Food, Pragmatism, and the Third Wave: A Conversation w/ Bodil Sidén from Kost Capital 🍴

Food, Pragmatism, and the Third Wave: A Conversation w/ Bodil Sidén from Kost Capital 🍴

Greetings to 3,000+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 Today, we’re talking about food, not as in sharing great recipes, but as in one of the biggest systemic problems (and opportunities) on the planet. Food touches climate, health, geopolitics, culture, and everything in between. And while energy has dominated the green transition conversation for years, food has been quietly underfunded by VCs. And that’s slowly starting to change 💡 In this episode, I’m joined by Bodil Sidén [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bodilsiden/], founding partner of Kost Capital [https://www.kostcapital.com/], a Copenhagen-based €20M fund (and venture studio, and R&D platform) backing the next generation of food companies across Europe. Bodil brings sharp pragmatism to a space too often defined by wishful thinking, and she’s not afraid to say the quiet parts out loud. So, let’s dig in! 🍴 📋 What’s Inside 🌍 A System That Touches Everything – Why food is both the problem and the solution🐴 Never Bet on the Consumer – The Trojan horse strategy at the heart of Kost’s thesis🏭 Improving the Factory, Not the Oranges – Why the first two waves of food tech missed the mark💧What’s in the Swedish Water? – Lessons from Stockholm’s ecosystem boom🤖 AI Meets a 0.1x Industry – The most under-digitised vertical is also the most exciting🛒 Health as the Wallet Issue – Why health, not climate, gets food onto the shelf🌾 Food as a Strategic Asset – Resilience, regionalisation, and Europe’s opening 👩‍💼 Meet Bodil Sidén Bodil’s path into food investing runs through politics, media, and the operator world before landing in VC. She built her early career across Swedish public life and communications, then spent years close to founders and capital before deciding the most important problem she could spend the next decade on was the food space. Bodil’s path into food investing is anything but linear. She began her career in Swedish politics, drawn early to questions about how societies make decisions and where real change actually happens. From there she moved into tech and scaling, taking leadership roles at Uber [https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=c95d81d2a9f7b5c307b9ed3e7dcffd0fa9903371a3d06abb4624abb54b4d11aaJmltdHM9MTc4MDQ0NDgwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=35bb0387-a2ed-6ba0-10ea-14eca6ed60bb&psq=uber&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudWJlci5jb20vZ2xvYmFsL2VuL3NpZ24taW4v]in the Nordics and later at Bellbird [https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=5fbec9be9307988bc38b6a28b60130727dc6bb725c6133ffe273bd5f028c9e48JmltdHM9MTc4MDQ0NDgwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=35bb0387-a2ed-6ba0-10ea-14eca6ed60bb&psq=bellbird&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmVsbGJpcmQuc2Uv], before joining blq Invest [https://www.blqinvest.com/] VC as a Partner. She then spent years close to founders and capital before deciding the most important problem she could spend the next decade on was the one we all sit down to three times a day 💡 What pulled her into food wasn’t an industry interest. It was a systems interest. The more she looked across climate, health, geopolitics, and culture, the more she saw the same answer staring back: food sits at the centre of nearly everything that matters, and almost nobody is building the venture infrastructure to actually fix it. Today, as General Partner of Kost Capital in Copenhagen, Bodil leads investments and operations across a fund designed to do exactly that. She’s also a vocal advocate for the broader Nordic ecosystem, a regular voice on what’s working (and what isn’t) between Stockholm and Copenhagen, and, in her own words, a picky eater with a lifelong loyalty to porridge 🥣 Her work is animated by a simple conviction: the best impact investing doesn’t ask people to change. It quietly changes what’s already in front of them. Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. 🌍 A System That Touches Everything Bodil doesn’t mince words about why food matters. It is, in her telling, the centre of everything the sun touches: climate, health, security, equality, culture, belonging. Every problem capitalism has with the planet shows up somewhere in the food system, and so does every potential solution. “It’s a tough competition between health and climate, and they often can be solved hand in hand. How you solve it is maybe not where it’s most broken, but maybe where the consumers are.” That instinct, to meet people where they are rather than where you wish they were, runs through everything Kost does. Climate is abstract. Health is immediate. Lead with what people feel in their bodies, and the climate wins follow 💚 🐴 Never Bet on the Consumer If there’s one mantra Bodil returns to throughout the conversation, it’s that you should never bet on consumers changing. You should be obsessed with how they behave, but you should never try to change them. She uses herself as Exhibit A: She has eaten the same porridge for breakfast since she was six. No one, she says cheerfully, is touching her porridge. But the oats in the porridge? The spices? The protein blend? Those are fair game. That’s the Trojan horse, a B2B-first thesis hiding inside a consumer-facing problem. Change what’s already on the plate rather than asking anyone to eat insects for lunch 🐎 🏭 Improving the Factory, Not the Oranges Kost backs ingredients, enabling tech, and platforms that improve how food is made, not the finished product itself. Bodil draws a sharp analogy to early software: nobody invested in pencils and paper. They invested in ERP and CRM, the business-critical infrastructure that made companies run better. Food is overdue for the same shift. The first wave of food tech (roughly 2017 to 2020) gave us Impossible Foods [https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ccae98a05bb153912f67422baaf9b472f455d99709faa285555933a87e6a46f9JmltdHM9MTc4MDQ0NDgwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=35bb0387-a2ed-6ba0-10ea-14eca6ed60bb&psq=impossible+foods&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9pbXBvc3NpYmxlZm9vZHMuY29tLw], Beyond Meat [https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-GB/], and Oatly [https://www.oatly.com/]. Generalist VCs piled in with SaaS playbooks, then realised dairy margins of 5 to 7 percent don’t behave like software and quietly backed out. The second wave leaned on precision fermentation borrowed from pharma, promising technology but built for MedTech economics. Kost’s bet is on the third wave: inputs and ingredients with SaaS-like gross margins, quietly upgrading the entire supply chain from the inside. “The gross margin on a colorant is maybe 60 to 65 percent. That’s close to SaaS margins now.” 