Profile

Zinc exists to build and scale a brand-new way to solve the most important societal problems faced by the developed world.

Our approach empowers the most talented and motivated people in the world to redirect their careers and have a large-scale social impact as entrepreneurs, researchers and intrapreneurs.

We focus on specific ‘missions’ with an intensive programme that includes our two products: Venture Builder and The Academy, in each mission.

We believe that missions unite, mobilise and organise the best talent, knowledge and capital that are needed to break through at scale.

We have 3 criteria for choosing a Zinc mission:
1. It must tackle one of the great unmet needs in the developed world;
2. The target addressable market must exceed 100m people in the developed world alone;
3. There must be lots of unexploited opportunities to disrupt, extend and improve existing services through new technologies and insights from research.

Since we launched in 2017, we have been developing a unique ecosystem of diverse talent across many sectors, mobilising them around a common mission and building commercial and investable solutions to social problems.

We are building a new commercial innovation system for the social sciences, to increase the impact of existing research and to generate new R&D opportunities through our ventures. Zinc’s main financial backer is the London School of Economics. Zinc is also a member of the ASPECT consortium which is accelerating the commercial impact of social science.

Our first mission, launched in October 2017, was to improve the mental and emotional health of 650m women and girls in the developed world. Our second mission was to unlock new opportunities for people in places that have been hard-hit by globalisation and automation. Mission 3 aims to add five high-quality years to later life. Learn more at https://www.zinc.vc/mission-3