Main Responsibilities Of A Managing Partner At LoveMore Group

It's going to depend on the type of fund or family office you work for. You could be the head of an ESG practice at a large investment bank. In my role, I worked for a family office.

This means a family backs the private equity fund. They wanted to explore creating a siled fund or making impact investments. Impact investments are those that produce a financial return, along with social and environmental returns.

This involved creating a separate division within their private equity company. It would be alongside their real estate, seed-stage VC, growth-stage, and distressed assets divisions. The ultimate objective was to overlay impact as a lens across all their investments.

On a day-to-day basis, my role involved understanding the family's values and goals for their investments. Since this function didn't exist before I joined, other than the family's philanthropic work, it was important to align their financial return goals with their impact objectives.

I created an impact report where I interviewed each family member. I used my experience to gain qualitative learning through dialogue and visited all the different philanthropies they had supported. The family was Mexican, so much of their work was in the Sea of Cortez region. This was personally fulfilling as it allowed me to combine my love for Spanish and Mexico.

I grew up visiting Baja and spent six months in Chile. I was able to bring a global perspective to their investment portfolio, which is why they hired an American for this role. I started by creating a report that addressed their different financial goals, required returns, and asset class interests.

We explored real estate, specific sectors in agriculture, or if they were agnostic to sector but prioritized a certain return percentage. The goal was to align these with their impact goals. There are many frameworks for viewing impact, from simple ESG to the UN's sustainable development goals. I presented various options and my own perspectives.

This is a rapidly developing field, and a key challenge is comparing impact investments. A part of my role was to facilitate conversations about what impact looks like for them. We discussed why their free market endeavors might not already be producing the desired social and environmental outcomes.

We also considered if impact factors could lead to outperformance. This could be through attracting better talent in mission-driven organizations or by positioning companies ahead of policy shifts requiring carbon accounting.

Ultimately, it involves answering many questions. We needed to define who we wanted to be in this evolving world and how to apply this across the entire portfolio. If you're looking to work in this field, you likely won't be immediately plugged into a head of impact position unless you have significant prior experience.

You might start as an associate, possibly not directly in the impact lens, but with opportunities to work on measurement and gradually transition to a full-time impact role. My day-to-day involved meeting entrepreneurs, which was the second step in my process: creating a pipeline.

A portfolio's quality depends on its pipeline. The top of the funnel involves identifying impact unicorns that affect a billion people and are valued at over a billion dollars. A weak start will lead to a weak outcome.

The next step is creating a filter to select entrepreneurs who are genuine, persistent, and smart. We also considered fairness in our process, being mindful of the inherent advantages and disadvantages certain entrepreneurs face.

We contemplated whether our portfolio should mirror the kind of entrepreneurs we want to see flourish. For instance, our Chief Investment Officer was interested in backing Latino-founded companies, or we could apply a gender lens. Focusing on a specific area can help identify the best within that pool.

Once companies are selected and funded, value is added. The investor then reaps the return. This is the opposite of how an entrepreneur should approach raising capital. They need to consider investor alignment, especially if the investor will have a board seat or influence future capital flows.

It's crucial that investors speak the same language and share the same goals. The best entrepreneurs, despite the perceived imbalance of power, ask these questions, signaling to investors that they are invested in their success.