Ronald Cohen
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Ronald Cohen emerges in this interview as a quintessential Pioneer, having built entirely new fields rather than joining existing ones. He co-founded Apax at 26 into a European venture capital vacuum, explicitly stating he had to 'build the field' alongside the firm. His pivot to impact investing follows the same pattern: identifying an unmapped territory, inventing new instruments like the social impact bond, and prosecuting the case for systemic change through impact-weighted accounts. Cohen frames each chapter of his career as entering ahead of others and accumulating experience that compounds into leadership. His insistence on mandatory impact transparency as the defining reform of modern capitalism, drawing a deliberate parallel to post-1929 accounting standards, reflects a Pioneer's instinct to reshape the foundational rules of an entire system rather than merely compete within it.
“What's exciting about entering a new field is that you do have to build the field. You have to prosecutize for it, explain it, bring examples of how it's worked in the United States and why it should work in Britain.”
“The name of the game is changing now. It's shifting from delivering risk and return to delivering risk and return and impact.”
“It doesn't make sense to create harm with 95% of your assets and try to create good with 5% from the return that you've got from those assets.”
Money Maze Podcast: “Sir Ronald Cohen: From Venture Capital and Private Equity to Impact investing, A conversation with the man who leads the charge!”
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