⚡ $53M for Metals, $2.5B for Startups, ChatGPT Premortem Simulator (#195)
Climate numbers. CEO to know. Investor spotlight. AI insight. Mindful moment.
Today’s topics:
CLIMATE NUMBERS: Can slow project permitting kill us?
CEO TO KNOW: Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO of Cyclic Materials
INVESTOR SPOTLIGHT: Chuck Templeton, Managing Director at S2G
AI INSIGHT: The ChatGPT Premortem Simulator™
MINDFUL MOMENT: The gull in a storm
1. CLIMATE NUMBERS
Can slow project permitting kill us?
Extreme?
Maybe.
But consider this:
It takes, on average, 4.5 years and 1,000s of pages for a project to get through National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permitting.
Even for environmentally beneficial projects like renewable energy.
That’s longer than it took for the U.S. to (help) defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
Learn more (and be depressed or motivated) by reading Abundance, a newish book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
2. CEO TO KNOW
Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO of Cyclic Materials.
He is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience with two related companies valued at over $1B.
He’s also one of the top hydrometallurgists in the world with 20 patents and 3,000 citations.
Cyclic Materials recycles rare earth elements (REEs) from end-of-life products such as electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and electronic waste.
Their last round was a $53M Series B round with investors like BMW iVentures and Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund.
Learn more in my conversation with him here.
3. INVESTOR SPOTLIGHT
$2.5 Billion for Food, Ag, Oceans, Energy.
Chuck Templeton, Managing Partner at S2G, was my recent guest on our Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) podcast.
He’s ex-operator, including founding OpenTable and serving as lead investor and operating Chairman in companies such as Grubhub and Venmo (Braintree Payment Systems).
S2G is a multi-stage investment firm with $2.5B under management and 100+ portfolio companies. They focus on venture and growth-stage businesses across food and agriculture, oceans, and energy.
4. AI INSIGHT
The ChatGPT Premortem Simulator™.
Patent pending. 🙄 Not.
Prompt: “Hey ChatGPT, assume we face-planted our next capital raise. Give me five brutal causes and the red flags we should have noticed six months earlier. Here’s some context.” Then give it some juicy details about your company — but only after turning off the data sharing feature in OpenAI (instructions here).
Marvel: Out pops a playlist of things you have nightmares about.
Iterate: Hit “Pretend you’re a CEO with prior successful exits. Now rerun with mitigation playbooks, probability sliders, etc.”
The result?
Weeks of doom scrolling, nail biting, and uncertain whiteboarding compressed into two cold brews and smart typing.
Ship to the team, look smart to investors, get to work, avoid disaster.
5. MINDFUL MOMENT
In Stormy Times, Remember the Bird.
To clarify:
We’ve got some very dark clouds out there in climate.
I don’t mean the middle finger.
—
“Each storm has, like a navel, a hole in its middle
through which a gull can fly in silence.”
— Anonymous, 14th century Japan
That’s all, y’all.
Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.
~ Chris
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