Building world class team culture from first principles
Small Steps Vol. 103: How to build a team that's buzzing to come to work 🐝 ; where the world's CO2 emissions actually come from 🌎; and carbon sinks 101 🌱🌊.
Kick start
👐 Mindset Health has an incredible team culture. While this is something we and its team have known for years, it was recently publicly recognised with Mindset winning this year’s top spot in the Health category of the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list.
How do they do it? What’s their advice for other early stage founders setting out to build a team where everyone is passionate, efficient, mission-driven and buzzing to come to work?
Read our interview with Mindset’s co-founder and co-CEO Alex Naoumidis to find out.
Spoiler alert: the secrets include prioritising a strong growth mindset and supporting every team member to realise their full potential, executive coaching to improve both personally and professionally, and market leading, inclusive policies. Nice!
What we’re thinking about
🌎 Where do the world’s CO2 emissions come from? Look no further than this helpful NASA visualisation. It demonstrates the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere and reveals the geographic regions responsible most responsible for those emissions – unsurprisingly, the Global North.
The video shows the four major contributors to the climate crisis: fossil fuels in orange, burning biomass in red, land ecosystems in green, and the ocean in blue.
The dots on the surface of the Earth also show how atmospheric carbon dioxide is also being absorbed by land ecosystems in green and the ocean in blue. Though the land and oceans are each carbon sinks in a global sense, individual locations can be sources at different times.
By the end of each year, the world’s plants and oceans have combined to absorb about half of all fossil fuel emissions, slowing the progress of climate change – a reminder of the importance of protecting and preserving our essential natural carbon sinks.
Video sourced here.
🌱 Carbon sinks 101: What are they? Carbon sinks are the natural or artificial systems that absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than they release. They play a critical role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle and in mitigating the effects of climate change. The most significant carbon sinks include forests, oceans and soil, which collectively absorb billions of tonnes of CO2 each year.
Forests sequester carbon through photosynthesis, storing it in trees’ tissues and forest soil. Oceans absorb about a quarter of the CO2 released into the atmosphere, largely thanks to the hard work of phytoplankton.
Unfortunately, deforestation and intensive agriculture have depleted significant swathes of the Earth’s natural carbon sinks, leading to imbalances in the carbon cycle that are further exacerbating the climate crisis. We need to protect both existing carbon sinks and enhance their capacity, regenerate lost sinks, and (obviously) reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all at the same time.
New paths
🎧 Mindset is on the lookout for a Head of Finance (Melbourne).
👩💻 WORK180 is hiring an experienced Account Manager (Perth, part-time or full-time).
🔥 Want to work for an impact company? Fill out our expression of interest form for roles across our portfolio. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
🐛 Goterra’s maggots will be munching on the City of Sydney’s organic waste, to help the City extend food waste collection to all households by 2030. Goterra will be processing about 600 tonnes of food waste over the next 12 months.
🔋 Amber Electric has scored $3.2 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), to trial battery electric vehicle (BEV) smart charging and provision of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services with residential customers. This Australian-first will provide meaningful insight into pathways for commercialisation of smart charging tech.
🛠️ CLT Toolbox founders Adam Jones and Ringo Thomas featured in the latest episode of the High Flyers Podcast! Listen here for how they’re radically simplifying the process for designing with low- and zero-carbon building materials:
🧻 Who Gives A Crap’s CEO Simon Griffiths featured in the AFR’s Five Minutes with the Boss, talking about why he hates flying business class, the points in his career that really changed the trajectory of what he was doing, and the medical effects of sitting on a toilet for 50 hours straight.
For the road
☀️ Complexity economics and the renewables transition. “As the world becomes more complicated, science becomes more and more necessary.” This is American scientist and entrepreneur J. Doyne Farmer key point in why he’s using ‘complexity economics’ to predict how the most difficult economic problem humanity has faced – the transition to renewable energy – will be made possible. Just like Moore’s Law (which predicted that computing power would double every two years) gave companies the confidence to invest in computing from the 1970s onwards, the same will apply for renewable energy – because for every idea, the necessary capabilities will soon be realised. We just need to switch to accepting this assumption.
