Everything is hard…
Climate Week April 2023
Climate VC = Hardware VC
Climate investing is 2/3 hardware
Planetary
Benefits
Large
Market
Rapid
Growth
Bits &
Atoms
Traditional VC
Cleantech 1.0
What we believe
Thesis �Proprietary & Confidential
Some of the best generalist VCs have reached the same conclusion: climate is mostly not software
Seed Dynamics�Proprietary & Confidential
4
| Hardware % of general portfolio | Hardware % of climate portfolio |
| < 30% | ~ 70% |
| < 10% | ~ 60% |
Top GP Sample | NA | 66% |
| < 10% (angel fund) | 63% |
Source: Crunchbase, YC, Vintage IP (Top GP Sample) with data classification from Third Sphere.
Hardware Flavors: Multiple paths to real 🦄 ($1b annual revenue)
5
| |
|
100m
Resonant Link wireless charger coils
6m
Rachio water control devices
0.5m
Onewheels
Hardware Flavors: things that make things
6
2,000
Toggle modular rebar fabs
10,000
Furno modular cement kilns
50
Bowery indoor vertical farms
Hardware Flavors: XaaS
7
1m
Cycle ebikes
10,000
Near Space stratospheric robots
2.5m
Mill organic waste bins
Hardware Flavors: Is it construction or manufacturing?
8
We try to avoid complex, customized hardware because it’s super hard to scale rapidly. Most of our portfolio fits within Type 1 and Type 2: Mass-produced: Onewheel electric boards, Gradient self installed heat pumps, Resonant Link wireless chargers. Mass-customized: Radiator Labs heating system retrofit, Sapient Energy commercial building controllers. Mass-produced complex products: Climate Robotics biochar robots, News Space Labs stratospheric robots. Some standardized complex products exist like Bowery, Furno and Toggle modular fabs. |