Climate Capital’s Founding Story
Climate change is an $80 trillion market opportunity disguised as an existential crisis. All businesses must undergo paradigm adjustments to achieve zero emissions, remove CO2 from the environment, buy time to prevent the worst climate disasters, and repair the damage.
Globally, the main emitters are energy generation, transportation, manufacturing, and food production, and any change in any of these implies multi-trillion-dollar market opportunities. Supporting early-stage climate tech companies not only saves the world but also provides a generational investment opportunity.
Climate change is the defining crisis of the twenty-first century, and how humanity addresses (or fails to handle) this challenge will have a profound impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Climate Capital argues that climate damage and venture profits may be coupled to create a path and incentive for investment in climate adaptation, mitigation, and restoration.
Climate Capital was born from Sundeep Ahuja’s passion for climate and entrepreneurship. Sundeep is the author of a climate-focused book, HALINE, "Hunger Games meets climate change," and a television show pilot, Last Glimpse, “a visit to the Maldives which faces rising sea levels.” He also previously founded Silicon Climate, a non-profit accelerator for climate companies, and blissmo, a company that helped consumers discover more sustainable products. Since its inception, Climate Capital has invested in over 250 of the world's most outstanding climate startups.
Sundeep has been investing in climate since 2015 and launched Climate Capital in 2018 as an angel investment syndicate. In 2020 the pools of top-tier climate entrepreneurs and climate-motivated LPs had grown larger than what one person could manage, and Michael Luciani joined the team to help establish the Climate Capital Collective (C3). C3 was founded to enable emerging investment managers to lead deal sourcing and diligence, taking advantage of Climate Capital’s exceptional dealflow. This structure has allowed Climate Capital to broaden the talent pool in early-stage investing and scale up its ability to connect LPs to all of the best entrepreneurs working on climate solutions.
Over time the firm has grown (so far) to have three distinct traditional focus areas (Growth, Early, Bio) in addition to the syndicate (C3). This structure has allowed Climate Capital to build expertise in specific verticals and stages while leveraging efficiencies of scale, allowing us to give the best founders an unfair advantage in accelerating their growth.
Climate Capital is building a community of ambitious entrepreneurs who radically impact the human carbon footprint. Founders recommend Climate Capital because:
Everyone on the team was a founder before they became an investor, which allows the CC team to bring actionable advice and empathy to their relationships with founders, as they understand what it takes to build exponentially impactful businesses.
We are strongly networked - with >2500 climate investors, founders, operators, and enthusiasts in our community are uniquely positioned to help founders find the best talent, customers, strategic partners, and investors.
We are both business savvy and deeply technical. The team prides itself on seeing opportunities in markets and technologies that are not obvious to others and helping founders leverage these opportunities to create massive value.
Watch this space to meet our founders and enjoy insight pieces by our team & network. Welcome!