🔧 💧What’s in the Swedish Water? Bodil joined us in Denmark from Stockholm, where the start-up energy right now is genuinely electric. So, we had to ask: what’s the secret? Some of it is structural. Sweden built a sophisticated capital market in the 90s, IPO’d unicorns early (Spotify, Skype), and has had decades of liquidity flywheels turning. Founders exit, become angels, start new companies, and the cycle compounds. Some of it is cultural: a dense, passionate, weekend-working founder community that treats start-up building as a craft, not a 9 to 5. Denmark, she argues, is on its way, but still needs a few things to fall into place: a healthier liquidity environment for mid-cap companies, more family offices willing to back venture funds instead of defaulting to real estate, and a builder mentality that’s a little less polite about working weekends. We’ll get there ❤️🤍 🤖 AI Meets a 0.1x Industry Food is among the most under-digitised verticals in the world. The average European farmer is 65. R&D still relies on physical bioreactors, sawdust, and weeks of waiting for results. Which is exactly why Bodil sees the AI upside as enormous. “We have an opportunity to go from like 0.1 to 10x that instantly. Any food company that’s starting now can be an AI-first company.” She imagines pre-testing new fats or proteins in silico before firing up a fermentation tank, recipe development cycles measured in hours rather than months, and data treated as a core strategic asset from day one. Her plea to the rest of the ecosystem: bring talent from other verticals into food. The fintech operators, the SaaS PMs, the infra engineers. Food needs the cross-pollination 🧬 🛒 Health as the Wallet Issue The fastest-growing pockets Bodil is watching aren’t where you’d expect. Forget Gen Z. Look at boomers: fat wallets, active lives, and a biological reality that nutrition science is only beginning to catch up with. A 70-year-old today, she points out, is the new 50. They’re finishing marathons and travelling the world, but they also need bioavailable nutrients designed for the bodies they actually have. And women’s health, where the surface has barely been scratched. Cycle-aligned nutrition, perimenopause, the link between what we eat and our mood and cognition. Both segments are wide open, both have real willingness to pay, and both have been chronically underserved by an industry that has spent two decades arguing about plant-based burgers 🥛 🌾 Food as a Strategic Asset Geopolitics has put food security firmly back on the agenda. The war in Ukraine reminded Europe how much of its grain, seeds, and flour came from one corner of the continent. Climate volatility is hitting coffee, cacao, and staple crops. Corporates can’t plan their supply chains, and the cost of that uncertainty is showing up on shelves. “Investing into food can actually bring both resilience and prosperity for the population. Europe has a massive opportunity to build sustainable, healthy, really cool products. But that requires less regulation and much more aggressive builder mentality.” Regional production, diversified crops, and home-grown alternatives to fragile global supply lines: that’s a strategic agenda the continent can actually win on 🌾 Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! This post is public so feel free to share it. ✨ Closing Thoughts Bodil’s work with Kost Capital reminds us that fixing the food system is not a single bet on a single breakthrough 🍴 It is the slow, deliberate work of changing the inputs, the infrastructure, and the economics that sit beneath every plate 🌾 Her conviction is that real change rarely comes from asking people to be different. It comes from quietly making the better option the more obvious, more affordable, more delicious one 💚 That belief shapes every part of how Kost invests, from the ingredients in your morning porridge to the bioreactors that might one day replace whole supply chains 🧪 Kost shows that impact in food is not a marketing layer or a future ambition. It is built into the daily choices of how a fund is structured, which founders get backed, and which problems the team chooses to solve 🔧 It is about meeting consumers where they actually are, supporting science-led founders with both capital and craft, and treating health, climate, and resilience as parts of the same equation rather than competing priorities 🌍 In doing so, Kost proves that pragmatism and ambition are not opposites. When guided by conviction, curiosity, and a stubborn refusal to settle for happy forecasts, a fund can help reshape one of the most stubborn systems on the planet, one ingredient at a time ✨ 📥 Tell Us What You Think: Where do you think food tech is heading next, brands, ingredients, or something else entirely? Reply to this newsletter or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com [ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com]. 👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com [https://impactvc.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Rebuilding the Grid for the Energy Transition w/ Jon Sigvert from Reel ⚡

Greetings to 3,000+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 For this episode, I sit down with Jon Sigvert [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonsigvert/en/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_contact_details%3Bl71R5%2BIpT7iaMb19LHjUEA%3D%3D], co-founder and CEO of Reel [https://reel.energy/], one of our very own portfolio companies at Footprint, to talk about how you build a fundraising machine, what it really means to buy green electricity, and how Reel is quietly solving one of the most complex optimization problems in the energy transition. Jon went straight from his master’s thesis at DTU into co-founding Reel and never looked back. Just a few days before we recorded this, he closed a very strong Series A. We talk about all of it 💡 📋 What’s Inside 💰 Fundraising as a Sales Funnel: Jon’s structured, auction style approach to raising capital at every stage 🌱 The Green Energy Paradox: Why green energy claims often don't add up, and what Reel is trying to do about it⚡How Reel Actually Works: The dual sided model connecting corporate buyers with renewable energy producers 🧠 Building a Company Straight Out of School: Leadership lessons from a first-time founder who never had a “real” job first 🔍 What This Means for You as an Impact VC: Three things every climate investor should take away from Reel’s journey 👋 Meet Jon Sivert Jon is one of the more unusual founders I have had the pleasure of working with. He studied engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, where he took virtually every course available on life cycle assessment and environmental impact modelling. His master’s thesis, titled “Is It Really Green Though?”, examined the consequences of corporate green electricity procurement and became, more or less, the white paper for the company he went on to build 📚 Reel is, in many ways, Jon's first real