A few years Earlier, when the pandemic was still in full swing, Raj Kapoor and Josh Felser started investing in climate change technology startups.they called their operation climax, and initially placed bets using their own money. Although we are both experienced founders, managers, and investors, this is our first time focusing on this specific sector and we started by testing the waters.
The company announced today that it has closed a $65 million founding fund and used it to support founders launching a climate technology software company.
Mr. Kapur and Mr. Felser both have long histories as investors, with Mr. Felser co-founding Freestyle Capital and Mr. Kapur spending seven years as a managing director at Mayfield Funds. They also founded and sold their own software startup.
It’s a little surprising that it took this long for the two to work together. Their resumes are strikingly similar. Felser said that in 1997 he founded Spinner (sold to AOL) and in 2004 he founded Crackle (sold to Sony). He also launched the #Climate nonprofit in 2014 and created a public-private coronavirus task force during the pandemic. Mr. Kapur previously served as chief strategy officer at Lyft, and before that he founded Snapfish (acquired by HP) and FitMob (acquired by ClassPass). He also launched a nonprofit climate social app in 2007.
Those experiences, combined with a growing concern about the state of the Earth’s climate, led the two to form Climactic.
“If we can get the top 50 supply chains to meet their net-zero goals, rather than just pay lip service, we’ll have the biggest impact,” Kapur told TechCrunch+. “To get there, we think the low-hanging fruit is software, because there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained.”
Source: techcrunch.com
