With its first cohort of 60 founders starting this month, Cambridge’s Carbon13 is delighted to announce it has opened the Carbon13 SEIS Fund to qualified investors. One Million Pounds will be shared among 10 start-up businesses generated by the venture builder, which have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 10 million tonnes.
The Venture Builder is the first of its kind as no other SEIS fund is investing in start-ups with a strong environmental commitment. With many corporates already using, and the Bank of England and others projecting, a carbon price of $100/tonne, this is an impact of “unicorn” size.
Sixty founders have now been through a competitive selection process, and have been whittled down from over 600 applications. Each founder was selected for the programme based on their potential to become founders of a highly scalable venture and, as a consequence, these founders are significantly more experienced than in the average accelerator: Fifty-five per cent are drawn from technical backgrounds, and many of the remainder are serial entrepreneurs.
Chris Coleridge, founder and CEO of Carbon13 comments: “Net Zero is the biggest opportunity of the next 50 years. What the venture capital world is beginning to wake up to is that the investment opportunity posed by climate change is not like the internet, a general-purpose technology that has rolled out, steam-engine-like, through the economy, incrementally changing everything it penetrates; it’s more like a world war, where society’s awareness of the threat it’s under creates a prolonged and intense engagement of the private sector’s capital and its capacity for innovation.”
ET Capital manages the Carbon13 SEIS Fund for Carbon13, and supports innovative, sustainable businesses coming forward from the fund.
Further to the SEIS Fund, Carbon13 has partnered with several well-known later stage investment funds to secure follow on funding for the startups graduating from their cohort. Partner venture funds include the government backed Clean Growth Fund, Potential Climate Ventures, Zero Carbon Capital, Revent VC, MMC Ventures, Ubermorgen Ventures, Pale Dot Blue VC and several others.
Stats on the Net Zero economy:
1200 corporates have committed to Net Zero or Science Based Targets
Bank of England forecasts the Carbon Price will surpass $100 in a few years
Venture Capital investment into climate tech has surged, it's now at 5 times the VC industry average.
The global market size for green technology and sustainability ventures is projected to reach $48.36 billion in 2027