Climate tech investors and entrepreneurs met Monday evening in downtown Seattle to network and gather insights from each other.
The meetup was among the first events held as part of PNW Climate Week, an inaugural event organized by community groups and spread across Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C. The week includes 33 events in-person and online. It offers a much scaled-down version of last week’s Climate Week NYC, an annual summit that coincides with the UN General Assembly.
Monday’s panel was hosted by Madrona Venture Labs and featured investors from Elemental Excelerator, Toba Capital and Alante Capital. Joining them were representatives from two climate tech startups, clothing recycler Ravel and carbon accounting startup Muir AI.
Here are some of the tips shared by the investors, which were Susan Su of Toba, Gabriel Scheer of Elemental and Kate Dillon Levin of Alante. Investor Brock Mansfield of Meliorate Partners moderated.
Think beyond software
Su: “I’m definitely not one of those VCs that says, ‘I’ll invest in climate, but asterisk only if it’s software.’ Software didn’t get us into this pickle, and it won’t get us out. The way for Seattle to really step up is to get a little bit uncomfortable and go beyond the enterprise software-as-a-service areas of expertise that we have built so deeply and move into some of the other spaces.”
Scheer: “Looking around at all the different opportunities, all different strengths that this region has, we have a huge industrial history, a huge natural resources history … you can do a lot more in Seattle than we do. That’s one of our biggest weaknesses, is not seeing how big we could be and playing at that level.”
Levin: “One of the things that is super exciting is thinking of climate tech as more than just taking a molecule of CO2 out of the atmosphere and being able to see it’s a much bigger opportunity.”
Big ideas attract big dollars — and talent
Su: “When it comes to climate tech and really attracting the kind of funders that are going to take you from pre-seed all the way to pre-IPO — we invest in very late stage deals — I think the dream has to be massive.”
Scheer: “When I joined LimeBike, we had this crazy vision for a mobility platform. And there were 20 of us in a room doing stupid things trying to make this happen. But it was that sense of grandiose vision. It wasn’t just a software-as-a-service thing. It wasn’t just a plug-in. It was like, we’re gonna change the world. And that attracted tons of people.
But don’t forget humility
Levin: “We want to know that there’s some sense of the climate risk, the impact risk associated [with the tech]. What if this goes pear-shaped and actually enables more emissions? Having that ability and willingness to be vulnerable about what could go wrong.”
Develop solutions for a wide market
Su: “It’s the responsibility of everyone in this room, and all of us, to really remember that we have to be solving a real problem for lots of different people — not just for the haves, but also for the people who have historically had not, which is a lot of people.”
Find a fundraising mentor
Su: “There’s a lot of little things when it comes to fundraising that people who aren’t in a high-density ecosystem don’t pick up in ambient awareness, and that’s really unfortunate. It’s not that companies in Seattle or Boise or anywhere else aren’t as good. But you’re not going to be bumping into somebody …. and asking them, ‘Hey, how did it go with your pitch the other day,’ and they’re giving these tips.
“So you need to find an advocate or somebody that can give you that hidden sidetrack, whether it’s one of us on this panel or somebody else in your life so that you can quickly level up to that degree of knowledge.”
