Building a €100M investment vehicle for youth education, health and employment
Designing the investment vehicle from scratch: thesis, a funnel filtering ~600 opportunities down to an investable portfolio, and a business–impact criterion — to generate returns with real impact (Spain and LATAM).
The thesis set the vehicle's economic and impact perimeter
One of the largest online higher-education groups in the Spanish-speaking world decided to turn capital into a €100M fund for young people. The challenge was to translate that vision into an investable perimeter.
We set as a baseline criterion that only businesses where impact grows with revenue can enter. The specific impact pursued was defined from an understanding of young people's challenges and needs, focusing on education, health and employability.
We also defined criteria for the investment mix (PE and VC), company profile and profitability, and target geographies.
We focused on technology-driven growth opportunities
For each defined investment area, we analysed market trends and the leading international benchmarks that have shown notable growth.
We paid particular attention to the disruptive potential of technology, and of AI in particular, noting how it is already transforming the ways to make an impact on young people.
Far more personalised educational content, digital therapies in mental health, or advanced nutrition options are some of the opportunity areas identified.
We mapped more than 600 companies and set up an operational funnel
We identified Spanish companies, or those in the LATAM market, with the best market positioning and growth potential (PE investment), and start-ups with the strongest growth outlook (VC investment).
The investment pipeline was built as a five-filter funnel: market sweep (~600 companies), preliminary analysis (182), committee review (25), contact and pre-investment analysis (15), and full due diligence (2). All navigable through a purpose-built CRM.
Beyond building the operation, we got directly involved, activating contacts with founders and opening the first conversations.
We eased investment decisions by synthesising the business–impact analysis
The business–impact pairing entered from the very first filter, combining financial and market analysis with impact assessment using the Impact Management Project methodology.
We synthesised each company's analysis into executive one-pagers that made it easier for the investment committee to decide whether to proceed.
For companies close to investment, we ran business and impact due diligence to deepen the verification of each company's status and outlook.
