Reframing Venture Capital
Venture capital is doing well. After a short dip caused by increasing interest rates and some ‘mishaps’ - from WeWork to FTX - 2024 already looked rosy again. 2025 promises to be the next big year for ‘small tech’, if we believe Mark Andreessen and his powerful friends in government. And if we watch the most recent exits from Wiz and Figma to the long-awaited Klarna. At the same time, Europe is trying to catch up - by deregulating and investing in defence tech.
Techno-optimism prevails, again or still. In the face of ecological and climate crises, skyrocketing inequality, continuing modern slavery and the potential unintended consequences of powerful AI technology, the proposed answer to our malaises is all to often: technology will save us and make the world a better place.
Learning from the past
We know that tech does not always deliver on the need for solutions to real problems, however. From Ricardo and Keynes to recent Nobel laureate Acemoglu, experts have held up the same mirror throughout history: not all technology is good and technology does not automatically solve challenges for everyone.
With the decisions of what and whom to fund right now and how to govern tech, can we learn from the mistakes of the past? Retrospectively, we know that letting people like Zuckerberg or Bezos run loose and unchecked - focused on growth at all costs - risks potentially extreme net negative impacts for society.
As tech ecosystems around the world - comprised by an interconnected network of LPs, VCs, founders and workers - we have both a responsibility and a choice: how do we fund and build a technological tomorrow that works?
What that means can vary tremendously. Different parts of the ecosystems across geographies can build different versions of this technological tomorrow. At the moment, however, variation is mostly absent. VC works, but only for a mostly homogenous group of people already at the top, wielding and investing in monopoly power.
Towards a new technological tomorrow
We believe that venture capital investors and their limited partners have both an outsized influence on technology’s trajectory and one that is often underestimated. This is where we start.
Since 2021, we have spent all our time and resources figuring out how VCs can analyse risk better and create more value supporting their startup portfolios; that is what we call ESG integration, fully aligned with bottom line considerations and technological progress.
Now, we work with more than 500 VC funds worldwide and over 110 asset owners and managers on this task; we trained VCs and LPs from more than 150 institutions across 10 different countries. These numbers alone are proof of the success of our collaborative and system’s wide approach.
Today, we want to announce our renewed focus on our two core communities, VCs and LPs; and we are announcing our expansion in two further directions: we are doubling down on our emerging markets work and are exploring also supporting the sphere of portfolio companies and founders.
We will do all this under a new name: VentureESG is becoming too small and restrictive; the misunderstood notion of ESG can close doors where we want to open them. We will continue to talk about ESG - and DEI and responsible investing - but calibrate our language to prevent misunderstandings where necessary. We are also talking more about impact and the change necessary in VC as a system. From today on, we will do this as Reframe Venture (RV).
Our continued focus is clear and unchanged: we will play our role in reframing venture capital - with the influence of LPs and taking into account the needs of founders and workers. Our goal is to contribute to creating a just, inclusive technological tomorrow that works for all of us, starting with VC.