Earth Tech Investing Since 2012 — Murray McCraig, Cofounder of ArcTern Ventures
Co-led by Cofounder and Managing Director, Murray McCraig, ArcTern Ventures is an earthtech venture capital firm investing to solve humanity’s greatest challenges — climate change and sustainability — since 2012.
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BUSINESS
What is your investment focus — e.g., sector, stage, geography, check size? What makes you unique versus the competition?
ArcTern invests throughout North America and Europe in earthtech startups having a positive impact on solving climate change.
ArcTern invests across all earthtech sectors, including energy, mobility, industry, food, and the protection of ecosystems, and will invest beyond just software.
Typically, ArcTern writes first checks into Series A rounds of $5 million with $15M+ reserved for continued investment.
Unlike most new entrants to the sector, ArcTern has been investing since 2012 and has built a deep understanding of success factors, which guide its unique investment strategy.
The managing partners come from entrepreneurial backgrounds having all founded, scaled, and exited numerous startups and can relate to the many challenges faced by founders. We get it, we’ve done it.
What are examples of recent investments that you’re excited about?
A few of our most recent investments in Fund II include:
Zoomo: Zoomo is the world leader in utility eBikes for quick service delivery firms in major cities around the world. eBikes are now the fastest and lowest carbon way to deliver in urban environments, but most eBikes have not been designed for the demands of delivery.
Xeal: Xeal makes EV charging software that allows offline charging and payment using a distributed ledger system. Xeal solves the number one downtime problem with chargers – connectivity. Xeal is ideally suited to multi-residential buildings where most parking garages have limited connectivity and is being adopted by the top property managers and owners in America.
Span: Span has reimagined the standard home electrical panel. Span enables users to control every circuit in the home remotely and automatically while easily integrating their solar, storage, and their EV. Span is the future of home energy management.
Kebotix: Kebotix is accelerating green material discovery from years to days using its self-driving robotic lab. Kebotix’s AI platform is able to generate, simulate, and screen millions of molecules meeting specific parameters. The AI then designs and performs real world experiments in a robotic lab with no human intervention learning from the results to design the next set of experiments.
Two example investments from Fund I that are delivering impact include:
Hydrostor: Hydrostor uses advanced compressed air energy storage (ACAES) that can to store energy on a massive scale at a lower cost than today’s leading solutions. Hydrostor is currently developing projects in North America and Australia.
GreenMantra: GreenMantra’s unique catalytic depolymerization process upcycles waste consumer plastics to high value specialty chemicals for industrial customers where the product is incorporated into other industrial products for long-term sequestration.
If you had to start over, what are 1-2 tips you’d give yourself in order to be faster, more effective, and higher impact?
Focus on global scaleability and cumulative impact. Many startups have solutions that are highly impactful, but don’t scale well. The net global impact is often lower than less impactful, but highly scaleable solutions (think SaaS vs. manufacturing processes).
In deeptech sectors, we used to prioritize technology over the team as we felt you could always adjust the team, but could not pivot the technology. The reality is this is very hard to do, so we now prioritize leadership regardless of the business model or sector.
Outside of your current investment focus, what do you see as 1-2 promising climate or sustainability sectors?
We focus broadly, so it’s hard to pick one, but I’m really excited about the long-term potential for cell-cultured meat, particularly beef and fish.
Another area I’ve been investing significant time is applied quantum computing. Quantum is ideal for solving efficiency problems and has so many applications in the earthtech sector, from designing wind farms to optimizing transport.
PERSONAL
What are some habits and routines that keep you focused, healthy, and sane — e.g., meditations, exercise, productivity hacks?
I stick to the basics, lots of healthy vegetarian food, daily fitness, meditation, and balance. At work, I generally try to prioritize the important and non-urgent items – the big rocks before the sand analogy. (Stephen Covey video)
What recommendations do you have for our audience — e.g., books, podcasts, quotes, tools?
ArcTern’s co-founder, and my good friend, Tom Rand, recently published The Case for Climate Capitalism that makes the case that only by leveraging capitalism can we solve climate change. It’s a must-read.
What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you — outside of your own family?
I’m blessed with so many great friends and family members who have been incredibly supportful of me over my life. My Olympic tragedy is a good example of the volume of caring people in this world. It is similar to climate change, in that climate change is a human issue more so than a planet issue. Climate change will destroy lives and disproportionally affect the poor and disadvanged populations. When the average person understands this truth, my belief is they will make the necessary sacrifices in their lives to reduce their impact.
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Note:
THE TORCH is an interview series from Entrepreneurs for Impact. We profile CEOs and investors mitigating climate change. Our goal is to highlight their work and inspire others. As we deal with multiple crisis, from Covid and racial injustice to climate change and economic recession, we need some of this positive light in what seem like dark times. Onward and upward.