PNW Climate Week: State of Climate Tech VC in the PNW Round Table

by | Jul 20, 2026 | Episodes

Episode summary: Five Pacific Northwest climate tech investors — recorded live at Pacific Northwest Climate Week 2026 — break down where climate tech venture capital is actually flowing this year, why Seattle still trails Silicon Valley on VC dollars, and what they’re really evaluating when a founder walks into the room. The conversation applies directly to anyone raising capital, building a company, or job searching in a market where AI has made it easy to look good on paper and harder to stand out.

Guest bios:

Gabriel Scheer is Senior Director, Investments and Innovation, at Elemental Impact. Gabriel leads the transportation, energy, built environment and water portfolios – supporting 76 companies across those verticals. In addition to pipeline development and due diligence, he has directly overseen over 40 new and follow-on investments, deploying more than $30M in catalytic capital. He serves as a board observer for Artyc PBC, Mythos AI, Dimensional Energy, and Found Energy and has helped to co-design and manage more than 30 first-of-a-kind and early commercial projects in communities in Africa, Europe, and North America. Previously, Gabriel was on the founding team of Lime, where he led global data policy and transit partnerships and developed go-to-market strategies in North America. As the founder of two companies, he also contributed to the book “Smart Cities, Smart Mobility.”

​Ben Shwab Eidelson is a co-founder and partner at Stepchange Ventures, an early-stage venture fund backing companies building software to accelerate energy abundance and upgrade critical infrastructure. Ben also co-hosts the Stepchange Show, a long-form podcast that tells the stories of human progress through the lens of transformative technologies, systems, and infrastructure. The Stepchange Show recently covered the history of data centers and the power grid, and has had over 250,000 downloads. Prior to Stepchange, Ben was a product leader and repeat founder, building two software companies—one acquired by Google and the second by Stripe. When not nerding out on infrastructure, Ben can be found with his wife chasing their 3 kids around local Seattle playgrounds.

​Susan Su is a climate tech investor and capital formation advisor to companies and funds across the energy transition. She built Toba Capital‘s climate investment practice from the ground up, spanning direct deals, fund-of-funds commitments, and co-investments, and currently serves as an advisor to the fund. She is a founding board member of the Carbon Business Council and serves on the Mission Alignment Committee at Prime Coalition, where she reviews catalytic capital investments for mission integrity. Susan is also the founder of Climate Money, a newsletter and podcast covering the business of decarbonization.

​Jonathan Azoff spent 20 years in silicon valley building rapid growth startups, including multiple exits to the likes of Zillow and Disney. He served as a fractional CTO to public companies (TNY.AX), and formerly led engineering teams at growth stage fintechs like Carta, Cardless and Pomelo. In his second act, he transitioned to the investor side of the table, joining the board of climate tech incubator Sweet Farm, and starting the deep tech venture firm SNØCAP with his two founding partners. He is one of the main individual investors behind The 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub, and is responsible for bringing the club to Seattle, where he lives now. He’s an uncompromising advocate of great storytelling, having fun while doing good, and not taking himself seriously.

​Dr. Christine E. Boyle is General Partner at Burnt Island Ventures, a water-specialist venture capital fund, where she works with innovators to bring the next generation of water technologies to market. She was the CEO and founder of Valor Water, which sold to Xylem in 2018. At Xylem she served as VP of Digital Product Development following the acquisition. She serves on the boards of Aclarity Water, Subeca, Previsico, EPOCH Blue, and Waterly.  Dr. Boyle is also a member of the Cal-Nevada American Water Works Association Board and a trustee of the American Water Works Association Management and Leadership Division. In Dr. Boyle’s free time she plays league tennis, boats, and travels to post-socialist nations.

What you’ll learn:

  • How the 2026 climate tech VC numbers break down nationally — and why concentration in a handful of mega-deals is squeezing the middle of the funding stack
  • Why Seattle ranks #6 nationally in VC dollars despite sitting on some of the country’s deepest personal wealth
  • What investors are actually screening for beyond the pitch deck, from response time to how a founder treats their own team
  • How the hyperscaler-driven data center and energy boom is reshaping where capital flows, and what history (the 1970s WPPSS nuclear default) suggests about the risk
  • Why human referral has become the deciding factor in both fundraising and hiring now that AI has made outreach nearly free
  • What’s missing from the Pacific Northwest climate tech ecosystem, according to the people funding it

Key moments:

  • The panel debates whether nuclear, batteries, and data centers are “sucking up” regional capital or building a foundation the rest of the ecosystem can draw from
  • Susan Su asks the other panelists to describe how their investment committees actually make decisions, not what they tell founders in a rejection email
  • Christine Boyle and Ben Eidelson describe the informal signals — professionalism, stress response, pace of learning — that shape a funding decision
  • The group discusses AI-generated pitch decks and why differentiation now matters more than polish

Resources mentioned:

Full Transcript

Susan Su: You have to be really consistent.

And not just CEOs, but, like, fund managers, just, like, generally successful people. And you kind of feel like you’re interacting with a script rather than the real person. And that worries me because when life or your business throws something unexpected at you, you can’t respond with a script

Gregory Heller: This is Conversations on Careers in Professional Life, a podcast from the Foster School of Business MBA Career Management Office. I’m your host, Gregory Heller. On each episode, I talk with guests from faculty and staff to students, alumni, and business leaders about the skills and strategies that can help you design a professional career that you’re happy with.

This episode was recorded live at Pacific Northwest Climate Week in 2026 in front of an audience at the Foster School of Business on July 16th at Founders Hall, the most sustainable building on the UW campus. I [00:01:00] sat down with five climate tech investors who live, work, and invest right here in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Gabriel Shear of Elemental Impact, Jonathan Azoff of Snowcap, Susan Su of Toba Capital, Ben Eidelson of Step Change Ventures, and Christine Boyle of Burnt Island Ventures. We get into where the money is actually going in climate tech this year, why Seattle still lags Silicon Valley on venture dollars despite sitting on enormous wealth, and what these five investors are really evaluating when they meet a founder.

A lot of it applies directly to your job search as well. Let’s get into it on this episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life.

Today, for the State of Climate Tech VC in the Pacific Northwest and Beyond 2026 Roundtable. You’ll just have to imagine the round table in front of us.

I’d love to see a show of hands, who [00:02:00] has been to one of the climate tech VC panels that has happened? There’s been one every day this week. I’ve been to a couple already. You’ve been to them already. Okay, great. So now we know we have to break a little bit of new ground.

We do luckily have one person on this panel who has not spoken yet at Pacific Northwest Climate Week, and I’ll have the opportunity to introduce him in just a moment.

