IMPACT LEADERS: Alternative Funding for Mission-Led Businesses with Esme Verity

Conversations about funding for purpose-led businesses are often dominated by a single narrative: venture capital, rapid scale, and exit. Yet for many SMEs, social enterprises, and mission-driven founders, this model is either a poor fit, or actively undermines what they are trying to build.

In this Impact Leaders interview, we speak with Esme Verity, founder of Considered Capital, about what happens when founders step away from that default story. Drawing directly on her experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs globally, Esme reflects on alternative funding routes, ownership and governance choices, and the personal realities of building a values-led business inside a system that doesn’t always support it.

This is a grounded conversation about trade-offs, constraints, and long-term thinking, not idealised impact or theoretical models.

About Esme Verity

Esme Verity is the founder of Considered Capital, an organisation that supports impact-driven founders to explore alternatives to conventional venture capital. Through programmes including the Alternative Funding School, Considered Capital works with entrepreneurs globally to understand grants, debt, patient equity, and different ownership structures - and to decide whether external funding is right for them at all. Follow Esme here.

Toby: To start at the beginning, what experiences shaped how you think about business and mission?

Esme: I think I come from a slightly different place, in that I’ve always believed those things. I haven’t gone through a painful transition of unlearning one model and adopting another. For me, it’s always been confusing why you wouldn’t start a business that has some sort of social value or benefit to the community at large.

I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. We’re three generations of antique dealers. What’s interesting about that industry is that it’s largely women who are running these businesses. They’re commercially viable, but they’re also preserving things that are old, often forgotten, and no longer commercially viable to produce.

There’s something powerful in that combination - serving people, running a business that works, and protecting skills and crafts that would otherwise be lost.

Zebras, unicorns, and frustration with the status quo

Toby: How did you end up working specifically in alternative funding?

Esme: Like many founders, it came from frustration with the status quo. A real turning point for me was reading the Zebras Unite manifesto - “Zebras fix what unicorns break.”

It articulated something that many founders feel but don’t have language for. The idea that not every business needs to aspire to be a unicorn, which is a mythical creature anyway, was incredibly freeing.

Most businesses are far more zebra than unicorn, but unicorns get all the airtime. What Zebras Unite did was open up space to think differently about growth trajectories and what success actually looks like.

What Considered Capital actually helps founders do

Toby: When founders come to you, where do you usually start?

Esme: Our mission is to help organisations unlock more founder-friendly money, but funding is never the first or only question.

We spend a lot of time helping founders think about ownership, governance, and decision-making. Who owns the business? Who controls it? How is value distributed?

We run the Alternative Funding School, which has had around 300 entrepreneurs come through it over the last three and a half years. People join at very different stages. Some have a product, some don’t. Some know exactly what impact means to them, others just know it matters and want to protect it.

Some people raise grants, some raise debt, some raise patient equity. And a significant proportion realise that external funding isn’t worth it for them - that trading revenue is actually the best form of funding.

That’s not a failure; that’s a good outcome.

Success isn’t always raising money

Toby: Are there outcomes you’re particularly proud of?

Esme: People often want to hear about who raised money - and that makes sense - but I also think there’s success in realising you don’t want external funding.

Around 20-30% of organisations that come through our programmes decide it’s not worth it. They focus instead on setting sensible profit margins, growing steadily, and paying their teams properly.

For those who do raise money, I’m especially proud of product-based businesses that have been very deliberate about protecting their mission, because they’re often pushed towards higher-margin markets that don’t align with why they started.

Running a values-led business is hard

Toby: How do those principles show up inside Considered Capital itself?

Esme: We see ourselves as building a business, not just a consultancy, so we face many of the same challenges as the founders we work with.

We want to pay people fairly, provide good work, and keep the lights on - and those things don’t always align neatly. There have been periods where several people on the team were dealing with personal challenges at the same time.

You want to be able to say, “Take three months off, fully paid,” but sometimes you simply can’t. Holding that tension is difficult, and we operate in a system that doesn’t always support businesses trying to work this way.

Boundaries, burnout, and leadership by example

Toby: How do you manage balance personally?

Esme: I wasn’t very good at it at first. Passion can carry you for a long time, but it isn’t infinite.

One thing I’ve learned is that, whether you want to or not, you model behaviour. If you’re sending emails at 9pm, people assume that’s what’s expected.

I’ve become much more intentional about boundaries - and about explaining exceptions. If I see someone on Slack while they’re on holiday, I’ll tell them I don’t want them there. Rest isn’t rest if you’re still half-working.

What’s broken in the funding ecosystem

Toby: What do you see as the biggest blockers right now?

Esme: On one side, there’s what’s been described as the “wealth defence industry” - advisors, incentives, and systems that make it very hard for wealth to move into places where it could do more good.

Even when individuals want to move money into impact, they’re often surrounded by people whose incentives are about preservation and financial return, not outcomes.

On the founder side, most accelerators and support programmes still default to a Silicon Valley model. They add a layer of impact language, but the underlying assumptions don’t change. A lot of businesses get lost at that point.

Advice to mission-led founders

Toby: If a founder is about to default to VC, what would you want them to think about?

Esme: I’d want them to think long-term.

In ten years’ time:

• Do you still want to be running this business?

• Who owns it?

• How big does it really need to be?

• What does “enough” look like for you?

  
  

Most founders I work with aren’t looking for extreme wealth. They’re looking for flexibility, independence, and a good life. Those goals aren’t always compatible with conventional VC - and people don’t always connect that early enough.

Final reflections

Toby: What do you wish someone had told you at the start?

Esme: This isn’t for everyone - and that’s okay.

There’s a lot of hype around speed and competition, but going at your own pace is often healthier. More people doing this work isn’t a threat - it’s a sign that the ecosystem is growing.

When we move too fast, we break things. Often, the things we break are people.

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This series of interviews is in support of our mission to accelerate sustainability and decarbonisation across SMEs, NGOs and value chains. By sharing experiences, lessons learned and tips and tricks to embedding sustainability, we can all learn how to improve more, faster.

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