I first met Alex Papanikolaou at the EI Eevent in Edinburgh a little over three years ago.  Alex was born with cerebral palsy, but has never let this get in his way. In fact, it’s driven him to work harder to change the perception of him and his situation. Alex has always been driven and has always wanted to run his own business.

The more Alex travelled the more he became aware of the restrictions for someone with his condition. Importantly, the realisation was not in the individual limitations, but in the limitations of the devices created for him. Like any good entrepreneur, Alex spotted a gap in the market, a gap he wasn’t going to wait around idly for someone else to fill.

Enter Freedom One Life, the company Alex founded not to invent a better version of the powered wheelchair, but rather, to give all those who are restricted by the limitations of what is currently available a new lease on life.

However, Alex had trouble finding investors. The problem being, investors would classify Freedom One as a social impact investment (rightly or wrongly) and assume the likely potential return would be minimal. And, regardless of how altruistic we believe we are, too many investors speak about having an impact and not enough of them follow up with investment. Doing good and seeing an incredible return are not mutually exclusive.

Investors who continue to write off Social Impact investments before even reviewing the underlying business plan, or giving it more than a brief read, may be missing out on big returns. So the next time you receive a pitch deck from a company with an element of social impact treat it like every other investment opportunity you receive.

Read the full article about social impact investments by Tom Britton at Medium.