We recently connected with Devin Thorpe and have shared our conversation below.

Devin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s one of the most important lessons you learned in school?

A few of you may recall when in 1976, the Teton dam in Southeastern Idaho failed, damaging or destroying about 80 percent of the structures in the small town of Rexburg. Living then in Salt Lake City, my father invited me to join him on a volunteer group trip to Rexburg, to dig the much and mud out of basements.

To an 11-year-old, that sounded like a good time. I signed up on the spot.

The whole trip took about 24 hours, leaving at about 2:00 AM, arriving at dawn, working all day, departing at dark and arriving after midnight.

Not long ago, I returned to Rexburg to see the statue erected in my honor. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find it. As an adult, I recognize how little I helped as a kid, but then I was sure I’d changed the world.

The experience has come to define my life. I felt so good helping people that day that I promised then I would never miss an opportunity to .serve.

Of course, I have missed many opportunities to help. I was, perhaps, distracted by building a successful finance career, but ever since I was let go from my position as the CFO for a global food and beverage company, I have focused on channeling the enthusiasm of my youth to make the world a better place.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The mission of The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, is to help community builders, social entrepreneurs and diverse founders attract more capital via investment crowdfunding by growing the universe of investors seeking to back them.

Since the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012, I’ve been writing about investment crowdfunding. I began hosting conferences on the topic in 2014.

Last year, we estimate that about 100,000 people invested via crowdfunding with an eye toward impact, supporting a local business, investing in a social enterprise or backing a diverse founder. That is great!

The problem we see is that by comparison with the number of people who ski and golf, countless more people should be investing for impact via crowdfunding. We hope to grow the community of impact crowdfund investors to 10 million by 2032. That would represent 100-fold growth.

We work to accomplish this by holding virtual national and international events and local events across the country. At these events, we provide training and inspiration for both entrepreneurs and investors.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

In order to both demonstrate the power of impact crowdfunding as a funding source–and to experience it firsthand–I raised the capital for The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, via crowdfunding using the site Crowdfund Main Street.

It was wonderful to experience the implicit–and explicit–expressions of support that came with the investments that came from members of the TSCI community. I was equally touched by the $96 investments from individuals in the community and the investments of thousands of dollars from wealthy investors.

Every investment was an expression of faith in our business model and our social mission. Each one inspires me to work hard to deliver impact for the community and financial returns for the investors–many of whom share DNA markers with me.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

After passage of the JOBS Act in 2012, an enthusiastic community of people passionate about investment crowdfunding began working in the space, planning to launch regulated portals as authorized by law as soon as the rules were implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In that context, I hosted and organized two events celebrating impact crowdfunding. The events were wonderful but not very profitable. One key problem was that the SEC didn’t implement the rules until 2016. So, we were talking about the future not the present.

As a result, we put the events on hold. In 2022, with the implementation in the rearview mirror and enthusiasm for crowdfunding growing, we re-launched the events with great success.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://superpowers4good.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/devindthorpe
• Facebook: http://Facebook.com/devinthorpe
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/devinthorpe
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/devindthorpe
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/devinthorpe
• Other: http://devinthorpe.com https://thesupercrowd.com