Gratitude Railroad

Gratitude Railroad is a community-driven impact investment firm founded in 2013 by Howard Fischer and Eric Jacobsen. The firm focuses on championing innovative businesses that generate compelling financial returns alongside enduring social and environmental impact. Gratitude Railroad invests in early-stage companies and emerging funds dedicated to planetary health, social well-being, and intersectional innovation. Their mission is to transform capitalism into a force for greater good by integrating trust, compassion, collaboration, and shared value creation into the investment process.

The firm's investment strategy targets companies at the Seed and Series A stages, typically with annual revenues exceeding $500,000 and proven product-market fit. They usually invest approximately $1 million per company, primarily in the United States. Gratitude Railroad emphasizes diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), focusing on founders deeply committed to these principles and prioritizing investments in diverse teams with lived experience in the issues they are addressing.

Over the past decade, Gratitude Railroad has seeded and built a large portfolio of companies and funds, catalyzing hundreds of millions of dollars into impact-focused enterprises. Their portfolio includes companies such as itselectric, Mae Health, Twentyeight Health, Wasted, Carallel, StormSensor, CapShift, The Renewal Workshop, AllHere, and Solstice Power Technologies. The firm is guided by the belief that capitalism, when integrated with trust, compassion, collaboration, and shared value creation, can be a powerful and effective system for generating good while achieving profits.