So we’re gonna do things a little bit differently with introductions. If you’ve been to panels, oftentimes the moderator introduces all the panelists, and it takes like ten or twelve minutes. I’ve sent you all the bios of this esteemed collection of investors. Uh, so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna introduce each other the way you may have introduced your neighbor to your neighbor on the other side or behind you.

And it’s my true pleasure and privilege to introduce my good friend, Gabriel Shear. Gabriel works for Elemental Impact, where he’s been for the past couple of years, and he focuses on [00:03:00] transportation, energy, water, data centers, and the built environment, buildings like this. before, working at, Elemental, Gabriel worked on the team that brought us Lime bikes and Lime scooters.

And we go way back to when he was working for Zipcar and started Green Drinks, which is actually happening this evening in Pioneer Square, even though it’s gone through a bunch of evolutions. So Gabriel, welcome to Conversations on Careers and Professional Life.

Gabriel Scheer: Thank you. And with that, I will introduce Jonathan Azoff.

Uh, Jonathan sitting next to me here, uh, is a founder, a builder, an investor, currently GP at Snowcap, which is a fund that I think in a lot of ways epitomizes Jonathan, which is to say endlessly curious Building and tinkering. If you need a watch repaired, this is your [00:04:00] guy. If you need to think about how to build something from a foundational level, probably this is your guy.

And if you want to talk for hours about any arcane thing and have someone endlessly curious to go deeper than you, this is probably your guy. Uh, wonderful friend and very glad to have you here in Seattle, a true ecosystem builder and community builder, uh, Jonathan from Snowcap.

Jonathan Azoff: Thank you, Gabriel. That was very sweet.

Uh, well, I get to introduce my good friend, Susan Hsu, who, if you’ve been to those VC panels, you might notice she’s been a killer moderator. She’s also a, uh, very sartorial person, wearing the fine blue chemise with cats, avec cats. Um, and, uh, Susan, uh, I, I got to meet Susan actually after I moved here to Seattle, uh, five or so years ago.

And, uh, when I met Susan, she was and, and still is, uh, helping out Toba Capital, which is a family office and, uh, investor, and she helped develop their climate, [00:05:00] uh, investing thesis and practice. Uh, on top of that, Susan is also the host of Climate Money, a podcast about climate and investing and all the esotera that comes with it.

I’ve learned many things by listening to Susan speak about money and climate, like the PE ratio or debt, uh, most recently, uh, on a panel she did. And I often think about Susan a lot when I want to bring the smartest person in the room in on practically any topic that intersects money and climate. So I deeply appreciate Susan.

Yeah, I’ll let her go next.

Susan Su: I appreciate you for showing me For showing me, um, the bakeries. Yeah. This is what John knows his bakeries in Seattle. Um, so it is my great pleasure to introduce Ben. Um, Ben is an incredibly impressive person as the co-founding GP of Step Change, an early-stage venture capital fund based right here in Seattle, uh, through, through you, Anais [00:06:00] in LA, um, that backs ambitious founders building software to accelerate energy abundance and rebuild critical infrastructure.

So really, really important things. But I think, um, what’s really easy to overlook is that Ben is actually a founder. This is your third go around as a founder. You’re founding a VC fund and media company this time. Um, so you do these, like, four-hour incredible deep dive podcasts that is my second favorite after the Fall of Empires.

I don’t know if it– or no, the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Has anybody listened to that one? They’re, like, two to four hours. Similar deal, but this is about, um, energy transition, so a little bit different. And, um, Ben previously sold a company to Google and another company to Stripe, which is why he has been at Stripe and Google.

And we actually overlapped at Stripe. So Ben and I have lots of different things that we have in common and, um, he’s also very famously known as Climate Papa. Has anybody heard or listened to the Climate Papa [00:07:00] podcast? This is Climate Papa. Um, Climate Mama is here too Yeah, sorry. Sorry to call you out. But it is no joke to have three kids, three wonderful kids, and to build everything that you’ve built.

So huge kudos to you, and I’m just in awe

Ben Eidelson: Thank you, Susan. It’s my pleasure to introduce Christine Boyle. Um, we, I think met maybe at a, at some climate dinners maybe a year or two ago, and every time I get the chance to sit next to her at a dinner, at a gathering, at an event, I just learn so much. And I’m always like, uh, you know, in thinking about, uh, how I want to introduce her, it’s just like my favorite person to be seated next to at anything.

Um, and, you know, in the climate ecosystem, there are, there are generalist folks like, like some of us, but very importantly, there are folks that go extremely deep on one particular topic. And Burnt Island Ventures, that Christine’s a partner at, um, goes deep on water, and water is important. Um, [00:08:00] and so we’re very, very lucky to have her in the Seattle ecosystem, and anything, anytime I ever see a deal that touches water, she’s always my first call, and it’s, it’s just a pleasure to be her friend and, uh, hopefully future co-investor in, in multiple deals to come.

Christine Boyle: Oh my gosh. Blush.

Gregory Heller: And, uh, I just met Christine on Monday at one of the panels and, uh, was really impressed by the insights that she had and shared on that panel, and I’m excited to hear where we go today. Uh, interestingly, we are also arranged, um, we introduced in the order in which I know each of these people, the tenure of, of my, uh, friendship and, and, uh, uh, relationships with each of them.

So I’m gonna tee us up a little bit, and then the goal here is to not hit each of you with a question and go down the line, but to have a real conversation. Uh, the podcast is called Conversations on Careers and Professional Life. We might talk a little bit about that, but really a conversation about the state of climate tech VC here in the Pacific Northwest.

I’m sure that’s [00:09:00] gonna take us beyond our borders, and, um, in 2026. And on Monday, Susan, uh, led a panel and we were, uh, at Silicon Valley Bank, and we were referencing the Silicon Valley Bank report that came out earlier this year focused on 2025. But on, on Monday also, uh, Climate Tech VC came out with their own report for the first half of 2026.

Um, and it showed tremendous growth in the first half of the year investment in climate tech. Uh, that current report showed that there’s been 26 billion in climate tech VC funding in the first half. That’s up 55%, um, and the best half year since 2022. Um, but there’s also been increasing concentration, so I think it was 10 deals took 42% of all of that money.

Uh, low carbon data centers, as we talked about, I think on Monday, Tuesday, and probably Wednesday, uh, went from 3% to 34% in just [00:10:00] one year. So there’s increasing concentration of the deal flow. The number of deals is decreasing, and there is this chasm from seed and A, uh, to C. In that B round, there’s a big chasm that we’ve talked about a lot.

