Prime Attends the Systemic Investing Summit in Rio de Janeiro
Prime’s Anna Goldstein and Dan Block gather at the Systemic Investing Summit. Photo credit: Anna Goldstein
Our Chief Program Officer, Anna Goldstein, and Dan Block, our Director, Catalytic Investing, joined a growing global community of systems investing practitioners and field-builders in Rio de Janeiro for the Systemic Investing Summit, hosted by the TransCap Initiative. With roughly 250 attendees, over half of whom were from Brazil, the convening reflected both geographic and thought diversity, as well as the accelerating momentum behind systemic investing.
One takeaway from the summit is that, while systemic investing is still in its early stages, the movement is gaining significant traction and its frameworks and principles are being actively shaped. Across conversations, there was deep alignment on the importance of the work, but more questions than proof points or answers on how to implement it.
Some of the questions that surfaced are:
Which financial backbone organizations should play the orchestration role in different contexts, and how should the work be funded?
How do we incentivize collaboration, and what does effective collaboration actually look like across actors with different roles?
What are the best practices for drawing system boundaries?
Does systemic investing require every participant to operate with a systems lens? Or does that responsibility sit mostly with capital allocators?
This event confirmed that the majority of organizations in the systemic investing field are grappling with the movement’s early-stage complexities and have equally complex and thoughtfully constructed impact strategies.
Field visit to the agroforestry model being implemented by Courageous Land. Photo Credit: Philip Kauders, CEO of Courageous Land
Another theme that emerged is a growing recognition that systemic investing is inherently collaborative. No single organization is expected to, or even capable of, doing everything. Instead, progress depends on how well actors align their efforts, build on one another’s strengths, and move in a shared direction.
Humorous slide from a presentation by Kwaxala Fund (Canadian Carbon Credit Conservation Fund for Indegenous Communities). Photo credit: Dan Block
The summit also marked the launch of the TransCap Initiative’s Systemic Investing Practice Guide, a resource that will continue to evolve alongside the field. Efforts like this point to an important shift: from isolated experimentation toward shared learning and codification.
At Prime, we see a meaningful opportunity to contribute to this collective effort through our upcoming collaborations with TransCap Initiative.
A big thank you to the summit organizers at Transcap Initiative, with a special shout-out to Dominic Hofstetter, Sam Bonsey, Hannah Paterson, and Marina Cancado from Converge Capital. We’re looking forward to continuing to learn alongside this community and to contributing as our practice evolves.
