Our 2018 Learning and Impact Report
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Our 2018 Learning and Impact Report

Paul Miller
Written by
Paul Miller
Posted on
June 26, 2019

We're delighted to publish our annual Learning and Impact Report, showing the progress we made in 2018 and what we’re working on in 2019. There’s quite a bit in the report and one of the things we’re particularly proud of is the great results from our commitment to investing in diverse teams, in fact we’re delighted to say that:

44p in every £1 invested by BGV went to all female founding teams and 21p to mixed teams (vs. industry average of 1p in every £1 and 10p in every £1 respectively)

We’ve also taken the decision as a firm to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for an additional way to assess and measure impact across our portfolio. This decision was a result of a pilot programme we ran in 2018 with two angel investors from our network, Andy Wales and Ed Gillespie, looking for founders who were accelerating progress towards the SDGs. Through this programme we worked with two great startups – Agronomex and Panda Packaging, addressing the reduction of food waste at the farm gate and eliminating plastics respectively (SGD 12 Responsible Consumption and Production).Across the portfolio, we currently have 55 active companies mapped across 13 of the 17 SDG's. A few other highlights from the report include:

  • London's Tech for Good Ecosystem continues to grow: The Tech for Good meetup grew to nearly 8,000 members at the end of 2018 and we reached over a million people globally through the techforgood.global channels.
  • High-levels of follow-on investment across the portfolio: £2.6m invested by BGV has led to the portfolio going on to raise a further £64m from other investors.
  • The close of the UK's first SEIS and EIS fund for tech for good. We received an overwhelming response to our new fund, showing huge demand for individuals to invest in tech for good, so much so we're planning a subsequent round later this year.
  • Three fantastic additions to our senior team: with Amanda Feldman joining our Board and Steven Clarke and Trevor Hope joining our Investment Committee.

We’re really excited for the future, including the next phase of growth for BGV. Our aim is to build on the rapidly growing interest in tech for good from both founders and investors, and to act on and share our ongoing learnings as industry leader. As ever, we lead by example and will continue to strive to be the best tech for good investors that we can be. Read our Report here.