Why we started PIC - letter from the founders

Princeton Impact Capital was started by a group of four students who were previously in Effective Altruism Investments (EAI), an impact-investing-focused fund. When the four of us heard from EAI Leadership in the Spring of 2021 that the established fund had been liquidated and the club could no longer actively invest money into various portfolios, we decided to pursue this new venture and establish a new club called Princeton Impact Capital (PIC).

At our core, we care about cultivating a culture where Princeton students are able to come together and discuss interesting investment opportunities across a wide range of sectors under the lens of sustainability and the rise of ESG (environmental, social, governance) investments. Learn more about ESG here. 

By pursuing the establishment of this new club, we are also hoping that our members will be able to continue investing in a stock simulation portfolio that represents companies driven by sustainability goals and are rated highly on ESG scores across the board. We want our club to be able to research stocks that will generate positive returns while also contributing to a more sustainable planet, equitable workforce, and better crisis-management company structures. We also look for people who are genuinely curious about looking at a variety of business models and understand them, display the intellectual willingness to learn more about investing and the financial sector as a whole, and value learning more about how the rising trend of sustainability-conscious investing affects investment decisions. Finally, we hope to provide a platform (such as a blog or newsletters) where our members can help generate the intellectual ideas that will drive important discussions and publish content related to their research in this expanding ESG space. There are still many questions that we, do not even have the answers to, for example: 

Do sustainable practices truly improve long-term returns? Could they potentially harm short-term returns? What are the top industry rating scales for ESG, and which ones are most accurate? What are different companies doing to improve the objectivity of their ESG ratings? Do startups have a harder time scaling their ESG initiatives than well-established conglomerates? Which industries or stakeholders are the winners and which are the losers of this trend toward sustainability?

In return, we hope to offer a club environment focused on equity research and financial analysis training from the basics- no prior experience is required whatsoever. We have developed a robust training system for all new members which will take place over the fall semester and tailored it with an ESG-focused lens regarding how we look at companies. In addition, we plan to periodically bring in speakers in the sustainable-investments space: this includes Chief sustainability officers at major consumer staple companies like Nike or the Global Head of Sustainability at investment banks like Barclays. It is important to get a broad range of perspectives regarding the developments in this space, and we feel that this is an important aspect of our mission to make these talks open to our members and the wider Princeton community. 

Andy He, Antoni Hasiura, Jason Gu, Justin Ong

Founders of Princeton Impact Capital