That’s the national picture Um, there’s also some, uh, insights about growth in Europe for climate funding. I know Gabriel has been in Europe a bunch over the last couple years, so he may maybe have some insights around that. But I would love for you to discuss, uh, here in the Pacific Northwest, locally, what is happening with climate tech venture capital.

Is there the same type of concentration that we’re seeing so far this year at a national level? Um, and how does that bode for the future of the startup ecosystem, climate tech startup ecosystem here? Who’d like to start us off?

Gabriel Scheer: I, I guess I, that they’re [00:11:00] looking at me

Gregory Heller: John, who always

Jonathan Azoff: is the first to chime in

Gabriel Scheer: They’re looking at me. They’re looking at me. I feel like I gotta say something. Um

Jonathan Azoff: I, I approach everything from the perspective of what I can see through the lens of local community, which is obviously, uh, a thing that I have immersed myself in and care deeply about.

And, um, to that end, uh, it may or may not surprise, uh, folks to hear that the, the largest community of founders in climate tech in Seattle, at least that I’m aware of, are in battery tech. Uh, we have the PNW Battery Collaborative run by a few local members here in town, and, uh, they’re working on everything from software solutions to energy optimization and storage, all the way through to novel battery chemistries and the deployment thereof.

Um, and they are underpinned by, uh, almost like a, a sort of shadow of Group 14 and some of these larger, um, battery players that, um… You know, I spent 20 years in Silicon Valley, and I watched [00:12:00] this cycle of founders exiting and then funding the next generation of founders. And for whatever accident of history, batteries seem to be in that zeitgeist and, and following in that model.

So I, I think if I were to answer the question about what, you know, what are we seeing here in climate tech in the Pacific Northwest, I would lens it through what are people spending their time in, and batteries do seem to be the, uh, flavor du jour right now.

Gregory Heller: All right. Anyone have a contrary opinion to that?

In addition to batteries, anything else that’s-

Susan Su: Well, Greg, were you, were you talking about companies or were you talking about capital?

Gregory Heller: Uh, companies and indus- maybe sort of industry niches that are really sucking up a lot of the funding. Yeah. Is there a concentration?

Susan Su: I mean, yeah, I think the most obvious one is nuclear- Yeah

is Helion, is, is, is the rounds that have been raised. Yeah. Um, and I think it’s great to be known for something, you know. So, like, to the extent that those companies can be successful, grab [00:13:00] headlines nationally, raise multi-hundred million dollar rounds, then, you know, it brings attention, and it brings literally people and visitors, um, from outside of the region to come and take meetings, and it brings, um, it brings capital to…

that will eventually flow, I believe, to other categories as well. So, um, if you’re in nuclear, great. If you’re not in lu- nuclear, also great. We should be really thankful that they’re able to, um, break ground in that way for us.

Ben Eidelson: I, I think I, like, br- bristle a little bit at the framing that it’s, it’s kind of sucking up as though it’s a zero-sum perspective.

And, you know, when there’s these large growth rounds, the, the funds that are participating in those are not the same funds that would, you know, help the pre-seed or seed or even Series A ecosystem that we need. So, like, there’s a little bit of a, kind of just a different time horizon, I think, to capital, and I think there’s also a different time horizon to these ecosystems.

And then likely, you know, those companies, as, as we just talked about, when talent g- grows and those companies have exits, like, that funnels back into [00:14:00] either funding or starting the next ecosystem. I know that there’s a wave now of of folks who built Starlink, who are now building the next wave of energy companies here.

Um, and I think where I see a commonality across batteries, nuclear, other, other things that I’m sure we’ll get into, is that in this region, within probably five, 10 miles of here, is the largest energy buyers with the largest pockets in the world. And, like, that is, I think, going to be, in my mind, a big part of the story of the next five to 10 years.

And so, you know, what does it mean to have Amazon, Microsoft, Meta’s energy team, others that people don’t realize are necessarily even here are here, and I think that that’s immense for both the energy ecosystem and probably the water ecosystem. And so I think that can create this base of intellectual sharing, whether or not the capital or the founding teams are necessarily here, it becomes a place to come to engage in what we need to do to, to get through the moment.

Christine Boyle: Oh. You know, I w- founded a company and I did all that, uh, [00:15:00] a water tech company. My- I’m, I’m very reliably go back to water. So, but I did that in Silicon Valley, and I think I did it for a reason. I had access to, like, top, uh, software dev talent and access to capital. And I’m from Seattle. I, um, my family’s been here since the early 1900s.

Like, I have this long history here, and the feeling I got, and I, and I wouldn’t say it’s terribly different today, is, you know, there’s a lot of, like, there’s a lot of cool startups here. There’s some good water tech startups such as Aquagga and Membrion. Um, but, uh, but it’s mostly corporate tech. Like, that’s more of the, like, employment centers at the very least here, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google, et cetera.

And that means that they’re filled with engineers, and I think that, I think that there’s, like, uh, on the capital side, very, like, there’s more risk-averse nature because of the risk, de-risking nature of even learning to be an engineer. And so y- you’re filled with all these engineers, and engineers aren’t [00:16:00] necessarily gonna be the biggest risk-takers when it comes to investing in VC.

Um, and I, and I’m just always wondering, like, why culturally Seattle remains number six, uh, across America for, uh, VC dollars spent. It’s 2.3%. Silicon Valley is 41%, and then Boston, uh, New York, and it kinda… We’re number six. So I think that, like, none of the, these amazing people were here back when I was raising capital, and so thanks all of us, things are changing, but there’s a certain cultural risk appetite that makes, uh, VC a little bit tough here, so.

So true.

Gregory Heller: And I was gonna say, we do have, I mean, there are the five of you, and we have more, right? So is, is it changing? Is that risk appetite changing, do you think?

Susan Su: Actually, I have a question for everybody here. Yeah. ‘Cause I think this is a really, really good point. There is so much money here. The concentration…

Do y’all know Mercer Island is, like, the wealthiest ZIP code [00:17:00] in the United States? It, it’s, it’s more than Bel Air, it’s more than Manhattan, it’s Mercer Island. And it’s so quiet. And, and it’s like, you know, the stealth wealth thing. And, and there’s so many people that have all their RSUs vested from decades of hypergrowth across Amazon, Microsoft, um, and other companies.

And it doesn’t recycle back out into the community the way that it does in the Bay Area. So, um, uh, you and I both went to Stanford. I stayed in the Sil- Silicon Valley when I was in my 20s, and a very common phenomenon is, like, that first bit of disposable income you get, you’re on AngelList, you’re investing 5K into somebody’s startup.

