Impact Funds Oncycle Recruiting?
Anyone have intel on recruitment timelines for MF impact funds? Have BNZ, TPG rise, Bain Double Impact filled 2025 class spots?
Also would love to hear if climatetech/growth players (Fifth Wall/Lowercarbon/G2) are participating in oncycle or what the off cycle process might look like for them?
Familiar with VC/Growth climate space, everything is off-cycle and light on HH usage. Believe G2 did a Linkedin post for their last role and Fifth Wall uses a mix of organic and one of the HH. Think EIP is recruiting now for Investor role but for near term start. Breakthrough Energy is less finance-background heavy. Energize typically takes post-MBA. Lowercarbon does somewhat odd recruiting and haven’t seen a ex-banker folks there (very small team vs AUM). I’d check CTVC’s jobs and John Gannon blog for the VC roles as well.
These are typically also more ad hoc and are less geared to the typical August cycles.
Sure - I think overall these types of funds fall into that gap of providing equity checks for <$100M rounds, while BnZ / TPG Climate , etc. really don’t write checks less than $100M.
In terms of recruiting, believe across both buckets they are looking for real interest in the space since there is some level of specialization (albeit varies between funds). Generally, it’s just less plug-and-play like the more vanilla PE or tech VC/GE funds. Additionally, teams are smaller and sometimes separate funds with separate associate pools - all leading to these funds doing longer off-cycle processes to get to know the candidates better. This may have changed as for those bigger funds as they reach scale and maybe test the waters on on-cycle, but generally have seen these be more careful processes.
The big growth guys go through typical head hunters for whatever the parent fund uses (but sometimes different). We’ve also seen legacy Energy teams that are rebranding as Energy Transition / Climate in the MF space. Same case there.
More of the VC DNA in the pure-play climate funds leads to some aversion to head hunters as their recruiting is more ad hoc, less programatic and generally not hiring “classes”. Due to resource constraints, these processes are basically run in-house for the most part with more “organic” in-bound from mix of blog/newsletter, LinkedIn post from Partner, word of mouth, company website, etc. Process (from my experience) has typical intro conversation, follow-up with more pressure testing on interest in the space, high level valuation / back of the envelope return technicals, discussing a space you think is interesting/investable etc. Then, next step is typically some form of case study with model component and desk-top research (can be take home or live). Last step being a super day discussion with senior level in-office.
Riffing - but the general environment is still more on the positive side vs. general growth / VC side (outside of AI). However, would say that new funds and new position hiring has slowed and there seems to be some shifts around smaller funds and their ability to raise the next fund. My view in the environment is to stick with well capitalized funds in the space (ball-park >$250M latest fund for true VC, >$500M for latest fund for VC/growth) and with track record / legit partners. Obviously if you have a special situation or differentiated insight - always look for the upside. Good example (more on PE/Growth side) is Neos that spun out of Oaktree after the Array / Shoals IPOs. Legit team with $800M AUM - would take the risk there with an inaugural fund with some carry.
Lastly - all the VC/Growth funds have different levels of diligence and financial modeling focus that you can pick up on based on the interview process and background of the junior team (ie are they all ex-PE/IB). View climate’s inherent ties to more HW businesses as elevating the importance of a modeling skill set vs traditional VC with fairly vanilla SaaS. Additionally, it’s a lot easier to move to earlier stages compared to vice versa.