Regenerative Finance, Unicorn Hunting In Impact Investing, Impact Certificates & More
Impactish Newsletter Issue #002: November 16, 2022
It’s definitely been a 🧨 week. For those aware of the FTX sh*tshow, you’ve had about enough of seeing how Tech can negatively impact the world, so lend us your eyes and the Impactish team will restore your faith in technology’s potential for good.
Bit of a theme this week on the finance side of Impact Tech - David talks regenerative finance and chats with Brianna Welsh about impact certificates, Kabir discusses the concept of being sustainable-by-design, and we dive into the best tech to promote consumer environmental action…
Let’s get into it.
THIS WEEK’S ISH
Each week our Impactish contributors focus on a specific area of Impact Tech and bring their findings or opinions back to you.
We also curate a short selection of some the best stuff we came across in the world of Tech. For more, you should check out our Twitter account, (and tell us if we are meant to be also trying out Mastodon, and if you are there already - what’s the water like?).
It’s a pretty vast landscape so feel free to send us any news or cool projects we should check out, or tag us on any great Tweets you think we should see.
ReFi - The New Eco-Economic Frontier
Heard the phrase ‘ReFi’ and figured you kinda know what it means, but wouldn’t want anyone to actually question you on it? Check out this article from David to get your foundation principles down.
Investing in Sustainable-by-Design
Read Kabir’s thesis on finding the next big investment opportunity from startups which are ‘Sustainable-by-Design’. A few great examples to throw around the next time people say an environmental business could never be a Unicorn.
In other news…
We love this take from Inca42 on why Impact Tech in India is seeing more investment funds heading its way.
Also loving the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive from the EU on increasing transparency on sustainability measures. For the TL,DR you can check out our tweet earlier in the week.
MOST IMPACTISH
Brianna Welsh from Reneum shares her insight with David on fundraising for environmental focused initiatives. Only 19 minutes, so if you’re keen to hear about Impact Certificates and how Reneum is using blockchain tech to fund renewable energy, check it out on your daily commute or walk.
DEEP-ISH PERSPECTIVES
We ask three Impact Technology experts what they think…
What Are The Most Effective Ways To Enable Consumer Environmental Action?
John Ellison, Source @ ReFi DAO says: “if we can redesign money as a technology to make planet positive behaviors the most lucrative thing to do then we will see wide scale environmental action across the board”
Chelsea Burns, Founder @ Escaladora Ventures says: “The growth of climate fintech solutions over the last several years has given retail investors the opportunity to invest in the green economy.”
Narayan Iyer, Founder @ Laminar Scientific says: “innovate and provide technology that is convenient for a consumer to use, with reduced energy intermittency and a lower levelized cost of energy.”
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
In keeping what became an unintentional theme this week, we’ve got an introductory video for you on the topic of ESG.
Check out Nikita Turk’s video for the basics.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
We’ve been pondering the fable ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Hans Christian Anderson. It is a cautionary tale warning against “courtly pride and intellectual vanity”, and the events around the FTX collapse mirror this tale from the 1800s painfully accurately.
In our version, the Emperor is the Venture Capitalists - desperate to be cool and relevant and thought of as intellectually superior to all others. Giving money out on the basis of ‘investing in the person even more than the project”. The devious ‘clothes makers’ are SBF and FTX - constantly feeding the idea (so easily nurtured on Twitter) that if you didn’t ‘get it’, clearly you weren’t smart enough. The Crowd of onlookers watching the Emperor walk proudly by, also wanting to appear clever, are the Media, the Twitter ‘fanclub’ and retail investors.
Our comparison perhaps falls down when it comes to the one innocent enough to reveal the truth, but perhaps it was Coindesk, who were confident in what they had seen to brave the dissenting mob.
The fact a fable from almost 200 years ago just played out suggests we aren’t quite as advanced as we think we are. Systems need to change to correct for human fallibility, and maybe these new tech projects are the things to do it.
We really hope the more we highlight the opportunities within Impact investing, the more capital we can attract to it. A start might be to stop focusing on ‘THE person’ and instead focus on the project, the plans, the potential, and ALL the people it should serve’.
See you next time when we’ll go for a cheerier closing thought!