This week’s guest on Cleaning Up is Emily Kirsch, Founder and CEO of Powerhouse and Managing Partner of Powerhouse Ventures. Powerhouse, based out of Oakland, California, is an innovation firm that pairs startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate with some of the world’s largest corporations and investors. Emily is also managing partner of Powerhouse Ventures, directly backing seed-stage start-ups innovating on decarbonization. 

Michael and Emily spoke about building Powerhouse and adding value to its huge startup database, some of the hits from Powerhouse Ventures' first funding round, and ended with a wider discussion about the role of VCs - and pioneering women - on the path to net-zero. 

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Links and Related Episodes 

Learn more about Powerhouse here: https://www.powerhouse.fund/ 

Michael appeared on Emily’s podcast, Watt It Takes, back in 2021: https://www.powerhouse.fund/liebreich 

Watch Episode 9 with Jigar Shah here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJhhinSeh9I 

Watch Episode 18 with Nancy Pfund here: https://www.cleaningup.live/episode-18-nancy-pfund/ 

Watch Episode 47 with Gina Domanig here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZvy2c92Ss

Guest Bio 

Emily is Founder & Managing Partner of Powerhouse Ventures, and Founder & CEO of Powerhouse. Prior to launching Powerhouse in 2013, Kirsch worked with Van Jones to launch the Green Jobs Corps, Oakland’s first ‘green jobs’ training program. She is the founding convener of the Oakland Climate Action Coalition, which drafted and secured passage of what was at the time the most ambitious climate action plan of any U.S. city. Emily is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Fellow, served on the Executive Committee for Clean Energy for President Biden, and appeared on the San Francisco Business Times’ 2020 list of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.” 

Emily hosts the podcast Watt It Takes, which has over 1 million downloads and has featured founders of some of the energy and automotive industries’ most iconic companies like Nest, Sunrun, and Tesla. Emily studied Sustainable Urban Development at San Francisco State University.