Funding The Future: Meet the Venture Capitalists Driving Global Systems Change
By Daniel Simons
Venture capital firms are like time machines. They let us see the future before it’s created. If you want to know what the world might look like in five or ten years, cast your eyes to the companies that VC firms are investing in now.
Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that provides crucial funding and support to startups and early-stage companies with the potential to disrupt industries and drive innovation forward. Venture capital firms place a huge range of educated bets, knowing that most of their gambles will fail, but hoping that a small percentage of their successes will result in gigantic windfalls.
Their money isn’t just a medium of exchange, it’s a love letter to the future that says ‘I believe in this and I want it to succeed.’ When venture capitalists make investments in impact startups and climate tech, the success of their investment can mean success for all of us.
As we confront the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource shortages and pollution, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option.
Research from Project Drawdown suggests that, between 2020 and 2050, an investment of US$23.6 trillion is needed to limit warming to 1.5C. According to the IEA, half the technologies we’ll need to achieve net-zero emissions haven’t even been invented yet. That means we are going to have to radically scale up sustainable and renewable technologies that exist today, and we’re also going to have to double down on disruptive and systems changing research and inventions.
Structural, political, behavioural and economic changes will all be necessary, but investment and innovation has a pivotal role to play, literally.
Photo from: https://dance.co/posts/press
Money is the blood that oxygenates the impact ecosystem. The more bets we place on our future, the better our chances of success. Venture capital firms back trailblazers. By channelling more capital towards impact ventures we can unlock new solutions, disrupt outdated systems and bring forth truly transformative technologies.
With a series of existential challenges coming head to head with global instability and economic uncertainty, there has never been a more important time to invest in the resilient, regenerative and revolutionary inventions that could power a better tomorrow.
Celebrities and business leaders are already starting to fund the future. Shark Tank star Chris Sacca has Lowcarbon Capital, Al Gore chairs Generation Investment Management, Bill and Melinda Gates have launched Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Atlassian Co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes created Grok Ventures to invest in renewable and regenerative startups with bold ambition. Leo Decaprio is a regular VC investor and even ‘Iron Man’ Robert Downey Jnr has launched the The Footprint Coalition, which aims to accelerate the transition to a sustainable planet.
As the ‘race-is-on’ mentality floods into mainstream consciousness, more and more funds will flow into the high risk, deep tech, moonshots that can help solve our collective challenges and usher in a new era of abundance.
The impact and climate tech VC landscape is immense and growing. Here are a few inspirational companies that are placing big bets to create the future we want.
Tenacious Ventures
Tenacious Ventures invests in agtech operators that are helping transform food and agriculture toward a carbon neutral and climate change resilient future.
Tenacious Ventures is an Australian firm and 80 percent of their investments are in Australian companies. They are also working towards a second fund that will have a stronger international focus.
Tenacious Ventures has backed a range of successful and soon-to-be successful Australian agtech startups including: Goterra, a company that uses insects to process food and organic waste and turn it into sustainable protein and fertiliser, phyllome, who use robots and artificial intelligence to produce fresh food, and Regrow, a software company aimed at making regenerative farming accessible and scalable, that was named Fast Company’s most ‘Most Innovative Company in Agriculture in 2023’.
Regeneration.VC
Regeneration is supercharging consumer-powered climate innovation. Focused on harnessing the power of circular and regenerative principles, they invest in nature-inspired materials, circular economy brands, and technologies that repurpose materials and products.
Regeneration VC has invested in Clean02, who make the world’s first carbon-capture soap, Pangaia, an innovative manufacturing and fashion company that makes clothing from flowers, hemp, bamboo, pineapple, banana, seaweed and wild nettle, and Cruz Foam, the earth-digestible, shell-based, consumer packaging alternative, that has the backing of Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Voyager Ventures
Voyager Ventures is a women-led, $100 million dollar fund run by Sierra Peterson and Sarah Sclarsic. The company has an impressive suite of investors, including the present or past CEO’s of General Electric, Lyft and Shopify.
Voyager invests in early-stage climate technology companies, and is on a mission to decarbonise the global economy and ensure a livable future for all.
