 My name is Alicia Seiger, I'm the Managing Director of the Sustainable Finance Initiative at Stanford, and we host this monthly seminar where we invite luminaries in the sustainable finance space to share their insight and knowledge and wisdom with us. And we are so lucky to have Shantae Harris here with us today, but I am not introducing her because one of our students, one of our exceptional students, Madison Freeman, who's a GSB E-IPER and very accomplished climate policymaker, investor, and entrepreneur in her own right who's worked in the Biden administration among other places in the sector is gonna introduce Shantae. So Madison, please take it over. Well, thanks, Alicia. Shantae, super excited to have you here. I've had this sincere pleasure of getting to know Shantae for the past couple of years starting when we were both investors in New York City and it's been such a delight to see all of the impact that she's created in a variety of different places. And I'm really thrilled that we get to hear from you today on a particularly pressing topic, the need to deploy climate technologies at scale and the pathway for doing so. Shantae's had an extremely impressive career, but just to touch on a few things, she's worked on venture capital at Second Muse and next to venture partners. She's done local policy advising in the city of New York and she's worked on climate strategy at Schmidt Futures. She's been named to Forbes 30 under 30, NASDAQ, ACEE, lists of luminaries around the country, GreenBiz. And she's also a founding member of the women of color in climate tech and sustainability. And I just wanted to mention as well that Shantae is working on something really exciting right now in the context of deploying capital for the energy transition. And she's mentioned that she'll be making some big announcements about exactly what that entails next week. So I think, really excited to hear from you today, but also looking forward to hearing more about the details on what you're working on once it's all coming out of stealth in the next couple of days. So with that, I'll turn the floor over to you, Shantae, really looking forward to hearing what you have to share with the group. Thank you, Madison. What an incredible introduction. Thank you to Stanford for hosting me today. And I'm really excited to dive into this topic. It's a topic, if you know me, I'm sure some of the folks on this call do. If you don't, I've been talking about for years, which is really how do we ensure that the right types of capital are going into climate tech companies and their corresponding projects. And we'll talk a little bit in a minute about what that difference is and why it matters. But I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen because I did pull together a presentation for this. And feel free to use the chat. I may not be able to see it, but definitely wanna hear both your thoughts, feedback and questions towards the end of the seminar and generally looking forward to continuing to ensure that this space is a space that grows. And I think there's really nowhere that's better to talk about this than Stanford, acknowledging all the incredible work that's being done around finance. So the talk today is really focused on what I've been calling the great deployment, which is really this incredible moment that we're in where we're seeing climate technologies scale at an exponential rate than we've ever seen before, while also simultaneously an increase in climate finance across the board. And that of course includes venture capital, which I think a lot of you probably are either working in or familiar with in terms of what companies have access to, but it's not the only space. And so we're gonna be spending a lot of time talking about what are the additional options as it relates to venture capital and the broader finance community. So with that, let's talk a little bit about where we're at. There's been an entire ecosystem shift and I'll be frank about almost a year and a half ago, I left my previous role at Second News running a venture studio model aimed at de-risking early stage climate tech, one missing the work that I did as an operator across various stages, supporting companies and scaling, and realizing that we've seen this uptick in early stage venture capital and early stage capital for companies as a whole, but not as much attention around how do we really get across the second valley of death? Many of those areas are defined by infrastructure or early projects or I'm sure what many of you have either heard or are starting to hear about around first of a kind, which when I joined Schmidt Futures as a climate tech strategist, there wasn't as quite much attention as there is now. And so it's been really incredible to not only see the increased attention on climate tech, but then this increase attention around the ecosystem shift as we start to dive into understanding and navigating the evolving capital stack. And to tell you all a little bit more about me, I know that Madison did an incredible job. Thank you again for sharing a little bit about my work, but I always like to tell folks, I've been a strategist and operator and investor. I've also done a lot of work and policy and for quite some time as I was scaling different companies across various stages, I saw this disconnect between a lot of private capital and the incentives on the public sector side and really wanting to bridge that gap not only because I was passionate about it, but also because I saw there was a unique opportunity to ensure that market drivers were informing the way that the entire financial ecosystem is deploying capital and ultimately how investors understand their portfolio and the startups they support. So with that in mind, let's take a closer look at what the funding is today and how to think about it. I think this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways, venture capital, some of the most expensive money out there for founders and for founders who are on this call, you I'm sure understand that for investors, even if you are in venture capital, you understand what the parameters are around VC and the goal here is not to talk about just VC and maybe why you would only go that route or just other alternative financing options. It's really to talk about how are we blending all of these together to make sure that our companies or the companies within the climate tech ecosystem are able to scale and able to do that in a way that's truly sustainable. So let's