Throughout this episode, we encourage you to think big and explore opportunities when becoming a partner. Kasia shared her personal story so you can find out the background of this decision, the deal’s organization, and all things you should take into consideration. Never mind if you want to become a partner or thinking about someone else joining the partnership – after listening you will have some things to study and a lot of noted tips! Maybe your journey of becoming a partner in a company...

Scaling a business comes with its own set of challenges. In this episode, we discuss the difficulties that arise when a company grows, based on our own experience. We focus especially on: - communication issues, - new roles and the meaning of HR nowadays, - company culture and how to make people understand it. Tune in to learn more about it! We don’t give you ready-made solutions, but this uplifting feeling that you’re not alone in this. Even if in other companies everything looks great on...

When you have your own company or are deeply devoted to your work, it’s easy to become a workaholic. In this episode, you will learn how to avoid this way but stay highly performed at the same time. As an entrepreneur or founder, running a business can often feel like a never-ending battle. That's why it's crucial to have a routine and healthy habits in place to help you stay productive and focused. Kasia and Maciek share with you their everyday must-haves, which support their careers. It’s...

The founder's perspective is our daily reality. An accelerator's perspective brings new insights into the start-up market, which we share with you through a talk with Gabriel from Elemental Excelerator. They have developed a mentoring program that takes a personalized approach to help founders reach their goals and achieve success. And of course, they’re climate-focused! In this episode, we explore their unique approach to mentoring, the process of selecting companies for the program, and...

What can work against greenwashing look like? Quality carbon credits are the answer. BeZero Carbon focuses on quality carbon rating, helping companies become transparent and have a positive impact. In this episode, we talk with Tommy about his personal career which led him to BeZero Carbon, some industry insights, the importance of the quality in this sector, and non-voluntary options as well. We also make some space for advice aimed at newbies, who don’t know how to focus just on one part...

Are you a founder who's successfully convinced investors to trust in your startup? Congratulations, you've taken a significant step towards fulfilling your dreams! However, the hard work doesn't stop there. Once you've secured the funding, you'll need to learn how to manage your investors effectively to ensure a successful business relationship. Svenja Tegtmeier, from Saiz, had to learn this the hard way. Investor relations turned out to be more challenging than she anticipated. Managing...

You can often hear complaints about how the impact investing scene could be better. But that depends on your perspective. The state of impact investing looks a lot different when you’re the first one on the scene. That’s exactly the wide point of view that Wojciech Majewski has. Dealing with investors and founders from Poland and the CE region, Wojciech has seen impact investing evolve and mature over the years. At first it was a struggle to get any funding and having to explain time and...

For companies that work in software development, diving right in to build a complete software product seems like a natural course of action. That’s exactly what Jamie Dujardin and his team at Altruistiq did. Until they learned the hard way that sometimes the best way to move forward in the tech world is to go analog. Because what’s the point of investing tons of time and energy in software features that then turn out to be unnecessary to most users and clients? Why not instead manually...

When you think of carbon credits, companies reactively and unconsciously buying up credits to offset carbon emissions might come to mind. Thankfully, those days are becoming a thing of the past. That’s not only thanks to a shift in mindset and evolving regulations. It’s also thanks to companies like goodcarbon that are paving the way for a new way of looking at carbon credits. By building a technical, Web 3-based platform, they cut out the middleman and allow project owners and companies to...

ESG is a framework that helps companies to manage risks and opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance criteria. This aspect is increasingly important among investors during startup evaluation and due diligence processes. One of the primary responsibilities of both parties is to align what ESG means in the context of a particular startup. For example, environmental risks would be more relevant to a startup focused on mining various ores than building new accounting...

Impact is a global issue, there’s no doubt about that. We talk a lot about involving entire industries, countries, and regions in the battle with climate change. The problem with that is that it’s quite hard to do. In fact, it might be much more efficient starting off at the micro level with an individual instead. Here’s the scenario: you get a person to willingly change their habits for the better with customizable, short-term pledges they’re held accountable for. Let’s say they consciously...

When you think of oat milk, the word “revolutionary” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. And yet that’s exactly what oat milk can be if you have the right approach. Imagine taking all the water out of oat milk, leaving behind only the 10% plant base and selling it as a powder. That means a lot less CO2 emissions and significantly less packaging waste with no negative effect on taste or quality for the consumer. What’s more, customers seem to be hungry for this new alternative. Now...

