Koen and Reinoud are the hosts of the FSG Finance Podcast, a platform created to inspire and educate students and young professionals by engaging in in-depth conversations with leading founders, investors and innovators shaping the future of finance and impact. As driven and curious members of the Financial Study Association Groningen (FSG), they explore not just business models but the personal stories, motivations and decision-making behind their guests’ careers, bridging the gap between education and the real world while helping their audience navigate career choices and opportunities in high-impact industries.
In this episode of the FSG Finance Podcast, hosts Koen and Reinoud interview Jacqueline van den Ende, founder of Carbon Equity, about her unconventional journey from University College Utrecht to building companies in emerging markets and eventually launching a climate-focused investment platform. She explains how finance is the most powerful tool to drive climate impact, why she chose to democratize access to private equity for retail investors, and how Carbon Equity enables individuals to invest alongside top climate tech funds. The conversation explores her vision for the future of impact investing, the upcoming multi-trillion wealth transfer to younger generations, and the importance of educating students early about capital allocation.
Listen to the podcast (dutch) on Spotify!
Koen: Welcome to the FSG Finance Podcast, today we are speaking with Jacqueline van den Ende, founder of Carbon Equity, in this conversation we want to get to know the person behind the role, we will talk about her path, making impact: and entrepreneurship.
Reinoud: Before we begin, we like to start with five quick dilemmas, you can nuance them later, flat or hierarchical
Jacqueline: Flat
Reinoud: Impact or financial return?
Jacqueline: Impact
Reinoud: At the helm or coaching from the sidelines?
Jacqueline: At the helm
Reinoud: Jeans and sneakers or formal attire?
Jacqueline: Jeans and sneakers
Reinoud: Institutional investors or retail investors?
Jacqueline: Retail
Koen: You went through those quickly, would you like to explain one of them?
Jacqueline: Yes, impact versus return, impact for me means solving problems that really matter, not doing vague feel good things, when you address the world’s biggest and most relevant challenges you create value in the real economy, both planetary value and financial value, so I see return as the consequence of real value creation, not something separate from it.
Reinoud: I was also curious about institutional versus retail, I think you recently opened a new fund with a stronger focus on retail investors, around May if I recall.
Jacqueline: Correct, and that is why I answered retail so quickly, Carbon Equity exists to unlock private capital that otherwise has no access to opportunities in private equity or venture capital, institutions already have that access, I care more about mobilizing many people to earn good money in the right way than about mobilizing a few very large pools like pension funds, I would rather invest ten billion with one hundred thousand people than the same amount with ten pension funds, because the impact on unlocking private capital is very different, globally there are trillions in retail capital sitting idle, in the Netherlands alone about 80 billion euros of savings is sleeping, our idea is to mobilize that capital for energy transition and climate innovation while helping people earn a better return.
Koen: That gives us a good first impression of Carbon Equity, could you take us back to your student years, where did you study and how did it start.
Jacqueline: After high school I took a gap year in Peru through a Rotary Exchange, then I studied at University College Utrecht, I chose it because it was international and at the time I thought I might work for the United Nations, there is selection at the gate, so you are with a small motivated group, I studied Social Sciences, economics, law, political science, the idea is very interdisciplinary, you design your own path.
Reinoud: What came after university?
Jacqueline: I founded De Kleine Consultant during my studies and later worked at HAL Investments, that period taught me a lot about building teams and owning responsibility, after several years I left investing to become an entrepreneur abroad, I moved to the Philippines to help build a fintech company from zero, hiring there was chaotic, a diploma did not signal quality the way it does here, candidates would not show, some left after a week including with the laptop, it felt like the wild west, but we learned by selling, hiring, and iterating quickly, eventually we built a team of more than one hundred people, what I love most about entrepreneurship is creating something from nothing and watching it live on without you.
Koen: When did climate become the center of your work?
Jacqueline: Climate had been on my radar since about 2008, but in 2019 I read The Sixth Extinction and it truly landed, the speed of climate change compared to past mass extinctions is exponential, and if we do not act, the outcome for humanity could be dire, my career had been in finance and I had learned that money decides what grows and what does not, capital literally shapes the future, that is why I concluded that finance is the most powerful lever to drive change.
