Introducing Impact Edge

In 2021, alongside friends and colleagues, we’ve launched Impact Edge to provide advisory services to startups and startup investors on all things related to impact. To keep things lean, we’re staffed on a project basis and work in a distributed way with very few overheads. This enables us to work on any problem around the world and bring in the best people to solve it. Early indications are that our model works with clients in the US, UK and Sub-Saharan Africa.

What we’ll be working on

Impact as an idea is rapidly gaining traction. Take the growth in impact investing or even the frequency of impact related searches on Google as two (of many) data points. This is however an incredibly broad space. We will be focussing on startups and startup investors, here’s why:

1. Business Model Alignment: What excites us most, is where impact is a key part of the business model, where ultimately the payer is interested in the degree of impact being created. In these cases, impact is additive, a source of value, rather than a distraction or a drag on performance. This alignment of incentives is the catalyst which brings together all the inputs necessary to drive impact. We think that the opportunities to create these synergies are most abundant in the early-stage equity ecosystem.
2. Huge Scale at Pace: The venture ecosystem has demonstrated that when all the right inputs come together, big things happen quickly. Think of what Netflix and Disney + have done for home entertainment. Or what Monzo and Revolut have done for personal banking. Or what Headspace and Calm have done for mindfulness. The world is in urgent need of similar hotfixes across many social issues, we think venture is the way to do that.
3. The Venture ‘Way’ is Conducive to Impact: Creating impact requires iterating for creative solutions to complicated problems. This often means lots of testing (and failure) and being driven by user feedback and a vision of a better world. Sound familiar? In many ways the process of creating impact is the same as building a successful startup.

The vision

We will help create a world where the most valuable organisations have impact at their core.

By using our insights, frameworks and processes to help organisations leverage impact as a source of edge.

Because the world needs the venture ecosystem to realise it’s full impact potential.

Why launch an impact advisory firm?

1. It is additive to the ecosystem: If venture is so great, why not build a startup or be an investor? Simply put, because people are already doing that (exceptionally well!). An advisory function whose sole purpose is to learn what works and then replicate that across multiple actors in the ecosystem will have far greater impact. This is partially because existing actors in the ecosystem are constrained in their ability to do this well. Take investors for example, while learning is fundamental to what they do, learning cycles are long (investments can be held for 5–10 years), capacity is focussed primarily on investing rather than learning (as it should be) and the number of data points is typically as large as a portfolio. An advisory function can collect data across a far bigger data set, much faster and is geared to generating insights (because that is how it drives value and therefore revenue).
2. There is demand: With an increasing number of founders and investors interested in impact, there’s huge demand for established expertise to help people get up the learning curve as fast as possible. When I worked at Big Society Capital, we saw a 10x increase in VCs interested in impact venture over a two year period. Part of the reason that these funds came to BSC was because we could provide much needed impact expertise.
3. There is a need: It seems like wherever you turn there’s another crisis or wicked problem that needs to be solved. At the same time, there is increasing recognition that the private sector must be a part of the solution. Equally apparent, is that the private sector does not yet have the right incentives or tools to be able to respond to these needs. Ultimately, if we are going to rid the world of these challenges, we need actors that build capacity in the private sector to be able to respond to these challenges.

In short…

The world needs game-changing solutions fast and we think the venture ecosystem could be the answer. To do that, it needs the right insights, frameworks and processes. We’re here to help build that. We’re here to help you find your Impact Edge.