BEDFORD FUNDS, LP
A private investment vehicle designed to generate exceptional investor returns with lasting social and environmental impact
An innovative
approach to investing
Headquartered at the
Energy Innovation Center
A unique 200,000 sq. ft. eco-system designed to advanced
the science, policy, and commercial application of power food and equitable learning and training.
aboutus
Bedford Funds is a private capital investment vehicle designed to deploy an investment strategy focused on buying, building, and operating a portfolio of low-carbon power systems, low carbon (CEA) food systems, and related technologies.
The fund's management team's past ATR is 28.6% IRR and 3.6 times ROI accrued while directing $4.2 billion AUM over 25 years.
When fully scaled Bedford's investment strategy could deploy multiple billions of dollars with similar risk return metrics.
Additionally the team has extensive for-profit and not-for-profit ESG experience and expertise with a focus in low-carbon power and food systems and equity in leaning and workforce development.
Bedford is a signatory to the United Nations Principals of Responsible Investments (PRI).
Bedford has a unique affiliation with the Energy Innovation Center Institute ("EICI") that oversees an innovative public/private ecosystem designed to advance international dialogue, policy, think-tank and commercial innovations in low-carbon electric generation and storage, microgrids and district power systems, smart building technologies, workforce training, and food. The Fund's alignment with the EICI helps to power its ESG efforts.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Bedford CEO discussing
low-carbon power systems at the Energy Innovation Center
ourteam
Bedford’s core team includes career private equity professionals and sector-focused infrastructure and tech company operations leaders, with deep experience in all phases of company and private equity portfolio creation, management, operations, back-office, and exits. The team also has considerable operating ESG experience which helps the Fund be optimally effective as a PRI member private capital investment vehicle.
The Fund’s CEO, President, CFO, and corporate controller are senior private equity professionals with over 30 years’ experience in all phases of private capital investing, operations, turn-around, and portfolio management in private equity funds, family offices and other structures. The other partners all have both private capital and deep sector related operating company and P&L leadership experience.
The focus of the team’s expertise is heavily weighted toward building and developing low-carbon power and food infrastructure and technology investments through direct operations of assets and portfolio management.
Additionally, through Bedford's CEO's leadership role at the Energy Innovation Center Institute, the group commands unique international convening power on investment strategy industries unlike any other investment vehicle in the U.S. at this time.
Unyielding principals
that guide us every day.
ourfounders
The six founding principals have considerable experience creating investor value over their careers.
A differentiator of the group is that their expertise also includes meaningful experience working effectively in economically distressed neighborhoods, with sustainable technologies in the energy industry, and advances in workforce training technologies and applications.
This rare combination of private equity asset, portfolio, and technology company operations leadership experience, along with significant Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) work will deliver exceptional investor returns with ESG impact.
The Managing Directors have been working together over the last 20 years in various capacities and relationships.
Rich DiClaudio
Managing Director and CEO
32 years of private equity, SFO, and ESG not-for-profit leadership. Focus on energy and education technologies. Career AUM over $900 million.
Rich Talarico
Managing Director and President
34 years of private equity and single family office leadership. Focus on technology, media, and content development. Career AUM over $500 million.
Dean Praskach
Managing Director and CFO
33 years of private equity, family office, and large scale financial structuring leadership. Focus on technology. AUM over $400 million.
Jim Dorris
Managing Director,
Unpaid Advisor
21 years of operating and P&L responsibility in energy, industry, health, ESG leadership and private capital investing.
Mike Broeker
Managing Director
Unpaid Advisor
29 years in technology, software development, and operational leadership.
Alex DiClaudio
Managing Director
10 years in private capital, media, entertainment, and education technology. Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University
ourexecutives
Value creation is all about team and culture.
Innovations decay.
Strategies, technologies, and revenue models come and go.
Strong teams with a culture based on core principals will always create value in new ways and reduce operational, market, and investment risks along the way.
Over the last year Bedford's founding Managing Directors have been assembling a team of highly talented sector-focused executives to run many of the Fund's investment strategy plays. Most of these men and women and are long-time business associates and past partners.
OURSTRATEGY
Our primary strategic investment verticals are organized around:
Future of Energy | Future of Work | Future of Food & Healthy Living
Each sector is large, growing, and undergoing rapid transformation driven
by new technologies and shifting social preferences.
The recent COVID-19 outbreak has only amplified these changes.
All portfolio investments are based upon team expertise,
the ability to generate exceptional investor returns, and
positive social impact.
This value creation strategy is accelerated by leveraging a “force-multiplier effect” derived from deploying all of the investment verticals into innovation ecosystems.
When the current lineup of portfolio investments are fully-scaled, Bedford’s strategy will help address several of the modern redlines in many of the nation's most vulnerable communities.
esgobjectives
Sustainable investing, once considered a niche investment strategy, has continued to grow in its usage and we see it as now being integral to the investment processes used by
the certain investors. (Bank of America/Merrill)
In its simplest terms, sustainable investing is the process of seeking positive social and environmental effects while targeting competitive financial returns.
It is most often accomplished by combining traditional investment approaches with ESG (environmental, social and governance) objectives. Sustainable investments span the spectrum of asset classes, such as publicly traded equities, fixed income instruments and private investments. Bedford focused on private capital application of ESG investing.
Its time for a new approach.
It is no longer enough to make some concessions to investing for returns and impact, its critical part of performance for alpha impact investing. Managers who do not embrace this approach will be left behind and their investors will experience higher risks and lower returns over the long-term.
This approach is a philosophy based on a simple idea that when practiced consciously, business elevates humanity.
Bedford's leadership team has been earlier adopters of and contributors to the science of ESG investing that is now being proven to provide alpha impact outcomes. We have adopted these various efforts and sciences into a holistic blend of ESG principles focused on the overlapping and reinforcing convergence of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Principles of Responsible Investments (PRI) directives and the economics science supporting the Economics of Mutuality (EoM).
Our approach Specifically, the strategy coalesces around profitable, scalable operating businesses and technologies for which the team has deep investing and operating expertise, are foundational to the global economy and are undergoing rapid transformation by both technological advances and shifting social preferences. Simply put Bedford focuses on the Future of Energy, Work and Food and the intersectionality of the three into a force-multiplying innovate sustain investing model that is designed to deliver superior investor returns and impact.
Bedford's method for generating both top tier returns and the ESG outcomes aligns well with both the UN Principles of Response Investment (PRI) and the Economics of Mutuality
(EoM). When combined they create a new business and investing approached designed to deliver extraordinary outcomes for all stakeholders.
Businesses that employ theses principles are more innovative, less risky, and better positioned to deliver superior performance in the long term, because all stakeholders along the value chain have a vested interest in the success of their business and others.
Of course, as investment professionals, we still want to achieve exceptional returns for our partners.
Bedford's blended risk investment strategy expects to deliver private equity returns of mid-teens IRR net of all fees, costs, carry. There are also multiple opportunities in the strategy for returns to exceed this target meaningfully, all while simultaneously generating positive social and environmental impact.
findUS
Energy Innovation Center
1435 Bedford Avenue, Suite 108
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219