Net Purpose

About Net Purpose

Net Purpose, founded in 2019 by Samantha Duncan and Peter Elwin, operates as a data provider for sustainable and impact investors. The company aims to deliver factual, quantifiable data on the social and environmental outcomes of companies and investment portfolios. This service is designed to assist investors in launching, expanding, and reporting on sustainable and impact-focused funds, a market segment with commitments valued in the trillions. The founding team's background is deeply rooted in the financial and impact measurement sectors. Samantha Duncan, the CEO, previously led impact measurement at LeapFrog Investments, a private equity firm specializing in emerging markets. Co-founder Peter Elwin brought extensive experience from his role as Head of the Land, Food, and Water program at the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and prior work in equity research at JP Morgan Cazenove. This combined expertise underpins the company's mission to standardize impact measurement, addressing the founders' firsthand frustrations with the lack of reliable data in the field.

The firm's core business revolves around a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides sustainability data. Its clientele consists of asset managers, asset owners, and service providers who require robust data to align their investment strategies with sustainability goals, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Net Purpose generates revenue through subscriptions to its data platform, which equips these financial institutions with the necessary tools for portfolio analysis, fund creation, and transparent reporting to their own clients. The platform aggregates data on a massive scale, covering thousands of stocks and a wide array of public and private companies, and maps their performance against social and environmental metrics. The data is sourced from hundreds of verified public documents and is presented without subjective ESG ratings, focusing instead on delivering auditable facts.

A key milestone for Net Purpose was securing a £10 million Series A funding round in 2023, led by ETF Partners. This round also saw participation from existing investors such as Illuminate Financial and Jim O'Neill, a former chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. This capital injection is intended to expand the company's data coverage and enhance its product offerings, further solidifying its position in the sustainable finance data market. The company claims to have the highest-quality sustainability dataset available, powering some of the world's most sophisticated sustainable funds, with clients representing over $5 trillion in assets under management.