Some of Voyager’s most exciting investments include: Electric Fish, a company that develops portable ultra-fast charging and networked energy storage infrastructure, Intensivate, who create ultra-efficient computer chips that can help rescue power and emissions in data centres by up to 90% and Remora, a startup that invented a technology device that can capture 80% of a semi-trucks emissions directly from the tailpipe.
Obvious Ventures
Obvious Ventures is dedicated to finding and investing in companies that are solving humanity’s biggest problems and creating disruptive solutions that can help us reimagine huge sectors of the global economy in ways that can move the planet forward.
Obvious Ventures was an investor in Patagonia and a driving force behind Beyond Meat, Medium and Diamond Foundry. Their three central pillars of investment are: Sustainable Systems, Healthy Living, and People Power.
Some of Obvious Ventures game-changing folio companies include: Enervee, an organisation that helps provide businesses with a universal way of comparing a product’s energy efficiency, Proterra who design and manufacture zero-emission busses, and Good Eggs, a marketplace and delivery service that makes it easy for people to buy the best local, organic and sustainable foods in the Bay Area.
ReGen
Byron Bay based ReGen is obsessed with finding companies who are building products that challenge the status quo for the better. They back founders who are building regenerative technology companies across the planet.
Regen focuses on three key areas: food and agriculture, materials and products, and decarbonisation. They support companies innovating across alternative food production, soil health, robotics and automation, regenerative fibres, textiles, dyes and feedstock, building materials and infrastructure.
Some of ReGen’s most transformative portfolio companies include: Meati, the alternative meat made from mushrooms, Circe, a company that makes fats and oils from carbon dioxide, Pachama, who harness satellite data and AI to help companies invest in high-quality carbon credits, AIGEN, who create pesticide-free, solar powered robotics platforms, and Rhizocore, who are using mycorrhizal fungi to accelerate woodland regeneration.
Earthshot Ventures
Earthshot invests in entrepreneurs who are making a dent in climate change. Over the past twelve years they have invested in over 150 startups.
Earthshot invests in energy, mobility, food and agriculture, repurposing waste and decarbonisation.
Some of Earthshot’s more interesting folio companies include: Electric rental car company Halo, Web3 carbon credit startup toucan, and Supercircle, a company aimed at powering the circular economy for the world’s best retail brands.
Photo from: https://www.earthshot.vc/
Planet A
Planet A is a scientific impact investing firm that exists to support bold and brave founders, who are the heroes driving the green transformation.
Founded in 2022, Planet A already has an exciting range of impact startups as part of its family including: E-bike subscription company, Dance, carbon drawdown company, uniquely named 44.01, trash cleanup and repurposing company Wildplastic, and The Upright Project, the world’s first open-access platform which enables smarter decision-making for investors and companies by measuring the sum of a company’s positive and negative impacts on the environment
Photo from: https://planet-a.com
Breakout Ventures
Breakout Ventures is the home for creative bioscience entrepreneurs. They support companies that harness the power of cells and computation to reprogram, engineer, scale, digitise, miniaturise, visualise and grow the future.
The company invests in early-stage companies that are building bio-based solutions to improve human health and the sustainability of our planet.
Some of Breakout’s most exciting and world-changing portfolio investments include: Twelve, the carbon transformation company that eliminates and replaces fossil fuels by turning C02 into a range of products, including carbon neutral jet fuel, the Mushroom packaging startup ecovative, and Checkerspot a company that designs performance materials at a molecular level by optimising microbes to biomanufacture unique structural oils that are produced in nature, but have not previously been accessible at scale.
Pale Blue Dot
Pale Blue Dot is a seed-stage venture capital firm that backs the most exciting climate tech startups across Europe and the US.
The company, based in Malmo, Sweden was founded in 2020 and has an 87 million Euro fund that is supported by the Swedish government-owned company Saminvest.
Noteworthy investments include: Clothing subscription company Hack Your Closet, genetic engineering sustainable food company Phytoform, fossil-free retirement fund manager Sphere, plant-based canteen machine company VEAT, and Betta F!sh, the creators of ‘Tu-Nah,’ a plant-based tuna substitute made from seaweed and fava beans.