Joe Hudson

💰 This investor is building a venture thesis around a fast-growing climate threat. (That almost no-one in VC is paying attention to) Will Everill didn’t come from a biology lab or an ag giant. He came from climate tech media and networking, connecting founders and investors around the world. But then he got the bug .... for bugs! He learned that the biggest climate risks dominating headlines — wildfires, heat extremes, floods — weren’t the ones inflicting the most economic damage. Behind the scenes, something else was exploding: 🐛 Pests. 🪲 Invasive species. ☣️ Biological threats. Otherwise known as 'PIB' risks. He found that virtually no-one in venture was treating this as an investable category. So instead of waiting for another fund to define it… Will founded UpRoot Capital to do it himself. 🎙️ Listen to the full interview with Will here: https://lnkd.in/eAewHwV6 📩 And sign up to Climate Proof for more adaptation finance, tech, and policy intelligence: https://lnkd.in/eFDX8kWn

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States like California are pioneering a new funding model for climate adaptation—without raising taxes. The fossil fuel industry is trying to stop them. LA’s 2025 wildfires caused $28-58 billion in damage. With federal climate funding drying up, states are turning to Climate Superfund bills: companies pay based on their historical emissions. In a nutshell, if ExxonMobil = 2% of global CO2 emissions since 1990? They cover 2% of costs. InfluenceMap has identified 47 fossil fuel companies responsible for 36.4% of the damage, according to historical emissions tracked by the Carbon Majors database (Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Shell, and CNPC top the list). Predictably, groups like the American Petroleum Institute (API) are lobbying against this sort of bill nationwide, with the usual misinformation playbook. What is odd, though, is that the California Chamber of Commerce— a major cross-sector industry association supposedly ‘giving voice’ to small and large companies across the state—is parroting API talking points to oppose the bill in California. Sure, CalChamber has Shell, Chevron, and BP as members. But it also has folks from companies like Disney, EY, and Google on its executive committee. How does blocking this effort to tackle California’s escalating climate costs without resorting to taxes serve the broad business community in California? Do these companies know what their industry association is up to? https://lnkd.in/ep57AJK9

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People often want to label us carbon developers. We understand why—we talk about carbon a lot. But for us, that’s the wrong mental model. We don’t deny that carbon is an important tool in the toolkit. But for too long, it’s been treated as the whole toolkit. That’s led to a lot of wary stakeholders and failed promises across the ecosystem—including to the planet it’s meant to protect. It’s true, we talk about carbon a lot—but only as the first leg of the stool. For us, carbon is capital: capital to invest in the people and systems that ensure its maintained and invested in sustainably, for both the planet and those who live off it. https://lnkd.in/gxx27W8D

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The first close is just the beginning. The real value shows up between year 2 and year 7. In ClimateTech, we’re not building for the next funding round. We’re building for real-world adoption, and that takes more than slides and sprints. But that doesn’t mean we wait 10 years to see results. From pilot projects to regulatory wins, from Series A to industrial scale-ups... the best founders show traction early, just not always in the way traditional tech metrics expect. That’s why we’ve always been clear with our LPs: this isn’t about waiting for exits. It’s about building momentum from day one, and compounding it over time. It takes alignment. It takes trust. And above all, it takes a shared understanding that real impact moves at the speed of systems change… not social media. 💬 How are you helping your stakeholders see the full arc of value creation?

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Motti Levin | Global CEO - Haifa Group | Supal Sharma Show | Precap | Stay in Tune! We’re excited to share the Pre-Cap of our much-awaited Podcast featuring Motti Levin, CEO – Haifa Group. This powerful episode explores: 🌍 The know-how of the Global Specialty Fertilizer Business 🌱 Haifa’s Global & India Impact in Crop Nutrition 🚀 How Israel is Leading Agricultural Innovation Through Technology 💧 The origin of Drip Irrigation & Water-Soluble Fertilizers in Israel 🎯 Practical Insights & Life Learnings from the Inspiring Journey of Motti Levin A Conversation packed with Leadership, Innovation & Real-World Agri-Business Wisdom. 🎧 Stay tuned for the Full Episode! #Podcast #AgriBusiness #SpecialtyFertilizers #HaifaGroup #MottiLevin #AgriInnovation #IsraelInnovation #DripIrrigation #WaterSolubleFertilizers #FertilizerIndustry #AgricultureTechnology #AgTech #Leadership #BusinessInsights #IndiaAgriculture #HaifaGroup #Israel #supalsharmashow #supalsharma #MottiLevin

