Fairly early on in my climate journey, I recorded an episode with a seasoned founder who had been working in clean energy for a long time at a very strategic level. During the episode, I was struck by his insistence that his decision to tackle the problem his company was trying to solve had nothing to do with climate, it was strictly a business decision, seeing a humongous market ripe for disruption and envisioning a better way. After the episode, we went for a long walk. During that walk, he told me that he’s absolutely mission-driven and that is his primary reason for building the company. I asked why he didn’t say so on the show, and he said he doesn’t want the market-based capital sources to think there is any hint of concession or philanthropy here, it is a greedy capitalist opportunist through and through. At the time, I was puzzled by this. But five years later, I get it. There is a difference between being “concerned about climate change”, “believing that it is caused by humans” etc and being willing to sacrifice your self-interest (whether you are an individual, a corporation, or even a nation/government) for the collective good. I know there is a contingent of people that think we can win over hearts and minds. While that is noble, I find myself increasingly disagreeing. To me, it needs to be about abundance. About jobs. About national security. About national leadership on a global stage. About better products/services. About lower costs. Either these, or about protecting YOUR city. Protecting YOUR house. Making sure YOU can get insurance. Making sure YOUR neighbors and community members have enough food to eat and clean water to drink. The longer I do this, the more I find myself thinking that there is an inverse correlation between how core addressing climate change is to a product’s (or fund’s!) stated value prop, and how much impact it will actually have in the end. There are, of course, exceptions (carbon removal, for example). And the regulatory landscape, net zero commitments etc can of course play a role here. But the more a company can lean in on simply being better, impact aside, the greater the likelihood it will ultimately be impactful (and successful!).

There are a couple of founder types getting us excited at MCJ these days: One is what we’re calling ‘new industrialists’. The energy transition is a mega trend that isn’t going away, and our entire global economy will need to be re-wired in a way that is more in harmony with the planet we rely on to sustain us. This means that sector by sector, industry by industry, there will be opportunities for new pillar companies to be built, either by upstarts emerging or incumbents evolving. The founders setting out to build these pillar companies are the types of founders we want to know and work with. The other we don’t have a term for yet, but I am going to call them ‘systems fortifiers’ as a placeholder (if you have a better term, let us know!). Much of the future instability of our climate is already baked in, no matter how fast we decarbonize. The transtion is inevitable, but the transiton will be a bumpy one. Our cities, our food system, our financial system, etc were all built assuming a stable climate. These systems now need to be rebuilt to adapt to an increasingly unstable one. The founders setting out to shore up the foundation of these fundamental systems are the types of founders we want to know and work with. Now that our fundraise is done (woo hoo!), we will be turning our attention to 1) refining our theses mentioned above, and 2) tuning our own flywheel to best facilitate ongoing learning in these areas, indentification and backing the most promising startups, and building bridges so more resources and talent flow into the companies we back and the transiton overall. This is a work in progress, but I’m putting it out there to try to rekindle the public learning that I got away from as we raised our new fund for the last year in one of the most difficult macro environments in a long time. In some ways, it feels like my “journey” is over and the real work is now beginning. Excited to be back!