Colin Rebel

10+ years in sustainability • I advise Climate Tech and Nature Tech start-ups • Building a portfolio of angel investments

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

3 things I love about investing in climate tech startups:

1. Voting with my money; making an impact on issues I care about.
2. Working with founders who dream big and push technological frontiers.
3. Staying up to date with the latest trends in climate innovation.

Join the fun!

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

If I launched a carbon removal startup today, it would certainly be an Enhanced Rock Weathering one.

• The technology is ready
• The infrastructure is ready
• It has the potential to remove 2 billion tonnes of CO2 per year
• The cobenefits for the farmers are huge (yields)

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Investing in startups introduces you to a new asset class and is a great diversification opportunity.
But few investors explore the private markets. Why?

I love how the VC fund Loyal measures its performance against other asset classes!

[Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors @isaiah_p_taylor]

Ok quick story time (don’t blame me, Danielle started it)

Valar is the first company I’ve raised venture money for. I lived in a town of 22k in north Idaho with no close friends or family who were founders, VCs, or really in tech in general. No college network (I skipped college). Truly stepping in fresh.

What I did have was a lot of conviction after years of a lot of ruthless math and checking assumptions and changing my mind when I was wrong. I had a clear path forward.

So I decided to raise a pre-seed, figuring it’s the biggest bite I could take being literally a kid with a piece of paper and no network.

Well, I boiled down my ~250 pages of notes from the last few years, wrote a 3 page memo and ~20 page appendix and hit the road.

I pitched 62 VCs, the vast majority billing themselves as “pre-seed investors.”

Only one (1) of those wrote a check. The rest of the responses fell into these categories, ranked by rising frequency:

1. “No, this is crazy, you’re not going to be able to pull if off.” A respectable answer. They’re wrong, I’m going to win, but I understand. This was the smallest category.

2. “No, I like the idea, but too early for us / we want to see the team built out first / you need a cofounder.” A shocking number of pre-seed investors said this.

3. “I’m in!!!” Then ghosted me. Never wrote a check.

BUT. The largest category of all, in fact larger than the first two combined was… DRUMROLL PLEASE 🥁🥁🥁

4. “Wow this is incredible. I love this. I think you’re going to win. Can you let me know when you have a lead?”

We got this over and over and over again. Eventually I had about 8x more “committed” than I was even raising. But nobody wanted to jump.

I wanted to shout at them on every call, “there’s no way in hell I’m calling you back once I have a lead, I’m picking like one other guy on this list and closing it up.” But instead I said “haha ok I’ll mark you down.”

If course what actually happened is that I eventually had a conversation with an investor who previously built and sold 7 of his own companies and understood the science. He asked me to whiteboard every aspect of the business and drilled down on everything until he understood it.

And then he simply did the entire round.

Best part of the story? When I announced this on X, I got a flood of flustered messages from everyone who asked to be brought in when I had a lead. This never ceases to make me chuckle.

Moral of the story here is that there’s an absolutely massive gap in the pre-seed market for investors with JUST A TINY LITTLE BIT OF GUTS. Like just a WEE BIT OF CONVICTION.

Whoever is doing this right now has got a jump start on like 80% of the market 😂

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

Find an up-to-date map of all ERW startups here:
https://t.co/jHjRGzI6JO

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

+600% last year!

Enhanced Rock Weathering carbon removal sales are booming... but:

- The ERW market is dominated by off-take agreements and only 1 or 2 players
- Only a few thousand tonnes have been delivered

Here is the leaderboard, April 2024 (data from @cdr_fyi)

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

Fact: Venture Capital beats the S&P 500.

AngelList claims the platform has generated 26.5% per year for investors dating back to 2013!

I believe everyone should have 5% to 15% of their personal wealth invested in startups and private companies.

Why isn't everyone doing it?

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

AI-powered software, computer vision and machine learning to replace cumbersome, costly and unreliable manual checks in insect farms.

This is one of the less-expected AI applications I've come across so far!
Any other weird stuff?

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

"C players FIRE A players"

Don't know if someone has ever experienced this?

A players certainly leave teams of C player.

When standards and ambition are low, A players quickly notice and start seeking better opportunities, better places to thrive.

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@clawrence @cornoisseur More Republicans support coal mining than wind! 🤦

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@copenhenken The irony is that commuting by bike used to be "working-class", simply because it was cheaper.

Now it's hype to cycle to work, at least in the upper-class.

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

The number of Enhanced Rock Weathering projects that launched in the past few months is impressive!

Not surprising, given it's arguably one of the cheapest and most scalable carbon removal technologies.

I've put together this ERW ecosystem map 👇

https://t.co/jHjRGzI6JO

[Dimitry Gershenson 🌍 @d_gershenson]

If you're a pre-Seed/Seed climate founder and want advice around fundraising, financial planning, cash management, etc...I'd love to help!

I'm running office hours on a first-come, first-serve basis on April 11th. I've got 6 15-min slots available. Who's interested?

DM me

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

Guys, now is the time to sell our chocolate stocks and buy maple syrup
(no financial advise, capital at risk) https://t.co/N55wDJDw3c

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

✔️ So many people invest in the stock market.
❌ Almost no one invests in startups.

I don't understand this.

1) Startup investing yields better returns.
2) Barriers to angel investing are lower than ever.
3) It's a lot of fun and you meet incredible people!

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@speedandscale "But the continent’s power network is cleaning up so fast it’s destroying demand for carbon permits, slashing the price."

I explain how the EU-ETS and other compliance carbon markets work in simple words here 👇
https://t.co/AK7hZ7TI9n

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@gnievchenko If that's the way ideas mature, I can't wait to be in a post peak Direct-Air-Capture hype world.

(Not to mention AI...)

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@cairngormsnews What happened to the trees?
Where did the forests go?

This one is particularly depressing.
Nature has been destroyed and now you have a desert, in a National Park. ;(

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@JomauxJulien Great news indeed!

But electricity consumption is actually going down in Greece.
The country still heavily relies on oil and gas.

[Colin Rebel @ColinRebel]

@clawrence Nah, coal mines and Russian gas are fine.

But next week they will probably block a ground-mounted solar panel project because it "threatens farmlands"...
🤡