Startups in the CDR space need to succeed quickly if we want to reverse climate change before time runs out.
But the current system requires that climatetech founders often devote time to pitching VCs and filling out multiple grant applications. Time that would be better spent developing their solutions.
So, what can we do to connect emerging carbon removal companies with the funding they need to move forward?
Neesha Mirchandani is Founder and CEO of Impact Stars, a consultancy that helps planet-positive entrepreneurs raise money and attract clients.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change Happy Hour, Neesha joins Ross, Siobhan and Asa to discuss the magnetic pitch method she uses to support CDR startups in attracting venture capital.
Neesha explains what VCs look for in a climate startup and shares her frustration with philanthropy’s failure to fill in the funding gaps.
Listen in to understand how we might streamline the grant application process for CDR entrepreneurs and get Neesha’s advice on how to apply business sense to your climate ventures!
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
Na’im Merchant at The Carbon Curve
Climate Change vs. Artisanal Cheesemaking on Reversing Climate Change S3EP35
‘Who Should Pay for Carbon Removal?’ by Robert Hoglund
California Wilderness Coalition
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hey, welcome to Reversing Climate Change. It’s a happy hour show. We haven’t done this in, when was the last time we did this? Is it before the holidays?
Unknown speaker: Mm-hmm.
Asa Kamer: It’s been too long.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. At least a month. You sound like you got a chip on your shoulder, Asa.
Asa Kamer: I am. I miss you guys.
Ross Kenyon: You miss it?
Asa Kamer: I’m not okay with it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Asa Kamer there, producer of Carbon Removal Newsroom and Siobhan Montoya-Lavender. Also, I hear you giggling in the background.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Here I am giggling away. Happy to be back, clearly.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. How’s it going? Thanks a ton.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Things are good.
Ross Kenyon: Last time you were here, I think we talked about how you had a big refresh, right?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. Things are rolling along. I think we’re trying to go after more B2B customers now. Try to get conferences or clients that want to be like, Hey, I want to send all these gifts to my direct reports or stuff like that. So we’ll see how that goes.
Ross Kenyon: That sounds great. Yeah. We should probably just talk about that at some point on the show too. It’s definitely warranting of its own episode. Maybe we can get some of your colleagues on, assuming they would want to. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. That’d be fun. Let’s do it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Okay. Well, down to the meat of this show, which you’re allowed to say on a climate podcast, I think. Nisha Mirchandani. Ah, see, I hesitated just a tiny bit because you got in my head, Nisha. I still did it. I rolled through. Welcome to the show.
Neesha Mirchandani: It sounded good. Yeah. It sounded great. I have to say this is... Fantastic for the first attempt.
Ross Kenyon: We got so interested in getting the pronunciation quasi-correct that I didn’t even get your title. Why? We got all in our own heads and we missed it. What do you do? Why are you here, Nisha?
Neesha Mirchandani: Titles don’t matter to me, but I guess I started down this climate road because I have a 13-year-old and four or five years ago, I started realizing that I didn’t have Anything I could say to him when he grew up and asked me, what was I doing about this existential crisis? So I started learning and I pivoted my business, which was consulting. And I started saying, what would it look like if I could just help people who are solving this problem of climate change? So that’s what I do. I’m, I guess, the CEO or do-it-all-er at Impact Stars.
Because if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s what you are. You do everything.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, no kidding.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m with you on the titles too. My title used to be cross-functional wildcard until I got a note that was not nearly professional enough. Now I’m creative editor. I’m also trying to do more supply work and work over on that side of the business too. Like, do I need a new title? In some ways, I wouldn’t mind just releasing the title.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Let it go. Just go with co-founder. That’s what you are. That’s what we do. I just call myself a co-founder. I’m like, I wear a lot of hats, man. What am I going to say? I co-founded this business.
Neesha Mirchandani: I think the one I like is Chief Wrangler. Yeah. It’s like whatever it takes to wrangle this beast, that’s what I’m doing today.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: You’re a Julio Friedman fan then, I bet.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. He owns the Wrangler brand essentially at this point. It’s really bold of you. We’re going to get a call from an IP lawyer here as soon as it’s published.
Neesha Mirchandani: When I think about you, I think about the voice of CDR.
Ross Kenyon: Oh my. Oh my. That’s sticking now. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I’m making a meme about that.
Ross Kenyon: I always, I always feel, I thank you. I’m glad, I’m glad my voice has reached you in some way. Although I feel, I always feel uncomfortable when this is placed upon me in any serious fashion. So I feel like I just ask questions and hang out. This show is the goofiest of them all. Like listen to Naeem’s podcast, different. He’s a serious man. Yeah.
