Zoey Dash McKenzie is taking action to be a part of changing how women, Black, and people of color are disproportionately affected by climate change.
TechCrunch reports that the Public Ventures founding partner has launched a $100 million impact fund to invest in early-stage life science and clean tech startups with the mission of “improving health equity and supporting climate preparedness for underserved communities.”
“Beyond just being an impact fund, we are really breaking away from conventional structures and venture capital submitted in alignment with the needs of accelerating early-stage science,” Dash McKenzie said, according to the outlet. “We’ve decided to employ a waterfall structuring, make assessments on a deal-by-deal basis and then return funds back to our LPs earlier on. We’re accelerating capital velocity at the early stage, when it’s needed most, so we really sit right in the middle of government grants and traditional venture capital.”
The impact fund will focus on startups in Canada, and they will have access to support, such as experts, to help build their projects. The aim is to scale the country’s innovation.
“We will be very thoughtful in terms of the types of investments that we make as opposed to sprinkling it across various verticals,” Dash McKenzie explained to TechCrunch. “We aim to kind of stack our investments so that they have an amplified impact in the real world. We’re going to come up with a few strategies on how we can pull together a consortium of startups from all over the world to have a meaningful output.”
Dash McKenzie detailed that the impact fund plans to do an open call in the fall to identify the life science and clean tech startups and invest in them before the end of 2023. Additionally, she noted that she is awaiting confirmation on a potential anchor limited partnership with a government program that has allocated over $50 million for emerging fund managers.