look at some of the numbers. I won't read all of them, of course, but I think they're important to name because they really help us start to understand both the challenge and the opportunity that we're in. So in 2022, more than 4,000 unique investors participated in at least one climate deal and what we saw was actually generalist VCs entering the climate space as well. And I think for many folks in climate tech, like myself, I'm sure others who were a part of the clean tech wave, it's been really incredible to see the focus on climate not just being this niche area and why you of course need specific skill sets and knowledge sets within the space. It really is about the market opportunity and how quickly climate tech is evolving, how quickly public incentives are growing and also how much we're seeing additional capital express interest and also move into the space. So while that has been happening, what we've also seen is global climate tech venture capital invested at a total of $70.1 billion the year before last. And climate tech accounted in 2023 for 70% of total VC investment in 2023. I was honestly surprised by that stat. That was a stat I came across recently and wanting to understand what was the difference between 2022 VC and 2023. And while we did see VC drop in climate tech across the board, we also know that VC dropped as a whole across every industry. And so what that means is we're at this moment where a lot of money has gone into early stage venture and much of that venture capital has been put to use by incredible companies. We saw 83 climate tech unicorns around the world in 2023 or just the start of 2023 and climate investing going to two or two thirds of it, excuse me, going to hardware. So we have this incredible moment in time where we're seeing money increase across the early stage and for someone who was running a venture studio and seeing that gap in real time in 2020 and watching the numbers increase over the past few years, it's created this incredible opportunity for us to really look at the next phase as these companies mature, as they really get out into the world and go to market. So I already alluded to this, but to reiterate it, it's not an either or, right? So climate hard tech startups are indeed VC scalable and I love this graph. This was actually made by ThirdSphere. If you haven't heard of them, they're incredible VC fund that also has been built and excuse me, has built an entire platform around their work based in New York. And what you see here is that both Tesla and Uber had the same number of pre-IPO rounds, which means that when we talk about software and hardware, I think historically there's been this debate, hardware versus software, hardware versus software. And I'll be the first one to say that I love hardware. I've worked with mostly companies that are scaling, using physical products or building physical technologies that have to be deployed either in communities, in the market, in infrastructure, or a combination of all three. But it really doesn't have to be an either or, and I think we can see here that it shouldn't. And so whether we talk about Tesla or others, the goal or really the objective is to understand that how are we taking the existing data that we have around what companies have done well, particularly in clean tech 1.0 and applying that to now as we've seen this huge rush of capital flowing into climate tech. And I think the last thing I'll say here is if you look at Uber and Tesla, Tesla has had over eight times as much in terms of market cap. So we're also talking about bigger global opportunities when it comes to climate tech, which I think if you're on this call, you understand that it's a huge investment opportunity. But I think many folks don't understand that we don't have to, I think stay in sort of the silo thinking of software versus hardware or really putting our climate tech companies against existing companies that have been primarily software. We know that it can work and it is working. This is a really great graph from Bessemer Venture Partners. I believe if they didn't release it this past year, the year before last, and I wanted to include this in my discussion with you all today, because what you see is that the revenue across rounds matters. And particularly if we look at series A to series C, there is this big jump in terms of revenue that has to happen in order for clean tech or climate tech companies to be successful. And what this tells us is that the financing matters just as much as unit economics. And I know that that probably feels very simple to some of you in terms of an insight, but what it tells all of us is that if founders, investors and investors are not thinking about the unit economics and ultimately how revenue is truly a part of the strategy in scaling a company, then we know that they're more likely to fail. And so because we know that we have to be equipping our founders with both funding and market opportunities that match the specific gap. So let's dive into the gap a little bit more. Many of you may have heard of the Valley of Death. There are a few within the climate tech space. One of the main Valley of Deaths that we're gonna talk about today really has to do with going from a few pilots and demonstrations to full on project finance or early deployments. And so what you see here is that venture capital investment starts to really dry out. And it also becomes more expensive for companies to leverage their venture capital really in spaces where they shouldn't be, whether that's infrastructure or just really getting to market as it relates to demonstrations, facilities, pilot facilities. And so typically this is series A and series B where we see this gap. Of course it varies because climate tech is not a monolith. There's a lot of different categories. We won't necessarily talk about that today, but if you haven't signed up for Climate Tech VC, it's a really great newsletter that does do deep dives on all of the different categories within climate tech. And you can start to see the trends within specific categories. And what we know across the board is that this Valley of Death does exist. And it really begs the question, what can we learn from this when financing climate technology across the board? So it's not an either or as I mentioned before, it's an and. And so to cross multiple technical valleys of death, particularly in hard tech, innovators need to not only have more capital but more types of financing. And I've really loved