SOSV is pleased to announce four more speakers for the upcoming SOSV Climate Tech Summit taking place virtually on October 25–26, 2022, joining the previous eight speakers already announced.

Joining us on panel discussions are USV‘s Mona Alsubaei and Khosla Ventures‘s Rajesh Swaminathan, who will join a panel about climate tech investment. Quaise‘s Carlos Araque will round up the session focused on novel geothermal energy solutions. Finless Foods‘s Michael Selden will share his experience on a panel about on the regulatory challenges and opportunities climate tech face.

Below is more information about our speakers. Please register today!

THE SPEAKERS

Mona Alsubaei

Mona Alsubaei, member of the investment team of USV, is focused on its Climate Fund. Before USV, Mona worked at CrossBoundary, an emerging markets investment advisory firm where she was responsible for growing the firm’s Middle East and Central Asia presence. Mona started her career in policy and international economics at the United Nations Economics Committee and Environment Programme. Mona is a global nomad who lived and worked in over eight countries but always has a special place in her heart for her hometown — Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Rajesh Swaminathan

A Partner at Khosla Ventures, Rajesh Swaminathan has two decades of experience assisting and investing in deep tech startups. He manages many of the firm’s investments across renewables generation, storage, hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, plastics, foodtech, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.

Previously, Rajesh was the head of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of 85 deep-tech startups globally, as well as two deep-tech funds in Korea and Taiwan. He led investments and helped build companies, many of which had strong exits, including Enphase Energy, Solid Energy, Rockley, Infinite Power Solutions, Adaptive3D, Tango, Inpria and Norsk Ti. Rajesh was recognized amongst the top 100 global CVCs, on the Global Corporate Venture (GCV) Powerlist.

Earlier, he worked at Third Point Ventures and at Lucent’s Bell Labs, where he drove technical assessments and partnerships for several optical, MEMS, and RF device startups, and also led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s systems.

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he worked on Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team, and also worked with KV on companies in solar and water. Previously, Rajesh earned a master of science degree from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.

Carlos Araque

Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise (deep geothermal, raised $70M). Carlos Araque is an engineer with a background in technology transfer, product development, and venture capital. He was the Technical Director for The Engine, MIT’s groundbreaking fund and platform to commercialize world-changing ideas. During his time at The Engine, Carlos got introduced to the work of Dr. Paul Woskov from the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center on disruptive millimeter wave drilling technology for deep geothermal heat access, and founded Quaise, Inc. to pursue commercialization of the technology at scale. He leads the company as its CEO, with teams in Houston, Boston and Cambridge UK. Carlos is from Medellin, Colombia and has BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.

Michael Selden

Michael Selden, CEO of Finless Foods (cultured and plant-based fish, raised $37.5 million), working on building a future for seafood where the ocean thrives. A stalwart environmentalist since a young age, Michael is dedicating his career to impacting positive change within the seafood industry. Prior to co-founding Finless Foods, he studied high-throughput cancer screening at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, and worked as a research intern at New Harvest, a non-profit dedicated to propelling forward the field of cellular agriculture. When he is not working towards building a sustainable future for our oceans, Michael hangs out with his bulldog Roscoe, makes music, or reads the latest science fiction. Michael earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Khosla Ventures, USV, Quaise Energy and Finless Foods to Speak at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit 2022 was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who knew that the climate tech ecosystem in 2022 would face such surprising challenges? Just a year ago, investors happily doubled down on climate tech startups, deploying more than $40 billion according to TechCrunch.

Now we face inflation-driven economic turmoil, war in the Ukraine, and the related instability of carbon-based energy markets. If there’s a bright spot, as Climate Tech VC recently noted, it’s the “ample climate capital in the market to stay warm through a cold snap,” thanks to the 72 climate venture and growth funds totaling $37B announced in the last 18 months.

Good news or bad, there’s no doubt that 2022 is a new chapter for climate tech startups. The SOSV Climate Tech Summit team is building an outstanding, two-day virtual program Oct. 25–26 (register — it’s free) enlisting dozens of investors and founders to address how they see the ecosystem in this new world. Is this nuclear’s moment? (Carbon capture’s? Hydrogen’s? Alternative protein’s?) We will hear about those topics and much more. At last year’s summit, attended by more than 2000 people, Bill Gates declared that the climate startup ecosystem will produce “8 to 10 Teslas.” We believe him, and we’re eager to hear which categories and companies are capturing the momentum in this new world.

We’re delighted to announce our first eight speakers.

Joining us for fireside chats with expert moderators are US Department of Energy Director Jigar Shah, who runs the $40B Loan Program Office, MIT Professor Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, as well as two ‘climate unicorn’ CEOs: Climeworks’s Dr. Christoph Gebald, and Notco’s Matias Muchnick.

