ETF Digest
Lucy Rands on how to align massive impact with Venture Capital returns
Posted
23 July 2026
Categories
Our Partner, Lucy Rands, recently appeared on the Raising Europe podcast. Lucy sat down with host Tom Guinness to discuss how ETF Partners – The Environmental Technologies Fund aligns massive planetary impact with venture-scale returns.
In this deep-dive discussion, Lucy breaks down our core investment thesis and shares actionable insights for founders. Key takeaways from this episode:
♻️ Impact Meets Economics: Why true impact investing goes far beyond traditional ESG, and how to back growth-stage businesses (Series A to C) while maintaining a clear path to venture returns.
♻️ The AI Application Layer & Defensibility: AI poses massive energy consumption challenges, but the real opportunity lies in vertical-specific AI applications that use proprietary data to build unbreakable moats.
♻️ Tactical Fundraising for Founders: How entrepreneurs can turn VC conversations into productive business development opportunities, even navigating rejections to secure client and investor introductions.
♻️ Deep Tech & Future Horizons: Lucy’s perspective on evaluating risk across quantum computing, tracking critical software metrics like Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and what she looks for in a ‘must-back’ founder.
Listen or watch the full episode below.