impact investment

Join Max, our resident Business Ninja, and Erika Karp, Executive Managing Director and Chief Impact Officer of Pathstone, as they talk about responsible and sustainable investing.

Pathstone is an independently owned and operated wealth management firm serving multigenerational families with complex needs, single-family offices, and foundations and endowments. Their comprehensive range of services and deep expertise go far beyond investment management. Every client has different values, goals, and objectives. No two paths are the same. Pathstone's expansive capabilities and personal, in-depth approach enable them to customize solutions and leverage best practices to accommodate each of their client’s unique needs. It’s what makes Pathstone – The Family Office.

Learn more about Sustainable and Impact Investments: https://www.pathstone.com/sacrifice-nothing/

Learn more and visit their website at  https://www.pathstone.com/

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Cécile Duranton is the managing director of Time for the Planet, a trail-blazing non-profit citizen fund detecting and financing climate change innovations.

Before joining Time for the Planet, Cécile trained as an agronomy engineer, as she is passionate about nature, animals, agriculture and food systems. 

The young French woman tells Anne how she left home at 14 to attend a specialist highschool to continue to ride and train horses, and later to intern in the UK and in Vietnam. Cécile thrived in her travels, and shares how she discovered that bonds can be formed even when one doesn’t speak the local language (though clearly she loves trying). As a business developer for different French companies, she has worked extensively across South East Asia. Living the expat lifestyle, Cécile discusses why she chose to learn new languages — to better understand the culture and build strong relationships and an international network at the same time. 

Cécile explains how she chose to study in Brazil, and later in New Zealand, and how she ended up turning from the engineering side to the business development side of the industry, changing the arc of her career. She also tells Anne how she got involved in sustainability and, in particular, climate change before making it her first mission. 

Cécile designs and executes the international strategy of Time for the Planet, so Anne asks her about the mission of the business, how they inspire action in citizens, how they built their model to have maximum impact, why they have a low threshold to entry (you can become a shareholder for as little as 1 euro) and how changing their communication around climate change transformed their business from doom-inaction model to one charged with hope, energy and powering individual action. 

A fascinating and motivating conversation. Happy listening! 

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Selected links from episode 

You can connect with Cecile via LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-duranton-71469b83/

Or discover the project Time for the Planet here - https://join-time.com/en

Pircicaba, Brazil where Cécile studied - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracicaba

The Patagonia letter to shareholders from September 2022 - https://www.patagoniaworks.com/press/2022/9/14/patagonias-next-chapter-earth-is-now-our-only-shareholder

Where to measure your carbon footprint - https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

Cécile's interview on the podcast 'Fille Xpats' (in French) - https://fillexpats.com/77-france/

Fair Phone - https://www.fairphone.com/

The book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

The book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

This episode is brought to you by AVM Consulting 

Struggling to connect with your audience? Feeling disconnected from your brand's purpose? Is motivating your team becoming a daunting task?

AVM Consulting offers a unique blend of coaching, consulting, and storytelling services designed to help your brand connect authentically, align with your values, and inspire your team to achieve greatness.

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Ready to transform your brand and drive meaningful change? Don't wait any longer. We like to make magic happen.

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This week we speak with Blaine Grimes, the woman behind Gulf of Maine Ventures, the investment arm of Gulf of Maine Research Institute. I really enjoyed my conversation with Blaine. She has a broad perspective on the ocean economy as well as a take-charge attitude. 

During her tenture at GMRI, Blaine realized that important innovations were sometimes not making it into the market due to a funding gap in the blue economy startup space. Like any good entrepreneur, she set out fix the problem. And in doing so, she seems to have started a trend! Blue tech investment is finally getting its moment!