And joining us on panel discussions are Google X’s Sarah Hunter, who will join a discussion about how public policy shapes the startup ecosystem; World Fund’s Daria Saharova, who will join fellow first time climate fund general partners to discuss their outlook; Energy Impact Partner’s Shayle Kann, who will compare notes with other billion + climate fund investors; and Dandelion Energy’s Kathy Hannun, who will talk over geothermal with other geo-energy pioneers.

Below is more information about our speakers. Please register today!

THE SPEAKERS

Jigar Shah

Jigar Shah, Director of the $40 billion Loan Programs Office at the US Department of Energy, who wants to bring new clean technologies to bankability. Jigar has been an investor focused on decarbonization as co-founder and President at Generate Capital, a startup founder at SunEdison, a company that pioneered “pay as you save” solar financing, think tank CEO at Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite to help entrepreneurs address climate change, and long-time energy expert at the popular podcast The Energy Gang.

Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang

Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, Co-founder of Form Energy (long-duration energy storage, raised $368.8M), Desktop Metal (metal 3D printing, IPO) and Sublime Systems (low-carbon cement, seed stage). We first heard about Dr. Chiang from his co-founders at both Form Energy and Sublime Systems who spoke at the Summit last year, and we’re delighted to have such a prolific academic, inventor and entrepreneur join us this year to talk about how scientists can transition from lab to startup.

Dr. Christoph Gebald

Dr. Christoph Gebald, Founder and CEO of Climeworks, the first direct air capture unicorn, which has raised $784.1 million from Partners Group, GIC, John Doerr, Carbon Removal Partners, Swiss Re and more. In 2021, Climeworks opened Orca, the world’s largest direct air capture and storage plant that permanently removes CO₂ from the air. Orca is based in Iceland and powered by 100% clean renewable geothermal energy.

Matías Muchnick

Matías Muchnick, Founder & CEO of NotCo, one of the rare unicorns in the plant-based food space. NotCo is unique in its approach using a proprietary AI system to design and test food formulations from an extensive plant catalog. What started with mayonnaise now includes meat and milk, taking the world by storm. Starting at IndieBio, SOSV’s biology program, NotCo has then raised $370 million from investors including Tiger Global, Future Positive, Bezos Expeditions and more.

Sarah Hunter

Sarah Hunter, Director of Global Public Policy at X (formerly Google X), Alphabet’s moonshot factory, where she helps engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs invent and launch new technologies to solve big problems in the world today. Sarah will provide insights on policy-making and how startups can engage successfully in the process. X has spun off companies in multiple industries, and is doubling down on its climate tech efforts.

Kathy Hannun

Kathy Hannun, President & Co-founder of Dandelion Energy the largest home geothermal company in the United States is one of X’s spin-offs. Its system is able to replace your home’s existing air conditioning and heating equipment. Geothermal energy is a lesser known source compared to solar and wind, but shows great promise to cover an increasing share of our global needs. The company has raised $64.5 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates, GV, Collaborative Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Daria Saharova

Daria Saharova, Founding Partner of World Fund, a 350 million euros climate tech fund, the largest from Europe. So far, the fund has invested in multiple sectors ranging from food tech companies such as Qoa (sustainable & dairy-free cocoa), Juicy Marbles (plant-based meat), to space manufacturing startup Space Forge.

Shayle Kann

Shayle Kann, Partner and Decarbonization Lead at Energy Impact Partners, a VC fund with $2.5 billion under management that invested in dozens of companies advancing the net zero carbon economy, including Form Energy and Boston Metal, who both spoke at the summit in 2021. Shayle leads a $350 million fund that invests in early-stage climate startups. He is also the co-host of the Catalyst podcast.

Announcing the SOSV Climate Tech Summit’s first eight speakers was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

SOSV Founder and Managing Partner Sean O’Sullivan started investing in what is now called Deep Tech soon after the 1994 IPO of MapInfo, the pioneer in street maps he co-founded. Over 25 years later, SOSV has backed over 400 deep tech startups, out of the 1000+ companies in portfolio. In December 2021, Sean shared some of the lessons learned in an extended fireside side and Q&A session in Paris during the Hello Tomorrow deep tech conference in Paris. Below is a slide deck he shared as well as video of his on-stage appearance.

The Background on SOSV

SOSV is among the world’s most active VCs, and a leader in program-based pre-seed and seed deep tech investing. The firm has over $1.1B under management and over 1000 startups in its portfolio. SOSV launched HAX in 2012 to focus on hardware oriented startups and IndieBio in 2014 to address biotech-based startups. Today, SOSV’s main themes are Human Health (>200 investments) and Planetary Health / Climate Tech (>140 investments). Pitchbook has ranked SOSV as the most active VC in Climate Tech, Life Sciences and Hard Tech for 2020–2021.

Currently, SOSV invests $250,000 to $500,000 at stage pre-seed in about 100 new deep tech companies each year through the HAX and IndieBio programs. SOSV continues to invest in those companies through series seed, A and beyond through its core fund and a new Select Fund, which SOSV announced this year.