Neesha Mirchandani: And there’s a place for that. But I think Why I love the show and I’m a big fan, as you know, is as I was on this journey of like, what can I do for climate change? I needed someone who was being realistic about where we are and bringing all the latest news to me about, you know. The deep conversations we need to have, but also challenging me and continuing to inspire me in this very calm voice that you have that is curious, but also a little pushing people, you know, without scaring them and without scaring us.
And I think in climate is much about psychology as it is about, you know, anything else because we’re human beings. You’re here.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a really that’s a really nice thing to say. Thank you. I’m glad. That’s actually my intention, not to go too into my own psyche, but my intention is to be, I always try to ask at least one hard question of everyone that was on, but also meet people where they are and just be curious. It’s not the right approach for every listener, though, too. It’s like some people want a show that’s much more linear. Today’s episode of Reversing Climate Change that came out is about cheese that I like. Who is it helping?
What is the business value? Open question that I have to defend to my colleagues.
Neesha Mirchandani: But I don’t know. Actually, I think it’s really important that you did that episode. I listened to it. And this morning, I didn’t finish the whole thing because I jumped on the Running Tide podcast with another CDR company. But I love how the micro and the macro connecting climate and the cheese that you eat And how that cheese is made is all connected to climate change. And I think as humans, we relate to the micro more than we relate to the macro. There are a few people who are like geeks and they just love the macro and the systems change, but not everybody can grok that or wants to grok that when they’re walking their dogs, you know?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I do think there’s value in bringing in touchstones like cheese or like when you did the episode on cooking and talked about vanilla, that always stuck with me. And recently I was asking some interns to introduce themselves and say, you know, what, what they’re passionate about in climate change. And this guy from France, who’s not an intern, but it’s on my team said, well, I’m passionate. He’s serious. I’m passionate about the fact that like climate change is meaning we can’t grow the same grapes in France. He’s like, so why? The wine is changing.
He’s like, and now the damn Brits are growing grapes because they’re having different climate change over there. And so I actually think moments like that, like really personalize the concept because it can get very systematic and broad and out of control for people’s minds. And so I think there’s value in talking about cheese.
Asa Kamer: I totally agree. And even though like, I mean, we’re just a few days out from the whole gas stove sort of news cycle when we’re recording. And even that, I mean, I would love, personally love to get an induction stove. And I think a lot, I mean, obviously a lot of the outcry against getting rid of gas stoves is stoked by natural gas companies and their marketing and that they make people upset, but I mean, I do think people care about cooking and they care about their kitchen and they care like that’s a very homey place.
I mean, what room in the house is more evocative of family and togetherness than the kitchen? And if your tradition is a gas stove, I mean, I can see how that’s an effective way to like manipulate people and make people think like, wait, I really want this. What are you talking about? You can’t get rid of that. And the politics of like, Taking stuff away and making people not get to do stuff is unpopular. I mean, we should ban soda, but when cities try to do that, there’s pushback. Anyway, so I just, I agree.
And a lot of people probably care more about cheese than they do about polar bears.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s true. I don’t really get that debate very much though, because I have an induction cooktop and it’s way faster than any gas range that I ever had. But if you’re comparing, if you’ve never used induction and you think it’s like an electric cooktop, I’ve never used one of those I was happy to use. Those things suck. Those things are so, like, if you think liberals are coming for your gas stoves and you have to go to the crappy electric cooktop, I think I’m on the gas news team on that one.
Induction is amazing. Have you guys got a chance to use it at all?
Unknown speaker: Yes, I have.
Ross Kenyon: No, Acey, you have? You should have the evil gas stoves.
Neesha Mirchandani: I have the evil gas stove and, you know, spent a lot of money on it. So now I’m...
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I really want an induction though. I have to go to like, there’s like a little place, a little pump where I have to go and fill up this little tank and bring it back and screw it into my gas stove. So like gas stove, not worth it.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. It’s like you have to bring a tank to get natural gas filled up and you have to cart it back up to your house. Okay.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. I have to bring it back to my house and then attach it to the hose and then I can turn my gas stove on. Wow.
Asa Kamer: So where you live is like primed for electrifying because they don’t already have the gas grid in there like a lot of places in the US.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: There you go.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. The only thing I’d be concerned about with being so dependent on electricity is I don’t have solar panels or anything. And then our neighbors during one of the blizzards over the Christmas season, the next town up from Seattle, they lost power for days. So some of my friends had no power for like three or four days. And in that case, I would not want to be so dependent upon the grid. So then I would get solar panels, but then that would drive up the rates for all the people who are not off the grid and utility death spiral.
