#134: The Habits, Life Advice, and Book Recommendations of 5 Climate CEOs and Investors — Part 1

⭐ In today’s episode, instead of talking about business and finance, we will concentrate on the people side of growing a climate tech business. We’ll listen to five CEOs talk about advice they'd give their younger self, recommendations for their favorite books and podcasts, and the habits that keep them healthy and focused on this startup journey.

If you like this episode, then consider this part 1 of more like it in the months to come.

And shout out to Bill S. for his recommendation for this kind of compilation.

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#1

Naman Trivedi, Cofounder and CEO of WattBuy, which helps homeowners find the best electricity, solar plans, and more – all at the lowest price: Using just a home’s address, they crunch the data to recommend personalized bundles from the most trusted providers. To date, they’ve helped procure 20 gigawatt-hours of clean power while saving customers over four million dollars.

#2

Jacqueline van den Ende, CEO at Carbon Equity, a fintech platform that seeks to power the world's most impactful climate technology solutions with retail capital: In under two years, they’ve mobilized $120M across 450+ high net worth and mass affluent individuals to invest in professionally managed VC and private equity climate funds.

#3

John Tough, Managing Partner at Energize Ventures, a leading climate software investor that manages $1.2 Billion across two strategies: venture capital and growth equity.

#4

Sarah Richardson, co-founder and CEO of MicroByre, which "makes pets out of bacteria": They domesticate naturally occurring bacteria and introduce them to industry. They enable customers to efficiently produce bio-derived chemistries at or below current petrochemical economics. Newly cooperative bacteria can replace ancient biomass (petrochemicals) with renewable biomass (lawn clippings) efficiently and economically.

#5

Bryan Hassin, CEO of DexMat, a next-gen climate tech materials company that transforms carbon from an expensive environmental problem into high-value, high-performance nanomaterials: And he brings 100s of millions of dollars in prior startup exits to this important problem.

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