“Life does not subtract things; it liberates you from them.
It makes you lighter so that you can fly higher and reach the fullness.”
--Facundo Cabral
Losing your home to a forest fire is a lesson in impermanence and nonattachment. And while Diego Saez-Gil is still processing the loss, he is using the experience as a catalyst, reaffirming his commitment to the pursuit of climate solutions.
Diego is the founder and CEO of Pachama, a tech company that leverages AI to drive carbon capture and validate the progress of forest restoration projects for carbon markets, and author of the Medium article, "On Losing Everything to the Climate Crisis, Except for Hope." On this bonus episode of the podcast, Diego joins Ross to discuss how losing his home to a forest fire has given him renewed energy around his work and made him more of a minimalist than ever before.
Diego explains how both climate change and poor forest management practices are to blame for 2020’s devastating forest fires, speaking to the permanence issues surrounding ecological methods of sequestering carbon and how carbon markets can make reforestation for carbon sequestration economically viable. Listen in for insight on the success of Pachama’s recent fundraising efforts and learn how you can help protect our global forests by joining Diego’s team.
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:
Diego on Reversing Climate Change EP104
Diego’s Medium Article ‘On Losing Everything to the Climate Crisis, Except for Hope’
Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment
Pachama’s Blog Welcoming New Investors
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the creative editor for Nori, which is a new title that I am now using because what was it even before? Lead strategist, bit too vague, weird, open-ended startup title. As you might know, if you work at startups, sometimes these titles, they get a little bit strange. So that is my new title. I’m the creative editor. I think this is the first RCC where I’ve mentioned that. Besides that brief point of order, I wanted to mention that we are doing a bonus episode with an alumnus of the show.
Diego says, Gil, founder of Pachama, is here to talk about all the things that Pachama is doing. And also Diego has had some very interesting personal news. So thanks for coming back, Diego. Hi, Ross. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to have you back. I was intending to have you back on anyways, because we follow your progress, much of which has been made recently. But before we dig into that, perhaps for someone who is new to Pachama, we should introduce what exactly you’re working on.
So could you please do a brief synopsis of Pachama?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yes, absolutely. Pachama is a technology company that has the mission of helping restore the forest. As you guys know, forests have a big piece of the solution to climate change because trees as they grow, they remove carbon from the earth and standing forests that we have today still protected in places like the Amazon rainforest, Congo, Indonesia provide an immense service to the planet already removing carbon Every year in compensating about a third of current human emissions. So the planet needs to stop deforestation of primary forest immediately.
It needs to start a massive reforestation movement and it needs to start managing forests better for timber production. The tree plantations that are dedicated to timber production needs to be managed in a way that maximizes the carbon sequestration of those forests. So what we do is we use the latest technologies on remote sensing, which includes satellite images, LiDAR, and we combine that with machine learning algorithms that we use to validate and monitor the progress of forest projects that are restoring or protecting forests. And then we help these projects get funding from carbon markets.
So similar to you guys at Nari, we connect companies that are looking to achieve net zero or carbon neutrality. We certify carbon projects that are removing carbon from the atmosphere or avoiding emissions from avoided deforestation. But we have the value of validating and monitoring all these projects with this data. In the long term, we want to help originate way more forest projects than they exist today. Today, there are many projects that are doing a great job, but if we are to solve climate change, we need to remove hundreds of gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere.
So we are thinking deeply about how our technologies and our data can help accelerate the process of origination, reducing the cost of certification, While increasing the trust on these projects. So that’s what we’re doing. And yeah, fortunately, we have already had the chance to work with great forest projects in more than eight countries. We’re working with great corporate buyers, including Microsoft, Shopify, SoftBank. And we received the support of great investors. So we’re still early on our journey, but off to a good start.
