Unreasonable

Interviewing Mark Straub: Solving Hard Problems

We look at a problem and see it as a market. Tweet This Quote

Bio: Mark Straub has been passionate about the power of market-based models to fight global poverty since he traded investment banking for micro-lending in 2006. At that time, Mark joined Lok Capital in New Delhi as an early employee and the first American. At Lok, he was instrumental in the firm’s seminal investment in Spandana and initiated a fellows program to support Lok’s portfolio. More recently, Mark was a member of the six person team at the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, a $300M expansion stage fund investing in category leading technology companies. At DFJ, Mark invested in world-changing entrepreneurs in e-commerce, consumer media, clean technology and aerospace aviation at companies including TrialPay, Gilt Groupe, Admob, betaworks (bit.ly), TremorVideo, Tesla Motors, BrightSource Energy, Silverspring Networks, and SpaceX.

Entrepreneurs with the biggest chance of success aren’t in it for money, but to solve a big problem. Tweet This Quote

In 2011, Mark combined his passions for emerging markets, technology and socioeconomic change by joining Vinod to co-found Khosla Impact. He is honored to have the opportunity to support entrepreneurs and teams who are developing market-based solutions to poverty and believes business must play a leading role in solving the world’s most challenging social problems.

We might not be able to fix broken government institutions, but we can use technology to solve hard problems.  Tweet This Quote