PURPOSE AND VALUES

It is a prerequisite that the start-up’s founding team cares deeply about climate change and the sustainability challenges facing the planet with the sustainability contribution at the very core of the business model.

FOUNDING TEAM

We invest in dedicated founding teams with preferably at least two founders that know each other well with long term commitment and no immediate exit ambitions. We look for founder expertise and other relevant accomplishments, which we can complement with our commercial competences and sustainability expert knowledge.

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT

We require a minimum viable product. Our focus is on steady sales and revenue growth rather than successive rounds of fundraising for hockey-stick growth. We require a cost-conscious approach to developing a market and testing product fit before going full-scale.

INDUSTRY FOCUS

We are industry agnostics with our main focus being able to establish a direct link between the company’s commercial scaling and its sustainability contribution. Our investments are mainly centered around food, construction & materials and technology, but will also venture outside these areas if a good opportunity arises.

SUSTAINABILITY CONTRIBUTION

We strive to find investments that address some of the biggest challenges within climate change and can contribute to systemic changes. We have a preferance for cases, where already at an early stage we are able to quantify the sustainability contribution and apply the lenses of the upcoming EU Taxonomy, the DrawDown project and Inevitable Policy Responses by example when evaluating the potential impact and relevance of the investment case.

GEOGRAPHICAL MINDSET

Most of our investments will center around Denmark and the Nordics due to our aim to be close to our investments and actively involved in their development. However, our investments might extend in reach in accordance with our geographical expertise and in cases where an active partnership can still be realized despite geographical distance.

Could we be a match for your start up?  Send your pitch deck to: pitch@thefootprintfirm.com

SUSTAINABILITY CONTRIBUTION

A central contribution to all our investments are investing our time and knowledge in firming up and proving the sustainability contribution of the business case. We see this as the utmost important contribution from us as an active investor and will continue working on, challenge and pushing forward the ambition on the impact angle throughout our ownership.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

As active investors we see it as key that we contribute through participation in and strengthening of the  board of directors. We have the experience that a relevant board with dedicated resources can be of immense value to a start up, but also that a dysfunctional board can be the exact opposite. We use our extensive network and experience to help the founders establish the best possible board and will invest our time in keeping the board relevant at all time through the start up journey.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

We work structured with our investments to establish a solid financial structure with insightful reporting. In our mindset this includes reporting on sustainability dimensions that we see as a central part of the value creation towards future funding rounds. Our CFO has a strong hands-on experience with investor owned companies and work closely with the start up teams on financial reporting and modelling when needed.

BRANDING & MARKETING

It is our experience that most sustainability start ups will benefit from stronger branding and marketing, why we support our start ups within this area when needed. We have strong experience in developing trustworthy core stories anchored in facts and quantitative data for communicating on sustainability and place high value on the ability to use own activities to inspire others and create insights on the sustainability agenda.

COMMERCIAL EXCELLENCE

We support our start ups with our commercial skill set. Our team members have on average ~10 years of professional experience from various organisations and management consulting across countries, industries and within business development, go-to-market, sales strategies and scaling etc. We work every day with establishing a solid link between companies’ commercial offering and relevant sustainability impact and firmly believe that these are not opposites but on the contrary can create significant synergies.

FUNDRAISING JOURNEY

We live and breathe sustainability – exactly as our start ups do. While sustainability is rapidly becoming a hot investment topic, we believe we are in a unique position to advice founders in establishing the link between purpose and business and will make it a key priority to raise funding on mission-aligned terms.