Paul Miller (LinkedIn, personal website)  is Managing Partner and CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures, which is "Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC".

Note that at about 33 minutes there are some pauses because our internet connection went down.

Our conversation covers how to run a 'Tech for Good' VC, including having a selection process that works, and investing in ambitious, leading-edge companies.

Some specifics:
-Some of the Venture Capital (VC) jargon, like: 'early stage', 'managing partner', 'general partner', and 'limited partner'.
-The structure of funds in a VC firm.
-BGV's role in the start of Fairphone, an Amsterdam-based electronics company which is 'changing how our devices are built and produced'.
-BGV's role in the start of Aparito, accelerating healthcare by digitising clinic trials.
-How valuable campaigning skills are to a start-up CEO, as there is need to keep on storying telling your route to success.
-The value in having a 'pointy' experience of the problem they are trying to address. Not a generic appreciation, but a deeper explanation which gets into the detail of what it is like for those facing the problem.
-BGV's own process innovation of how it invites and selects the organisation it backs: an open call, followed by structured evaluation by a diverse spread of experts (which helps avoid the trap of solving problems for white dudes who all went to Ivy League universities).
-The biggest challenge for a small VC firm is to raise the capital, mirroring the experience of the start-up founders. There are some improvements, such as the British Business Bank, and Big Society Capital.
-Paul believes that the government needs to put some actual force behind institutional investors to invest in innovations, so that the pension funds are not just reaping the rewards of past innovation, but also investing in the innovations which will pay the pensions of the future.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.