Ross Kenyon: Great. I think that’s a nice summation for someone who is new to Pachama. But if you’re listening and you are truly new to Pachama, there is a full episode of Reversing Climate Change you can go back and listen to. The link is in the show notes if you’d like to get more detail on all of what Diego and his colleagues are working on. And Diego, as I minorly buried the lead, I will unbury it now. You wrote a piece which caught my eye and the eye of many On Medium called On Losing Everything to the Climate Crisis Except for Hope.
So it sounds like forestry, wildfires, climate change, a lot of them have touched you personally rather than just intellectually at this point.
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, life sometimes take very ironic twists. And in my case, about three years ago, I... As I was going through a moment of personal reassessment of my life, I decided to settle myself close to the forest, close to nature, because I was feeling the call to help protect and restore nature. So I bought a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which is a beautiful redwood forest south of San Francisco. And I settled there. And from that house is that I did the research and the initial brainstormings that became Pachama.
All the early team members at the company came through that house and stayed with me a couple of days. That was kind of like a rite of initiation into the team. So that house in the forest was really a temple for me. In a very meaningful turn of events, a month ago, I decided to take vacation for the first time in many months. And I went up to Oregon to do a camping trip. And when I went back, my house was completely gone to the forest fires that recently raged California.
Yeah, it’s meaningful that those forest fires are a clear consequence of climate change, that those forests will need a restoration soon. You cannot make our mission more personal. And that’s a little bit what I shared on that note. I also share some of the wisdoms that have helped me during these times stay resilient in face of that adversity and that have helped me in the past as well. We hope that it could help others. But yeah, that’s what happened to me. My house is gone.
Not that I needed any more motivation to work on this, but now it’s really personal that I want to dedicate all my life to work on the climate cause.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, it sounds truly awful. I have a very good friend whose house burned down when he was a child and he brings it up and I can tell it still feels very violating and intrusive. And I can tell he still carries it with him despite it being 20 plus years ago. I can only imagine what it’s like for you to describe it as a temple. Yeah.
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, no, I mean, and everything I had ever owned was there because I was away from the house when this happened. I didn’t have time to take anything out. So all my possessions now, I was joking before we started, all my possessions fit on a weekender bag. And then a couple of books that I had taken with me for the camping trip. So everything, art from my family, books that I collected through many years, souvenirs from traveling around the world, letters, pictures, and furniture I had very consciously bought.
Everything has gone to ashes. So huge lesson on non-attachment, on impermanence. But yeah, it’s quite hard. It’s definitely the biggest disaster in my life and probably will be, I hope. So yeah, definitely still processing the loss. There’s an inevitable amount of grief that has to be experienced. But as I said, I’m trying to use it as a catalyst for renewed action and energy on this very important mission that we will have to All face together during the next two decades. So, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: I imagine from reading a baseline asceticism and of not becoming too attached to material things has been of great use to you. Yeah. I think you were kind of already on that wavelength though. Did that just further confirm you in this?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mentioned earlier that my moving to the forest, my... A drive to start this new company all was part of a process that I was living. When I was turning 35, that was three years ago, I had kind of like this midlife crisis, if you want, in which I felt that I was a little bit lost and directionless, or I didn’t like the direction that my life was taking. That led me to Exploring a lot of different new ways of seeing the world and including going to the Amazon rainforest and spending some time with indigenous people that have been living there for thousands of years and have a completely different view of the world.
To going to Thailand and spending some time in a Buddhist monastery and learning to meditate and the wisdom of Buddhism. All those lessons came to be useful in front of this situation. Right. So from the indigenous people of South America, I learned that you really didn’t need material things to be happy. You know, people in the Amazon, they live with nothing. You know, they live very simple, minimalistic lives and they’re super happy because they know that what happiness comes from, from being with people you love, from being connected to nature, From just, you know, having no worries.
So I was trying to live that way. I was trying to learn from them that way of living, you know, a way of minimalism and focus on relationships. And then from Buddhism, I learned that everything is impermanent, that suffering comes from, you know, attaching to what you like and rejecting what you don’t like and being driven by ego. So I was meditating a lot on that. So yeah, in a way, I’m grateful that I got all this access to all these lessons before this adversity happened in my life, because that is what has helped me navigate through this.