Accredited? Sure You take on your own risk, and it is very common to see, um, people practicing investing not as investors, not as institutions, but as individuals. And we [00:18:00] just don’t have that here. We have E8, which is an incredible angel network, but… And E8 has been here for decades, and they’ve been really active.

But for example, E8 is populated by lots of different types of people, but also lots of, uh, executives, former executives from Amazon and Microsoft. There’s a certain diligence process. There’s a certain type of almost what I would say, like PE-style underwriting, which if you go down to the Valley and you see how investors work there, it’s like, “Let’s play a game of pickup basketball.

I will decide in five minutes,” not make you go through a bunch of rings of fire to prove to me that your pre-seed startup has path to commercialization. So this is like my rant about I think it slows things down. It’s really hard on founders because it puts the burden of proof guilty until proven innocent.

Um, but I wanna ask everybody here, if we could help people that are attending, what is your decision process? Like, [00:19:00] not what you tell founders in emails when you, like, send a rejection email, but like how does it really work on your ICs? Like, I want the truth, and I will start. So at Toba, it’s backed by– It’s a separate fund backed by a single-family office.

We don’t have an IC. Our entire decision-making process is based on your deal lead socializing to, uh, one LP, our CFO, and our managing partner, who, like, they don’t do votes. We don’t have votes. We don’t have people that do sit on the IC or don’t sit on the IC. There’s just three people that tend to make all the decisions, and if you can influence them, then you can get any crazy deal through.

And it’s not based on how well you’re s- you write your memo or how good that pro forma looks. It is really just based on that social relationship. And so for me, if I’m feeling like my political capital is not very good internally, then I’m probably not gonna succeed with my deal no matter how good the deal is.[00:20:00]

And so, like, to the extent that you can help me look good to my team, that’s how I get things done. And we have cut checks from 500K that way all the way up to 30 million. So it is a serious fund that doesn’t operate in a serious official capacity. But I wanna know how it all works with Elemental, Burnt Island, Step Change, and Snow Cap, as well as any funds that you’ve previously, uh, worked at or been a part of.

Ben Eidelson: I also think we should continue the thread on the, like, Seattle ecosystem aggregation- Yes, yes please … because that’s also a good one. So- Yes, please … hold both of these. Um- If that’s okay. We could always, like, give a dual very, um- The culture here is changing and evolving for the better, but I think it’s flipped, right?

I think that the default venture angel investing culture here was born out of the ’90s, and it was this idea that investors give founders permission to go build companies. That’s what I felt here when I was first building my first startup here. And in the Bay Area, this changed [00:21:00] earlier. I think it changed in the mid-2000s, like YC epitomizes this, and then Andreessen super scaled this, which is founders give investors the permission to potentially sell, or, you know, earn the right to buy some of their equity.

And so that power dynamic is the flip, and to me, the faster Seattle can catch up with the idea that, like, founders are kings, our job here is to serve them and help them achieve, you know, their empire that they’re building and be lucky to be along for the ride. And that mentality attracts, I think, the best founders with the biggest ambition to go take on the right problems.

If you’re not gonna get that here, you’re gonna go to a place where people understand that and support that. And I think it can, and it has happened here, but oftentimes the founders that are here who feel that way and have that ambition are gonna hop on a plane, go two hours to a place where the capital thinks and acts that way.

And so I think that’s, that’s kind of the, my, my mental model of the relationship between kind of the capital permission structure, the kind of old school behavior. Um, but then there’s also then the, like, corporate permission structure and status structure of whether it’s starting a VC fund or, or starting a [00:22:00] company.

We’re still catching up to, like, what, what does status look like in this ecosystem? Because in the Bay Area, like it’s very clear that angel investing, starting something, taking that risk, getting into YC, like those are the pinnacle, at least in your 20s and 30s, of like achievement, right? And here I don’t think that that is nece- is the default pinnacle culturally, um, for better and worse.

Um-

Christine Boyle: I got into YC

Gabriel Scheer: But more you would probably even most people

Ben Eidelson: Yeah, I saw it and I was like, “You really…” Yeah. It was like, that’s, that’s the, the signal. Maybe we do this and then we come back to the- Yeah. … to the investment.

Christine Boyle: Okay.

Gabriel Scheer: I have a quick thought. I, I agree with what you said in terms of a lot of our risk tolerance or, or lack thereof in Silicon Valley, definitely.

And it’s a place to compare against ’cause it’s easy and it’s obvious, and 41%, right, of the VC comes out of Silicon Valley. I do think, though, we have some other systemic challenges and also opportunities. One of the systemic challenges is, to your point, we’ve got these big, big companies here, and it’s golden ha- handcuffs, right?

Like, if I’m there and I’m getting stock that’s going up, up, up, up, up as my payment, like it’s really hard. I [00:23:00] ran a job fair a number of years ago called Get A Real Job Fair, and the name obviously it was a little cheeky, and our whole goal was to help startups pull talent out of the big corporates. And we…

I actually hired a guy to stand outside of Microsoft and Amazon’s offices with a sign that said Getarealjobfair.com to try to get people to come to this event. And it was a great event. It was a lot of fun. Uh, but we’d, you know, we’d have like 10 to 15 startups in the room, and we’d have… We required a founder or a C-level person in the room pitching, but then you as a potential job seeker, an engineer at Amazon or whatever, would come and you had talked to the founder, and the pitch was ship code daily, make a difference.

And I think that’s a big piece of the problem here, too, is that it’s really easy to be comfortable and not jump, which has less to do with Silicon Valley’s appetite for risk. Well, in some ways it’s that, but it’s differently that way. It’s less to do with the amount of capital here, ’cause you’re right, we have a ton of it.

Uh, but it’s partly just, it’s hard, I think, for a lot of people to leave. But then another thing we have on the strength side, we have all these companies, you referenced Starlink, we have tons of engineering talent in a lot of different ways, right? Whether it’s Boeing, whether it’s working in the ports. We have so many people [00:24:00] doing so many different pieces of the puzzle.

I mean, you think about mobility, for example, like we could and should do a lot, and I would argue we don’t have enough startups coming in, in mobility, for example, here in Seattle. But if you look at Lime, you mentioned I was on the founding team there, uh, Lime’s fourth-biggest market, I believe, in the world is Seattle.

That’s behind like London, Paris, and I forget the third one, but maybe Berlin. Uh, so like Seattle rocks when it comes to a lot of things. We have capital. We have people eager to try new things. We have educated people that are willing to do stuff. So let’s figure out what strengths we have. If it’s maritime-focused, we’ve got a lot of people who know a lot about maritime in every different angle you could think of, so let’s pull them in.

