our model

and how we work.

We build what Wales needs next.

Wales has no shortage of good ideas. What we lack is the machinery to turn them into real, scalable, long-term solutions.

DC Group is designed to fill that gap. We’re a mission-driven venture studio: part think tank, part builder, part broker, part long-term partner to the nation.

We identify system-level gaps

The big problems — stagnant productivity, climate vulnerability, weak civic infrastructure, fragmented services — don’t fall neatly into one department, one sector, or one budget line.

We incubate & test

Every DC venture goes through a disciplined development process:

  • early discovery and research

  • proof of concept

  • partnership building

  • business modelling

  • prototyping

  • rapid iteration

Some ideas mature quickly; others take years. We give them the space, rigour and patience required for real, system-level impact.

We scale through collaboration

Once a venture is validated, DC helps scale it across Wales. That can mean:

  • spinning out a new organisation

  • housing it inside government

  • creating a national coalition

  • licensing the model to partners

  • maintaining it inside the DC Group portfolio

Every venture has its own trajectory — our job is to support it until it stands on its own feet.

We reinvest the value back into Wales

As ventures grow, they generate financial, social and intellectual returns.

Those returns feed the next wave of ventures — creating a Welsh impact flywheel that compounds over time.

We design ventures, not reports

Most organisations stop at strategy. We start with it. But then we build.

Each idea is shaped into a real venture:

  • new institutions

  • new delivery models

  • new coalitions

  • new financing structures

  • new tech or data platforms

  • new community-led programmes

We mobilise capital & partners

Big problems only shift when money, political will and community energy align. DC blends all three by bringing together:

  • government

  • responsible business

  • foundations and philanthropists

  • impact investors

  • community leaders

  • universities and research partners

Where needed, we create new funding vehicles — from blended-finance structures to pooled funds — to get long-term ventures off the ground.

We measure what really matters

Impact. Not outputs.

Drawing on Ronald Cohen’s work on impact transparency and impact-weighted accounting, we build ventures that can demonstrate — rigorously and credibly — their social, environmental and economic return.