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In a recent BioCycle interview, Bill Caesar of Generate Upcycle suggested that RNG might one day be valued based on the cost of carbon abatement rather than $/MMBtu. It’s an interesting framing — and it highlights something bigger. What’s actually driving food waste diversion right now? In some regions, it’s policy mandates. In others, corporate climate commitments. In others, rising landfill costs. And in many cases, credit markets. If valuation changes, project economics change. If the drivers are mostly incentive-based, the buildout will reflect that. If they’re structural, infrastructure follows. #LFG #RNG #Biogas #WasteToEnergy #MethaneEmissions https://lnkd.in/g8KPvrji

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🌱 ECO RASCALS : Female-led. DTC. B2B. Children's Eco Retail. We are proud to be working with Eco Rascals to solve an alarming problem. Children are ingesting microplastics at alarming rates - Eco Rascals is tackling this head-on with a beautiful, sustainable alternative. 💡 A UK-based, trademarked brand, Eco Rascals designs eco-friendly children’s products made from 100% natural bamboo - prioritising safety, health, and style. 🌍 The problem: - Kids are exposed to harmful plastics daily. Eco Rascals offers a trusted, health-first alternative - designed with purpose, loved by parents. - Every week, the average adult ingests 5g of microplastics (equivalent of a credit card). Children, with their constant exposure to plastic items, are at an even higher risk. Eco Rascals addresses this issue with a range of products that replace plastic children's tableware, reducing the risk posed by microplastic ingestion from hot foods served on plastic plates. See https://ecorascals.com/ Then DM me for more info. Join us on this funding round? ECO RASCALS is a portfolio company of XSS Capital. If you are interested in joining us on this funding round please DM me for more info. Join our investment network to access high-growth, scalable business opportunities typically reserved for leading VCs. #Sustainability #AngelInvestment #EIS #ConsumerGoods #EcoFriendly #Health #StartupFunding #EcoRascals

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The Kinder Future Brief – Edition #03: RA Capital Inaugural $120 million Planetary Health Fund I'm back with the Kinder Future Brief, now migrated to Substack. This week: 🌍 Exclusive insights from RA Capital Management's Walter Dauksher 🍼 Eclipse Ingredients emerges from stealth to create lactoferrin ♻️ RarEarth closes a €2.6 million round to accelerate rare elements recycling 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Inyanga Marine Energy Group raises £3.7m for Welsh tidal energy Subscribe to the Kinder Future Brief on Substack: https://lnkd.in/dUqTpMxZ

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🌍 From Biochar to Biocarbons: A Masterclass in Scaling Regeneration What does it take to turn a climate solution into a real, scalable business? On the latest episode of Louder Than Green, I sat down with Brando Crespi, an ecopreneur, deep ecologist, and co-founder of Pro Natura International, Global Biocarbon, and Polymateria. We dive into: 🔹 How charcoal alternatives in Senegal evolved into a global biochar movement. 🔹 Why carbon black (hidden in everything from tires to plastics) is a $27B fossil-based problem. 🔹 The operational challenges of feedstock, farmer adoption, and carbon credits. 🔹 How biocarbons can decarbonize industries like plastics, asphalt, cement, and consumer goods. 🔹 What it really takes to build a profitable, regenerative business model. This isn’t a conversation about theory. It’s about systems, operations, and scale, and why regenerative innovation must be both science-driven and business viable. 🎧 Listen here: From Biochar to Biocarbons: A Masterclass in Scaling Regeneration https://lnkd.in/g8QtZ7iF 🎧 Listen here: From Biochar to Biocarbons: A Masterclass in Regenerative Innovation https://lnkd.in/gTW32p_q 👉 If you’re in sustainability, materials, or operations — this episode is a roadmap for what’s next. #Sustainability #ClimateTech #RegenerativeBusiness #Biochar #CircularEconomy #GreenThatDream #LouderThanGreen

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$100 billion in climate funding, 200 climate accelerators, and 27 climate startups...... The climate funding ecosystem right now: -47 accelerators trying to accelerate... nothing. -12 VCs with "climate thesis" in their bio looking for unicorns in a desert. -Governments promising $100 billion that doesn't exist. -And maybe 3 actual startups trying to, you know... solve climate change. The math isn't mathing!!! You can't just manifest climate startups out of thin air. You need systems, regulations, policies, plans, government strategies, & god forbid... pan-African coordination 🥲 You know, the boring stuff that actually enables innovation. But instead we get: -47 pitch competitions -Another climate "demo day" -VCs asking "what's your carbon credit strategy?" to a farmer with solar panels Africa was promised $100 billion for climate funding. Spoiler: It's not there yet. And there's a reason for that... you can't just throw money at a continent and expect climate startups to spawn like NPCs in a video game 🤯

