Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) Podcast: Transcripts
#112:
How many climate tech unicorns are there
Chris Wedding:
Howdy, folks. Welcome to another solo episode where I turn the weekly newsletter from Entrepreneurs for Impact into audio form because we're on the go, we're busy. As some of you readers know, I like to start off these newsletters with a bit of a tease and an agenda, if you will. So, let me give you the agendas we're going to go through here. Two issues, one for December 20th, and the other from January 4th, so looking back a little bit, everything's still evergreen, timely, et cetera.
The newsletters, again, as you probably know, they're broken up in two parts because look, we're not just titles and roles at work, we're also human beings trying to grow, et cetera. So, the two sections, one climate, but that was a good Southern accent, climate startups and investment, that's the first section. I tend to have three blurbs there, the next section, productivity and living the good life. Pretty broad there.
So, in our climate startups and investment buckets, we've got six stories. I'm going to read you what those are before I go through each of those. The first is, how many climate tech unicorns are there? A fun graphic goes along with this one. Number two, how do I transition to a job in climate tech? Many of you listeners are already in climate tech. Many are emerging professionals or career switchers. Thank you, we need you. Number three, the lies about electric vehicles.
The next three here in climate startups and investment, that first category here for the newsletter, 2.8 billion reasons that fusion should matter to you. The fifth, this is why $4 billion at two firms is not enough and the sixth climate tech related blurb I write about is, if you stop drinking in 2050, does it matter? Hashtag climate goals.
In the productivity and living a good life buckets, I’ve got four stories. One is, choose pronoia over paranoia, not a typo, but it's like it's the opposite of paranoia. Pretty refreshing way to go about your day or week. Number two, a free therapy lesson from Stutz. This is a psychotherapist, psychologist, profiled in a great Netflix show with Jonah Hill that I really enjoyed watching with my wife over the holidays. Two more in the productivity and living a good life bucket.
Number three here, what's your positive intelligence quotient, aka PQ, and I've got a link to two different tests you can take online free assessments, which I learned a lot from. The fourth topic we'll go through, hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Sounds like a Zen koan. Hang with me, we'll go through that one together.
All right, in the climate tech bucket, let's go through these six stories pretty quickly here. So, how many climate tech unicorns are there? I go on, look, are you a failed startup if you're not a unicorn? Well, of course not, but please kick your FOMO, your fear of missing out off of the metaphorical bus. Look, pretty sweet if you actually do reach that stratosphere. Of course, awesome for you, your team, the climate, your investors, equally important for the broader climate solution community. We need a ton more validation still, even as climate tech enters the mainstream.
I've got a graphic in the newsletter from HolonIQ, H-O-L-O-N IQ. Again, H-O-L-O-N IQ. They've got a great visual. Looks a little bit like the part of a periodic table where they show 47 climate tech unicorns since 2015, 28 joining in 2021 alone. Collectively, they've raised over $50 billion at a 130-billion-dollar valuation. Important to note, this list does not include startups that have already had exits. I think, IPOs, SPACs, strategic acquisitions and the like. The same resource at HolonIQ shows a table with the geographic location, the sector recent VC capital raises and estimated valuations are pretty cool. Not a perfect list for sure. I think Climeworks reached out as well to say, “Hey, look, we're part of that list as well.”
05:16
Let's go to number two. How do I transition? How do I help a friend transition to a job in climate tech? More than 90,000 folks have been laid off in the broader tech sector this year. Yeah, holy cow, it's incredible. And many people in non-climate sectors are tired of selling, again, quote unquote, “selling sugar water.” Some of you have heard the origin story behind this with good old Steve Jobs convincing, I think it was a Pepsi executive to come work for Apple. Anyway, tired of selling sugar water and want to find more meaningful work. Awesome.
For both of these groups, there's an amazing resource that I've linked from Climate Draft that's really meant to help folks find jobs in climate tech when they're not coming from climate tech. My welcome is, look, happy hunting to you. Welcome to the club, plenty of jobs out there despite some of the negative headlines. So, I'll leave it to you, but check out Climate Draft, tons of resources around jobs, learning, there's a community as well.