And I think that’s where like it’s easy to compare against San Francisco and to some degree be kind of down. I’m right there with you. I complain about the lack of capital here and the lack of appetite when you exit to go do a thing as opposed to go buy a nice place on an island somewhere. That’s great.

But like, also, like reinvest. Give back to those who helped you get there or to the next generation of those. And I’ll answer your question about the deal flow side or like how deals work. Elemental is different. Uh, for those who don’t know, Elemental is a nonprofit investor We act a lot like VC, except we’re not.[00:25:00]

Uh, we don’t have LPs, if you’re not familiar with those. Essentially, those are people that give money to VCs. We don’t have those. We have instead donors. So they give us money in the form of philanthropy, grants, that sort of thing, family offices, foundations. Many of them are, in fact, normally investors in VCs.

But in our case, they give us the money to invest in climate tech, and specifically to help founders with deep environmental and community impact. We’ve got a founder in the room, actually, Grant over there, CEO of Mass Reforestation, a local, actually our only locally based company right now. Uh, but, um, but yeah, our process is a different process than most and, and I think you know a little bit about it.

But essentially for us to fund you, you have to apply, and then we have a couple of month dilgen- diligence process. I’d love to say it’s a couple, meaning two. In reality, let’s shoot for three, uh, is, is probably more realistic. And right now we’ve got a big initiative around data centers that, that takes a little more time to explain.

I can get to that later if it’s useful, but that’s our process.

Jonathan Azoff: You, you can watch Gabriel age in real time when he has to go through cohort review. It’s, it’s quite amazing. Um, it’s amazing listening to [00:26:00] you guys speak. I love being the small brain on the panel. Um I also will answer your question, but I feel like, yeah, compelled to talk about the premise ’cause it is such a juicy, uh, premise.

Um, so there were a few people, uh, actually who are even in this room who saw the first time I, I stepped on this foot gun, um, where I talked about this exact topic about why we don’t have the dynamics of Silicon Valley. And I’m also, just to be clear, spent 20 years there, five companies, three exits. Like, by any measure, I am like the most prototypical Silicon Valley person.

I don’t necessarily think we need to copy everything Silicon Valley does. I think there’s some things that are uniquely great about the Pacific Northwest, and may- why don’t we try to just do better than that, right? Like, let’s not copy, let’s do better. Um, but one of the things I called out, you know, the, the– when you look at the formation of Silicon Valley out of, you know, all the investors out of Fairchild Semiconductor and then Stanford Xerox PARC and all the things that created what we now know as Silicon Valley, [00:27:00] there was critically this investor class that was willing to kind of let the founder lead.

And I do also subscribe to that idea that founders are the sort of ones we should aspire to work with. I, I’m a producer on a show called “The Right to Invest.” Th-that show is literally inv… It’s like “Shark Tank,” but the investors are pitching the founder to get onto their cap table, right? Like, I truly have bought into that.

Um, at the same time, I do want to not completely renege about what I thought about the angel class back then. I still think that is a pervasive problem where they are somewhat allowing founders to exist, but I do think it is getting better. Um, like for instance, since we called out E8, I will also say that E8, just in the time I’ve been here, has professionalized, has gotten a lot better at producing regular, consistent deal flow and deal action.

Um, and they typically see deals even before I do. So, so I, I, I have to give them credit for improving the pace and the deployment [00:28:00] process, uh, internally, and that’s like a huge credit to the team that’s there now, like Sarah and, and others. The other thing I would say is, uh, and I also have to give credit to someone who’s not in this room but works in this building, Ken Hornstein of Pac Ventures.

Uh, I watched Ken pitch at that same event where I, you know, blasted Seattle’s angel scene. And, uh, Ken made a point that I think is relevant to the Mercer Island point, which is if every accredited investor in Seattle or King County or even Washington chose to just put $1,000 towards a startup It would fundamentally transform this state and, and our startup ecosystem.

Like, it, it, it is crazy how much capital is available here. Um, if o- most people don’t even know they can do it, that they can be investors and that they are accredited. But chances are, if you work for a tech company, you are accredited. Um, so anyway, that’s [00:29:00] my small brain view.

Christine Boyle: Okay. Let me find popcorn. I’m gonna popcorn back to Susan’s question on, on, um, to all…

So to our founders in the room. So here’s some, like, it’s kinda the question is kinda like, what… Tell people something they don’t know. So probably what folks don’t know, if you’re a founder applying, and you’re a water tech startup applying to Burn Island, and we fund kind of pre-seed seed through Series B, um, not that different than the, the ranges that Susan mentioned, uh, is that there’s sort of table stakes, right?

Sort of like, you know, thesis, market size, um, product market fit. Where are you in that journey? I know there’s all the kind of table stakes. Is your IP defensible? You all have to have that. But I think what founders don’t know is how much we’re praising them, like deeply. Like, how responsive are you? What was the tone of [00:30:00] your email?

Have I met you? Were you defensive in your, in your meeting with me? Um, did I see you at a gathering and you, um, got super drunk and were saying inappropriate things? Like, were you… Uh, have a, is there like kind of some internet record of you either being very good or being very bad on social media? Um, all those little things, like, I think when, w- like even all the way through the diligence process, which we do have.

We, you know, we do probably more traditional memo writing and diligence, IC, all that jazz. But it’s, we’re paying very close attention to how professional you are, how you deal with stress, um, how pr- um, how you present yourself to the external world, how you treat your, um, colleagues in a meeting, especially the CEO.

Often, man, you see CEOs kind of cut off their own staff, uh, uh, kind of make them maybe, like, not [00:31:00] really shine. Like they need to look super smart, whatever. Of course, you’re really smart, everyone’s really smart, blah, blah, blah. So, um, but anyways, that’s kind of what you might not know about how closely we’re looking at the founder’s behav- and the CEO’s behavior.

Gregory Heller: That’s great. I wanna just, uh, uh, double-click on that for a second, um, because I think it’s great advice not only probably for founders who are pitching, but for anyone who’s looking for a job. Yeah. You know, these are, these are what we’re now more and more calling durable skills, uh, not soft skills, because they’re the things that, you know, the AI can’t replicate.

Yeah. It’s how you actually show up. In the world when you’re interacting with other people. It’s great to hear, and I heard it on a panel yesterday, it was like the fifth P, I think, um, that Hillary talked about from, uh, from PitchBook, the fifth P, the, the people that- Mm … you know, and, and how you’re relating to not only your team- So P,

Christine Boyle: P, P, P, P, P.

Gregory Heller: Yeah. Yeah, the fifth [00:32:00] P.

