Our strategic review showed that one of our most material areas is to facilitate responsible scaling in our portfolio. Our companies are early stage, fast-growing with a lot on their plate. Some will come to dominate their industries (and parts of our lives) for years to come. By facilitating responsible scaling from the start, we can build in a real value add and avoid costly, add-on experiences later.

While an increasing number of the companies that we meet are so called “impact natives”, many of our founders and teams have limited experience with impact and ESG. We have however seen that impact is relatively easy to discuss with founders at a very early stage, regardless of what kind of company that the founders are building. They are keen to think through what kind of world that they would be creating and which could be unexpected and unintended outcomes.

With internal (ESG) policy’s however, the ongoing question in the back of most minds is “when does it actually make sense to focus on responsible scaling practices?” “Will it be too much, too early? Will it just be a burden and not a value add?“

We believe that its absolutely crucial to adapt our support to the reality of our founders, to offer on-demand services that they can use, when it suits them - not when it suits us. We can however do a lot more than we previously have given our role and position in the eco-system to facilitate their journeys.

When we asked our portfolio companies, most want to prioritise responsible scaling right from the start but hesitated since they didn’t want to undertake a burden too big or overpromise and run the risk of being perceived as greenwashing. From us investors, they requested easily accessible, on-demand support that facilitate for them to take their first steps at their own pace.

With this in mind, we have designed our responsible scaling support according to these main principles:

1. We want to start the responsible scaling thinking already in the DD process and link DD assessments to coming portfolio support.
2. We want to facilitate for companies to understand how they are part of the problem but also how their businesses could be part of the solution so that responsible scaling becomes a natural and value-adding part of their culture and corporate DNA.
3. We want the portfolio support to be on-demand and accessible to the portfolio companies at their own pace, we don’t believe in “one size fits all”.
4. We want to make use of our collective portfolio experience to provide inspiration and enable sharing of best practices.

The resulting process links our Due Diligence assessment to portfolio support by using these main tools: 1) Impact assessment 2) Sector-specific materiality maps, 3) ESG maturity assessments and 4) Sustainability Roadmaps. All tools have been co-developed with our sustainability platform partner Apiday and are available on demand for our portfolio companies.

In the following sub-sections, we walk you through our process of choosing an ESG management system that matched our needs and our main tools for ESG support. We will revert back to the impact screening and link to commercial viability in a separate chapter.

Sector-specific materiality

Choosing a Sustainability Platform

ESG maturity assessment & roadmaps

Operators Session: Introducing sustainability (fall 2022)