SNØCAP, a new climate-focused venture capital fund, is launching with $5 million to invest in startups.
The team has a somewhat unusual target for its investments, aiming for startups making innovative, environmentally friendly components that are used early in the supply chain when products are being manufactured.
“The same core technology actually becomes applicable across a bunch of different sectors in a bunch of different applications,” said co-founder Nate Salpeter.
The fund hopes to reach sectors including advanced materials, waste, infrastructure, food and energy, with the goal of backing solutions for industries that represent 1% or more of global carbon emissions. The team is looking for a big impact while generating financial returns.
SNØCAP’s founding trio has a broad scope of expertise and experiences that should be helpful in its pursuit of diverse technologies to fund.
- Salpeter lives in western New York where he runs Sweet Farm, an nonprofit organization that combines sustainable agriculture and animal rescue with a technology startup accelerator. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and previously worked at Bill Gates’ TerraPower nuclear company, among other jobs.
- Seattle-based co-founder Jonathan Azoff is a computer engineer who worked for 20 years in Silicon Valley. Two of his startups were acquired, one by the Walt Disney Company and another by Zillow. Azoff is board president for Sweet Farm and the inaugural backer of The New York Climate Film Festival.
- Co-founder Shrina Kurani, also a mechanical engineer, lives in Southern California and her first job was working for NASA on a lunar outpost. She has worked for an electric utility, earned a master’s degree in Sweden in sustainability science, helped launch a water chemistry company that was acquired, and in 2022 made an unsuccessful bid for Congress running on a climate platform against a longtime incumbent.
The group has already made two investments. The first was in a startup called Sparxell, which produces color pigments made from plant-derived cellulose, avoiding the use of plastics and ingredients that require mining. The pigments can be used in numerous consumer goods, paints and building coatings that boost energy efficiency.
The second was in RevivBio, a startup using artificial intelligence to quickly discover and test naturally occurring proteins and enzymes that can address a variety of environmental problems. The company’s first success was identifying a unique enzyme that treats so-called “forever chemical” pollutants named PFAS.
The fund is investing in early-stage companies whose technology has some validation outside of the lab, such as indicators of market demand and the ability to scale beyond the lab setting.
“A big part of our job is trying to understand, is this just a science project, or is this a viable business?” Kurani said.
Investing in physical technologies compared to software brings multiple potential challenges, including upfront manufacturing costs, difficulties in scaling, and a slower return on investments. But the startups that SNØCAP is funding should be able to plug their products into existing supply chains, rather than relying on the growth of new marketplaces or changes in consumer behavior, which could benefit their bottom line.
“We’re just swapping out one thing for another — it just tends to be cheaper and better for the environment,” Azoff said.
The organization, which is named for the mountainous snowpacks that are shrinking as the planet warms, expects to deploy its initial fund over four years, backing up to 20 startups.
The investments will be between $100,000 and $300,000, and could include additional support with grant writing, field trials and academic partnerships.
The team’s other partners are Kate Kingen, Abigail Albright and Kelci Zile, who previously led sustainable investments for Seattle’s Madrona Venture Labs.
The Pacific Northwest is home to multiple climate venture funds. That includes Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures, E8, Elemental Excelerator, VertueLab, Evok Innovations, and recently launched Stepchange. Microsoft and Amazon also have significant climate investment funds.
