Idgar van Kippersluis is an impact investor and will soon join as an ambassador of PYM. He began his career in management consulting and then set up a (private equity) investment firm. After nearly twenty years, he started looking for more social impact. He hopes to combine the power, dynamism, and innovation of our capitalist system with greater sustainability, less inequality, and more fairness. 

How did your impact journey begin? 

I came from the private equity world, had set up my own investment company, and had been interested in the impact world for some time. I actually came across the Wire Group by chance and started investing in their fund of funds to get a better overview of the possibilities within impact. Around the same time, I also got involved at INSEAD in setting up an impact investment club for MBA students. I then joined the investment committee of their fund and learned a lot about impact investing through that experience.

What has been your most successful investment so far? 

I have been actively involved in impact investing for over three years now, and I think it is still too early to point out clear winners, although some funds, such as AquaSpark, are doing very well. A few direct investments I made that looked promising unfortunately did not succeed. From those experiences, I mainly learned to diversify even more and to focus on funds.

How has your background in finance shaped you as an impact investor? 

I think I tend to look more for the business model and the numbers behind the story. Sometimes you see investments that rely heavily on nice anecdotes and photos. I think I view those with a bit more skepticism. 

How could (positive) principles of private equity be applied to impact investing? 

At the moment, in my view, impact investing consists almost entirely of venture capital: financing promising new ideas that—if successful—have a direct positive impact. In those cases, impact and financial returns ideally go hand in hand. What you hardly see yet is ‘impact private equity’: impact investing that focuses on transforming existing, non-impact companies into more sustainable and fair enterprises. I think this is because you more often encounter trade-offs. Decisions that lead to higher costs and lower cash flows in the short term, but—if all goes well—translate into greater appeal to customers and employees in the long term, and thus into higher value. That is more complex and less practiced and proven, but I hope we will see more of these kinds of initiatives in the coming years.

What is the advantage of investing through a fund-of-funds? 

A fund-of-funds can be interesting for several reasons. Of course, it immediately provides a high degree of diversification and thus lower risk. In addition, you also learn more about the different approaches and focus areas of various funds. On the other hand, you do add an extra layer of costs, which can slightly reduce your return.

As an impact investor, how do you view philanthropy?  

I think there is a spectrum between pure philanthropy on one end and maximum return investing on the other. For example, I support a number of purely philanthropic projects in the cultural sector and, more recently, the School for Moral Ambition Foundation. These are quite clearly philanthropic initiatives, but sometimes the boundaries are not so clear-cut. For instance, I have also made a few investments for the sake of impact where I consciously accepted the significant downside risks. It is important to realize in advance where you are on that spectrum so you can adjust your expectations accordingly. 

How do you see the future of impact investing? 

For real large-scale systemic change, a lot needs to happen at once. Impact entrepreneurs with innovative ideas are an important part, but not sufficient on their own. You also need supportive policies and a certain mindset among consumers to embrace the new. Often, this requires people to think more broadly than just their immediate short-term interests. Instead, we should try to take the interests of all stakeholders into account in every decision, especially in the long term. 

Additionally, I think much more robust data needs to be made available to convince people on a large scale to invest in impact, and especially to attract institutional investors in that direction. What financial returns have different impact funds shown, and what measurable impact have they achieved? There is a lot of progress to be made by making this much more transparent and insightful. 

How can a network like PYM add value? 

It is clear at PYM that everyone is genuinely committed to channeling more capital towards impact. This can be achieved both by getting more people interested in impact and by allocating an ever-larger portion of their assets to it. I fully support that mission and look forward to contributing to it, as a .