Pre-MVP MVPs :) Attempts by the indsutry to start including ESG in DD effort:

• PRI DDQ https://www.unpri.org/private-equity/responsible-investment-ddq-for-private-equity-limited-partners/8730.article
• ILPA DDQ https://ilpa.org/due-diligence-questionnaire/

Harvard and other LP's are carefully vetting VC's ESG intentions and practices:

https://www.venturecapitaljournal.com/harvard-and-other-lps-are-carefully-vetting-vcs-esg-intentions-and-practices/

ESG VCs/startups performace survey from 2022:

https://www.venturecapitaljournal.com/the-first-esg-report-card-is-in-and-it-isnt-great-for-most-vcs/

Confirmation of need by Carta:

https://carta.com/blog/esg-is-coming-to-venture-capital/

Harvard Business Review on challenges with establishing ESG metrics for VCs and startups:

https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-vcs-can-help-startups-set-and-meet-esg-goals

Greenly has done well as a carbon accounting tool.

ESG tool for PE, LPs and VCs:

Novata

• B Corp
• Raised $30MM 02/2023
• Chief Legal Officer from Techstars

As reference points ESG tools targeting a different segment - ESG tools for corporates:

1. Novisto - raised $20MM 05/2023, Canada
2. Atlas Metrics - raised $5MM 03/2023, Germany
3. NossaData - raised $1.2MM 05/2022, UK

Three sector efforts that are focused on framework development:

1. ESG_VC (100 VC funds)
2. VentureESG (450 VC funds and 110 LPs)
3. Data Convergence Project (325 GPs and LPs)

Potentially an even stronger framing is: how do we help LPs enable the "wellbeing economy" of healthy growth and ethical innovation? I'm worried mandates can disempower folks down the metrics chain. I suspect that if everyone just does their role well (e.g. the company board is highly attentive to the concerns of all company stakeholders and communicates that publicly), we'll see the macro progress towards global goals that has been alluding us.

@Jeremy Burton I've got some ideas on this front. We think it ultimately comes down to the details of the framework, the rate of reporting, and the methodologies behind the reporting.

This may seem like a bizarre metaphor, but it isn't that dissimilar from the ways lawyers conduct voir dire (jury selection). If you aren't asking the right questions to the right people, you aren't going to find out what you need to know. Sometimes, that is best accomplished with an oblique approach on the stickier issues.

We think that Lequity has some value to bring to that particular market segment.

Good idea... One of the major pension funds wanted us to take the software platform we built for my last company and pierce the veil of their private equity portfolio holdings in order to estimate their carbon impact starting with their real estate portfolio. A lot of these were known operationally or could be estimated with currently available data analytics. In a start-up or technology portfolio, there will need to be new metrics established, new monitoring methods, new portfolio management and reporting, and new incentives that need to be created by LPs (carried interest alignment, NFTs for carbon reduction, etc.). There are definitely multiple problems to be solved here and potential solutions. I feel that the leading LPs in the ESG field need to lead in this area to develop standard approaches. Happy to pitch in the discussion here.