How we built a VC platform to serve impact founders across Europe — part 1/2

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This article is the first of two posts for VC platform managers and investors, explaining how we are building a platform to deliver bolder social and environmental outcomes.

Our mission as an impact fund is to help build ventures solving global social and environmental challenges. We do that by investing in startups that scale successfully in big markets and deliver meaningful social and environmental outcomes. In venture capital, the bridge between identifying an opportunity and its success is a long one.

How do we know, quarter after quarter, that we are supporting our ventures in the best possible way so that they can deliver the social and environmental outcomes that we set together at the point of initial investment?

As a small team, how do we know we are spending our time providing support where founders need it the most and in the most efficient manner?

We created our platform to help answer both of these questions. This article explains the thought process behind our platform as an enabler of impact, what we have learned, and the challenges ahead.

© MSM THE PLATFORM EXISTS TO SERVE THE MAJOR NEEDS OF FOUNDERS WHEN SOLVING SOCIETAL CHALLENGES

© MSM THE PLATFORM EXISTS TO SERVE THE MAJOR NEEDS OF FOUNDERS WHEN SOLVING SOCIETAL CHALLENGES

Platform principles

Before we get into the components of our platform, it is important to start with our four core platform design principles:

  1. We manage impact to create economic outcomes: our platform components are designed as aids to help our companies see the asymmetric upside that derives from being bold in impact.
  2. We are founder-centric: we design, experiment, test and iterate our platform components in close partnership with the founders in our portfolio. If they are not incredibly keen on it or don’t think it is useful, we do not build them. Simple.
  3. We follow the Pareto principle: we take an 80:20 approach to focus on minimum effort and high impact support (usually that is just one or, at most, two things at a time that can create massive wins).
  4. We are honest about our strengths: we focus on the components we are best equipped to provide (e.g. we help our founders manage their impact, or we may help them with a particular game-changing capital introduction), but we would not help our founders with commercial introductions in geography where our network is weak, even if we think we could somehow help there, it is not going to be a good use of anyone’s time.

Platform components

As Cory Bolotsky has neatly summarised here, VC Platforms typically have ten main components: events and workshops, incubation and office space to online forums, and talent support, among others. The challenge then becomes which components to prioritise.