In 1999 we moved from the startup phase of our social enterprise to investing equity in 6 companies across the South Bay who were committed to creating good jobs, and launching networking and advising services. So much has changed in the last 20 years, and yet so much is painfully the same. In our first annual report 19 years ago, our founders Bud and Penelope wrote, “No one could ask for more business activity than the country has seen in the past 8 years, and yet low-income people are not any better off. In the last decade, many residents of the Bay Area experienced an economic boom unlike any they had seen in recent years. However, in this time of prosperity, other individuals in California’s low-income communities found only increased disparity. While the Bay Area developed into a rich vault of venture capital and business networks, entrepreneurs in these communities still found themselves challenged in gaining access to these valuable business and financial resources.”