job. He has never worked in a big corporate. He jumped straight from student life into co-founding a company that is now growing 8 to 9x year on year going into the Series A. What stands out about Jon is not just the numbers. It is the calm, the clarity and the stubborn conviction that commercial success and genuine climate impact have to coexist 🌍 💰 Fundraising as a Sales Funnel Jon closed Reel’s Series A less than 24 hours before we sat down. His approach has been remarkably consistent across every round: treat it like a structured sales process, build a prioritized funnel, move fast, and never reveal a valuation expectation. “We never communicate actual numbers. We always ask to get the best offer possible.” He is firm on speed too. Dragging a process out kills urgency and burns momentum. His rule: weeks, not months. And the real prerequisite underneath all of it? Obsessive traction building between rounds, not investor relationship building. What is less often discussed is how much harder Series A preparation gets compared to earlier rounds. Jon’s pre-seed deck was built by an engineer with spinning wind turbine animations (he has since learned from Reel’s in-house designers to never use spinning elements in a PowerPoint). At seed, there were a handful of customers to point to. But at Series A, with hundreds of customers and terawatt hours of energy running through the business, there was suddenly a mountain of data and financials to structure and present in a way that was easily digestible for investors seeing Reel for the first time. Many founders underestimate that leap 💡 Jon has also been in the fortunate position of choosing among competing term sheets, and notably, he has not always gone with the highest valuation. Getting the right partner on board matters more than maximizing a standalone number. One honest reflection: as rounds get larger, the binary approach of only speaking to investors when actively raising starts to cost you. Investors putting in double digit million euro checks need more runway to build conviction than a compressed process allows. Jon himself sees this clearly now and is thinking about how to keep key investors in the loop between rounds going forward. 🌱 The Green Energy Paradox Reel was born from a frustration Jon developed writing his master’s thesis. Every few years, major corporations get caught claiming carbon neutrality from electricity they haven’t actually greened. The culprit? Green certificates. You pay for the right to say you consumed renewable power, but nothing really changes in the system. “You just bought the right to say you have consumed green electricity. In reality, you didn’t change a thing.” That insight became the foundation of Reel: build the alternative that actually makes a difference, not just on paper 🔍 ⚡ How Reel Actually Works Reel operates on both sides of the energy market. For large corporate electricity consumers, Reel acts as a licensed supplier delivering power that is genuinely greener and often cheaper, by sourcing directly from renewable energy producers through long term PPAs. To put the problem in perspective: electricity prices have become more than 20 times as volatile as the stock markets in recent years. That is an enormous headache for energy intensive businesses trying to plan their cost base. Reel gives them budget certainty and a genuinely green procurement story at the same time. On the producer side, Reel provides revenue certainty that unlocks project financing for new renewable energy assets. On top of that, Reel does fully automated, algo driven trading optimization across multiple power markets. As renewable energy grows, capture rates decline and forecasting gets harder. That is exactly where Reel’s proprietary tech, including in-house machine learning based forecasting for each individual asset, creates the most value. The next frontier? Battery energy storage systems. Batteries allow you to physically shape power profiles, storing energy when there is too much and releasing it when demand peaks. Reel is already working with BESS, and in several European markets the real glory days of that technology are still ahead 🔋 Germany is next on the map, the largest energy market in Europe and one facing the same cannibalization challenges Denmark worked through years ago 🇩🇪 🧠 Building a Company Straight Out of School Jon has never had a conventional job. His team describes him as unusually execution-focused. His own description is blunter: he is only now learning to step back from the product and optimize the organization itself. On culture, he keeps it simple. “We are tough on the issue, soft on the people.” No douchebag policy. Only hire kind people. Psychological safety, he argues, is not the opposite of high performance. It is what enables it. If you come to work and feel comfortable sharing your perspective without worrying you will sound stupid, that is what allows a small team to move fast. When I asked Jon where his energy comes from, given how calm he famously remains (someone once noted his pulse never seemed to go above 52 during the seed raise), his answer was disarmingly simple. He finds it deeply fulfilling to build something from scratch and to directly solve real challenges rather than being a small piece in a large corporate machine. That drive, paired with an engineer’s instinct for structured problem solving, is what makes him tick ⚡ A company Jon looks up to? Flatpay [https://www.flatpay.com/en-gb], also out of Copenhagen, for how effortlessly they have scaled across borders. Totally different product, but the playbook of well-orchestrated software solving a systemic problem, even with a hardware component, resonates deeply with what Reel is building 💡 🔍 What This Means for You as an Impact VC Reel is a useful case study in what durable climate investing actually looks like. A few things worth sitting with: 💡Regulated markets are a feature, not a bug. The barriers to becoming a licensed electricity supplier and a balancing responsible party are high. Most investors shy away from that complexity. But once you are in, the incumbents are slow, legacy burdened and structurally unable to innovate at the speed Reel can. The moat is real, even if it takes longer to build. 💡The cannibalization effect is the next big wave. As renewables dominate more grids across Europe, capture rates will keep declining. The companies that can intelligently manage, trade and optimize renewable output, including through battery storage, are going to become essential infrastructure. This is not a niche. It is the core problem of the next decade of the energy transition. 💡Watch for the thesis to company founders. Jon is a rare breed: a founder whose entire intellectual formation was pointed at the exact problem he is now solving commercially. That depth of domain knowledge is very hard to fake, and it shows in the product, the fundraising narrative and the ability to retain conviction when markets get complicated. When you see a founder who wrote their master’s thesis on the problem they are now building for, pay close attention 👀 ✨ Closing Thoughts What struck me most about this conversation was how grounded and calm Jon is through it all. He is building in a complex regulated market, scaling fast, and doing it without ever losing sight of the original mission: making green electricity purchases actually mean something. Reel is proof that deep technical conviction, relentless commercial execution, and genuine climate impact are not in tension - they compound 🌍 📥 Tell Us What You Think: Is the green certificate system due for a reckoning? Reply to this newsletter or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com 👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com [https://impactvc.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Intelligence, Infrastructure, and the Real Limits of AI: A Conversation w/ Arnau Tibau Piug, PhD, Co-Founder of TetraxAI 🤖

