What a fantastic event on the climate capital stack! Huge thanks to Daniel Kriozere, Helena Merk, Luc Gerdes, Marisa C. Sweeney, Cody Nenadal, Lisa Wang, Alicia Cha Umphreys and Matthew McGraw! The community thanks you for all your efforts. Together we grow, learn, and move faster! #9Zero #climatetech #capital
We're hiring at Streamline! Come accelerate access to capital to scale the climate transition ??????
One of the most overwhelming parts of building in #climate is constructing a "capital stack". Unlike building in SAAS, in #climatetech you need to fund physical "stuff" and returns on investments take longer-- this means you can't only rely on VCs and need to get creative. Daniel Kriozere put a panel together this week to demystify this, bringing together companies from across the stack: from where we at Streamline Climate sit with grants, to VC funding, to equipment financing with Luc Gerdes and Camber Road, etc.. ( ?? See the chart below for how it all fits together ) Having a full capital stack represented on a panel meant we could explore when and why each capital sources was relevant. A lot of climate tech is early and unproven, making traditional funding harder to access and you need to combine multiple. Financing these "first of a kind" #FOAK projects requires a larger risk appetite which fewer lenders have. Some of the key takeaways shared: 1) Match the type of capital to the specific business function. Ex: if you need expensive equipment, consider equipment financing rather than operating off of your balance sheet 2) These capital sources are not competing against eachother, rather they are collaborating. For example, the best time for Venture Debt is right after raising a VC round. 3) This is hard. There is no one-size-fits-all. --- ?? Shoutout to the 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub for hosting us. They're bringing the sf climate ecosystem together - thanks for all the awesome work done by Matthew Joehnk and Duncan Logan