New Wave. Laura Fox: Investing in Sustainable Cities
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🌊 The Fourth Swell Has Arrived
Today, we’re joined by Laura Fox, Streetlight Ventures founding partner and the operator who scaled Citi Bike to ~$120M ARR.
She’s now backing the next wave of city-scale climate builders, in mobility, logistics, energy, water, waste, and adaptation.
We dig into why adaptation is finally investable, how to build where the payer = beneficiary, and Laura’s anti-FOMO framework for spotting what actually matters in climate.
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My 5 takeaways:
Cities = Climate’s Front Line: Half the world lives in cities, which generate ~70% of global emissions. Cities also control the capital, infrastructure, and policy that shape everything else. We won’t solve climate change without solving for cities.
The Cost of Adaptation: Extreme weather is already a balance-sheet issue: the WEF estimates $4T in corporate P&L losses from climate impacts. Above 90°F (32°C), productivity can drop by 50%. Climate resilience becomes critical to operating.
Utilities in Permanent Crisis Mode: U.S. utilities spend $100B+ a year on disaster recovery, and still face more outages per capita than any other developed nation. Reliability is the new frontier for climate innovation.
The Adaptation VC Filter: Laura’s test for what’s VC-backable is simple: the payer and the beneficiary must be the same. If the customer directly benefits (less asset loss, safer operations, lower costs), it’s investable. But when the benefits are public or shared (like cooling a whole city block), the model breaks. That’s where government, not venture, has to lead.
Laura’s Anti-FOMO Investing Playbook:
Does it matter? Is the market big enough? Is the customer pain urgent? And does the solution drive real climate impact? If those hurdles aren’t met, the conversation doesn’t move forward.
Can they do it? Founders must show industry fluency, ideally firsthand experience with the problem, or deep learning through research and customer discovery. Laura looks for founders who can tell a clear story, sell across stakeholders, and attract early believers.
Can it scale?
Feasibility (proof from early pilots)
Desirability (validated customer insights and pipeline)
Viability (a credible path to margins and scale)
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Connect with Laura:
Or ask me for an intro!
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🌊 Next Up on The Swell
A deep dive with Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner at Pale Blue Dot.
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