Hi, I’m Luni. I’ve been entrepreneuring for the last 35 years.
Software companies for the first 20 years, one at a time. The first funded by my leftover college fund, then a super-Angel. The next four by California-based venture capital funds. Only the first shut down. The acquired. One big win.
In 2011, while running my last software company, I stumbled upon Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the first business school to teach how to do good in the world using the tools of business school. I volunteered as Entrepreneur in Residence for nine months before they asked me to teach. I taught for eight years.
Those teaching inspired me to do more. More was Fledge, a business accelerator that took the best practices of the tech accelerators but applied them to mission-driven, for-profit startups. The first cohort was in 2012 and by 2020 there were Fledge programs in eight cities around the world with hundreds of graduates.
By 2020 most of the African fledglings had yet to receive a follow-on investment (most Fledge programs provided an investment, in addition to training and mentorship). To remedy this issue, I create Africa Eats as an investment company to help those fledglings scale up. Five years later, that is working quite well.
I spent all of 2024 working to open up the capital markets to these companies, and by December we had Africa Eats and two “bizi” listed on the Stock Market of Mauritius. That required creating Africa’s first market maker, Tuesday Markets.
Stepping back to 2013, I accidentally created a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Realize Impact. It dabbled in a few projects until 2020 when we launched the Philanthropic Investing Grant service (realizeimpact.org/phig/), which has moved over $50 million into impact investments in the last five years.
This website hosts many of my books, podcasts, and for more writings, whatifonly.substack.com
