Greetings to 3k+ Impact Supporters! 🌍 This is Jonas writing 👋 For our first episode of the year, I sit down with Johannes Weber, co-founder of Ananda Impact Ventures, one of the earliest impact venture firms in Europe.

If you look around today, it almost feels like impact has always been here. Every second deck says climate. Every LP has a sustainability bucket. There are conferences, frameworks, and a whole vocabulary around it.

But it really was not that long ago that none of this existed.

Johannes started Ananda when impact VC was not even considered a category at all. There were no benchmarks, no success stories, and very few investors who believed you could do good and make money at the same time.

In other words, they had to build the playbook themselves 📕

So, we went deep, into the practical decisions, the early mistakes, and the bigger patterns that shaped not just Ananda, but the impact VC space more broadly.

📋What’s inside

🧭 Starting When Nobody Believed – The early days of impact VC and the first proof points that changed minds 🌍 Beyond Labels – Why climate, social, and education categories can hide system-level connections 🔬 Brave Tech Over Easy Tech – Funding frontier technologies instead of incremental software 🧠 Research First, Deals Second – How Ananda sources and backs founders with conviction 🌓 Staying Steady Through Cycles – Avoiding hype, focusing on long-term partnerships and systemic change

👋 Meet Johannes Weber

Johannes’ entry into impact came from experience and a very human curiosity.

Early in his career, he helped build and take a fintech company through a small IPO. Suddenly, he had what many founders chase: liquidity, freedom, and the option to do whatever he wanted.

But his original motivation wasn’t abstract ambition. “I wanted to be able to go to Disney World like the other kids,” he says, reflecting on growing up at a private school where his dad taught. That simple desire for independence set him on a path to entrepreneurship.

After the IPO, Johannes experimented with ways to make a difference. He bought an asset manager focused on sustainable public equities and partnered with WWF. The idea was straightforward: screen out harmful companies, invest responsibly, and donate a portion of fees.

On paper, it looked good. In practice, it didn’t feel like they were moving the needle.

“Buying shares on secondary markets and writing checks to charity just didn’t feel like we were changing anything. Ownership without influence doesn’t move systems,” he explains.

He even tried activism for a while. Showing up at shareholder meetings in a panda suit to pressure companies to behave better 🐼

That frustration was the moment the thesis crystallized: if you want to shape outcomes, you have to build companies from the ground up.

And so, Ananda was born, one of Europe’s first dedicated impact VC funds. Today, they’re investing from their Fund V.

🧭 Starting when nobody believed

It’s easy to forget how contrarian impact investing once sounded.

When Johannes went out to raise their first fund, the pitch was simple. Back entrepreneurs solving real problems and aim for venture-style returns.

Some thought it was naïve. Others thought it was charity dressed up as investing.

They aimed for €100 million.

They closed at €7 million.

“People either thought it was cute or strange. There wasn’t a single example we could point to and say, look, this works.”

So instead of referencing proof points, they decided to create one 💡

One of their early investments was Auticon, now one of the world’s largest employers of people with autism, placing neurodiverse talent into high-quality tech consulting roles.

When Sir Richard Branson later invested and publicly endorsed Auticon, something shifted. It became harder to argue that impact businesses could not be serious businesses. That early success helped open doors not just for Ananda, but arguably for the broader VC ecosystem 🌀

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🌍 Beyond labels...

A theme that kept coming back into our conversation was Johannes’ discomfort with how neatly we tent to categorize impact today.

Climate funds. Health funds. Education funds.

It makes sense from a fundraising perspective. LPs like clear labels.

But the world does not work in labels.

“Mental health affects climate outcomes. Education affects biodiversity. These systems are connected.”

Climate often feels ‘easier’ because emissions can be measured and reduced to a single number. CO₂ becomes a universal currency.

But something Johannes cautions is that measurement can sometimes give a false sense of precision.

Just because something is quantifiable does not mean it captures the full picture.

That’s one reason Ananda has chosen to stay generalist by design.

They go deep on sectors through research, but they avoid locking themselves into one narrow theme. Some of their most interesting investments would have never fit neatly into a single box.

For them, flexibility is not a lack of focus. It’s a way to avoid blind spots.

🔬 Brave tech over easy tech

This part of our conversation really stuck with me.

Johannes argued that venture capital, at its best, was originally meant to fund frontier technologies. Hard science. Infrastructure. Big leaps 🚀

Yet over the past decade, much of VC has drifted toward incremental software.

