Kathryn Cicoletti on the Future of Impact: Where GroundForce Capital is Headed Next

November 10, 2023

Since the close of our cur­rent fund last year and the launch our rebrand as Ground­Force Cap­i­tal in August 2023, we have been heads down on invest­ing, build­ing our pipeline, refin­ing our process­es, hir­ing and build­ing our net­work, all in ser­vice of our port­fo­lio com­pa­nies and lim­it­ed part­ners.

I’m proud of how far we have come. Oper­at­ing as Pow­er­Plant Part­ners, our ini­tial goal in 2015 was help­ing plant-based food com­pa­nies scale up. Since then, we have rebrand­ed to Ground­Force Cap­i­tal and expand­ed into a wider range of busi­ness­es that improve human and plan­e­tary health. As we look to 2024, we’re dou­bling down on peo­ple and the plan­et because we’ve seen first­hand how a sin­gle invest­ment can cre­ate rip­ple effects that improve many lives.

The Two Pil­lars Guid­ing Ground­Force Cap­i­tal’s Invest­ments

In 2022, we re-eval­u­at­ed how we define and mea­sure impact to bet­ter reflect our broad­er scope. By 2023, we devel­oped a frame­work iden­ti­fy­ing two pil­lars of invest­ment: pro­mot­ing healthy and sus­tain­able lifestyles and sup­port­ing regen­er­a­tive, low-car­bon food pro­duc­tion. These pil­lars shape our vision for the future and help us eval­u­ate new invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. Our port­fo­lio already includes com­pa­nies in line with these goals, and we aim to build on their suc­cess.

Bob­bie
Mom-led, women-found­ed and on a mis­sion to start a move­ment in the infant feed­ing indus­try, Bob­bie seeks to raise the stan­dard of for­mu­la avail­able to infants in the U.S. 100% USDA organ­ic, aller­gen and filler-free, and exten­sive­ly safe­ty test­ed, Bob­bie aims to pro­vide com­plete nutri­tion to infants at a crit­i­cal phase of life. Advo­cates for feed­ing cul­ture, black mater­nal mor­tal­i­ty aware­ness and mater­nal well­be­ing – Bobbie’s mis­sion is a pow­er­ful force for change.

OWYN
OWYN (pro­nounced ‘OhWin’) stands for Only What You Need — and serves as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple behind the brand and its prod­ucts. OWYN’s ingre­di­ent list is lim­it­ed to the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of life, sus­tain­ably sourced from nature. The brand focus remains on high-impact nutri­tion that’s aller­gen-free, third par­ty test­ed, and ver­i­fied by OWYN’s Med­ical Advi­so­ry Board. 100% plant based, veg­an, organ­ic when pos­si­ble, free of the top‑8 aller­gens, and GMO-free — OWYN uses real ingre­di­ents and pro­motes real nutri­tion.

Look­ing Ahead: Ground­Force Cap­i­tal’s Com­mit­ment to Impact Mea­sure­ment and Report­ing
As Ground­Force Cap­i­tal con­tin­ues to grow, our com­mit­ment to impact mea­sure­ment and report­ing remains stead­fast. We have made strides in the past few years and over the next year, we intend to strength­en our impact man­age­ment prac­tices and bet­ter under­stand, mon­i­tor, and com­mu­ni­cate the effects of our invest­ments.

Improv­ing Our Approach
Ground­Force Cap­i­tal is a returns-dri­ven invest­ment man­age­ment firm with a mis­sion to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to health­i­er lives and a sus­tain­able cli­mate. We invest in excep­tion­al com­pa­nies shift­ing behav­iors and mak­ing a real dif­fer­ence. Most of all, we remain com­mit­ted to account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pur­su­ing mean­ing­ful progress for peo­ple and the plan­et.

We rec­og­nize that mea­sur­ing impact is com­plex with no one-size-fits-all solu­tion. That’s why start­ing in 2022, we began to cre­ate repeat­able frame­works for select port­fo­lio com­pa­nies using SASB-based cus­tom impact KPIs and EDCI (ESG Data Con­ver­gence Ini­tia­tive) met­rics. This process not only sup­ports each com­pa­ny in set­ting ini­tial mea­sure­ment and reduc­tion tar­gets, specif­i­cal­ly through begin­ning to gath­er EDCI data, but also forges a path toward emis­sions reduc­tion at the Ground­Force Cap­i­tal lev­el. Look­ing ahead, we will con­tin­ue to iter­ate and enhance our report­ing by work­ing direct­ly with port­fo­lio com­pa­nies on both impact and ESG enhance­ments that accel­er­ate the world’s tran­si­tion to health­i­er lives and a regen­er­a­tive cli­mate.

Over­all, we remain ded­i­cat­ed to max­i­miz­ing the impact of our invest­ments and hold­ing our­selves account­able through trans­par­ent mea­sure­ment and report­ing. The future is bright, and Ground­Force Cap­i­tal is ready to help lead the way.

Look­ing Ahead
After reflect­ing on where we’ve come from and where we’re head­ed, I’m filled with excite­ment for Ground­Force Cap­i­tal’s future. We have an incred­i­ble team and a bright vision for gen­er­at­ing returns and impact at scale. Though there will undoubt­ed­ly be chal­lenges and set­backs, our vision remains clear. The next decade will be piv­otal and we’re thrilled you’re on this jour­ney with us! Togeth­er, we can address inef­fi­cien­cies, dri­ve growth, and make a big­ger impact.

To read more, please see the Ground­Force Cap­i­tal Impact and ESG Report 2023 for YE 2022.