What does impact investing actually mean?

For me, foun­ders are the epitome of impact, because they are people who want to proac­tively change things, shape things, make an impact. As perso­na­li­ties and busi­ness ideas are so diverse, my under­stan­ding of impact is ther­e­fore very broad. It’s about brin­ging about progress and solving the major chal­lenges of our time: Climate change, scar­city of resour­ces, digi­ta­liza­tion, arti­fi­cial intelligence. 

At eCAPI­TAL, we combine impact with tech­no­logy. Our invest­ments aim to improve lives through tech­no­lo­gi­cal progress. This focus has exis­ted since eCAPI­TAL was foun­ded — even though the terms impact inves­t­ing and deep tech were not used in 1999, today they stand for what eCAPI­TAL has been doing for 26 years. We look for visio­nary foun­ders who are deve­lo­ping ground­brea­king tech­no­lo­gies. We under­stand their chal­lenges and ambi­ti­ons and support them in buil­ding their teams and compa­nies. — Since its incep­tion, eCAPI­TAL has supported a total of 93 young compa­nies. Some of the better-known start-ups in our history include sonnen, a pioneer in elec­tri­city storage, a flag­ship clean­tech company with a successful exit. And Exein, secu­rity soft­ware for the smal­lest IoT devices; a current eCAPI­TAL invest­ment that recently attrac­ted media atten­tion as part of a follow-up finan­cing round. 

With our invest­ments in the areas of Clima­te­Tech, cyber­se­cu­rity, new mate­ri­als and software/IT, we aim not only for finan­cial returns but also for a posi­tive ecolo­gi­cal and social impact. Our current eCAPI­TAL V fund with a volume of €162 million invests, for exam­ple, in the compa­nies 1KOMMA5° (PV systems, storage, heat pumps, char­ging stati­ons and smart elec­tri­city tariffs), Baobab (cyber insu­rance) and MOTOR Ai (auto­no­mous driving). At the same time, we are constantly on the lookout for other highly inno­va­tive tech­no­logy companies. 

As a tradi­tio­nal venture capi­tal company, we strive for successful exits of our invest­ments within four to seven years, but as an inde­pen­dent inves­tor we have a rela­tively large amount of leeway. We see oursel­ves as a spar­ring part­ner for the foun­ders and mana­gers of our port­fo­lio compa­nies — we are a highly inter­di­sci­pli­nary team and have a strong entre­pre­neu­rial focus in terms of our part­ners, venture part­ners and fund investors. 

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and agent-based auto­ma­tion soft­ware are curr­ently opening up count­less new possi­bi­li­ties in almost all areas. The speed of tech­no­lo­gi­cal progress is incre­asing expo­nen­ti­ally. We will see many chan­ges in sectors and indus­tries, but also in our ever­y­day lives. AI will ther­e­fore be an abso­lut­ely promi­sing trend for start-ups and VC inves­tors for the fore­seeable future. Progress in the field of AI is also driving deve­lo­p­ments in robo­tics. Auto­no­mous machi­nes will soon be omnipresent. 

The elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the world conti­nues to advance, driven not only by AI requi­re­ments in terms of compu­ting and ther­e­fore elec­tri­city capa­ci­ties, but also by efforts to achieve more sustainable energy gene­ra­tion, mobi­lity and product manu­fac­tu­ring, among other things. Invest­ments in CO2-neutral power gene­ra­tion, storage solu­ti­ons and effi­ci­ent distri­bu­tion of elec­tri­city will conti­nue to attract capi­tal. The topic of secu­rity and defense has also chan­ged from a no-go to a rele­vant invest­ment area for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors in a short period of time. With our exper­tise and networks, we at eCAPI­TAL cover secu­rity in infor­ma­tion tech­no­logy and expect to see increased inno­va­tion in the coming years. 

Despite all these exci­ting global oppor­tu­ni­ties, the Euro­pean start-up and VC ecosys­tem also has chal­lenges to over­come, for exam­ple with regard to the exit markets. My wish for Europe would be a func­tio­ning stock exch­ange for IPOs of growth compa­nies that enables successful start-ups to conti­nue their long-term, inde­pen­dent deve­lo­p­ment beyond the VC-finan­ced phase. 

Hannes Schill has been one of the mana­ging part­ners of the venture capi­tal company eCAPI­TAL ENTRPRENEURIAL PARTNERS in Müns­ter since 2014. Before joining eCAPI­TAL in 2014, Hannes Schill was an invest­ment mana­ger at corpo­rate VC Innogy Venture Capi­tal, worked as an invest­ment control­ler in the rene­wa­ble energy sector at RWE, lear­ned about M&A invest­ment banking at Morgan Stan­ley and began his career as a finan­cial analyst in the auto­mo­tive indus­try at Robert Bosch. He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth College (USA) and studied Inter­na­tio­nal Busi­ness Admi­nis­tra­tion at the Stutt­gart Univer­sity of Coope­ra­tive Education. 

h.schill@ecapital.vc