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This is a masterclass in excellence in offline distribution - quietly owning luxury wellness touchpoints across B2C and B2B, and most importantly, demonstrating the patience most founders miss. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. first invested in Forest Essentials in 2008. That was almost two decades ago. They didn’t swoop in and buy the company. They watched while the brand matured. They waited until the brand reached ₹578 crore in revenue (FY25) with 71% profit growth - and then they went all in. But here’s what I can’t stop thinking about: Depth is a moat. Heritage is a moat. Patience is a moat. The brands that get acquired aren’t always the ones that look most acquirable on day one. They’re the ones that become so rooted, so specific, so unmistakably themselves, that eventually the world has no choice but to come to them. You can’t manufacture that. You can only build it. Slowly. The way Ayurveda has always approached everything - with intention, with time, and without shortcuts.

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🚀 Raising capital as an impact entrepreneur is not easy. So here's months of fundraising lessons distilled into one image. I just got back from @Miller Center for Global Impact In-Residence, and I wish someone had handed me this before I started fundraising. So I’m sharing it with you. It’s a collection of the 13 most honest, hard-earned lessons from entrepreneurs that went to SOCAP with me this month. It's full of real real insights you only get when you’re pitching, getting rejected, getting back up, and trying again. These insights came from entrepreneurs across Africa, Asia, and Latin America all building mission-driven ventures with the same challenges we all face: limited time limited resources and a lot of heart. If you’re fundraising this year, I hope this helps you avoid a few headaches and move a little faster.

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Articles like this don't go far enough to explain the lack of proliferation and adoption of agtech. These are symptoms rather than causes. Venture capital misses is a symptom not the cause of #agtech laggards. What are those causes? To name a few: 1. Building technologies not enterprises. These technologies will become products; those products become business lines and those business lines eventually go on a balance sheet. We need to treat them as such from the beginning. 2. Strategy guides the business. Strategy tends to get put on the back burner when building. 'We'll figure that out once we finish the tech.' That is backwards thinking. Start with the strategy and objectives in mind. This is not a build it and they will come endeavor. 3. Market access. Do you remember when you were a kid and you sold candy to fundraise for a school event or sports uniforms (I did)? When you went knocking on doors, you knew which doors to go knock on? Agtech does not know which doors to knock on or if there are doors to knock on. There are many root causes for #agtech adoption issues but these 3 cores ones, if we address them, would solve A LOT of headache on the backend for deals, VC and investors. There are skilled and experienced professionals in agtech who can provide all three. #agrifood #startups #innovation #agriculture #food Catalyst Ventures Consulting https://lnkd.in/gXvT3ukA

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| OUR SAVINGS CAN UNDERMINE NATURE. AND OUR FUTURE | "For every one dollar invested in protecting nature, USD 30 are spent destroying it". The ultimate irony is that much of this money is coming from our pensions, managed by the very people we entrust to provide our future. And the double irony, is that incumbent financial services themselves will fall if nature collapses. 57% of the world’s largest businesses rely directly on nature and will be hit hard when nature fails to provide essential services and resources". — Hadewych Kuiper, Managing Director at Triodos Investment Management. "To put our money where our mouth is, we are currently co-developing a Nature-based Solutions fund that will convert conventional farmlands to nature-inclusive farming practices. This not only contributes to local food security, it also helps restore biodiversity and capture carbon at the same time". ✨Read Hadewych 's most recent column👇 https://lnkd.in/eTPURQu2 Since 2024, Fondaction and Banque Triodos have forged a partnership to accelerate positive change in finance. As I’ve emphasized before: Because nature is not a 'nice to have'. It’s essential infrastructure that our economy depends on.

