CLIMB by VSC

Amy Francetic is the founder of Buoyant Ventures , a new woman-owned venture fund in Chicago that invests in digital climate solutions. Her journey began at Evergreen Climate Innovations , where she co-founded and led the company as CEO, before moving on to Energize Ventures , a $165 million venture fund that propelled cutting-edge digital technologies to optimize energy equipment and infrastructu...

For over 15 years, David Roberts has been exploring and writing about a variety of topics related to news and culture. From 2015 to 2020, he was with Vox, a news and culture publication for which he still occasionally writes and contributes. Previously, he was with Grist , a publication focused on environmental news, and has also written for Outside.  He has appeared on TV shows, radio programs, a...

Catherine Boudreau is senior sustainability reporter at Insider .  She previously spent six years at POLITICO , first covering food and agriculture policy and then helping launch the company's first sustainability beat focused on corporate accountability on environmental and social issues. She started her journalism career at Bloomberg BNA. Her reporting has also been featured in Bloomberg Busines...

Tom Chi is the Founding Partner at At One Ventures based in San Francisco. At One Ventures focuses on backing early-stage startups that use deep technology to reduce planetary footprint.  Tom has worked in a wide range of roles from astrophysical researcher to designer to corporate executive developing new hardware/software products and services. He's played a significant role in established proje...

Alex Brown started his career in the tech world and served as a Chief Engineer before turning his attention to science. He is now the Co-Founder and CEO of Alga Biosciences , which has set its sights on transforming the agricultural industry. With a mission to eliminate methane produced by enteric fermentation, Alga has created a model to stop cattle from burping methane and make a dramatic impact...

Leo Banchik is a Partner at Global Founders Capital , leading their early-stage climate tech venture fund. He has a strong passion for sustainable technology and a unique combination of engineering and sustainability consulting experience. A mechanical engineer by background and graduate of the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) , Leo has conducted resea...

Heather Clancy is an award-winning journalist specializing in transformative technology and innovation. She started her reporting career on the business news desk of United Press International, and her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. Heather was the launch editor for the Fortune Data Sheet , the magazine's newsletter dedicat...

Dylan Welch is the Founder & CEO of Green. Org and Dylan Welch Media. He has a long history in television production and business development, having produced over 1,000 TV shows with ABC, NBC, CBS, and Amazon, before starting his own company with a focus on clean technology, renewable energy, and sustainability. Since then, Dylan has interviewed hundreds of scientists, CEOs, and experts in th...

Laurie Menoud is a Partner at At One Ventures , a venture capital firm focused on investing in a world where humanity becomes a net positive to nature. A biotechnologist by training, Laurie’s played roles in the chemical industry, she’s built a dozen ventures out of DoD research programs, and she’s currently focused on finding, funding, and growing teams that catalyze planet-positive industries. S...

Michael Grunwald is a Miami-based journalist who fled the mainstream media after three decades with the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Time Magazine & Politico Magazine. He wrote books for Simon & Schuster called The Swamp (about the Everglades and Florida) and The New New Deal (about the Obama administration), and now is working on another one about how to feed the world without fryin...

Areeb Malik is the Co-Founder of Glacier , a company using AI & Robotics to fight climate change and extract value from the $123B worth of recyclables that fill landfills and oceans. Before founding Glacier, Areeb worked as a Software Engineer at Facebook. This episode centers around the complexities of the recycling industry , why it's such an intriguing yet technically challenging space for...

Stonly Baptiste Blue is a founding Partner of Third Sphere , a venture platform that works for founders accelerating the transformation of global systems to better serve humanity and the planet now and into the future. At Third Sphere he and his team invest in pre-seed tech for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Stonly previously founded Veddio Cloud Solutions , an enterprise software compa...

Andrew Beebe is the Managing Director at Obvious Ventures , a venture capital firm with over $1 billion AUM that invests in early-stage, purpose-driven entrepreneurs reimagining trillion-dollar industries. Andrew joined Obvious Ventures at the firm’s inception to lead investments in climate tech and clean energy solutions, and his investment thesis has led the company to invest in companies, like...