And basically there’s no way to go. All roads lead to perdition is what I’m saying. Nisha, we could just do this. This is literally what we do when you’re not here. So this will keep going until we stop. So I’m going to make a conscious decision to say, steer us back to yourself as all good conversationalists eventually must. What are you doing with Impact Stars? What is happening in your world right now? What are you thinking about?
Neesha Mirchandani: So I work with entrepreneurs. I help entrepreneurs who are trying to raise money. Sometimes they’re trying to validate if they’re onto something, if there is a there there. And then sometimes they’re just getting rejected by VCs, so they don’t know what to do. So I help them look at non-dilutive sources of capital. I also am very, very hard on them because I try to be harder on them than an investor would or a philanthropist would. So as one of my... As one of my clients likes to say, and a VC says this too, if it gets through Nisha, it’ll get through us.
And that’s because I am really validating the crap out of it. And so it’s very hard because founders fall in love with an idea. They want to save the world in the climate space. They’re not building the next dating app. So for them, it’s like, you know, I have to kill a few darlings. It gets pretty messy and bloody, but at the end of it, so sound and so solid. That I really feel like it would be impossible for someone with money to say no because it’s in their interest to say yes.
But the process of getting there is very hard. So as I’ve been doing this one-on-one work, actually for me to learn also what works, what doesn’t, what founders want, what they don’t want, I’m moving more into a scaled model. So instead of just helping one founder at a time, I’m trying to now Provide this in more of a scaled program. I call it a sprint because we do mini sprints on each thing. And at the end of the day, the founder, you separate the wheat from the chaff because most of them won’t make it through.
It’s that hard. And so I was like, how can I come up with a sexy way of calling this so they won’t think of it as all this horrible stuff? And I came up with the magnetic pitch method because that is the result that I’m trying to develop for them is their pitch is so magnetic that instead of them beating down people’s doors, other people are beating their, the investors are beating their door down. So that’s my evolution in climate for the last three to four years. Lots of learning and lots of mistakes.
And now where I am, I think I feel really comfortable with Where I’m at, and the minute I do, I start creating more complexity, like let’s do the magnetic pitch method. So yeah, constantly challenging myself to do more because the climate clock is ticking.
Ross Kenyon: Why CDR? I associate you so strongly with being a fixture of the air miners community. There’s lots of places you could have plugged in. How’d you choose carbon removal? Companies definitely need it though. There’s tonnes of early stage companies.
Neesha Mirchandani: Yeah. That’s a good question. I started, okay, everybody starts with climate. That’s the problem. But if you don’t focus, then all you’re doing is like solar panels and induction and this and that, and you just never have any expertise in anything. And I started with regenerative agriculture when I was on Facebook, mindless scroll that we do on Facebook. And I got targeted for an ad on soil. And it was a course by Kiss the Ground. And I went down this rabbit hole and it was by a platform called Commune. And they had a course by Kiss the Ground.
And as I’m going through this course, I’m like screaming at my husband. Oh my God, this is so cool. And I’m like going nerdy on it. And he’s like trying to watch TV, some action flick. And he’s like, just stop, go to the other room. So I actually went to the guest room and slept till I finished the course. Because I was so in love with regenerative ag. And then that’s how I heard about Nori. That’s how I heard about the podcast. And then I went into biochar. And then I went into many other kinds of ocean CDR.
And next thing I know, I’m in air miners. And it just felt like home, maybe, that I found my people. I still have trouble with DAC because I feel like because we can measure things in DAC, It gets a lot of the Shopify’s and Stripes on board. And I feel like my orphans are the regenerative ag and sometimes the biochar and the people who cannot prove permanence as easily or they have co-benefits, but they cannot offer the measurability that an investor wants or a buy-off carbon credit wants. So I have a soft spot for them.
I’m just telling you everything. Maybe you don’t care.
Unknown speaker: We care about it all. Keep going. This is like Nisha therapy. Let it out, Nisha.
Asa Kamer: That’s why you’re here.
Neesha Mirchandani: There have been so many sleepless nights when I have a founder who I know if they succeed would have gigaton impact, but their startup isn’t cool enough for the You know, people who want permanence, so they want measurability. And so I’m as much obsessed with MRV and reinventing it and telling the story in such a way that you don’t need it because there are other reasons to fund regenerative agriculture that go beyond the binary, is it carbon measurable or not? But telling that story is very hard and you’ll see funders go almost to the end and then just drop off.
And so there’s a tragedy. There’s a real tragedy out here going on in CDR. So you’ll see funders who will show interest, but then at the last minute, they’ll just drop off. And the reason is that regenerative agriculture doesn’t have the unicorn potential. And from the buyer point of view, it doesn’t have the measurability. Now, I know Nori is trying to fix that. Many other companies are. But we’re not there yet. And I think sometimes certain kinds of CDR are pitted against other forms of CDR. And it’s like an apple and an orange and you shouldn’t be comparing the two.
