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Climate Takes 2024
52 Plays1 month ago
Climate Takes takes a quick look back on 2024. We're joined by Nicky and Michael, cofounders of Carbon13, who share their takes on climatetech trends this year and what we think is coming through in 2025. We also take the time to enjoy our favourite moments and recognise the wonderful work of our partners such as Barclays Eagle Labs, Siemens Energy Ventures, Arm and more.
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Transcript
Introduction and Focus on Carbon 13's Journey
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Climate Takes. Climate Takes 2024. We'll be taking a look back at this year for Carbon 13 and a look ahead to 2025. I'm delighted to be joined by Michael and Nikki, the co-founders of Carbon 13. Nikki is the CEO and Michael is Chief Strategy Officer. Hello, guys. How are you doing? Morning. Yeah, well, no good morning.
00:00:34
Speaker
OK, guys, we're going to start with a quick fire round. OK, Michael, you go first and then we'll do we'll do Nicki.
Cohorts and Team Building Highlights
00:00:41
Speaker
ah Michael, ah what's been the biggest wah-hey moment this year? I think like for me, there was the start of the last cohort was just ah Again, like having a new cohort start in Berlin and then starting at almost at the same time in Cambridge and seeing these two groups of people um and both of them just incredibly impressive individuals in in two of these cohorts. There's 80 people in each cohort and
00:01:13
Speaker
I think now ah towards the end of the year, we have now over 50 teams working on different climate solutions, which is just amazing. Just the pure energy in that room, but also the the potential that will come from that. Exactly. Nikki, best event.
00:01:33
Speaker
Best event.
00:01:36
Speaker
So Michael's just spoken about some of the ones with the cohorts, but actually the other one that sticks out in my mind is our company day, and which we had earlier in the summer. um And it was just brilliant having the team together, the sun was shining, and hearing all of the ideas for you know what we want to achieve going forward was brilliant. 100%, I really enjoyed it. and Okay, ah we're gonna move into ah looking
Partnerships and Collaborations with Major Players
00:02:07
Speaker
at the year. but um It's been a joy this year for Carbone 13 to work with Barclays Ego Labs. How do you think this year has gone ah for our work with them?
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's um so Barclays have been a partner of ours for a little while now. And I think and there's something about working with an organization over a period of time. It really helps us to understand their priorities and obviously for them to understand ours. Barclays have been on their own journey making stronger commitments to climate, which is fantastic. And I feel like we're very much and a key part of that. so Yeah, it's it's a flourishing partnership that's able to support ah some really fantastic ventures. I'm looking forward ahead to 2025 with another venture launchpad with Barclays. A highlight for me this year was we won the Growth Investor Award a Team of the Year for investing in in women um and I think
00:03:14
Speaker
a large contribution to that was a couple of other ah partners as well. Nikki, would you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. So yeah, that that was a really nice moment. And thank you for putting the application in, Sarah. um We've done, I mean, look, something like that doesn't come from one thing alone. So we as Carbon 13 have been, um we're not necessarily very vocal on this.
00:03:45
Speaker
at all times but um it's a core part of our mission and to make sure that we have diversity in our teams and that allows us to bring new perspectives on how we solve and climate change and our partners very much buy into that so Barclays is one they they're very supportive of it and maybe Michael you could talk about Siemens Energy. Yeah happy two I mean we realized that there's just a lot of other people. um what We realized realized that ah bringing together different partners and supporting this kind of initiative to bringing more women into into climate tech, um if we can bring in partners, then this makes our initiative stronger. And Siemens Energy, we had been talking about a partnership for a while and realized that there's a very strong connection around this topic of bringing more women into climate tech. And Kendra
00:04:42
Speaker
the managing partner of Siemens energy ventures. She was right away sort of, when we mentioned that to her, she was right away excited that they could support that. um And we've been doing that now um in coming up with a third cohort. um So and we started with, um yeah, with the last one.
00:05:04
Speaker
And then, um yeah, we're now very excited about other ways to also expand that partnership. So for example, we see this also around the kind of startups that we support and the kind of expertise that Siemens Energy has and also invests in as Siemens Energy Ventures, there's a strong overlap in terms of the energy transition um and other startups that might need a physical element of their of their business and might need to, for example, do a fork, like a first-of-a-kind plant. And this is something where Siemens Energy Ventures is also very strong and we can see a lot of potential long-term.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, and then the the other partner is Arm, who are based in
Building an Ecosystem through Strategic Partnerships
00:05:45
Speaker
Cambridge. and So Fiona Arm has been in and the team the wider team has been very supportive. They actually helped us in doing some independent research of how people experience the Carbon 13 program and if we need to be thinking about other things that we can do.
00:06:03
Speaker
um So I expect we'll be releasing some of the findings from that next year. And of course, you yourself, Sarah, you did some work um earlier in 2024 where you were able to speak to some of our founders. And again, how do we package that up in a way that not only benefits our founders, but also externally as people are considering what pathways they want to take?
