About Us

Who is UNICEF Venture Fund?

The Venture Fund invests exclusively in open source solutions. The Fund generates value by building open source IP and scalable digital public goods, strengthening communities of problem solvers, and growing solutions that bring results for children and the world.

Learn more here.

Why Open Source?

The Fund believes that open source is good for business.

1

Community Building

A huge benefit of open source is the vibrant communities that can grow around the open source software. This can bring value for both the producers and the end users because developers can get help in creating the software from the community and get feedback from their users about what works and what doesn’t.

2

User growth

The use cost of open source is typically lower than with proprietary equivalents, creating user growth and goodwill.

3

Talent Acquisition

It is often easier for open source clients to attract top talent within the industry because the community-oriented nature of open source means you likely know who the best candidates are already.

4

Cost Effectiveness and Optimization

Using and developing open source software can save vast amounts of time and energy because you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

Why were the Toolkits created?

Venture Fund's mentors guide startups as part of Venture Fund's Technical Assistance Programme towards common goals such as applying for Digital Public Goods and communicating and articulating the technology's benefits and impact and developing business models for the new technologies developed to ensure long-term sustainability.

The past, current and future mentors will document their key learnings and curate resources in these toolkits. These toolkits are also published here for other startups and teams outside of UNICEF's Venture Fund's networks.