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Y Solve is an innovation system that builds, operates, and funds independent public benefit companies to generate financial return and social impact, simultaneously.
Purpose
The Lab is a US public benefit company that has developed an innovation system to create a step-function of doing good: Scale (volume) and scale (efficiency), anchored in driving the highest RoII (Return on Impact Investment). Our system is comprised of Lab activities, Foundry services, and funding innovations.
In the Lab, New Venture Development originates and builds our companies from hypothesis to the pre-beta phase; Portfolio Management guides our portfolio companies after the pre-beta phase; Innovation Services provides shared and 3rd party services to our portfolio companies; and Capital Formation oversees the funding innovation of y-Invest.
Process
We are a group of systems thinkers, business builders, and technologists with the belief that emerging technologies will have profound implications for society, with the potential to transform industries and improve quality of life. We endeavor to build solutions that solve real world problems in a responsible, secure and equitable way.
Areas of Impact. Societal challenges are often deeply intertwined. Accordingly, we create businesses in 9 areas of impact: Education, Finance, Future of Work, Government Innovation, Green and Blue Economy, Healthcare, Inclusive Economies, Infrastructure, and Media.
Themes. Themes are long term secular key drivers that capture economic, technological, and social changes. Our Themes are anchored in recognizing that we are at the very beginning of an “Emerging Technology” super cycle, a period of unprecedented growth and innovation in artificial intelligence, asset tokenization, blockchain, additive manufacturing, and opportunities at the intersection of hardware, software and data. This phenomenon is driven by several key factors, including the explosive growth of big data, the increasing power and sophistication of machine learning algorithms, and the rapid adoption of AI-based solutions across a wide range of industries. We deeply consider how emerging technologies can be used for positive social impact.
Since societal problems are non-static, themes provide broad guidance in creating forward looking solutions that provide value to impact customers. We regularly consider events and market activity to determine whether our theses are correct.
Reducing early stage risk. Recognizing that most new ventures fail early in their lifetime, we utilize a structured methodology to increase our rate of success. The process includes a number of internally developed tools: y-Validation, 5 fits, theory of change/risk scorecard. Our innovation runs much deeper than the businesses that we create. For example, within y-Validation is the notion of COM (Core Obtainable Market), which is more important than the standard market sizing elements of TAM (Total Addressable Market), SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market), and SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market).
Targets
We have an audacious agenda. We are at the beginning of our journey to create 120 companies. These are our year 8 targets.
120
# of companies
20x
Social Impact
12x
Financial Return
4x
Sector Capacity
(per dollar invested)
The Lab and Foundry work together to scale impact
The Y Solve Lab and Foundry work in tandem to accelerate innovation, scale impact, and drive measurable results for portfolio companies. At the core of this relationship lies the Foundry's unique value proposition, which addresses three critical dimensions:
1
Driving top-line revenue
2
Mitigating risks
3
Reducing operational costs
By providing tailored solutions to companies emerging from the Lab, the Foundry ensures that early-stage businesses have the necessary tools and expertise to move successfully from growth to scale phases. This integrated approach allows companies to focus on product development, client engagement, and revenue generation while benefiting from proven frameworks in advocacy, training, leadership, and social impact measurement.
The Foundry and Lab together represent an innovative, scalable ecosystem that transforms promising ideas into sustainable, high-impact businesses.
The Foundry works with the Lab to meet our innovation system targets. The Foundry is a non-profit dedicated to scaling social impact for good. The Foundry is comprised of four centers of excellence: Social Impact Measurement, Training, Leadership, and Advocacy.
We drive systems change by providing advances in measurement, education and advocacy. The Foundry enhances the growth and capability of mission-aligned organizations by delivering expertise and services. These activities enable organizations to scale high-value solutions effectively.
Integrated with Y Solve Lab, we fulfill our mission by unlocking human potential, tackling the critical challenges of our time, and delivering transformative outcomes that drive social progress.
Centers
Social Impact Measurement. The Social Impact Measurement Center of Excellence (SICoE) delivers Coherence Measure, a proprietary measurement system for enhancing every portfolio company's strategic implementations and social impact.
The Center’s proprietary impact measurement system provides external 3rd party verification of social impact and an accompanying suite of management tools that power the Lab’s portfolio companies to better evaluate progress and communicate impact. As a result, companies can better connect with mission-aligned ecosystems, drive capital formation activities and consistently improve products and services to accelerate and expand impact.
As social impact is central to all Lab companies, rooted in each company’s theory of change and logic model, all Lab companies use the expertise and services of the SICoE throughout the company’s lifetime.
Training. The Training Center of Excellence (TCoE) develops high-quality, customized training solutions that drive continuous learning and workforce transformation.
By creating company-aligned curriculum, cutting-edge programming and strategic credentialing the center equips companies to meet emerging demands and scale more effectively. Ongoing commitments to research and development fosters learning innovations to grow higher-value skills needed within organizations and industries.
This center supports Y Solve Lab’s education portfolio companies (e.g., ADAC Digital, Beamyn, Codey, Kybo, Possibyl, and United We Cloud) and non-education-focused companies to better anticipate and navigate human capital constraints.
Leadership. The Leadership Center of Excellence delivers innovations in human capital, leadership theory, social and organizational modeling while providing advancements in skill development practices and principles. Offerings delivered by expert practitioners equip leaders and teams to thrive in high-velocity, complex environments where systemic impact and growth are critical. Grounded in the Human Capital 3.0 framework, commercialized through Edyson’s Sygnal products, the center creates measurable leadership and employee solutions to Lab companies receiving institutional funding. By operating at more foundational layers of productivity, our Human Capital 3.0 framework enables organizations to increase employee and team contributions better than typical performance management practices. The LCoE readies leaders and their teams to more effectively navigate the pace of rapidly changing environments startups face.
The LCoE solves persistent gaps in leadership development programming rendering most leadership trainings ineffective at demonstrating measurable organizational value. Current leadership development methodologies build programming separated from the strategic organizational activities creating costly programmatic gaps. Second, leadership trainings often bias trainings towards instructor comfortability and fail to effectively leverage current high-value motivations within the leaders undergoing trainings. Finally, and most perniciously, leadership programming often over invest in knowing about leadership topics and perennially fail to grow high-relevance applied leadership skills. Our proprietary learning, training and application methodologies solve these gaps putting complex leadership capabilities directly into organizational action.
Advocacy. The Advocacy Center of Excellence (ACoE) specializes in three areas of expertise. First, this center captures the voice of impact customers, broadcasts lab company impact reporting activities and amplifies community concerns to promote positive change. Second, our teams leverage data driven insights and proprietary frameworks to foster needed policy reforms. Third, the Advocacy Center of Excellence supports transformations in tax codes for individuals and public benefit companies demonstrating needed social change.
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