I recently got 4 climate-tech investors together for a Q&A event focused on pitch decks. The questions and the following discussions were interesting, and I learned many new things. It was an honor to have the following investors join me:

David McColl is the Founder of Shoreline Capital and a partner at Echelon Capital. Prior to venture, David led innovation projects for Enel Green Power and was a part of the founding team of several energy efficiency startups. He has a B.S. in Finance and an M.S. in Energy Engineering from Stanford University.

Jessica Eastling is a Senior Associate at…

This week Ginger Rothrock, Senior Director of HG Ventures, talks about HG Ventures in relation to the broader investment ecosystem.

HG Ventures launched back in 2018 as the corporate venture arm of the Heritage Group, a multibillion-dollar private Midwest conglomerate in the traditional industrial sectors of construction, environmental services and specialty chemicals.

How does HG Ventures differ from institutional VCs?
As the corporate venture arm of the Heritage Group, we look at leveraging the people, the assets, and the relationships of our operating companies and our R&D group to support STEM entrepreneurs in scaling their business. …

This week Moji Karimi, the CEO of Cemvita Factory, reveals how he is decarbonizing the chemical industry.

Can you describe what Cemvita Factory does and the potential impact?

We engineer microbes to use carbon dioxide or methane as a feedstock to produce carbon-negative industrial chemicals. Because we are using emissions as input, we lower the feedstock cost, and since nature-inspired bioprocesses happen under ambient temperature, we eliminate the emissions and cost due to the status quo energy-intensive chemical reactions. The addition of these two benefits makes it possible for us to produce carbon-negative chemicals. Our platform is designed to create…

Get ready for the next Impossible Foods, but for raw tuna — Kuleana. Kuleana provides plant-based seafood without the environmental and ethical consequences of traditional tuna farming.

Fun fact — Kuleana is a Hawaiian term which means “responsibility” and refers to a reciprocal relationship between the person who is responsible, and the thing which they are responsible for. In the case of Kuleana the company, that means humanity’s relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants.

Before jumping into Q&A with Jacek Prus, the Founder of Kuleana, below is some context for the landscape and why this matters:

Aquaculture is the…

This week Taka Kamezawa took time to discuss what he is working on at TrueAlgae.

Can you describe what your company does and your impact?
TrueAlgae is a biotechnology company that has a very efficient, patented mode of production for making high-quality algae. We can monetize algae in many ways, including chicken feed, fish feed, and nutraceuticals, but our first market is as an organic liquid soil amendment. We are currently selling in bulk to large fruit and vegetable farms in California and Florida. We are also licensing our production technology in Mexico.

Our initial product, TrueSolum, is an organic…

I was bored Sunday morning, so I posted a question on LinkedIn with a question that I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

As investments in the broader climate sector heat up, and the EV sector gains momentum, electric aviation is also flying high.

Ampaire, an Elemental Excelerator portfolio company with $7M+ from NASA and backed by Techstars, is has been innovating in the space. The aviation industry is responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions, and Ampaire can directly reduce the emissions of planes by up to 50% in their hybrids.

They also were also recently acquired by Surf Air Mobility.

Can you describe what your company does, the impact, and how it differs from other competitors in the space? Ampaire is…

FloWaste recently announced the close of their $270K Pre-Seed round. The round was led by Plug and Play Ventures, and other investors include: Elevate Ventures, RSLP Ventures, Flywheel Fund, Culvex Investments, and individual investor Angie Stocklin. Flowaste is providing data and analytics for cafeterias and restaurants to reduce food waste costs.

Why does this matter?

• One third of food is wasted globally (roughly 1.6 billion tons). At the current rate, annual food loss and waste is likely to rise by a third by 2030, with 2.1 billion tons, worth $1.5 trillion, being lost or thrown away.
• If food waste was…