Impactful Startups V.013

This series provides weekly insights into my top startups (Pre-Seed // Seed) that are striving to make an impact across the globe.

Today I’m stepping away from companies and the light is on a venture fund. Which is very exciting because usually I’m covering impactful startups that are making a real difference. I briefly touch on their funding history and their financial health but I’ve yet to cover the venture funds of the world that are working to help these companies grow. So with that being said, Future Planet Capital is the star today. They’re a great fund based out of London and are investing across various funding stages. They’re relatively small but have had success with their investments thus far. They were founded in 2016 and this is their mission statement:

• Future Planet is the impact-led, global venture capital firm built to invest in growth companies from the world’s top universities. We provide venture and growth funding to entrepreneurs and businesses profitably solving the world’s greatest challenges in Climate Change, Education, Health, Sustainable Growth & Security.
• Our mission is not simply to deliver excellent returns but to create a lasting impact. Our network and strategy provide unrivalled access to growth companies emerging from leading academic institutions and the centres of innovation that surround them.

Alongside that we also get a sense of their investment strategy:

• Future Planet Capital links global centres of innovation to opportunities capable of delivering breakthrough returns in the areas of climate change, education, health, security and sustainable growth.
• We believe achieving long term profitability and meaningful impact is both possible and necessary for businesses to thrive in tomorrows economy. Through careful analysis and selection of investment opportunities under our “impact drives returns” investment thesis, we seek the intersection of growth and meaningful impact while addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges.
• Our funds take a multi-stage approach to provide growth finance at scale to proven technologies and life-science companies. Our proven team source direct deals in addition to working alongside a limited number of strategic partner managers with strong university-links to gain unfair access to dealflow from innovation dense ecosystems.

To date they’ve made 8 investments, across different stages as mentioned and they have taken the lead on several of their investments. They’ve even have had an exit, Halo Neuroscience, which is a neurotech company focused on using electrical neurostimulation to unlock human performance and treat human disease.

Looking deeper at their other portfolio companies below:

CONGENICA — Provider of clinical genome analytics to support medical practitioners treating patients with rare genetic diseases.

VACCITECH — T-cell immunotherapy and vaccine company behind the Oxford/Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine and ChAdOx platform.

PRAGMATIC — Designer and manufacturer of IoT enable flexible integrated circuits at a fraction of the cost of current silicon chips.

LEARNERBLY — Corporate learning & development platform and marketplace, curating offline & online content hassle free, from trusted vendors.

NAVENIO — AI geolocation engine enabling indoor localisation, auto-mapping, and the uberfication of work and healthcare.

It really is great to highlight funds that are working in the impact vertical. So many times great funds like Future Planet are overlooked by the big guys who are house hold names. I’ve written an entire article on how financial returns can be derived in the impact space and many funds are very successful in this world. They’re fueling the companies that we may not see in our daily lives, but are so crucial to the global society.

For those reasons, I commend Future Planet and wanted to highlight their success as well as their portfolio. As you’d imagine they have quite a small team <10 members but a great advisory board and you can see more about their internal talent here — https://futureplanetcapital.com/team