The purpose of the HAX and IndieBio programs, which are the best funded and best resourced globally in their category (including dozens of experts on staff), is to help startups reach the critical threshold in product and market development that positions them well to raise a qualified series seed or series A investment from established venture investors.

SOSV backs companies globally — in our most recent ranking of our Top 100 Climate Tech portfolio startups, over half were from outside the US. HAX has offices in Shenzhen, Tokyo, and San Francisco, and is opening a major new program in Newark, NJ in 2022. IndieBio operates programs in San Francisco and New York City.

Questions Posed to Sean O’Sullivan

From Founders…

Q: What most often kills deep tech startups?

A: “Founder issues are number one, number two and number three. You really have to have huge alignment among founders in terms of what you’re in it for, what your timeframe is, why you care about this area. Otherwise things fall to pieces. It does kill so many teams, especially during the first two years. If you make it past 18 months you’re generally in a really good shape.”

Q: Most common mistake made by first-time founders
A: Being too controlling, not sharing the workload with the management team, not bringing on people that are better than them. Otherwise you can’t scale.

Q: What other advice do you have for founders?
A: What drives this is passion. Even though you’re struggling with external and internal issues, funding issues, it’s a hard battle to be in. I wouldn’t advise it unless you’re basically a maniac. But if you are a maniac, it’s the best job in the world.

We need people who are desperate to solve a problem. A lot of times, people who create medical device companies is because their parents died of that cancer, or because they are devastated by the forest fires that are taking down their state.

People have to be in it not for money. You have to be in it for the change in the world you want to believe in.

Q: How to raise initial funding?
A: At our stage, we take serious risk, but later investors at seed and beyond want to see as much customer traction as possible. Prove a market exists, have some buy-in from customers even if it’s 2 years off.

Q: How to find your first customers?
A: You need to be solving urgent and expensive problems for people.

From Investors…

Q: What matters most when investing in deep tech startups?
A: Team, technology, market all together. Unless you have all of it you have none of it.

Q: What can stop you from investing in a promising technology and team?
A: Inability to take advice and be open-minded. Over-representing and under-delivering.

Q: Did top companies look great from start?
A: Some of our unicorns did not look like unicorns and would have been at the bottom of the class. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t great founders but initial momentum wasn’t there, or had cloudy IP, etc.

Q: Is there a Valley of Death for deep tech startups?
A: There are multiple Valleys of Death. One of them is finding product/market fit but being unable to finance production.

Q: What other forms of capital other than equity can help deep tech?
A: In Climate Tech, getting project financing as soon as possible can help. They expect annual returns sometimes as low as 5%, which is very different from the VC model, which expects 30%-40% returns.

Q: Do you work with generalist VCs, CVCs?
A: We love everybody.

Q: How about ‘hardware as a service’
A: This is a great model, and might be eligible to revenue-based financing, which is a funding complementary to project financing and VC.

Other Topics…

Q: What do you think about Europe’s deep tech ecosystem?
A: About 15% of our portfolio is in Europe. It’s hard until companies reach a certain revenue level. Initial government funding helps a lot.

Q: What do you think about Climate Tech?
A: We love it. We have made over 140 investments, especially in alternative proteins, new materials and manufacturing/industrial solutions.

Q: How about local manufacturing?
A: We are very interested in it and have made several deals in this space, like unSpun (on-demand custom jeans). This is one of the key themes for our new HAX center in New Jersey.

Q: Do you invest in robotics?
A: We have made dozens of investments in various applications, from industrial robots to service robots like Simbe, which does autonomous inventory for retail. We made multiple deals in cleaning robots such as Avidbots (indoor commercial cleaning), Viabot (outdoor cleaning) and Somatic (bathroom cleaning.)

Q: What are the best communities for founders in deep tech?
A: We have our own community of founders and host events regularly. We are also happy to host groups for events at our facilities in SF, NY, Shanghai, Shenzhen and more. There are also various specialized slack groups, meetups, and organizations like iGEM (for synthetic biology) that helps founders connect.

We hope those answers will be useful to both founders and investors in deep tech. For the complete set of questions, please check the slides and video at the beginning of this article.

Lessons Learned from SOSV’s 400 Deep Tech Investments was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This story was originally published on TechCrunch. This version includes minor edits.

Two weeks ago, over 60 iconic founders and investors shared their insights on how the world can tackle the planetary “Code Red” with over 2,000 participants at the inaugural SOSV Climate Tech Summit.

Here are key takeaways from over 16 hours of programming.

To download: https://bit.ly/sosv-climate-insights

It’s not clean tech 2.0

Is it another clean tech bubble? While the previous boom and bust arguably led to several successful companies (we might include Tesla), it’s different this time. The difference is that people and governments are pushing corporations and funds toward net-zero, and this movement is not going away.