this evolution of how we're talking about climate tech financing that you can see was pulled from Climate Tech VC. And they actually did an announcement, I believe early last year where they talked about wanting to and desiring to dive more into all of the different capital stacks. And as someone who's looked at debt, broader areas of equity, government grants and we'll get into all of these categories in a second, it really is critical. And you see that all of these specific financing options play a very critical role and have and will continue to in terms of how we support climate tech founders, how we see impact if perhaps you're on more of the catalytic and philanthropic side or just returns from a pure market returns perspective as a financier. And so it's really about understanding that VC goes hand in hand many times with all of these other options if these companies are to be successful. So let's talk a little bit about market players. I won't read all of this but you can see here some of the categories that not only matter but particularly in light of the Inflation Reduction Act in light of what has occurred in the market over the past year are even more critical to the success of companies. So if we look at philanthropy, grants and prizes, government and philanthropic entities are oftentimes offering really great terms or a non-dilutive capital for companies as they scale. Of course, when it comes to lenders this is about borrowing money and this may not always be the right option particularly if the terms are not in favor of what a company is building. And so we'll talk a little bit about how companies can think about that creatively both now and in the future and then tax credits. I know so many as I'm sure you all do companies that are diving deep into tax credits and what's interesting about tax credits is that they really can be leveraged and should be leveraged for a number of companies within climate tech so that they can get deductions so that they can actually see this offer really impact their company positively. And then we've talked a lot about venture capital. So of course venture capital is a part of this I won't go down that rabbit hole again but it's about all of these pieces of being a part of founder education and investor education. So if you are a founder or an investor and maybe you haven't really started to look at all of these options this is only a few but a great place to start. And then I put at the bottom here why not project finance? I'd love for project financiers to answer this question but what we do know is that typically they don't invest in technologies that aren't commercially proven and they're also not incentivized to really take on smaller scale projects that aren't economically viable for them as financiers. So we have this gap that I've already visually demonstrated for you is a big one that overlays with revenue, overlays with financing options that companies need to think about and ultimately deployment. So going back to the theme of the great deployment how are we and we can be founders, investors, ecosystem funders, how are we really thinking about filling this gap in a holistic way and what does it mean for the future of these companies? So let's talk a little bit more about alternative finance. And I wanted to spend a little time here talking about what are the other options that companies have? So of course there's venture debt and venture debt is oftentimes a very challenging topic of discussion because it's not always in the best the terms are not always in favor of the founder that's building the company but it can be an incredible opportunity to leverage in terms of thinking about saving dilution on the backend. Crowdfunding, I'll be honest, I think three years ago I thought I would see a lot more crowdfunding opportunities it's not to say that they don't exist but I think we're still scratching the surface in terms of really seeing crowdfunding fill in the gap for companies. And there are some really great solutions or options that are popping up within this space. They're not always geared towards emerging technologies. So they are typically looking at incumbent technologies throughout the renewable energy space like solar but it's still something that or an area that I believe and I know is really critical to how we're going to continue to solve this valley of death and then alternative credit. So credit has been actually I think a big area for a lot of financiers over the past year particularly in light of the market changes but credit is huge. And I think when we start to think about equipment and purchase orders and anything related to revenue-based financing being able to offer company's credit is a big opportunity and there are some funds who are starting to do that which we'll talk about soon. And then pilot funding and while pilot funding is not hey, here's a specific type of financing pilot funding is really important. And so whether we're talking about a first of a kind or a number of existing smaller facilities after an initial pilot facility it's really about how are we ensuring that companies can continue to pilot their solutions learn from them and engage with it all of the different stakeholders that they have to engage with. And I think a lot of what we start to see is this need for working capital across the board. So let's talk about pilot projects a bit further and also public funding. So like I mentioned before I spent years really leading various companies throughout the process of setting up pilots facilities demonstrations and thinking about how to leverage public funding for that and it can come in a variety of ways that I think still it's not always demystified for a company when they're scaling. So pilot projects are really great opportunity for companies to work with agencies. And we see this now more than ever with Inflation Reduction Act and a lot of the pilot funding coming out of the Department of Energy. But historically many pilot projects also are funded by state and local agencies. And so being able to approach those area or those agencies based off of the area in the region where you're deploying is of course critical design challenges. They're not always there meaning that agencies or various public-private partnerships don't always have these challenges but they're a great entry point particularly if you are early stage to think about where you can plug in and how you can get a piloting opportunity. And one of the areas that gets overlooked is not