Proving the Impact Business Model:
10 Years of Spring

We acknowledge and are deeply grateful that we are situated on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, as well as the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. We do not take this lightly and understand the role we hold in engaging in ongoing reconciliation with Indigenous communities. 

As an organization that is connected across this country and this planet, we are learning and unlearning the truth of the history of Indigenous peoples here in Canada and beyond. We recognize the injustices that these communities have faced and are seeking to create equity for all through the work we have the privilege of doing on this land.

As we look forward to the future of impact together, we invite you to extend this land acknowledgement into a land engagement. There are many opportunities to support our local Indigenous communities with time, money and other resources to honour and respect these lands through responsible citizenship.

Engagement Opportunities

Welcome from Tina Ippel, Director of Operations

It’s still hitting me that Spring has been creating impact for 10 years already. When we launched Spring 10 years ago we started with a simple, but audacious goal- to change the world with innovation. An equitable world where every business is an impact business and every investor is an impact investor.

For Spring, we believe that means building and nourishing the marketplace that is at the intersection of impact innovation and impact capital. To do this, we knew we needed to first support the community of founders, entrepreneurs, and businesses and we focused on our first four years with incubation, acceleration, and investment readiness. Starting in 2019, we began to embrace the investor community, and now spend equal time and effort cultivating both of these communities and fostering the right connections and the right time to catalyze impact. 

Fast forward to today: with more than 2,700 founders and 900 investors supported, Spring remains grounded on delivering what our communities need, when they need it. We have continued to evolve and innovate, including programs focused on immigrant and underserved communities, the launch of the Spring Collective and the Spring Impact Capital Fund, and the acquisition of Future Capital. As we head into this next decade, we’re poised and ready to support the scaling of businesses and impact alike across Canada and beyond. 

–Keith Ippel, Co-CEO

When moving from the UK five years ago, I Googled “impact”, “entrepreneurs” and “Canada”. Spring and Keith Ippel was the resounding answer. (And that was before Spring had done any SEO or Google ads….) I knew this was the community I wanted to be a part of and contribute to.

Entrepreneurial, always learning, improving and proving it with results- Keith’s values and vision underpin Spring’s incredible growth & impact over the past 10 years. Each chapter started with a market gap: supporting early-stage entrepreneurs wanting to make the world a better place through their businesses.

As all entrepreneurs and scaling companies do, we too have had our fair share of growing pains and lessons learned along the way. Fortunately, Spring is powered by an incredible team that, individually and collectively, inspires me daily on what is possible when you build an inclusive, humble and mission-driven business that’s designed to make the world a better place.

– Caroline von Hirschberg, Co-CEO

In the Beginning… There was Keith

“It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years … Spring has been an interesting organization in that we have had so many powerful, impactful people who have been a part of our community, both as employees as well as as partners, and as well as customers.

We’re very fortunate to have all of those partners who have supported us on the journey. Because really, our world is not only that intersection between impact entrepreneurship and impact capital, but financial institutions, venture capital funds, angel groups, universities, ecosystems, support organizations and innovation houses. There’s a full ecosystem of support around impact. And we’ve been very fortunate not only to be a part of it, but to be supported by it.”

– Keith Ippel, Co-CEO

Spring wasn’t actually “Spring” from the start, as you can see from our original incorporation document. We knew what we wanted to do, and wanted to get down to the business of doing it, so we started out as Beeker Activator Inc. as a holding name. It was a way for us to set up a legal entity and do the impact work we wanted to do while allowing the naming process to be organic without time constraints.

We started what became a five-month process of coming up with different names, checking if their web domains and social media handles were available, and taking the time to sleep on it and to see if we still liked our options. As you can imagine, there was a lot of debate back and forth amongst the team. 

As we experimented and explored, “Spring” came into the mix and floated to the top. We liked its esoteric connotations: new beginnings, growth, green and everything else it represents. That, in combination with it being a single syllable that everyone can spell, made it a great name.

At that time the “.is” domain, owned by Iceland, was just becoming available to the world. Google had tagged it as something they would look to optimize in SEO. So we went to the Iceland domain website and spring.is was available … on a site that was completely in Icelandic. 

We had to guess what we were filling out on the Icelandic form but in the end, we got it. We also had no idea what we had paid for it. Fortunately it turned out to only be €40, so it was money well spent, even if we had to pretend to understand Icelandic.