Navigating the funding landscape: the top 4 questions from climate tech founders
The answers to your questions ⁉️; VCs commit to reporting on investments into women-led teams 👩🔬; and some climate news from around the world 🌍.
Kick start
🥗 Securing funding is the biggest challenge that Australian climate tech founders are currently facing, according to Climate Salad’s 2023 Australian Climate Tech Industry Report – and with climate founders aiming to raise $1.5 billion in the next 12 months alone, that’s no small issue.
So how to help people navigate the fundraising landscape? We recently held office hours with some of Climate Salad’s amazing climate tech founders and answered their questions to help lend transparency to the process. We found the same key questions coming up each time - so we’ve shared them here, along with our answers, for any other climate tech founders out there.
What we’re thinking about
💸 Transparency to fight the women-led funding shortfall. There’s been some exciting movement in the VC community in the past few weeks, with a list of Australian VC funds including Airtree, Blackbird, and yours truly at Giant Leap having collectively committed to reporting on the proportion of funding going to women-led startups. As reported in the AFR, the initiative is a first and essential step toward improving the huge gender imbalance in Australian startup funding.
Funds will report on the proportion of women-led teams they see at the top of their investment funnel (i.e., from the number of pitch decks received), down to deals investigated, and finally investments made – both by number of investments, and by dollar value.
The transparency initiative is being led by our friends at Scale Investors and Alberts (who have also already reported their stats), and is joined by a growing list of funds, including Tractor Ventures, Climate Salad, Birchal, Trawalla, Euphemia, Artesian, Friday Club and Launch Vic’s Alice Anderson Fund, to name a few.
At Giant Leap, we’re proud that, as at the end of FY23, 60% of our portfolio companies are women-led businesses and 60% of our investment team are women. Details of women-led companies in our investment pipeline are available on our website homepage (just scroll down!). We define women to include all women, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth, and recognise that gender is a spectrum. We also intend to expand reporting to reflect other forms of diversity in future.
If you’re an Australian VC investor and keen to get your fund involved, just reach out to the Giant Leap team. If you’re a founder – ask your current and future investors about their stats and what they’re doing to improve them! 👀
New paths
🛠️ Great Wrap is hiring a Head of Operations (Melbourne, Hybrid).
👷🏼♀️ Goterra is after a Service Technician (Canberra).
🏥 Seer Medical is hiring a number of roles in the US, including VP of Clinical Operations, a Junior Product Support Engineer, and a Clinical Application Specialist.
🔥 Also, check out our Giant Leap Fund jobs board for over 80+ available positions or fill out our expression of interest form. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
🐛 Goterra featured in the AFR this week, with a great write-up on the thousands of tonnes of food waste from more than 200 Woolworths stores that will be diverted from landfill and turned into livestock feed and fertiliser at its new waste facility in greater western Sydney. This follows Goterra having raised more than $10m in a bridging round earlier this year.
🎙️ Sendle Founder and CEO James Chin-Moody discusses the 5 virtues of good company culture in an exclusive with Foundr podcast including being humble, honest, happy, hungry and high-performing.
For the road
🛂 A passport for your plastic cup? Coming soon. A new scheme being developed by the Australian federal government will trace the full life cycles of plastic, glass and other recyclable materials, so you can know exactly where your products have come from. These ‘digital product passports’ aim to give quality assurance to companies and eradicate greenwashing, and may be capable of mapping the entire lifecycle of a single bottle! The Sydney Morning Herald shares more on this here.
💰 Charging for the true climate cost of foods. The Guardian takes a look at a German supermarket, who’ve imposed a week-long trial to raise the cost of products including wiener sausage, cheese and yoghurt, to reflect their real cost on people’s health and the environment.
🧑🏽⚕️ Out of Pocket’s Halftime Report on healthtech. The recently released report takes a look at the macro changes in the fundraising and regulatory environment, as well as interesting startup ideas that have gained traction.
🌱 It’s confirmed - a vegan diet massively cuts emissions. The Guardian reports on a new study which states that plant-based diets lead to 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than meat-rich ones. The research also found vegan diets cut the destruction of wildlife by 66% and water use by 54%. Food for thought!
👨👧 AI doesn’t just discriminate against women in the workforce – it also has a problem with parents. The University of Melbourne has conducted research which shows that strategies like ‘resume blinding’, which may work for human hirers, do not work for AI and that AI replicates biases inherent in its training data. Read more about this here.
📚 VC books to read when you’re learning about raising. VC investor Solai Valliappan shares her list of books to read when starting out in the industry – also helpful for founders looking for a deeper understanding. Here is Solai’s list to better understand the terms, frameworks and structures in the VC landscape.
↘️ The rise and fall of the chief diversity officer in the US. The Wall Street Journal reports on high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives leaving their jobs, amidst thousands being made redundant, as US companies scale back their racial justice commitments.
🚀 Pre-accelerator programs to support startup diversity in NSW. The NSW Government has backed four pre-accelerator programs, run by Startmate, I2N, iAccelerate and UNSW Founders, to support founders from diverse backgrounds and social impact driven startups. Check out the details of the four programs here.
Save the date
📅 22 August: Applications close for x15 Ventures’ Xcellerate Program23 - Xccelerate is an expedited investment process that helps early-stage founders understand the pathway to partnering with a large corporate, like a bank. It's a high-touch program that creates valuable connections between founders and stakeholders within x15 and CommBank, enabling exploration and experimentation. Suitable for pre-Series A climate tech and circular economy startups. Apply here.
📅 29/30 August: Mindset Health’s Depression, Anxiety & Hypnotherapy Workshop - a live event with Dr Michael Yapko. A two-day immersive workshop suitable for all healthcare professionals interested in mental health - CPD available. Register here.