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Student Spotlight
Antoine Cocle MPA'12
Posted Dec 21 2023
Kaya Impacto is an impact investment consulting firm started by Antoine Cocle MPA’15 to help social entrepreneurs raise capital to grow and scale their businesses — and impact.
Company: Kaya Impacto
Location: Mexico
Why We Love Kaya Impacto
Kaya Impacto works exclusively with social enterprises to helps them further their impact by providing access to capital and technical assistance. Kaya Impacto has already helped entrepreneurs to raise capital worth $5 million. It drives impact through its growing network of enterprises.
Antoine’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Antoine is a former banker who was helping “the rich get richer.” He came to SIPA to change his trajectory and knew that he wanted to leverage his background in finance to do something more fulfilling. He was initially interested in micro finance but started with entrepreneurs while at Agora and realized that what he really wanted to do was to help connect entrepreneurs with hard to access capital. Antoine never really thought about becoming an entrepreneur but realized that building a company and working on a team was something he wanted to do.
Running a High Impact Business
Kaya Impacto measures impact by assessing the success of its network of entrepreneurs. More specifically, they measure how many entrepreneurs go on to successfully raise capital and yield rates are of the capital raised. Kaya also looks internally at the percentage of repeat clients. Kaya is a B-Corporation and is committed to being a socially and environmentally responsible business.
Antoine says that managing cash flows has been the toughest part of being an entrepreneur. Everyone needs to get paid and the founder gets paid last! The most rewarding part of being an entrepreneur is that entrepreneurs get to choose what they do and have the power to create a team of people they love to work with. Antoine says that it’s an unbelievable privilege to work with award-winning entrepreneurs in Mexico.
Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs
"My advice is to just do it! Experimentation is what matters. If you have a value proposition that makes sense, you need to start prototyping it. I also advise that you do not rush. And begin by getting exposure to entrepreneurship, perhaps by working with another entrepreneur before starting your own thing."
Favorite Place on Campus
"East Asian Library."