Gabriel Scheer: And, and the reverse is true as well, right? Like, founders are assessing their potential funders, especially if you’re in a hot sector where you have demand for what you’re doing. They’re assessing you in the same way

Gregory Heller: Completely. Yeah. Looked like you wanted to jump in with something, Ben.

I

Ben Eidelson: was just gonna, just gonna, like, echo, echo this point. I think especially as for us, the earlier we’re looking at a, at a deal, I mean, the earlier, like, is it, you know, pre-seed two people and an idea versus, you know, they’re a team of, of five or six, the more the bet is on these people to figure it out, right?

And if you’re betting on people to figure it out, the question is, well, how did they figure out… What did they figure out in the last two weeks? What did they figure out in the next two weeks? Like, what is their pace of learning? How, not just responsive are they for the sake of responding to my email, but responsive to the introduction.

How do they jump on that and how do they move it forward? Like, many of the things that we end up investing in require a founder to look at a particular m-market that’s been the way it’s been for 50 to 100 years, and see some way through it and kinda push, push the boulder up the hill. And it takes, like, a [00:33:00] particular type of person to do that while being nice and kind, and someone we wanna spend the next decade working with.

And so that is, like, you know, a, a sometimes, sometimes very, very, like, under, like, very discounted relative to, to the other things.

Christine Boyle: Yeah, and there, there’s… The s-super interesting thing is, okay, we wanna find someone who believes in themself to such a degree that they believe they can just, like, walk through a wall, ’cause that’s what building a company feels like.

And we don’t want them to be a total asshole. But can you walk through a wall if you’re not a little bit of an asshole? And what does that math look like? Just curious what people might think about that sort of personality type.

Susan Su: I, I happen to think a lot of different personality types can be successful as leaders.

You can be Elon, you can be Dario, you can be Sam, you can be somebody really quiet, you can be, um, somebody really loud. [00:34:00] You can be somebody overtly charismatic, you can be somebody who is a black hole of charisma. But I think- … you have to be consistent. You have to be really consistent. And if I could forward the type of founder that I would invest in, or person that I would hire in a heartbeat for any leadership position, it would be somebody like Ben.

And not to put you on the spot, but the, the things, the things that I, I was reflecting on this, and things I really like about Ben is that he is not just going off of a script. Um, I have invested, and I know many great CEOs who, because they have to repeat what they say so many times to so many parties, they, like, forget who they’ve told things to.

And not just CEOs, but, like, fund managers, just, like, generally successful people. And you kind of feel like you’re interacting with a script rather than the real person. And that worries me because when life or your business throws something unexpected at you, you can’t respond with a script [00:35:00] So when I talk to Ben, wh- whatever it is about, he will pause and think deeply from first principles and give me the answer that comes right then from actual deep reflection, which is really, really impressive to me.

Like, the ability to, uh, take a question and grapple with its realities in the moment is something very, very hard. So I mean, maybe it goes without saying, but to be a successful founder, I think one of the attributes is that you have to be very, very smart, okay? And like, it’s not like I’m saying smart people are more valuable than that people that have less intelligent capabilities, but like there are people who are very, very smart and know how to be present and know how to engage with intellectual material.

That is like, I guess, table stakes, but it shows up in different ways. So this sort of going deep right there in front of you, first principles, being really, really ready for the meeting, and being, I guess, [00:36:00] well-rested enough that you can, um, pay attention and take things on and not just give, uh, rattle off the numbers that you always say.

I would say those are some attributes that, uh, could carry you into whether it’s an interview for a, a job or whether it’s a, um, conversation with a potential investor.

Jonathan Azoff: C- can I continue the train of reflecting things I like about Ben in the founders- … that I see? Uh, one of the things I like about- It’s like a reverse roast

about, about Ben, um, that is also I, I’ve noticed in founders that I like is, uh, Ben did the hard thing first, not the easy thing. So, so like, uh, you know, Ben, Ben’s got his Step Change, uh, podcast, which once again, you should all listen to it. Um, but to s- to… I, I’ve actually had the pleasure of watching Ben and, and I research these things and like how long it takes, and they pull out these tomes and we’ll, we’ll spend months reading it like, I don’t know, in the twilight hours while you’re putting your [00:37:00] kids to bed.

I don’t even know how you do it. Um, and like, you know, my media consumption habits are like absurd. Like, like I, I like Substacks and YouTube videos and like, it’s not good. Me either. It’s just how my brain works. But Ben will actually go and read the literature. Like he’ll actually go do the work. And when I meet a founder who has those qualities, those sort of like they’re comfortable in their own skin and they can give you those first principles answers, it’s because they’re almost like a professor.

They’ve ta- they, they’ve put in the work to actually understand it so that they can apply the, the, the core theoretical knowledge to any problem in front of them. Uh, this is also why I’ll never be on the other side of a debate about coal or data centers with, with Ben. Or

Gabriel Scheer: the grid.

Jonathan Azoff: Um, yeah. I

Gabriel Scheer: mean, jumping on the why we love Ben train.

But also how it’s archetypical and thinking specifically about our selection process at Elemental. I’m gonna bring it back. Uh, one of the things you’ve done with the grid specifically, with coal, like Ben and, and I are putting out lots of things without necessarily asking for a [00:38:00] thing in return for that.

Uh, and when we’re looking at founders, to get back to your point, Christine, we have… I mean, to give context, from August last year till now, I think we’ve had about 1,200 companies apply for funding from Elemental. We’ll fund 50 to 20 in a given year. Like the numbers are just hard, right? And so one of the key things we look for are founders who are giving of their wisdom, their expertise, and not necessarily giving in a way that’s extractive of them, but rather you’re a part of a community now.

If we invest in you, you’re in the portfolio, and we have 165 other CEOs who don’t know some of the stuff you know. And so we’re looking for founders who will be contributive to that community. That’s something Ben has done an amazing job at. Uh, it is something we love about you, and it’s also a great exemplar of what we look for in a founder when we’re looking at, at companies.

Ben Eidelson: I’m gonna pitch a startup now ’cause, you know-

Gregory Heller: Yeah. You got all the… Everyone’s ready to fund. Um, I, I’m gonna just reflect that back on you, Gabriel, because I think that you and, and Jonathan too, I mean, I, I know both of you better than the others, but you ha- you embody that same energy as well and that generosity.