Tony Fadell, father of the iPod and the iPhone, the co-founder of Nest, and now an investor with Future Shape, said during the Summit: “​​Every company has some problem with clean to solve. [ … ] It’s a new industrial revolution, and pretty exciting, frankly.”

The opportunity of a lifetime

As Bill Gates put it during his interview with climate tech journalist Amy Harder, “There will be 10 Teslas out of this space, and only one of them is well known today.”

This echoed the statement that “500 to 1,000 unicorns created by such a complete reconstruction of industries,” as Sean O’Sullivan, managing partner of SOSV, said at TechCrunch Disrupt in September, and the recent prediction by Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock that “the next 1,000 unicorns will be in climate tech” at the Middle East Green Initiative Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

On the “Valleys of Death” panel, Arvind Gupta, partner at Mayfield, who recently published a roadmap for climate investors, explained that “re-materializing our economy” was a $100 trillion opportunity. Suzanne Fletcher, general partner at Prime Movers Lab, added that we were in the golden age for breakthrough science, and while “it’s the second inning for EVs, it is the first for agtech and other sectors, with a lot still untouched and undercapitalized.”

Dr. Clea Kolster, chief science officer of Lowercarbon Capital, said during a carbon-removal panel, that “Whether we achieve net-zero or not, we need to roll back the CO2 that we’ve emitted. Carbon removal needs to become the size of the oil and gas industry, a trillion-dollar market. Today it’s about a billion dollars.”

It’s about people

Last year, clean tech veteran investor Vinod Khosla wrote that we needed breakthroughs supported by a dozen instigators — we could call them the “green dozen.” At the summit, he reiterated this view, highlighting that we need more tech talent and Ph.D.s to pursue those breakthroughs.

Josh Santos, CEO of Noya, a startup that retrofits industrial cooling towers to capture CO2, felt optimistic, saying, “More than ever, there is a surge of interest of people that previously had jobs outside of climate that are looking at moving into climate. We need the federal mandates, but none of it matters if we don’t have people to do it!”

Mayfield’s Gupta added that his chief worry was about scientists that have brilliant ideas but not the means to follow up. Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of MIT’s The Engine, added that we must ensure scientists believe they could be entrepreneurs, and investors need to back people who don’t look like the people who have won before. In the same spirit, Alex Greenhalgh, CEO of bio-silk company Spintex, encouraged scientists to venture out, saying, “You can’t see someone wearing your academic paper.”

To summarize the scale of efforts needed, Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, Heliogen and Energy Vault, said, “We need thousands of shots on goal to do it, and entrepreneurship is the answer.”

It needs patient capital

Climate tech is not a walk in the park and the playbook is yet to be written. Khosla said that a good analogy was biotech/pharma investing, where it takes 10–15 years from concept to a drug approved on market. “Climate tech is the same way,” he said.

David Tze, CEO of Novonutrients, which uses industrial CO2 to produce proteins, detailed the steps and “valleys of death” that startups need to cross: “You need to find investors who are willing to support a multistage, scale-up process as you go from a laboratory benchtop to the floor scale, to field pilot, to demo scale, to small, large and very large commercial scale … and that takes years.”

Scott Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Generate, added, “It is a real mistake to think that capital is just fuel. Your investors will be involved for a long time and hopefully can provide much more than fuel.”

Money wants green

The climate tech funding stack is still lacking in parts, but things are trending upward, with a new climate tech fund or SPAC seemingly announced every week. In addition, institutional investors are looking for new assets to re-allocate and “green” their portfolio.

As Mateo Jaramillo, a former Tesla VP and now CEO of Form Energy, explained, “[Energy storage can be a] new asset class to invest in, like coal or natural gas.”

Watch for frontrunners

Things are already in motion. Matt Peterson, director of the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, pointed out that Amazon is already the largest purchaser of renewable energy, with over 10 GW of capacity, and the totality of Amazon “looks like the world at large” with its data centers, warehouses, vehicles, devices, movies and complex supply chain. “If it works for Amazon, it works for a lot of companies of smaller size,” he said.

The Amazon Climate Pledge was joined by over 200 corporations, and several tech giants like Microsoft and Shopify are standing out with further action toward decarbonization of both direct and indirect emissions.

While “geography is destiny” for renewable energy — the amount of sun, wind and rivers a country has can’t be changed — some countries are also worth paying attention to:

• Singapore, home of the sovereign fund Temasek, has the unique situation of being a developed nation with very limited natural resources and imports almost all its food and energy. The way it handles this wicked problem is likely to provide insights to the rest of the world. As a start, it was the first country to allow the sale of cell-cultured meat last December.
• Iceland gets most of its electricity from hydroelectric and geothermal power. Already attractive to the power-hungry crypto-mining industry, it could also become the carbon-capture center of the world.

