Build impact into your start-up from day one

Organisations we work with

We met some of them through Impact Hub Amsterdam’s Food Chain Accelerator, Fresh Ventures, Impact Hub Amsterdam’s Regeneration Program and Impact Hub Amsterdam’s Investment Ready Program.

What you get

• A theory of change investors understand

  A sharp logic from problem to outcome, which you can explain in one slide

• Impact indicators that fit a start-up

  A few indicators you can actually measure now, rather than a framework for a company ten times your size

• Ready for impact due diligence

  Prepared for the questions impact investors ask, for example using the five dimensions of impact

• Years of mentoring founders

  Jeroen spent around eight years as resident expert at Impact Hub Amsterdam, helping founders with impact frameworks and investability

• A mission your first hires can work with

  Impact goals that are clear enough to guide hiring and product decisions

Why we do what we do

Read the film as text

1. We all want to know
2. our place in the world.
3. Thin grey lines join dots into a web.
4. We like to believe that what we do is part of something larger.
5. It is.
6. Together we make our surroundings, our brands, our communities.
7. We shape the work of others, as they shape ours.
8. The web grows dense.
9. We live in one web of cause and consequence.
10. Each path tells a story, part of a larger narrative.
11. A system of meaning.
12. So what is our impact?
13. Whose lives do we touch?
14. What changed? For whom? How much? And what part was ours?
15. Intended or not, for better or worse.
16. Knowing that changes what you do next.
17. A dark line draws a path through the web. Impact management helps you see it, steer it, and use it.
18. A large word: Lead. A purple path runs through the web. Lead with purpose, and fund your mission.
19. A large word: Improve. A green path runs through the web. Learn what doesn’t work and design for better.
20. A large word: Engage. A blue-green path runs through the web. Share your story, and bring others into it.
21. A large word: Account. A blue path runs through the web. State your claim, and prove it.
22. A large word: Discover. A yellow path runs through the web. Find your next impact before it happens.
23. “How do you measure impact?”
24. It sounds hard.
25. It isn’t.
26. It’s not about the how.
27. It’s about
28. Portraits of people fill the screen.
29. A large word: Who.
30. About rights-holders, whose lives are touched.
31. And stakeholders, whose choices shape them.
32. The people stand side by side, at the same height. A wave of colour runs through the web. Every voice, every perspective, equally weighed.
33. The web turns many colours. Pluriform and equivalent.
34. Who determines what.
35. And what determines how.
36. That’s it. No more, no less.
37. We count what can be counted, and listen to the rest.
38. Coloured paths wind across the web. We find the stories that connect the dots, and make sense of the whole.
39. We love our craft:
40. to ask the questions,
41. to measure what matters,
42. and narrate what works.
43. One dark path remains. Let’s reveal your path.
44. The word narrate, with the line: impact in numbers and stories.

What we often hear

• “Next month I pitch to impact investors, and my impact case is still mostly a story.”

  We help you build a lean theory of change and impact indicators that hold up in the first due diligence conversations

• “We’re still looking for product-market fit. Measuring impact feels like overhead.”

  We link impact indicators to data you already collect, so measuring impact helps you learn about your product as well

• “Our team is mission-driven, but now that we’re hiring, nobody makes that mission concrete.”

  We help you turn your mission into two or three goals your first hires can use when they make product and customer decisions

• “Is B Corp worth the time and money at this stage?”

  We look at whether certification makes sense now or later, and what you can already put in place so a future application is easier

• “After the round my investor wants impact figures every quarter. It costs me days.”

  We set up light reporting that fits your investor’s format and takes hours, not weeks

What you may be wondering

• Won’t this eat too much of my runway?

  We pick a few indicators from data you already collect. A single question works too: you pay per question.

• Will investors understand this?

  We work with the frameworks impact investors use themselves, such as the five dimensions of impact. So they recognise your answers.

• Will I become dependent on an adviser?

  No. You get a theory of change and indicators that you track and explain yourself.

To read

• From crickets to a stadium: seven years with Impact Hub Amsterdam

  Since 2018 Jeroen Wilms of Narrate has been resident impact expert at Impact Hub Amsterdam. He worked there in local and global programmes. Startups, SMEs, corporates and regenerative entrepreneurs came through. What they had in common, and what we learned.

• You don’t have to measure everything to start

  Many organisations never start, because measuring looks big and expensive. This is how we start small, with what is already there.

• A theory of change in an afternoon

  A funder, investor or proposal asks for a theory of change. Here is how we make a first version in one afternoon, with your own team.

• Why slowing down first gets you there faster

  A pilot is under pressure to show results quickly. So measuring often starts too early and thinking too late. On slowing down as a way to speed up, and what the private sector already knows about it.

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