You’ll take a meeting with anyone, [00:39:00] you’ll share what you know, um, without any promise of, uh, remuneration later, maybe to a fault, right? But I think it is really important, and I think it maybe is something that actually also sets the Pacific Northwest apart from other places, is that there isn’t the same kind of, “I don’t wanna tell you what I’m…

my secret sauce,” right? “I’m gonna keep this to myself.” Um, but there is that sort of sharing, that collaborative spirit. Uh, you know, at Foster we say, “Better together, better tomorrow.” I think it kind of comes from something that’s, you know, maybe in the water in Seattle.

Ben Eidelson: I think that’s spot on, and we’re very, very lucky here to have that kind of cultural undercurrent.

You walk into Nine Zero, which Don has helped come to Seattle, and you g- you immediately feel just everyone’s trying to figure it out together and help each other, and, and that’s unusual. You know, I mean, venture by default is, is a sharp elbow, can be a sharp elbowed ecosystem, [00:40:00] is, you know, is derived from this concept that like you’re fighting for allocation and the deals that matter.

And I’ve like particularly, I mean, I think climate in general benefits from a little bit more collaboration by default, but climate in Seattle is like the most collaborative work environment I could ever imagine. Um, I also think back to, back to you all’s members point, uh, like one, and then maybe what founders I think they realize this, but, you know, we look at about eight hundred deals, maybe nine hundred deals a year, and it’s two of us, and we try and both be on most calls and, and look at most things together.

And so we’re– and we end up investing about two percent. And so it means by default we’re saying no to someone who’s working on some part of the climate problem, and we’re both doing this to work on the climate problem. And so it, it’s hard. Like, we want, we want every person we meet to succeed. We try to be as generous as we can with introductions to others who could fund them or help navigate that maybe like this isn’t a venture opportunity or it’s not a fit for us for some reason in our thesis.

But for, for founders in the room, I think it just [00:41:00] means like it– and I think this is a Seattle thing that I’ve noticed, where people don’t realize that like when you think about those ratios, it doesn’t mean, you know, kind of be demoralized by the odds. It means you gotta pitch a lot of people, and it means that you cannot say who’s local only if I want my company to succeed.

And I, I hate to say it ’cause like we all want more things funded and started in Seattle, but I want any founder in this room or listening to this in this ecosystem to succeed first and foremost. And to do that, they need to be as open-minded as they can on the sources of capital that can come. So yes, come meet us first and then have us introduce you to the funds in New York and in San Francisco and in London to make sure that you can like, can launch.

Susan Su: There are so many funds out there. Yeah. It is mind-boggling. Yeah, I have spent 10 years of my career in venture capital, and even to this day, I’ve been working very hands-on with one of my portfolio companies on a capital formation project. And even to this day, I am discovering [00:42:00] not just pockets, but like whole worlds that I didn’t know about, and I feel like kind of embarrassed.

Like, how did I not ever hear about this fund or not that… And then they’re like, “Oh, it’s a $250 million fund.” It’s like a pretty substantial, and they’ve like done up quite a bunch of deals, and it, it’s just such a big, big world. And, um, it’s very, uh, cottage at the same time, um, and quite bespoke. So what I always say, like for founders or even for like people tr- trying to be operators in companies, like you need to get a friend in the business.

So whether it’s a GP at a small fund that will like take your call, or even just like a friend who works at a venture fund or somebody else that’s on a private equity side, just having a, an actual inside track to how things, um, work, and maybe you can access their PitchBook account or, um, whatever it is.

Like, those things can be very [00:43:00] material to your process.

Jonathan Azoff: Yeah. I, I have a, just a, just a quick, uh, riff on that just to double down. Yes, there are a lot of funds. Um, like I, I maintain lists and lists of, of funds. Um- Binders

Gregory Heller: of them …

Jonathan Azoff: binders full of funds. Um, and, uh- There is a truth though about funds, which are, they are like vehicles.

Um, so a firm manages many funds, and often when you think of a VC, you describe them as a fund, but actually they’re, they’re a company that manages many funds, and those funds have a lifetime. And this is sort of a know your audience argument, but, like, the existence of a fund is not the existence of funds insofar as, like, you– they may not be ready to invest in you, and if they are not ready to invest, there may be all sorts of reasons they still wanna talk to you, and you may desire or not desire to engage with them as a result.

Um, but you should just be aware of where a firm is [00:44:00] in their fund life cycle, because they could be at the tail end. That means different dynamics. They want quicker exits, if they even have any capital left to deploy. Or they could be at the beginning, and they’re like, “YOLO Wild West, let’s get our first deal in.”

Um, or, or it could be somewhere in the messy middle where they’re fundraising for their next fund, but they’re still deploying out of their first. That’s where I am. And, like, that means, like, my– I have half a brain I can dedicate to you and half a brain, you know, going and, and trying to raise my next fund.

You may not want that. That may mean my process will take a lot longer than another firm’s process that, that maybe doesn’t have that distraction. Um, so just, uh, it, it… I guess the takeaway here is the existence of a fund does not mean that they’re ready to deploy, so be aware of that

Christine Boyle: A, a question, like one of the things when I was raising capital, I got a, my graduate degree at University of North Carolina.

Uh, show up in, uh, you know, San Francisco, and people are like, “We don’t even know where that is. That’s not even on our map.” You know? Like, “This is… Where… Is that in our [00:45:00] country? We have no idea.” Um, and so one of the things that I recognized was that both startup and company building, as well as VC, is what I would call clubby.

Um, and, like, there’s a club in San Francisco that’s, like, the ex-Google club. There’s the I went to Stanford club. There’s the, um, I don’t know, in Boston, there’s the, like, MIT graduate club. Lots of… And so those are just a few examples. And is this kind of riffing on your point, too, is like you need to know someone.

If you’re not part of a club, if you’re just, like, waving out in the wind, whether you’re trying to company build or, um, you’re trying to, like, be a VC, you have to get into one of these. Like, you almost have to. And I was building a company quite successfully, but I wasn’t part of a club, and I was like, “How the hell do I get access to capital?”

And that’s why I joined Y Combinator. I just sold 10% of my company to [00:46:00] Y Combinator just to get their stamp of approval. I didn’t need all the, the stuff, like, that they offer, the coaching. It was good. I was fine. I love the partners, learned a lot. But I needed a stamp that said, “Hey, you’re credible in the eyes of, of this community.

You’re an… You, you’re now, you’re now much more eligible and high likelihood for investment.” So I guess the question I have for us is what is that here? What are our clubs?

Jonathan Azoff: Wow. I… Can I- Ooh. Can I take this? I love… Okay. So I’m a very, like, uh, field of dreams person when it comes to this. Like, I always assume I’ll never get into a club, so I always make clubs.

Okay. I wouldn’t wanna be a member of any club that would- Exactly.