When it comes to Life Cycles Assessments, many founders hit one of two brick walls. Either they need to practice a whole lot of patience waiting for a consultant that comes with a hefty price tag or they can use complicated software that doesn’t necessarily show founders all they want to know. Does that mean that founders just need to grit their teeth and bear it? Fortunately, not anymore. We sat down with Gregory Norris, a scientist-turned-entrepreneur, the man behind Earthster, an LCA...

In today’s market, transparency is taking up more and more of the spotlight. For companies to keep up with the growing trend and legal pressure, they need to implement transparency measures in their supply chains. It’s the same for any industry, including food. But it’s not just laws keeping companies accountable. More aware consumers want to know where their products come from and are willing to pay more for products from sustainable and credible brands. It’s also a case of risk...

There are few things as exciting and enrapturing as creating a product. You put your blood, sweat, tears, and time into it, coddling it and nurturing it until finally you’re ready to go to market. Or at least you think you are. Oftentimes instead of going headlong into success, founders crash head on into a brick wall when it turns out that the market is less than enthusiastic about their product. That’s exactly what Mandeep Soor, the founder of Bendi, had to face. Because product-market...

Struggling to find a good funding option? A lot of founders do. Especially when they believe that they only have the simple choice between retail and angel investing. But there’s another interesting solution on the market. One that brings the best of both investing worlds, in both Europe and the United States, to the table. All for the relatively small price of selling co-ownership in the company. How’s that a small price? Because what you’re really doing is letting existing customers...

What do you think of when you think of international market expansion? Metrics? Capital? Risk? You wouldn’t be wrong. But there’s something important missing. What about the more human side? A lot of real business is done on the ground floor and that’s where personal relationships and shared goals take center stage, not numbers and graphs. Intricate knowledge of the local business ecosystem right down to local business etiquette can make or break a deal. This isn’t just a case of good...

In today’s day and age, a lot of companies use carbon credits to pat themselves on the back and make themselves feel good about impact. But take a look around you, the environment isn’t having it. We need to transform our mentality when it comes to how we treat nature. But that can’t be done without the help of private capital. But how do you make the two starkly different worlds of private capital and nature come together? By aligning interests and adding additional incentives. By...

You’ve probably heard of the high emissions of the meat industry. But did you know that the dairy industry is as much of a culprit, accounting for the highest emissions just after lamb and beef? In fact, the emissions given off to produce the cheese consumed in Europe is equal to the emissions of Belgium. Yet, for Willicroft the most important stakeholder in producing cheese is the planet. Our guest, Brad Vanstone, talks about how plant-based cheese can not only introduce a tasty and...

No matter who you are in a teal organization, one day you’ll find yourself saying these words—brace yourself, change is coming. And in all honesty, you either embrace the change or lose your head. Why? Because as the organization grows, so does its complexity. So you automatically ask yourself the question—how do I keep the company culture I worked so hard to build alive in an evolving environment? To make things worse, the tensions you don’t see can be far more dangerous than those out...

When the organisation is small, it’s relatively easy and intuitive how to work together. But the bigger the company gets, the less obvious it gets, especially in terms of building a company culture in teal organisations. Recently we had a case, when one of our portfolio companies reached out to us with exactly this kind of problem - they needed advice on how to do that, and we decided to take a deep dive into topics of transparency, teal and self-management in the latest episode. That’s...

Sustainable fashion is a thing now. Retailers put “made from recycled materials,” “organic,” and “sustainable” labels on their clothes and collect worn-out apparel for recycling. But from the customers perspective, making sustainable choices is not a no-brainer. Apart from order returns, the pure evil of the industry, as customers we have a really vague understanding of how our fashion choices matter. And that’s because we don’t understand the underlying problem. To shed some light...

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Founders talk about impact measurement a lot. Most of the time, they complain about not knowing how to handle it. Frankly, though, there are many frameworks like life cycle assessment (LCA) that help startups make the first step towards it. In the latest episode of the Founding Impact podcast, we explored this topic with Marie Bos - Managing Partner at M&H Advisory and Investments. If you’re looking for a way to start measuring your impact and building an impact management...