just whether it's funded. Ideally you really do want your pilot customers paying for it but it can also present other ways to save money and think about being cost effective like do you get an area or a plot of land for free? And for anyone who's ever piloted any sort of technology that is a hardware solution it can be really challenging to actually get the sign off whether that's the permitting, the approvals for a space. And so design challenges and pilot projects with agencies oftentimes are helping you mitigate many of the costs around getting out there and into the market. And then last but certainly not least procurement opportunities. And we could have a whole, I think seminar on procurement opportunities but procurement is so big and I think historically within the venture capital community there's been this desire to separate government from startups and quite frankly in climate tech it just doesn't make sense. There's so much opportunity for companies to leverage the existing procurement opportunities out there. They require specific expertise and of course there's always going to be an opportunity cost for all of these pieces but they're huge and particularly right now with Inflation Reduction Act we're talking about over $300 billion being deployed. Procurement opportunities are important and they start to get at what we were talking about or what I was speaking to before which is how is revenue overlaying with the financing itself? And government sits in this really nice in between where you can have pilots, you can have procurement where you're getting paid to both test your company while de-risking it and leading to further opportunities that include revenue for the business so going back to the unit economics but then also an ability to attract additional private financiers. So let's talk a little bit about mechanisms and structured capital. I think structured capital is an area that many folks don't necessarily think of or want to say out loud when we're talking about scaling companies because it can sound like, wait, what do you mean? I'm going to think about different capital stacks and how they layer but that's exactly what we have to do. That's exactly what's happening and I'm really excited about not only what is happening but then some of the case studies that are coming out as of the past, particularly two years because we're seeing whether it's VC firms, project financiers, catalytic funders start to think about ways that they can structure their capital to really fill in a gap within the company and make sure that it's optimizing for returns and impact or one, depending on what the priorities are for that specific investor. So joint ventures, definitely not a novel topic but it is important when we start to think about the ways that many companies within the climate tech space are scaling and need to scale. So they can help de-risk the structure throughout and some companies have run their own joint ventures. We'll talk about an example shortly. Also in partnership with their venture capital fund, right? And so there's this ability to start to, I don't wanna say separate but think about the infrastructure required alongside a climate tech company as an additional investment opportunity. And I've been talking to a few companies that are in the climate tech space or maybe they even launched 10 years ago when we were still calling it clean tech and they've done this. They're doing it and there's some really great examples that aren't really, I think, top of mind when we think about financing climate tech companies but they have led to an instrumental impact in terms of their ability to fund both the infrastructure involved with their company and the technology itself. So what are some of those best practices? There really needs to be a vested interest by both parties that are involved securing input volumes, potential access to existing sites. So we come back to the site selection piece and we'll talk more about why that matters but site selection is a huge piece to this. And so if there isn't that access it can cause many challenges for the way that a company deploys its technology or its project and then shared operational, regional, regulatory knowledge. So even in naming that what you hear or what I hope you hear in that is site. So how are you thinking about site in the greater context of the strategy that you're creating around financing and then broader network of potential investors? Who's going to join the, excuse me, who's going to join the joint venture? So we really have to be thinking about how can we create more joint ventures that get at some of this need and we'll walk through a case study, as I mentioned. Creative funds, I'm really excited about creative capital as a whole which I did decide to separate from catalytic capital and I'll explain why. But creative capital really refers to patient long-term capital that doesn't require a quick return. And many times it is thinking about how to be additive either to an existing portfolio or an existing strategy that we know is working in terms of revenue and growth. So recent funds have had the opportunity and been talking more about debt, equity and hybrid investments. We've seen more of these funds in Europe. And so I think I'm personally really excited about what these funds can and should look like in the States as we're solving just as many if not more problems around scaling and deployment. And then investors in the space really focus on driving top tier financial returns. So while there isn't always the expectation of an immediate return, there still is an expectation of returns, right? And those returns really being top tier and at the same time driving environmental, social and economic progress. And what I do wanna point out here is that it's not just environmental. So social and economic progress is a big piece to this. How is the project or the strategy around deployment that integrates projects that a company has thinking more holistically about how it's impacting a community, a region, a nation. And in terms of requirements, it goes back to what we're talking about around hardware, two thirds of hardware, two thirds of all climate capital has gone into hardware. So it really hopefully debunks in case any of you came into this conversation, this notion that hardware is not being invested in or that it's a bad investment because what we're seeing is that it's not and it's actually an incredible time for hard tech companies to be scaling and we have to