GMRI
Gulf of Maine Ventures

Also mentioned:

Sea-Ahead
Ocean's Balance
BlueTrace
American Unagi

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Abigail Carroll LinkedIN
Happy Planet LinkedIN
Twitter

Listen on:
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www.happyplanetpodcast.com

Interview mit Martin Baart, Co-Founder und CEO von Ecoligo

In der Nachmittagsfolge begrüßen wir heute Martin Baart, Co-Founder und CEO von Ecoligo, und sprechen mit ihm über die erfolgreich abgeschlossene Series-A-Finanzierungsrunde in Höhe von 10 Millionen Euro.

Ecoligo setzt Solar-as-a-Service-Projekte in Schwellenländern um. Somit treibt das Startup die Energiewende in elf Ländern wie Kenia, Vietnam und Chile durch die Umsetzung von Photovoltaikanlagen auf Firmengebäuden voran. Dies wird durch private Anlegerinnen und Anleger ermöglicht, die mit ihren gezielten Investitionen in Solarprojekte die Klimakrise bekämpfen und ihr Geld gewinnbringend anlegen wollen. Die somit vollständig finanzierten Solar-as-a-Service-Projekte bringen den Kunden nicht nur finanzielle Ersparnisse, sondern ermöglichen ihnen auch, nachhaltig zu wachsen. Die bisher unterzeichneten Projekte werden laut Unternehmensangaben zur Einsparung von über einer Million Tonnen CO₂ beitragen. Ecoligo wurde im Jahr 2016 von Martin Baart und Markus Schwaninger in Berlin gegründet. Mittlerweile verfügt das Jungunternehmen auch über Standorte in Ghana, Kenia, Costa Rica, Chile, Vietnam und Philippinen.

In einer Series-A-Finanzierungsrunde hat der Berliner Impact-Investment-Anbieter nun 10 Millionen Euro eingesammelt. Die Venture Division von Fotowatio Renewable Ventures namens FRV-X ist als neuer Investor der Runde beigetreten. Fotowatio Renewable Ventures entwickelt und betreibt weltweit Projekte im Bereich der erneuerbaren Energien. FRV-X ist beispielsweise Hauptanteilseigner von Evergen, einem Softwareunternehmen für erneuerbare Energien, dass die Leistung von Batteriesystemen für Privathaushalte, Gewerbebetriebe und Versorgungsunternehmen optimiert. Ecoligo will die Investitionssumme verwenden, um weiterhin nachhaltig zu wachsen, bestehende Märkte auszubauen und die globale Energiewende effektiv voranzutreiben. Zudem will der Solar-as-a-Service-Anbieter seine digitale Impact-Investment-Plattform weiterentwickeln und die Möglichkeit zum Investment in weiteren Ländern anbieten.

Early-stage enterprises can establish their businesses how their founders envisioned them in a safe environment with patient finance. In other words, investors are willing to sacrifice short-term gains in exchange for longer-term profit and impact. Their investors become partners in attaining common financial and non-financial goals through investment money, as well as broad networks for marketing and distribution, strategic guidance and mentorship, and later-stage financing, using a patient capital approach to patient capital.

Lizette Peña explains how Kachuwa Impact Fund avoids putting pressure on its partners without requiring excessive development in this episode. She also compares and contrasts the Kachuwa Impact Fund to regular venture capital firms.

If you're thinking of starting a business or taking an interest in impact investing, then this episode is for you! 

Episode Highlights

• [05:34] Becoming A Director of Kachuwa Impact Fund
• [07:22] Kachuwa Impact Fund Making Pressureless Partnership Possible
• [10:26] Finding Investors Who Will Accept Long-Term Return
• [15:16] What Sets Kachuwa Impact Fund Apart From Other Venture Capital Firms
• [21:32] What Kachuwa Impact Fund Looks For
• [25:38] Profitability And Revenue
• [32:39] Defining Success
• [40:26] Lizette’s Recommendations on Investing

Resources:

• Visit our website for more insights on designing an ownership structure that aligns with your company vision, and check out the Her CEO Journey™ podcast series!
• Get your 90-Day Financial Strategic Planning with our team! Set up a time here!
• Want to start investing or want to pitch your business? Visit Kachuwa Impact Fund’s website to know more about them.