Greetings to 3k+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 In this episode, I sit down with Arnau Tibau Puig [https://www.linkedin.com/in/atibaup/], co-founder and CTO of TetraxAI [https://tetrax.ai/], and one of my co-workers at Footprint, Will Nunn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-n-a30454127/], to explore how AI is actually being deployed inside infrastructure and energy systems to accelerate the green transition, what defensibility really looks like when everyone has access to frontier models, and why reliability might end up mattering more than raw intelligence 🤔 AI has moved from novelty to necessity in record time. Valuations are soaring. Data centers are multiplying. Every second pitch deck claims to be AI-enabled. But beneath the excitement sits a quieter and more important question: Where does intelligence actually create real economic value, and where does it quietly fail? And will AI ultimately benefit or harm the green transition? Our conversation felt less like debating the future of AI and more like stress-testing its current reality, especially in industries where mistakes are expensive and systems are a bit more complex. If you are building with AI, allocating capital into it, or simply trying to understand how it intersects with climate and infrastructure, I think you’ll find this one particularly interesting 💡 📋What’s inside 🤖 AI Beyond the Hype Cycle – Why model access is no longer a moat and where real defensibility now lives.🌍 Operational Intelligence in Infrastructure – How AI can accelerate permitting, financing, and project deployment in energy and climate systems. 🛡️The Reliability Problem – Why verification and safety standards matter more than AGI timelines in critical industries.⚡ The AI and Energy Paradox – Data centers, electricity demand, and whether AI becomes a burden or an accelerator for the energy transition. 🧠 The Future of Knowledge Work and Human Potential – What changes for legal teams, junior roles, and decision making when intelligence becomes abundant. 👋 Meet Arnau Arnau is a data scientist with over 13 years of experience in tech by training, with a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science. He spent years in big tech in California before moving into the start-up world. But what stood out to me most was not his technical background. It was the clarity behind his shift in focus. At some point, he realized he was solving interesting technical problems but not necessarily meaningful ones. Climate change and the energy transition felt different. He described it as a “big, beautiful problem.” Complex, systemic, imperfect. Worth committing to. That perspective led him to co-found TetraxAI alongside Marta Vizcaíno Martín [https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-vizca%C3%ADno-mart%C3%ADn-legal-transactions-ai-energy/] and Ekaterina Filina [https://www.linkedin.com/in/katyafilina/] 🚀 TetraxAI focuses on operational intelligence for infrastructure investors and developers. In practice, this means processing enormous volumes of regulatory, legal, technical, and financial documentation so projects can move faster and with greater clarity. It overlaps with legal tech, but it is far more vertical and infrastructure specific. This is not about generic document summarization. It is about embedding intelligence directly into the workflow of energy and infrastructure deployment. 🤖 AI Beyond the Hype Cycle One of the most practical parts of our discussion centered on defensibility 🔐 Frontier models are increasingly accessible. The intelligence layer itself is becoming quite commoditized. But Arnau framed it quite clearly: “Defensibility used to be about how hard it was to build what you built. Now it is about how hard it is for your customers to leave.” The moat is no longer the model. It is the integration, the embedded workflow and the absolute necessary layer of trust. He also offered an analogy that I have not been able to shake: “The strongest CPU or the smartest human is not very intelligent in the middle of the ocean. Whereas a shark; with much more limited cognitive capacity to humans, is extremely intelligent in that context.” Raw intelligence without context is essentially useless. The shark understands its environment. It processes signals in ways shaped by evolution and adaptation. Its intelligence is inseparable from its domain🦈 AI, Arnau suggests, is quite similar in that regard. Intelligence becomes valuable only when it is deeply embedded into a specific context. So, when founders talk about building intelligence, the real question becomes: Are we selling general intelligence, or are we carefully shaping it into something operationally useful inside a system? That is a very different ambition. Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 🏗️ Operational Intelligence in Infrastructure With the increasing complexity of infrastructure projects, the need for operational intelligence has never been greater. Infrastructure is rarely elegant. It involves long permitting cycles, public authorities, layered regulations, engineering constraints, financial models, and political dynamics. A single renewable energy project can involve thousands of pages of documentation and years of back and forth. This is where TetraxAI comes in 🤖 Arnau described how project teams often spend disproportionate amounts of time navigating a plethora of documentation rather than making actual decisions. AI can help structure, interpret, and cross-reference this information far faster than manual processes. But he was careful not to frame AI as a magic solution. AI does not automatically eliminate regulatory complexity. It does not remove risk. It does not replace accountability. It augments decision-making. And that distinction is critical. If you are building in climate or energy infrastructure, AI may not necessarily be the product. It may just be the accelerant that makes the product viable at scale. This