Inevitable

Latest Episodes:

Craig Shapiro and Tomas Alvarez Belon, Shared Future Fund Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

Today's guests are Craig Shapiro and Tomas Alvarez Belon from Collaborative Fund.

Collaborative Fund is an investment firm focused on supporting and investing in the shared future. Their funds center around two macro themes, the growth of the creative class and the concept of the collaborative economy.

Recently, Collaborative Fund announced their new Shared Future Fund which provides rapid funding and useful resources to early-stage entrepreneurs working to solve the global climate crisis. It's a programmatic fund and they aim to make 100 investments of $100,000 in 2022 alone, giving a decision within 10 days of application.

Craig is the Founder and Managing Partner of Collaborative Fund. He currently holds a board seat or board observer seat in several pioneering climate focused companies, including: Brimstone Energy, Dandelion Energy, Kula Bio, and Quaise Energy. Tomás is a climate investor at Collaborative Fund focused on decarbonization and the Shared Future Fund initiative. Prior to joining Collab, Tomás co-founded Canopi, a Y Combinator-backed carbon accounting startup, and was a consultant at Bain & Company. He also advises Climate Tech VC, a 20,000+ subscriber newsletter focused on climate innovation.

We cover a lot in this episode, including the origin story of the firm Collaborative, how their approach has evolved over the years, and what led them to get into climate investing. We also discuss the types of risk they're comfortable with, criteria they look for, and how they think about different sectors. And we cover the Shared Future Fund, what it is, how it works, Craig and Tomas’ vision for it, and how it fits in with the other things that they do as a firm.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded June 14, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Startup Series: Myst Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Titiaan Palazzi, COO and Co-Founder at Myst.

Myst is a machine learning platform that leverages AI technology to improve demand and supply forecasting for an increasingly renewable power grid. Their platform helps companies accelerate the deployment of expert forecasting solutions that not only increase profitability but also reduce risk.

We have a great discussion about the different energy use cases that more accurate predictive modeling can help, the customer types that use Myst today, and the transition of data science talent into the climate space.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @codysimms (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded June 28, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Episode 215: Jamie Alexander, Drawdown Labs Jun 27, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest is Jamie Alexander, Founding Director at Drawdown Labs.

Drawdown Labs serves as Project Drawdown’s private sector testing ground for accelerating the scaling of climate solutions quickly, safely, and equitably. In her role, Jamie leverages the organization's world-class research and analysis—and the cross-industry capabilities of participating businesses and funders—to experiment with collaborative ways to address climate change at unprecedented scale, and offers the world a more expansive vision for private sector climate leadership.

Jamie has been a very active member of the MCJ community, including contributing to our Community Voices newsletter and serving on the Advisory Board at Climate Changemakers. Prior to joining Project Drawdown, Jamie worked in corporate partnerships at Ceres, Inc.

This discussion brings a new energy to the MCJ podcast as the conversation not only covers Jamie’s climate journey, but also highlights some of the double standards that manifest in people working in climate change, some of the infighting that occurs, some of the tensions, and the chicken and egg scenarios. At the end of the day, a little hearty debate is a good way to ignite progress.

Enjoy the show!

Episode recorded June 13, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Startup Series: Sense Jun 23, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest is Mike Phillips, Co-founder and CEO of Sense.

Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, Sense provides homeowners with real-time insights that illustrate their home energy use. Users of Sense’s Home Energy Monitor are able to not only understand energy use on an appliance level, but also identify opportunities to both save money and consume energy when it's cheapest and cleanest. Sense is actively pursuing a broader and more ambitious vision. By deploying its technology as a software application and embedded intelligence for the growing landscape of smart meters, the company is positioning itself to expand its energy monitoring and management capabilities considerably.

As investors in Sense via our MCJ collective venture capital fund, we were excited to talk with Mike in more detail about his climate journey and the company’s origin story and progress so far. We have a great discussion about the future of the home, electric panels, smart meters, the role utilities play in hardware deployment, and in what ways consumers want to be involved in home energy management.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @codysimms, @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded June 14, 2022.

Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@ovr.vc.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Episode 214: Rachel Slaybaugh, Principal at DCVC Jun 20, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest is Rachel Slaybaugh, Principal at DCVC.

In her role, Rachel is focused on climate, sustainability, and energy investments. Before joining DCVC, Rachel was an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where she held leadership roles in several data science and entrepreneurship efforts. Concurrent to being a professor, Rachel was a Division Director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she ran the Cyclotron Road Division. She served as a Program Director at the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, where she created the nuclear fission program and managed the agriculture portfolio as well as solar and virtual reality teams. Rachel co-founded the Good Energy Collective and currently serves as Chair of the Board. Rachel received a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Penn State, where she served as a licensed nuclear reactor operator, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin–Madison in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics.

We have a wonderful discussion about Rachel's climate journey and how she has prioritized her professional pursuits. We also talk about what Rachel has learned working in academia, government, early-stage innovation, and now as a venture capitalist. Additionally, the conversation touches on where VC and equity capital fit into the climate problem as well as key learnings from the last cleantech wave, and so much more.

Enjoy the show!

Episode recorded June 7, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Startup Series: Mazi Mobility Jun 16, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Jesse Forrester, Founder and CEO of Mazi Mobility.

Mazi Mobility is a Kenyan Mobility as a Service (MaaS) company that is re-imaging mobility through the implementation of an electric vehicle ecosystem in Africa. Mazi assembles and sells electric two and three-wheelers while building and operating the EV charging infrastructure to support these vehicles. A Kenyan award-winning entrepreneur and visionary, Jesse believes in the confluence of impact and profit. He is a former Zayed Sustainability Prize winner and has been involved with social enterprises for the last 6 years, touching on the food, water, and energy nexus.

