Why I joined Counteract
This post was first published on Medium in March 2021
Elephants and Mount Kilimanjaro — source: & Beyond
After a couple of years without returning to my home country, I recently managed to fly back to visit family in South Africa and Kenya. Out of the plane window I saw a distant snow-capped Kilimanjaro peeking (peaking?) through the clouds, below which the Masai Mara stood full of life. The journey continued over Johannesburg, where mountains transitioned to mine tailings dams, and buffalos to cars. I imagined what these landscapes would have looked like many years before the industrial revolution.
The responsibility of the consumer
In moments like these, I get filled with a sense of duty to dedicate my wholehearted energy into preserving this beautiful planet. I’m conscious of the irony, though, in considering this whilst 20,000 feet in the air, in a plane powered by fossil fuels. The reality is that there are some parts of industry that are extremely hard to decarbonise, and up until now, the choice has fallen onto the consumer to partake in an industry or not. There has been progress in making close alternatives that don’t cost the earth (such as the rise of the vegan burger) and easier ways to reduce our carbon footprint, like how Stripe integrated a carbon removal purchasing API at checkout. But the onus is still on the individual to make choices in their day-to-day to do their best to help the planet.
I am not a vegan, but I am a pescatarian (somewhat rare for a South African!). I fly home to visit my family, but I cycle in London. I sometimes buy bags at the store, but I choose the compostable ones and use them for food waste.
And this all relates to Counteract how?
Counteract aims to catalyse a scalable impact on climate change by supporting engineers and scientists to create businesses that can remove a gigaton of emissions. That’s 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to the weight of 280 thousand elephants (67% of African elephant population), and the amount that over 40 billion trees could remove (10% of the Amazon). The world currently produces approximately 40 gigatons of carbon equivalents (CO2e) per year, which is substantially more than the 0.04 gigatons we removed last year. By joining Counteract, I now dedicate 100% of my time and energy into finding people and companies who have ideas to make a meaningful impact on climate change, through carbon removal.
Investing in climate tech ventures
Before joining Counteract, I was grateful to be part of the Octopus Ventures Deep Tech investing team. I learnt about what to look for in a company, and most importantly, what is helpful for entrepreneurs. Moving into venture capital, I realised that there are many aspects to consider in the space to remain at the cutting-edge of advancing technologies. My manager gave some helpful advice to “pick your superpower” and double down on that. For me, originally trained as an engineer, this was my love of technologies solving issues affecting the planet.
Through reaching out to investors who backed startups creating great social or environmental impact, I learned that this space was collaborative and evolving. We convened our climate tech investor networks and hosted a series of net-zero for VCs events, we interviewed the Deloitte Global Lead for disruptive M&A and surfaced insights on the space. It became clear that the climate tech industry is at a tilting point, sustainability is high on companies’ agendas and innovations are fundamental to corporates achieving ambitions in this space.
Through this networking, I was connected with the serial entrepreneurs and now Partners of Counteract, Andrew, Andy and Matt. Counteract is helping combat the climate crisis by providing financial and strategic help to scientists and (sometimes soon-to-be) entrepreneurs innovating in the carbon removal space. To reach the 2050 net zero targets, carbon removal needs to scale faster than the oil industry did at its peak. After meeting the team, hearing about their plans for Counteract, and their backgrounds in building multiple companies together, scaling teams from 0–2000+ and advising numerous corporates and scale-ups on their marketing strategies, I was sold. Research and repeat conversations have proven that there is a great chasm in funding and support for early stage companies between the friends and family rounds and the first institutional money. In carbon removal, this gap is even more severe, considering the technical solutions and often large capital requirements, uncertain carbon markets and evolving regulations. These factors make it hard to commercialise business plans for carbon removal, and the early nature of these solutions requires investment into R&D.
In order for innovations which are truly shaking up the space to succeed, deeply scientific projects are requiring support. This ranges from technical hardware solutions sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the air (like Climeworks), or reversing the mining process by injecting carbon back into the rocks in mineral form (Carbfix), through to biological solutions such as using enzymes to accelerate the speed and complexity of biodiverse reforestation, or coastal environments supporting coral reefs which naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere.
I’m really excited to be part of this team, rolling up our sleeves and getting involved with these ventures that we are supporting. We have a tight focus on technological and biological carbon removal and our approach to supporting innovations will depend on the shape and size that we find them in. This allows for flexibility to patiently invest in people and ideas, to build companies around opportunities and to invest in formed companies looking for support, in more ways than just financial. Our mission is to counteract climate change by supercharging innovations that move the needle on atmospheric greenhouse gas reduction, and help hard to decarbonise industries take positive action in removing their emissions. All this without excusing emissions that are avoidable or slowing the vital transition to renewables.
