4Impact heads for year-end close for EUR 125m second fund

Anastasia Gnezditskaia
20 April 2023

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Dutch venture capital firm 4Impact is heading for a year-end close for its second fund with a hard cap of EUR 125m and is open to commitments from institutional, impact and corporate investors, as well as family offices, general partner Pauline Wink said.

The Hague-headquartered sponsor has already received fund commitments from Oost NL, InvestNL, family offices and C-level executives, she said, declining to disclose current commitment levels.

It seeks ticket sizes of up to EUR 10m from investors and plans to complete the fundraising by year-end or early 2024, Wink said, adding that it seeks investors that are interested to support innovations with a positive impact.

The fund acts as a standalone investor or as a part of a consortium, particularly in the case of non-Benelux deals.

4Impact launched its first fund, which is materially smaller than the second one, in 2019. The first fund has been deployed in 11 investments. With a fund life of 10 years and a holding period of between six and seven years, the fund plans to approach exits in two years, although it has already been approached by potential buyers, she said.

Investment strategy
With the second fund, 4Impact seeks to deploy equity in around 25 early-stage companies that use digital technologies to make a positive impact on people and the world. It is interested in companies based in Benelux, the DACH region and the Nordics. It will seek to combine scalable software solutions for the planet and people with strong financial returns, Wink said.

It participates in seed and Series A rounds, with an initial ticket of up to EUR 2m and around EUR 4m-EUR 5m available for a lifetime of a company. The VC firm tends to invest one third of a fund in initial investments and two thirds in follow-ons, Wink noted, adding that 4Impact targets a net IRR of 20%.

Fund II has so far been deployed in one investment, a German operator of carbon credit management platform CarbonFuture that offers a marketplace for collecting, managing, and trading carbon sink certificates, ensuring independently verified standards.

Investments in Fund I include Dutch companies such as predictive hiring software provider Equalture; Satelligence, a company that helps agricultural firms track the unwanted environmental impact of their activities; Carbon Equity, an alternative investment platform that supports companies that combat climate change; and environmental technology company Circularise.

The founders of 4Impact worked at Goldman Sachs previously and the team is aiming to ensure diversity among its team, Wink noted.