🔥 The powerful force of Gen Z. Young people are continually told they expect too much from the world of work, but now the “unreasonable” demands of the youngest generation in the workforce are in fact starting to be met. This also aligns with consumers increasingly expecting companies to speak out on social justice issues, and the positive correlation that SP Global has found between business outcomes and support for ESG initiatives. The underlying principle? This generation wants to work for companies and buy products that reflect their values.
🧠 Tech can help us more accurately diagnose mental illness. New wave tech solutions are improving the accuracy and speed of diagnosis, with a variety of phone-based technologies including eye-tracking, voice identification and heart-rate monitoring coming into play. While the nascent solutions are not yet perfect, they’re providing promise for increased quality of care and accessibility, given that over half the US population currently lives in “mental health professional shortage areas.”
👼🏽 Digital babies. Researchers at the University of Galway and Heidelberg University in Germany have created ‘digital babies’ to improve the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions in newborns. By treating the ’digital twin’, researchers can accurately predict how the baby’s body will respond to various therapies ahead of administering them to the real-life counterpart.
🤖 Lie to your therapist, tell the truth to Generative AI. Turns out, 93% of patients have in fact lied to their psychologist or therapist during a session. Maybe that’s not so surprising, but early indications suggest we’re willing to be far more truthful when interacting with generative AI. Maybe this is due to the perception that the bots don’t judge… but it still raises issues about confidentiality and ethical use of data.
🚀 Mythbusting exponential startup growth. Contrary to conventional VC wisdom, successful startups don’t grow exponentially – they actually grow quadratically. This is the argument of the latest edition of The Venture Crew newsletter. The evidence for this? Even Slack, which was one of the world’s fastest growing products, only saw exponential growth for its first four years, before easing off into steady quadratic growth after that.
➡️ Europe’s swing to the right may rock climate policy. Far right parties are finding momentum and power across the continent. As part of their protectionist election platforms, they’ve threatened to undo energy and food policies aimed at tackling climate change through regional cooperation. We’ll be watching the political climate closely to see how it impacts climate policy and action around the globe as the year progresses.
🥪 The future of food is looking bright. Nothing is off the table when it comes to the future of food, says our former Investment Manager turned European Climate VC Charlie McDonald. Posting his thoughts on HackSummit and F&A Next, he said that there’s intense interest in Europe in lab-grown fish meat and reinvigorated curiosity on mycoproteins — mushroom fibres that have a remarkably similar texture to meat or cheese.
🌏 We’re so close. Jordy Kay, founder of Great Wrap, has done the math. At this rate, by 2030, we’ll be a mere 1% short of the agreement we made as part of the 2016 Paris Agreement. In an alternative history where the agreement never happened, he contends we’d already be beyond the 1.5C global warming threshold. A big shout out to all of the founders, investors and customers in the renewable energy sector - this traction is largely thanks to you!
🐻 Sick of your job? Become a Tasmanian wombat walker. Yep, you read that right. Other options include wine taster, oyster organiser and stargazing guide. Tasmania is on a mission to turn annual leave into an adventure, and given the immense positive effects of nature on the brain, we think this sounds like a pretty good gig.
💀 And finally… The ABC nails the pain of Teams Meetings. TGIF, am I right?
Save the date
📅 July 1: Applications close for the Women of Colour Executive Leadership Program! With a proven track record of success, this 4-month initiative running from August to November 2024 is specifically designed and delivered by Women of Colour for Women of Colour. The program offers in-person workshops, personalised executive coaching and networking opportunities. Apply now, or share with a WoC you know!
📅 July 4: Applications close for the CUREator+ Dementia and Cognitive Decline incubator program. Companies that are pioneering innovative health technologies to enhance the lives of individuals affected by dementia and cognitive decline can apply to receive up to $5 million per project in non-dilutive funding.
📅 August 14: Submissions close for the ARENA Solar ScaleUp Challenge. This aims to surface and fund ideas that tackle key pain points in the creation, installation and running of solar energy cells. Shortlisted submissions could gain access to a pool of up to $100 million in grant funding from ARENA.
📅 August 31: Applications close for the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator competition! This competition is an unrivalled platform to profile your business. Get international exposure, validation from tech industry partners and potential investors, and mentorship and guidance from KPMG advisors to help your startup. Definitely one to check out!
