In March 2018, Homebrew‘s Hunter Walk wrote on his blog, “For VCs, Your Thesis Is Your Portfolio Page, Everything Else is Just Hopes and Dreams“.
And more recently at the BC Tech Summit, in a discussion around diversity and inclusion, Careteam CEO, Alex Greenhill tweeted this, “intent is not the same as impact”.
Loved the #MovetheDial discussion at #BCTECHSummit w @PwC_Canada sponsorship – learned that “intent is not the same as impact” and helping people understand the difference matters! pic.twitter.com/6uRqBXKIkN
— Alex Greenhill MD ? (@atgreenhill) May 15, 2018
At Pique Fund, the inclusive angel fund launched and managed by Pique Ventures, we’ve been investing in leadership diversity since 2014. We started with a lot of intentions:
- To invest in at least 3 women-led startups for every 4 we invested in.
- To invest in a mix of early seed and late seed stage ventures.
- To deliver remarkable blended financial and non-financial returns and an investment approach that encourages the well-being of our stakeholders and communities.
Those intentions have converted into impact:
- 100% of Pique Fund’s portfolio is women-founded and 6 out of our 7 portfolio companies continue to be led by female CEOs).
- 4 out of 7 of our investments were early seed and 3 were late seed, including Beanworks, which we then went on to participate in their Series A round with follow-on investment.
- Based on current valuations, our portfolio IRR is positive and on-track (contact us for more information) and Pique Fund’s investor community and portfolio companies’ aggregate workforce are diverse.
Pique Fund portfolio companies are diverse. 50% of Pique Fund portfolio company management teams are women, compared to only 13% of the average tech company’s executive team according to #MovetheDial’s 2017 Benchmark Report. 45% of entry-level workers in Canadian tech are women, but this percentage declines to only 25% at the VP, SVP, and C-Suite level as noted in the June 2017 report by McKinsey Global Institute.
Pique Fund investors are diverse – and these percentages are based on amounts invested, not just by number of investors.
It’s important to set the intention and even more important to follow-through, do what you say you’re going to do, and then communicate whether the intent turned into impact. This is how change happens.
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For more tools for turning your intent into impact, check out Integrated Investing: Impact Investing with Head, Heart, Body, and Soul, available at all major online book retailers.
Download your free 24-page Integrated Investing Toolkit, by signing up to the Pique Ventures newsletter.
[…] Fund is looking for based on the description of the fund, our existing portfolio, and some of our posts about the fund. As Pique Ventures grows, we endeavour to make the experience of contacting us more […]
[…] Fund is looking for based on the description of the fund, our existing portfolio, and some of our posts about the fund. As Pique Ventures grows, we endeavour to make the experience of contacting us more […]
[…] women representing 80% of the fund’s capital. The aggregate workforce and management teams of our portfolio companies are diverse and based on current valuations, our fund is tracking its target […]