think about all of these additional layers around financing. So in terms of requirements, capital intensity, right? So if you're a hard tech company, many times you do have to think about your company in a different way as it relates to how much more capital intensive it's going to be versus a software solution or a SaaS platform. Many times you have a longer path towards commercialization. This isn't always true, but it can be and that commercialization challenge is not always the technology. Sometimes it's whether the industry has matured as quickly as you need it to scale. Sometimes it's price point, which certainly overlaps with industry, but I've had a lot of conversations with companies over the past year where they are struggling with this price point, how do you get industry on board? And creative capital can help not only buy time for that but really get to the heart of what needs to happen so that we're seeing industry adopt at an accelerated rate. And then many, though not all of these types of funds or vehicles seek to fund capital intensive and asset oriented businesses. So I know I talked about capital intensity, but assets are a big piece here. We can call it infrastructure as well, but essentially real assets that you either have to own, license, how can you think about ways that this sort of capital can apply to the business model? And then infrastructure as a service. So I think many times in the tech world we love using the phrase as a service. And I do really love this phrase. I don't think it's one that's used commonly, but it starts to get at what I was just speaking to which is the real asset side of this work. So it's an approach to structured capital which enables companies to provide infrastructure at no upfront cost to their customers. And many times there were payment needs on the cash flows associated with that infrastructure. And you can access this depending on your business model. So this goes back to understanding the revenue and how the specific climate tech company scales, but you can look at certain areas and many areas we're seeing as it relates to virtual power plants, EV charging, energy efficiency altogether. And while some of these solutions are incumbent, many emerging technologies are actually adding an additional layer of a novel, either business model or application in the space. So it might be EVs which know aren't new or it might be solar, which of course isn't new, but maybe it's a new approach to solar or a new approach to EVs. And you can think about your business model which you should already be, but if you're an investor or a founder, now you can start to think about, okay, what are the incentives as it relates to the assets that we're going to own or license, et cetera. And similar to project capital, the benefit here is financing infrastructure at an optimized cost of capital, providing a sales tool to the underlying business. So you're incentivizing perhaps customers or other stakeholders who wouldn't otherwise be incentivized or capital fuel for growth. So just general, as I mentioned before, working capital that can help you answer some of these questions where other types of financing just wouldn't provide that, and then equity. So an emerging area of exploration that I've been seeing that's, no one's really announced publicly, but outside of venture capital, financiers are testing models that finance both the company and the growth and overall project equity or see me through growth and overall project equity. And many of these vehicles are still coming together, as I mentioned, but they are focused on advancing early commercial scale projects and many of them are focused on growth stage. And growth stage can many times mean past this valley of death, but I'm also seeing folks start to come in earlier and say, okay, is there a way to de-risk sooner so that we can see growth capital really player role in getting companies over this gap to project financiers. And then catalytic capital. So this is where I've been spending a lot of my time. I know Madison mentioned earlier my work, Wichmitt Futures last year and also thinking about how to bring in other new financiers and funders into the space. For those who don't know, I believe it was 2020, if not 2020, then 2021, there was a report that was released that identified that only 2% of philanthropic dollars were going into climate solutions. And so since then, while we certainly need to see a greater increase in that space, there has been more attention and more thought and strategy related to how philanthropy or generally groups that don't have the same requirements around returns or the same expectations in terms of timeline can present additional funding to companies and to the scaling of their projects. So they bring the same level of investment rigor and process to deals with a bias towards impact potential over financial returns. And going back to my piece around creative capital, you know, the big differentiator here is that creative capital includes all of it, right? So it's saying, hey, we want impact potential, we want social impact potential. And that's not just environmental, that's not just social, it's actually a combination of all of it. And really looking at more of an ESG lens many times applying to an existing portfolio. Whereas catalytic capital is not necessarily new and that it's been around for at least a decade, but it's growing in its popularity in terms of ways that we might be able to structure concessionary PRI capital towards specific deployment gaps and opportunities. And so it does impact, I mean, it does emphasize impact as much as returns. And that's a really important differentiator within catalytic capital. So focusing on impact not just across GHG reduction, but larger societal impact as well. And many times it is looking at not necessarily sometimes equity, but not necessarily equity. And so it will include things like PRI capital. And the last thing I'll say on that is I think what we are going to see is this more common merging of catalytic and creative capital, given that they are still pretty new to the scene and there's this overlay of how we deploy, what parameters are around them, but the instruments through which this capital is deployed does truly matter. So talking more about why any of this matters, when leveraged correctly, structure can unlock equity value and scale for certain kinds of businesses. And I really love this graph. I pulled this from Spring Lane Capital on a report that they did. And