Climate is everywhere

Every industry wants green solutions. The summit highlighted innovators in some of the key sectors we need to decarbonize:

• Energy storage: Form Energy, Redwood Materials, Heliogen and Energy Vault.
• Food and agtech: Upside Foods for meat, Shiok Meats for seafood and Pivot Bio for fertilizers.
• Industry: Boston Metal for steel, Sublime Systems for cement, Spintex and unspun for fashion, and Noya and Novonutrients for carbon capture.

Form Energy’s Jaramillo said that a running joke these days is: “Your next job is going to be in climate whether you know it or not.”

We need hopeful inspiration

Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of Lanzatech, said, “We’re going to get this done. We have to get this done!”

The final thoughts were from sci-fi and climate fiction author Chen Qiufan, author of “Waste Tide” and the recent “AI 2041” (co-authored with investor and AI expert, Kai-Fu Lee): “There are already so many dystopian ideas. We need to write about a positive and bright future to inspire young generations.”

In our attendees survey, a mere 5.8% felt we were all doomed, while another 15.4% answered “Wait and see”, and an overwhelming majority with 78.8% reported that they felt optimistic about the future after the summit.

There is much work to do

The event was resolutely focused on funding innovation, and left open several questions:

• Nuclear energy. Should it play a role in the transition, as a non-renewable, low-carbon source. Will public opinion evolve? Is nuclear fusion achievable?
• Scalability of renewables. As mentioned above, ‘geography is destiny’ for solar, wind, hydro and geothermal. In addition, solar and wind energy take lots of space, building materials, require energy storage, and suffer from price variability.
• Hydrogen. Green hydrogen requires energy, and the existing gas infrastructure isn’t fully compatible as as H2 molecules cannot be treated like the CH4 of natural gas.
• The Kaya Identity. It describes the relation between energy, GDP, population and CO2. Is the elusive ‘decoupling’ of CO2 and GDP a true possibility? Do we need to consider frugality, from ‘peak meat’ to ‘peak travel’, ‘peak fashion’, ‘peak cars’ and more?
• China. No climate plan can work without China, as it has the largest population, is the world’s largest manufacturer, and top CO2 emitter. Can it achieve its ambitious climate pledges?
• The cost of nature and its limited resources. How do we reconcile our efforts with the current ‘zero cost’ that natural resources represents on balance sheets?
• Finance. The cost of capital (especially debt) weights on the final price. Governments might have to play a key role in funding long-term projects to enable access to cheaper capital. Such impulse could help accelerate the cost reduction thanks to technical advances and volume.
• Ethics. Technological progress will not allow us to escape the ethical, cultural and value choices that we need to face.

As we head into 2022, let’s keep working on the answers!

Key Takeaways from the SOSV Climate Tech Summit was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Following the recent SOSV Climate Tech Summit—where over 60 iconic founders and investors shared their insights on how the world can tackle the planetary “code red”—we gathered a list of free resources we identified in the climate tech sector.

NEWSLETTERS

• Climate Tech VC
• Bloomberg Green
• Cipher, by Amy Harder and Breakthrough Energy
• Exponential View, by Azeem Azhar

PODCASTS

• My Climate Journey, by Jason Jacobs
• Exponential View Podcast, by Azeem Azhar

REPORTS & DATA

• Insights from 50 Climate Tech Leaders, by SOSV
• The State of Climate Tech 2020, by PwC
• Rethinking Climate Change, by RethinkX
• Carbonomics, by Goldman Sachs
• The Future of Climate Tech, by Silicon Valley Bank
• Introduction to Climate Tech, by Pitchbook
• 2021 Tough Tech Landscape, by The Engine
• List of Climate Tech Unicorns, by HolonIQ

BOOKS

• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates
• Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, by John Doerr
• The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society, by Azeem Azhar
• Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat, by Larissa Zimberoff
• Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner, by Po Bronson and Arvind Gupta

To download: https://bit.ly/sosv-climate-insights

Free Climate Tech Resources For 2021 was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pitchbook released their inaugural report on Climate Tech for Q3 2021, where SOSV was ranked the most active VC in climate tech by deal count for the period of January 2018 to the end of September 2021.

This came notably from our startup development programs in Hard Tech (HAX) and Biology (IndieBio), which backed dozens of startups notably in the field of alternative protein, biomaterials, and industrial technologies — three of the largest contributors to the emissions of greenhouse gases.

As a reminder that VC in general and Climate Tech in particular are a team sport, we are glad to count many of the other firms ranked as co-investors in our top startups (more details here).

Prelude Ventures and Khosla Ventures also shared insights about their investment approaches during the recent SOSV Climate Tech Summit (summary and videos).

• Vinod Khosla: Searching for the “instigators” who will make a difference (video)

• Big VC climate rounds: How do the check-writers think about later stages? (video)

Pitchbook Ranks SOSV #1 Investor in Climate Tech for 2018–2021 was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Each year, TIME Magazine selects inventions for their originality, creativity, efficacy, ambition, and impact. Startups from the SOSV programs HAX (hard tech) and IndieBio (biology) have made the list regularly.

