Putting your money to work
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 10, 2021
Putting your money to work
Money still talks. Let’s explore how we can put our money where our hearts are, and make every dollar count.
A conversation with:
Michael Thomas (Carbon Switch)
Premal Shah (Renewables.org)
Beth Meyer (Techstars)
Zach Stein (Carbon Collective)
Transcript
Zach Stein: Okay, everyone's in. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us on this panel of Putting your Money to Work. My name is Zach Stein. You can see me at the top left there. I'm the co-founder of Carbon Collective. We make it really easy to invest things like your 401k or your IRA in portfolios that are climate first and built for solving climate change.
I am really excited to be here with three awesome panelists who are going to share the work that they're doing. How they think about how to put your money into climate change. And I hope to give us some ways that we as individuals could be actionable for that. So first I would like to introduce at the bottom left there, Michael Thomas, he is the founder of Carbon Switch in Campfire Labs.
His research on electrification and home energy for carbon switch has been featured in media outlets like NPR, CNBC, the wall street journal, and dozens of other publications prior to starting carbon switch. It was a journalist writing for magazines like the Atlantic fast company and quartz. What is really cool. And what we're excited to hear about from Michael is that at carbon switch, Michael has chosen to commit a large percentage of his company's profits towards climate efforts. Which is really, cool. Bottom bright.
I want to introduce Premal Shah. Premal is the co-founder of Renewables.org, which makes it possible for everyday investors like you and me to align their money with their values specifically to invest in solar until now renewable energy has been the domain of large financial institutes.
Ooh, remit Renewables.org makes affordable capital available for a neutral energy in emerging markets. Investors get a 6% APY return by lending money. Premal is also the co-founder of Kiva.org. Maybe you've heard of it under Primo's leadership Kiva raised over a billion dollars for microfinance projects in 75 countries. Premal started his career at PayPal and graduated from Stanford.
And last, but certainly not least Elizabeth or Beth Mayer is the senior risk and compliance attorney at Techstars where she has led the efforts to implement ESG investment principles across their venture portfolio. For those in the audience please if you can turn off your camera, if it's not already off that way, as we move to our speakers our faces will be will be highlighted for that.
And with that, let's get to it. Okay. So the first thing I would love to cover and let's start with Beth. In your work, if you could give a little bit of a story of how in your work at Techstars, how did you come to focus on the need for how to implement ESG principles?
Or maybe more specifically, we can talk about climate principles at that organization.
Beth Meyer: Yeah, absolutely. I was very lucky and the Techstars employees care a lot. Techstars as, a venture fund itself has always lived by hashtag give first, it cares a lot about its impact on its founders and society.
But when it came to the environment there was a group of us that just started meeting independently and we called ourselves the green team. And sometimes we'd talk about like how to build Cobb houses. And sometimes we would talk about how to shift the focus of Techstars to care a lot more. And then a couple of us shut off from that and started to push our executive team and say, this is urgent, this is important. We want sustainability D and I, everything to be at the cornerstone of what we do. And it was very much a go bigger go home was our, idea of let's not add a little bit of ESG. Let's like, do it. And it wasn't necessarily easy to look like a lot of banging on doors and begging, and then they saw the light, which was amazing.
And now we have full executive backing. And so to more directly answer your question, how we are incorporating it into our company and our investment principles. I don't know where we're not. So in June we signed the United Nations principles of responsible investing, very purposely because that ties our hands.
So this can't be a voluntary thing anymore. We have to make public disclosures. We have to meet certain requirements or we're publicly kicked out of this UN group, which would be very embarrassing. So it's now affecting how we pick our companies, how we diligence our companies. How we pick, who will accept investment from what we provide for our employees, everything.
So for us now, our big focus is just to redefine success as a venture capital fund. Usually that's nothing but returns and now it's, more than that. It's we won't even look at you, even though your returns might be great. Or we think they might be great in the future, unless you can show us that you've at least thought about how you impact the environment.
Zach Stein: That's so interesting. And it's, I think like one of the hardest things on kind of money and climate and those types of investments is the gray areas of we won't look at you if this, but yeah. How do you how, have you guys you're on the forefront of this? Like how have you managed that kind of digging into the gray is, or maybe, I don't know if there's an anecdote or example that you could share on yesterday.
