Looking back at five years investing in tech for good

Time flies when you’re working with tech for good ventures. It seems like only yesterday that we opened up applications for the first cohort of the Bethnal Green Ventures accelerator programme back in 2012. Five years (and ten programmes) later and we’ve invested in over 90 ventures who are in turn benefiting the lives of over 18 million people.We’ve learned so much over the last five years that we thought it was worth trying to boil it down into a Learning and Impact Report which we’ve now published. You’ll find a whole bunch of data and case studies that we hope give you a flavour of what we’ve been up to and share some of the reasons we’re so optimistic about the potential of technology for positive impact in the world.

<a href='http://bit.ly/BGVImpactReport'><img alt='Learning and Impact Report 2012-2017 ' src='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Le/LearningandImpactReport2012-2017/LearningandImpactReport2012-2017/1_rss.png' style='border: none' /></a>

There are so many people and organisations to thank that I won’t attempt to do that here (we’ve tried in the report!), but if you’ve played a role in helping BGV and our ventures over the last five years, thank you. This is a real community effort.So what does the next five years hold? Well we’re gearing up to do more of the same but in a bigger and better way. The twin trends of increasing numbers of great founders wanting to use their skills to address problems they care about and the growing pool of investors wanting their investments to provide a financial return as well as improve the lives of millions of people, are showing no signs of reversing.We’ll be publishing an Impact Report each year from now on to share the progress we’re making so watch this space for updates!