Elodie Broad 
- Portfolio News
- 12 September, 2024
In July we hosted our first team “Impact Day”. In many companies, impact day involves nature clean-ups, cooking meals or planting trees. For us, it was hosting fifteen tech for good companies in our Balderton Kings Cross offices and giving them access to Balderton’s experience and expertise for the day.
We believe that the best way to change the world is to build a business, and that holds particularly true when said-business is founded with an explicit environmental or social mission in mind. The day was a resounding success and I wanted to share five key takeaways for anyone exploring similar ideas.
Clear goals and objectives
People often lack the time or headspace to think about how best to utilise their annual volunteering allowance. The “impact day” format, a firm-wide date where everyone is expected to step out of the day job and take part, was therefore a great option.
We decided to go down the route of skills-based volunteering, rather than time-based alone. And so emerged the vision of a venn diagram inspired by the concept of IKIGAI:
- What we’re best at: Building ventures
- What the world needs: Impact businesses
- What we’re (also) passionate about: Supporting diverse founders
- What the business needs: More volunteering opportunities
The right partner
With clear objectives in mind, we identified a fantastic partner in Allia. Allia is a charity that helps small businesses and social enterprises to develop, grow and achieve their impact aims in a number of ways. Allia’s Impact Accelerator programme supports founders seeking to build off the intersection between purpose led and venture track solutions.
We co-designed the day with Allia while letting them lead on the sourcing and initial short-listing of pre-seed and seed stage tech for good founders. They also ran an orientation day ahead of our Impact Day, helping the selected founders with their preparation to get the most out of the day.
Preparation pays off
Preparation was also in full swing back at Balderton. In order to make the day as valuable as possible for founders, we decided on the format of investment-team led morning (pitches and 1-to-1s), and platform-team led afternoon (masterclasses), carefully matching founders to investment team members based on focus areas and experience.
Allia also worked with founders to articulate their top three most pressing questions in advance; these were then shared alongside pitch decks with investment team members for them to digest ahead of the day. What felt like a large-scale match-making exercise between time, rooms, founders and Balderton team members ultimately delivered.
The effort you all put into making it so personalised and tailored to our businesses really paid off. The Balderton team took it really seriously and were obviously very committed to it, and that meant that not a minute was wasted in the time we spent with them.
Taking the conversation beyond fundraising
While morning conversations touched on business growth and fundraising–from what to prioritise, to what metrics to target, and the importance of simplicity and founder story in pitching, afternoon masterclasses hosted by Balderton’s Legal, Talent, Marketing and Finance teams covered more operational and tactical topics.
Participant feedback reminded us that founders rarely interact with VC platform teams until they’ve secured investment. The day therefore also contributed to clarifying the role of VC firms, and in the words of one founder, “understanding the value a VC can bring to a business from a knowledge perspective”.
Impact beyond the day
The day brought a whirlwind of insights and reflections for participants, as well as new connections. Since then, we have seen a number of follow-up interactions and conversations, sharing of resources, introductions, and even referrals for the Balderton Launched programme.
Most importantly perhaps, founders formed new relationships and friendships with other founders. “Start ups are tough and full of challenges. And with all the other businesses there, my pains and experiences are not unique and common”. Meanwhile, at Balderton, it’s been really rewarding to hear about the impact that we’ve made, with one founder reporting that the pitch they did the following morning “went really well, mainly due to the tweaks I made from yesterday”.
Beyond giving back, the value to our firm is undeniable, and it was great to all come together with a shared purpose for the day. And the final words go to my Balderton colleagues, who reported “a really great day and a phenomenal vibe in the office”, alongside “some really inspiring conversations”, and appreciating “feeling helpful”. We look forward to more impact days to come!