We were excited for this one because while the MCJ podcast focus has primarily been in the Western world, developing nations are just as important. Transportation in countries like Kenya will be critical in terms of emissions and Mazi is trying to bring about positive change. We learned a lot from this one and are so grateful that Jesse was willing to share his story.

Enjoy the show!

Episode recorded May 12, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Episode 213: Alison Smart and Spencer Glendon, Probable Futures Jun 13, 2022

Show notes

Today's guests are Alison Smart, Executive Director, and Spencer Glendon, Founder, of Probable Futures.

Probable Futures is an unconventional initiative that brings together leaders across culture, business, technology, and design in collaboration with scientists at the renowned Woodwell Climate Research Center. They're committed to and guided by their shared set of core principles. Probable Futures offers frameworks, tools, and storytelling to help people understand, prepare for, and choose between the futures that the climate offers us. The online platform currently provides educational materials about the workings of Earth’s systems and climate models as well as local and global projections of heat, cold, and precipitation. All Probable Futures materials are free to anyone in the world.

Spencer has an interesting background in that he spent 18 years as macro analyst, partner, and director of investment research at Wellington Management, an investment management firm with more than a trillion in client assets. He also holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics. Prior to helping found Probable Futures, Alison was Vice President for Strategy & Advancement at the Woodwell Climate Research Center (Woodwell), a leading source of climate science that informs policy, decision making, and the urgent action needed to combat climate change.

We discuss the pair’s respective climate journeys, what motivated them to work in this space, and what led them to create Probable Futures. We also talk about how they measure success, what stakeholders they’re serving, and the nature of the climate problem in general, as well as what’s holding us back.

Enjoy the show!

Episode recorded June 3, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Startup Series: Flowcarbon Jun 09, 2022

Show notes

Today's guests are Dana Gibber, Caroline Klatt, and Phil Fogel of Flowcarbon.

And today’s episode is hosted by Jason’s partner at MCJ Collective, Cody Simms.

Flowcarbon is using blockchain to make carbon markets more accessible. They're seeking to tokenize the voluntary carbon market to aid in price discovery, transparency, and access. We were looking forward to this conversation as Flowcarbon has been in the news a lot. They just raised significant capital from A16Z and other notable investors; the day after their raised was announced, Verra — the largest voluntary carbon marketplace — made a substantial position statement regarding blockchain; Flowcarbon was incubated by the family office of Adam and Rebekah Neumann of WeWork renown; and blockchain is a controversial topic in climate circles generally. So across all of this, we had a ton to discuss.

We cover the founders’ backgrounds and origin story of Flowcarbon, their views on the carbon markets today, how they believe crypto helps solve key issues in the carbon markets, and where they think this whole space is headed. We also discuss Flowcarbon’s specific technology approach and how it fits into the broader #ReFi movement, and we touch on the Neumann’s involvement with the company.

Enjoy the show!

You can find Cody on Twitter via @codysimms and MCJ Collective via @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded May 27, 2022.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Episode 212: Emma Stewart, Netflix Sustainability Officer Jun 06, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Emma Stewart, Sustainability Officer at Netflix.

Emma is working to bring the company's carbon footprint to net zero, raise awareness through their film and television content, and engage their millions of members on climate and environmental change. Emma brings a rare combination of domain expertise (environmental strategy, climate change accounting and policy, green buildings), strategy (start-up executive and corporate "intrapreneur"), and inventiveness (e.g. an architect of the original "science-based target" movement now 1000+ companies strong) to the field of corporate sustainability.

I was excited for this one because Netflix is a pillar company. They've got a big footprint and swing a big bat as it relates to their content, storytelling and audiences. We talk about Netflix's journey and how they got to be late to the game, what motivated them to get into action, what Emma's charter was coming in, where she started, and how she went about prioritizing. Some interesting tidbits come out in this discussion in terms of where the actual emissions are coming from, how they think about emissions they are directly responsible for versus the content production outside of the walls of their originals, how they think about things like offsets and carbon removal, and also Emma's general theory of change for what role companies play and what else needs to happen as it relates to policy, activism, government, and other things that are required to make this transition as quick and as efficient as possible.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast), or @mcjcollective (company) and via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded April 26, 2022.

To learn more about sustainability at Netflix, visit https://about.netflix.com/en/sustainability

To learn more about this episode, visit https://mcjcollective.com/my-climate-journey-podcast/emma-stewart

Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@ovr.vc.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Startup Series: Seabound Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Alisha Fredriksson, Co-founder and CEO of Seabound.

Seabound builds carbon capture equipment for ships. They're the only way for existing ships to reduce up to 95% of CO2 emissions and meet new global regulations and they already have six LOIs secured from major ship owners. I was excited for this one because shipping is one of those areas that is a big source of emissions and also really hard to decarbonize. So it's interesting to dig into what it is that makes it so hard to decarbonize, the different options for doing so, and of course, where Seabound fits in.

We also cover the origin story of the company, what inspired Alisha and team to do the work that they do, and some of their progress to date. It's especially interesting to dig into some of the motivations of the customers that are signing these LOIs, what value proposition is resonating, what some of their concerns are, and how a business like this ultimately scales.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast), or @mcjcollective (company) and via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

To learn more about Seabound, visit: https://www.seabound.co/

To learn more about this episode, visit: https://mcjcollective.com/my-climate-journey-podcast/seabound

Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@ovr.vc.

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

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