Reinoud: How did that insight translate into Carbon Equity?
Jacqueline: In 2021 we saw trillions flowing into public market ESG funds, but trading ESG shares often has limited real world impact, when you sell me your Tesla shares the ownership shifts but no fresh money enters the company, if you want to fund innovation you need to be in the private markets, that is where capital directly pays for engineers, factories, and deployments, and most companies are not listed at all, roughly the vast majority, so we set up Carbon Equity to pool many smaller investors and invest large tickets into a selection of top climate venture and private equity funds, that way individuals get diversified exposure to around two hundred companies rather than betting on a single startup, we target an average annual return of about ten to fifteen percent, while acknowledging that earlier stage investing includes higher risk.
Koen: How do you select the funds and the direct coinvestments?
Jacqueline: Our investment team is around eight people, with deep backgrounds from places like AlpInvest and McKinsey, we combine financial due diligence with a climate and technology lens, we ask whether a solution is technically and commercially viable and whether the managers have a strong track record and risk mitigation, out of roughly a thousand managers we select about ten per year, and we often do coinvestments directly into standout portfolio companies to enhance returns and avoid an extra layer of fund fees, we can do that because we track thousands of climate tech and energy transition infrastructure companies and know the market very well.
Reinoud: Where do you invest geographically and across which strategies?
Jacqueline: Our exposure is roughly half in the United States and just under half in Europe, depending on the strategy, Carbon Equity is a platform with multiple strategies, venture capital, private equity, and infrastructure, for example our infrastructure fund invests almost entirely in Europe.
Koen: What needs to happen so that students can also participate with small amounts?
Jacqueline: We launched a product where you can invest from about twenty thousand euros, we already see students or recent graduates investing together with their parents through a pooled vehicle, we are developing new structures that could bring the minimum down, possibly toward ten thousand, and through third party channels like pension providers even lower over time, the idea is to keep our direct platform focused while integrating with banks and pension platforms to enable very small tickets indirectly.
Reinoud: Education seems important for that audience.
Jacqueline: Absolutely, we want to help people understand risk and return and what it means to invest in non listed companies with impact, by educating early you build the brand and you are present when it becomes relevant for them.
Koen: How far along is Carbon Equity in your own timeline?
Jacqueline: I would say early phase plus a step, in three years we have raised over three hundred million and onboarded nearly one thousand five hundred investors, we have built a strong brand and a great product, but my vision is much bigger, I want to build the platform for millennials and Generation Z, and even Generation X, to earn good money while shaping the future they want, in the coming decades roughly eighty four trillion in wealth will transfer from the boomer generation to younger generations, they will need to decide what their money funds.
Reinoud: What are your personal plans?
Jacqueline: I often say that in the next thirty years I want to build companies in three ten year chapters, I keep a big ideas book and I park ideas for later so I can focus on what I am doing now, at some point I would love to return to Asia and build a kind of rocket internet for the energy transition, taking the most successful energy transition business models from Europe and America and deploying them at speed in emerging markets, attracting capital and talent to scale them rapidly.
Koen: For listeners who want to work with you, do you offer internships or student roles?
Jacqueline: Yes: the easiest way to start is through part time student roles that we have continuously, Carbon Equity has four main teams, the investment team that analyzes funds and direct investments and makes investment decisions, the investor relations team that raises capital and speaks with prospective investors, the marketing team that builds the brand and creates investing content, and the product and tech team with engineers and product managers who build the platform, we also have legal, regulatory and compliance, for investing roles a background in finance, economics or a technical field helps, on the investor relations side it helps to be commercial and energetic.
Reinoud: What is the best way for students to get in touch?
Jacqueline: Email info.carbonequity.com or check the careers page on our website, you can try to reach me on LinkedIn, but I receive many messages, so be persistent.
Koen: Wonderful, I think we now have a good picture of you and of Carbon Equity, thank you very much for your time.
Reinoud: And thank you for listening, if you are interested in Carbon Equity you can reach them through the site.