The Haas Impact Fund (HIF) is a seed-level, for-profit impact fund. It is funded from our endowment and seeks to provide a financial and impact return to the Haas community. It also seeks to support entrepreneurship on the UCBerkeley campus, other UC campuses, and the ecosystem of impact ventures at large. 

Class overview, Objectives, Pitch Day

We start the class with a series of intensive lectures on building your network for deal sourcing (outreach, where to find leads, who to talk to, what networks to develop, importance of confidentiality), early stage assessment/scoring (how to quickly evaluate potential deals for further diligence, financial projections and the VC method), and contracts (SAFEs, convertible note, straight equity). 

We then break out into our teams and have regular team-level advising by the faculty, supporting the outside mentors and advising on filtering and assessment.  We supplement this process with team share-outs to the other Partners in a midterm class session. 

Finally, we have a Pitch Day, presenting each team's pitch to external judges from the professional community of impact investors. The Partners then follow-through with the winning company, implementing an investment, usually co-investing in a round.

This is a 1-credit course, taught intensively on two Sundays,  that serves to introduce students to critical issues in the impact investing and sustainable finance fields, as well as to cover the role of finance in the decarbonizing, transition economy. 

The aims are:

● Understanding of opportunities and challenges in various asset classes, discuss latest thinking on impact assessment and reporting, and introduce expert speakers from multiple disciplines working in the field today

● Working knowledge on issues in the field and inspire further study in areas of particular interest

This course is intended for anyone who might be interested, now or later in their careers, in:

 - Becoming an entrepreneur in an impact sector, whether for-profit or non-profit.

- Working in impact investment (including impact VC, debt, accelerators, real assets) or sustainable investment.

- Managing capital for values-based achievement or structures.

- Working in impact sectors (climate, food, energy, environment, health, education, etc.) that wants exposure to structuring finance and capital raising

- Gaining essentials exposure to the leading thoughts on impact investment or sustainable finance.

Course Objectives

1. Manage the Haas Sustainable Investment Fund, including:

• • • Updating the Fund’s Objectives and Constraints, 

    • Establishing priority sustainability issue areas and approach, 

    • Producing an annual Investment Policy Statement,  

    • Executing on an implementation strategy, and

    • Reporting on financial returns and risk

2. Establish sustainability and impact measurement standards for Fund holdings and report annually 

3.  Engage and communicate with SIF stakeholders, including the Fund’s Advisory Board, donors, IBSI, and the broader Haas community.   

4. Provide student Principals with the skills necessary to pursue careers in sustainable financial services, including: 

• • • Fundamental and quantitative portfolio management, Wealth management, Investment consultin , Investment banking

How do entrepreneurs successfully raise finance?  In New Venture Finance, we take the perspective of the entrepreneur. Our first step is to figure out the rules of the game: What type of financier might be interested in our new venture and why? How will the venture capitalist or angel value our ideas, and what will the financing package look like? How will funding evolve as the startup grows, and how will investors exit the deal -- IPOs, M&As, or private secondary market opportunities? As we put the pieces of our knowledge into practice in cases, the course evolves to the second step, of positioning our new venture ideas for success, not just in raising finance but in using finance strategically. The course focuses on raising equity finance through VCs, angels, syndicates, angel groups, incubators, and accelerators. Pools of capital are changing, and thus, we also take a serious look at alternatives: Crowdfunding (Platform Equity, Platform Perks Models, Platform Debt), Impact Investing, Venture Debt, and Corporate VC. 

In the global context, we take the word “entrepreneurial” to mean pursuing opportunities. In this course, we cover the foundations for being successful global entrepreneurs. We study how to understand economic and strategic opportunities, and concurrently how to think about and source the appropriate types of finance to pursue them. The material prepares us to go after both developed and emerging markets strategies created by regulation openings, privatizations, development organizations, sovereign wealth, and climate change. We study how successfully to find, raise, and invest capital, highlighting the role of venture capital as well as other finance. We devote a module to the understanding of country contexts and how to evaluate the types of ventures can be financed in growth environments with frictions. Unique to this course are the modules on Impact Investing/Sustainable Investment and the Public Sector, focusing on Public Private Partnerships and Sovereign Funds. It is a broad course preparing students to evaluate their ideas and raise capital for becoming entrepreneurs, investors, or growth managers across the globe.

This case-based course is for students wanting to start and manage their own businesses, to work in venture capital or private equity, or to manage portfolios investing in private equity asset classes. The goal of the course is to give students the tools necessary to understand the process of raising entrepreneurial or buyout capital, to evaluate VC and buyout deals, and to judge private equity investments from the asset manager point of view. The class links together the roles of the IPO market, M&As, reorganizations, bank capital and asset management. In the process, students become very familiar with the institutional details of private equity and are able to integrate incentive design and strategic decision making with valuation in deal assessment. The class ends with an international private equity module to expose students to the players and added complexities of private equity in other developed or emerging markets.

Impact Investing Practicum is an eight week externship during which MBA teams complete a project with impact investing firms arranged by Haas. These are cutting–edge impact investing firms. Impact Investing helps firms develop solutions, creating value for the firm by leveraging the financial and social impact backgrounds and skills of Haas MBA students. For Haas students, Impact Investing offers un-matched experiential learning and exposure that we are able to arrange because of our unique thought leadership and history of student engagement and placement in this field.