Nancy Pfund

Background

Nancy Pfund is the Founder and Managing Partner of DBL Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm she launched in 2008 as a spin-out from JPMorgan ¹². DBL stands for “Double Bottom Line,” reflecting the firm’s strategy of pursuing both top-tier financial returns and meaningful social, environmental, and economic impact ¹³.

Pfund holds a BA and MA in Anthropology from Stanford University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management ¹⁴. She began her career with roles at Intel Corporation, the State of California, Stanford University, and the Sierra Club before entering finance at investment bank Hambrecht & Quist in 1984 as a securities analyst ¹²⁵. In 1999, Hambrecht & Quist was acquired by JPMorgan, where Pfund became Managing Director in Venture Capital ¹⁵. In 2003, at age 50, she started an in-house impact investing strategy at JPMorgan, which she spun out as an independent firm — DBL Partners — in 2008 ²⁵.

DBL Partners currently manages more than $1.5 billion in assets across four funds ⁶. The firm’s Fund III closed at $400 million in 2015 ⁷, and Fund IV closed at $600 million in 2021 ⁸. At least five of 18 companies in Pfund’s first fund went public, including Tesla, SolarCity, and Pandora ⁷.

Pfund has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2022 Financial Woman of the Year by Financial Women of San Francisco ⁵, the Forbes 2020 Impact 50 List ¹, the 2024 Impact Leadership Award from Impact Capital Managers ¹, Fortune’s 2014 World’s Top 25 Eco-Innovators ⁵, and Fast Company’s 2016 Most Creative People in Business ⁵.

She currently serves on the boards of Bellwether Coffee, Chestnut Carbon, Rain, Spatial, and Zola Electric ¹. She is also a Trustee of the National Geographic Society and co-chairs the Yale School of Management Program on Entrepreneurship ¹. Prior to their public offerings, she served as a board observer at Tesla Motors and sat on the boards of SolarCity and Pandora ¹.

Stated Thesis

(Self-reported: These represent what Pfund says publicly about her investing approach. See Inferred Thesis for analysis of actual investment behavior.)

Pfund describes DBL’s approach as investing in companies that create dual value: “We invest in companies that create a social benefit, broadly defined, while they deliver attractive financial returns” ³. She emphasizes that this is a “no-sacrifice” approach: “There is no sacrifice: impact investing allows you to blend profit and purpose!” ³.

She has described the types of companies DBL targets: “These companies can be obvious in their benefit (like solar energy or electric vehicles), or not so obvious (like tech companies that are run by women or people of color, and are committed to multi-dimensional workforce development and community improvement)” ³.

On the firm’s competitive advantage, Pfund has stated: “When you’re obsessed with carbon and climate change, you spend so much of your day reading about it, learning about it, talking about it. And so, any opportunity to infuse a discussion with climate change, we readily take that on. And so, we are hyper sensitized to connecting the dots in ways that other people are not” ⁹.

DBL Partners publicly focuses on seven investment themes: clean energy; agriculture and food; nature-based solutions; health and safety; economic opportunity; transportation and mobility; and the space/Earth nexus ⁸.

In her 2024 Impact Capital Managers remarks, Pfund described the firm as known “for investing in under-innovated fields” ¹⁰.

Inferred Thesis

The analysis below is based on 46 portfolio companies identified from DBL Partners’ website, Crunchbase, Tracxn, and press coverage ¹¹¹²¹³.

Sector concentration (based on 46 verified investments): - Clean energy / solar / energy storage: 13 of 46 (28%) — Tesla, SolarCity, PowerLight, BrightSource Energy, NEXTracker, Primus Power, eMeter, Solaria, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Menlo Micro, View, ZincFive, R-Zero - Climate / wildfire / nature-based solutions: 5 of 46 (11%) — Rain, BurnBot, Mast, Chestnut Carbon, Fiber Global - Agriculture / food: 4 of 46 (9%) — Farmers Business Network, Bellwether Coffee, Revolution Foods, Agtonomy - Space / aerospace / transportation: 4 of 46 (9%) — SpaceX, Planet Labs, The Boring Company, Airspace - Consumer / marketplace: 4 of 46 (9%) — The RealReal, Pandora, UrbanSitter, Trove (Yerdle) - Africa / energy access: 1 of 46 (2%) — Zola Electric - AI / technology: 2 of 46 (4%) — xAI, Spatial - Healthcare / biotech: 5 of 46 (11%) — Five Prime Therapeutics, Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, XDx, Labcyte, Wynd - Workforce / economic opportunity: 3 of 46 (7%) — Andela, The Muse, RallyPoint - Other technology: 3 of 46 (7%) — Apeel Sciences, Mapbox, Kateeva - Fintech: 2 of 46 (4%) — eLoan, Pallet

Key patterns:

• Climate and clean energy dominate: Clean energy (28%) and climate/nature-based solutions (11%) together account for 39% of the portfolio, making this the firm’s overwhelmingly dominant thesis in practice. This is consistent with their stated focus.

• Multi-stage investor with early-stage emphasis: DBL invests from seed through growth stages. Examples range from leading Rain’s $9.7M seed in 2023 ¹⁴ to growth-stage investments in SpaceX and xAI. The firm has backed companies across their full lifecycle, from early seed through IPO.

