A SORENSON IMPACT FUND
Investment Approach
Enable Ventures targets investments that achieve a double bottom line that drives profit and purpose in the historically underserved global disability community.
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We are early-stage investors with extensive networks in disability communities and the impact investing field. We source the highest quality deals and approach the market with significant domain expertise, allowing us to assess market opportunities and capture value where others may not have the knowledge to enter.
We make investments in four impact areas:
Up-Skilling, Re-Skilling, and
Future-Proofing Work
Bridging skills gaps and training workers in the credentials they need for the 21st century economy.
To develop an equitable labor market that works for everybody,
Enable Ventures is committed to investing in people first and the solutions necessary to compete in the global economy:
Using capital to bridge skills gaps, training workers in the credentials they need for the 21st century economy.
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Connecting disability-diverse talent with partners in new and emerging industries, or future-proofing old industries, revitalizing economic participation in various industry sectors by expanding access to training, technology, skill development, credentialing, and support to access upward mobility.
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Bringing underrepresented people into the conversation about the future of work: people with intellectual disabilities, blind and low-vision workers, veterans, people with mental health disabilities, and those for whom chronic poverty has led to disability.
Founders With Disabilities
Betting on the world’s most creative, flexible, problem-solving founders with lived experience of disability.
People with disabilities with truly groundbreaking ideas have unequal access to wealth, equity, and social capital, making it difficult for them to find early-stage capital to grow their projects.
We believe that the lived experience of disability is an asset that should be leveraged and that entrepreneurs with disabilities are some of the most creative, flexible, adaptable innovators – because they’ve had to be their entire lives.
Work-Related Technology
Supporting technologies that are universally designed to maximize global human talent.
Too often, work-related technology comes from global supply chains and procurement pipelines that did not begin with either people with disabilities or the job market in mind.
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As a consequence, work-related technology often must be modified on the back end, a costly and inefficient proposition. In the real world, that means:
Innovation is slowed worldwide.
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People with disabilities are disproportionately underrepresented in in-demand industries (or the labor market altogether).
Enable Ventures aims to increase the labor force participation of people with disabilities by seeding and supporting technologies that are universally designed, making work more efficient and better for not just people with disabilities, but for everyone.
Next-Gen Assistive Technology
Advancing the kinds of technologies that will make marked improvements in the daily lives of people with disabilities.
Enable Ventures knows that over 1 billion people on earth need assistive technology (AT) – a number expected to double by 2030 – yet currently only 1 out of 10 people with the need for it, actually have the technology they need to overcome functional limitations and to thrive.
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We aim to drive economic inclusion by investing in and commercializing the next generation of assistive technology.
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That means advancing cutting-edge, frontier technologies that will promote:
Equality of opportunity
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Economic self-sufficiency
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Full participation in employment and the community
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Independent living
The assistive technology market is starting to converge with the general consumer electronic market leading to greater commercialization of assistive technologies and the opportunity to serve a larger Total Addressable Market. For the past half century, assistive technology investment has emanated from very large corporate players or universities. We are changing this with a disruptive bottom-up approach.