“Everybody is focused on sourcing better and investing better. Nobody is focused on adding value, and that is exactly where everything goes right or wrong. ”
— Eva Yazhari
My guest today is Eva Yazhari – founder of Beyond Capital Ventures and one of the most original thinkers in the world of impact investing.
She grew up on Staten Island, a short ferry ride from the heart of global finance – but far enough away that Wall Street was more skyline than reality. Her parents were both working artists from the Midwest who raised their only child with brushes, sculpture, and a relentless curiosity.
They taught her that making something from nothing – especially something beautiful – was a valid way to build a life.
Her family’s history ran even deeper. In 1959, her grandfather moved the family to western Tanzania using connections through the Catholic medical missionary network – not to become missionaries, but to have a supportive community around them while he served as a doctor there.
For Eva’s father, who grew up there, it shaped a worldview that saw service and social justice not as abstract ideas, but lived realities. When the family returned to the U.S. during the Civil Rights movement, that sense of justice only grew stronger.
Eva was raised with those stories and during her career she carried them with her.
She went to Barnard College intending to do medical research. But pre-med proved too cutthroat, so she pivoted to mathematics – a subject where right and wrong were clear, and where she found confidence in the logic.
It was during her undergrad years that she stumbled into finance – literally. A friend called and told her Merrill Lynch was hiring night analysts. She figured it beat working in the biology lab.
That job opened a door. A few months later, she hustled her way into an internship – and then a full-time role – at Entrust Capital, a fund of hedge funds.
She was investment team employee number two. They had $200 million under management when she joined. Five years later, they had $5 billion. She also learned how to build exposure models, conduct deep due diligence, and manage relationships with activist hedge fund managers.
But then the financial crisis hit. She was sitting in front of a Bloomberg terminal, watching hedge funds make money off of disaster. She had what she calls her “aha moment.” She didn’t want to play that game.
But she didn’t just walk away from investing – she built something intentionally different. Beyond Capital Fund was structured as a nonprofit, a 501(c)3 – not to do charity, but to meet the moment. She describes it as “almost like a Trojan horse” – a structure that made her approach more acceptable to early supporters, even as she operated with full VC rigor.
She knew in 2009 that most investors did not yet believe emerging markets could deliver both returns and impact. So she created a structure that was more palatable – donors could get a tax deduction, while she quietly ran the fund like a VC from day one. There were no grants. No concessionary capital. They always behaved like a VC.
The result was a top‑quintile track record: a 0.3% loss ratio, markups, and over 100 million people reached through portfolio companies’ products and services.
But the nonprofit structure also kept the firm smaller than it needed to be. “I think it was the right thing to do, but I think it was a little bit of a mistake in the growth of the firm,” she told me.
In 2019, someone approached her after a talk and simply asked, “How do we invest?” – and that was the moment she knew the market was finally ready.
She and her team launched Beyond Capital Ventures, a for‑profit venture fund, carrying forward the same thesis with a structure that allowed investors to participate directly in the returns.
Today, Beyond Capital Ventures invests in early-stage companies across East Africa and India. It’s one of the few woman-led impact VC firms globally, with a team that’s 70% based in the markets they invest in.
Eva’s approach is hands-on, thesis-driven, and unafraid to push boundaries. She refuses deal flow from Europe or the U.S. because she believes the best opportunities come from being on the ground. As she says, “I’d rather the principal who runs our Nairobi office meet a founder while filling up his water bottle, than us meet them through some other channel.”
Beyond Capital has pioneered something radical in VC: the equitable venture structure. 10% of the GP’s carry is allocated to portfolio founders. Not only does it create community – it’s created collaboration. That motivates companies across her portfolio now to share customers, talent, and capital.
She measures impact as rigorously as she measures financial performance. Her team uses a three-tier framework aligned with IRIS and SDG metrics. And she’s clear-eyed about what success looks like. “Everybody is focused on sourcing better and investing better. Nobody is focused on adding value, and that is exactly where everything goes right or wrong.”
Eva’s career is proof that creativity, service, and capital don’t have to be separate. And that you can build something that lasts if you’re bold enough to hold them together.
Listen in for the full conversation.
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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Introduction
[04:08] Growing up in Staten Island with artists shaped Eva’s entrepreneurial mindset
[07:33] Family’s Tanzania legacy inspired global investment vision
[12:41] Public high school revealed economic privilege gap
[14:51] The shift from pre-med to math at Barnard
[17:57] Entering finance through Merrill Lynch’s night analyst program
[23:30] Transitioning to Entrust and helping scale a hedge fund
[32:24] Leaving Wall Street to start Beyond Capital Fund
[34:01] Choosing nonprofit VC structure to prove impact returns
[43:03] Challenges raising capital and proving early traction
[54:09] Why BCV focuses on India and East Africa
[57:27] Challenging high-risk, high-return venture assumptions
[01:06:28] Using conscious leadership to evaluate founders
[01:12:09] End-to-end investment and exit strategy process
[01:16:37] What makes BCV different from traditional VC
[01:17:43] Equitable venture structure and founder profit sharing
[01:20:32] Example of CarePoint investment and results
[01:27:12] Rapid fire questions
Additional Resources:
- Eva Yazhari LinkedIn
- Beyond Capital Ventures website
- Eva Yazhari Instagram
- Book ‘The Good Your Money Can Do’
- The BCV Podcast
MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEWS:
“Simple solutions to complex problems yield the strongest results over time. ”
— Eva Yazhari
“Returns and impact is causal from business growth and returns in emerging markets… The bigger my companies grow, the more impact they have. ”
— Eva Yazhari
