The need to address global challenges is more urgent than ever. Yet there is still a huge funding gap to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Capital, talent, and policy are shifting towards addressing the world’s most challenging environmental and social problems, creating a generational opportunity.
We believe that the best businesses are those that profit while solving environmental and social challenges. These businesses are more resilient, attract better talent, more engaged consumers and are tapping into sizeable economic opportunities.
Solving the greatest environmental and societal challenges drives commercial success in the long run, leading to asymmetric returns with outsized potential.
We implement the Impact Management Project guidelines and the UN SDGs framework to assess, manage and report the social and environmental impact of each portfolio company.
We make decisions based on five overarching principles:
1. Lock-step – we back companies where the bottom line is dependent on the social or environmental outcome delivered. This is how business can deliver impact at scale.
2. Business centric – we co-design our impact KPIs with our founders. These are intrinsically linked to the daily operational success of the business.
3. 80:20 – we can’t measure all impact, but we can measure what matters most. We apply the Pareto principle, concluding that 20% of what we can measure, will capture 80% of the impact.
4. System change – impact can be binary in the early stages of a business, and is only apparent when the business solution becomes systemic. This requires an intentional founder and patience, as impact will not always be immediately apparent.
5. Incentives aligned – our fund structure is set up so that our incentives are aligned with the delivery of financial and impact goals.
The impact case of any given venture always starts with defining its outcomes, rather than outputs. A single project can deliver multiple outcomes, which can be both positive and negative. There are certain negative outcomes that we simply do not work with. From there, we focus on the important questions that the Impact Management Project brings to life:
Joining our platform
Impact expertise
Capital and commercial outcomes
Active portfolio support
Access to talent
Impact community
An impact mindset and discipline enhances commercial outcomes, product development, access to capital, talent attraction and every other single element of a business. We bring our 15+ years of impact expertise into the day-to-day operations of our portfolio companies, enabling them to be more resilient and building unfair advantages compared with their peers. We use the Impact Management Project framework. As an impact fund, our carry as fund managers is tied to the impact performance of our portfolio companies. This is something we are very proud of.
Amongst the multitude of things that make businesses move forward, we know that two things are paramount for early-stage and growth businesses: commercial outcomes and access to capital. We have productised and structured our approach to capital and commercial introductions by leveraging on our global networks of corporates and investors. Furthermore, we love rolling-up our sleeves and working with management teams on financial modelling, cap table arrangements and all the things that help founders succeed.
We have been founders ourselves. We know the sacrifice and pains that come along with the excitement of building something new for which we are passionate about. We know that all of our portfolio companies will face hardship:
co-founders will have disagreements, targets will not be met, insecurities will interfere. We embrace those challenges, and we enjoy solving them with you. That is why each of our portfolio companies can count on 24/7 support available to deal with all things needed in a timely manner.
Long gone are the days where the brightest students wanted to work for corporates with a pure shareholder model. The war for the best talent is now fought on the grounds of impact and purpose, and the best talent wants to work for companies that are high performing and intellectually stimulant whilst making the world a better place. As a result of our unfair advantage, the best talent comes to us either directly or through our network.
Our impact community hosts +100 founders today and counting. It is an online space where founders, technical teams, mentors and experts meet to ensure that no query goes unanswered. Also it is a community with perks, as by becoming a part of it you will have access to over €1 million in perks and discounts from the best service providers.
© 2024 Mustard Seed + Partners. , Company No.: 09418809, Acre House 11/15 William Road, London, United Kingdom, NW1 3ER