Story number three, the lies about electric vehicles. So, I'm quoting from an article in MotorTrend, pretty entertaining and well-researched article I got to say, pretty fun. Look, pretty fun to send to your favorite EV hater. I think we probably all have folks in our lives that continue to talk about things like, and I quote, “A Prius is worse for the planet than a Hummer. EVs are coal-powered cars. Lithium mining is uniquely bad for the environment. Cobalt mining relies largely on slave labor, if not child slave labor.” The author goes on, actually the last part is sadly true, but the rest, question mark lies. And he says, “I'm not even going to go into the hypocrisy of posting anti-EV rhetoric from a lithium-ion-battery-powered phone or laptop.”
I excerpted two of the main points he makes. I'm going to read those to you here. The first that EVs are powered by coal. We get two bullet points there to contradict that. In 2021, this is pretty similar to last year too, the US power grid's make up was 38% natural gas, 22% coal, 20% renewables, 19% nuclear, and 1% other such as petroleum. This means that if all cars in the US were suddenly powered by electricity, at most only 22% of them would be fully coal powered. If you want nuclear in with renewables because atomic energy produces no CO2 emissions, in parentheses during operations, certainly a lot of embodied CO2 in the construction, 39% of the grid is emissions free, and that percentage is getting higher each year.
Second bullet, replacing gasoline with coal, which for the record, he states is an abysmal idea, would reduce energy uses by 31%. Another way to think about it, right now Americans use about 9 million barrels of oil a day for our automotive transportation needs. Magically switching to EVs charged via burning coal would result in only needing the equivalent of about six million barrels. All right, let's go to the next one here.
His headline, EVs as Oil Savers, Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, aka ICE vehicles, by the way, ICE always seems to connote something clean, so have some sort of internal dissonance within here. Anyway, internal combustion engine vehicles only send between 16-25% of the energy created from burning gasoline to the wheels. The other 75-84% is lost due to inherent inefficiencies. EVs eventually send 87-91% of the energy in the battery to the wheels. Pretty stark contrast.
09:39
All right. Third story in the climate tech bucket, 2.8 billion reasons that fusion should matter to you. In case you live under a rock, by the way, very important asterisks there, which I'll come back to, and you missed this, on December 13th, 2022, the US Department of Energy's, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced a historic breakthrough in energy fusion. So, what is the big deal?
As some of you know, much, much better than I do, fusion could provide virtually infinite carbon free energy. After 90 years of research, these scientists achieved a net energy gain for the first time, which means they produced more energy through fusion reactions than the amount of energy put into the system to start said reaction. Investors include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, John Doar, and others have invested 2.8% billion dollars last year, actually they could have invested earlier than last year, all in about $5 billion invested in recent years according to the Fusion Industry Association. So, big boy slash big girl dollars here.
Two more bullets on why fusion matters slash what it is. It requires extreme heat of 100 million degrees Celsius, which I know that for folks in the US are thinking, “What does that mean exactly?” In Fahrenheit, 180 million degrees Fahrenheit or higher diffuse the nuclei of two atoms, therefore forming a new larger atom resulting in lots of new energy produced.
Final bullet, the deuterium, which is a common hydrogen isotope from a glass of I think sea water with a little tritium added, this is a less common hydrogen isotope, could power a house for a year. That's pretty mind-bending stuff. More to read all over the web, but Reuters and CNN did pretty good mainstream profiles of this development. So, back to the asterisks when I mentioned living under a rock, I'm mostly referring to myself much of the time. If you were to ask me almost anything about pop culture, TV, music, et cetera, you might think I was raised by wolves in the wilderness. I wasn't, thank you, mom and dad, but anyway.
