Belgium-based investing firm Impact Shakers has announced the launch of its first €20 million fund, Impact Shakers Ventures I. With this funding, it plans to invest in early-stage startups all across Europe, focusing on climate tech, impact infrastructure, and inclusion tech.
- Impact Shakers was founded in 2018 by Yonca Braeckman and Diana Pati. It is an investment firm that uses inclusive entrepreneurship to address social and environmental issues. As Impact Shakers shares in its Medium blog, it achieves this by closely collaborating with investors, business owners, and partners in an impact ecosystem, based on the concept of "Collaboration is Systems Change".
“It became clear pretty quickly that if we wanted to build a more inclusive startup ecosystem, we would need to add capital to the mix. We started with a friends and family instrument and are working our way up the capital ladder with this first impact venture fund,” says founder and CEO Yonca Braeckman.
- Belgian Victrix, a family-owned investment company that focuses on sustainable and impactful investments, provided the anchor investment to Impact Shakers Ventures I. According to the fund, other LPs also include a number of individual impact leaders in Europe, with half of them are women.
“At Victrix, we believe in enabling strong teams looking to drive systemic change. We were impressed by the Impact Shakers team, their network and access to deal flow, as well as their ability to catalyze the ecosystem towards positive change,” says Basile Aloy, CEO of Victrix.
- Impact Shakers Ventures I will make investments using a venture accelerator model, which means it will choose six to eight firms annually and invest €150,000 first, followed by a six-month impact acceleration program and possible follow-on investments of up to €1.5 million.
- The founders will gain from an ecosystem of specialists, impact investors, and other partners, as well as the knowledge of the Impact Shakers team, both during and after the program.Diana Pati, Impact Shakers’ co-founder, will be leading the operations of the accelerator.