It’s like comparing siblings and causing sibling rivalry. And it offends me deeply when that happens.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, you’re bringing up kind of like an existential angst of the CDR industry, right? Is because like, what is CDR? And if it isn’t measurable, and if it isn’t the carbon, if it’s not just carbon by the numbers, Is it CDR? And then how do we define the parameters of CDR? One thing I want to ask is on your Impact Star website, you do talk about providing carbon credits and you call it a basket of credits that are as future proof as possible in an ever shifting marketplace in an uncertain regulatory environment.
And I just, I really liked that you phrased it that way. I felt like you were just being Blunt and honest, but also it made me it compelled me to be like, yeah, those are the kind of credits I want, like the best I can get within these parameters of uncertainty.
Neesha Mirchandani: So I did a six month deep dive on carbon credits because I’m stupid like that. And when you go down the carbon credits rabbit hole. May the force be with you because it leads to depression and anxiety and angst of the worst kind. It is full of buzzwords and acronyms and things I still don’t understand. So I gave up. I’m like, I thought I was doing a PhD on carbon credits, but what I ended up was confounding myself on how stupid the whole market is. And so I’m guiding these entrepreneurs when the system is broken.
And so the best I can do is help them tell the best stories, put the best logic, make it as future-proof as possible. But honestly, you know, it is what it is. I’m not going to be able to change the whole system for them. And that really, sometimes it hurts me. It makes me feel like a failure.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Nisha, your therapy question. No, no, it’s very welcome. Silence. Yeah. You said you were going to be goofy, Nisha. Yeah.
Neesha Mirchandani: Let me tell you the fun side about what I do. The fun side about what I do is that I wake up in the morning and I bounce out of bed because I cannot believe what I get to do for a living. I feel maybe it’s misguided, but I really feel lucky That I’m not sitting in climate anxiety like I used to be and I’m doing something. Now, will it add up to anything measurable? Will I make a dent? I have no idea. And only hindsight can be the judge of that.
But for my own sanity, I guess, very selfishly, it makes me feel like I’m making a difference. That’s as stupid as that sounds. It is real on a day-to-day basis. Now, there are days when I feel I took one step forward, two steps back because I couldn’t help a founder raise money. I’m just being honest. I’m telling them, you know what? This thesis is never going to work with investors. I’m so sorry. But on most days, I’m optimistic. And when I see other people with climate anxiety, I see myself as being different from them in that one regard.
And so it’s really fun. And when you see someone actually make it, Or when you see that it’s working, it gives you goosebumps. It literally gives you chills.
Ross Kenyon: That’s nice. That was a nice little antidote to earlier. Although I liked it. It’s okay to bring some darkness into this. I felt like it was productive to bring it up. I’ve had lots of these feelings too. And I agree with you. I think the primacy of measurement, I mean, is good, right? Like if your companies are going to claim a net zero benefit of a carbon credit, it damn well should be measurable in the ways that people specify. Like you don’t want people making greenwashing claims that are more uncertain than certain.
And you are right that regenerative ag and some of these more ecological methodologies, like I don’t even know to what degree they can stand up and will be I think when net zero standards become codified, I don’t know that nature-based solutions are going to have a really strong place in there. But we also want to find ways to support regenerative agriculture or biochar. I mean, some biochar would probably qualify as net zero, depending on how you do it. But wanting to find ways to support even those that aren’t going to qualify for just the carbon benefit.
Christoph, when he was on the show, he used to always talk about God, what was his line? He had so many good lines, but one of his was, end to carbon exuberance. Kristoff sort of got regen-pilled and was just like, no longer wanted to only focus on carbon, but wanted to focus on the entire suite of reasons to care about some of these squishier products.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. And that brings us back to defining CDR in general. I feel like that kind of does the crux of what’s included, what’s excluded. And I flip-flop all the time between thinking like, oh, we should be more holistic and considering the whole ecosystem benefits and all the different components. Then I’m like, no, screw that. Let’s just get carbon out of the atmosphere in tonnes. And that’s the focus.
Unknown speaker: That’s me too, for sure.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Neesha Mirchandani: So I think you read out a sentence from my website and that’s what I said. It’s not one or the other. It’s a basket of solutions and you optimize it differently based on your company’s objectives, based on what you do, which industry you’re in, your personal choices. But at the end of the day, you have some that’s permanence driven and some that’s co-benefits driven and some that’s immediate that’s going to affect your community where most of your employees live. So if you’re living in California and you’ve got wildfires, you may want to use biochar in the forest around where most of your employees live because it’s going to help prevent all the stuff on the ground in the forest, very technical term, but all that brush from burning and you’re sequestering carbon.