The fifth blurb on climate tech, this is why $4 billion at two firms is not enough. So, first, the good news, climate investment commitments by big financial players are getting bigger as they should. Two recent examples, General Atlantic recently raised $3.5 billion to invest in the climate change fight. There's a link to a summary in Reuters and then Barclays plans 500 million pounds of investment in green startups by 2027, and Bloomberg covered that one, as well as Barclays website. So, look, big numbers, but now the bad news. November's COP27 Climate Conference in Egypt highlighted the need for four to six trillion with a T, trillion dollars per year invested in renewables and decarbonization solutions until 2030, at least. Look, huge gap, B versus T.
For me, I think for all of us, it's hard for our mostly hunter gatherer brains to easily grasp the scale of change needed. And if you've ever hung out or heard Eric Toone from Breakthrough Energy Ventures talk about this, now he does a great job just highlighting how big this scale of change really is. Look, time to speed up our revolution, if only we had some greater control over that.
The last climate tech story here from these two newsletters, if you stop drinking, in this case, alcohol, I presume, in 2050, does it matter? Hashtag climate goals. So, a recent report from JUST Capital shows that the number of corporations committing last year to net zero emissions by 2050 grew by more than 2X. So awesome. I've got a graph from that JUST Capital report. But wait a second, right? 2050 is decades away and the corporate leaders that must act by then are of course not the same ones making the commitments today.
14:34
All right. So, now let's transition mentally to a pretty hilarious article from Australia, a source called The Shovel. “Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050.” It's got a picture of a very happy man in maybe his 60s, 70s, enjoying a cold pint. The article continues, “A Sidney Man has set an ambitious target to phase out his alcohol consumption within the next 29 years as part of an impressive plan to improve his health. Program will see Greg Taylor, 73,” aged 73, “continue to drink as normal for the foreseeable future, before reducing consumption in 2049 when he’ll turn 101. He has assured friends it will not affect his drinking plans in the short or medium term,” end quote. I won't spoil the rest super short read, but you get the idea, action today matters a lot more than action decades from now.
Okay. We're going to switch mentally from climate tech and finance trends to productivity, better habits, et cetera. I've got four blurbs for you here. The first, choose pronoia over paranoia. We've all heard the bold and maybe depressing quote from Andy Grove, the founder and former CEO of Intel, which says, “Only the paranoid survive.” Yikes, right? Debbie Downer much. Partially true perhaps, but what if a different way there was? That's not a typo, it's a reference to my friend Yoda, Yoda speaking.
Here's your new favorite word perhaps for 2023, pronoia. Here's the definition, the belief that the world around us conspires to help us get what we want slash need. If you think this perspective is only for pot-smoking hippies from the 1960s, hang tight. I'm going to double down on that sentiment. Here's an excerpt from a 1963 novella by JD Salinger called Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters. One of the characters in that novella states, “I’m a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” End quote.
Now, look, you may be thinking, “Quit the delusion. This is not very helpful,” but let's consider the following from a little more left-brain source here. The Mayo Clinic describes the health benefits of a positive bias, not unrealistic by the way, just a positive bias towards life as follows, increased lifespan, lower rates of depression, lower levels of distress and pain, greater resilience to illness, better psychological and physical wellbeing, better cardiovascular health, and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease and stroke, reduced risk of death from cancer, reduced risk of death from respiratory conditions, infections, and better coping skills with hardships and times of stress.
So, look, if you assume the best, if we assume the best in any situation and great things happen, well, you proved it right, well done. But if you assume the best in any situation and a shit show occurs, then you just go back to your Daily Stoic book, which maybe you're also reading most mornings, where the perspective is, look, shit happens. That's part of life, accept it, learn from it, and move on. Dot, dot, dot, if only it were that easy.
Story number two in the second bucket here, productivity and living a good life. Title is, A Free Therapy Lesson from Stutz. So, first, as many of us have come to appreciate during COVID, I've got a stat for you here, in 2019 through 2020, a bit dated, but it still works, 21% of adults were experiencing a mental illness that's equivalent over 50 million Americans.
