The Urbantech Investor Playbook: 25 experts share their best practices

Stonly Baptiste
Urban Us
Published in
2 min readAug 3, 2019

Forward thinking investors increasingly prioritize investing in underserved sectors of the economy and in startups with what some call ‘unfair advantages’ — such as an exceptionally-positioned founding team, product insight, or early start in-market.

Urbanization and climate action have created a unique opportunity to combine top tier financial return goals with outsized public benefits. But the best opportunities often exist across multiple traditional sectors.

Fleshing out an investable strategy prompts multiple questions. If you’re investing in the electrification of transportation, do you focus on the energy sector, automotive, or even real estate? Or if you’re investing in resilience, do you invest in local government first responders, private insurance or construction firms?

A playbook

Our investment experience over the last few years, and the increasing interest from other investors, have prompted us to surface our best practices and compare notes with leading impact investors. The result, which today we’re excited to announce, is the Urbantech Investor Playbook. Urbantech describes startup technology companies that directly improve city life and cities’ sustainability through unusual strategies and insights that many investors consider unfair advantages.

The Urbantech Investor Playbook compiles best practices from over 25 Limited Partners (LPs), — from impact funds, foundations, and family offices, — as well as direct investors like venture capitalists, wealth management firms, accelerators, incubators, and more. We particularly thank the following contributors:

Ben Zachs, Zachs Family Investment Fund

Charlie Macdonald, Impact Investment Group

Chintan Panchal, RPCK

Colin Le Duc, Generation IM

Dan Luscher, ADAP Capital

Ellen Martin, Closed Loop Partners

Ian Adams, Clean Energy Trust

Jesse Simmons, Align Impact

Jo Fackler, Impact Management Project

Justin Motika, Advantage Capital

Karla Mora, Alante Capital

Kathryn Petit, The Urban Institute

Lisa Sebesta, Fresh Source Capital

María Puch Herreros de Tejada, New Ventures

Mathilde Beniflah, Beyond Capital

Mike Belinsky, Bridgespan Group

Mike Winterfeld, Active Impact Investments

Randy Castleman, Direct Investment Resources

Richard Ambrose, Pomona Impact

Rob Eloff, Lateral Capital, https://www.latcap.co/

Sarah Freeman, Bridges Fund Management

Shuaib Siddiqui, Surdna Foundation

Vineet Diwadkar, AECOM

What it covers

To make this playbook, we asked investors to share industry-tested best practices on how to improve deal access, evaluate opportunities, and accelerate investment decisions in urbantech startups and investment managers. Specific topics we cover include:

  • Sectors of the urbantech landscape
  • Finding and accessing the best opportunities
  • Understanding emerging technologies
  • Scaling social benefits
  • Choosing appropriate success metrics
  • What makes a good urbantech LP

Urban Us is indebted to our friends and colleagues’ wisdom, and expect others will find the content as valuable as we do. You can access the full Urbantech Investor’s Playbook here, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts.

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