So there’s many ways to look at the basket of future-proof solutions. I think we need to just be very real about things and not try to compare an apple to an orange. You need both. Sometimes you feel like an orange and sometimes you feel like an apple and there should be no crimes against apples and oranges.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: What are you feeling like today, Nisha?
Neesha Mirchandani: Apple, orange, maybe a mango. I’m a mango girl. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: You bring up this idea of like, you know, what do the companies want? What do funders want? What do people who are buying these credits want and stuff? Where are you seeing the landscape of funding for CDR specifically, or you can talk to client more broadly, but you know, you have kind of knowledge on both VC and philanthropy. Talk to us about the difference there.
Neesha Mirchandani: If you’re looking at the VC side, they are looking for unicorn potential. That’s their number one thing. Otherwise, they’re not doing their jobs as venture capitalists. Many climate opportunities either don’t have an idea whether they’re VC scale, unicorn scale, or they know they’re not, but they have benefit from a climate point of view. That’s the VC side. I am just shocked at how much VC money is coming in and I celebrate. I do a little happy dance. I have a funding happy dance that I do. I’m so, so delighted. Like I cannot tell you four years ago, even how bad it was, you know, but now it’s different.
Having said that, there are still a few gaps that I think philanthropy and maybe government and maybe some new FinTech products need to fill. If you want, I can go into what those are that VCs don’t fill.
Ross Kenyon: I want to hear that. And I also heard you have some rant that you had to tamp down in your soul about philanthropy. I was promised at least some portion of a rant. Provocative views. Yeah.
Asa Kamer: Provocative views.
Neesha Mirchandani: So I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but about $3 trillion is lying in different foundations and just in the U. S. , And that money, 5% of that has to be spent down. That’s the rule if you want to be a foundation. And out of that, 2% to 3% goes to climate. And don’t even ask me what smaller percent of that goes to CDR or I’ll burst into tears. So what my point or my rant is, is that we’re not doing a good enough job at CDR and specifically these underfunded opportunities that I’ve identified.
In convincing philanthropy that they actually are the ones who are going to be the game changers and they’re going to be catalytic and their little bit of money is going to unleash what we need in terms of speed. So we’re working in climate time. Think in dog years. You know how a dog, they say a dog ages seven years for every human year. The way I look at climate time is the same. We need solutions that are going to work in the next five years so that Miami doesn’t flood. We need solutions that are on a much longer scale so that we can sequester long term for a thousand years.
And what we are missing is we’re missing philanthropy that says, we understand, we share your vision, and we’re willing to fund those exponential ideas. Even if, here’s the important part, they’re not going to be unicorns. So they’re not something that a venture capital will ever make money on, but they’re worth doing because they’re what we need for climate. And specifically in CDR, I can think of ecosystems where all of us gather, we exchange ideas, they incubate startups and they bring in people like me to help. They’re not getting funded that easily.
Especially if they’re working with non-unicorn companies. The second part is like your cheesemaker. You know, there’s many things that can replicate and be localized, but they’ll never be unicorn and they shouldn’t be. They should be open source. Nobody’s funding those. And then there’s many other categories I can go into, but you kind of get what I’m saying. The need for philanthropy is strong. And you see the same philanthropists over and over again. You see the Granthams and You know, this one, that one, but you don’t really see every foundation say, you know, that art collection that I funded at the Met is going to be underwater if I don’t fund climate.
You know, that building that I paid for on the Harvard campus, that is my pride and joy and my legacy. That’s not going to exist if Boston is underwater or nobody can live in Boston anymore because of, you know, the weather systems that pass by. So I think There’s an existential need and a self-serving need for every philanthropist. And that includes us because we’re philanthropists too. To say this portion of my money that I give to charity as a human being, as a foundation, as a donor advice fund has to go to climate.
It is in my self-interest because none of the other philanthropy I do is going to matter if my earth doesn’t exist for me to live on.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. And I have to be honest, I did not know there was, what did you say, $3 trillion in philanthropy? That’s mind-boggling.
Neesha Mirchandani: And there’s $3 trillion in philanthropy, $46 billion gets given to the next generation every year. And that’s going to go up with the baby boomers, you know, passing on their legacies. And then there’s another, I believe, $200 billion. Billion dollars, not trillion, billion in donor advice funds, but I’m not so sure on that, maybe 300 billion. So this is billion with a B. And so if we took, in my opinion, 1% of that, just 1% of that, and we gave it to these companies that I’ve been able to mentor that aren’t getting funding because they’re not unicorn and the ecosystems that give them life, And we funded those and we localized them, brought them to the global south.
