Author: richardmuscat

A big part of any startup pitch is some kind of guess as to how big the potential target market is. This is often referred to as the Total Addressable…

What’s happening with Automattic and Wordpress at the moment is a perfect illustration of why capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with positive social or environmental impact. More money does not equal…

The idea that corporate supply chains can be made sustainable is a core part of political and corporate net zero strategies. For the most part, this is a greenwash. The…

Opportunity cost refers to the loss of potential received value by choosing to not do something or by choosing a different route. One opportunity cost of sleeping late, for example,…

Whether you’re investing your time or your money (or someone else’s money) in impact work designed to address, mitigate, or reverse climate change there are really only two criteria that…

A growing sector of climate tech and green investments is concerned with what can best be described as “upgrading nature”. Things like ‘better’ insects, ‘improved’ trees, ‘enhanced’ wood, ‘supercharged’ vegetables,…

Climate Performance Potential, or variants thereof, is the “in” term for measuring the investability of a climate startup. Although there is no standard or agreed upon way of measuring this…

We need to invest less and compost more to start harvesting meaningful climate outcomes. Financial investments into startups, including climate tech startups, expect a one-to-one return. Of course in terms…

I am not using the term “bullshit” for shock value. I am referencing David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs Theory where he asserts that “roughly two out of every five people are…

80 climate startup pitch decks on my desktop. 58 claim they will be doing things at scale. Most of the rest have similar goals. Typically in some variation of “decarbonising…

In 2021 I watched aghast as Nacho Gimenez, then Managing Partner of BP Ventures, spoke to a packed room about BP’s commitment to decarbonisation. This was during Carbon13’s venture builder…

Here’s a dilemma. What if the thing you’re good at is not needed? What if your hard-earned skills are making the climate crisis worse? What if you’re great at hammering,…

In September 2021 I boarded a train to Cambridge to join Carbon13’s second Climate Tech cohort. Carbon13 is a venture builder whose stated mission is to create high-growth startups that…