Stephan Bostoen and his team at Pebble Wave are about to see what kind of splash you can make with $30 million and several years of learning about teal organizations.
Bostoen is co-founder of Pebble Wave, a Belgium-based private equity firm that recently raised a second investment fund of just over $30 million (25 Million EUR). The plan over the next five years is to invest in 40-60 companies committed to environmental sustainability, conscious leadership, and teal practices.
Entrepreneurs hoping to land Pebble Wave financing should note that merely testing the teal waters won’t work. Would-be portfolio firms must take the full plunge into self-management, evolving purpose and holism.
“We only work with companies fully committed to teal,” Bostoen says.
Bostoen’s new investment push is based on Pebble Wave’s progress with an initial round of investments in 12 companies. The initial 12, which include plant sensor firm Phyto-IT, robotic harvesting company Octinion and consulting firm Hifluence, have served as a lab to discover how to build successful, teal organizations.
Among the lessons learned by Pebble Wave over the past seven years:
- A leader or leaders must serve as the ongoing inspiration for the organization, meaning they must have a personal purpose closely aligned with the purpose of the organization
- leaders must be willing to engage in ongoing coaching to heighten their level of self-awareness
- employees need new tools for executing tasks to make the transition to self-management
Pebble Wave’s portfolio companies so far have been located in Europe. The new funding round is designed to expand into new geographies, including the United States.
And if all goes to plan, the $30 million investment fund will be just a drop in a bigger bucket over time. Bostoen and his colleagues are aiming to replicate this model again and again, creating 250 investment teams of 10-15 people each, that collectively generate more than 3,000 teal companies. Those companies will touch 10 percent of the world’s population, Bostoen estimates–a figure that includes a range of touchpoints, including employees at teal firms, family members and friends of those employees and customers of the companies.
The result would be a much better world, Bostoen says.
“Our purpose is to develop the consciousness of the world,” Bostoen says. “Raising consciousness helps all problems. We can make organizations that help people become more conscious.”
A more-conscious world through thousands of teal organizations would be a big splash indeed.