This year, we have an unprecedented 6 companies listed:

• Nuratrue (earbuds with personalized sound, HAX).
• Unspun (custom-fit denims — second time on the list!, HAX).
• Huue (sustainable indigo dyes, IndieBio).

Special Mentions:

• Looking Glass Portrait (a 3D display for your desk, HAX).
• Moona (a pillow-cooling device to aid sleep, HAX).
• Upside chicken (cell-cultured chicken, IndieBio).

A few interesting changes in the list is the continuous evolution of categories, the growing presence of startups, of sustainable solutions of all kinds, and the emergence of biotech.

What Have They Become?

The list celebrates innovation, but companies don’t always succeed. A strong reminder of that is Jibo, the social robot who graced the TIME cover in 2017 (the Nest thermostat and fidget spinners were also on the list).

Let’s look at what happened to SOSV startups selected in previous years:

2020

• Perfect Day (milk protein, IndieBio) raised $350M in September 2021 and brought their cow-free ice cream to market.
• Cradlewise (smart baby crib, HAX) raised $7M in November 2021.

2019

• Catalog Technologies (data storage using DNA, IndieBio) raised $35M in September 2021.
• Unspun (custom denims, HAX) raised $7.5M in September 2021.
• Light (simple phone, HAX / Brooklyn, NY) is still operating.

2018

• Lynq (compass that points to people, HAX) raised $6M in 2020.
• HabitAware (bracelets that break compulsive behaviors, HAX) received a $1M grant from the NSF in 2020.
• Lumos (smart bike helmet, HAX) is still operating.

Looking forward to 2022 and beyond!

6 SOSV startups in TIME Magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of 2021’ was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Earth Day, April 22, 2021, SOSV published its SOSV Climate Tech 100 list, a collection of the top climate tech companies in our portfolio. The list was notable because the companies up to that point had raised $1.85 billion from investors (including $89 million from SOSV), and had a market cap in aggregate of $5.65 billion.

Techcrunch reported on those numbers and commented that SOSV’s “planetary health’ mission was “paying off.” We subsequently published detailed analyses of the list’s founders and investors, and we announced an Oct. 20–21 event called the SOSV Climate Tech Summit, aimed at helping the climate ecosystem move faster.

Now it’s nearly five months later, and the Climate Tech 100 list financials are due for an update. Thanks to the strength of the companies on the list as well as a powerful surge in climate tech venture investing, the financials for the 100 have taken a big step forward.

• The SOSV Climate Tech 100 aggregate value has jumped from $5.7 billion to over $8.1 billion, an increase of 44%.
• Total investment in the 100 increased $508 million to reach $2.36 billion, an increase of nearly 28%.
• SOSV topped off its investments with $13.8M to reach $103 million, an increase of 15.5%.

25 startups on the list raised new funding. The largest contributors to the jump in valuation were major raises at NotCo, Formlabs, and R-Zero.

• NotCo is a food technology company that uses AI to create new food formulations for animal-based product replacements like milk, mayonnaise and more. They raised $235 million in a round led by Tiger Global. NotCo graduated from SOSV’s IndieBio and is the program’s first unicorn.
• Formlabs is a pioneer in 3D printing and has been growing steadily, developing new products, materials and market opportunities. It raised $150M in a Softbank-led round.
• R-Zero provides UV-based disinfection systems for buildings that dramatically reduces the use of chemical disinfectants. It raised $41.5M in a round led by World Innovation Lab. R-Zero graduated from SOSV’s hard tech program HAX.

Aside from those three frontrunners, SOSV’s food and ag portfolio continued to grow quickly, and manufacturing-related startups picked up momentum as well. The Climate Tech sector in 2021 overall has been on a tear, with more money invested in more startups than ever, about $16b across close to 250 venture deals in 1H2021, according to research from Climate Tech VC.

We look forward to watching all the companies in the climate tech category continue to grow strongly in the months ahead. Please join us at the virtual (and free) SOSV Climate Tech Summit to hear from the top investors and founders across the ecosystem who are working hard to make a difference for our planet’s well-being.

Here is the SOSV Climate Tech 100 as of September 2021:

SOSV Climate Tech 100 Startups value grows by 44% in 5 months was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The original version of this article was published on Techcrunch’s Extra Crunch. This article was written by Benjamin Joffe, Partner at SOSV with data from Meghan Hind, Operations Analyst at SOSV.

On Earth Day, April 22, SOSV published the SOSV Climate Tech 100, a list of the best startups that we’ve supported from their earliest stages to address climate change. There are always valuable insights embedded in a list like the 100. A TechCrunch story captured the investment perspective, and an SOSV post went deeper into the companies’ category breakdown and founder profiles.

One big remaining question is: what can founders learn from the list about climate tech investors? In other words, who invested in the Climate tech 100? We dug into the “who’s who” for those 500+ co-investors and here is what we found.

