For the penultimate episode of series six, I was joined by Katya Constant, the Head of The Climate Brick. The Climate Brick is an initiative set up by EQT Ventures and Contrarian Ventures to accelerate the at-scale deployment of climate tech by introducing the "missing manual" (a playbook for scaling and funding seven different climate tech archetypes based on data from over 3,000 companies) and uniting the ecosystem through building the largest cross-stakeholder community. 

Across this series we will be discussing the challenges around scaling deep tech solutions within climate. I’ll be speaking to Investors, Founders, Venture Builders and other key ecosystem players all focused on scaling and commercialising groundbreaking, deep tech innovations.

We will explore how to prepare for the challenges that deep tech companies often face around fundraising, scaling, team building and commercialisation; and we’ll hear from stories of those who have successfully scaled to Series A and beyond.

Video versions of this and previous episodes are available here.

https://climatebrick.com/ 

1:48 - Katya’s journey from investment banking through to climate and career coaching 

9:51 - What themes have you seen across the successful businesses you’ve been involved with, that has separated them from those that haven’t survived?

15:01 - What was important to you from an investor perspective when you were at Systemiq?

19:02 - What do you see as being the key financial challenges that deep tech companies face?

23:19 - What advice would you offer to founders in the early stages, to help them de-risk things and show it to investors.

25:49 - When do you think a startup should think about having a CFO in place either permanently or fractionally?

28:37 - What is the Climate Brick?

33:47 - What were your key learnings from doing research for the Climate Brick?

35:42 - Do you find that corporates are as keen to collaborate as the rest of the investment community?

37:19 - Are there certain industries or locations where communication across the capital stack is better and climate could learn from?

38:28 - What led you to move into coaching founders and where do you add value?

42:08 - Do you work with individuals or with founding teams?

43:17 - What common challenges do you see founders face when you’re coaching, are there recurring themes?

47:08 - What advice would you give early-stage founders around what to start thinking about and practising now, that will help them face those challenges in the future?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.