• Deep Elon Musk network: DBL has invested in at least four companies associated with Elon Musk — Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and xAI — representing a notable concentration in one founder’s ecosystem ¹¹¹⁵.

• Strong exit record: The portfolio includes six IPOs — Tesla (2010), SolarCity (2012), Pandora (2011), The RealReal (2019), Planet Labs (2021), and NEXTracker (2023) — plus 18 acquisitions ¹²¹⁶.

• Impact thesis is real, not marketing: Unlike some firms that retroactively apply ESG framing, DBL’s portfolio demonstrates consistent commitment to social and environmental impact across its full history. Nearly every investment has a clear impact angle — from clean energy to food access (Revolution Foods) to African energy access (Zola Electric) to workforce inclusion (Andela, RallyPoint).

• Geographic focus: The portfolio is heavily concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, though investments like Zola Electric (Tanzania/Africa) and Andela (Lagos/global) show willingness to invest internationally when the impact thesis is strong.

• Co-investor patterns: Frequent co-investors include SolarCity co-founders Peter and Lyndon Rive (who co-led Bellwether Coffee with DBL), Congruent Ventures, and VoLo Earth Ventures in climate-tech deals ¹⁴¹⁷.

• Notable gap: Despite claiming healthcare as a focus area, healthcare/biotech investments (11%) are concentrated in earlier funds (Five Prime Therapeutics, Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, XDx, Labcyte) and appear to have declined in recent funds, with the firm pivoting more heavily toward climate-tech and wildfire prevention.

Portfolio

Note: Years marked with ~ are estimates based on company founding dates or portfolio page ordering. This table represents approximately 46 of 72 investments tracked by Tracxn (~64% of known investments) ¹².

In Their Own Words

“Impact investing is a way to marry my dual interests and work toward significant social and environmental change.” — Nancy Pfund, CleanTechnica interview, March 2019 ³

“We invest in companies that create a social benefit, broadly defined, while they deliver attractive financial returns.” — Nancy Pfund, CleanTechnica interview, March 2019 ³

“There is no sacrifice: impact investing allows you to blend profit and purpose!” — Nancy Pfund, CleanTechnica interview, March 2019 ³

“We are well on our way toward the electrification of basically everything… This will be the clean thing to do, it will be the cheap thing to do.” — Nancy Pfund, CleanTechnica interview, March 2019 ³

“Our mission is to invest in successful, innovation driven companies, and make great returns for our investors. That’s our first bottom line. But our second bottom line is to drive social, economic, and environmental improvement with our investment approach.” — Nancy Pfund, podcast interview ⁹

“Catastrophic wildfires are a climate flywheel we cannot ignore.” — Nancy Pfund, Rain seed funding announcement, September 2023 ¹⁴

“We are known for investing in under-innovated fields.” — Nancy Pfund, Impact Capital Managers Awards Dinner, February 2024 ¹⁰

“Our expertise in these areas of economic development, community engagement, and policy, represent a big part of our value-add when we invest. It’s a very bespoke, collaborative, creative process. There is always something new.” — Nancy Pfund, Yale Insights interview ²⁵

“When I first started my impact investing journey, it was a lonely place to be… Many of these early adopters were women.” — Nancy Pfund, Financial Women of San Francisco award, 2022 ⁵

“Personally, it was devastating to set aside our mission for the Bay Area, but it was obvious what we had to do; the priority was to make the company successful.” — Nancy Pfund, on a difficult decision regarding a portfolio company, Yale Insights ²⁵

What Founders Say

“We are thrilled to be working closely with DBL, Lyndon and Peter Rive to help accelerate our already rapid growth.” — Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Bellwether Coffee, on DBL Partners’ Series B investment, September 2019 ¹⁷

No additional independently sourced founder testimonials found. DBL Partners’ website does not feature founder testimonial pages, and dedicated searches for founder quotes about Nancy Pfund across social media, podcasts, and press coverage did not yield verbatim testimonials beyond the Bellwether Coffee quote above.

Connections

• Board member, Rain — autonomous wildfire suppression company; DBL led seed round ¹⁴
• Board member, Bellwether Coffee — sustainable coffee roasting technology ¹⁷
• Board member, Zola Electric — Chairwoman; renewable energy for Africa ²⁰
• Board member, Spatial — 3D spatial computing ¹
• Board member, Chestnut Carbon — nature-based carbon removal ¹
• Former board observer, Tesla Motors — pre-IPO through public offering ¹
• Former board member, SolarCity — 2008 through Tesla acquisition in December 2016; served on audit and compensation committees, chaired corporate governance committee ²
• Former board member, Pandora — pre-IPO through public offering ¹
• Trustee, National Geographic Society — Finance and Advancement Committees ¹
• Co-chair, Yale School of Management Program on Entrepreneurship ¹
• Co-founder of DBL Partners with Ira Ehrenpreis — Ehrenpreis is also Founder and Managing Partner; formerly General Partner at Technology Partners ⁷²⁶
• Frequent co-investor with Congruent Ventures and VoLo Earth Ventures in climate-tech deals ¹⁴

Sources