00:06:28
Speaker
um And then the final one is HSS, so Herbert Smith Freehills, who again have been offering support. Yeah, especially around the supporting teams with at the early stages around what kind of documents should I be looking at? How do I even incorporate my business? None of these kind of steps where you do, you could use a lawyer, but maybe as an early stage setup, you don't have the money to pay for a lawyer. So having some kind of pro bono work from Herbert Smith-Freehill was um very great. And Dylan, our contact there, yeah he's been with us actually for quite a while now as ah as a partner as well. So we're happy with that. I think in a way, 2024, we've made, it's been the year of the ecosystem strengthening in a way. I think every every other the week, I feel like we're we're working with another organization and
00:07:23
Speaker
i ah to support the the ecosystem in the UK and Germany because the partners that we've mentioned are based both in Germany and Cambridge and it is part of how we operate to build that bridge between the UK and the EU and beyond. Yeah, I mean we should probably mention that we've we've had a series of announcements at the end of this year from Earthshot, obviously being a nominator on that, Geovation where we've been doing some events in their spaces and and working a bit more closely with their team. TechSpace would be the other one, which spans both at the UK and Germany, and also is now offering some co-working space ah to our ventures. um And then we have, in the broader ecosystem, other programs that we're able to plug into. um So when ventures leave our programs, they have other places to go.
00:08:18
Speaker
And we're going to kick off the year with the two amazing showcase days. If you you're an investor in climate tech, you should definitely reach out if you haven't signed up to our demo day um sort of climate innovation showcase days in Cambridge, which is now taking place in London um in late late January, as well as in Berlin. And both of them are hosted by Google, um which has been a really strong partnership for us as well.
00:08:45
Speaker
exactly We'll be sharing the the links to our January events.
Reflections on Climate Tech Challenges and Opportunities
00:08:49
Speaker
um how what's our what's What's our take on 2024 for climate tech in general? I think 2024 was a difficult year still. We're still coming out of a period where, obviously, 2020, 2021, there was a lot of investment. I think a lot of companies had to almost grow into the kind of valuations that they had raised in earlier. And also, there's been a slight shift to towards more AI-focused businesses. I think that's been sort of the buzzword of the year for a lot of VCs.
00:09:27
Speaker
I think 2025 is very exciting um about the possibilities. like We know there's a lot of businesses that really have been making progress and are coming up to a really strong growth round in the next 18 months or so. um Yeah, that's maybe some it's for me. Yeah, I mean, it's, um as ever, there's been some big geopolitical events.
00:09:55
Speaker
um Some of the things that I, yeah, some of the notable things are COP 29. We finally had some agreement on Article 6 which allows countries to work together to address emissions. um there's So that met With some excitement but also some disappointment, I see it as ah a step on a good pathway because we need to get climate finance in better shape and it also opens up a huge number of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Keter, one of our ventures, is very much in the heart of that space but taking a data-driven approach so that we can have high integrity carbon offsets.
00:10:39
Speaker
um The other big news was the US elections. That's raised questions on the IRA, so the Inflation Reduction Act.
Impact of Elections on Climate Policies and Startups
00:10:49
Speaker
And my expectation is we will see some aspects of that stay, other parts go. um We also had an election in the UK and we're still trying to understand what that means for various different sectors and activities.
00:11:07
Speaker
um And then the other thing, just relating back to AI, I've heard a lot of people talking about the EU AI Act, which is very interesting. Some perspectives that it may harm us in the short term, but be beneficial long term. Other people think it's... Well, anyway, I think there's questions to be raised for 2025 and AI businesses and where they wish to locate.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, I would add I feel um this year, increasing to see a lot more circular economy startups who are trying to find the value in the supply chain, ah looking at previously products that would be waste and to see if we can derive a value from them. um And I think a glimmer of hope for me as well is, and you've mentioned this, Nicky, the intersection between hardware and AI as well, that combination.
00:12:10
Speaker
um So I think ah that's probably the research I'll be doing over my Christmas break is understanding in more detail the relationship between understanding hardware and the intersection of AI with the two together. I think would be my recommended Christmas research.
00:12:27
Speaker
I remember in 2022 we started looking into that sort of triangle of founders because obviously that's where we come in. It's like the the founder level and you have this idea of a of a scientist and machine learning AI person and a commercial person having those three together. We have quite a few examples in our cohorts where um Samudra Earth, we're on this podcast obviously where you have a data person, commercial person, actually in one person in that case, um and then a scientist and another team that is just about to close around um working on the intersection of um sort of
00:13:05
Speaker
optimization experiments in the biotech industry and AI and again bringing those together. and I think there's a lot of opportunity and you'll see a lot of teams from carbon-13 having sort of being at the very early stages of that and sort of starting to make waves in 2025 and beyond.
Celebrating Milestones and Future Opportunities
00:13:24
Speaker
We saw our thousandth founder go through our program this year as well as our tenth program start.
00:13:30
Speaker
um And applications are open for our 11th and 12th programs with our accelerator opening up not long after that. So I'm so excited to see the amazing people who are going to join the Carbon 13 community ah from that. um ah If you know anybody who still wants to fight the climate emergency you see through a startup, um please refer them to us. We're very welcoming. We'll have a chat and take them through everything that we do.
00:13:57
Speaker
um Okay, that's all my questions. um Any last words that you would like to add?
Showcasing Founders and Climate Entrepreneurship
00:14:05
Speaker
I think the last one is, this is a new thing for us, Sarah. So why are we doing climate takes?
00:14:13
Speaker
um We're doing climate takes for lots of different reasons. I think We admire the work our founders do and they have such interesting stories to tell. So we want to make sure the world knows about the work that they're doing. But more than that, we want to say this is why climatic entrepreneurship is necessary and then why it works and then why it should have resources allocated to it. So it's also looking at people's takes on the industry and problem space that they are working in from a founding and investment perspective.
00:14:49
Speaker
But it's still a call to arms as well. What is climate going to take to fight the climate emergency? We need to keep the momentum going in the right direction. And so this podcast is as a part to play in that. OK, cool. and That's Climate Takes 2024.
00:15:10
Speaker
ah We are very much looking forward to 2025 and from everybody at Carbon 13, Merry Christmas,