19:05
Second, therapy can be awesome. I've tried it, lots of folks I really respect and trust also they rely on it as well. Third, here's a film, Netflix, well, at least that's where I watch it, a show to watch one night this week over the holidays, that was from December. Anyway, it's irreverent, raw, funny, and also super practical. At the same time, here's a summary of the film from Rotten Tomatoes, which gave it an audience score of 97% and 100% on the Tomatometer, so pretty positive reviews.
And I quote, “Phil Stutz is one of the world's leading psychiatrists. He's helped countless patients over 40 years, including world-class creatives and business leaders, among them, many therapy skeptics. Directed by friend and patient Jonah Hill, the film explores Stutz life and walks the viewer through his signature visualization exercises called The Tools.” I’ve got a link to some short videos on The Tools and I'm also reading a book he co-wrote from some years ago about The Tools as well.
All right, I've got three more stories or blurbs here for you and then we'll call it a day or a week. The third, what is your positive intelligence quotient? So, PQ, and I've got a link to a couple of online free assessments here. The quote, “Your mind is your best friend, but it can also be your worst enemy.” I know that's true. I think if we're honest, we all feel that is probably true for many of us.
This quote dominates the website from Shirzad Chamine. Maybe I'm saying your name wrong, Shirzad. I would love it if you told me. I mean, Shirzad, sorry, is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Positive Intelligence, a lecturer at Stanford University and former CEO of the largest coach training organization in the world. Holy cow. A key goal of positive intelligence is to shift our mindset from one of surviving, so think a negativity bias with our quote unquote, “inner saboteurs,” to one of thriving again, from surviving to thriving. Where thriving has a positivity bias with our quote unquote, “inner sage” winning most of the time. Think kind of angel or devil on our shoulder. I've got an image here from the website on positive intelligence talking about what really defines the survive region with our inner saboteurs versus the thrive region with our inner sage.
And I've got a link to these tests you can take. One is to measure, of course, your positive intelligence quotient. You'll also find at that same website under resources and then assessments, a test you can take to identify your top saboteurs out of 10 different saboteurs that he profiles. So, pretty useful stuff all to help us become more self-aware like founders and investors, corporate innovators, et cetera, but also friends, family members, parents, et cetera.
All right, last one here, number four in this bucket on living a good life, hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life or so it was said by Jersey Gregorek. “What does he know anyway?” You may be asking. As a world champion weightlifter, poetry writer, and co-author of The Happy Body, maybe he's onto something. Take healthy living as an example, you may be thinking. Fighting our taste buds and let's face it, universal entropy, a tendency towards disorder. We can change our diet and daily habits, but as we all know, especially being the start of a new year, it can be hard.
The reward in this, that was a fun teenage experience, the reward minus voice cracking, the reward is decades of life that are easier with longer and more enjoyable lifespans and health spans. Or, on the same train of thought, another quote for you, hard times create strong, in this case men, but strong women create good times. Good times create, shall we go back? Good times create weak men and weak men create hard times. A lot to take in there. Let me try this one more time. I'm going to stick with just one gender. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
24:20
This comes from G. Michael Hopf, a combat veteran of the US Marine Corps, former bodyguard, and author of books on quote unquote, “post-apocalyptic landscapes, wild west gunfights, and the creepy world of the paranormal.” Look, are both quotes true? Yeah, some of the time, maybe not all the time, I like both of them, but mostly, as I like the quotes and explore who's behind them, pretty cool to see the diversity of the lives of these two humans and really reminding us about the diverse lives we all lead, either over the course of our lives or the other parts of our lives. Most of us don't know about our co-workers or even some of our friends and family.
If you're about to barf because of the sentimental nature of this, good luck, go grab your anti-nausea medicine. I stand by it though. All right, we'll wrap it up here. So, that was a at 10, if my math is right, 10 different data points on climate tech, startup and finance trends, plus a few tools and tips on productivity and living a good life. We'll call it here. Have a great week. Talk soon. Peace.