Beth Meyer: I will tell you. And a beautiful sense and in a hard sense, there's just not a lot of leaders on this yet in VC. There's impact funds and there's like climate focus funds, but like a really big fund that invest in everything hasn't yet come forward in the US so I want to make that distinction and said this is how we're handling all this.
And so the beautiful opportunity in that is that I just want really hard, like anything that I thought could be a gray area. I was like, this is how we're going to utilize. And we wrote out very explicit. We're going to ask you these 10 questions and if you can't answer them, that's going to impact our decisions here.
We're going to have a committee that has people from all different parts of our company that gets together and assesses. Is this the right partner for us here? Cause that's where I think the gray area comes into is I know on a personal note talking about putting your own money, there's been times where I look into an ESG focused fund.
And then you find that they're investing in like oil companies and you're like wait it, wait a check. That doesn't feel like it works. So we just went through all those issues that we had seen in others and we're trying to do it. And by no means, do I think we have, we done it perfectly, but ours is just to be as comprehensive as possible.
Which is another big aspect for us. The UN PRI really requires a lot of how you invest your money. But it doesn't mention a ton about your internal operations. And for us, it was, we can't demand this of our portfolio companies until we lock it down ourselves. So we've also done a lot internally.
Zach Stein: That's really fascinating. Okay. I want to come back a day into that a little bit deeper but get some other voices here. Premal, let's go to you. You founded Kiva. Would love to just hear that story of kind of going from one of the more successful nonprofits that are out there and of which I'm a proud member, my monthly donation, And would be really interested just to hear what was your journey from being in that position to now founding renewables.org? Was there any kind of like light bulb or what happened?
Premal Shah: Yeah. Thanks Zach. And I'm a huge fan of what you do at Carbon Collective. Kiva it's a website that allows you to invest in microfinance across wealth and geographic divides. And Amy one of the folks in the audience here, she and I used to work at PayPal slash eBay back in the day.
And it's just incredible how complete strangers would buy and sell from each other online and I think the insight with Kiva was why can't we, if you can buy from the stranger on a website, like eBay easily, something that paid by, why can't you make a micro loan to a stranger across both the geographic divides.
And I just learned a ton in the process of creating trying to make it simpler and simpler for people to get involved. In poverty alleviation and, to create more meaningful feedback loops. And I think for me, and I think a lot of us here are in this place of, oh my goodness, climate is this existential risks. There's a narrowing window here. I, honestly just can't think of a more important issue for me to try to develop my energies towards and kind of network and resources. And I'll say just microfinances a very hopeful idea in the context of poverty, right?
Poverty can sometimes feel so overwhelming you talk in terms of billions of people. But then something like micro finance, which is market-based Loans and other financial services can spread very quickly nearly three, 400 million people have benefited from it.
And pioneered by people like Muhammad Yunus who won the Nobel peace prize. If there's something really exciting, I think about the fact that solar is now cheaper than coal in India and in Africa in many places we're seeing this kind of very hopeful moment fixed to the engineers around renewable energy being just a more just you can save money by switching.
And one of the, one of the gating factors, just like with micro finance, so of showing high repayment rates and micro finance was, there's just a lot of capital coming into the space. There's not enough capital, it's not coming fast enough. And I know people oftentimes dismiss the retail investor or kind of everyday people, but drops in the bucket or how you fill up a bucket.
And I think we matter and creating like you have Zack with Carbon Collective, just making it easier for folks to. Align their, portfolio with their values. I think there's something really powerful here. And so we're just getting renewables.org off the ground and what it is.
It's like a Kiva for solar where you could invest in projects across India and east Africa right now. And it's a fixed income product. So you'll help finance rooftop, solar for a factory or a mall. And you get paid back over five to 10 years. And the types of returns that we project we can provide are around 6% annual yield.
So unlike Kiva, which is just a return of principle system, this is one where we believe you can make money as well as because the dollar goes so far in terms of just the grids dirtier in India and the cost of solar. As is about half the cost as it is here. You have about twice the impact of a dollar invested in India, solar versus in American solar in terms of decarbonization.
And so we think that about $1,300 invested would offset the average Americans CO2 for a year, which you know, is a pretty good proposition around making money and a small amount actually going pretty far away in terms of offsetting once on carbon. We're still building it. It's still very early. You never know candidly where the journey will take you, but this is something that just really excited to be focused on.
