Ian Pinnington

Ian Pinnington is a Partner at ArcTern Ventures, a Toronto-based venture firm focused exclusively on climate and sustainability ("Earthtech"). He joined ArcTern in 2017 as the firm's first hire and has since invested across the climate-tech spectrum, from pre-revenue hardware companies to growth-stage software businesses. He progressed from Associate (2017–2018) to Principal (2018–2022) and to Partner (2022–present). Note: the original stub listing him as a "Principal" angel investor doing seed rounds is out of date — he is a VC partner whose firm primarily leads Series A and B rounds.

Before ArcTern, Ian was a management consultant at A.T. Kearney in New York. Earlier in his career he worked at Sustainalytics (a sustainability research and ratings firm later acquired by Morningstar), where he developed low-carbon investment strategies for public-equity investors and advised large corporations on integrating sustainability into their core business models. In 2015 he co-authored a United Nations Environment Programme publication on "Bank and Investor Risk Policies on Soft Commodities."

He holds an HBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University (where he received the Ivey Plan for Excellence Scholarship) and an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from Columbia University. He currently serves on the board of Recurrent, among other portfolio roles.

• Invests through ArcTern's mandate: privately negotiated equity in "Earthtech" startups building breakthrough solutions for climate change and sustainability, targeting strong financial returns alongside measurable climate impact.
• Concentrates on five high-impact subsectors: Electricity & Energy, Industry, Transportation/Mobility, Food Systems, and Nature.
• Stage focus is Series A and Series B (occasionally early-growth), with initial checks in the ~$3M–$12M range and a sweet spot around $4–5M; ArcTern frequently leads rounds.
• Comfortable across business models — pre-revenue deep-tech hardware through growth-stage SaaS — reflecting his stated experience investing "across a broad range of stages, sectors, and business types."
• Brings a sustainability-finance background (Sustainalytics, UNEP work) that informs a rigorous view of real-world decarbonization impact, not just narrative.