Better Money Better World

Nasir Qadree raised an oversubscribed first fund through Covid from large institutional capital sources like PayPal, Bank of America and Truist Bank to rethink the building blocks of wealth in our society. Nasir’s pathway into venture was not a straight line. After starting his career at Goldman Sachs, Nasir found his way to the private markets after opening a coffee shop in the West Village and discovering that many of his patrons were venture capitalists. Today, Nasir is building a new type of community around his values with posts ranging from his goal of running 51 marathons, DJ-ing at a club each week, and meditation. Together, Zeal represents a new VC firm to deploy capital from some of the largest institutions in America to bridge the economic opportunity gap.

Liesel Pritzker Simmons and Ian Simmons challenged orthodoxy when they invested 100% of their family wealth into impact investing by creating a new type of family office -- Blue Haven Initiative. Blue Haven invests through third party managers with an impact lens across asset classes, from public equities to private equity to early-stage VC to hedge funds. The only in-house invested platform is Blue Haven’s $50M allocation to an evergreen fund to support mission-driven, tech enabled startups in sub-Saharan Africa. Liesel and Ian have an intergenerational view on performance and the impact that their capital has on the world as they are invest for their children and their children’s children. They view ESG as a way to mitigate risk, which helps maintain and grow their assets.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick partnered in impact with buyout behemoth Bain Capital. Together, they created Bain Double Impact which was recently selected by PEI as the top impact fund in the world. By investing in mission-driven, scaled middle market companies operating in traditional industries with clear impact metrics, the Bain Double Impact team is bringing impact into middle market private equity. With three major exits already under their belt, Governor Patrick believes that while the planet is in trouble, communities are in trouble and capitalism itself is in trouble, there is room for optimism as new thinking pushes through the orthodoxy of the past to create a new system of capitalism that maximizes value for all stakeholders.

With over 1,000 data scientists and engineers and 70 petabytes of data, Two Sigma is uniquely positioned to seek to bring data science to impact investing. Warren Valdmanis co-founded the Two Sigma Impact team after 14 years at Bain Capital, including a role in creating Bain Double Impact. Warren is focused on solving two threats to our economy: companies and executives prioritizing short term profits over long term growth and and the hollowing out of the middle-class workforce.  Both topics have social impact metrics where private capital can play a role in helping to shape the future.

Brian Trelstad has been a driving force of virtually every innovation in impact investing for the last 20 years. He helped start the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs when Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund and Brian helped lead the creation of the widely used Impact Reporting and Investing Standards (“IRIS”). Now, he’s telling the impact investing community to stop innovating and start implementing to provide a clear, concise description of what impact is and how to judge it. After all, if Robert Parker can distill the quality of a fine wine to one number, why can’t impact investors pick a simple way to describe impact? Brian challenges core aspects of private investing business models. Is the 2 and 20 economic model of private equity a bug in the impact system as it perpetuates inequality? Should LPs pay more carry to firms that deliver above promised impact? After all, today, (almost) no one gets compensated on their impact metrics. But some day, LPs will be able to incent impact the same way they incentivize performance – with cash payments to good managers. Brian dispels the myths of impact investing and then builds back towards a more equitable future.

Closed Loop Partners invests in products and services that don’t depend on natural resource extraction or the disposal of those products in land fill to be successful. Closed Loop is a VC through buyout stage investor in the circular economy – proving that the circular economy is much more economical and higher quality than the companies of the last century. Through their investments, Closed Loop is showing that “those that profited in the previous era will be consigned to their rightful place: the waste bin of history”. Ron Gonen learned about the value and cost of waste as New York City’s Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation and brings that lens to reshape how our economy uses resources and then recycles.

Electric vehicles are superior to internal combustion powered cars. Distributed energy is superior to centralized energy. Sustainable agriculture is more profitable than dirty agriculture. Many trillions of dollars are flowing into recreating our 100 year old industrial infrastructure. The cost of solar power has dropped ~90% since the founding of the Ecosystem Integrity Fund which creates the opportunity to create venture like returns from deploying over 20,000 charging stations and saving over 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Geoff Eisenberg and Devin Whatley have decided that backing clearly superior technologies and products was the pathway to bringing institutional capital to sustainable investing. From alcohol imbued Kambucha to hydrogen based aviation, EIF is leading the charge to create sustainable companies of the future.

SJF Ventures has pioneered venture-like growth in sustainable businesses since 1999. Co-founded by Dave Kirkpatrick, SJF was initially called the “Sustainable Jobs Fund” – founded with the belief that environmentally driven companies would create good jobs. But today, SJF has built deep expertise across verticals like healthcare, education, and the environment. Dave, and Emma Sissman, lead at SJF for implementing impact and growth strategies, talk about how SJF drives high impact and high growth at the same time.

Brandon Shelton loved jumping out of airplanes as an airborne officer. After leaving the service and working on Wall Street, Brandon is now co-founder of TFX Capital which backs high performing veterans who are domain experts tackling nasty problems. Veterans make up 0.5% of the population but start 10% of the small businesses in America – making veterans an attractive demographic to invest behind. In the 1960s, US government funding helped create the first boom in Silicon Valley. TFX Capital is helping to create a new investment ecosystem around veterans that will perhaps create the next golden age of interaction between Silicon Valley and the US Military.

DBL Partners is renowned for leading early investments in companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. DBL Co-Founder Nancy Pfund built her career with a simple mission: to take on companies that are stifling innovation. From the Detroit Big 3 to Satellite companies that monopolized access to space, Nancy leads investments in startups that take on the incumbents and win. Listen to the story of how a young staffer at the Sierra Club in Washington DC became one of Fortune’s top 25 Eco-Innovators by backing passionate entrepreneurs who are decarbonizing the economy.