Zach Stein: Amazing. What a journey that you're on and really excited personally, to take in far, deeper into what you're working on.
Michael would love to jump to you and hear about you have a business that is not climate-related, but you came out and you're like, Hey, I wanna, I want to devote a significant piece of our profits to climate. So I want to hear about where, what was the Genesis of that? And then also some of the nitty-gritty of what's that going to go into?
Michael Thomas: Absolutely. Exactly. I've started a couple of companies about four years ago, I started a company called Campfire Labs. It is not climate related at all. It's a content marketing agency that helps B to B tech companies like Dropbox, Notion, Stripe, Asana to produce content that is not, related to climate or poverty alleviation or any of these things that I consider a lot more altruistic.
I was excited about being able to work with some of these companies that a lot of friends that work there. But I, knew that I wanted to make a bigger impact. And there's a lot of companies that were pledging 1% of their profit or 1% of revenue. And I thought that was a funny thing since a lot of liberal people in San Francisco.
Talk about how we need to raise tax rates and we should be having 50, 60% tax rates at the highest incomes. And then all of us when we actually have the option don't really give or don't do much. If you've ever been to dinner with somebody who is super wealthy and they don't tip. Something's off here, you have the money why aren't you tipping really big? That was some of this, our thinking was that I could actually create some impact by giving. What I decided was would be 50% of the profits from this business to climate non-profits and I had done some writing and journalism, as you mentioned.
I'd also done some volunteer work work in refugee camps and just new. Climate was going to be a huge issue, both for that all sorts of things in our world. But I saw it as really a climate justice issue. I, was in some of these refugee camps, volunteering and Greece and Jordan, and would hear UN officials talk about how there's going to be tens of millions of climate refugees. And and so I just really felt motivated to do something with my money and I felt like at the time there wasn't as much ESG investing. And I still really think that the most impactful thing that we can do is support non-profits. And I think there's just no shortage of amazing nonprofits out there.
A lot of people think that nonprofits aren't very effective or the private sector is way, way better. So why not invest in Tesla? But I think there's just an incredible amount of organizations that are getting coal off the grid. That are investing in trying to pass policy actually speed along the climate transition.
So, that was some of the impetus. And then more recently I've started a company that is climate related to climate tech company called Carbon Switch. And it's like a wire cutter for sustainability. So how can you figure out how to reduce your carbon footprint and improve the comfort of your home?
For example by switching to a heat pump. Most boring and overlooked climate solutions. One that I like to talk about it as much as possible. And and then I also produce reports things related to climate policy.
Zach Stein: Awesome. Yeah, Michael, I would love to nerd out with you on heat pumps. It'd go deep and installation and all of that by doing a stick with you. And as we sneak back through and get a little bit deeper. You're a business owner of, a number of businesses. It this is the lens that you've taken. Are there other areas maybe for people in the audience that you could speak to as someone who like you've spent a lot of time.
Thinking about these, what can you do as your business? You have I imagine a number of employees where you're banking, like all those questions were where did those type of questions like journeys lead you. And are there any kind of lessons that people in the audience who are maybe on a similar spot to, you could take from?
Michael Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I've got an example here that's near and dear and also pretty relevant. And so I guess I'll start by just saying that I think businesses and people within business has really overlooked some of the disproportionate impact that they can have on climate. So one of the unfortunate things about our democracy right now is that people with power and influence have a lot more influence on legislators.
So unfortunately when an executive of a company that creates thousands of jobs or even dozens of jobs in a community goes and talks to a legislator, whether it's a state legislator or a US Senator they actually can move the needle on that. And for anybody that's working at a company or for anyone who runs a business, that's a really big opportunity since you can move the needle on.
Push for for climate action. So one example that I think is often overlooked is a lot of work on climate actually happens at these public utility commissions, which is the state groups that regulate utilities. It's not federal groups that regulate them and here in Colorado Xcel, our big utility that runs almost all the power in this.
They are trying to keep a coal plant open until 2040, and then switched some of their coal to gas, which is in addition to producing a ton of CO2 emissions, it's also just a really bad financial decision. That's gonna stick rate payers are all of us customers with much higher utility bills, and then we're going to have to pay to shut down that coal plant or that gas plant that they invest in at as a sort of stranded asset, that's what they call. A lot of people are like, Oh, what can I do about this? And maybe they go to a protest or, shop in the street. But there's actually these public hearings where you can go and just talk to the PUC commissioner and you can, they have to listen to you. You can go and say, Hey, I really care about this.
