Impact entrepreneurship: trends and challenges for start-ups
05/14/2025
6 min
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Le Club Les Echos Débats Prospective recently organized a debate (in French) on the topic “Impact entrepreneurship: start-ups that are revolutionizing the business world,” in partnership with Wavestone and IÉSEG. Participants in the event included: Caroline NEYRON (Mouvement Impact France), Clémentine Granet (Co-founder, Les Petits Prodiges), Benjamin Constant (Managing Director, Neo-Eco and NeoCem), and Nicolas GOURSOT (Co-founder, uMotion).
But who are these impact start-ups and entrepreneurs ? And what are some of the key challenges and trends in France? Jacques ANGOT, Director of the Incubator and Professor of Practice at IÉSEG, looks at some of challenges for impact entrepreneurship and some of the issues raised during the debate.
Impact start-ups: a new generation of entrepreneurs at the crossroads of meaning and action
This new generation of entrepreneurs is no longer content with simply doing good by running their businesses. They are looking to repair, prevent, and transform.
For these emerging, hybrid, and ambitious start-ups, solving a social, environmental, or regional problem is at the very heart of their business model. These are not traditional companies that offset any negative impacts they may have with some responsible activities. Positive impact is a condition for the existence of their business model.
What distinguishes mission-led companies from traditional start-ups?
The difference is subtle but strategic. Companies with the Entreprises à mission status, introduced into French law in 2019, can have a social or environmental purpose written into their articles of association while retaining a traditional business model. Impact start-ups, meanwhile, embed societal transformation in their products or services. They create value through their impact.
This radical ambition is driven by a new generation of impact entrepreneurs, who are often highly educated and sometimes career changers, who refuse to choose between meaning and success. They want models that stand the test of time and fit into their story.
What factors explain the emergence of this sector?
The climate, social, and energy crises have shifted our expectations at different levels. On the one hand, consumers’ behaviors have been changing as people become more aware of these societal and environmental problems. Meanwhile, the rise of impact investing is also changing the rules of the game for entrepreneurship, with initiatives such as French Tech 2030 and BPI France’s climate plan in France. In this context, impact start-ups are no longer peripheral but are becoming the figureheads of a new entrepreneurial narrative.
A French dynamic in the making – more than 1,000 start-ups
In 2023, Bpifrance Le Hub, France Digitale, and Mouvement Impact France published a mapping of French impact start-ups. This identified more than 1,000 impact start-ups which together had raised nearly €10 billion since their creation. And their development is accelerating…
The mapping shows that 20% of them were created after 2020, and various sectors are represented: 42% are working on issues related to environmental transition (clean energy, decarbonization, circular economy etc), 32% on social issues such as inclusion, education, and health, and 18% on local or democratic resilience. Nearly a third of these start-ups have social and solidarity economy (SSE) status and one in two claim to be mission-driven companies.
The challenge of scaling up
But the picture is somewhat mixed, especially when we focus on the scaling of these startups. Despite the sector’s vitality, only 7% of these start-ups reach Series B funding, compared to 15% for traditional start-ups. Scaling up therefore remains a challenge. Impact alone is not enough to convince investors, it must be shown, measured, and consolidated over time.
What impact entrepreneurs can consider before getting started
Embarking on impact entrepreneurship is not just about having good intentions; it means accepting a new complexity: that of combining a desire for transformation with the need for (economic) viability. Here are four key questions entrepreneurs can ask before taking the plunge.
1. Why do you want to solve this problem?
Impact cannot be declared, it must be experienced and lived. The driving force must be deeply rooted. The best impact start-ups are led by founders who are deeply connected to the problem they are trying to solve: for example, an educator who is digitizing social integration or an engineer who is reinventing the supply chain to reduce carbon footprints. The alignment between personal life, values, and professional projects is a lever for resilience, but it is also a compass when choices become complex (for example, with regard to financing).
2. How can impact be measured?
Impact without proof remains wishful thinking. Measuring impact is therefore a strategic issue for both external credibility and internal management. Several tools are now available, such as these tools in France:
– The Impact Score grid developed by Mouvement Impact France, which evaluates companies according to five dimensions: governance, economic model, environment, social, and area/region.
– The SDG Action Manager from B Lab, which links sustainable development goals to concrete business practices.
– And the tools developed by Bpifrance, which integrate impact assessment into financing processes.
But beyond the tools, it is the mindset that counts: integrating mission indicators from the outset and linking them to key performance indicators (KPIs). Impact is not an externality; it is one of the pillars of the model.
3. To what extent is your model economically sustainable?
An impact start-up often must do more with less: for example, conquer an emerging market or sector, or navigate between public subsidies and regular revenues. The trap can be twofold: either capturing a market while losing sight of the impact, or over-focusing on the mission at the expense of (financial) sustainability.
Hybrid models (revenue plus subsidies, or business-to-business to consumer, with financial partners) are often the most relevant. But they require a strong strategic plan and transparent communication with stakeholders.
4. What types of financing are suitable for your project?
Traditional investors are still too often looking for “scalable” models with quick returns. However, impact takes time, fieldwork, and experimentation. Nevertheless, more specialized funds are emerging (e.g., Fifty Partners, but also BPI France, which offers a range of tailored support). Above all, however, financing models are evolving towards a more “patient capital” approach with risk-sharing or non-dilutive financing mechanisms involving local authorities, communities, and foundations, which are also becoming key levers.
A change in the entrepreneurial paradigm ?
For a long time, entrepreneurs were those who took risks to seize opportunities. Now, they are also taking a stand to ‘transform the system’. Companies are no longer launched to compete in a market, but to fix a problem in the world. This does not mean that everything in the traditional models should be discarded.
But impact entrepreneurship poses a number of fundamental questions : what is the purpose of a company? What value does it really want to create? For whom and at what cost? In a world marked by uncertainty, a crisis of meaning, and climate emergency, these questions are no longer peripheral. They are central. They are redrawing the contours of leadership. And impact startups—small in size but big in intention—could well be the trailblazers.
There is one point of caution: what if impact becomes an order? By talking about it so much, we risk turning impact into a new moral norm that makes those who don’t achieve it feel guilty. But impact can only be a conscious, aligned, and thoughtful choice, not a label of conformity. It is less about judging projects than about helping everyone make their own ethical, economic, and personal choices.
Trend or shift?
Impact entrepreneurship is not a trend. It is a shift, a shift in the center of gravity of innovation towards models where impact is the compass for project leaders. This means accepting the complexity of learning to measure what is not always visible, and seeking fairness rather than raw growth.
This is the English version of an article originally published in French.
A replay of the Le Club Les Echos Débats event is available here (in French):
