Involving employees in the impact venture capital adventure
The story of MBH3, a micro-fund with impact carried by a company, its managers and its employees
MBH3 is an impact investment fund formed by Mbpack, a French packaging specialist based in Mayenne. This adventure is primarily collective: the fund’s shareholders are Mbpack’s employees and its executives. Together, they identify, finance and support several companies with a social or environmental impact.
Triple strategic will
At the genesis of MBH3, there was a triple strategic will:
anticipating the challenges of tomorrow, in order to offer society an overview of innovation and new market opportunities;
participate in practice in the creation and growth of entrepreneurial projects with an impact, with the skills of an industrial company and its teams; and
experience this exciting adventure with all mbpack collaborators.
The birth of the fund
In the spring of 2021, an SAS named MBH3 was founded. MB to maintain its link with mbpack and H3, the contraction of Horizon 3, the disruptive pillar of the business project launched in 2020 by Claude Daniel and Laurent Lemarchand, associate managers.
From the outset, shareholding in this structure is offered to all mbpack employees on a voluntary basis. And it is a plebiscite: 21 out of 28 eligible collaborators lend themselves to the game, with the acquisition of at least one action. The managers put a proportion of the amount of employees in the pot.
Every year, a capital increase is made. Collaborators can re-acquire actions, and those who have not participated, newly arrived or previously incompetent, can join the MBH3 adventure.
The equity portfolio
The raison d’être of MBH3 is the participation, from the start-up phase, in start-ups working to improve the world of tomorrow. Three projects per year are targeted on a wide range of topics. The fund is trying to invest in the regions to participate in a local economic fabric.
After two years of existence, MBH3 is a shareholder in an aquaponic farm project, a startup positioned on the drastic reduction in the electricity consumption of companies or on a start-up producing urban furniture based on plastics that are now not recycled. By maintaining this pace, the portfolio is diversifying and has to have about 20 startups by 2027.
Governance of the fund
In terms of governance, the functioning is clear. The watch cell detects interesting projects in search of funding, then a validation committee, composed of 5 members (collaborators and managers), endorses the choice of projects and the amount of the envelope.
MBH3 tends instead, depending on the needs of the project holder(s), to put themselves in a position as a real adviser on feedback on business management experience, network opening and advice on project strategic orientations.
The news of the projects invested is shared with all the shareholders who can thus familiarise themselves with the world of entrepreneurship, its difficulties, its risks and its successes. It is a real pedagogical tool.