Invested In Climate

The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful data points and frameworks (30,000 US climate patents, $250K to launch a deep-tech startup, IEA's 40% of needed 2050 solutions not yet commercialized) but these are interspersed with substantial filler, introductions, and general statements about why philanthropy matters that add little for a sophisticated operator.

“In the US alone, we have 30,000 climate related patents in our national labs and universities”

“We estimate it takes about $250,000 to launch a startup from scratch and support them for the first 16 months”

The episode largely recycles familiar arguments about why VCs won't fund early-stage deep climate tech and why philanthropy is needed in the Global South; the most original moment is Andrew's 'innovation arbitrage' framing and Deepa's back-of-napkin $400M calculation, but neither is developed into a genuinely contrarian or first-principles argument.

“innovation arbitrage which is like taking innovation in one region and reshaping it, learning from it, taking it to another”

“if we just assume that we have a 1% success rate, then what we need is 2,000... each of those fellows would need $200,000 to launch... the being $400 million that Lab Start would need to solve climate change”

Both guests are genuine practitioners with real organisational track records - Deepa has 20 years spanning GE Ventures and product launches, Andrew leads an organisation that has supported 11,000 entrepreneurs and mobilised $5.4B - but they are nonprofit ecosystem builders rather than founders or executives who have scaled a commercial business themselves.

“I have been working at the intersection of, uh, climate innovation and capital deployment for the last 20 years. I spent time as a venture capitalist, places like GE Ventures”

“we've supported over 11,000 entrepreneurs, 1800 startups to date. We just released our impact report. This has mobilized $5.4 billion in fall one funding and revenue”

The episode is anchored by several named companies with concrete dollar figures and impact metrics - particularly the Indonesia investment cases - giving it better-than-average specificity for a philanthropy podcast, though some sections remain vague and aspirational.

“That $500,000 that we put into that company catalyzed $88.5 million in follow on value creation and investment. They operate a portfolio of over 100 megawatts of solar PV systems with over 200 project sites, 164 megawatts uh, of energy generated annually equivalent to 147,000 tons of CO2, uh, avoided annually”

“we put 500,000 into which catalyzed $35.8 million of an additional value. They sold over 20,000 electric motorbikes with the battery swap. So you can take the battery in. They have different charging stations at the cvs... They deployed over 1300 battery swapping stations across Indonesia”

The guest-host format produces soft, pre-prepared prompts that function more as open invitations to pitch than genuine probing; there is no pushback, no challenging of claims, and follow-ups simply hand the floor to the other guest rather than pressing on anything substantive.

“What about LabStart? Tell me about one founder or company that captures why your model works. What stage were they at when they came into your program?”

“If you had the resources you needed over the next five years, what would you would be true about the climate tech landscape that isn't true today”