Make a real impact.

Found a Climate Tech Start-Up With Us

1.5° Ventures works with mission-driven founders and founding teams to compliment and accelerate their development and the deployment of their technology to effectively combat climate change

 

1.5° Ventures brings everything needed to successfully launch and scale effective climate tech start-ups.

Climate Action

1.5° Ventures only engages topics which have the potential to reduce at least 100Mt CO2e every year, and where emission reductions are coupled directly with revenue. The business model and the technology both need to be ready for hyperscaling.

Team Building

1.5° Ventures actively sources stellar climate founders from tech and business backgrounds, brings them together, then helps them to develop as founders, teams, and companies. Our founders remain in the driver's seat to shape their own companies.

 

Force Multiplication

1.5° Ventures acts to enhance and accelerate every aspect of our start-ups by at least 20%. Teams benefit from shared experience, existing structures, and hard lessons learned. Founders are super-charged through our coaching, knowledge-transfer, and expert guidance.

 

Ecosystem Access

1.5° Ventures connects our founders with other founders, corporates, researchers, investors, governments, and the wider climate tech ecosystem to get their first pilots running, access to the best talent,  technology, and whatever it takes to succeed.

 

Funding Strategy

1.5° Ventures has developed and continuously refines a comprehensive financing strategy for climate tech start-ups. The strategy covers equity, debt, and grants to enable the often neccesary complex CAPEX-financing.

 

 

Shared Services

1.5° Ventures provides a wide array from simple IT services to complex legal documents: everything our start-ups need to hit the ground running. The 1.5° Ventures office is in the heart of Berlin and available to all our start-ups 24/7.

 

The 1.5° Ventures Hypothesis

We only have limited time to decarbonize as quickly as possible.

Fundamental research into new technologies, building new supply chains, or altering how society works at a basic level may eventually yield results, but we need to mobilize what we already have in the society and systems where we already live.

The fastest way to reduce emissions is through hypergrowth start-ups.

Big coporates often are not agile enough and won’t move unless forced (so-called fast-followers). Small and medium size businesses often don’t have the required scale or set-up. Governments can induce demand but cannot affect supply.

Carbon is a physical problem which needs physical solutions.

Software can only be a part of the solution. In the hardest to decarbonize industries, new processes, materials, and technologies are required which are connected to physical things. Atoms, not bits, are the key to climate effectiveness.

Why are so few climate tech start-ups being founded?

The case for climate tech venture building

Despite all the ingredients for breakthrough climate tech success being available…

  • Motivated talent from all walks of life; researchers from academia as well as industry veterans are compelled to work in climate
  • Existing technologies which have already been (at least partially) developed past the point of feasibility for many of the core processes in society are sitting on the shelf, ready to be used
  • New and massive green venture funds and private money that see the potential in climate tech and want to have an impact – green is the new gold.
  • Government regulations, programs, and funding are already in place and getting stronger every day

…not nearly enough climate tech start-ups are being founded and funded. In Q1 2022 less than 5% of all European early-stage funding rounds were closed by climate tech start-ups, and even less have the potential to reduce or abate 100Mt CO2e.

The main structural obstacle preventing more climate tech start-ups from being founded and funded are these unique challenges and their complexity:

  • Carbon is a physical material, and the effective solution space requires predominantly physical products and services
  • Founders with backgrounds in chemistry, biology, or other physical sciences often aren’t well connected with good business founders or even the idea of starting a company
  • Climate solutions are often dependent on CAPEX-financing which has few proven structures, models, and means for start-ups

Few founders can be expected to bring everything from the start (business, industry, scientific community, financial world, industry, regulation, grants, etc.) and even fewer climate tech start-ups are able to effectively scale.

The 1.5° Ventures solution to enable the creation of successful climate tech start-ups is to match stellar climate founders from tech and business while acting as a force multiplier to enhance and accelerate every aspect of their companies.

 

Let's Make An Impact

Use the below form to let us know you'd like to help stop the climate emergency!

We are always looking for mission-driven founders and founding teams with stellar management skills, strong go-to-market-mindsets, and pragmatic problem-solving, technical, and collaboration abilities.



    Rather write us an email? impact [ɛt] one.five.ventures