Today’s guests are Abe Yokell and Shayle Kann, respectively Co-Founder and Managing Director at Congruent Ventures and Managing Director at Energy Impact Partners (EIP). This is a special live episode recorded at the first SF MCJ meetup, a great event organized recently by MCJ listeners in the SF/Bay Area. Abe and Shayle are both cleantech 1.0 veterans, and the discussion largely centeres around what happened last time, lessons learned, what is needed now, and the besy ways for us to get there. Founded in 2016, Congruent Ventures invests in early-stage startups in the cleantech space, and Abe and his team have developed a portfolio of 27 companies to date. Prior to that, Abe was an investor at Rockport Capital Partners, a VC firm which was active during the first wave of cleantech in 2007. Shayle started his career in cleantech as a research analyst at Greentech Media. His current firm, EIP, has close to a billion dollars of AUM, much of which from some of the largest energy utilities, and invests in innovative startups across the energy space. This was a great event, and I hope there are many more of them. They are starting to spring up in other cities as well, which is very exciting to me! The audio is a little rougher than normal since it was our first live taping, but it should feel more authentic as well :) Enjoy the show! You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Shayle’s journey from energy transition in the market intelligence space to climate change venture capital at Energy Impact Partners (EIP)

• EIP, a VC with ~$1B in AUM whose LPs are a coalition of utilities

• The sectors EIP invests in

• Abe’s journey from Rockport Capital Partners, a cleantech private equity firm based, to cofounding Congruent Ventures in 2016

• A history of the first cleantech wave

• Lessons learned

• How the current interest in climate tech compares/contrasts with the first cleantech wave 

• What types of innovation is needed in climate tech

• What types of capital are the best for for which types of innovation

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

• Energy Impact Partners: https://www.energyimpactpartners.com/

• Congruent Ventures: https://www.congruentvc.com/

• Rockport Capital Partners: http://www.rockportcap.com/

• Solyndra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

• Thin-film solar cell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_solar_cell

• MiaSolé: http://miasole.com/

• Alpha: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp

• National Renewable Energy Lab: https://www.nrel.gov/

• Lawrence Berkeley Lab: https://www.lbl.gov/

Get connected with MCJ: 

• Cody Simms X / LinkedIn
• MCJ Podcast / Collective / YouTube

*If you liked this episode, please consider giving us a review! You can also reach us via email at info@mcj.vc, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.