Join the Impact Cherub Club for October

I’m not a financial advisor; nothing I write in Superpowers for Good should be considered investment advice. You should seek appropriate counsel before making investment decisions.

As we gear up for the 1:00 PM Eastern, October 17, 2023, meeting of the Impact Cherub Club, we invite you to join us. The club is an informal gathering of friends who meet up to review impact investments everyone is eligible to make and virtually anyone can afford. We share responsibility for completing basic due diligence before making investments. No one is required to invest.

There are no dues or fees to participate, and I don’t touch the money. When members invest, they do so directly for their own accounts. We benefit from new members only by the fresh perspectives they bring. Please join us! Everyone is welcome.

Next Meeting—October 17, at 1:00 PM Eastern

At our next meeting on October 17, at 1:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM Pacific, consistent with our plans for future sessions, the agenda will have three items:

• Diligence Reports

• Education Moment

• Preliminary Consideration of New Candidate Investments

I’ll review those items in reverse order.

New Company Consideration

After some preliminary screening, I’ve shared some candidate offerings with the members of the club to choose which we’ll review this month. Members chose the following:

Bagel Kitchen

Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Bagel Kitchen’s mission is “To inspire a conscientious lifestyle one bagel at a time by creating experiences, partnerships and employment that challenge people to embrace environmental sustainability and the importance of giving back to their community.” The company will use the proceeds to open a second location. Led by a married couple, Marc and Shannon Schulz, Bagel Kitchen is raising on Mainvest.

The Sepia Coffee Project

The Sepia Coffee Project is BIPOC-owned and led with a mission to revitalize the community of Highland Park, a close suburb of Detroit. The business sells coffee in bulk to businesses and directly to consumers. Launched in 2022, reaching $13,000 in revenue, the company projects sales of about $170,000 this year and $700,000 next year. The company is raising on Wefunder.

Education Moment

At the next meeting, we’ll take some time to discuss how we evaluate the prospects of a company we are considering backing. Some, but not all issuers, provide helpful projections. Of course, companies always miss projections. It is, nonetheless, important to evaluate how far the company might miss projections. We’ll discuss the clues that provide guidance in that context.

Diligence Reports

We’ll begin the meeting with the due diligence reports from the Impact Cherub Club members who volunteered to research the companies after we briefly learned a bit about them last month. After hearing the members’ reports, we’ll vote to determine whether or not to recommend investment in the companies. The decision will be made available to everyone who registers to attend, including those who don’t make it. Register here.

Here are the companies we’ll learn more about this month:

Boaz Bikes

Boaz Bikes provides scooters in urban communities just like Bird and Lime, their global competitors. Boaz Bikes differentiates itself by striving to work more cooperatively with municipalities, deploying safer vehicles complete with turn signals and rearview mirrors, and serving neighborhoods the big providers ignore. The company is raising on Wefunder.

ByteNite

ByteNite is deploying technology that allows any computer, even your cell phone, to be part of a massive supercomputer that is faster than Amazon Web Services computers. ByteNite charges those who need the computer for the privilege and then shares that revenue with folks who make their devices available for the purpose, keeping 30 percent of the revenue for itself. The theory is that this model will ultimately be better for the environment as it will reduce the number of computers required in the world to do all of the world’s computing. The company is raising via Wefunder.