Why the future is looking bright for lactose free milk, brain free meat and many more environmentally positive solutions: Making the impossible inevitable with Sean O’Sullivan

We check in with Sean O’Sullivan, once of Kinsale, Cork, and now US based inventor, innovator and major driving force in an explosion of Climate Tech based exciting, environmentally positive solutions. This interview is a little longer than usual, but covers some really interesting insights and positive solutions for our shared future.

Sean O’Sullivan is managing partner of SOSV, a venture capital firm which specializes in accelerator programs for very early stage companies and is one of the most active venture investors in the world.  SOSV runs the world’s most active accelerators in hardware (HAX), life sciences (IndieBio), and Asia cross-border startups (Chinaccelerator/MOX) and blockchain (dlab).

O’Sullivan’s first company, MapInfo, grew to a $200 million revenue public company with over 1,000 employees, and popularized street mapping on computers. His first internet company, NetCentric, developed many concepts in internet computing, and he is credited as the co-creator of the term “cloud computing”.

O’Sullivan received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a MFA in Film Production from USC.  O’Sullivan is on the board of Khan Academy, Sun Genomics, the Tyndall Institute, the Autism Impact Fund and a number of private companies.

SOSV is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. The company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in Europe, Asia and the USA. Wikipedia

Check out the Climate Tech 100 also ->

SOSV has always been keen on technology and startups that promise better human and planetary health. In recent years, climate tech has been an especially big priority at our IndieBio (biotech) and HAX (hardware) accelerator programs, and a steady emphasis at MOX (global mobile consumer) and Chinaccelerator (enterprise Asia). The SOSV Climate Tech 100 marks the first time we’ve analyzed our 1,000 company portfolio to present our top climate tech investments.

We are pleased to report that as of April 2021 the SOSV Climate Tech 100 have raised $1.85 billion from investors and have a market cap of $5.65 billion. The average company is four years old. SOSV has invested $89 million in these companies and was in most cases the first investor, though we continued investing through early rounds.

Not all the companies on the list contribute in the same way to climate tech, so we grouped them in three broad tiers. The core (71) are companies that aim to disrupt incumbent, carbon-intensive technologies. The adjacent (25) are companies that have an indirect impact on climate change, for example by re-using waste or power consumption. And marketplaces (4) typically provide consumers with more cost and carbon efficient solutions.

Here are a few data points to help navigate The SOSV Tech Climate 100. We divided the companies into five industry categories: Food (50), Manufacturing(28), Transport (9), Energy (7) and Building Systems (6). There are 14 countries represented, with the US (65), Canada (9), Singapore (6), and the UK (6) topping the list. 40 percent of the companies have at least one female founder. And a final note: SOSV has invested in more than 40 additional climate tech companies that we also love but didn’t make the cut this year!