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Welcome to Season Two!

In this episode of Ground Up, your hosts Ham Namakajjo and Fay Kakai from UEEI sit down with Eddie Sembatya from Finding XY. Eddie shares insights on creating social impact, finance for green businesses, and the growing global awareness around impact investment.

To find out more, visit www.findingxy.com
 

Key themes:

• Intro/About Finding XY
• Impact
• Challenges and funding
• Partnerships and collaboration
• Success and the future

Don't forget to share this podcast & subscribe for more.

Find Jorma on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jormalaiapea/

Find out more about Limitless Impact Investments here: https://limitless.fund/

5:35 - Rich: I think we can all agree now that it's essential to our planet. We know there's a problem that we have to fix and the technology side is just a massive opportunity. As humans we're good at innovating when we have to, and now we have to.   

11:00 - Peter: There is the technology mantra of "move fast and break things" but in cleantech you don't necessarily want to actually have incumbents doing that because in the cleantech industry entrepreneurs are working with technologies and systems that quite literally keep the lights on. So we really need to educate our technology communities so they understand that the customers they are working with are often very risk-averse customers coming up against very disruptive technology. 

12:30 - Peter: I wish investors were more understanding of some of the challenges cleantech companies are up against. This friend of mine said to me, 'Well Peter, to me they've got long development cycles, long sales cycles, lumpy revenue, I wanna run in the other direction'. So I'm looking forward to our investors embracing some of the unique characteristics of cleantech. But customers are facing disruption. So my hope is that customers become aware of that and embrace it. 

13:30 - Peter: One way to make investors feel more attracted to cleantech is  through some de-risking mechanisms. So one thing we promote at Alacrity is pilot funding. Once investors or clients see a project that has been successful in the field the stakeholders then see that a lot of the risk has been removed from the situation. We also really need to help the companies scale up. Very few cleantech solutions are very stand-alone, so there are often multiple actors who need to be coordinated. 

14:50 - Cec: A lot of costs over the years have come down as more actors enter cleantech you get economies of scale. We're also looking for opportunities in industries that we hadn't really previously thought of bringing cleantech into, so there are more solutions being offered by cleantech. And as each segment of the industry grows economies of scale are bringing costs down and making cleantech more competitive with 'old-tech'.

16:20 - Rich: There was a lot of scar tissue left in the investment community after the pain that many early cleantech investors experienced in the early aughts as the sector really came into being. So when I started working more seriously in cleantech in 2015/2016 none of the investors really wanted to talk about it. But that has really changed. It still is predominantly courageous investors taking the big risks, but I think if we look back on this time we'll see that there were some amazing returns achieved. 

18:30 - Burak: This plastic fund that we helped implement at the start of this year really helped to create commercial value especially in small communities. And that is really one of the key benefits of cleantech and of our program. The capacity it has to generate really high value jobs across geographic and economic regions.

22:20 - Peter: In the mid-2000s there was the Tech Wreck and a lot of investors flooded to cleantech. But cleantech generally speaking turned out to be much more complicated to implement than those investors thought. It turns our that integration and adoption for cleantech is quite difficult. 

24:50 - Rich: Cleantech is actually very measurable. So you can't fake it in cleantech and that's something people need to get over a bit. It's also important that people have ways to demonstrate and pilot their technology using funding, especially government funding, because if you don't do it in real life in the real environment then you'll always lack credibility. So you need to see these technologies and projects actually working, especially the bigger customers. They can't just depend on what worked in another area of the world.

26:50 - Peter: The biggest threat to cleantech is execution risk. It's back to that customer unhappiness. These are conservative customers and if you stumble, they're not coming back. 

28:50 - Rich: The biggest threat to cleantech is the status quo. If people aren't forced to make changes sometimes they don't. But if there's continued risk aversion and lack of funding at an investor level and government level then that's the biggest threat to the industry growing in a meaningful way.