is a more humble framing of AI. But perhaps a more durable one 💡 🛡️ The Reliability Problem This part of our conversation felt especially important with how fast AI is being deployed across organisations. We briefly touched on AGI and autonomous systems, but Arnau quickly redirected the focus toward reliability standards in critical industries. He referenced sectors like aviation and nuclear energy, where systems are engineered to meet extremely low failure tolerances. In those environments, probabilistic errors are simply unacceptable ⛔ When you compare current large language models (LLMs) against those standards, the gap is substantial. The limitation is not intelligence in the abstract, but rather reproducibility, verification and failure tolerance. LLMs are probabilistic by design. They generate outputs based on likelihood distributions, not deterministic reasoning chains. That makes them powerful for many tasks. But it also makes them quite unpredictable in edge cases. In consumer applications, a hallucination might be inconvenient. But in infrastructure finance or grid management, it could be critical and costly 🚨 This is why Arnau emphasized that deployment standards matter much more than AGI speculation. Before asking when machines will surpass human intelligence, we should ask: Can they meet the safety thresholds required for the systems we are embedding them into? In many critical industries, the answer today is no. That does not diminish AI’s usefulness… It just reframes it. Instead of full autonomy, we see augmentation. Instead of replacing experts, we see systems that compress information and support judgment and better decision-making. Reliability is not a sexy topic. But in regulated and high stakes industries, it may just be the defining one 💡 ⚡ The AI and Energy Paradox There is an obvious tension at the heart of the AI boom 💥 AI systems require vast amounts of compute. Data centers are expanding rapidly. Electricity demand projections in multiple regions are being revised upward. At the same time, we are trying to decarbonize the grid and accelerate the energy transition. So, is AI actually helping or hurting? 🤔 Arnau approached this question with a sense of clarity rather than defensiveness. The trade-off is real and unavoidable - AI will consume energy. The infrastructure footprint is not trivial. But he reframed the debate in a way that stuck with me: “It’s not about whether AI uses energy. It’s about whether it helps us use energy better.” That distinction matters. On one side, AI increases demand through training runs, inference, and the physical expansion of data centers. On the other side, it can dramatically improve grid optimization, energy forecasting, demand response, infrastructure planning, and operational efficiency across industrial systems. The outcome is not automatic. It depends on design choices, where data centers are located, how grids are decarbonized, and whether AI is deployed to optimize energy systems or simply layered on top of them as another consumer. In other words, AI can either amplify strain on the system or actually become a tool that makes the entire energy network more intelligent and efficient. The technology itself is neutral. Its impact depends on where we point it 🎯 🧠 The Future of Knowledge and Work Our discussion about knowledge and work started with legal teams and more junior analysts, but it quickly widened into something more structural. For years, many entry level roles have centered on gathering information, synthesizing documents, preparing briefs, and escalating insights to senior decision makers. That informational bottleneck defined hierarchy. AI compresses that layer dramatically. Tasks that once took days now take minutes. Thousands of pages can be structured and cross referenced almost instantly ⚡ Naturally, that raises questions about displacement. But Arnau’s perspective was a bit more nuanced. As information processing becomes abundant, the scarce resource shifts. It is no longer access to data. It is judgment. Client relationships become more valuable, not less. Accountability becomes clearer, not blurrier. Contextual risk assessment, ethical reasoning, and long-term decision making remain deeply human responsibilities. In fact, as AI systems generate outputs at scale, the need for experienced professionals who can interpret, validate, and stand behind decisions only increases 📈 The routine layer compresses. The strategic and relational layer expands. Arnau also shared his hope that AI could eventually enable far more tailored education, adapting to individual learning speeds, styles, and gaps in understanding in ways traditional classrooms struggle to achieve. The same principle applies in healthcare, where more personalized diagnostics and treatment pathways could significantly improve outcomes. In that sense, AI is not just about efficiency inside firms. It has the potential to widen access to high quality, individualized support across society. But even there, the same pattern holds. Technology can surface insights. Humans must decide what to do with them. If anything, the evolution of AI does not reduce the importance of human expertise. It sharpens it. The future may belong not to those who can process the most information, but to those who can exercise the best judgment once that information is at their fingertips🧑‍💻 Thanks for reading this issue of Impact Supporters! This post is public so feel free to share it. ✨ Closing Thoughts What I appreciated most about this conversation was its sobriety. Arnau is building in one of the most hyped technological environments in decades. Yet his focus remains on systems, context, and verification. AI is powerful. But power without reliability, without domain integration, and without thoughtful deployment can create fragility rather than progress. For those of us working at the intersection of technology and impact, the opportunities out there are significant to say the least. AI can accelerate infrastructure. It can compress complexity. It can unlock capacity. But only if we treat it not as magic, but as integrated infrastructure. And infrastructure only works when it is built carefully 👷 📥 Tell us what you think Will AI ultimately accelerate or complicate the energy transition? Reply directly or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com 👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas 📚 Links to articles and books mentioned: Stephan Rabanser -Towards a Science of AI Agent Reliability | Center for Information Technology Policy [https://citp.princeton.edu/events/2026/stephan-rabanser-towards-science-ai-agent-reliability] Sustainability Without Hot Air by David MacKay [https://www.withouthotair.com/] Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt [https://www.willpatrick.co.uk/notes/good-strategy-bad-strategy-richard-rumelt] Strategy – A History by Lawrence Friedman [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/strategy-9780199325153?cc=dk&lang=en&] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com [https://impactvc.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