An active but fragmented landscape

If you think 500 investors in 100 companies is a lot of investors, you’re right. There are clearly a lot of investors interested in climate tech, and most are generalists just testing the waters. For the Climate Tech 100, about 10% of investors invested in more than one startup and only seven (less than 2%) wrote a check to four or more. They included Blue Horizon, CPT Capital, EF, Fifty Years, Hemisphere Ventures, Horizons Ventures.

That pattern tracks well with data from PwC, which found that 2,700 unique investors had backed 1,200 startups in their ‘State of Climate Tech 2020’ report covering the 2013–2019 period. PwC’s report found that only ten firms out of 2,700 made four or more climate tech deals per year on average over the 2013–2019 period. The most active firms are listed in the table below.

There is reason to believe that the fragmentation will diminish with the launch of more funds focused on climate tech. Four billion-dollar-plus funds have launched since 2020 that fit the description (see the chart below.) It’s also encouraging that capital deployed in climate tech grew at five times the venture capital overall growth rate over the 2013–2019 period. Even so, climate tech still only represented 6% of total venture capital deployed in 2019, so there is plenty of room to grow.

The investor who’s who in SOSV’s Climate Tech 100

We looked into the various categories of backers: VCs, CVCs, angels (including celebrities), governments, sovereign funds, family offices, foundations and non-profits.

VCs

Most of the venture firms that invested in the Climate Tech 100 were either generalists, including Khosla Ventures, True Ventures and Horizons Ventures, (the Hong Kong-based early investor and serial backer of four of the Climate Tech 100), or deep tech funds such as DCVC, Future Ventures, France’s Elaia, and Australia’s Main Sequence Ventures. It’s important to note that VCs routinely write checks for very early-stage companies, often coming at the same stage as angels. Founders should keep that in mind.

More recently, venture firms that specialize in one or more climate tech categories have started to appear in Climate Tech 100 syndicates. Today, they represent about 30% of the VCs in our data set. AgFunder, for example, is focused on food & agriculture while Braemar Energy Ventures looks at energy startups. Prelude Ventures invests in carbon reduction and Unovis funds companies that reduce the need for animal products. Fifty Years and Future Positive take a broader approach to social good investments. For founders, this new class of mission-focused investors is important to watch.

Corporate VCs

Various CVCs are keen on climate tech, both to honor the commitments to net-zero (over 100 firms joined the Climate Pledge) and to keep track of innovations in their sector. CVCs represented only about 10% of the total VC group. Specialist CVCs like Ingredion, Whole Foods Market or Tyson Ventures — unsurprisingly, focused on food — accounted for 40% of the CVC group. That said, CVCs account for only about 12% of the VC investments in the Climate 100, which is probably explained by the fact that the average company is only four years old.

Although CVCs may not be rich targets for early stage founders, it’s important to note that corporates can be helpful beyond the cap table by providing contracts for research, pilots, co-operations and distribution, and access to infrastructure, such as fermentation tanks.

Angel Investors

They generally support companies from formation to series A. We counted over 150 unique angel investors across our Top 100, and over 70% of the startups who have successfully raised capital had at least one angel investor on their cap table. Angel investors can be great to help startups get off the ground with initial capital and advice. While the majority of angels wrote checks in the $25k to $100k range, some doubled down to go as big as $200k or more, and on rare occasions angels enabled startups to close seed rounds without a VC. The following chart shows the distribution of individual angel checks, with amounts in logarithmic scale, from $1k to over $1M.

Celebrity Angels

Celebrities are also active in climate tech. Natalie Portman and John Legend are investors in our Climate Tech 100 (in the mycelium leather startup MycoWorks), while Leonardo DiCaprio is on the advisory board of the animal-free dairy protein startup Perfect Day.

Not every founder has access to celebrities, but you never know who you might bump into!

Plenty more celebrities are outspoken about climate and putting their money where their mouth is. Bono, for example, has made more than 20 investments through his $5 billion Rise Fund with TPG. Robert Downey Jr. has made seven investments via his Footprint Coalition, and Serena Williams has written checks to Impossible Foods, Pachama and Myro. Elon Musk as usual is taking his own path by underwriting the $100 million XPRIZE for Carbon Removal technologies.

Governments

About 10% of startups in our Climate Tech 100 won grants or loans from government entities. Often those funds target early stage R&D.

In the US, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, dubbed “America’s seed fund,” actively support startups. The Biden administration has requested a $36 billion budget to fight climate change, some of which may find its way to startups through those programs and others.

Other startup backers were regional, national or international organizations, such as the Departments of Defense, Energy or Agriculture, Space Florida, Bayern Kapital (Germany), the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (Canada) and the European Innovation Council.

Sovereign funds

Sovereign funds generally invest in assets such as stocks, real estate, bonds and VC funds (including Softbank’s $100B Vision Fund 1), but some sovereign wealth funds invest directly in startups. They generally come in at series A and beyond. Because our Climate Tech 100 companies are so young, only a few have such investors.

