Impact investing

which would mean that for every investment any investor puts into any of the funds in Ghana, your liability is limited to the amount you've invested in that fund.

And we also have, for instance, Impact Invest in Ghana, which is also another association we birthed for the ecosystem, which is very particular about the investments we make, not only Venture Capital Trust Fund, but of course the funds we invest in and other funds in Ghana, the impact of such investments, be it the social, the environmental, and the governor's impact.

And so talking about the ecosystem broadly, VCTF since 2004 has played, indeed, we even have now the first private fund of funds, Chegaba.

The CEO for Che Gabba is a former general manager from Venture Capital Trust Fund.

I mean, so over the years, since 2004, we've tested the model.

VCTF has led, given the resources we've gotten from the state, in building a thriving ecosystem today.

And any time you participate in any of our conferences, the national conference, be it organized by GVC or Impact Invest in Ghana, you see the lived experiences of these actors in the private equity ecosystem.

And this has been made possible by the existence of venture capital transfer.

Nicolas works at a particularly interesting point in the impact ecosystem.

He's building the market for impact secondaries and exploring how liquidity can help impact investing grow, mature, and became, if not more mainstream, at least wider, way wider in size and therefore in impact.

In this conversation, we unpack what it really takes to build a functioning impact market.

Some would say efficient impact market.

From the tensions between impact investing and traditional asset management, to the role of dedicated impact players, the different forms of secondary transactions, and the question of whether impact should influence how we value a company.

We also explored a particularly important element.

How can we create liquidity without undermining the patient capital that many impact businesses need to scale? Or said differently, the patient capital and the specific quality of capital that impact businesses need to fully develop and thrive.

Ultimately, Nicolas makes the case for looking beyond the individual investment and thinking about additionality at the level of the market itself, asking not only where capital can create impact, but how investors as a whole, as a collective, can help make impact investing more investable, scalable, and resilient to asset and asset class.

There's no cookie cutter approach to, to governance, just as there's no cookie cutter approach to then what a go-to-market strategy is, that they, they all fall, uh, under the same process.

I, I think as well, just to round that thought out, I was really lucky working at the beginning of my comms career with, um, the late Mark Mobius, who was of course the founder of Emerging Market Investing at Franklin Templeton, and really the founder of Impact Investing, which is sort of what we now call ESG investing.

And he, he would've loved the article that you shared, and probably had the same visceral reaction to me, which is very, very simply, if a company needs to grow and it can't, or a company's in trouble and you don't know how to fix it, the first place you go to is who is leading the company and how are they leading the company? That, that is the G.

What, what is remarkable about that is it seems so obvious and that, you know, we, we talk about this in law.

My name is Scott Arnell, and each week I sit down with a world-class investor to uncover their secrets of profitable ESG, impact, and socially responsible investing.

Find out more at SRI360.com. For over a decade, we've been promised billions, even trillions of dollars moving off the sidelines into impact investing.

The capital is there.

The appetite is real.

And so one of the entities that's doing the technical assistance, Habitat for Humanity, brings deep housing expertise to ensure that the investees receiving the capital are really thinking quite a bit about the product The affordable housing product, the strength of that, the effectiveness of it alongside the capital they're receiving from the fund.

And I think those examples are quite important.

We've seen an impact investing quite effective, where especially you have a thematic coalescence at the portfolio level.

And then there's also market level, Scott.

They want to maximize impact with sustainable returns.

So from their perspective, if they can increase impact and that might cost them a little bit on the return, that's okay for them, which is different than a lot of other investors in the impact investing world.

The global impact investment world, Investment Network does an annual survey of whether investors are impact first or finance first.

And the impact first investors are usually about 15 to 20% of the overall world of impact investing, which is a tiny part of the overall world of investing.

So we're able to focus on basic human needs because our investors aren't looking for the highest possible return.

That's Aaron Rudberg, managing partner at S2G Investments, the Chicago-based firm co-founded by Walmart heir Lucas Walton, which recently closed its $1 billion solutions fund.

I spoke with Aaron about the opportunity and the impact in financing growth stage companies too big for venture capitalists and too small for infrastructure investors, and about his views on the dangers of groupthink in climate and impact investing.

I think you'll enjoy our conversation.

Aaron Rudberg, welcome to the podcast.

which would mean that for every investment any investor puts into any of the funds in Ghana, your liability is limited to the amount you've invested in that fund.

And we also have, for instance, Impact Invest in Ghana, which is also another association we birthed for the ecosystem, which is very particular about the investments we make, not only Venture Capital Trust Fund, but of course the funds we invest in and other funds in Ghana, the impact of such investments, be it the social, the environmental, and the governor's impact.

And so talking about the ecosystem broadly, VCTF since 2004 has played, indeed, we even have now the first private fund of funds, Chegaba.

The CEO for Chegaba is a former general manager from Venture Capital Trust Fund.

We've had two major phases.

The first is what I call the model testing phase, which is, of course, when the whole idea of venture capital private equity investment came to be through the enactment of act 680 of course till date many even wonder what venture capital investing is or what venture capital really is i mean so over the years since 2004 we've tested the model VCTF has led, given the resources we've gotten from the state, in building a thriving ecosystem today.

And any time you participate in any of our conferences, the national conference, be it organized by GVC or Impact Invest in Ghana, you see the lived experiences of these actors in the private equity ecosystem.

And this has been made possible by the existence of venture capital transfer.