From Panda Suits to Planetary Impact: A Conversation w/ Johannes Weber, Co-Founder of Ananda 🐼

Greetings to 3k+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 For our first episode of the year, I sit down with Johannes Weber [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jweberananda/], co-founder of Ananda Impact Ventures [https://ananda.vc/], one of the earliest impact venture firms in Europe. If you look around today, it almost feels like impact has always been here. Every second deck says climate. Every LP has a sustainability bucket. There are conferences, frameworks, and a whole vocabulary around it. But it really was not that long ago that none of this existed. Johannes started Ananda when impact VC was not even considered a category at all. There were no benchmarks, no success stories, and very few investors who believed you could do good and make money at the same time. In other words, they had to build the playbook themselves 📕 So, we went deep, into the practical decisions, the early mistakes, and the bigger patterns that shaped not just Ananda, but the impact VC space more broadly. 📋What’s inside 🧭 Starting When Nobody Believed – The early days of impact VC and the first proof points that changed minds 🌍 Beyond Labels – Why climate, social, and education categories can hide system-level connections 🔬 Brave Tech Over Easy Tech – Funding frontier technologies instead of incremental software 🧠 Research First, Deals Second – How Ananda sources and backs founders with conviction 🌓 Staying Steady Through Cycles – Avoiding hype, focusing on long-term partnerships and systemic change 👋 Meet Johannes Weber Johannes’ entry into impact came from experience and a very human curiosity. Early in his career, he helped build and take a fintech company through a small IPO. Suddenly, he had what many founders chase: liquidity, freedom, and the option to do whatever he wanted. But his original motivation wasn’t abstract ambition. “I wanted to be able to go to Disney World like the other kids,” he says, reflecting on growing up at a private school where his dad taught. That simple desire for independence set him on a path to entrepreneurship. After the IPO, Johannes experimented with ways to make a difference. He bought an asset manager focused on sustainable public equities and partnered with WWF. The idea was straightforward: screen out harmful companies, invest responsibly, and donate a portion of fees. On paper, it looked good. In practice, it didn’t feel like they were moving the needle. “Buying shares on secondary markets and writing checks to charity just didn’t feel like we were changing anything. Ownership without influence doesn’t move systems,” he explains. He even tried activism for a while. Showing up at shareholder meetings in a panda suit to pressure companies to behave better 🐼 That frustration was the moment the thesis crystallized: if you want to shape outcomes, you have to build companies from the ground up. And so, Ananda was born, one of Europe’s first dedicated impact VC funds. Today, they’re investing from their Fund V. 🧭 Starting when nobody believed It’s easy to forget how contrarian impact investing once sounded. When Johannes went out to raise their first fund, the pitch was simple. Back entrepreneurs solving real problems and aim for venture-style returns. Some thought it was naïve. Others thought it was charity dressed up as investing. They aimed for €100 million. They closed at €7 million. “People either thought it was cute or strange. There wasn’t a single example we could point to and say, look, this works.” So instead of referencing proof points, they decided to create one 💡 One of their early investments was Auticon [https://auticon.com/uk/about-us/our-mission/], now one of the world’s largest employers of people with autism, placing neurodiverse talent into high-quality tech consulting roles. When Sir Richard Branson later invested and publicly endorsed Auticon, something shifted. It became harder to argue that impact businesses could not be serious businesses. That early success helped open doors not just for Ananda, but arguably for the broader VC ecosystem 🌀 Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 🌍 Beyond labels... A theme that kept coming back into our conversation was Johannes’ discomfort with how neatly we tent to categorize impact today. Climate funds. Health funds. Education funds. It makes sense from a fundraising perspective. LPs like clear labels. But the world does not work in labels. “Mental health affects climate outcomes. Education affects biodiversity. These systems are connected.” Climate often feels ‘easier’ because emissions can be measured and reduced to a single number. CO₂ becomes a universal currency. But something Johannes cautions is that measurement can sometimes give a false sense of precision. Just because something is quantifiable does not mean it captures the full picture. That’s one reason Ananda has chosen to stay generalist by design. They go deep on sectors through research, but they avoid locking themselves into one narrow theme. Some of their most interesting investments would have never fit neatly into a single box. For them, flexibility is not a lack of focus. It’s a way to avoid blind spots. 🔬 Brave tech over easy tech This part of our conversation really stuck with me. Johannes argued that venture capital, at its best, was originally meant to fund frontier technologies. Hard science. Infrastructure. Big leaps 🚀 Yet over the past decade, much of VC has drifted toward incremental software. “If we only fund easier SaaS companies, we’re not really solving the big problems. Venture was invented for the hard stuff.” So, Ananda actively looks for heavier, more complex bets. Satellites that detect forest fires globally Biodiversity measurement infrastructure 🐜 Biosecurity and pathogen detection 🧬 Science-driven platforms that governments and critical systems rely on 🧪 These companies are slower to build, more capital intensive, and don’t always fit the neat venture playbook. But if they succeed, the upside is systemic 👏 “If this doesn’t fundamentally change something, we’re probably not the right investor,” he told me. 