BGV's Impact and Learning Report 2020

We're delighted to share the launch of our Impact & Learning Report 2020.As a tech for good investor, supporting and delivering positive impact is core to our investment approach. Our annual impact and learning reports provide us the opportunity to share our journey, progress and reflections on our performance against that. Each year we aim to build on the insights shared in the previous year’s report.

Two VC industry firsts

This year's report sees us breaking new ground with two VC industry firsts. Under the section ‘Our commitment to founder diversity’ we believe that we will be the first European VC to share such extensive diversity and inclusion data on our portfolio. The results of this survey go beyond basic diversity information, such as age, gender, and ethnicity, with additional factors that hold many founders back from establishing and growing new businesses, such as socio-economic background, sexual orientation and disability. In addition to this, our section ‘Unintended consequences in tech for good’ sees us become the first VC globally to map and share our portfolio’s risks of unintended consequences - defined as unforeseen negative effects of a business's products or services. Despite being purpose-driven, tech for good is no less immune to unintended consequences and we believe as investors we must take responsibility in accounting for these risks and supporting our portfolio to mitigate them  

Tech for good in 2020

Elsewhere in the report, we share how BGV and our portfolio companies responded to the challenges of 2020, in addition to our highlights of the year. These included three of our portfolio ventures raising successful Series A investment rounds and achieving one of our first meaningful exits as our portfolio company Overleaf was acquired by Digital Science. We also include the usual insights on our portfolio performance with data on the increase in portfolio user numbers, revenues, and funding.

Our approach to impact measurement and management

We continue to pull back the curtain on how BGV and our portfolio measures and manages impact including stories from three of our portfolio founders on how they validate their impact as an early-stage tech for good venture. Continuing to align ourselves with the Impact Management Project’s Impact Class Matrix, we share details on the ‘additionality’ and ‘engagement’ BGV delivers to its portfolio alongside some stats from a portfolio survey on our success on these fronts.

BGV's diversity and inclusion

Finally, as one of the first VC firms to have published data on our team’s diversity and inclusion in our previous year’s report, we build on this by sharing updated data and information on how we bake these practices into BGV as a business.As pioneers of tech for good investing we see it as our responsibility to be as transparent as possible, so that others can learn from our efforts. We hope that our insights from 2020 contribute to the continued growth of a thriving tech for good investment ecosystem.

Download the full report here