And then the practice of meditation that allows me to, on a daily basis, go back to that inner peace and that knowing that everything is okay, regardless of what might be happening outside.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a good thing for people in general to remember. I just hope Diego, you don’t overcompensate. And if Pachama is a massive success and you become wealthy beyond imagine, you start making houses made out of gold, buying everything in sight. I have a hard time imagining this is your preferred lifestyle, but don’t overdo it with all of this being taken away from you.
Diego Saez-Gil: I do hope that Pachana becomes very successful because that will mean that we’ll be protecting and restoring a lot of forests. But I already pledged to whatever wealth I get to earn in my life is going to go to nature. It’s going to go to protect and restore nature. That is my life mission. And yeah, I mean, this is learning. This is teaching me that I really don’t need a lot. And now I want to be even more minimalistic. Some friends have started telling me, hey Diego, what can I buy for you?
And I was like, nothing, I don’t need anything. I’m confirming that really material things are, I read a quote from an Argentinian musician called Facundo Cabral, who says, life doesn’t take away things from you, It liberates you from things so that you can fly higher and be lighter, something like that. That’s my take towards material things. And this comes just to confirm that philosophy. Okay.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I’m really happy you’ve been able to integrate it in a positive way. I imagine this was not as easy an experience for many others in this situation. So kudos for taking it in stride. I’m not sure that I would be nearly so resilient. Although I imagine there have been periods where maybe this has broken you down more than we’re seeing here. Oh, yeah.
Diego Saez-Gil: Oh, yeah. And I’m also allowing for that. Right. So it’s not that I didn’t cry. I cried. And I was, you know, sad and depressed for a few days. And yes, I mean, I think it’s part of the grief process. You have to allow these emotions to come and live through them, just be present for them. So yes, this doesn’t mean That you don’t feel. I’m trying to allow whatever presents, but then know that everything passes and move on and know that everything can be reinterpreted to be of meaning for your life.
Ross Kenyon: Should one attribute culpability for the various wildfires on the West Coast to climate change versus various forest management practices? And it really disappointed me that it became a political issue that neatly divided along partisan lines. And I can imagine forest management, we’ve done episodes on it, forests are definitely not managed perfectly in the United States. And climate change is definitely happening and exacerbating all of it. Do you have any thoughts about how we should unravel that one?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it also makes me very sad that these days everything is political and ideological and one seems hard to have nuanced public conversations based on science, on intellectual humility. And I think this is a case. The forest fires clearly are a consequence of both climate change and the way that humans have interacted with the forest, right? So in California, we have suppressed fires that occur naturally for many years. That meant accumulation of fuel in a way that is not natural for these forests.
And we suppressed that fire just to protect utility companies or people that are living on those forests or companies that have operations on those forests. And we need to manage forests in a way that is more long-term focused and short-term focused. But clearly, climate change is undoubtedly correlated to the beginnings of fires because The hotter the summers, the higher the chances of fire spreading. And this is just basic chemistry. And you just have to look at the history of fires in not only in California, but everywhere in the world.
Everything is on fire. Pantanales in Brazil, Siberia in Russia, Australia last year. So all ecosystems around the world are getting on fire at record rates. And that’s going to continue being the case, right? It’s obvious that climate change and global warming is a part of the cause of this situation. So, yeah, I mean, I think we have to start having a more science-based conversation about this. Otherwise, we’re not going to be able to act.
Ross Kenyon: That’s absolutely the case. And it’s hard to have nuanced conversations. This is why I’m such a strident... I don’t know, I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard, but dang it, that’s what I’m trying to do with this podcast because I hate that everything else has to be distilled into a tweet where we’re yelling at each other. I’m trying to turn the conversation down a little bit, talk to everyone. But yeah, it’s not nearly as common as maybe it should be. That’s disappointing.