🧠 Research first, deals second Another thing that differentiates Ananda is how intentional they are about sourcing. Rather than waiting for hundreds of inbound decks, they often start with a few questions: * Where might new technologies emerge in five years? * Which risks are underappreciated today? * What capabilities will societies need that don’t yet exist? Then they run structured deep dives. Talking to scientists, operators, and domain experts. Mapping the landscape long before companies are fundraising. Only after building conviction do they actively look for founders. The result surprised me: 15 of their last 18 investments originated from internal research. “By the time we meet a founder, we already understand the problem. We don’t need the education slide. We can go straight into building together.” It creates a very different dynamic. Less pitching, more partnership 🤝 🌓 Staying steady through cycles We also talked about the past few years: the boom, the flood of climate capital. And now, the cooling off. Johannes has seen this movie before. Capital always moves in waves 🌊 Some investors show up because a theme is fashionable, then disappear when returns take longer than expected. He calls it ‘tourist capital’. “When the water goes away, you see who was swimming without pants.” His approach is simpler. Stay consistent. Don’t chase labels. Build funds sized for reality, not hype. Because the underlying problems do not disappear just because markets change. And the founders building in these spaces need long term partners, not fair-weather investors. 📬 What this means for you as an impact VC Johannes’ experience shows that impact investing isn’t about chasing trends or checking boxes. It’s about influence, insight, and patience. You’re backing companies early, before their business models, incentive structures, and impact ambitions are fully set. That means you can help shape what “value” really means both financially and socially 🌱 So, start small: ✅ Pick one frontier technology or complex systems company in your pipeline and map the systemic impact it could create 💬 Engage founders early on the trade-offs between growth, profit, and impact 📈 Use those insights to adjust governance, incentives, and long-term strategy The lesson is simple: this isn’t about “adding” impact 🧩 It’s about understanding the full potential of the companies you already invest in 🔍 Be patient, stay consistent, and lean into the hard bets that can reshape systems. ✨ Closing Thoughts Talking to Johannes felt like talking to someone who has quietly watched the entire impact ecosystem grow up. What I appreciated most is that nothing about Ananda’s story feels rushed or opportunistic. They did not jump in because it was trendy. They stayed because they believed ownership and company building can genuinely shift outcomes. Over time, that patience starts to look like an advantage. Maybe that is the takeaway for me. Impact investing does not need louder claims or more complex frameworks. It probably needs more consistency, more curiosity, and more conviction to back the hard things. The kind of work that might take longer, but actually moves the needle ⚡ 📥 Tell Us What You Think: Where should impact VCs focus next: fewer braver bets on frontier solutions, or more incremental improvements that scale faster?Reply to this newsletter or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com [ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com] 👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! This post is public so feel free to share it. 📚 Further Reading If you want to dig in a little deeper into some of the ideas we explored with Johannes, these reports give context, data, and inspiration for impact VCs: * Thriving at Nature’s Pace: Emergent Economics for Oil, Gas, and Coal by Dr David Ko [https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/14399#t=aboutBook] A forthcoming book that invites readers to rethink economic systems and investment through nature‑aligned principles, proposing a more holistic approach to climate, capital, and long‑term value creation. * The State of Impact Investing Market Size [https://thegiin.org/publication/research/sizing-the-impact-investing-market-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] – GIIN, 2025 [https://thegiin.org/publication/research/sizing-the-impact-investing-market-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] See how impact investing still represents a small fraction of global AUM, and why early proof points were so crucial. * IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment [https://www.ipbes.net/node/97532] A consensus scientific assessment showing how biodiversity loss is a systemic business and economic risk and why integrating nature into strategy matters for long‑term value. * An Investor’s Guide to Deep Tech | BCG [https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/deep-tech-investing] Explore why funding frontier technologies may be harder, but can deliver outsized systemic and financial impact. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com [https://impactvc.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Shaping the Future of Impact Private Equity: Emelie Norling on Systems Change at Summa Equity 💼

Greetings to 3,000+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 Today, we’re talking about private equity in a way you might not expect: as a force for impact. Private equity usually gets a bad rap for being all about profits, but what if it could be a driver of change? That’s exactly what Summa Equity [http://www.summaequity.com] are doing in Europe. In this episode, we talk to Emelie Norling [https://www.linkedin.com/in/emelie-norling-67052b86/] to explore how impact can move from an afterthought to becoming the core of investing. From theory of change to hands-on ownership, we cover it all. Let’s dive into impact PE with Summa Equity. 📋 What’s Inside 💡 From Law to Impact – Emelie’s path from academia to Summa Equity🦁 Taming the Lion – How private equity can meet purpose 📈 Beyond the Hype – The evolution of impact PE returns ⚙️ Inside the Machine – How Summa builds their theory of change 🌍 A Broader Lens – Why climate is just one piece of the puzzle 🔌 Bridging the Gap – What start-ups can learn from buyout impact thinking 👩‍💼 Meet Emelie Norling Emelie’s journey into impact is anything but linear. She began in academia, studying how global institutions interpreted the early idea of sustainable development. Her world at that time revolved around legal arguments, institutional frameworks, and dense academic debates 📚 “It was fascinating,” she recalls, “but it felt distant from the places where decisions were actually made.” That desire to get closer to the action brought her into asset management, where she led responsible investment for a Swedish insurer. Eventually she found her way to Summa Equity, where she now plays a central role in shaping one of Europe’s most thesis-driven impact platforms 🌱 At Summa, Emelie helps define impact investment themes, guide due diligence, connect leadership teams around impact roadmaps, and ensure that the fund’s commitments to its investors translate into measurable, transparent outcomes. Her work is defined by a belief that finance, and societal progress can be aligned without compromise, as long as investors are willing to commit to real depth and discipline. 