And so as a business, you're one of the utilities, biggest customers, because you pay probably hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and bills. And most of these PUC commission meetings are just full. Nobody like there's environmental groups and there's oil and gas companies and no one in between. So you can have a really big influence by showing up as a business leader and lobbying as a citizen to say, Hey, we should cut our rates. We should get rid of some of the CO2. And it's a totally open process where they have to listen to the. Congress where a lot of stuff happens behind closed doors.
So that's one example of where businesses can have a lot of impact. And a lot of people in companies can actually push for their executives to go and show up at some of these or even write an op ed on a paper and try to get more people to advocate.
Zach Stein: That's so cool. That is a suggestion that you don't hear often. How do you, as a business owner use the fact that you have this large footprint, you're a large it's an interesting way of using your supply chain in a way that we don't often think about it and your impact as a customer there. That's really a trust a yeah, Beth, I'd like to pick up on that theme of you guys made this big transition and you touched on some of like, the ESG part is hard.
It internally, and so I guess the question I want to ask is if, you like were to start it all over again, like what, or you're telling someone like what lessons did you learn? Or like, where did you think you fell astray? Or if someone's getting ready to implement this in their company if you want to touch more specifically on money, feel free to go broader.
Beth Meyer: Good question. We had all guns, rubber sledding, roadblocks. I would say, I wouldn't change. So I think lesson learned, I would do what we did and I would throw like the cart before the horse and make a public commitment before the move fast break things. Like I think when it comes to things like this, you have people like probably everybody that's listening right now, it's on this panel that cared deeply, that understand this is urgent.
I think you can't decouple it. I don't want a job that doesn't enable me to make an impact because I think it's so critical if people don't buy into that yet, which plenty don't forcing their hand by making public commitments or making requirements I think is critical.
So I would not change that. I think I love that we did that first because if management changes, if anything. Are these requirements that we're now bound by will not change, which I think is great. I wish we had staffed up specifically for ESG and sustainability sooner. I think there is when it comes to certain in a for-profit institution, especially like an investment fund.
I think there is an assumption. Just like we informally created this green team. I think there's the thought of this is feel good stuff. So people will do this in their free time. And then nothing, everything only grows in fits and starts. And I think that's a real, that's a real problem. I think this needs to be.
And that's where we are now, like past that, where we understand there's tremendous value to this. And we can't take ourselves seriously as a business that cares about the world, unless we hold true to what we're stating and incorporate ESG and everything we do. But I wish we had staffed up first and, been more public, even though we have been quite public about it.
Shout it from the rooftops, because then it creates a cycle. I think we'd get more startups that care about this, which is what we want. And then we get more investors. And I think it's very cyclical, but I think there's a lot of hesitancy here because one thing I didn't mention before, what really helped us move along is we started to get pressure from non us investors in our funds for ESG.
It started becoming table stakes on the diligence process. So just as much as they'd ask about the financial performance of our funds, they would have. How we handle ESG, which really put the pressure on us of how do we handle ESG. We need to, have some good answers here. And so I think that's something until other funds in the U S start to feel that pressure. I think there is a fear of coming out and saying the wrong thing. And what, if you make these big commitments, but somebody's better. So being braver I think, is something else that would have changed.
Zach Stein: That's really cool and really inspiring. I want to move on to Premo. Ed asked you, you and I both have we're in this business, but I think a lot of people here are coming probably as individuals and saying okay, like I have some money, whether it be in a bank or whatever you're doing with it, like how do I maximize my climate impact?
With that money. And I think you'll have a really interesting perspective because you initially came from the nonprofit side of that with Kiva and have now moved onto this for-profit side. Definitely feel free to talk more about the work you're doing, but also I'd be interested as someone who's studied the space really closely. Even if the things that you personally do or stuff like that, of how can you as an individual put your money to work best to put your money to work to solve.
