Climate Capital has invested in 250+ climate startups since 2015. CC Insights shares what we are learning about the early stage climate tech ecosystem. Co-invest with us here.
We’re excited to announce an initiative we’ve been collaborating on: the Climate Scout Fund.
The Climate Scout Fund combines the global networks of Climate Capital, Earthshot Ventures, and Elemental Excelerator to empower a diverse set of today’s climate-tech leaders with capital and community to seed tomorrow’s most impactful climate solutions.
We’re recruiting ~20 exceptional climate scouts who are plugged into powerful early-stage networks (eg. YC, GoogleX, startup founders, etc.), many of whom invest today. Our goal is to recruit at least 50% of our scouts from groups underrepresented in VC.
The concept of scout funds is not new (see Sequoia, Atomico, Accel, Hedosophia, Ada), but this scout fund will be the first of its kind in climate. Scouts will be given an annual investment budget and welcomed into the Climate Scout Fund community where they will connect with other climate scouts and get access to the Climate Capital, Earthshot Ventures, and Elemental Excelerator communities.
We’ll open up scout applications later this month but are accepting nominations now. We already have notable founders and executives who are interested; in general we are looking for scouts across these areas:
Founders and leaders at successful growth stage or public climate tech companies
Well-networked early-stage climate founders
Executives at successful tech companies beyond climate
Exceptional students at leading or highly-specialized institutions
Brilliant, unconventional doers and thinkers
If this sounds like you or someone you know and respect, please nominate them here. While prior investing experience is strongly preferred, it’s not required.
Why build a Scout Fund?
A scout fund is a funding model commonly used by venture capital firms to identify and invest in promising startups – frequently structured as an allocation of capital within a larger firm. These funds operate on a simple yet ingenious principle: harnessing the knowledge, experience, and networks of individuals with a knack for spotting diamonds in the rough.
Whereas VCs at-large can trend towards homogeneity and affinity bias, scout funds allow firms to tap into a wider range of sectoral experts who can identify business models, problem areas, and blind spots that might otherwise be overlooked. By doing so, they increase the chances of discovering groundbreaking startups that have the potential to disrupt markets and generate substantial returns.
These scouts are empowered to invest small checks in companies with the oversight and support of the supporting firms – catalyzing differentiated dealflow for the later-stage funds, and providing early-stage support to founders with big ambitions.
We built this fund to leverage the sector-leading capabilities of Earthshot Ventures, Climate Capital, and Elemental Excelerator in pursuit of supporting the strongest pre-seed climate tech teams in the world -- and we’re excited to get to work.
PS: if you’re interested in being a scout, find us next week in NY @ Climate Week at one of our events.