Cool Climate Collective

🌲👐🌲 Welcome to The Collective 🌲👐🌲

We bring together investors and operators from Silicon Valley and beyond who are at the intersection of climate and technology in order to accelerate solutions to climate change.

Our LPs have built companies like Tesla, Stripe Climate, Google, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, DoorDash, Twitter, Slack, Square, and Airtable, as well as VCs like AngelList, Techstars, 500 Startups, Next Play Capital, and Lift Ventures.

How to get involved:

Join the Syndicate (and invest $1k-$50k+ in climate startups with us)
Pitch Your Startup (for us to put the last $100k-$200k 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)

🌎🔥⌛️ 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, has 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 with a goal of reaching 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. — Chama

—

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 end of the decade.

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.'

— Link

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. We will do this quickly in order 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 will often look to fill the last $100K of a founder’s funding round. 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 ClimateTech, together.

Sincerely, your friendly climate investors...

Mehrad & Tristan

🌲👐🌲

Join us in accelerating climate solutions

Who We Are

Mehrad is the Program Manager of Terra's Climate Change for VCs program as well as a partner at Climate Foundry 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, including at Yale, Berkeley, and other tech transfer offices.

LinkedIn | AngelList | Twitter

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 technolog

LinkedIn | AngelList | Twitter