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Most cleantech startups die in the "demo plant" phase. Caelux just decided to skip it. As start-ups lurch towards scale, patterns emerge. At first glance, the 3GW partnership between Caelux and SolX may seem to be a simple supply deal. But it is much more. It is a masterclass in side-stepping the Valley of Death. Many hardtech founders fall into the "Death by Pilot" loop: building one plant to prove buildability, then another to prove manufacturability. They chase commercial validation from brand names to pull funding forward. But, without firm contracts, the result is a stack of LOIs with little teeth for project lenders. Because buildable is not yet bankable. Searching for a path across Death Valley, even savvy teams must cobble together uncomfortable coalitions. They stack pancake-layered cap tables of VCs, private credit, and family offices to reach a scale that might satisfy a lender, a customer, or a strategic partner, rarely all involved. It is an exhausting effort that often fails slowly, because it attempts to build a bridge with divergent components rather than a sound structure. Caelux flipped the script. Instead of sinking millions into capex before firm orders arrived, they will utilize SolX’s existing production lines and balance sheet in Puerto Rico. They structured a bespoke deal mirroring the due diligence checklists of project lenders and utility customers alike. They secured domestic content, durability, and immediate volume without ever breaking ground on a demo facility. This is the leadership DNA shift hardtech needs. Those with sufficient experience to look beyond the limited options available and create solutions that meet the requisite conditions, elegantly and effectively. Leaders at Fervo and Caelux have demonstrated they can create business cases that map to a credit committee’s readout. They understand that at scale, the move-fast mindset yields to the debt-driven rigor of infrastructure. The chasm between Series B and a successful OEM is littered with casualties. Crossing it isn't about building for future demand. It is about executing a well-structured bridge that paves the road to bankability today. #HardTech #ProjectFinance #CleanEnergyInfrastructure Fervo EnergyCaelux®

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Venture‑scale climatetech is hard. We’re asking founders to hit three moving targets at once: 🌎 Real climate impact (measured in tons, not tweets), 🌎 Compelling unit economics in markets that are often regulated, slow, or both, and 🌎 Scalable go‑to‑market that can attract institutional capital before you run out of time, money, or patience. Too many promising climatetech teams get stuck in the gap between prototype and project finance: the tech basically works, but the scale‑up story isn’t investible yet. The capex is heavy, sales cycles are long, customers are risk‑averse, and the “venture math” looks fuzzy to people who don’t live inside this space. If we want more fundable climatetech companies, we need to help founders design for bankability, deployability, and venture readiness from day one—not as an afterthought when the runway is already short. That’s exactly why we’re running the Venture Mechanics ClimateTech Scalathon at 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub in Seattle (May 1-3): a hands‑on, working session focused on turning promising climate ideas into scalable, financeable businesses with credible paths to venture scale. If you’re a founder, operator, investor, or corporate partner who wants to help more climatetech startups actually clear the funding bar, I’d love to see you there. Early bird tickets are live now — grab yours while they’re still available and help us build the next generation of truly investible climatetech companies. Only the time format is borrowed from hackathons, otherwise coding is not part of this exercise. It's more of an MBA business plan pitch competition rolled into one intensive weekend. Join a founder's team or build your own team from scratch on Friday evening (May 1st). Existing startups with only one or two founders can also join in a separate bracket, if they want to level up their strategy for scalability and fundability with the help of other experts and mentors from the Catapult Accelerator. https://lnkd.in/gTQhhXb7

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We’re pleased to be working with Rho Impact to strengthen how we assess and scale climate solutions. At Climate Innovation Capital, carbon performance is a core underwriting variable - not a side metric. Our Carbon Qualification Model (CQM) is designed to evaluate opportunities consistently across sectors, linking emissions directly to financial outcomes. As we continue to build and apply CQM across our portfolio, tools like Rho Impact's Koi.eco help bring greater structure, transparency, and efficiency to that process. We are so pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Rho Impact team as we keep focusing on what matters: backing technologies that deliver real emissions reductions and outstanding profitability. https://lnkd.in/ej_Pm4Qs hashtag #climatetech #climateinvestment #decarbonization #climatefinance

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Do you have the GSD gene? Then this episode of Ecosystem, Scale! is for you. In Episode 8, world-class ecosystem-builder Jess Edwards breaks down how the real magic isn’t just execution — it’s turning goodwill, relationships, and momentum into sustainable infrastructure that outlives any single program or initiative. If you’ve ever wondered how to move from hustle to systems… from activity to architecture… from “one more program” to lasting impact — this conversation is a foundational guide. 🎧 Give it a listen, and if it resonates, pass it along to someone else you know who carries the GSD gene. https://lnkd.in/duRG5P8d Because ecosystems don’t scale on effort alone — they scale on what we build that lasts. Apple: https://lnkd.in/eS389tsK Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eVPEzzuB Melanie (Akwule) Nnogo, MBA, Anastasia Jackson, Isabel Wen, Next Economy MBA, Mitch Smith, Sean R Reid, Jason See, Jess O'Brien, Josh Heller, Gary Livingston, Elizabeth Brigham , Lavonya Jones, Demetria A. Gallagher, Anand Macherla, Jenny Tacka, Bernita Platt, MBA, Tony Kershaw, Jeannine Briggman Rogers

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