Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital · Sarah Chen-Spellings

Scaling with Purpose: Antler’s Global Thesis on Intentionality & Outlier Returns w/ Rosalind Bazany

June 19, 2025·52 min·3 clips

Antler says it has no mandate to invest in impact companies, even with over 40% in that bucket.

Sarah opens the conversation by framing Antler as a global early-stage venture firm. Rosalind Basney joins as Antler's head of ESG and impact. Antler is described as one of the world's most active and selective early-stage venture capital firms, with 27 offices across six continents. Basney's perspective is shaped by a childhood of frequent moves and a paratrooper dad. She also brings experience from hedge funds during the global financial crisis. That background gives her a systems-minded view of risk and returns. The discussion turns to Antler's pledge partner fund role in Beyond the Billion, the global initiative where GPs and LPs commit self-defined capital targets to investing in women-founded companies. Basney is clear that the firm still has a fiduciary duty to deliver returns. For her, impact and financial viability have to sit on the same foundation. She notes that over 40% of the portfolio could be defined as impact companies. That ratio is used as evidence that the thesis is commercial, not symbolic. The conversation also points to nearly 3,000 women supported through Antler's global founder residencies. Since 2018, the firm has backed around 420 companies with at least one woman co-founder. She says the work is sector agnostic. Women founders are building across AI infrastructure, fintech, climate, health, consumer tech, and prop tech. The mix shifts year to year rather than clustering in one stable category, reflecting macro conditions and changing industry attention. Two examples give the abstract argument some texture. Neha Junaidja at India P2P is described as moving from clean cooking to microfinance and processing 50,000 loan applications in two years. Genuine Taste in Canada is building cultivated animal fat from stem cells to improve alternative protein, reduce deforestation pressure, and cut emissions by up to 90%. The episode closes on the idea that early support can help a founder move from zero to Series B.

As heard by us

Impact and returns are treated as one discipline, not competing agendas.

Rosalind Basney frames the episode around a plain idea: if capital is supposed to do good, it still has to earn its keep. Antler's ESG and impact work comes across as a discipline, with financial viability and real-world impact treated as linked rather than opposing goals.

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Want the case for backing women founders without relaxing the return bar?

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