for those who aren't familiar with Spring Lane Capital they're a really great firm to look into. Many times I would say they've really been a leader in the space well before most folks were talking about physical assets and infrastructure as a service. But what you see here is all of the ways that government, universities, foundations and philanthropic capital play a role within a company's technology life cycle and how the commercialization gap is really low. So we're still seeing money flow in but maybe not necessarily towards the most critical aspects. And that's a lot of where my work currently is focused. How do we equip CIOs and existing institutional investors to not just fund these emerging funds but also to think about where their money can have the most impact for both returns and environmental and social impact. And it's a big gap. So I'll just echo that again. It's an area that we need to fill and it's great to see the examples that we're gonna dive into a folks trying to do that in various capacities. So I pulled this from Climate Tech VC. I think this came out earlier last year. And it's just an example of what's happening in terms of innovation across the capital stack. So at the heart of what I'm sharing and what we're seeing in this space is a need for innovation and continued innovation across the funding and financier ecosystem and founders are already doing this, right? So if you're a founder, you're probably already trying to figure out, okay, I'm building this, what capital works best for this. And I have seen more founders put their fundraising into context around non-dilutive capital, for example, versus private capital. And these are just some examples of some of the existing vehicles that have come out. I won't go through all of them because I wanna make sure we have time for Q&A. But Enduring Planet is a great one. TerraSat, of course, the DOE is ramping up or has been ramping up its debt capital for large scale projects. And so what we see here is this nice merging of capital innovation alongside the lifecycle needs of a climate technology. And I mentioned we would come back to this earlier. So when thinking about the climate capital stack, opportunity costs. So how do you think about the ways that you not only approach fundraising, but then what really works for the company that's scaling? And the reality is that there are different complexity levels for all of these different types of capital. Grants are high. And so how can you support your either portfolio or connect them to those who specialize in grant writing, for example? If you've never done it before, there's a lot of layers around what you should and shouldn't do, right? So best practices, it's not that founders, if you know, let's put it on the other end. If you're a founder, it's not that you need to know everything about grants, but how do you connect with someone who does and ensure that you're taking advantage of that? And I remember when I was running our venture studio, one of our founders won a grant and after they won a grant, they essentially created a formula where they kept winning grants. So you have to put up some, or put in some initial time and commitment, but the outcome once you do is huge, right? Not only for your company and your own dilution, but also for ensuring that you have this working capital that can honestly be a lot less complex than all of the other areas. And then I think the other thing I want to point out here is catalytic capital. So the complexity being low, and that doesn't mean that it's necessarily easy to access in terms of knowing where to go, but it's great to see that this space that is still emerging and entering the financial ecosystem and working alongside VC can actually be a less complex process than many of the other areas. We talked about project finance, of course, commercial debt alongside that, really high complexity as well. And so as you're thinking about your capital stack, acknowledging the time commitment, the expertise that you do and don't have, and also what's the likelihood of receiving the outcomes in terms of increased financing? And I want to talk more about site. I know I mentioned site a few times. This was an article I wrote for Impact Alpha around this time last year, really aiming to zone in on the pre-development and project management side. So this is an area generally still glossed over much of what I'm announcing next week aims to solve for this, but how are we truly mitigating risk around pre-development and project management? And I would say these buckets fall in to what I've called the unsexy parts of climate tech, though I love them and I spent years working on them. And I'm sure some of you who are tuned in right now have, but zoning analysis, feasibility and design assessments, permitting, environmental assessments, et cetera. You get the point, the point is that these are oftentimes processes that can take a long time if you don't know what you're doing or a shorter time. If you're equipped with a plan and you have the right expertise and skill set on your team, and this is an area that many funders and founders have glossed over over the years, but ultimately I would say is one of the biggest and most critical aspects of the success of particularly this valley of death that we were looting to. So there's a need for a different type of capital in the climate tech market to complement venture capital and private equity. And this was a quote from one of the individuals at the Special Opportunities Fund. And so I wanna talk a little bit about case studies and then wrap up so we have time for questions. I won't get into an ecosystem approach because of it, but I talked a little bit about catalytic funding and I wanted to give this example of a project that I worked on years ago, Carbon Offsets Company, well before the height of Carbon Offsets over the past few years, but really seeing how we were able to tap into credits, grants and philanthropy, their business model was about making Carbon Offsets tangible by connecting it to green infrastructure projects. And we were able to not only secure an $85,000 pilot project, so again, going back to revenues and government, revenue and government, but we were also then able to work with a Fortune 500 company, tie that to their Carbon Offset budget, as well as a CBO that was actually a public-private partnership that was looking at the urban heat island effect. I won't go into further details, but this gives you a sense of how a company