Gagan Dhillon is the CEO & Co-Founder of Synop , creators of an end to end fleet and energy management platform that automates EV operations by helping businesses handle tracking, billing, reporting, and cost management under one unified, data-centric platform. Prior to co-founding Synop, Gagan witnessed first-hand the challenges that businesses face when transitioning to commercial electric v...

Janelle has held numerous leadership positions as a startup CEO and Founder, Mayor of Sausalito, and trusted advisor to startups across a range of technologies. Janelle’s current work focuses on innovation, public service, and climate change leadership. Her organization, The Center for Sea Rise Solutions (CSRS) , is a global nonprofit focused on empowering local decision makers to take action arou...

Lauren is a lifelong entrepreneur, strategic advisor and angel investor, and Co-founder & CEO of Sesame Solar . Sesame Solar manufactures the world’s first 100% renewably powered Mobile Nanogrids, which can be set up in 15 minutes with minimal training by one person. Easily transported by a variety of means, the Nanogrids are used in essential services and emergency response around the world b...

For the past 10 years, Nick Halla has helped build Impossible Foods from the ground up, forming an amazing team and developing and commercializing delicious, sustainable plant-based foods to address many global food production issues - efficiency, scalability, safety, health, food security, and more. Nick was Impossible’s very first employee, and would go on to lead their international strategy, h...

Harsh Patel is the Managing Partner and Co-founder at Wireframe Ventures , where he invests in seed & early-stage startups aiming to improve human health and the planet.  He was an early investor in companies like Palantir , Mammoth Biosciences and Goat . Before that he was Co-founder and CTO of Orbit Commerce, a company that was eventually acquired by Digital River. Harsh is passionate about...

In our latest episode of CLIMB by VSC, we speak with Levi Tillemann , an American entrepreneur, author, and policy expert. He is the founder and CEO of Valence Strategic, an advisory firm specializing in clean energy, and the author of the book The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future .   Levi was appointed as a Distinguished Fellow to the U.S. Secretary of Energy in 2013, and ha...

In our latest episode of CLIMB by VSC, we speak with Meera Clark . Meera is an investor at Redpoint Ventures , a firm that has invested in some of the world’s leading technology companies over the past 20 years. Investments include names like Draftkings, Hims, Netflix, Ramp, Snowflake, Stripe, thredUp and many more. Meera recently joined Redpoint from Obvious Ventures, where she invested in startu...

Listen to this episode from CLIMB by VSC on Spotify. In our latest episode of CLIMB by VSC, we speak with Tommy Leep , founding partner of Jetstream , where he invests in pre-seed climate sustainability and biodiversity startups. Tommy previously worked at AngelList, Haystack and Floodgate, and invested in startups like Robinhood, Patreon, Clubhouse and Mercury.  In 2019 Tommy read The Uninhabitab...

In our latest episode of CLIMB by VSC, I’m thrilled to be joined by our friend Allison Wolff, co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, a startup that leverages data-driven science and cloud technology to help make communities and ecosystems more resilient in the face of climate change. Allison brings to Vibrant Planet over 20 years in Silicon Valley across corporate strategy, product strategy, custom...

Our guest this week on CLIMB by VSC, is Sundeep Ahuja, who is an investor and syndicate lead of Climate Capital and Duro Ventures. As an investor, Sundeep has invested in businesses ranging from Good Eggs, Substack, and Notable Labs and more recently has back leading climate companies including Mosaic, NCX, Arcadia and many more. We love talking about scaling challenges for climate startups on thi...

Our guest this week on CLIMB by VSC, is Raj Kapoor, a VC investor and founding partner of the venture capital firm Climactic. Prior to becoming a founding partner alongside Josh Felser, Raj has a depth of experience as both an operator — Raj as CSO at Lyft and previously CEO of Snapfish and Fitmob before that — in addition to his experience as an investor at Mayfield Fund. At Climactic, Raj is foc...

Our latest guest on CLIMB by VSC, is Katelin Holloway,  an investor and founding partner of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. Prior to becoming a founding partner alongside Alexis Ohanian, Katelin was the former head of people and culture at Reddit, and an investor at Initialized Capital. At Seven Seven Six, Katelin is focused on helping her companies build inclusive company cultures, work...