Premal Shah: Yeah. I I just want to pick up on what Michael said which is there things like advocacy there's no real business model in that for a lot of groups, especially when it comes to climate advocacy. And so that's where a donation to a really effective advocacy group, in addition to all the things that we control our personal behaviors that can be really powerful. And I think Michael's got a whole list of. He's, done a lot of work looking at where a dollar philanthropy can have the most impact in this area.
And oftentimes we have two pockets, we have our donation pocket and we have our investment pocket. And, we tend to invest a lot more and there's this opportunity in SAC with what you're doing at Carbon Collective. It's a robo investor. So if you're interested in things like Wealthfront or whatever why not look at Carbon Collective?
And look at the historical returns at Carbon Collective and you can invest along your value set there's companies like there's banks now, like Atmos join Atmos where that's the url.com and you can actually it's a bank, you get a debit card, it's FDAC insured and their investments go into clean energy and Renewables. And, so that's a way of aligning your values. In your portfolio our belief with, Renewables. And we just saw this with Kiva too, is the dollar goes so far in emerging markets. And if you look at econ, the global warming is a global problem.
And if you look at emission levels in India. And many of these markets where, you know, both Kiva and Renewables work it's just it's really going up. And the, grid is very dirty and and in many of these places, solar is actually cheaper. And so we need to accelerate the amount of capital going there and the cheaper it gets, the more opportunity there is for it to not be in your just donation pocket, really, but really as an investment and as part of a, maybe a real diversified portfolio where you own S and P 500. Where you might own your house. I think a really diversified portfolio would have emerging market exposure.
And then there's something really powerful about renewable projects, wind solar, et cetera, which are really uncorrelated oftentimes with a lot of the fluctuations that drive stock prices here, in the U S and what we want to do is originate great projects on the ground, in these markets, or both do it ourselves and work with other partners out there and then help connect them to people who care.
And the dream is that if you do care, 5% of your portfolio would be invested in renewable energy. And that, would just be a really sensible thing to do from a financial perspective, not just from an impact from.
Zach Stein: Awesome. I know I carbon collective I'm super excited to explore. Are there ways that we can collaborate it, make those comprehensive financial plans for people? So we are coming up, we got 10 minutes left in this. What would be great? One thing I know we've looked through it. One thing that would be great is Michael, it sounds like you have a great resource for where a dollar can be best spent.
I don't know if you or someone here could make sure that we get that into the. So that we have that I do want to open up the floor now for questions that we have from the audience. And so I'm going to open up chat here and see. Nisha asked I think this was for you, Beth, what tool do you use to do impact assessments that aren't greenwashing or do you use a consultant?
Beth Meyer: So when it comes to our own impact assessment, we are going to have an outside consultant. The start of next year to do it like a very comprehensive material at the assessment of our impact across all of our stakeholders. We haven't decided which one we're going to use that I'll tell you go B gob. Y sounds fantastic.
And I've been very impressed by them. For our portfolio companies, we have a scale problem. We're not we're not investing in 10, 20 companies a year. It's like 500, 600,000. So to do an impact assessment on every single one is, very difficult and it's not something we've cracked yet.
So the way that we're doing that is highly personalized. Interactions with these startups, which we can do because we're an accelerator model. We have a managing director that selects the companies for investment and it's 10 at a time. So they have we're training our managing directors on this is what matters.
This is important. Here's the very long exclusion lists we have. And if companies do anything related to this. They can't be involved. And then we're training our companies on how to be a B Corp. They, should they be interested in that, how to measure their own impact how to incorporate sustainability into their business model from day one.
So we don't have it figured out yet, but we're trying to do our own recipe. That makes sense for our motto.
Awesome. And when you're asking those companies to measure their own impact, are there any like resources or tools that you point to, or
I can give them to you next year? We're making them right now.
Zach Stein: All right. We're building the airplane as we're flying it here. Awesome. What question I have for the group here is we talked about a little bit about banking and join Atmos. I think that this is something that we've all touched upon. I know it's something, this is like saying personally, it's been really hard for me as a business owner to figure out where.
And where it makes sense from a climate perspective. I don't know, like I've ended up and I'm happy to share more in line, but like we've ended up in a dress like a, really nice baking experience that is just less bad. Like I'm confident as an, a fossil fuels, but that's it. Where have, you had anyone just feel free to hop in here?