Then I think, I mean, human ingenuity is capable of putting someone on the moon, then why not solving climate change?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, that’s an optimistic quip there.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it sure is. I’m wondering what’s so distorting about this process, too. It sounds like... Are people in a position to make investments from family offices and philanthropy? Is the allure of prestige distorting this where the local solutions impactful, though they may be, they’re just not as headline grabbing? Carbon accounting is still the dominant paradigm. Everyone’s concerned about getting to neutral, getting to negative, that it causes an overfocus on this sort of like measurability that causes us to neglect things that will not allow companies or family offices to make And I think a lot of them want to get to that status.
A brief side note, I really liked Robert Hoagland’s piece about how companies that are most profitable should be driving carbon removal rather than just those that have, because those companies are also like low emitters too. So like, cool, Shopify goes negative. Great. But also there’s like 50 state oil companies, state-run oil companies that cause all the emissions in the Department of Defense. So like, Great. But it didn’t really get us to where we needed to be. I don’t know about that last part.
Neesha Mirchandani: I’ve thought very deeply about this. And I do it for every time I help a client. I ask myself, okay, if I was a funder, why would I fund this? Why would I not? And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but when an investor goes into an investment committee meeting, they have what’s called a pre-mortem. Where they make that person who’s bringing the deal to the table kill their own deal and argue the opposite position. It’s called a pre-mortem and it is brutal. So, you know, easy for us to say, oh, you know, people with money should do this and companies should do that and VC should do this.
They have their own battles to fight when they go to prison. So I always try and put myself in the shoes of the funder. And I think... The important thing is, A, businesses are here to make money, not to solve climate change. And so the ones who are solving climate change have the luxury for whatever reasons, or they’ve made it part of their brand. And so that’s one piece of it. But a foundation, I think, would get into climate, but they don’t necessarily know how to engage sometimes, or it’s not their core focus.
They may be You know, helping kids in foster care or they may be just focused on conservation as their one thing. And so what I’m suggesting is that perhaps as I do due diligence and I help these founders, I come up with a way where, you know, it’s like a common grant application. And all these foundations can just give a little bit, maybe it’s 1%. And then I pull those resources, put them through my system, which is very rigorous. And then you would only get a grant if your technology or your startup or your nonprofit or your community is going to have an exponential scalable or replicatable or open source kind of impact on climate.
It would be things that multiply, but here’s what’s happening now. The founder is applying for 15 different grants at the same time and it is killing them. So every foundation has their own little grant application and they ask different questions. So what I would like to do is bring it all together under one roof and say, please, once they pass through the ringer, you know, and they go through this process, which I’m telling you is more rigorous than anything I’ve ever seen a funder do. Please give them money with the magic easy button.
Don’t make them slog for it because they’ve got to work on climate, not on raising money.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Completely agree. The idea of streamlining this process is so essential. My very first job was as an intern for the California Wilderness Coalition. And I was basically, they hired me to be like their full-time grant writer. Because you need a full-time grant writer. And I just think if we could find a way to streamline this process and get... Sometimes it’s small dollar amounts to these early stage startups to get them going. And as you point out, Misha, there’s plenty that are not unicorns, but that are, as you say, community-based or they’re social networks for professionals that work within this field.
That aren’t going to be profitable, but are essential to the ecosystem and that are going to enable other companies to be profitable because they’ve created this platform for connectivity or whatever it is that they’re doing, that they’re contributing to the ecosystem. So yeah, I’m just, I’m interested on your take on like, why isn’t this already happening?
Neesha Mirchandani: Okay. So here’s where I think I have the same question you did. And my conclusion is that we haven’t told the right story. We haven’t explained it well enough. And that’s going to be my next adventure. Not right now. I’m working on the magnetic pitch method, launching that, helping the entrepreneurs. Because honestly, if I don’t have that set up, then my due diligence is missing at scale. And I need them to make sure that they meet a certain standard before we get them to press that easy button and the money comes in.
But once I’m done with setting up this magnetic pitch method, the backside of that is what I guess are due diligence deals that I can take to these philanthropists and say, you all should fund this because it is so good. And just look, and then it’s up to me to, and this is where I’m putting pressure on myself, which is just making me nervous. But like tell the story in such a compelling way that a philanthropist looks at me and says, why wouldn’t I fund this? And you did all the work for me.
You due diligence. I don’t have any more questions to ask. And yes, they don’t need to fill up another grant report because I would have asked the same questions. You’ve asked more than I would have asked. And so please take my money. I have trillion dollars lying in the bank. And I want my art collection at the Met to survive climate change. So please take my money. And so this is what I fantasize about. But yeah, that is the problem in philanthropy that I see. And I think philanthropists actually are not bad people.