“If we only fund easier SaaS companies, we’re not really solving the big problems. Venture was invented for the hard stuff.”

So, Ananda actively looks for heavier, more complex bets.

Satellites that detect forest fires globally Biodiversity measurement infrastructure 🐜 Biosecurity and pathogen detection 🧬 Science-driven platforms that governments and critical systems rely on 🧪

These companies are slower to build, more capital intensive, and don’t always fit the neat venture playbook. But if they succeed, the upside is systemic 👏

“If this doesn’t fundamentally change something, we’re probably not the right investor,” he told me.

🧠 Research first, deals second

Another thing that differentiates Ananda is how intentional they are about sourcing.

Rather than waiting for hundreds of inbound decks, they often start with a few questions:

* Where might new technologies emerge in five years?

* Which risks are underappreciated today?

* What capabilities will societies need that don’t yet exist?

Then they run structured deep dives. Talking to scientists, operators, and domain experts. Mapping the landscape long before companies are fundraising.

Only after building conviction do they actively look for founders.

The result surprised me: 15 of their last 18 investments originated from internal research.

“By the time we meet a founder, we already understand the problem. We don’t need the education slide. We can go straight into building together.”

It creates a very different dynamic. Less pitching, more partnership 🤝

🌓 Staying steady through cycles

We also talked about the past few years: the boom, the flood of climate capital. And now, the cooling off.

Johannes has seen this movie before.

Capital always moves in waves 🌊 Some investors show up because a theme is fashionable, then disappear when returns take longer than expected.

He calls it ‘tourist capital’.

“When the water goes away, you see who was swimming without pants.”

His approach is simpler. Stay consistent. Don’t chase labels. Build funds sized for reality, not hype. Because the underlying problems do not disappear just because markets change.

And the founders building in these spaces need long term partners, not fair-weather investors.

📬 What this means for you as an impact VC

Johannes’ experience shows that impact investing isn’t about chasing trends or checking boxes. It’s about influence, insight, and patience. You’re backing companies early, before their business models, incentive structures, and impact ambitions are fully set. That means you can help shape what “value” really means both financially and socially 🌱

So, start small:

✅ Pick one frontier technology or complex systems company in your pipeline and map the systemic impact it could create 💬 Engage founders early on the trade-offs between growth, profit, and impact 📈 Use those insights to adjust governance, incentives, and long-term strategy

The lesson is simple: this isn’t about “adding” impact 🧩 It’s about understanding the full potential of the companies you already invest in 🔍 Be patient, stay consistent, and lean into the hard bets that can reshape systems.

✨ Closing Thoughts

Talking to Johannes felt like talking to someone who has quietly watched the entire impact ecosystem grow up.

What I appreciated most is that nothing about Ananda’s story feels rushed or opportunistic. They did not jump in because it was trendy. They stayed because they believed ownership and company building can genuinely shift outcomes.

Over time, that patience starts to look like an advantage.

Maybe that is the takeaway for me.

Impact investing does not need louder claims or more complex frameworks. It probably needs more consistency, more curiosity, and more conviction to back the hard things.

The kind of work that might take longer, but actually moves the needle ⚡

📥 Tell Us What You Think: Where should impact VCs focus next: fewer braver bets on frontier solutions, or more incremental improvements that scale faster?Reply to this newsletter or drop us a note at ImpactSupporters@thefootprintfirm.com

👋 Thanks for reading, Jonas

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📚 Further Reading

If you want to dig in a little deeper into some of the ideas we explored with Johannes, these reports give context, data, and inspiration for impact VCs:

* Thriving at Nature’s Pace: Emergent Economics for Oil, Gas, and Coal by Dr David Ko A forthcoming book that invites readers to rethink economic systems and investment through nature‑aligned principles, proposing a more holistic approach to climate, capital, and long‑term value creation.

* The State of Impact Investing Market Size – GIIN, 2025 See how impact investing still represents a small fraction of global AUM, and why early proof points were so crucial.

* IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment

A consensus scientific assessment showing how biodiversity loss is a systemic business and economic risk and why integrating nature into strategy matters for long‑term value.

* An Investor’s Guide to Deep Tech | BCG Explore why funding frontier technologies may be harder, but can deliver outsized systemic and financial impact.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit impactvc.substack.com

From Panda Suits to Planetary Impact: A Conversation w/ Johannes Weber, Co-Founder of Ananda 🐼

Impact Supporters

From Panda Suits to Planetary Impact: A Conversation w/ Johannes Weber, Co-Founder of Ananda 🐼