Pledge Ventures at Two

A lot has happened since we last shared an update on Pledge Ventures. As I write this, we’ve just closed our 21st investment and we have a full pipeline of exciting opportunities, with a few more likely to go through imminently. We’re a few weeks on from our first ever community event, we’ve just launched our new website (designed in collaboration with the fab team at Proxy) and we’ve just made our third donation to Founders Pledge, bringing the total donated to nearly $500K! All of which is to say, we have been - and will continue to be - very busy.

The holiday season provided a great opportunity to reflect on the last year, and I was struck by a couple of things: how far we’ve come in a year; and what’s made our rapid progress possible.

In April 2024, Pledge Ventures I had its final close at $53 million, welcoming more incredible, aligned LPs into the fold. Over the course of 2024 our deployment rate accelerated and we made 15 investments into some very cool Founders Pledge member companies, with a strong cohort of companies emerging despite a challenging environment for growth rounds. New additions to the portfolio included Bolt, DICE, Cera, Carwow, and Twelve (more here on our website). We’ve made investments in seven different countries into everything from AI to health care, e-commerce to carbon capture.

The thing that’s been commented on most over this time is the speed at which a small team is making investments across a wide range of industries and geographies. This is of course the model - stay lean so we can maximise donations to Founders Pledge, and build a broad, diversified portfolio of 60+ companies. Nonetheless, understanding and diligencing this many companies in quick succession is no mean feat.

We’re able to operate at this level for one simple reason: we’re not doing it alone.

The support and enthusiasm that the Founders Pledge community has shown for Pledge Ventures has been overwhelming. It goes without saying that we’re indebted to our LPs, our Investment Committee, the founders who’ve made space in their rounds for us, and the teams at Founders Pledge and Headline who’ve supported us since day zero. However, we’ve also had the privilege of learning from many more founders and investors within our network who’ve helped us to understand the intricacies of the opportunities in front of us. It turns out that the Founders Pledge community is not just a ‘Who’s Who’ of the best founders and investors in venture capital, but a pretty unparalleled roster of experts and advisors on almost any subject you can think of, many of whom have given up their time and gone above and beyond for us.

In December at the Barbican Conservatory, we had our first opportunity to bring together many of those who have played a part in the Pledge Ventures journey so far. The mood was conspicuously uplifting, and it reminded us that there is something incredibly special about a group of people who are held together not just by value, but by values. This is a community who have opted in to trying to make the world a better place, and where alignment runs deep, even though the day-to-day for most is heads down running a start-up.

The good news is the Founders Pledge community is growing, and increasingly the conversation seems to be turning towards how we can do good while doing well, both in and outside our immediate network. Founders are more focused than ever on understanding and growing the impact of their for-profit businesses, and investors are actively seeking out opportunities that not only drive returns but also correspond with their social values.

There is clearly still a long way to go here, in part because the options for those who want to maximise both profit and impact remain limited.

Many might argue that with the growth of impact investing, particularly in Europe, we have the solution we need - after all, the median IRR for the 2020 vintage (the latest year for which Pitchbook has published data) puts private market impact funds on par with non-impact funds. This looks promising from the perspective of returns (though more data is needed before we can be confident about this), but not all companies can be impact companies, not all impactful companies do the same amount of good in the world, and not all social problems can be solved through for-profit businesses. Impact funds increasingly seem to be able to avoid making a profit trade-off, but in accepting them as the sole solution rather than just one of the tools at our disposal, I’d argue we’re not being nearly ambitious enough when it comes to making a dent in the world’s most pressing problems.

This is the challenge Pledge Ventures is seeking to address. We’re investing in some of the most exciting companies globally - some of which could be classed as impact companies, others not - and aiming to generate outsized returns for LPs. Simultaneously, we’re providing support to Founders Pledge as they drive funding to the non-profits making the biggest difference in the world. When our LPs do well, Founders Pledge does well - the two are in lockstep. We believe the impact Pledge Ventures can have via Founders Pledge will ultimately be far greater than we could have achieved through investing for impact, and we’re still not asking our LPs to compromise their returns.

Collectively, we need to raise the bar in 2025.

The myriad challenges our world faces are accelerating at a much faster rate than any one approach can tackle alone, so my call to action for 2025 is simple: be ambitious about your impact.

Look for the most effective ways to do all the things in your life: from your investments to your philanthropy, the way you run your company to the company you choose to start next, whether focused on profit or purpose, or sitting somewhere at the intersection. Be intentional about the change you want to see in the world and remain optimistic about our chances of achieving it.

This blog is issued by Pledge Ventures Ltd FRN: 986310 an Appointed Representative of Kin Capital Partners LLP FRN:656789 who are authorised by the FCA.