Have you approached. And where, did that land for you? I can
Michael Thomas: take that one. I just wrote a 3000 word guide on that. How to move your money to a climate bank says deep in, in the weeds. For the guide, I basically looked at. Where's the money go? I signed up for four bank accounts, which probably flagged me with the FBI.
I think the fourth one took 10 days probably because the FBI is ah, this looks a little sketchy. So anyway, I batted them all. I looked at the user experience and, really tried out a bunch and a few of them do have. Business bank accounts. That's on the carbon switch site, if anybody wants to dig in more, but I personally chose to move my money to Ando.
It was a great user experience a really impact driven company. I think that. One thing I really like about what they're doing is a hundred percent of deposits go to climate investments. Renewables, energy efficiency, UV loans, things like that. And I agree with you, Zack, I think less bad is not a good way to think about climate impact.
If you're just divesting, if you're just moving your money to like a credit union that funds a bunch of car loans that aren't eating. That's not that good. Like we don't, we need the climate emergency demands what I've been referring to as going beyond divestment. And I think today there's just a massive business opportunity for that economic opportunity.
So if you're holding fossil fuels in your retirement account, the odds that your returns are good are quite low at this point. And, that it's true with, banking to. And you can have real impact by switching your money as a business or as an individual.
Zach Stein: Yeah, I saw Al gore came out yesterday saying that fossil fuel debt is a potentially $22 trillion asset bubble.
It could be the new subprime it's oh boy. So that's a thing Beth or Preble any kind of, any other thoughts we, would want to add on the bank?
Beth Meyer: I don't know that I have any good additions on the banking question.
Zach Stein: Yeah. I'm just grateful to Michael about this 3000 word essay.
Michael Thomas: It's on the, I can drop a link to it. It's on the carbon search site. If you go to most recent or the blog page I'll drop a link in it though.
Zach Stein: Okay.
Premal Shah: No. Look at it. The idea of information intermediaries that create transparency around cut through the marketing and help really size things up around where. Money can have the highest impact. And if you're banking, you want that to be FDAC insured.
You want that to be liquid. And then when you think of investments you're willing to carry some risk for higher return. And I think the role that folks like Michael play in the ecosystem it's really valuable. Because I think we're on the right side of a bigger trend I think more and more people are waking up to just how serious this is. And they really I think kind of happiness for many people's being connected to something bigger than oneself. And I can't imagine anything bigger than this cause. And aligning. Lanny aligning your behaviors to that is important, but there's a lot of marketing fluff out there and it's, hard.
And so it's really important for, people to like Michael to come in and a wire cutter for climate I think is desperately need.
Zach Stein: Yeah. Another resource that I like in this space is rainforest action networks report for banking on climate, or it's looking, it's not looking at the good banks, it's listing the ones that are the worst offenders in this ad.
I, don't know about you guys. I've been very frustrated by a bank of the west, which is doing a lot of advertising about this space. Like what is your bank invested in? Like their parent company is one of the top two. Funders of fossil fuels in terms of banks, BNP, Paribas. So it's a tough space.
Michael Thomas: I would also just love to add hope we got audio.
Zach Stein: Let's see. I think someone, it should. Looks good now.
Michael Thomas: Yeah, I think one last thing I just wanted to say on all of this step banking or investing I looked into a lot of this stuff a few years ago cause I was interested and it was really hard. There was just not a lot of good options. There. Wasn't a carbon collective.
There wasn't a renewables. I recently just redid that because my wife and I wanted to move all of our money. Like every single dollar. Into this beyond divestment idea. And there's just an incredible amount of opportunities out there. We just decided to invest $25,000 in renewables because I think what promo and his team are, doing is amazing.
And we want to put our money behind that. And it's just crazy to me that you can invest money in. Today that offsets the emissions and helps human health in a country like India that has both so much impact and also makes you. An insane amount of money over time. Like the value of compound interests that has just created a 6% between now and 2050.
If you invest 500 bucks every month you'll have a good amount in your retirement account. Whether it's carbon collective or renewable started work. So I just think there's an incredible amount of opportunity. And I'm just so excited about the opportunities out there for people and would encourage everybody that try to move as much of their money.
Zach Stein: Awesome. We are seeing a question here from Brene, which is for Beth. This is something that we like look at a carbon collective. We have the climate index, which we're looking at. Every company that's building a climate solution that on that is publicly traded. That is not generating more revenue from the fossil fuel industry.
