We need to see more repeat and successfully exited founders coming back and building impact driven startups - Zoe Peden, Partner at Ananda Impact Ventures

Zoe Peden is an accomplished early-stage investor and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience building products for both startups and corporates. Her work has been recognised multiple times - she was named Elle Magazine UK’s Female Social Entrepreneur of the Year and became a finalist in the Global Mobile Awards, among many other honours. Zoe joined Ananda Impact Ventures in 2016, where she leads investments in health, TechBio, nature, and decarbonisation of industry.

Her career began in the corporate world, where she spent a decade developing online products for large corporations just as the internet was taking off, before moving into impact-driven ventures.

“As a teenager inspired by the movie Wall Street and coming from a single parent family on social security benefits  I wanted to earn lots of money to solve the social inequity that I saw all around me, the poverty-related health and education issues particularly. 

I was always looking for ways to combine my love of the internet world (late 90s) with building something that mattered and would change lives.”

This pursuit accelerated when she co-founded MyChoicePad, a pioneering special-education app. 

“ After a decade I couldn’t stand working for anyone else so I co-founded one of the UK’s top special education apps. That entrepreneurial chapter of almost a decade was the catalyst for becoming a VC. 

Ananda was one of my investors and they invited me to join them - initially as a Venture Partner to assist with sourcing in the UK. This role then grew bigger and after an apprenticeship in VC, I became a Partner of the firm.”

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One key lesson Zoe shares about the impact-driven VC world is the importance of defining impact carefully.

“Some VC’s call themselves impact but they have no impact incentives in the way their firm is set up. 

Ananda is one of the investors who co-created the impact carry scheme with the EIF. This means that all of the fund is measured with impact KPIs on each company on the portfolio. No matter how well the fund performs financially if those impact KPI hurdles are not met the firm will not receive their carry. This helps to keep the VC values aligned with the founders. 

Always ask what qualifies a firm as an impact VC. We don’t need impact washing!”

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The skills one needs to join a VC firm, Zoe says, depend a lot on the stage of that respective VC.

“I work in the earliest stages so a background building a startup is very important, the risk appetite and empathy are crucial to get alignment with a founder and to assist in their growth to scale. 

Relationship and network become ultra important with an emphasis on creating a unique network that is hard for anyone else to replicate. Getting access to the best founders is the name of the game for success in VC.” 

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Her founder experience gave her a strong edge as an investor..The fact that she had first-hand insight into what it actually meant to build a product, build the strategy and execute helps her when evaluating founders.

“I bring that lived experience: empathy for the grind, the resilience to bounce back from rejection, and knowledge when guiding teams while they scale and fundraise. I’m very aware of what I know and what I do not - but I know plenty of people who have built and executed time and time again and can bring them in. 

I am very used to operating on imperfect information at speed.”

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Among the technology advancements she’s mostly interested in, Zoe names “bioconvergence” - the convergence of biology, computing, nanotechnology, and AI which have the potential to unlock new solutions in healthcare, agriculture, energy, and materials development.

“Applications include regenerative medicine, organ-on-chip diagnostics, microbiome engineering, and bio-based manufacturing. We’ve made investments in a number of these fields over the last 12 months. 

Biosecurity is one field I am super interested in. Now we have access to improved data and the ability to track and predict, it can have a colossal impact on all humanity and our planet – as it covers human health, animal health, food security, wastewater quality and is all exacerbated by pollution. Major impact themes colliding together.” 

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AI, she adds, can be a highly powerful tool for impact-driven startups looking to scale, democratise innovation and build real-world solutions in healthcare and climate and beyond.

“But these benefits come with significant risks from failing projects and ethical hazards to environmental  (energy cost of processing) and compliance challenges.

Success hinges on well-defined problem targeting, ethical design, operational resilience, and genuine alignment between impact and business. 

With measured execution, AI can be a powerful multiplier for positive change.”

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It’s been a very interesting decade for the investment world she says, looking back at her journey until now. There was a peak in 2021/2022, but we’re not returning to the pre-pandemic levels. 

“It’s never been easy to raise money and it’s not meant to be, as VC is designed for the outliers so it’s a micro proportion of all startups. The speed and scale of execution required is highly unusual. The bar is very high.” 

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For founders pitching to Ananda, she stresses the importance of alignment. The VC has a priority list of topics and themes they invest into, so it’s better if the company comes from one of those themes.

“Then we look for strong commercial acumen, far ranging vision, a complementary team, global outlook with some substantial IP moat. 

A large proportion of our founders have one of the founding team who is highly scientific or from a deep engineering background and the work is a spin out from their PhD. 

Paired with a commercial and well networked founder  - that’s the perfect blend for us! The pitch is a good test of how well they can sell to their first customers.”

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Finally, Zoe notes that while there’s no shortage of impact startups, what the ecosystem really needs to see is “more repeat and successfully exited founders coming back and building impact driven startups the next time around.”

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Thank you, Zoe Peden!