Cool Climate Collective
Our Thesis
Welcome to The Collective 🌲👐🌲
We bring together investors and operators from Silicon Valley & beyond who are at the intersection of climate and technology to accelerate solutions to climate change.
Our collective members have built companies like Tesla, Stripe, Google, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, DoorDash, Twitter, Slack, Square, and Airtable, as well as VCs like AngelList, Techstars, 500 Startups, Next Play Capital, and Lyft Ventures.
Ways to interact with The Collective:
Join the Syndicate (and invest $1k-$50k+ via SPVs into climate tech startups we collectively source and diligence)
Participate in our Investment Committees (we match scientific, domain and industry experts to join ad-hoc investment committees)
Learn about the Fund (get broad diversified exposure into an early-stage climate tech portfolio)
Pitch Your Startup (for us to put $100k-$250k into your funding round)
Mentor Climate Startups (and support founders working to better the planet)
Co-Invest with Us (and let's share our favorite climate startups)
Offer Perks to Climate Startups (and help them scale faster)
Have other ideas? Contact us (we are constantly incubating new initiatives and collectively spinning them out, e.g. Climate Patent Collective)
🌎🔥⌛️ Our Manifesto ⌛️🔥🌎
Climate change is a problem of atoms, not just bits.
And within it rests the single largest investment opportunity, ever.
A changing climate is already affecting every country, company, and human. And it will only get worse.
"The climate is f’d. Even worse than it seems.” — Chris Sacca
But where there’s pain, there’s potential. Not only can we be a part of the solution as climate investors, but we can make a profit while doing the right thing.
“The world’s first trillionaire will come from climate tech.” — Chamath Palihapitiya
And change is happening fast.
1/3 of the Fortune 500 has climate goals for 2030 or sooner. [1]
19 US states and territories have adopted policies moving to all-renewable or zero-emission electricity. [2]
197 countries, nearly every nation on Earth, have signed the Paris Accord on climate. [3]
In India (in just 5 years) 120 climate-tech startups raised $1.2 billion. [4]
$2 trillion — the amount the Biden administration aims to spend over 4 years on clean energy sources to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. [4]
ClimateTech investing is growing 5X faster than overall VC ($60B from 2013-2019). [5]
So far in 2021, more climate-focused funds were raised than during the previous 5 years combined. That’s led to VC-backed climate tech companies raising more than $14.2 billion worldwide—88% of the total for all of 2020. [6]
Climate businesses will be $1T in GDP within 10 years and corporate taxes on these new businesses will be $300B. That’s double California's annual tax revenues. — Chamath
All signs point to a major industrial and societal carbon transcendence.
There are already over 26 ClimateTech unicorns ($1B+ valuation) around the world who have collectively raised over $18B+ of total funding in the last decade and are now collectively valued at over $58B, including Rivian, Northvolt, and NotCo. Then there are the climate decacorns ($10B+ valuation), including Nest, Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods. There’s even a climate hectacorn in Tesla with its valuation nearing $1T.
And there could be dozens of climate decacorns by the decade's end.
As Chris Sacca, the Founder of Lowercarbon Capital, the largest climate fund in the space at $800M, says, ‘Fixing the planet is just good business. Shame and guilt won’t get us there, markets will.'
Our thesis is simple and backed by over a decade of building, selling, and investing in startups.
We will find and fund early-stage climate startups. These startups will reduce emissions, remove them, or help adapt to our changing planet while delivering co-benefits to our societies. We will do this quickly to help bring all the best ideas to market ASAP.
💡 For a deeper read into our investment thesis, refer to Mehrad's original climate investing framework.
What is clear is that we need A LOT more startups to be born and reach scale, FAST.
“Even as we race to get to net zero, the climate math tells us that we must also accelerate the development and deployment of solutions that can be carbon negative.” — Elon Musk
We leverage the collective network to engage in the due diligence process with their expertise. We co-invest with smart people and we look for strong indicators of execution, especially within the team and traction. Then we support founders with our pool of experienced operators, The Collective.
And with that, we welcome you to the Cool Climate Collective. Let's save the planet with Climate Tech, together.
Sincerely, your friendly climate investors
Mehrad & Tristan
🌲👐🌲
PS — Join us in accelerating climate solutions.
Mehrad is the former Program Director of Terra's Climate Change for VCs program and has been involved in various programming at MENA-based accelerators while also being a mentor to various Techstars programs. He’s also built deep relationships in the academic and scientific communities at prestigious universities and research groups exploring the frontier technologies of Climate solutions. As an operator, he has worn many hats, from Founder to Growth Marketer, where he has built and sold products from D2C e-commerce, EdTech and micro-SaaS.
Tristan has spent the last decade building, selling, and investing in startups and is bent on spending the next decade dedicated to fixing our climate problem. He's been a VC at 500 Startups where he directed $30M in funding, an EIR at Google for Startups, listed at Forbes 30 Under 30, a Terra ClimateTech VC Fellow, and a mentor at hundreds of accelerator programs, including Techstars, Katapult Climate, and Norrsken Impact. He’s also built and sold 2 startups at the intersection of impact and technology.