It still leaves out a lot of categories. Of companies there's a lot that look to be like really great to fill. And so you're at the other end of this is, these are all publicly traded companies and you're the ones that are companies are just getting started. I'm wondering if has that been able to be any type of focus of sag?
Like these are underfunded from us.
Beth Meyer: It's really interesting. And I feel like lucky for Techstars is we're so early stage and we have such a broad range it's if you are. If you can claim that you do tech in any way. So we have companies that like, because they sell their plates online, that's tech we have all sorts of very, novel, unique climate oriented companies that are applying.
And so right now, have we decided there are certain sustainability verticals that we're most interested? Absolutely. But ours is more. How are you looking at this and how, can you back up that you think that this is going to be an actual solution? So I can't say that there's this is we're too broad in what we look for to just delineate.
These are the three areas we're looking for right now, but our, the way we've taken this, as we're going to immerse all of our investment professionals that are picking the companies that we're going to ultimately invest in. In what our solutions we're going to educate them on climate change. We're going to educate them on, where we need support so that they can assess these companies on a one by one basis.
Zach Stein: Yeah, I really liked that. It's not like a top-down mandate, but it's saying let's make sure everyone's like swimming in the same water here.
Beth Meyer: And the thing is we've tried top-down and it, you end up missing so many unique, amazing ideas. Especially we're trying we've always been very global, but we're scared of scaling even more geographically and.
Places where entrepreneurs have not been tapped in the world that have a perspective that is incredibly valuable that I think we'll have. I think, I really believe some of the biggest solutions will be coming from areas where no one's been investing.
Zach Stein: Amazing. Amazing. All I'm going to ask our last question.
Okay. It looks like we've got, if we have time for this question, John, I just saw come in. I'm gonna, I'm going to ask our last question. If we have time we'll address it. Which will be what is one key idea or actionable takeaway that you would like this panel, this group to take away. Put up your hand or finger if, when you're ready with one and what you would like it, and let's try and keep these like really concise in, bite size, Michael, we're gonna start.
Michael Thomas: I've got a quick one. I think one of the best ways to learn about any of this stuff and to get excited about it is to just try it. So my recommendation. Yeah. Take a hundred bucks and move it somewhere, open an account with Ando or Atmos or invest the money into renewables and just get started. It's addicting.
You get into it and you do more and more. But don't feel overwhelmed and, just take that first step. Put that first drop in the bucket. That'd be my recommendation for everybody here. Do it tonight or this
Zach Stein: weekend. I love that. Do it tonight. You don't have to change your whole life. Just give it a shot.
Beth Meyer: Mine would be don't underestimate your position no matter what your role is in a company to shift them to care about this. So be brave, put something out there and be bold and talk to your executive teams and say, this is something we're passionate about. And, you can very easily frame the financial opportunity for anything that is leaning into ESG and climate.
But if this is something you're passionate about, but you feel pigeonholed and think, oh, but in my current job, it doesn't make any sense for me to do this change, change the script and change the company. Cause that would have a huge impact.
Zach Stein: Yeah. I love that. There's the phrase of every job should be a climate job.
And so yeah. What power do you have in your company in your current role?
Premal Shah: It's, hard. I, love, Michael's just start now and start small, learn into it. And Beth, what you said around social entrepreneurship and it's amazing. The power we have with our voice.
I'll just echo those two things. I think those are really pragmatic and I'm into just pragmatic small steps.
Zach Stein: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. Michael, it sounds like people could follow your work if they look up carbon switch and the amazing things that you're doing Beth, they can find your work at Techstars.
If you are a startup who is looking for funding who is especially in the climate space, go check them out. If you are looking to invest in renewables in a place where you can have significant impact without a huge amount of money and make stable returns, which in this world is not a consistent big go check out renewables.work.
My name is Zach Stein. I, again, I'm the co-founder of carbon collective. We make it really easy to invest things like your publicly traded equities into climate. Thank you all so much for joining.
Michael Thomas: Exactly.
Jen: That was amazing. Thank you so much, everyone. I just dropped a leak in the chat where you can head on back to the main stage. We're going to close this out and head into community conversation. So thank you again to all of our incredible panelists. I'm going to go take some money and invest it somewhere, probably in renewables.org.
It's amazing. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone.
