Attention! Climate VC investing in Cool Hominids
By: Climate Vc
Tags: Startup, Founders, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Climate Change

Hello friend!

May I ask you a question? What stage of evolution are you in?

Oh, and another question: what does venture capital have to do with saving the Planet?

Let’s start from the beginning, in a galaxy not too far away, our very own Milky Way, Google Maps direction: Earth coordinates. Homo Sapiens has thrown our Earth a bit of a twisted survival curveball — our earlier evolutionary brethren evolved by working in unison with the land, accepting its gracious gifts and being in balance with mother nature. With time, we have developed into power hungry apes, who ignore nature, and who exert our temporary dominance over everything we deem below us (which in the opinion of some particularly bad apes is EVERYTHING).

Fast forward a few millennia, (or a tiny fraction of a second on the cosmic calendar — don’t worry, we are pretty irrelevant!) and things are out of whack. 51 billion (with a B) tonnes of excess CO2e is pumped into the atmosphere every year — can you imagine what HMRC would do if you had £51 billion in unpaid taxes? That’s how we should think about the Planet.

As a species of not particularly well evolved apes, this is where necessity to avoid impending calamity is forcing us to pivot and undo the mess we’ve created, by radically changing the way we get around, grow and make things, and where we get energy from (which we will need an ever growing amount of!).

Source: brakken.tumblr.com

Enter the next stage of evolution: Homo Sapiens to Cool Hominid. *epic Pokemon evolution noise in the background*

Source: en.wikiversity.org

Let’s consider our geological history for a moment. If we look at any cross section, you will unmistakably see a variety of different strata. If each horizontal section of the strata represents a certain age on this earth, then consider this: how do we want the human legacy to be carved into history?

Cool Hominid, I choose you! Just like Pikachu, Cool Hominids are already here and growing in numbers. They are the ones who are spearheading change with an adapted mindset through evolution that things CAN be better, and that we MUST do something about this. Yes, yes, you frowning person staring at your computer screen with a bored look on your face and thinking ‘Whatever, I have heard this all before. Thank u, next.’ Not quite!

This is the part where venture comes in. We, at Climate.VC, spring to life, because if you look closely enough at the metaphorical and literal barren wasteland that we have reduced our Planet to, it still has the ability to sprout glimmers of hope everywhere.

Our adventure starts here. Ready Player Three? (Didn’t quite want to go for One and Two for plagiarism reasons).

We’ve seen hundreds of Cool Hominids in our very early life already, setting sights on a utopian future that allows us to make sustainable concrete, farm anything anywhere, create proteins for food by extracting carbon out of the air (I mean, Supersayan or what??).

We will be there on the lookout, to support and fund them at the earliest stages possible. We will start by taking 120 companies on this journey with us, investing £50k-£150k in each company over the next 3 years, but interact and create a platform of collective action for many, many more.

One more thing — in true Cool Hominid fashion, we will be brave, we will be vulnerable with you, we will share our thinking, our hopes and our dreams. So keep your ears to the ground and your eyes peeled, this is the task of our lifetime and all of us Cool Hominids need to forge the path together.

So let me ask you again: which stage of evolution are you in?

Written by Andrea Emanuelli @ Potential Climate Ventures