Mission Markets Musings: Mike Van Patten

There are several trends that I have been following that I feel will contribute significantly to the success of Mission Markets and the growth of the Impact Investing movement.

One trend that will help drive our success is the growing awareness that local businesses, products, and services are inherently more socially and environmentally responsible as well as impactful to the community in general. The investment community is seeking greater social and environmental impact and accountability from their investment choices.  Mission Markets can help to meet the rising demand for high-quality, triple bottom line opportunities

Another very important trend that has received significant news coverage as of late is the dramatic drop in the number of smaller companies going public. This is a direct result of high cost of going public, regulations and the fact that there is now less investor demand for earlier stage companies seeking public capital.

Investors have lost a great deal of money in the last few years, and have become more conservative. This is going to drive an increase in companies that stay private or choose to self underwrite a pubic offering via a “DPO or Direct Public Offering”.  Both of these trends are supported through the Mission Markets private, password protected Impact Investment Platform, through the facilitation of  private placement offerings and our secondary trading board that provides a bid/offer system for restricted private equity, debt and illiquid DPO shares for impact and community investments.

Mission Markets plans on providing a market for DPO’s beginning in early 2011.

Here is a recent New York Times Article on the decline in I.P.O.s:

“Wall Street, the Home of the Vanishing I.P.O.”
New York Times
November 17, 2010

-Mike Van Patten, Mission Markets CEO and Founder

Mission Markets operates a private investment exchange facilitating transactions within the social and environmental capital markets. The Mission Markets platform provides companies and organizations with access to funding and impact investors an efficient way to evaluate, invest in and monitor sustainable investment opportunities.

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