One of the most prominent in the Climate Tech 100 is Singapore’s Temasek (>$230 billion AUM as of 31 March 2020), which has invested in the SOSV alternative protein companies Upside Foods (fka Memphis Meats) and Perfect Day. BPI France offers grants and makes investments in many French startups, including SOSV’s Pili (biopigments), while EIT InnoEnergy, funded by the EU as a key part of the European Green Deal, has funded hundreds of startups including SOSV’s VoltStorage (redox flow battery).

Family Offices

Close to 10% of the startups in the Climate 100 received investments ranging from $25k up to $2 million from 30 family offices and trusts. Four of the Climate 100 received funding from four or more of those backers, so there are likely network effects in play. Unfortunately, family offices can be hard to find for those not in the know because they often do not have websites nor announce their investments. To connect with them, founders need to develop their networks and ensure their startups are as visible as possible.

Foundations and non-profits

Climate is a focus for many foundations and non-profits, and large organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Novo Holdings and the Grantham Foundation appear among the backers of the Climate Tech 100, alongside smaller, more specialized organizations like the CEDAS Foundation, the Straubel Foundation (environment), the Fink Family Foundation (waste & biodiversity) the Westly Foundation (at-risk children in California) Endeavor (impact) and others. Many come in at the earlier stages, from angel to series A, writing meaningful checks that are usually grants. The most visible foundations tend to be in high demand and difficult to reach but worth the effort for non-dilutive funding.

Writing The Climate Tech Investment Playbook

What’s clear from this analysis of the investors in the Climate Tech 100 is the enormous breadth of investors types working across this fast emerging category. It’s important to keep in mind how broad the category itself is — climate tech touches everything from food to energy to construction and more — as well as the outlooks and mission of investors, from sovereign funds investing in food security to hard tech funds looking for revolutionary technologies, to angels (celebrity or not) trying to invest in a better future for their children’s sake.

Founders should zoom in and out across that landscape to find investors who line up with their products and mission. Clearly, there has never been more money lined up against the climate sector, and investors are eager to make an impact on what’s likely to be the trillion dollar opportunity of the century.

What SOSV’s Climate Tech 100 tells founders about investors in the space was originally published in SOSV on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Clubs have boomed now that anyone can open one. One benefit has been to provide a home to the many rooms that were happening regularly but lacked visibility.

We listed below some clubs of interest if, like us at SOSV, you are into Synthetic Biology (with IndieBio), Hard Tech (with HAX) or Asia (with Chinaccelerator and MOX). Suggestions are welcome!

Biology

Synthetic Biology by SynBioBeta
Multiple events every week, including every Wednesday.
Synthetic Biology Breaking News w/ John Cumbers (founder of SynBioBeta, and Forbes contributor) & others.

Biotech investing with IndieBio by SOSV
A new topic each week, hosted by the IndieBio team.
Every Thursday.

a16z Bio
The firm has been ramping up its bio-related efforts with a podcast and now a bio club! The club features conference quality speakers and discussions.

Biotech Clubhouse
Every Sunday 1pm PST + other occasional events. Covers pharma too.

Food Tech

Food+Tech Connect
By AgFunder (media / investor) and Foot+Tech Connect
They recently will be hosting Po Bronson (GP at SOSV / MD @ IndieBio) and Arvind Gupta (IndieBio founder, Venture Partner at SOSV and now Partner at Mayfield) to talk about their new book ‘Decoding the World’ (with synbio of course).

Hard Tech

The Builders
A club for people hosting the hardest problems.

Hardware is Hard
A room hosted by Joe Patitucci (ID: natureofnow) and others every Tuesday at 2pm PST in the Startup Club. Startup Club is one of the largest (300k+) clubs on CH so rooms are often well attended. The room might be renamed ‘Hardware doesn’t have to be that hard’ soon :)

Climate Tech

Lots of startups and VCs seem to be in the climate tech business these days. Some clubs have also appeared, such as Climate Tech Europe (Fri, 13:30 CET) and Bye Fossil Fuels by Contrarian Ventures (Mon, 9am PST / 6pm CET).

Asia

South East Asia Tech Club
VCs and startups talk about SEA tech.

China Speed
Thursdays: doing business in China

Inside Asia
Asia tech news commentary in English. With long-time experts including Kaiser Kuo, Rui Ma and more.

Other clubs we like

Press Club
By SignalFire VC and former Techcrunch editor Josh Constine (ID: joshconstine). Journalists and experts discuss tech news every Thursday 6pm PT. Josh is part of ‘Clubhouse royalty’ with 3.3M followers and recently had the CEOs of Facebook, Spotify and Shopify together on his show to discuss the creator economy. The NFT commemorative portrait got auctioned for over $60k!

Talk Nerdy To Me
“Talk Nerdy To Me is Clubhouse’s Home for the Curious.”