Planet A Ventures: The Human Side of Climate Fund Managers with Nick de la Forge

Nick de la Forge is a General Partner at Planet A Ventures, a German early-stage ClimateTech fund investing in start-ups that have a significant positive impact on our planet. 

I really appreciate Nick as a human being and for his unique value system.

In this episode, we will be human, humble, and vulnerable and take you behind the scenes of raising and running a Climate fund.

In this episode, we cover:

• The serendipitous meeting that led to the creation of 3 European Climate Tech funds!
• Thoughts on how to bring more diversity in the Climate Tech space and generate more diverse Fund Managers
• The single trick that dramatically helped accelerate their fundraising 
• Showing vulnerability, humility and resiliency are MUST HAVE values in this Climate Fight 

Listen and Learn

• Planet A Ventures’ fund structure, scope and geography.
• Starting a Climate VC Fund feels like “assembling an airplane in mid-air”.
• The necessity of privilege to go for 2 years+ without a salary, which reinforces patterns and prevents new managers from getting in.
• The discrepancy in funding going to Female vs Male founders is rooted in the fact that there’s a huge gap of Female founders. That is the problem that should be fixed.
• MOMENTUM (in other words FOMO) is the single biggest driver of success in your fundraising.
• The main differences between fundraising for a fund vs for a startup
• In 10 years, all investments will become Climate investments.
• The importance of taking care of yourself to endure the Climate fight
• Surrounding yourself with other Climate Tech community members and taking a role is the best way to overcome Climate anxiety
• It’s not time for EGOs. We need to be f* wise from now on and make good collective decisions
• Carbon sequestration is actually not as impactful as most think
• The sectors where Planet A have completely changed their mind
• Planet A’s voting mechanism to approve investments 
• There is a risk that the large funds get corrupted and leave impact out of the equation.

Show Links

• Planet A Ventures website
• Nick’s LinkedIn
• Sebastian heitman from Extantia (ex Beyond Black)
• Extantia
• Climentum Capital
• The Climate Fiction article I wrote in 2020 mentioned by Nick

Carveouts

• Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get notified about Planet A Ventures’ upcoming fundraising updates!
• We have a LOT more Fund Managers coming on the show and it will go crescendo! Listening to this podcast is the curriculum you need to know how Climate Funds get raised, how they operate and the macro trends they invest in.