‘Recession-resistant’ climate start-ups shine in tech downturn

But the stakes are too high to be cynical, said climate entrepreneurs and investors.

“There’s a bigger fight to be had,” said Elisa Jagerson, investor at Wildcat Venture Partners. “Everything else feels like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

It has not always been so. When Julia Collins pitched her climate tech startup to investors in 2019, she dedicated the first slide of her presentation to a dramatic explanation of the climate emergency. She had created Planet FWD, a software provider that helps companies manage their climate impact, and Moonshot, a snacks company that uses regenerative ingredients, local suppliers and recycled packaging.

“I had to spend a lot of time on the courts to get people to learn,” she said.

That has since changed, as climate change and extreme weather events have become impossible to escape. “We’re way beyond the point of having to prove climate change, or that this is a big deal,” said Ms. Collins, who no longer uses the dramatic slide in her pitches.

Some of the new climate start-ups are already growing in value, at least on paper, fueled by the floods of cash. Josh Felser, an investor at Climactic, a venture capital firm, said the 11 climate companies he and a partner had backed over the past two years were now worth two and a half times what they were worth at the time of the news. investment because other investors had invested more money at higher valuations.

“It’s not because we’re so good,” he said. “It’s because the market is so hot.”

The founders said business was booming because potential customers were coming under more outside pressure to become eco-friendly, pushing them to spend money on things like emissions tracking and carbon offsets. carbon. Infogrid, a start-up that provides tools to run buildings and use energy more efficiently, previously struggled to sell its products to customers, said William Cowell de Gruchy, the company’s chief executive.

“Now they’re saying, ‘We have to do this. Our shareholders make us. Our boardroom makes us. Regulators make us,’” he said.