Climate CEOs (formerly Entrepreneurs for Impact): Scaling Climate Tech Startups

Led by CEO Tom Arnold, Gridium aims to reduce the carbon intensity of the built environment with energy efficiency solutions ranging from software optimization to deep retrofits for commercial and industrial real estate providers. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Gridium is the leading partner for companies looking to navigate the energy transition. We provide useful software that enables companies to manage energy more effectively with the equipment they already have. In the last year, we have expanded our offerings to help companies upgrade their existing equipment to increase operational efficiency while reducing carbon impact. We service about 3,000 commercial buildings and about a half-billion square feet of office space." "If you look at any city in America and see the high-rise apartment or office buildings, you are looking at billion-dollar assets. However, none of these assets, as incredible as it may seem, are credit-rated. If the asset is not credit-rated, you cannot do the typical ESCO model which is needed to finance a retrofit at this scale. We were able to figure out a financial solution that has enabled us to do ten million dollars of deep energy retrofits in the last year or so. I am not talking about 5% energy savings that you might get from our software solution; I am talking about 30%, 40%, or 50% energy savings from a fundamental transformation of the building." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Kiran Bhatraju, Arcadia Power is a platform that provides consumers various clean energy choices to decarbonize their homes. With options ranging from renewable energy credits to community solar and a guaranteed seamless billing experience, Arcadia power makes clean energy accessible and affordable for the residential sector. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are a new nationwide digital utility platform. We give clean energy access to everyone across the country no matter where you live -- home or apartment. Our business is against the backdrop of an industry with a monopoly structure that does not provide a lot of options, and we aim to change that. We have been in the market for five years, but we have been adding new products to the platform over time. We came to the market with a basic 100% renewable energy plan in which homeowners would purchase credits against their bill, and we have become one of the largest virtual power plant platforms in the country." "We are a team of product developers, data scientists, and engineers whose singular focus is to make the customer experience as simple as possible. The reality is that if a single customer would try to go out into the market to purchase clean electrons for themselves whether from a community solar perspective or otherwise, it is nearly impossible." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Aaron Ratner, President of Cross River Infrastructure Partners, a sustainable infrastructure developer, delivering next-generation climate positive projects, including carbon, hydrogen, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Cross River Infrastructure Partners is a platform of development companies deploying climate technology and capital into sustainable infrastructure projects. We do two things. We co-develop projects with development teams that have very focused expertise in a particular vertical, and we also partner with technology providers to become a developer of their technology as a service into the market. We currently work across carbon, hydrogen, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy, which are increasingly intertwined. The model is to have a platform to catalyze early commercialization of projects and technologies. Our goal is to bring together corporate partners, investment capital and talented technology developers to get early players accelerated up the technology adoption curve." "Our vision is to have built a platform that enables nascent but proven climate technologies to accelerate their deployment and get more projects in the ground by bringing together corporate customers and institutional finance. An additional aspect of the platform would include systematized vetting of technologies, which is a very difficult task. There is really a small window of opportunity, in which a technology is neither too early, risking relationships and capital, nor too late, wasting time and market opportunity. We are going to continue to refine our criteria for this type of project and technology evaluation." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by Jennifer Wagner, CarbonCure Technologies is deploying carbon sequestration retrofit technology for existing concrete plants as it aims to ultimately reduce 500 megatons of CO2 annually. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are one of the fastest-growing companies in the carbon removal industry. We offer a retrofit technology for concrete manufacturers that enables the production of the same reliable, durable concrete but with a reduced carbon footprint. Our solution is unique for its scalability and immediacy. There are many great carbon reduction strategies for an industry that require huge capital expenditures and long timelines for implementation, but we aim to make an impact more quickly and economically. Our solution works with existing infrastructure and regulations and can be installed in a single working day, without disrupting operations." "I am a chemist by training. After completing my undergraduate degree in Montreal, I continued to graduate school where I learned that I did not particularly enjoy lab work. After a particular presentation, I was told by a professor that he did not like the scientific aspect of my presentation, but if I were selling him something, he would buy it. This partially motivated me to pursue an MBA (chuckling). Through conversations with peers, I met CarbonCure’s founder founder Rob Niven who had a consultancy company and was beginning to launch what would become CarbonCure at the time. The rest is history." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by Kate Steel, Nithio is using data science to build a platform for evaluating credit risk and facilitating institutional investment towards off-grid energy solutions in Africa. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Our mission is to unlock financing at scale for energy access in Africa. There are 600 million people in Africa who lack access to electricity. It is believed that about 300 million of these people would be best served by off-grid energy solutions. Fortunately, there is a strong off-grid solar market that offers a pre-packaged solution for many of these households. In addition, there is a robust pay-as-you-go financing structure layered on top of that. However, because these systems are not paid for up-front, there is some actual and perceived risk that must be managed to ensure the system is paid for in full over time. We are able to model and understand the consumer financing risk at the household level which enables investors to come off the bench and join the game, thereby fueling the deployment of this off grid solar and storage in Africa. Ultimately, we are creating an alternative credit model standard to unlock this broader financing potential." "We are an intermediary for a blended financing facility. We welcome all types of risk profiles, including equity and debt investors, but would like to see more institutional capital. We operate as a capital conduit enabled by our analytics engine. There are a few market leaders in the off-grid solar space in Africa and a long tail of smaller and often local companies as well. We exist to provide funding for many of these companies as they grow and scale into bigger players." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by Wanona Satcher, Mahkers Studio builds residential and commercial spaces from used shipping containers. The company is currently focused on accelerating the speed of deployment while dramatically reducing the total cost of construction with its modular construction process in order to address the affordable housing crisis. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "Mahkers Studio is a green manufacturing and design-build company. We creatively reuse shipping containers as a modular real estate solution. We are able to customize these containers as residential and community spaces with the most impact coming from their ability to serve as affordable housing solutions. We view our solutions as an improvement, in terms of material and land-use efficiency, within the traditional construction industry." "Our fundamental goal is to address the affordable housing crisis. In order to do so, we needed a cost-effective and abundant material that could be constructed in a more efficient and localized manner. These constraints naturally lead to shipping containers that are already existing and consequently cheaper. We are also able to achieve benefits in terms of carbon reduction, structural integrity, and land-use efficiency." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.

Led by CEO Pandwe Gibson, EcoTech Visions serves as a co-manufacturing space in Miami Florida to help entrepreneurs and startups develop eco-friendly localized manufacturing capacity. Below are two excerpts from the podcast. "We are committed to limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in alignment with the UN’s recommendations and the ideal outcome of the Paris A. We aim to contribute to this broader mission by facilitating the distributed manufacturing of bio-resin and other environmentally friendly products in a manner that promotes entrepreneurship and innovation across materials sciences and business models. There is no need for every venture to figure out and build their own manufacturing capacity. They can outsource that to us." "Co-manufacturing can be compared to co-working offices in the sense that instead of sharing an office or workspace, entrepreneurs are able to share the use of advanced manufacturing equipment in a manner that is optimized for local supply chains. Legacy systems have traditionally forced entrepreneurs to outsource production to China and other parts of the world. This outsourcing comes at a significant cost in terms of complexity, fragility, and carbon footprint that we are looking to reduce by bringing cost-effective production back to the United States in a more regionalized way. We also aim to provide customers with about 10% cost savings through this shift." Here is the transcript summary of the podcast. -- Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for investor-backed CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our highly vetted, invite-only cohorts of 11 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Here are membership benefits, and these are sample members. To request more information on membership, click here. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 50,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.