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What was your ESG strategy before contacting Sami?
Impact topics have been important to Founders Future for a long time.
Our CSR approach is purely voluntary, nothing pushes us to do it but we are deeply convinced that this is the meaning of the story and want to contribute to it at our level.
The few regulations ESG which are our responsibility are not yet restrictive enough to force us to start, this should change quickly so we might as well anticipate.
I joined the management company two and a half years ago precisely to launch the Founders Future investment fund dedicated to impact.
The investment phase started investing 18 months ago, and our portfolio currently has about fifteen participations.
For the most initiated, this fund will be labelled Article 8 according to the nomenclature of the European SFDR, Article 9 being unfortunately incompatible with an early stage investment activity like ours.
La CSR strategy of our fund defined 6 quantifiable ESG/Impact impact criteria to monitor our progress:
- Tons of CO2e Issued
- Tons of CO2e contributed/offset
- Tons of CO2e avoided
- Liters of water avoided
- Number of people who have been able to access better health services
- Number of RSE/ESG certifications and labels from our participations
We contractually engage the managers of the companies in which we invest to make a best effort in terms of evaluating and reducing their impact.
These clauses are included in all the partners' agreements that we sign with entrepreneurs.
It is not in a logic of constraint, the objective is educational: we are convinced that soon doing a carbon assessment will be as automatic and recurrent as doing the accounting balance of your company.
It is our role to prepare them and to help them!
Have you already done a carbon assessment?
Yes, when I arrived I immediately started a first carbon balance.
I used theFree estimator from the GoodPlanet Foundation to get a first idea of our impact and discover how the carbon accounting.
As a result of this calculation we also had contributed to global carbon neutrality up to a portion of our emissions, via The company Ecotree.
Following this first experience, it seemed obvious and essential to us to carry out a real complete carbon footprint of our activity.
To have accurate figures on our carbon footprint, but also and above all to set an example for our portfolio and engage the companies in which we have invested to do the same!
Why did you choose Sami?
As an investment fund, we are not intended to favour one provider or tool over another.
As it happens, we know the carbon footprint platform market very well and the main players in the market.
Almost all of them contacted us as part of their fundraising, allowing us to fully understand how they work from the inside and their specificities.
We chose Sami simply by asking our participants what tools they were already using.
Sami was the most common platform, and our very good relationships with the team reinforced our choice.
What did you think of Sami?
We were looking for a platform that was accessible, in terms of price and operation, and easy to use.
These are the two important dimensions for successfully engaging our participations, whose founders are not necessarily familiar with this carbon world and have overflowing agendas.
If I want to convince them to start, I need a flexible and fast approach, and that's what I found.
Working with Sami was very educational, each point of contact with the online platform and our dedicated expert were opportunities to make progress on carbon and climate topics.
I liked the collective emulation created internally, the whole team being integrated into the calculation of our impact in a fun way. And everyone was able to participate in the presentation of our annual results.
The relationship with the various members of the team was also very good and we understood each other right away.
Our expert was always available to answer our questions and those of our participations, whom we all consulted to collect the data necessary for the calculations. It was also a good way to get them started and to introduce them to the process.
What are the main lessons of your carbon footprint?
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As an investment fund, the biggest impact of our impact is of course linked to our investments.
Indeed, carbon accounting rules require us to include in our Scope 3 a portion of the carbon footprint of the companies we finance, up to the amount of our financing.
It is logical, the carbon footprint measures our dependence on carbon and our business and financial results depend above all and above all on the activity of our portfolio.
Our total carbon footprint for 2021 is 2,291 tons of CO2e, including only 80 tons linked to our management company. Founders Future teams and offices represent 3.5% of the total, with the rest linked to our investments.
We discovered that 5 companies represent over 75% of our total carbon footprint.
This is explained by the fact that these companies produce and sell physical products, while the others have, like Founders Future, mainly digital and intangible activities.
The results provided could also have allowed us to be compared to our sector, although this is not something we are interested in at the moment.
What are the next steps before next year?
The results of our 2021 carbon footprint confirm our CSR policy.
The main action we can take as an investment fund is to raise awareness among our participations and push them to implement their own low-carbon approach.
This starts with the essential step of measuring, via a carbon balance, life cycle analyses Or a Combo of the two approaches.
Indeed, as we have seen, our impact is above all their impact: if our portfolio decarbonizes mechanically, our carbon balance decreases.
And if our portfolio measures its impact more precisely, our carbon balance also becomes mechanically more accurate.
La raising awareness of our portfolio is therefore our biggest decarbonization lever and the number 1 action to focus on, our investments representing +95% of our total CO2 impact.
It is also our role and our responsibility as a financial investor, to best advise our startups to support their long-term strategic decisions.
To encourage our entrepreneurs to start up, we will organize a climate program with Sami in early 2023. The objective is to invite our entire ecosystem to a masterclass organized with Sami to explain to them in practice how we care about the climate as a company and what we have to gain (or lose if we don't)
This program will be accompanied by feedback from companies that have already taken the plunge, and an attractive promotional code for those who want to follow the movement and be supported by Sami.
Other awareness-raising actions will follow, including the organization of Climate frescoes for our wallet.
