5 Questions with Shaun Randolph, Founder of SoTech Ventures

Nov 18, 2020
Shaun Randolph, SoTech Ventures

Shaun Randolph is a serial entrepreneur, non-profit professional, grant writer, social enterprise consultant and innovative finance pioneer turned venture capital/private equity advisor dedicated to harnessing some of the most profit-driven concepts from the private sector (private equity, venture capital + mergers and acquisitions) and re-tooling them into vehicles for social impact.

Shaun brings 12 years of experience spanning organizational development, social enterprise consulting, project management, grant writing and innovative finance.

01. What is the mission of your organization?

SoTech Ventures specializes in unlocking access to $865B dollars in assets held within philanthropic institutions by providing founders with an innovative operating model that allows their assets to be seamlessly transitioned between private and non-profit corporate structures.

02. Why have you chosen to dedicate your career to this work?

This work was custom created for the underserved entrepreneurial community as a means of supplementing investment from the mainstream investment community or as a tool to bypass traditional investors all together.

I am not a fan of seeing founders of color beg investors for capital so I made it my business (literally) to provide them with a way to secure capital without those investors.

03. What is the proudest moment of your work?

My favorite part of my work is disrupting the capital market landscape. So my proudest moment happened recently when I established a partnership with an up and coming crowdfunding platform that will allow founders we support to access all the capital they need (either from philanthropic sources or the crowd) in order to advance from idea to exit, all without having to engage the mainstream, discriminatory investment community at all if they so choose.

04. What advice do you have for organizations that want to support the entrepreneurs you serve?

Recognize that the current capital market system was designed and has functioned for years without any thought for underserved demographics. As a result, there are elements of that system that simply aren't a good fit or synergistic with the needs of underserved founders. That said, instead of forcing or influencing underserved founders to compromise their otherwise viable businesses to fit into a broken capital market, instead apply those same standards of innovation to yourselves and evolve how you invest.

05. What gives you hope?

Seeing the resiliency of underserved entrepreneurs gives me hope. To hear them describe how they've been rejected and/or neglected time after time again yet they still persist forward gives them a grit that only makes them stronger.