Well, I appreciate your approach, and I think that’s clearly the case, and it’s hard to argue that’s not happening. Well, one question I had for you, Diego, in watching these wildfires, I’m in Seattle, so we didn’t get the same colors as the Bay Area, but the air quality was quite bad. Many days were, I believe, the air quality index was above 250%. Basically stayed inside for a week or 10 days or however long it was. So when I saw that, I was thinking about what happens to people who are working on forestry.
This is the wrong way to say it, so we can reframe it. But were these forest fires a way of showing, oh crap, forestry carbon credits might be riskier than we thought? Or is this a chance for you to come in and say, actually what Pachama is doing might aid this in the future? A little bit of both, neither. What do you think?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, it was funny for me to hear some people saying, well, look at all these fires. Forest carbon credits don’t work, clearly, right? Whereas, you know, to me, I see it well precisely because these forest fires are showing the importance of conserving and managing forests is that forest carbon credits matter more than ever. And yes, the risk profile is changing because climate change is Making the risk profile of everything changing. Every single human activity is changing in risk when we have a planetary crisis, right? Forests in particular, yes.
I mean, with rising temperatures every year, there’s going to be more risk of fire. And the same is going to be true for agriculture and for Mining and for, as I said, every human activity. So what we need to do is we need to be better at estimating that risk. One of the things that we’ve been saying about particularly carbon markets is That we have to have an insurance-based approach to these risks, right? As opposed to just a vanilla buffer pool, which is sometimes what is used on carbon markets.
We should be able to estimate risk profile of each particular forest project. And then based on that, you know, ensure these projects. And I think what it means is that we need to do more. You know, we need to do more reforestation, more forest conservation, more improved forest management. To compensate for this increased risk. So the short answer is these fires to me, it just highlights the importance of making forests be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Are you seeing many conversations within the forestry industry about what might be done differently in the reforestation process?
Yeah, I mean, reforestation until recently was thought of as planting tree for timber, right? Planting tree for timber in which you optimize for timber growth and timber harvesting. Optimization, that means planting one single species of tree, pine or eucalyptus, and then harvest as often as you can for economic benefit. But reforestation for carbon sequestration is a different game, right? So we need to plant native species and mix up for biodiversity. You’re trying to grow a forest, not plant trees. And I think we are trying to push that conversation forward As we think about new protocols and methodologies, forest carbon, on how do we make sure that we can incentivize the creation of forest, which as we know, high biodiversity forests sequester more carbon in the end.
So that is definitely an important conversation.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’d like to hear more about how that might change because I imagine reforestation is easiest to justify financially for if timber companies own the land or if they have some sort of leasing agreement with the Bureau of Land Management. Or forestry service or however it’s done. These sort of monocultures of trees are probably the easiest to log and make money on. Of course, that’s at loggerheads. Wow, what a accidental pun. That is perpendicular to something that’s closer to creating a diverse force that is good for biodiversity reasons and or carbon sequestration reasons.
Do you think that carbon markets will be enough to encourage people to go that latter route? Do you think that will happen?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yes. And that’s what we’re waiting for. I mean, in this century, if we don’t put a price to carbon and if that price is not high, Then we are not going to be able to avoid climate catastrophe, right? So we are building in the future in which humanity has put a price on carbon and corporations and governments pay a high price on carbon through carbon markets, through compliance frameworks, and therefore there is enough economic incentive for Change of land use from other type of activities or, you know, for areas in which reforestation for carbon sequestration was not thought of as an economically viable activity to become, you know, an interesting economic activity.
You know, of course, the judge is still out there, but we’re seeing the world moving in that direction, you know, with all these large corporations making pledges to become Carbon neutral by 2030, by 2040. China has pledged to become carbon neutral, right? So if everything continue moving in the direction that is moving, we definitely see the price per ton of carbon going up and therefore economic incentives for landowners to want to start forests.
