a Happy 4th!
I really can thank you enough. The Super Crowd community stepped up big time to help us close the crowdfunding raise with a bang last week! You helped us exceed our core goal by 16%! While we celebrate America’s independence today, I’m celebrating your generosity! Thank you so much!
Devin: What do you see as your superpower?
Karen: My superpower is being able to dissect a business concept or an idea—or an entrepreneur and help them figure out a better way to get to market.
Author Karen Rands leads the compassionate capitalism movement, which she describes as investors genuinely sharing the passions of the founders they back. Her goal is to dramatically grow the number of people investing as angels, including those investing via crowdfunding.
She points out that fewer than 10 percent of accredited investors, those traditionally eligible to invest in private securities transactions, do so. A comparable number of people invest via crowdfunding, suggesting that even in its early days, crowdfunding is attracting a new audience of angel investors.
Still, she notes, vast numbers of both ordinary and accredited investors don’t realize they have an opportunity for impact and profit via private transactions that exceed those of the public markets.
Karen deploys her superpower to help entrepreneurs raise more capital and help investors see red flags to avoid.
AI Podcast Summary
Karen Rands is the founder of Kugarand Capital Holdings, focusing on compassionate capitalism and helping people become angel investors through crowdfunding.
She discovered angel investing after leaving IBM and realized the lack of awareness and understanding about it due to legal restrictions on soliciting capital.
Karen wrote a book called “Inside Secrets to Angel Investing” to educate and guide potential investors, particularly those in corporate America with high incomes.
Her goal is to make angel investing as popular as real estate or stock market investing, as it offers the opportunity for impact and fulfillment.
Karen’s superpower is analyzing business concepts and helping entrepreneurs improve their strategies to achieve market success and funding.
She has seen success in mentoring entrepreneurs, helping them refine their business plans and secure funding.
Karen breaks down business concepts and identifies red flags to address, then helps entrepreneurs develop their investor avatar to attract the right investors.
Entrepreneurs should start by raising funds from friends and family, gaining confidence in their product and business before approaching external investors.
Karen offers coaching programs for entrepreneurs and investors, focusing on filling gaps, building confidence, and effectively raising capital.
To learn more about Karen and her work, visit her website KarenRands.co and access her free e-book “The 12 Secrets of Innovation and Wealth.”
How to Develop the Ability to Dissect a Business Concept As a Superpower
“My superpower is loving entrepreneurs and being able to clear the window so they can see the future that’s going to work for them to fulfill their dream and build the company that they want to build,” Karen says.
Karen has experience mentoring entrepreneurs in various business plan competitions and advising companies seeking capital. She has the ability to influence these entrepreneurs and encourage them to make necessary shifts, such as improving their language and articulation of their business. She has witnessed those entrepreneurs become successful in raising capital, scaling their businesses, and pivoting their approach to their marketplace and customers.
Karen shares a metaphor she uses to help entrepreneurs see the importance of raising money from friends and family. As you contemplate the lesson she’s making about friends and family, think about how she has dissected the funding process in a fresh way to help entrepreneurs be more successful.
This is one of the little analogies that I use:
If you knew, there's gold over there in that field, and you can get one other person, and you have to dig it up within an hour in order to get it. You can get one other person with a shovel, and the two of you can go and dig up that gold, and then it's yours.
Well, are you going to go to a stranger on the street and say, “Come help me dig up this gold”? No, you're going to go to the person that you know and that you would want to share that success with.
By following Karen’s example, you can learn to better dissect a business concept to help you invest better, support entrepreneurs more compassionately and potentially make it a superpower that helps you do more good in the world.
Guest-Provided Profile
Karen Rands: (she/her):
Managing Director, Kugarand Capital Holdings, LLC
About Kugarand Capital Holdings, LLC: Kugarand Capital Holdings offers capital strategy, coaching, and investor relations services for entrepreneurs raising capital using methods for direct public offering, commonly known as crowdfunding. We also offer educational products, coaching and due diligence for investors seeking to gain confidence and competence in investing in entrepreneurs as angel / crowdfunding investors.
Website: kugarand.com
Company Facebook Page: fb.com/KugarandCapitalHoldings
Other URL: bit.ly/linkCCS for podcast players for my show
Biographical Information: Karen Rands is the founder of Kugarand Capital Holdings. Her combined experience of many years at IBM as an innovation leader and ‘deal maker’ for startups, and her years managing the Network of Business Angels & Investors, have given her unique insights to help entrepreneurs navigate and capitalize the road from start to growth and exit; and investors to learn the art & science of investing in private companies.
Karen started the “Compassionate Capitalist” movement in 2009 as the economy faltered, and it was clear that only capitalism and entrepreneurism would provide the foundation for long-term economic growth. Her weekly podcast, The Compassionate Capitalist Show™, is listened to from around the world and has been downloaded over 154,000 times. Available on all major podcast platforms, it frequently hits top 100 business shows on Apple Podcasts, is ranked in the top 10% of business podcasts in the world by ListenNotes, and #7 on Feedspot’s list of top finance shows.
Karen is the author of the best-selling finance education book: Inside Secrets to Angel Investing. It is the foundational “how to” and resource tool for investors to learn how to add the very rewarding and profitable asset class of private stock to their investment portfolio. Her goal is for people to strive to learn how and commit to investing in entrepreneurs as a wealth-building strategy the same way they strive to invest in real estate. To that end, she has launched the Compassionate Capitalist Wealth Maximizing System to bring more investors to angel/crowdfunding investing that can invest with confidence and build a portfolio of multiple companies using what she calls the Angel Profitability Blueprint.
She considers herself a ‘near’ native of Georgia as she has lived here more than half of her adult life, beginning with graduation from Emory University with her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and English, only leaving for a short time to receive her MBA from the University of Florida and meet her husband of over 30 years. Their only daughter is a recent grad of Georgia State University’s Honors College in Media Entertainment Entrepreneurship and now resides in Savannah, GA.
Twitter Handle: @karen_rands
Personal Facebook Profile: fb.com/TheKarenRands
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/karenrands
Instagram Handle:
On July 19, 2023, we’ll hold the first-ever SuperCrowdHour with an extraordinary panel I’ll moderate, discussing “The Power of the Purpose Round.” The panel will include Parker Clay CEO Ian Bentley, DealMaker CEO Rebecca Kacaba and Renew VC founder Mark Hubbard. You’re entitled to a 50 percent discount as a Superpowers for Good reader! Join us for just $5 when you use the discount code SUPERCROWD. Register here.
Expert: Compassionate Capitalism Can Be Highly Profitable