31:30 - Cec: Really understanding their product and their market. Really to succeed you need to spend more time up front really understanding who your early adopters are. How you're going to get your product to market to prove and showcase what you do.

33:50 - Peter: The vast majority of customers are not easy adopters. They need to have an easy path to adoption.

33:30 - Rich: I would say that commercialization, marketing and sales are the biggest issues. And the things that we need to get right more often in order to succeed. Part of that is because a lot of these cleantech companies are really heavy technology, heavy science companies. But you need to go and find that help and bring in those skills. If 40% or 50% of an organization isn't related to sales and marketing, if 90% of your team is still working on the R&D side then you can assume that you're not going to be growing revenue in a meaningful way. So many companies have amazing technology but it doesn't go anywhere if they aren't able to build meaningful revenue. So I can't say enough how important it is to focus on sales and revenue.

38:25 - Burak: Firstly, you really need to get intercultural communication right, especially when you're looking to start selling on the international stage. Secondly, you need to work on your communication of your value proposition, and thirdly, develop a good sales cycle so you know what customers are asking for. And don't fall in love with your own idea/solution.

Partindo do livro de Bill Gates “Como Evitar um Desastre Climático”, Sofia Guedes Vaz e Cristina Gouveia conversam à volta da temática da tecnologia versus sustentabilidade. Será que a tecnologia é a chave para a crise climática ou o iceberg que nos vai afundar a todos? Para ajudar a debater e a pensar este assunto, a convidada deste episódio é Rita Casimiro, chefe de aceleração da MAZE, empresa de investimento da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

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In this episode of Ground Up, your hosts Ham Namakajjo and Fay Kakai from UEEI sit down with Norah Koigi Ngare, the Director of the Deal Flow Facility (DFF) at Financial Sector Deepening Uganda (FSD Uganda). Norah discusses the motivations for setting up the facility, how the facility will work, the target businesses, as well as the DFF's anticipated impact.

The DFF is a technical assistance and match making initiative set up to address the persistent gap in accessing growth capital for emerging businesses in Uganda. Established in 2021 in concert with the Capital Markets Authority and the European Union, the Deal Flow Facility is hosted and managed by FSD Uganda - www.fsduganda.or.ug/deal-flow-facility

Key themes:

• Intro/About Deal Flow Facility
• Motivations for setting up the facility
• How the facility will work
• The target businesses 
• The anticipated impact
• Opportunity for collaboration and partnership

Don't forget to share this podcast & subscribe for more.

Key themes:

• Supporting SGBs access financing
• Collective action and partnerships
• Innovations for financing SGBs
• Success and the future

Key themes:

• BiD Capital Partners and the firm's journey
• Impact Investment and who qualifies
• Uganda's entrepreneurial landscape
• Access to finance for SMEs
• Challenges faced and lessons learned

In this episode of Startup Hustle, Lauren Conaway, Garnet Heraman and William Crowder, Founding Partners of Aperture Venture Capital talk about equitable investments.

Find Startup Hustle Everywhere:

https://linktr.ee/startuphustle

This episode is sponsored by Full Scale:

https://fullscale.io/

Learn more about Aperture Venture Capital:

https://aperturevc.com/

Learn more about InnovateHER KC:

https://www.innovateherkc.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tune in to hear:

- Why is Adam Smith considered to be the original behavioral economist?

- Mike is advocating for mission driven capitalism. How does this contrast with a more classic approach to Capitalism that’s focused on shareholder value?

- Why might mission driven corporations outperform the S&P 500? Is there a specific mechanic at play here?

- How can consumers and investors separate out true mission driven corporations from those that are merely posturing as mission driven corporations?

- How does mission driven capitalism distinguish itself from other contemporary “do good” capitalism like ESG and impact investing?

- Does Mike expect mission driven companies to have standard market returns or expect them to outperform?

