Climate CEOs (by EFI): Scaling Climate Tech Startups #147: Over 15 Years and 150 Investments in Climate Tech Companies — Dawn Lippert, the CEO of Elemental Excelerator
⭐ My guest today is Dawn Lippert, the CEO of Elemental Excelerator, Partner at Earthshot Ventures, and Senior Climate Advisor at Emerson Collective.
Elemental Excelerator advances solutions to climate change and deploys them in the communities that need them the most. Each year, they fund 15-20 companies up to $1 million to improve systems across categories such as energy, mobility, water, agriculture, and beyond. To date, they have invested in 150 companies.
Earthshot Ventures is a venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs making a dent in climate change, and it spun out of Elemental in 2021.
Emerson Collective was established and led by Laurene Powell Jobs, and is working to renew some of society’s most calcified systems, creating new possibilities for individuals, families, and communities.
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🎙️ In this episode, we talked about:
How her work with sea turtle conservation in Puerto Rico and off-grid solar work in India led her to where she is today
Why it’s so important that the 150 companies that Elemental has funded form close partnerships with local communities for project development
The genesis of Earthshot Ventures as an experiment to combine top-quartile VC returns with nonprofit support
Their love of experimentation and their creation of eight financial products to meet the needs of climate founders
The missing gap of FOAK finance (i.e., first of a kind) as companies go from VC funding to project finance
Their obsession with moving more capital into climate, especially because 50% of the solutions we need to meet our 2030 climate goals have not yet been commercialized
How to balance urgency with importance in our calendars
Why joy is so essential in her work and company culture
What she looks for in founders they back
And lots more
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