Ross Kenyon: This comes up in a lot of shows lately, Diego, but there’s been a lot of back and forth in the carbon removal community about permanence. And that probably started to get really serious with Stripe, focusing so heavily on permanence and their purchases of negative emissions. But that’s been ongoing. But I’ve seen a lot of disagreements about whether... If ecological methods of carbon removal face recurrent problems like forest fires, is it not worth focusing our attention on something that is more industrial, mineralization, carbon stored in the built environment or products, something that’s seemingly more stable, not likely to off-gas to a gigantic degree?
Do you care to weigh in on that debate?
Diego Saez-Gil: Sure. We were talking earlier philosophically about impermanence, right? In this planet and in this universe. So, permanence is an illusion. I don’t think they’re going to like that answer, Diego. I think you got to give them more than that. I know, I know. But look, I think that precisely because, as I was saying with fires, because ecological systems are more dynamic We need to do more of it. We have a billion hectares available forest restoration. And by the way, talk about permanence.
Borneo forest has been there for 18 million years. Congo rainforest has been there for also a couple of million years. And the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of thousands of years, have been there removing carbon consistently from the atmosphere, hundreds of gigatons. Making a forest succeed at removing a lot of carbon shouldn’t mean that we don’t have to do it. It should mean that we have to do more and better of it. And by the way, I’m not saying that forest is the only thing we need to do.
We need to do everything. We need to explore direct air capture and we need to explore mineralization and we need to explore everything that is at hand because we are in face of a planetary crisis, right? Sometimes there is a lot of copy-paste thinking when it comes to permanent leakage, these kind of things. We have to think first principle and say, okay, how do we assure a ton-year carbon removal that can help us breach the gap that we have during the next few more important decades of the climate reversal mission?
So, yeah, I mean, we’re putting a lot of thinking on that. You know, as I said, I think it has to be a debate based on data and in which new thinking is super important.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I probably agree. And I want to see all of those things too. And I like to try to just pour cold water on when I feel that conversation is swinging too far one way or the other. I try to bring it back down to... We need all of it, guys. Let’s not form teams and fight each other.
Diego Saez-Gil: Let me tell you another personal view on this. I don’t want to live in a planet in which there is no forest and a bunch of director capture factors around. I don’t want to live in that planet. I want to live in a planet in which, yes, there are some director capture factors around and there is plenty of nature. That is not just a carbon sink, but it’s a habitat of billions of species that are part of the biosphere of this planet, right? So the case for nature as a solution to climate change shouldn’t only be seen as a carbon sequestration maximalism approach, but the way to help recover the ecosystems and maintain the health of the planet.
When we know that forests like the Amazon rainforest produces its own rain, That then fertilizes agriculture fields all across South America. So it’s, you know, we cannot judge Earth systems with a limited approach, if you know what I mean. Climate change is just one of the aspects of this planetary crisis. We need to create solutions that allow for a healthy planetary living for humans and other species to thrive for their generations to come.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a good way to put it. And I think that focus potentially runs the risk. I’m going to be conditional because there are versions of this that do broach this line and others that don’t. Of that maximizing for one single variable, in this case, carbon, may make it look like Ecological methods are not worth the time or money in relative terms. But of course, that’s not the only thing that force and other ecological methods of carbon sequestration are providing. In fact, the way that I framed it as ecological methods of carbon sequestration is probably an instrumental view that you might reject as improper.
Diego Saez-Gil: Well, you know, one interesting thing is that this is what the market is asking for as well, right? Yes, there might be a few carbon buyers that just focus on carbon removal. But we’re seeing the majority of corporations that pledge to net zero and to science-based targets and to other sustainability metrics that they care deeply about biodiversity, water conservation, community impacts, and the SDGs. They don’t just want to be able to check a box on their accounting and say, yes, this car has been removed. They want to have A holistic approach to compensating the environmental impact of their activities.
