Today's guest is Pippa Gawley, Founder & MD @ Zero Carbon Capital (@ZeroCarbonCap)

Pippa is Founder and Managing Director at Zero Carbon Capital, on a mission to address climate change through deep-science, hard-tech innovation. Pippa has a long history in this space and spent the last 4 years as a clean-tech investor in the US and UK. She is an active and passionate member of the impact investing world in the Bay Area,  the UK and beyond.  

Zero Carbon Capital launched the Zero Carbon Fund (ZCF) in 2020, to bring her experience and thesis to the early stage UK venture scene. ZCF  invests in ambitious teams with breakthrough deep-tech ideas that can scale to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least half a gigaton per year. This target helps Pippa’s team filter for businesses that can have the biggest impact towards mitigating climate change - the single biggest challenge of our time.

The team’s vision is “an earth where a good standard of living is enabled for everyone, safely and affordably, with zero carbon emissions; reliable electricity, healthy food, comfortable buildings, responsible industry and effective transportation”

Zero Carbon Capital’s current portfolio comprises 9 diverse startups, several having gone on to raise follow on funds from some of the biggest names in Cleantech, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures in the US. 

In today’s episode we cover:

• Pippa’s own journey to becoming a climate-tech VC
• The complexities and nuances of working with deeptech, IP intensive businesses
• The reason Zero Carbon Capital use a half-gigaton emissions reduction hurdle when evaluating startups, and how this works in practice
• How the team evaluates and manages a diverse portfolio of teams and technologies
• Some of the trends Pippa is excited about, and the ideas Zero Carbon Capital are backing 

Enjoy the show!

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Episode recorded December 8th Jan, 2020