can really think about a pilot project alongside public-private entities and government, but then also working with a CBO or philanthropic funder to fund their pilot and ultimately their deployment. And then this is, I mentioned Third Sphere earlier, if you haven't heard of them, really incredible fund. They have a credit arm tie to their work and they built that credit arm out of this exact need that we're spending time here today discussing and really seeing an opportunity to provide additional capital as it relates to post-revenue startups. So revenue again, understanding where the credit would be best used within their portfolio, or I know some of the companies that they've actually used the credit arm for are not in their VC portfolio. So understanding what is the best formula for the companies that would take advantage of venture capital and credit or venture capital versus credit. And then I mentioned joint ventures earlier as well as infrastructure as a service. I'll keep this brief, but Logical Buildings, which is a portfolio company of Keyframe Capital announced last year a $110 million financing vehicle to install and operate smart thermostats. And really what that did was create this incentive. So we talked about this earlier in terms of the actual model, but how can you incentivize stakeholders who otherwise wouldn't engage in ensuring that a company's success around deployment occurred? And what they've done is create an incentive for the apartment owners who otherwise would not benefit for carbon cutting and energy saving investments. And what's interesting about their initial approach was that the first $25 million was aimed at outfitting several multi-family buildings, enabling about 100 megawatts of peak load reduction capacity. And so there's a great article in Canary Media if you wanna look at it further. I think there's some other write-ups that you can take a look at. But what you see here is a venture capital fund using structured finance and bringing in their additional network of funders to support the incentive challenge around an existing portfolio company without any cost to the folks that they're incentivizing, which is really critical, a really critical piece to this. And then creative capital. So I talked about this before and I mentioned the special fund earlier, but S2G Ventures launched a $300 million credit vehicle where they were able to focus on the capital that is flexible around risk profile, structure, focuses on businesses with assets, cash flows, contracts or leases to provide downside protection and being able to mix equity and debt and working capital to really get at the heart of the needs of the company. And so, this is a great example of a fund but I think more importantly of institutional investors looking at the opportunities that they have differently around climate tech. So yes, venture capital S2G Ventures also has a venture capital arm, but then also what does the future of our ecosystem look like when institutional investors are thinking about creative capital that still has returns and also aids existing VC backed companies or other companies that aren't VC backed. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing and would love to take questions. Shanti, thank you. That was a fabulous presentation echoing the kudos in the chat here just a wealth of information and insight and breadth and depth. While we're waiting for folks to raise hands maybe I'll just highlight a few, I don't know if you've been able to read what's already come up in the chat, but I mean, so first just easy one while this is being recorded, is it, will it also be possible to share slides? There's been- Yeah, happy to share. Share slides. I actually did this presentation with founders at a conference last year. So yeah, happy to be with these public. Great, wonderful. And we'll hear what Daisy's got to hand up. Go ahead, Daisy. Yeah. Hi, Shanti, great to see you. And so glad to see the continuance of your work from when we talked about a year ago. I put a question in the chat just asking you had mentioned that a lot of these creative capital funds are located outside the US. So I was wondering where you're seeing the conversations taking place about getting more of this creative capital funds going inside the US because I know it's a really important piece that we don't have a strong movement on yet. And then I was also wondering if you're seeing any increased interest in investing in the types of companies or projects for companies that are doing like the community engagement pieces and the policy and regulatory engagement pieces that we know are really important for moving forward, the great deployment too. Yeah, thanks Daisy and really good to see you. So on the first question, I'll be honest, not enough. I hope is that we see more academic institutions hosting conversations around it. I do know, for example, Prime Coalition and CREO have been not only thought partners, but leaders in this space. And part of what I'm announcing next week helps. The goal is to help create more of those spaces where we can not only learn from existing regions where we're seeing more of this interest but simultaneously help educate institutional investors on why this is a really incredible opportunity from a pure investment perspective as much as impact. And so ensuring that both are happening simultaneously is important because we can pitch incredible vehicles. And I know there are folks doing that now but if they're not rising up to the diligence thing and the knowledge set within these larger institutions, we're going to keep sort of missing the dial. And while Europe is I think doing or more advanced in the conversations and of course the vehicles that we're seeing, we know that across the board, it's still in need globally. And when I was at COP last year, there was a really great conference that was hosting some of these discussions at a global scale, but generally there's a way larger need for these discussions. And then your second question is such a good question. I didn't get to get into the slide around ecosystem but that was part of what I was going to speak to. As we're looking at catalytic capital applications, there's a really great quote that of course I'm not going to remember at the moment but it was a quote by Scott over at Generate Capital about really how a lot of these pieces around deployment are actually stakeholder engagement and human capacity cost. And so you can either build a strategy where you think about