Just because they have money, it actually means that they’ve done something most of the time. If they’re self-made, even if they’ve inherited the money, Actually, having money is very hard because now you have to figure out what to do with it. And it sounds easy, but I’ve been around people with lots of money and it is actually a burden sometimes to know how to spend it wisely, especially on charity because you give money to someone, they waste it. You know, they don’t really strategically leverage it. And I’m all about leverage.
Like, how can I take this $1 and make $10 out of it? That’s how I think. Bit of a cheapskate, I guess.
Asa Kamer: I’ve heard people say that all billionaires are miserable. So not that we should sympathize with them, but I think you’re right. It probably brings up a host of psychological challenges that’s hard to identify with. And there’s also this idea that I’ve been reading about of green hushing, which is when there’s a new word for me, but when corporations like Oh, climate change is so complicated. Let’s just say nothing about it. No climate plan, no carbon credits. Like we can’t win. No matter what we do, we’ll be attacked from both sides.
It’s not good enough. It’s whatever. And I wonder if there’s a similar dynamic for rich people and philanthropy is of this like, well, climate is complicated. No matter what you do, you’re going to get attacked from both sides for doing too much or too little. And again, not that I sympathize with them, but I can imagine walking into that room for Anisha as a bit of a And if they’re probably a bit of a reverse where you’re doing the therapy in that case.
Neesha Mirchandani: I think also just understanding that there’s nothing wrong with making money if someone’s done it in an honest way. You know, you start a company and it goes big and you get lucky. Nobody should punish you for that. In fact, it’s such a privileged position to be in. It’s a burden. But if you look at it another way, you get to use the money that you made for good to save the planet and to do it strategically so that billion dollars can be leveraged into a trillion dollars. I think done right, philanthropy can be liberating to the person who has the money.
But many rich people get cancelled no matter what they do. So they are like wrong for having money, wrong for giving money, wrong for not giving money, wrong for money given silently, wrong for money given with the press release. So what are they supposed to do? It’s a lose-lose situation. Whereas here we are sitting in CDR in climate and we need the money. So I think it’s a communications issue. And I think in four years, if we played this podcast back, three of us, Actually four of us, I cannot even count.
And we’re sitting on my back porch drinking iced tea because I live in the South and that’s what we drink here with lots of sugar and lots of lime or lemon. And we sit with the sickly sweet iced tea and we talk about this podcast. I’d love to say that, you know, in the four years between then and that date, everything changed and, you know, billions if not trillions came into climate because, you know, We were able to tell that story better.
Ross Kenyon: I hope so, but four years from now, I’m just going to have AI listen to every podcast I’ve ever done. And then he’ll just, you’ll have some robot reading words like pejorative and lugubrious and blah, blah, blah. He’ll be like, that sounds close enough to Ross. It’s a reasonable simulation. He does a hundred podcasts a day and then your AI will listen to it and it’ll all get uplinked right away to your brain more than you could ever.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Oh, Ross, you’re killing me. Ross, that’s depressing. You’re killing me worse than the sweet, sweet tea.
Asa Kamer: And then you’ll feel nothing from all your content. And then you’ll read a Shakespeare, watch a Shakespeare movie and cry some more. And that’s all that will still connect with you.
Neesha Mirchandani: If you’re always sitting on my back porch drinking tea with me, instead of tea, what would you be drinking? Because I’m now curious. Would it be Long Island iced tea?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I could have the tea. Just take out the sugar, man.
Ross Kenyon: You don’t want the sweet tea?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I don’t want the sweet tea.
Neesha Mirchandani: What would you be drinking, Ross? Any beverage globally? Yeah, but yeah. What’s your favorite to celebrate?
Ross Kenyon: My favorite global beverage? I don’t know. I like Aguas Frescas. I could easily do with like a nice... I don’t really like Jamaica that much. I don’t like the hibiscus as much, but I think maybe like a Tamarindo might hit the spot.
Neesha Mirchandani: Tamarindo.
Ross Kenyon: You can see it because you’re listening and not looking, but Siobhan, who lives in Mexico, just flashed me nasty eyes.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: When he was against the Agua de Jamaica, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. What about you, Asa?
Asa Kamer: Well, I’m drinking tea right now. I used to be a big coffee drinker, but I had to switch over to tea because of horrible acid reflux. So now I’m on the team for tea. Team tea. That’s probably what I’m doing.
Unknown speaker: That’s a good team.
