🤔 Rebecca Offensend: The Jill of All Trades

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Rebecca Offensend is an Investment Principal at Working Capital Fund, an early-stage impact VC fund that is part of The Omidyar Group. She focuses on finding and investing in innovative supply chain tech companies that value and promote labor rights. Previously, she was an M&A banker at Perella Weinberg Partners, led strategy and operations for SunSaluter, and ran online marketing programs for Viator (now part of TripAdvisor). She graduated from CMC with honors in PPE and has an MBA from Columbia Business School.

It seems that ‘impact investing,’ while incredibly important, has been a buzzy term for as long as the space has been around, and not without a high signal-to-noise ratio. How does the Working Capital Fund think about balancing investment returns versus impact? Does the firm have metrics it holds itself accountable to in positively impacting global supply chains?

This is a great question because as capital and interest in the space have grown, I think it’s gotten more confusing for everyone about what ‘impact investing’ means. Impact investing is not an asset class or product, but a lens through which investors make decisions, Working Capital Fund included. I often say that impact investors generally fall somewhere along a continuum from ‘entirely financial returns oriented and impact is just our filter for deciding which investments to do’ to ‘entirely impact-oriented and financial returns is just our incentive alignment structure.’

Working Capital Fund is in the middle of that spectrum. We grew out of a non-profit foundation, so our impact roots are really important to us. That said, we expect our investments to scale, grow, and succeed as the standalone, for-profit businesses that they are. Our investment philosophy is to have a high bar for both impact and financial success, so it’s always a case-by-case analysis on how to balance impact and returns expectations. We do have an extensive impact measurement and management (IMM) system that we use to hold ourselves accountable to our investors, our portfolio, and the workers we center our work on. We have worked closely with a deeply experienced Developmental Evaluation team for the last few years to develop ways of measuring change and learning about impact directly from our companies, directly to workers, and more broadly in the global supply chain ecosystem. I highly recommend checking our Annual Impact Report, a public version of which is coming out shortly.

Can you share a bit of sizzle about one of your favorite companies or founders in the Working Capital Fund portfolio and why their work is important?

While I couldn’t pick a favorite child within the portfolio, I am continuously impressed by Kenzen. The company has developed a wearable device that does continuous monitoring for heat stress and over-exertion. They have created a body of work in data analytics and wearables that is miles ahead of anything else on the market. They are one of the leading Smart PPE companies, which was a virtually unknown category when we first met them 2 years ago.

Since the COVID pandemic, Kenzen has been front and center on worker safety, temperature monitoring, and industrial applications for Smart PPE — a category everyone in the world is now intimately familiar with. The team, helmed by CEO Nora Levinson and President Heidi Lehmann, is so impressive, smart, and driven. It’s such a privilege to work with them and I am so excited for all the good things they have coming.

You spent 2.5 years right after CMC as a snowboard instructor at Jackson Hole. That is so awesome. It strikes me as a bit of a contrarian move compared to what I’m sure were many peers heading off to corporate opportunities. What would you say to a current Claremont Colleges senior or recent grad who was considering doing something similar right after graduation, but had concerns about their long-term career path?

I’m a little biased on this, but I’m very much in favor of alternative career paths and taking the scenic route. I’ve never met an interesting person who went straight from Point A to Point B in their career. My time in Jackson helped me clarify my own interests outside the bubble of school (social impact, business innovation, working with smart people) and gave me a taste of what that ‘Living The Dream’ life was all about while I was still young enough to be broke and make mistakes. My path was not without its challenges — there was a global financial crisis happening, my parents weren’t thrilled at the beginning (though they came around), and being a 25-year-old intern wasn’t exactly fun when I rejoined the career world — BUT, I have never regretted that time. Taking some time ‘off’ was a little scary and seemed like a big deal at the time, but as friends and colleagues have pivoted careers, taken time off for family, gone back to school, started businesses, and switched jobs, I ‘caught up’ as I’ve carved my own path — or powder I guess… 🏂.

When I was sitting in my cubicle years later, it was always helpful to know that the grass isn’t greener, since I’d already been on the other side of the fence. Everyone will end up taking some breaks or pursuing different interests at various points in their lives; I just happened to frontload my ‘fun’ a bit, while my knees were still strong enough to snowboard and hike every day! If you’re graduating from the Claremont Colleges, you are undoubtedly a smart, accomplished, driven individual, with a rich career and life ahead of you. Your career will be LONG and it’s unlikely that you will do the same job or have a traditional one-foot-in-front-of-the-other career path, so taking a few extra twists, turns, and detours to pursue something you are passionate about is a unique opportunity, especially in your early 20s.

A lot of current students and grads aspire to work in venture capital, and I’m sure you get hit up all the time about how to ‘break into VC.’ What’s something that most folks interested in the industry miss, but shouldn’t? And how could those folks make those conversations more productive for you, and for them?

My best advice is the same for venture as it is for job searches in general: be specific! Venture capital is a huge industry, so telling someone you ‘want to be in VC ‘ doesn’t say much about what your knowledge and experience is, what you bring to the table, or how you could help your portfolio companies. Someone with an interest and deeper knowledge about a vertical (marketing strategy, sales, DevOps, artificial intelligence, branding, etc) or industry (like supply chains, healthcare, edtech, consumer brands, etc) is a lot more compelling than someone who is a generalist. So develop some specific interests and dive into those communities. Being immersed in a niche category or community will make you a better VC and clear a stronger path for you to join a great VC team when the time comes. I’m so much more excited to chat with people who have specific perspectives, nuanced opinions on markets or trends, or knowledge that they’ve honed over time — those make for the best conversations.

For the last couple of generations, I would say getting an MBA has been a default decision. In more recent years and especially after Covid, however, I think people are starting to question it more and more. How valuable do you think your MBA experience was at Columbia, and as an investor, is an MBA something you look for in a founder?

My Columbia MBA has been an invaluable addition to my career path, but I often caution those who are thinking about or applying to business school to think critically about the costs and benefits of the decision for them specifically. For most jobs and careers, an MBA is not the only way to get there, so it may be an expensive detour that you just don’t need to take to pursue your dreams. That said, if you are pursuing a huge career change as I was (moving from nonprofits to investment banking) or need to level up on a lot of business-specific skills like finance, accounting, operations, etc, it can be a great opportunity. In terms of what we look for in founders, I don’t think we’ve actually backed anyone who has an MBA yet! Maybe that’s just proof that you don’t need an MBA to run a great business.

What is the best way for the community to be in touch and follow what you do? And is there someone or something, in particular, you would love to have people reach out to you about?

Like every VC worth their salt, I’m on Twitter and I’m pretty responsive on LinkedIn, too. I also do angel investing on the side and am always excited to hear about new ideas in supply chains, recycling, and cannabis, especially from female and BIPOC founders!

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