Envisioning Climate Solutions Fund (managed by Envisioning Partners)
About
Since their first investment in April 2017, Envisioning Partners has prioritised sustainable urban solutions that create the most environmental and social impact.
Through its investments, Envisioning Partners aims to address societal and environmental impacts including gender equity. Initially, they had a separate sub-fund investing 100% in women-founded startups. However, they faced difficulty convincing LPs (limited partners) to invest in funds with very specific restrictions; some LPs viewed investing only in women-owned companies as tokenism. Some women founders, too, were sceptical of taking investments from women-only funds, fearing a loss of credibility with other investors.
Type of actor
Venture capital
Investment type
Private, investing in deep tech in Asia and North America with a focus on series A to B. Ticket size ranges from $1 million to $5 million per investment.
Operates in
South Korea, United States, Singapore
Sectors
Climate technology
Approach
As a result of lessons learned from their first fund, Envisioning Partners decided to switch to an internal-only gender lens and invest in women entrepreneurs from non-gender-labelled funds like their Climate Solutions Fund. They found that they can best support women founders by simultaneously integrating gender lens principles in investment strategy while de-emphasising gender in their fund marketing.
Now, Envisioning Partners applies a gender lens across all of its funds instead of having one specific fund for women-founded companies. Envisioning focuses on directing capital towards women entrepreneurs and ensuring gender-balanced leadership in their portfolio companies. Today, Envisioning Partners’ main gender lens investing ambitions include:
Setting a gender balance target for the companies they fund: 30% of portfolio companies or more must be founded by women entrepreneurs (women-owned) or have a woman CEO (women-led).
Increasing women’s leadership and participation across all levels in portfolio companies. A secondary step for Envisioning Partners is to improve the quality of life of working women, on the basis that doing so creates both social and business value.
As for climate, the Envisioning Climate Solutions Fund sets specific climate impact criteria in cooperation with investee companies. The explicit mandate of the fund is to invest in companies with the highest climate change mitigation potential. These include climate tech solutions like energy transition solutions, sustainable foods, and carbon technology. Solutions need to:
Address a tangible emissions source
Have direct impact
Be scalable (market ready within five years), and
Not risk delaying net zero in the long run.
Impact
Out of the seven companies in the Envisioning Partners Climate Solutions Fund portfolio so far as of June 2022, three are founded by women entrepreneurs. Envisioning’s internal target was for 30% of their investees to be women-owned or women-led businesses, which they have surpassed at this time.
The kinds of women-owned climate tech solutions companies they invest in include:
“Envisioning Partners has uncovered for itself the social and business values created by women as entrepreneurs, as professionals advancing their careers, and as consumers.”
Novoloop, a plastic waste upcycling solution provider
Mango Materials, an advanced biodegradable plastics company
KETOS, a real time water analytics solutions provider.
Key takeaways
As a result of steady investment in the impact space, Envisioning Partners has two key takeaways for others wanting to invest at the nexus of gender and climate:
1. First, gender equality, which Envisioning Partners designated as a key part of its agenda from inception, is not a separate investment domain. It must be a ‘viewpoint’ that penetrates and applies to all domains. Working a gender lens into their overarching investment strategy enables gender integration across all of their business activities.
2. Second, applying a gender lens to investment opportunities can offer new perspectives in investment – such as discovering implicit market biases and underutilised talent. Envisioning Partners has uncovered for itself, through measuring participation and leadership of women in the deep tech sector, the social and business values created by women as entrepreneurs, as professionals advancing their careers, and as consumers. Envisioning Partners reflects this understanding in its investment strategies.
What’s next?
Envisioning Partners hopes to influence other investment companies to invest with gender mainstreaming in mind. In developed markets, they have found that convincing investors that women are still less privileged is a difficult conversation. While inclusivity is a focus for impact in developing markets, they have found it less prevalent in developed market contexts. They therefore hope to create a playbook with explicit details of their internal processes and principles so that other firms can follow in their lead.