The Founder of One of Tesla’s First Institutional Investors Explains Why Social Impact Is So Important to Her Strategy

Peo­ple, plan­et and prof­it are three words that Nan­cy Pfund knows well. As the founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of DBL Part­ners, Pfund and her team were one of the first ven­ture cap­i­tal firms to make social impact a part of their invest­ment the­sis. That dou­ble bot­tom line phi­los­o­phy led DBL to become one of the first insti­tu­tion­al investors in Tes­la — and Pfund to cheek­i­ly sug­gest that Elon Musk forego his pri­vate plane to reduce his car­bon footprint.

Pfund shared anoth­er anec­dote of writ­ing an invest­ment check after a chance encounter with Farm­ers Busi­ness Net­work founders Amol Desh­pande and Charles Baron. The entre­pre­neurs were pre­pared to take advan­tage of the run-in and pitched Pfund on the fly.

To craft the per­fect pitch for those five-minute win­dows of oppor­tu­ni­ty, check out this Alice resource col­lec­tion.

Oth­er com­pa­nies in the DBL port­fo­lio include SolarCi­ty, SpaceX, Off Grid Elec­tric, Andela, The Muse and Pandora.

To lis­ten to the inter­view, vis­it The Entre­pre­neur