104 How to make genuine impact venture capital investments with Gabby Morgan of Conduit Connect

The EIS Navigator

We all have idea of what impact investing means, but how do you measure and systematise it? Conduit Connect is an impact venture capital investor and we have asked Senior Investment Manager Gabby Morgan onto to discuss this. She was hands on in developing their own impact framework and reporting so understands the issues and can talk about how Conduit Connect solved them.

In a wide ranging discussion we talk about:

• approaches to measuring impact
• developing a theory of change
• how to make impact robust in a company
• scaling impact
• being intentional about diversity
• negative externalities and avoiding them
• how to treat items that can't be measured
• greenwashing in the venture industry
• the challenges of comparing frameworks

With the new SDR Regulations coming in, this is a very timely discussion. Gabby has thought deeply about many of the issues and applied them in practice, so has some great insights.

01:20 Gabby introduces herself

03:30 What is Conduit Connect?

09:00 How do we approach measuring impact?

11:50 The four buckets of impact in Conduit Connect's framework

26:00 The need for fund managers to be intentional about diversity

28:30 What are negative externalities and avoiding them

32:00 Taking account of what can't be measured

35:00 How lockstep works to keep companies impact orientated

39:40 Greenwashing in the venture industry

41:40 How do investors compare manager frameworks

49:00 Prospects for the impact industry in next couple of years

54:50 Favourite questions

Links

Conduit Connect website - https://www.theconduitconnect.com/

Subscribe to the EIS Navigator podcast on most services here: https://the-eis-navigator.captivate.fm/listen

Suggested books and media

Range by Daniel Epstein

Ministry of Time by Kallane Bradley

Bio

Gabby Morgan

Senior Investment Manager, Conduit Connect

Gabby is a Senior Investment Manager at the Conduit Connect, responsible for screening and performing due diligence on opportunities for the Conduit EIS Impact Fund. She is also responsible for fundraising and investor relations for the Fund. She is an investor mentor at Carbon13, a leading climate-focussed accelerator, and a Board Advisor at Thalamos, one of the Conduit Fund’s portfolio companies. She has advised early-stage impact ventures through the Huckletree Alpha programme, Village Capital and Founders Intelligence.

Prior to joining the Conduit Connect in November 2019, Gabby was an investment research analyst for a US-based impact investing firm called Align Impact supporting their investment research and direct investment strategies. In 2019, She completed her MBA at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, where she focussed her studies on impact investing and social entrepreneurship. During her MBA, she was a Director of the MBA Impact Investing Network and Training (MIINT), Oxford Said Chapter, and was accepted into the annual Impact Lab run in coordination with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

Prior to getting her MBA, Gabby was a Director at Euromoney Institutional Investor in New York City. In this position, she founded and ran a number of their private investment memberships for wealth managers, family offices, HNWIs, pension plans and large asset managers.

Gabby was born in the UK but spent most of her life in the U.S., having grown up in Connecticut and spent four years in Boston for her undergraduate degree.