So I think that’s great because this is what market is asking for. The market wants multi-beneficial solutions.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’d be curious to see how this plays out as carbon removal matures because right now it seems that many of the buyers, they like having the story attached to it of there being farmers or forestry projects or other things that are charismatic in a certain kind of way. They give nice warm fuzzies for supporting various groups of people they want to support or there’s just the inherent biophilia of supporting projects like that relative to something that’s more... I wonder if some of that story loses its impact as people no longer are getting the PR points they did in the early days and then it’s really just about how many tonnes did you remove?
Do you think there’s any chance that we move that direction or do you think the story will always be key? Actually, I think
Diego Saez-Gil: that carbon removal with biodiversity benefits and other benefits will be paid a premium. We’ll have a higher price when we can effectively measure and score projects based on data on those metrics.
Ross Kenyon: Interesting. Yeah. I could see something like that emerging too. So if you want the bare bones, you just want the carbon. Okay. It was, it was turned into concrete and it’s in this building here, but if you want it to be. And there will be companies that will say, well, I just
Diego Saez-Gil: need to check the boxes and I just need to comply with the regulations and compensate for this carbon. And they’re going to go for the cheapest, which is the case today as well. And there’s going to be Others that do it in a more holistic sustainability. None of these companies are doing it because they are demanded by governments to do it. They do it because it’s part of their corporate sustainability policy. And I think even regulation markets, the European Union is talking a lot about the importance of biodiversity.
So we’re going to see regulated carbon markets to be demanding of premiums for biodiversity and other similar co-benefits. Again, it’s just I’m hypothesizing about the future based on what I
Ross Kenyon: see on the market. Yeah, that’s fine. I mean, this is open-ended and who knows what will actually play out in reality. We’re not fortune tellers. But yeah, many of those options seem plausible to me. Well, speaking of corporate sustainability goals, Diego, lots of stuff are happening for Pachama. I see news popping up quite frequently, most notably the Amazon Climate Pledge I saw recently. What is that? What happened? And who’s involved in that round for you?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, we recently announced a new round of funding for Pachama. And it’s really, really interesting how things happen in life sometimes because exactly one week after the fires on my house, we closed a deal with Amazon for an investment on the company from their climate pledge fund. So I was like, wow, life takes things away from you and then it gives you other things. But that was a round that we had been putting together for a few months when COVID started. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t know how deep this crisis was going to be economically.
I come from Argentina. I saw many financial economic crises in my life at this point. And I wanted to secure the funding to keep investing on this very important mission. So I went out and I started talking to some strategic investors and I was positively surprised with a lot of interest from great investors. And we were able to put together a round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is Bill Gates' firm in which many other billionaires have supported that initiative. And then we had other great investors coming along.
Serena Williams, entrepreneurs like Scott Belsky, Toby Lutke, and then Amazon was the last to join. And it was great because not only... It’s an investment in the company, but an intention to work together on helping them achieve their ambitious goals. So yeah, quite excited and great for that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, congratulations. That’s a massive deal and those names are outstanding. So kudos to you, Diego. Thank you. Thank you. I’m sure many, many bottles of biodynamic champagne were popped.
Diego Saez-Gil: Not yet, because we cannot get together with the team. Because with COVID, everybody’s working from home, which actually has been a good thing because now we are hiring people anywhere. We decided to go fully remote. We are a fully remote company. Our last three team members, one is in Utah, the other is in Missouri, and the other is in Los Angeles. So yeah, good news is that now we’re recruiting team members anywhere in the world. And that’s going to open up the pool of candidates that we can tap into.
But yes, we cannot get together to celebrate achievements. Yes. At some point, hopefully, yes.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. That’s exciting. Interesting. I didn’t know you were going fully remote like that. What roles are you hiring for right now?
