Fika with Ananda Impact Ventures’ Zoe Peden: ‘They call me Zobey-Wan’

Zoe, where does the Star Wars thing come from?

I’ve always been a sci-fi nerd. My family gave me two names growing up – one from The Magic Roundabout (Zebedee), and one from Star Wars. People would call me Zobey, then Zobey-Wan, and it just stuck. I even got the domain name. I used to dress up, play Star Wars… long before it was socially acceptable!

Before venture, you were in publishing, right?

Yeah. I spent 10 years in publishing – editing, writing, and digitising content from the late ’90s onward. We were using SGML, XML, HTML to structure academic publishing before everything went online.

It was a brutal industry. Private equity was rolling up publishers, people were getting laid off left and right. I spent my twenties watching colleagues leave with cardboard boxes. I knew I had to get out.

And then you went travelling?

For about two years, on and off. Australia, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa. I met creative, risk-taking people. My people. But I couldn’t backpack forever – so I thought: how do I recreate this kind of community?

You ended up in the charity sector.

I didn’t want to go back to a profit-driven company after publishing. So I joined the Makaton Charity as a senior manager. They helped people with severe learning difficulties communicate, and they needed someone to digitise their content.

I spotted an opportunity to build an app – this was before the iPad existed. When Steve Jobs announced it in 2010 I thought: this is the device. Assistive tech that used to cost £10,000 could now be an app on a £400 tablet.

So I built MyChoicePad.

That became your entry into impact investing.

Yes. I spent 10 years running the company – clinical trials, licensing, grants, early impact angels. In 2011–12, I basically soaked up all the early impact capital available in the UK. Then Ananda came in with what counted as a Series A back then – £1m. No one had raised that much in tech-for-good at the time.

Eventually, growth wasn’t fast enough for VC economics. I exited. The product’s still going 16 years later, helping hundreds of thousands of people communicate.

How did you move from entrepreneur to VC?

Ananda asked me to become a venture partner. They liked my sourcing – I’d already helped them find a few UK deals. Two days a month became two days a week. Then came the crunch moment: “Give everything else up and join us fully.”

For an entrepreneur, that’s terrifying. You’re used to multiple revenue streams. But I said yes.

Then I essentially became an apprentice. When you’ve spent 10 years running your own company, you have to unlearn a lot – the urgency, the fast decisions. Venture requires stewardship. Patience. Due diligence. But I kept the instinct that made me valuable: spotting opportunities early.

That’s how I made partner.

Ananda’s grown a lot – your latest fund was €108m. What changed over the years?

Impact used to be venture philanthropy. Lower returns, early ecosystem, early entrepreneurs (including me!) without the margins for mainstream VC.

From Fund III onwards – around 2017/18 – LP appetite changed. German LPs especially. The European Investment Fund (EIF). Foundations. Development banks. And critically: family offices. The old industrial European families, plus their Gen X and Gen Z heirs.

Honestly, they’re far ahead of the UK now. The UK led impact in the early 2010s – Big Society, catalytic capital. But that infrastructure eroded. Meanwhile, the Nordics, Germany, France, the Netherlands… they kept building.

I’m British, but I’m very happy to be European through Ananda.