Amsterdam-based Rubio Impact Ventures has since 2015 invested in promising companies in the Netherlands’ growing social enterprise sector. Its third fund brought in €70 million ($80 million) from ING bank’s impact investing group, NN Social Innovation Fund joined previous investors European Investment Fund, Invest-NL, Oost NL and fund-of-funds Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij.
Several family offices and individual investors also backed the fund. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency participated with a loan from its Seed Capital program.
With the new raise, female-founded Rubio now has about €220 million in assets under management.
Institutional engagement
Fundraising remains difficult, Rubio’s Willemijn Verloop told ImpactAlpha. The firm has been in “full fundraising mode” for its third fund for around a year.
“We would like to see more institutional investors, such as pension funds, moving into impact VC,” Verloop said. Two Dutch pension funds have made direct investments in some of Rubio’s fund two portfolio companies, she added, but “[we] have not seen many doing fund-to-fund investments in the impact venture space.”
Green jobs
Rubio is looking to make 30 investments with its third fund. It has expanded its thematic focus to include energy equity and green skills, in addition to circularity, education, economic inclusion and food systems.
“We need green technologies to reach people with little income, who are most hit by energy poverty,” Verlopp said. “We need millions of skilled people to fuel and implement the green transition.”
The fund is specifically looking at opportunities for people who have lost jobs in other sectors.
Market building
Rubio was an early mover in Europe’s impact VC ecosystem, said Marjut Falkstedt of European Investment Fund, which also backed Rubio’s first two funds. The firm, she said, is “helping to build the environment for risk capital investment in the impact investing space.”
Market proof points, in the form of exits, have been slow coming, noted Verloop. It has exited several companies from its first fund, including GoodFuels, a Dutch producer of plant-based biofuels, and has made a partial exit from its second fund.
“The exit market has been slow in recent years,” she said, “but we have seen strong growth and follow-on investments in our second fund’s portfolio.”
