What we learned about the conditions under which jobs emerge
When the Fund launched, the logic of job creation felt almost self-evident. Capital would flow to investment vehicles (IVs). Investment vehicles would deploy it to portfolio companies. Portfolio companies would grow and that growth would create jobs. The Fund’s role was to accelerate this sequence by backing vehicles and enterprises that might otherwise struggle to access capital, particularly women-led vehicles, first-time managers, and companies in markets where the investment ecosystem was still developing.
Over time, we learned that while this logic was not wrong, it was incomplete. The sequence was longer, more uneven, and more dependent on prior conditions than we had initially assumed. And the tension between the Fund’s multiple ambitions meant that the employment story was never simple, even in cases where things went well.
This book is the third in a four-part learning series that follows the Fund’s journey through the investment system. The first book traced how the Fund designed and moved capital to investment vehicles, and what it learned about fund structure, governance, and the power dynamics embedded in capital allocation. The second examined value creation: how business development services work, and what it takes to design support that actually strengthens enterprises rather than creating dependency. This third book takes the next step: given how capital was designed and how support was delivered, what happened to jobs — and which conditions consistently shaped job creation?