Web: themissioncorps.org

Compliance Code: 1447-OAS-4/28/2021

With guest is Manuella Cunha Brito, co-founder of Good Tech Lab and now Climatescape, joining us from France to chat about using technology to fight climate change, how to incentivize businesses and startups to be sustainable as well as challenges in turning research into real impact. 

Topics: Technology, Climate change, Impact investment, Sustainable startups, Decarbonisation, Carbon removal, Biochar - pyrolysis of biomass, Climate adaptation

• What are the technologies that are actually relevant for a low carbon future?
• Probability of climate action failure versus what the impact of that failure would be
• How to incentivise startups to be sustainable?: Actually, you have more chances at succeeding because they have a better chance at being relevant, it’s not so compromising and actually not more costly. You don’t need to compromise on financial returns to get a positive impact.
• Where is the balance between negative challenges around using technology and promoting that use and the positive opportunities of using and promoting technology? - in light of the deepening and many times misleading or misinformed narrative and conversation around technology 
• Who is usually the most uncooperative actor in tech global governance? 

Insight:

Limit of 2 degrees celsius in temperature is still very warm - it already means a lot of suffering for many people, extreme weather and other changes. We emit today about 51 giga tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year and we need to get to 0 by 2050. At the same time, improving the standard of living for millions of people around the globe will not be a small challenge. 

Helping investors to better understand how to use their economic resources to support innovation that matters and has a positive impact on the planet.  

Climatescape - creating a data powered market intelligence platform that will support people in making better decision in how they support startups in the climate tech space  

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

If you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI’s analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.
www.globari.org
@LinkedIn
@GARInstitute) / Twitter

Economic equality is one click away. This episode of Preview of Tomorrow introduces Dave Parsell, Cofounder and CEO of Localintel, an advanced technology company empowering communities to promote their economic development. Localintel works with organizations, enhancing their websites to increase engagement, educate consumers and attract new investment. The company is able to achieve this success through their highly sophisticated data tools. Localintel is forging the way for smart cities and small businesses to spread their mission and stimulate job markets to advance economic equality.

When money is remembered as energy, we begin to relate to it with reverence, with choice. Joshua Ackman is the former Head of Co-Investment at River Capital and is an “impact” investor I admire for his intentionality and somewhat Tantric relationship to capital - a man who is known for speaking the words love, spirit and money all in the one sentence. In our conversation, we explore what an integrated approach to investing that includes the ‘irrational,’ emotional, and relational might look like. We also explore what opens up to us when we see money as energy flow, the fact that we are all ‘investors,’ and how aligning our values and our decisions might support the weaving of the world our hearts know is possible. 

Whether you consider yourself an investor or not just yet, we all are and this episode will support you in stepping into your investor of time, energy and money in a meaningful, values-aligned way! 

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Fabio Segura has been awarded "outstanding young persons of the world" by TOYP (Japan, 2008). He was born in a small village in Colombia, surrounded by violence from guerilla fighters, which inspired him to work on peace building and later, transform education globally. His goal is to begin with early childhood development to ensure the success of young kids using  technology and impact investment. Fabio runs the powerful Jacobs Foundation, backed by a family and founder with the same name. 

Fabio recommends reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown

According to the UN, approximately 1/3 of all food is lost or wasted. How many times have we left the table with food on our plates? How much money does it represent? Anastasia, a Swiss entrepreneur wondered the same. Anastasia went to the hospitality school in Lausanne, where she met her business partner, Noemi, and in 2017, they decided to launch Kitro, a startup that focuses on food waste management. 

She finished her studies in 2016 and then started thinking about this project, and just one year later, they launched their startup. She focused all her time and energy on the company. After graduating from university, she didn't have any responsibilities, no family to feed, and with only some rent to pay, she started couch-surfing. With all the liberty in the world and free time, she had the bandwidth to work on her dream project. She is an inspiring example of what it means to be a visionary. There are now 9 people working with her, plus a team in Africa, and they have around 237 machines operating in different places across the country. 

Anastasia recommends reading Markus Imhoof: More Than Honey