🌍 Do you have the courage to be disliked? (Issue #135)

Plus: 3,745 moonshot venture ideas from science fiction novels. Four podcasts with climate tech CEOs and investors. How to measure impact in VC.

Dec 19, 2023

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Today’s topics.

Four podcasts with climate tech CEOs and investors.
Seven guides for measuring impact in VC.
Do you have the courage to be disliked?
3,745 moonshot venture ideas from science fiction books.

1. Four podcasts with climate tech CEOs and investors.

If the negativity of mainstream news is beating you down with brass knuckles, then listen to these podcasts from Entrepreneurs for Impact about climate solutions, optimism, and hope.

2. Seven guides for measuring impact in VC.

You’ve heard it before:

“What gets measured gets managed.”

Unfortunately, many things that matter don’t get measured or managed.

Impact Capital Managers is trying to make it easier with three reports and four case studies on how to measure the non-financial impacts of private investments.

One case study profiles my friends at SJF Ventures, with $435M AUM across five funds. For example:

Having started out as an employment-focused impact fund, SJF works with all of its portfolio companies on improving job quality, often advising on employee benefits packages, employee engagement, and DEI hiring and talent retention initiatives.
The fund has also built a carbon impact model, which it uses alongside a carbon emissions accounting software tool to help its portfolio companies identify opportunities to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Do you have the courage to be disliked?

This comes from a book recommended by a member of our Climate Mastermind peer group program at Entrepreneurs for Impact. Thanks, Michelle Egger!

The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

Positive reviews come from a WIDE RANGE of readers:

“Marie Kondo, but for your brain.” — HelloGiggles (“a happy space for millennial women”)
“Compelling from front to back. Highly recommend.” — Marc Andreessen (billionaire VC manager)

It puts the work of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of nineteenth-century psychology, into easy-to-read conversations aimed at freeing ourselves “from the shackles of past traumas and the expectations of others.”

Oh, and there’s this fun reminder:

When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking about you.
When you’re 40, you don’t give a #@%! what anybody thinks of you.
When you’re 60, you realize that nobody has been thinking about you at all.

4. 3,745 moonshot venture ideas from science fiction books.

If you’re searching for your next BIG IDEA, consider reading more Sci-Fi.

The brave souls at Technovelgy and Not Boring have created a monstrous Google Sheet with 1,000s of imagined tech innovations from books dating back to the year 1634.

(Johannes Kepler, I see you.)

The Sheet shows which of these ideas have already become reality — e.g., undersea mining was originally discussed in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

But most still live in the ether. For now.