💡 From Law to Impact When Emelie first heard of Summa, she nearly dismissed it. Private equity seemed far removed from the values she had spent her career exploring. Yet her perception shifted dramatically during a single Investment Committee meeting. A partner began by describing the societal problem, the system it belonged to, and the levers for changing that system 🌍 For the first twenty-five minutes, the discussion was solely about impact. Only after that did they open the financial model. “It wasn’t impact as an afterthought,” she says. “It was the reason the company deserved to exist.” This moment revealed a surprising overlap between her academic past and the world of private equity. Unlike public markets, private equity owns companies outright. It can reshape governance, guide strategy, and invest in long-term transformation. Suddenly the leap made sense, and the unlikely path became her calling. 🦁 Taming the Lion Impact and private equity once felt like natural opposites, like a lion ordering a salad for lunch. But over the last decade, firms such as Summa, TPG Rise, and Trill Impact have rewritten that narrative. In 2016 the question was whether returns were even possible with impact. In 2021, anything that looked sustainable was overhyped and overvalued. Today, she says, the industry has entered a more grounded period. “The hype is over, and that is healthy,” she explains. “It reveals which strategies were built around real impact and which ones were simply wrapped in the language of it.” The lesson is clear. A strong impact story does not automatically make a strong business. It still requires discipline, thoughtful diligence, and the courage to face difficult trade-offs when they arise 🔍 📈 Beyond the Hype A recent study from Schroders in collaboration with Oxford University’s Business School showed that impact PE funds averaged 21 % IRR, outpacing the wider industry. Source: Schroders Capital [https://www.schroderscapital.com/en/global/professional/insights/the-investment-case-for-impact-in-private-equity/] “If you invest in companies solving society’s biggest challenges, it makes sense that they perform well. These are the businesses the world needs.” Ignoring impact is becoming the real risk. Climate shocks and geopolitical uncertainty make this lens essential. ⚙️ Inside the Machine: Theory of Change in Action Summa’s approach to impact begins with a simple question. What societal problems are most in need of solutions, and which business models can help solve them? Each of Summa’s themes starts with a detailed theory of change. The team maps the system, identifies leverage points, and explores which types of companies possess the most transformative potential 📈 “We bring together academics, industry experts, investors, and impact professionals,” Emelie explains. “That mix creates roadmaps that are directionally correct — and commercially grounded.” Once an investment is made, the collaboration deepens. The deal team and impact team run workshops with company leadership to align on the theory of change and build a sustainability roadmap. “It’s powerful,” Emelie says. “Founders see how their company fits into a bigger picture. That connection motivates teams far beyond compliance.” 🌍 A Broader Lens I asked Emelie to share her thoughts on Bill Gates’s recent essay on “Three tough truths about climate,” and she agrees that climate must be viewed through a wider systems lens 🔍 “If we only focus on carbon, we won’t solve climate change. It’s about biodiversity, equity, and human well-being — because the planet will survive. The question is whether it will remain habitable for us.” Her view reflects Summa’s investment philosophy: climate challenges sit inside a wider web of ecological and social issues, and any attempt to solve them must reflect that interconnected reality 🕸️ 🔌 Bridging the Gap Scaling innovation is always challenging. Venture-backed companies often generate the innovations needed for transformation, and buyout-stage firms have the scale to bring those innovations to the world 🌉 Yet the bridge between these two worlds is fragile. FoodTech is a powerful example. Emelie describes how often she sees brilliant ideas in alternative proteins or food waste reduction that struggle to cross into the buyout universe. “We need to support these companies so they can scale into our world,” she says. “Food is one of the biggest systems we can transform.” She shares the story of a Croatian fava-bean protein company that doubled farmer yields by simply improving their seeds 🌱 A small intervention produced enormous positive consequences, illustrating how outsized impact can emerge from innovations that seem simple at first glance. Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. ✨ Closing Thoughts Emelie leaves us with a reflection that feels timely for the entire field of impact investing. Measurement is essential, she says, but imagination matters just as much. It is not enough to calculate what exists today. We must have the courage to picture what could exist tomorrow 🌏 Her own path, from legal theory to investment committees, shows how change often comes from people who can see across disciplines and aim to bridge worlds. The future of impact investing will belong to those who combine rigor with creativity, who can build systems where energy is clean and affordable, food is sustainable and secure, and economic growth no longer requires ecological decline 🌿 Private equity has the potential to become one of the great engines of the green transition. Emelie’s work reminds us that transformation does not come from grand gestures alone. It comes from the steady, thoughtful decisions that shape companies’ day by day, and from the people willing to steward that change from the inside out. As we close out the year, this feels like the right message to carry with us🌟Imagination, patience and steady progress are the work ahead. Before we wrap, this conversation with Emelie is also our last one of the year and what a note to end on! We’re taking a short festive break to rest, recharge and dream a little bigger. Thank you for being part of this growing community. Your curiosity, feedback and support are what make Impact Supporter worth building 🙏💚 Wishing you a season filled with slow moments, good conversations and time to reconnect. We look forward to bringing new voices, new ideas and new impact stories in January 2026 🌍✨ 📥 Tell Us What You Think: Can private equity become the driving force of the green transition? Reply to this newsletter or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com [ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com]. 👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas Links to articles/data mentioned: Schroder, 2025 [https://www.schroderscapital.com/en/global/professional/insights/the-investment-case-for-impact-in-private-equity/] Gates, 2025 [https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate] Thanks for reading Impact Supporters! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com [https://impactvc.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]