Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups VC Investing Over 13 Years: EIF’s Devin Whatley & Geoffrey Eisenberg on Scaling Climate Startups
Discover how EIF invests $3–10M in post-revenue climate and sustainability companies, building trust with CEOs over years and backing market-ready startups like EV Connect and ZepSolar.
⭐ My guests today are Devin Whatley, Managing Partner, and cofounder, and Geoffrey Eisenberg, Partner, at Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF).
EIF is a long-time VC investor in renewable energy, distributed energy, smart transportation, and sustainable agriculture.
On their fifth fund, they invest in companies in seed, Series A, and Series B, with a focus on post-revenue companies with no tech risk that are looking to scale. They like to be the lead investor and write checks between $3M and $10M.
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🎙️ In this episode, we talked about:
- What has helped them raise capital over 13 years across so many cycles in the sustainability, cleantech, and climate tech worlds
- Why they sometimes take 2-3 years getting to know a CEO before deciding to invest
- How they think about the total addressable market today vs. the distant future
- The benefits of disclosing the “skeletons in the close” of the company early…because they’ll definitely be discovered by the investor at some point
- Their focus on CEOs who are obsessed but not flashy (i.e., show, don’t tell)
- Some success stories in their portfolio, such as EV Connect and ZepSolar
- Book recommendations to help them maintain humility and perspective on how history shapes the present day
- And lots more
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