Our guest this episode is Douglas Hansen‑Luke. Douglas is the  founder and Executive Chair of Future Planet Capital, an impact‑led, profit‑first venture capital firm.

Douglas has spent over 20 years working across emerging markets, sovereign wealth funds and new asset classes, always with a belief in the ‘efficient deployment of capital’. It was reading Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save which crystallised his desire to focus on the world’s biggest challenges.

Future Planet Capital now manages just under £500m, investing across three interconnected strategies:

• Global Growth — backing later‑stage companies emerging from the world’s top centres of innovation
• National Deep Tech — including management of the UK government’s deep tech fund, commercialising research from 50,000+ UK researchers
• Regional Impact — currently focused on the West Midlands, supporting local innovation ecosystems

Douglas describes the model as combining profit discipline with purpose, anchored in the three principles of global benchmarking, impact clarity and data-driven objectivity. 

• Two themes stand out:
  Impact and returns are mutually reinforcing — without profitability, institutional capital won’t flow to solutions that matter.
• Bias is a structural risk in venture investing, and Future Planet uses both data and competing innovation hubs to counter it.

Visit Future Planet Capital at: https://futureplanetcapital.com/

Connect with Douglas at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhansenluke/