🏛️ 39 climate VC investors write a letter to Congress + 🌿 Billionaire backs smart agriculture venture
Your 3-minute summary of climate tech, startups, better habits, and deep work.
Good morning, folks.
In today’s 3-minute read, we’ll cover these juicy nuggets:
🏛️ 39 climate VC investors write a letter to Congress.
🌿 Billionaire backs smart agriculture venture.
🌍 Climate tech research needs “reverse innovation”.
👩🚀 Scholarships for early-stage women founders.
🦸🏽 What’s your superpower?
🆘 Just ask someone.
Enjoy.
Chris
🏛️ 39 climate VC investors write a letter to Congress.
Led by my friends at SJF Ventures, these venture capital firms below have recently called on the federal government to step up to the plate and swing that giant bat for a healthier climate, more jobs, and global competitiveness.
Dave Kirkpatrick, SJF Ventures
Rob Day, Spring Lane Capital
Tim Woodward, Prelude Ventures
Tripp Baird, The Builders Fund
Emily Fritze, The Westly Group
Sameer Reddy, Energy Impact Partners
Anup Jacob, Activate Capital
Scott Jacobs, Generate
Josh Posamentier, Congruent Ventures
Emily Kirsch, Powerhouse Ventures
Praveen Sahay, WAVE Equity Partners
Paul Straub, Wireframe Ventures
Erik Lensch, Leyline Renewable Capital
Stonly Blue, Third Sphere
Amy Francetic, Buoyant Ventures
Jason Blumberg, Energy Foundry
Wal van Lierop, Chrysalix Venture Capital
Erik Snyder, Drawdown Fund
Tom Amis, Equilibrium Capital
Kevin Tidwell, Grantham Foundation
Tom Rand, ArcTern Ventures
Karl Khoury, Arborview Capital
Dan Goldman, Clean Energy Ventures
Andrée-Lise Méthot, Cycle Capital
Paul Richardson, Renewal Funds
Dawn Lippert, Elemental Excelerator
Sasha Brown, Ecosystem Integrity Fund
Daniel Prawda, GEF Capital Partners
Tyler Lancaster, Energize Ventures
Tom Steyer & Katie Hall, Galvanize Climate Solutions
Josh Cohen, City Light Capital
Ron Gonen, Closed Loop Partners
Monica Varman, G2 Venture Partners
Justin Desrosiers, SustainVC
Mike Jackson, Earthshot Ventures
Paul Seidler, Evergreen Climate Innovations
Whitney Haring-Smith, Anzu Partners
Scott Tierney, Valo Ventures
Brendan Bell, Aligned Climate Capital
Here are some excerpts:
Many companies we have funded have scaled tremendously in the solar, wind, hydro, storage, efficiency, resilience, and biofuels industries and now provide more than four million jobs in the U.S. and produce 21% of the country's power.
These companies are helping on-shore the supply chain for the energy industries of the future, creating high-quality manufacturing and installation jobs in every state and county.
However, to confidently invest, we need consistent federal policy leadership. We appreciate the smart grid, electric vehicle, carbon capture and R&D measures in the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last fall.
Now we ask you to proceed on the remaining pending legislation including clean energy tax credits, research support, domestic manufacturing incentives, resilience and mitigation investments, and electric vehicle incentives.
We also encourage the Administration to remove barriers to building more clean energy infrastructure, such as rapidly settling the recent solar module trade case.
🌿 Billionaire backs smart agriculture venture.
Galvanize Climate Solutions — anchored by billionaire Tom Steyer and Hall Capital Partners Founder Katie Hall — led the latest $38M Series B investment in Regrow Ag, an agtech start-up and friend of Entrepreneurs for Impact.
Other hallmark investors include Salesforce founder Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures, Rethink Impact, Cargill, and Microsoft's M12. (More from Reuters)
Details:
Regrow is the first digital platform to unlock the power and profitability of resilient agriculture through a single, measurable, and verifiable system.
They combine best-in-class agronomy (from FluroSat, started by Anastasia) with soil and carbon modeling (from Dagan, acquired by FluroSat) to deliver customized, site-specific and scalable solutions to businesses across the supply chain.
Sample customers include General Mills, Cargill, Kellogg’s, Syngenta, and Bayer.
Anastasia's passion is Earth observation, automation, and efficiency.
With three degrees and a doctoral thesis on autonomous navigation systems, she has experience in project management, transportation, and IT, including leading a 370-person team for UEFA, workshopping with Airbus, managing software development teams for American/European companies, starting a web development company, and running a successful event management startup.
Yep, super under-achiever! 😂
🌍 Climate tech research needs “reverse innovation”.
A recent study found that 80% of publicly funded climate tech research was spent in the UK, the United States, and the European Union (EU).
In a few words:
Duh.
That sucks.
What about Reverse Innovation?
Let’s see how MIT defines it:
A term coined by Vijay Govindarajan to describe the phenomenon of goods and services being produced in emerging markets (such as India) and then exported, with a few “tweaks,” to developed markets such as Europe and the United States.
What’s it really about?
Humility — We in the West don’t have all the answers. (Wait, what?!) 🤯
A numbers game — More minds, better ideas.
Blind spots — We all have them. We just don’t know it until we walk off that cliff.
Learn more in this Harvard Business Review article.
👩🚀 Scholarships for early-stage women founders.
I’m a broken record here, so bear with me. 🤐
From June 1 to 14, I’m leading a live, online boot camp about raising capital for climate tech companies. Just five short classes and three optional Q&A sessions.
Three notes:
So far, mostly dudes have signed up. #LoveYou 💖
We need more women in the house! 🔥
It’s going to be awesome (of course!), so you should invite a friend. 🙏🏻
To make that a little easier, I’m offering scholarships for some early-stage women founders.
If you want to grab one of those, just respond to this email.
I’m not a robot. 🤖 I promise.
More details on my course here:
https://maven.com/entrepreneurs-for-impact/fund-your-climate-tech-startup
🦸🏽 What’s your superpower?
We’re not all the same.
Thank Buddha. (Huh?)
This is true for talents, too.
But how often has your manager told you what your superpower is? 😕
So…
Whether you’re managing people, students, or your kids, consider telling them what their superpower is.
Maybe they’re at 100% already on a certain attribute.
Or perhaps they’re just at 50%, but your comment will propel them to 100%.
This management tip comes from fellow Duke University guy, entrepreneur, and business podcast host, Shaan Puri.
But his podcast (below) is slightly more popular than my podcast — uh, millions of downloads.
Don’t let the title make you want to barf. It’s one of my favorites most weeks.
That’s all, y’all.
Make it a great week, because it’s usually a choice.
— Chris
P.S. 🆘 Just ask someone.
“Don’t be ashamed to need help.” - Marcus Aurelius
We all need it.
—
Dr. Chris Wedding
Founder and Chief Catalyst, Entrepreneurs for Impact
”We help CEOs and investors tackle climate change via mastermind peer groups, online courses, newsletters, and podcasts”
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