Sarah Cone

Sarah Cone is the founder and Managing Partner at Social Impact Capital. Referred to by Forbes as a “risk-taker who has proven herself,” Sarah is an experienced venture capitalist who has proven that impact investing can generate strong financial returns while producing a positive effect on the world. Sarah invests from the earliest stages in founders that have with innovative and impactful solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. and helps them show their businesses are scalable in order to acquire follow-on funding from top-tier venture capital firms.

Sarah Cone launched the New York City-based firm in 2016 and, over six years, it has secured follow-on financing for 100% of its portfolio companies, with 94% of the financings being led by top-tier venture capital firms. The firm uses an “impact arbitrage” investment strategy, investing from the seed stage on companies that offer solutions to some of the world’s biggest environmental and societal challenges. Social Impact Capital is one of the few woman-led VC firms in the country.

Since launching Social Impact Capital, Sarah has grown its portfolio to include more than 30 companies with innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Sarah was one of the earliest investors in Prometheus Fuels, the world’s first zero-carbon fuel unicorn, and was an early investor in Andela, another social impact unicorn. She was the first VC investor in OpenInvest which was acquired by JP Morgan. Other portfolio companies include Totus Medicines, Charm Industrial, Aether Diamonds, and Menten AI. Sarah is a board observer for Emitwise and JUDY, and was formerly on the board of PreAct.

Sarah Cone’s prior venture capital experience includes two years at Illuminate Ventures, where she was an Associate for the B2B enterprise/cloud-focused firm. Sarah got her start in venture capital at Omidyar Network’s emerging technologies venture capital group. Sarah also worked in the legal department at Google and at technology law firm Fenwick & West.

Sarah’s passion for addressing important societal issues extends beyond venture capital. She began her career at the nonprofit Public Knowledge and was on a working group to protect human rights in China in partnership with major tech companies and human rights NGOs. Sarah has been active in volunteer work on the issues of human rights, asylum, and entrepreneurship. She is a Board Advisor to Axiom Education.

Sarah received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she received the Jurisprudence Award for academic excellence and the Advocacy Award for persuasive writing. She also holds a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from Evergreen State College.