Asa Kamer: I mean, if I was in the South, maybe for a few days, I’ll like, you know, do as the Romans do and drink sweet tea like I have in the past when...
Neesha Mirchandani: So I think one thing that might be useful to the listeners of this amazing podcast, which I love and want to thank you for, is if you’re trying to do something in CDR, if you’re trying to start a company, and whether you’ve tried to raise money or you haven’t, is first of all, to know that It’s hard, but it is much easier than it used to be. And the second thing is that there is help available. So don’t try to do it alone. It is hard to do it alone. And one of the reasons why I am working on my magnetic pitch method is because I’ve seen how hard it is for founders.
And no one working on climate, forget CDR, just in general on climate, Should struggle to raise money. And I think that it’s a crime. It’s literally a crime for someone who is doing something like this. But there’s also this save the world mentality. There’s a lot of people who get drawn to this work because they want to save the earth. And so you have to separate your You know, wanting to save the world instinct from the business side. And that is where I see a lot of founders struggle because you have to validate.
You have to make sure you’re using leverage. You have to apply business sense to your climate venture and not just try to, you know, I’ll do this and I’ll do that and add more complexity because some of the founders that I see are overcomplicating and taking on too much of that climate on their shoulders. And so there’s a lot going on even on the founder side that we need to fix in climate and in CDR. And it attracts a certain kind of founder sometimes that cares that much, but literally it is impossible to do it all.
And we need more community so that we distribute the stress. People on the frontline solving climate change are carrying way more of the load than the rest of the population. And it is crippling. It is shockingly high because they know how fast they need to move. And then all these obstacles of money and whatnot. So I think there’s a lot of empathy in my heart for those founders. But at the same time, I think it’s important for us as a community to lift them up. When you see that somebody post an idea and air miners for an idea they have, give it a like.
Give it a star. Just do. Put a rainbow. Put a green heart. Just encourage them. It is very lonely. And so I see that side of it. And I just feel like we need to celebrate these people, especially the ones who make it and do the due diligence and really get focused on one thing. We need to push them forward.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well said. This time has flown. I feel like this went by so much faster than our average podcast. I’ve been enjoying it so much. I really enjoyed talking to you, Nisha. And thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and as spicy as they may be. And thank you for making me feel sympathetic for billionaires for the first time in my life. And I hope that in four years from today, we are looking back and saying that, oh my God, look at all that amazing funding that poured into the climate and CDR space.
I appreciate you.
Ross Kenyon: Nisha, I imagine you’re probably always on the prowl for founders to work with. Is there a certain kind of founder that you’re looking for right now that if they’re listening that you might say, come send me an email or something like that?
Neesha Mirchandani: Yeah. I like to work one-on-one with founders that have gone through my validation system, mainly because then I know that they’re onto something and then I can connect them to the right capital. And The founders that I like to work with are pretty focused on one thing and they’re not all over the place. But then I’m building this methodology to help them get that clarity. So early stage, very early idea stage would go through the validation sprint within the magnetic pitch method. And I’m hoping to run that sprint with an incubator starting this month.
And then I’ll roll it out to the public so they can send me an email. And when it rolls out, I can let them know. And from a funder point of view, if there are philanthropists that want to be part of this and have an exponential impact, then I’d love to hear from them as well. And maybe there’s something we can start as a revolution on the philanthropy side.
Ross Kenyon: You almost sound like a manager in the showbiz sense, but for carbon removal, that’s...
Neesha Mirchandani: I’ve never heard that, but it’s more like a producer, I guess. Maybe a manager or an agent. I don’t know what I do. All I know is it’s whatever. It’s a chief wrangler, whatever the startup needs. One startup, I help them with HR. It’s not even my area of interest or expertise, but I went and Googled it and I just did what needed to be done. But I’m not going to let a founder fail because they couldn’t figure out their HR policy. It’s just, to me, unbelievable that would even happen.
So if I need to go on Google and figure it out, I will. But yeah, what I focus on is customer and capital. Those are my areas of expertise and building a business model and a structure that brings those two things to you. Customers cannot wait to buy from you and capital cannot wait to invest in you.
Ross Kenyon: Is there a website or somewhere people should go?
Neesha Mirchandani: My website is impactstars.com and you can find me there.
Ross Kenyon: Well, great. Links to all those things are in the show notes. If you’d like to go and potentially work with Nisha, go send her a note. And thanks for being here too, Aza. Good to hang. Been a minute.
Asa Kamer: My pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, thanks so much for listening. I hope you like these shows. We enjoy letting our hair down a little bit and goofing around with members of the carbon removal industry. It’s a lot of fun for us to take the pulse, see what’s going on out there. Give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps us get this out to more people. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated.
It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
