Market infrastructure for social ventures

The hybrid mission of social ventures enables access to a wide range of financial resources, which range from pure subsidy or philanthropic contributions to fully commercial private investment. In many cases, the temporal evolution of the funding mix for social ventures creates an apparently inconsistent business lifecycle: social start-ups must rely on public and private donors, but mature social ventures often strive for independence from donative resources. In this chapter we provide a conceptualization on the market infrastructure for social ventures. We first examine the two-sided nature of social ventures (matching financial/social goals of investors and the pricing of their products/services to balance break-even and profit expectations). Then we use a lifecycle view of social ventures to examine potential lines of research inquiry during the evolution from startup to maturity.