Jacqueline van den Ende: 'Carbon Equity want to attracttens of thousands of small investors'
Climate investment platform Carbon Equity needs to grow from 150 million euros of invested capital to 10 billion euros over the next ten years. To achieve that, the fund is also targeting as many small investors as possible, preferably tens of thousands. This is what Carbon Equity founder Jacqueline van den Ende told this week in the Dutch podcast Doorzetters by Ruud Hendriks and Richard Bross.
Hendriks and Bross' weekly podcast always focuses on one guest, who has something to say about entrepreneurship in the world of tech, crypto, startups and scale-ups. This time it was Jacqueline van den Ende. Two years ago, she turned everything around and founded Carbon Equity, a
climate investment platform that invests in startups and scale-ups that can solve climate problems. In less than two years, more than €150 million has been invested through Carbon Equity.
"I see two different types of investors at Carbon Equity. Some investors want to put their money to work with impact. They can't do that at a big bank like ABN Amro, which is why they switch to us. Other investors, on the other hand, find climate technology a very important macroeconomic
issue at the moment and therefore choose us", says Jacqueline.
Jacqueline's father Kees worked for oil and gas company Shell for 25 years. "As a result, I grew up in all kinds of oil countries. At one point, my father saw the light, climate-wise, and then organised a three-day climate conference. I think it's super cool that he did that then." One of Jacqueline's inspirations is Al Gore, the former US vice-president. "He used his platform to really have a voice and I think he put this issue on the agenda. Ever since his film 'The Inconvenient Truth', I have been conscious about climate change."
According to Jacqueline, Carbon Equity is not an investment fund, but more of a platform, where investors can access funds. "It is a kind of airlift of capital through funds towards pioneering and impactful tech companies. For those individuals, we soon want to keep the entry level as low as possible. So democratising it. The entry threshold is now 100,000 euros. Hopefully, from July it will be 25,000 euros," Jacqueline says.
Carbon Equity also operates internationally. "We have investors from countries like Mexico and Singapore and now have people in Belgium as well. As soon as we get the AFM licence in, we will launch across Europe." The platform received around 150 million euros of invested capital in the past two years. "But we are aiming for 10 billion euros of invested capital in the next 10 years. We want tens of thousands of investors to join us. I would rather have a thousand investors than one pension fund. It could be that in the future we will go to an entry threshold of a thousand euros, which might also make us more attractive to young people."
This podcast can also be found on YouTube (in Dutch):
This podcast of Doorzetters can be found here (in Dutch).