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah, we’re hiring engineers and we are hiring people on the business team. We’re going to be hiring people on marketing and on supply side. People with expertise on forest. But the most urgent searches are on engineers and we’re looking for machine learning engineers and full stack software engineers, front-end engineers. And we’re hiring slowly because we really want to make sure that we have very talented, very passionate people who are really driven by the mission and that shares our values. And also we want to have a very diverse team with a lot of emphasis on diversity.
Yes, with urgency, but with patience as well.
Ross Kenyon: You’re a man of paradox. It sounds like Diego. Yes. Urgency with patience. Okay. I like that line. Okay. Well, the link is in the show notes. If you would like to apply or learn more about those positions, or you might know someone who would be a good fit for Pachamas culture. I imagine Diego, if someone’s listening and they like what you’re about, I imagine Pachamas vibe is relatively similar. No? No.
Diego Saez-Gil: Yes, we like to talk about our values in three groups. One day we did a session and we put a lot of sticky notes in a wall with all the values of team members, and we grew them into big heart, sharp mind, and bold action. Big heart is because we all really are doing this because we care for this mission, because we care for the planet. We are a big heart. We are trying to communicate with compassion and kindness. Another way to put it is no assholes.
Sharp Mind is because we want people who are data-driven. We respect science and engineering thinking. And then Bold Action, that’s the entrepreneurial attitude that we want of taking risks and be willing to make mistakes because that’s how you innovate and how you learn. But yeah, we also try to show up whole, you know, not put a mask on our job, right, but be who we are. So, you know, it’s often to be found in our meetings, babies or dogs or cats showing up in the Zoom screens.
So yeah, we try to keep it very,
Ross Kenyon: very real. That’s good. I’m happy to hear that. Well, is there anything that we missed that you want to cover before we wrap up, Diego?
Diego Saez-Gil: Well, no, I mean, I think that I’m super, well, by the way, I told you before we connected offline, congratulations to you around. I am really excited to see that climate tech is now a category in Silicon Valley and that a lot of folks want to join the cause, you know, from engineers who want to jump ship from tech companies to venture capitalists who, you know, were also uninspired to keep investing in the, you know, next meaningless app We need all hands on deck. So we need investors, we need talent, we need corporate, you know, people at big companies convincing their companies that they have to commit to climate action.
And then we need people to vote in America. Guys, go out and vote. You know, we need all hands on deck because the climate crisis is here. It’s going to be hard the next few decades, but we can do it.
Ross Kenyon: We can navigate it, but we need everyone to contribute. Well, thanks for the kind words about Nori and thanks for the kind sentiments overall. Hopefully people can take some degree of solace in there. I think when people listen to the show and other climate podcasts or people speaking, there is a sense that Because we’ve started companies in climate tech, that there is work to be done and it isn’t just a hopeless future of wildfires and disasters forever. So I think working in this space gives one a sense of agency that is really powerful.
And I hope that it isn’t just something that we feel internally. Hopefully this is something that translates into bold action, as you say, in the real world.
Diego Saez-Gil: Yeah. And I think that just by doing it, It gives you, as you said, a reason to wake up in the morning and to go inspire to give it your all and to know that we’re going to be able to tell our kids and grandkids that when the world was on fire, we were working on trying to turn it around. So I think that, yes, I do invite everyone to join. They can join companies. They can start their own companies. They can be activists within their own companies as well.
Ross Kenyon: Definitely. Well, thanks so much for being here, Diego. Thank you, Ross. And best luck to you guys. Best luck to you as well. Links to everything we talked about are in the show notes if you’d like to follow up. If you like the show, would you please open up the podcast app in your iPhone? Give us a great rating and review if you would. It helps a lot. Help us get this in front of more people. Help us encourage your friends who are software engineers building an app they might not be as passionate about as they would be if they were working on something related to climate change.
Let’s make that happen. Thanks for listening and have a lovely day. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up We are also now on Patreon at patreon.com slash noripodcasts if you’d like more content, engagement, and community.
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