Canva couple’s eco-focused venture fund Wedgetail takes flight
Lisa Miller and Cameron Adams are pouring their Canva millions into what they say is the world’s most pressing environmental challenge.
Entrepreneur Lisa Miller, the wife of Canva billionaire Cameron Adams, has unveiled the pair’s ecology-friendly venture capital fund, Wedgetail.
First up it has deployed an initial $3m to help reverse the effects of biodiversity loss in what they hope can grow into a major, high-impact finance vehicle for improving global biodiversity.
Ms Miller said Wedgetail was the culmination of two decades of experience in both conservation and technology companies.
The executive began her professional life as a scientist at the Australian Museum before stints at Web 2.0 firms and at News Corp Australia, where she served as head of search for News Digital Media, then at Canva serving as the company’s head of product until June 2020.
Leaving Canva – the online design start-up that is now one of Australia’s most valuable software companies – was not an easy decision but Ms Miller said she knew she needed to move on in order to work more directly on projects tackling the global conservation and biodiversity problems.
In 2020 as the pandemic took off and during a crippling bushfire season, Ms Miller and her husband moved to Tasmania, became custodians of a significant piece of land in The Midlands, and connected with local farmers and other landowners.
“We’ve had all this experience seeing how start-ups work, how corporates work and how government organisations work and now we’re taking it to this idea of conservation,” she said.
“I really started to connect with farmers, Indigenous people and all sorts of organisations and I noticed the biodiversity crisis gets a lot less attention than climate change.
“Basically, all the ecosystems that provide us with clean air, clean water, they’re all under threat and if we lose all the trees and animals we won’t be able to survive, no matter how much carbon we’ve drawn.
“The question becomes, how do you engage with people who are on the land to improve restoration, biodiversity and conservation, and where are the commercial opportunities? That’s why we started Wedgetail.”
Ms Miller pointed to statistics showing that if the world is to meet its biodiversity, climate and land degradation targets, it needs to close a US$4.1 trillion financing gap in nature by 2050.
Wedgetail’s first financial product is a nature-linked loan, with an interest rate that automatically drops as the borrower creates more natural capital. The loans are built to accelerate businesses that have nature-positive impacts on the landscapes in which they operate, Ms Miller said.
An initial focus would be on cacao farmers and plans to scale into other commodities in the coming months.
Zorzal, a cacao farm in the Dominican Republic, is using its nature-linked loan from Wedgetail to help farmers achieve “bird friendly” certification, in which the cacao farmers must either set aside 50 per cent of their land as forest or maintain a minimum of 30 to 40 per cent canopy cover with at least 11 tree species per hectare.
“Farmers often do really great work on the land but they’re not rewarded for that financially,” Ms Miller said.
She said Wedgetail was self-funded initially but aimed to draw in other investors and make more traditional venture capital investments focused on nature-based projects.
Wedgetail will also prove the feasibility of its new nature-positive financial products, publish those findings and encourage financial institutions, governments and investors to follow suit.
“A lot of the money that Cameron and I will get through Canva will be deployed into Wedgetail to do environmental work,” she said. “We definitely have global ambitions with this.”
Canva, where Mr Adams still works full-time as chief product officer, now has more than 3500 employees globally and Ms Miller said she would draw inspiration from that company’s success in scaling up Wedgetail.
“Obviously I have a deep love of Canva and early on watching Mel (Perkins), Cliff (Obrecht) and Cameron go from three people in a tiny office to what it is now has been just incredible,” she said.
“Cameron and I did have other journeys as well, there were other start-ups that didn’t work, but Canva obviously has. I think it’s the combination of the founders, their diverse skill sets and their ability, and that they put no limits on themselves.
“Mel would often be checking Twitter every day and reading direct feedback, and just laser-focused on Canva’s users.
“What I want to bring to Wedgetail from Canva is really making sure you hire a great team, that you hold on closely to your mission and your values and you return to that big-picture thinking all the time; but then actually do the work each day to get there.”
