Planet Paradise
Businesses that help us live within our environmental limits by decarbonizing energy and industry, fixing the food system, and building a circular, wasteless economy.
Impact Methodology
If you remove the impact, you remove the business.
We believe
the most valuable companies of our time will be the ones solving humanity’s biggest problems
Our vision is
a new economic order that works for people and planet for the centuries to come, a radical shift towards impact capitalism
We’re on a mission
to partner with world changing entrepreneurs to create scalable and systemic solutions for global challenges
Investment Themes
We are impact-driven, with a multi-specialist approach to tackling the most pressing issues for people and the planet. Our investments are distributed across the impact spectrum and address the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the 7 Planetary Boundaries. We focus on two specific themes:
People Power
Businesses that empower people to create sustainable livelihoods by championing equal education, employment opportunities, and access to affordable (mental) healthcare.
Rubio’s Theory of Change
Impact must be at the heart of an impact entrepreneur’s business model, and the investment must align with our Theory of Change at fund level.
Background
We developed our social impact performance model together with the European Investment Fund in 2014. Rubio’s Fund I was one of the first funds in Europe to link impact and carry, and we are happy to report that we overachieved on our impact targets (impact multiple > 1) in our first fund. In 2024, we were still one of the few impact funds in the world linking our carried interest completely to both financial and impact returns—something we hope will become the new standard for all impact funds. Since there is no golden standard in the market yet, we will keep learning, developing, improving, and sharing!
Rubio’s Impact Methodology
During the investment process, we guide entrepreneurs through our ‘Impact Methodology’, which we adapted from the Impact Management Project (IMP) framework’s five dimensions of impact: Who, What, How much, Contribution, and Risk. We modified the IMP model to include investing for systemic impact, a crucial element of our mission. We only invest in solutions with transformational potential—those that can reshape an industry and drive change on a macro level.
Independent Impact Advisory Board
A crucial part of our impact methodology is the validation of impact metrics. As impact targets can be difficult to objectify, we have chosen to include a two-step impact validation model. The first step is an independent validation within our investment process by the independent Rubio Impact Advisory Board (IAB), which has been in place since the inception of our fund in 2015. The IAB formally consists of four independent impact experts (see below). It validates the theory of change and proposed impact metrics of an investment before Rubio proceeds to signing and closing the investment.
After signing, our LPAC (consisting of the largest investors in our fund) performs a second formal validation of our impact targets and links them to our carried interest.
100% carry linked to impact targets
The financial remuneration of Team Rubio is linked to both impact and financial targets. Our first hurdle is impact: 100% of our carried interest—the amount of money we receive after returns to investors—is tied to impact. If, during the investment period, the combined portfolio does not reach its impact targets, we forgo our carried interest. This mechanism eliminates conflicts of interest between impact and financial performance because our VC returns are tied to both. No impact = no rewards.
Reporting: the weighted overall Rubio impact target
Our overall impact performance is calculated quarterly to assess the fund’s actual impact performance against the three-year impact target set at the investment date. The Weighted Overall Rubio Impact Target is calculated as follows:
1-3 Impact Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are determined per investment.
Each KPI is assigned an impact weighting within the specific investment – as some KPIs are more relevant than others.
For each KPI a three-year impact target is set and validated (pre deal) by our Impact Advisory Board and finally (post deal) determined and approved by the Investor Counsil.
The Final Overall Rubio Impact Target per investment is calculated by setting off the actual impact reached against the three-year impact target multiplied by the assigned impact weight per impact KPI.
The fund level Weighted Overall Rubio Impact Target is calculated by multiplying the Final Overall Rubio Impact Target per investment by the relative investment weight of that investment.
We report the Weighted Overall Rubio Impact Target of our portfolio companies to our investors each quarter.
The fund overall impact hurdle at exit is minimum 60%, but we of course aim to exceed 100%.
The Weighted Overall Rubio Impact Target per 2023 year end is:
Fund 1: 222%
Fund 2: 27%
Want to know more?
This Rubio’s Impact Methodology Policy describes Rubio’s Impact Methodology in more detail, including the agreements we make with our Members (‘LPs’) and several informal methods and practices that we have ingrained in our impact measurement process.