capacity building and technical assistance up front or you risk wasting a lot of dollars and also maybe even not being able to move forward in a project. And so for those who don't know 30% of projects that don't have meaningful engagement actually fail. And so when we're thinking about not only, how we're funding but then what we're funding my hope and my desires that we start to see this increased mixed portfolio of solutions where climate tech is of course, hey, how are we cutting GHG emissions at scale? But then what are some of those challenges around stakeholder engagement and the companies that maybe don't fall as historically don't fall into the climate tech bucket as easily but there's certainly a big part of how we move adaptive or fancy tech forward. So the last thing I'll say on that is I have been having some really exciting conversations and I'll be announcing part of a tool that aims to help support with that. Just what does it mean for us to look at catalytic capital but honestly any other government capital as well I've had some great conversations with government agencies about how to fill in that gap so that we're ultimately seeing deployment happen faster and accelerate. And also we're not missing out on opportunities and communities simply because we haven't seen it before and I think broadening our discussion around what first of a kind is from not just novel technologies and applications but novel ways of deploying them as well. It's great. While we wait for other hands which I hope we'll see in a second here I wanna just elevate a question in the chat that relates to Shantae your last comment around government engagement and participation. Are there particular policies that you would like to see that would be enabling to the kinds of outcomes that you're identifying here? Yeah, so oftentimes when we talk about government and regulatory pieces it's how are we navigating those hurdles and I'm really interested in how do we flip that conversation from navigating hurdles to creating the market adoption economies. And one of the things I've been working on over the past year which honestly started more as a passion project but I'm really excited to share what that'll look like is this concept of a climate improvement district. So similar to business improvement districts how do we start to create or I don't even create I don't wanna say create how do we actually emphasize and uplift the existing market appetite for a lot of these solutions. I've had countless conversations with cities and regions and even federal stakeholders around where there's a need for economic investment and how climate tech is a part of that how there's a lot of regions that actually fit extremely well for certain types of climate technology. We're already seeing that in the carbon capture space. So what does it look like to actually create the market and equip governments to do that? And so that's partially how are we adding capacity and knowledge set there but then also what are the policies that we can create? So climate improvement district is one of those tools or applications within the policy world that I'm excited about but I wanna see a lot more around I know permitting keeps coming up but more permitting faster permitting accelerated permitting and I think the more that we can put our heads together and solve that challenge the more we'll see a lot more adoption of climate tech. Great answer, super interesting. Other questions from the audience here. I know we've got, we're kind of in the we're straddling a couple of hours here and I know some students have to get back to class. Give a minute. Also, I think a reflection of how thorough your presentation was, everyone's digesting but you've given so many answers it's hard to iterate on what the questions are. I'll ask one more just while we've got a few minutes. How do you think about the rest of the world? You said some of these there are more creative capital funds emerging in other parts of the world but in terms of impact and benefits of the energy transition how do you think about that in the context of a lot of what you've been talking about here are funds and firms and technologies that are birthed and deployed in the US. How do you think about either the transfer to emerging markets or the benefits sharing with those that are impacted first and worst? Yeah, it's a really important question. It's one I thought a lot about over the past several months to a year. I'm definitely not an expert in the global South but it is an area that I want to continue to explore with funders and financiers and so I would say the first way I think about it is how are climate tech companies VC backed or not really thinking about co-benefits and what it means to understand community needs outside of just greenhouse gas emissions and sort of the public health measurement space that many of us jumped to. And while that's important and we have to make sure the metrics are there and the assessments are there what are other ways of starting to quantify the benefits outside of just the technology and the climate space. So I think that's one area that I know many companies are interested in. They don't necessarily have the capacity to think about that. And so I think that then creates another area that relates to what I was mentioning with Daisy's question just how do we actually use catalytic capital to catalyze more of that investment around a project around a climate technology adoption and deployment where there is an understanding that the returns are going to look different. And so can you create a mixed portfolio or really a project with mixed assets where there's an understanding that, okay you might not make as much but if you're in the catalytic or create a capital space that's not necessarily your first goal anyways. And so I think starting to really group that into the ways that more capital that has more patience around impact and returns can be a part of solving the problem. That's great. Thank you so much. What a gift to have you with us. So fortunate and I hope we can find more ways to engage you in your work with our community. There's clearly a lot of interest and I know this recording will be watched many times and your slides will be cherished. So please everyone join me in thanking Chante Harris for this fabulous presentation and enjoy the rest of your day. Likewise, thank you all for having me. This was fun and I'm excited to keep having conversations like this. Great. We are too. Thanks. Bye.