Investment

We invest in ambitious start-ups and help them realise their impact potential

We back ambitious founders building commercially scalable solutions for the green transition. As active, hands-on pre-seed and seed investors, we partner with companies where impact and growth scale together, working side by side to build the future we need.

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What We Look for in the Ventures We Back

01
Impact & commercial potential

We back ventures where the business model is the sustainability contribution, and where every step toward impact also fuels commercial growth.

02
Founders with an edge

Teams with the outstanding technical and commercial edge; we step in alongside them with hands-on experience, deep knowledge, and broad support to make their ventures scale.

03
Future defining technology

We look for breakthrough innovations that leap past incremental change, reshaping industries, unlocking markets, and accelerating the green transition at scale.

04
Societal resilience

We invest in ventures that strengthen society's ability to withstand and adapt, from energy independence to resource security, building resilience that scales across markets.

THE FOOTPRINT FUND I

  • Stage

    Pre-seed & seed
  • Ticket size

    €0.5-2m
  • Fund size

    €73M
  • Fund type

    Article 9
  • Geo

    Northern Europe
  • Vintage year

    2024

Our portfolio

We invest in start- and scaleups with a direct link between commercial scaling and clear sustainability contribution, run by founders dedicated to creating real impact.

View all about Our portfolio

A venture fund powered by a large team of experts

Our model means that our startups gain access to not only investors, but an extended team of experts, entrepreneurs, and advisors with deep knowledge in various areas such as commercial excellence, sustainability, R&D, marketing & communications, and much more. When we invest, we all get involved.

Meet the team about Our team

The fund team

We have a core fund team involved in every investment we make, supported by the whole Footprint Firm.

View the whole Footprint Firm team about Our team

We invest early and are in it for the long run

We’re in it together, side by side with founders, sleeves rolled up, moving from vision to venture to scale. With deep sustainability expertise, hard-won experience, and a powerful network, our people become your people – accelerating what must happen.

Our Value Creation House is how we back founders from day one through growth, building together at every stage of the journey.

Exit
Funding
Commercial leads
  • Leveraging our large client base
  • Leveraging our platform
  • Using AI to identify leads
Commercial & operational excellence
  • Operational model
  • Market analysis
  • Go-to-market planning
R&D technical excellence
  • De-risking tech
  • Milestone idenitification
  • R&D organization setup
Marketing & communication
  • Value proposition
  • Brand strategy
  • Marketing strategy
Finance & reporting
  • Professionalization
  • Financial modeling
  • Capital allocation
Sustainability
  • Sustainability strategy
  • Article 9 readiness
  • Impact quantification
  • EU Taxonomy alignment
Board & governance
  • Active board member
  • Support in board building
  • Healthy founder-board dynamics
Team resilience & DEI
  • Recruitment support
  • Leadership facilitation
  • Founder resilience
  • DEI resources & networks
Tech & AI
Enabling foundation

Our investment verticals focus on solutions that accelerate the green transition

  • Our current linear ‘take-make-waste’ system use 60% more resources than the earth can generate every year. We invest in solutions that enable reuse, upcycling and recycling of waste streams to enable a circular economy.

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View all verticals about Our investment verticals

The future worth backing will not arrive by chance

This is a decisive moment. The Footprint Fund invests in breakthrough solutions that can shift systems and restore balance, pairing venture returns with measurable impact. The future won’t happen by chance. Come venture with us.

about Investment pledge

Our investment pledge

Venturing into a future worth building

Impact supporters podcast

Impact supporters is a podcast by The Footprint Firm. It's where founders, investors, and system-changers talk honestly about building the future. Each conversation unpacks what it takes to scale bold ideas into lasting impact - front frontier technologies to new business models driving the green transition.

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Come venture with us

Pitch usabout mailto:pitch@thefootprintfirm.com

Pitch us

Have a venture where impact and growth scale together? We invest early and work side-by-side powered by the whole Footprint Firm team.

Pitch us about mailto:pitch@thefootprintfirm.com
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Greenshift

Cutting cloud computing costs and emissions by up to 40%

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The challenge

Data centres are one of the fastest-growing sources of global emissions, and inefficient enterprise cloud applications drive a large share of the waste. With cloud spend projected to top €1 trillion a year by 2030 and data centres on track to emit 2.5 billion tonnes of CO₂, cutting avoidable compute is urgent for both cost and climate.

The solution

GreenShift is an Amsterdam-based AI startup that cuts cloud costs and emissions by up to 40%. Its platform right-sizes infrastructure, optimizes workloads in real time, aligns compute with renewable availability, and flags inefficient application code. Early pilots already show up to 40% reductions in both costs and emissions with no performance loss, and GreenShift is now scaling enterprise deployments.