sourcegraph
March 29, 2024

But climate entrepreneurs and investors say the stakes are too great to be cynical.

“There’s a bigger battle to be fought,” said Elisa Jagerson, an investor at Wildcat Venture Partners. “Everything else feels like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

It’s not always like that. When Julia Collins pitched her climate tech startup to investors in 2019, she devoted the first slide of her presentation to a dramatic explanation of the climate emergency. She founded Planet FWD, a software provider that helps companies manage their climate impact, and Moonshot, a snack food company that uses recycled ingredients, local suppliers and recycled packaging.

“I had to spend a lot of time on the court and have people up the learning curve,” she said.

This has changed as climate change and extreme weather events become inescapable. “We’re well past the point where we have to prove climate change or that it’s a big market,” said Ms Collins, who no longer uses dramatic dips in her pitches.

Fueled by piles of cash, some new climate start-ups are already increasing in value, at least on paper. Josh Felser, an investor at venture capital firm Climatic, said the 11 climate companies he and his partners have invested in over the past two years are now worth two and a half times as much as they were when they invested because other investors took Higher valuations cost more money.

“It’s not because we’re that good,” he said. “Because the market is so hot.”

Business is booming, the founders say, as potential customers face more environmental pressure to spend money on items like emissions trackers and carbon offsets. Infogrid, a startup that provides tools to make buildings run and use energy more efficiently, had previously struggled to sell its products to customers, said William Cowell de Gruchy, CEO of Infogrid.

“Now they’re like: ‘We have to do this. Our shareholders are making us. Our boardrooms are making us. Regulators are making us,'” he said.



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