Christine Boyle: I have my own club, Alice. You could… Yeah.

Jonathan Azoff: Um, and, and Nine Zero for sure in the climate tech community before that is very much a manifestation of that idea. Uh, and just to give you a sense of how that club creates those club dynamics, Nine Zero has a program right now called Give, Get, Get, where if you give them your list of investors, they’ll give you the list, the aggregate list of all the [00:47:00] investors that they’ve gotten from every other founder and investor.

And, uh, apparently, that program has blown up, because they also operate in Silicon Valley, so they have all those investors, too. Um, and so once again, just having the name of an investor is not a guarantee, but I, I just like… It’s a club dynamic that I thought was really useful for anyone who’s in that club.

Gabriel Scheer: Yeah. And I, I would say actually the, the- Having a list is one thing. It’s a lot of names. Having a person that trusts you recommend you into whatever club they’re a part of is, to me, the key. Like, if Susan calls me and says, “You gotta look at this company,” I’m gonna look at that company, full stop, because I trust her, and that’s, that’s the entourage to the, the club, as it were, in a way that is different from just a list.

I, I give out lists to a lot of my companies, but then what I ask for them is, “Tell me who you actually wanna talk to, and I’ll make that introduction,” ’cause that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Ben Eidelson: I was gonna say also from a career perspective, ’cause I think we’re talking a lot about fundraising- Yeah … but I’m always shocked how many people who are looking for a job, and they have a career, and they’re really smart, and they’re talented, and they go into the process, say, and I’m catch [00:48:00] up with them, and they’re like, “Yeah, I applied to all these jobs, and I’m hearing back from some, and some of them are in the process for it.”

I’m like, and that’s their whole, that’s the whole story. Like, it’s just the outbound, like, “I’m gonna send my application through.” Not, not like, “Hey, who can you introduce me to? Let’s sit down and go through your network.” So it’s like, it’s back to having a friend that brings you in. That’s how you get into the club, if it were, whether that club is the company, especially in the startup ecosystem, where that human referral, human trust, like, we will l- like, we do get some cold deals that we will occasionally look at, but by default, they’re not a fit because no one triaged them.

There’s no signal there. If anyone here sends me a deal, it’s, it, like, jumps to the top of the queue, and that’s just, it, it, and that’s not necessarily rational, but it’s, like, deep human psychology and kind of efficiency and pattern matching that everyone does for anything. And so I think that that’s such a important lesson.

And so if someone is talented and networked and trying to find their way in, like, use your network to go do [00:49:00] that.

Gregory Heller: Absolutely. The, the human referral is increasingly important, and I would… This is gonna take us in the direction of AI in a moment, um, but on the job front, right, the cost of applying to jobs has gone to zero because of AI.

I assume that on the pitch front, the cost of making a pitch for someone has kinda gone to zero because they can use AI, and it’s not gonna work, right? Mm. So to find the good deals or the good candidates, you’re gonna trust the person who knows that person, right?

Christine Boyle: Or they’re gonna submit a deck that doesn’t look like every single other Claude deck that I’ve seen in the last six months These Claude decks.

I mean, I’m not saying… I use Claude, I use ChatGPT, I use, you know, use lots of tools, but, like, you can’t, it, you, it, you can’t just produce it and send it. You need authenticity and your own intellectual ideas and frameworks. If you don’t have that [00:50:00] authenticity shining through, whether it’s for a job, an interview, an, a email, you’re not gonna make it in this environment, so.

Jonathan Azoff: Also differentiation. I, I, uh, I agree, um, on the Claude deck front. But I think founders underestimate how many companies we’ve seen like your company by the time you’re meeting us. And I would take a napkin with just your differentiator on it over another deck, because I need to very quickly ascertain in the limited time I have to look at your deal, like, why you and why is this different than the 15 other versions of this that I’ve seen?

Uh, I think we, we, uh, at least as founders, dramatically underestimate that, and as investors, we filter very quick for that, um.

Gregory Heller: I’m keeping an eye on time. There is a topic that I want to address. I wanna get back to the hyperscalers that are all around us and energy, because that was the news of this, uh, first half of twenty twenty-six report.

[00:51:00] And, you know, right now, maybe things look like it’s up and to the right, but what happens if the hyperscalers stop buying? What does that do to the capital that is currently invested in a lot of these energy and data center companies if that bubble pops? And there’s one little historical thing, and Ben might be the only person on the panel who n- would know about this because of the grid episode, but it’s the Whoops deal from the ’60s and ’70s here in Washington, and that was the WPSS nuclear deal that was the largest municipal bankruptcy, um, or default, I should say, uh, at the time.

Um, five nuclear power plants that were gonna be built. Only one of them got built, uh, because demand wasn’t there, right? So what had, ha… Now it’s not the munis that are, you know, over a barrel with, [00:52:00] uh, that investment, it’s the VCs. What could that do to the ecosystem?

Gabriel Scheer: Uh, I’ll just throw a quick thought in there, which is that right now it’s data centers, and that bubble may move or pop or whatever, and but we’re electrifying everything, right?

So whether it’s EVs or whatever else, it’s just a trial run for what’s gonna happen over the next X number of years. It happens that there are four, five, six, depending on how you look at it, companies that have very deep pockets and very high level of urgency and speed. But I, I think this is just the trial balloon for what does the grid need to look like?

How do we fix it? How do we make it work better? And what technologies can we bring to bear to do that?

Susan Su: I do think power demand going up is a secular trend, but on the other hand, the payer matters. So hyperscalers have a certain willingness to pay, uh, that is, that is supportive of, um, technology premiums that frontier technology demands because, well, you know, flash, like [00:53:00] Development costs a lot of money.

And so as– And it’s already starting to happen with SpaceX being underwater from its IPO, with OpenAI delaying its IPO until next year. As that starts to change, I won’t say pop or deflate, but let’s just say like the shape of that demand starts to change, we’re probably gonna see some change in multiples, and that’s definitely going to in, uh, come back to bite venture capital, which, um, at least in the last, you know, six to nine months, probably has been overpaying in order to chase velocity.

That it’s the velocity piece that may or may not actually come true. Of, of course, cooling, you know, um, transportation, general grid hardening, electrifica- like all of that stuff is still gonna happen, but utilities are not gonna pay for like your super fancy, [00:54:00] um, fusion facility that’s still 10 years away.

Ben Eidelson: Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re entering this whole period after what was actually a really unusual period. So this is actually back to normal from a grid growth perspective, but that’s I think the important context. Like, you know, the first grid went live in the late 1890s in New York, and then you had the next 30 years where we started connecting everyone else.

And then the wars hit, and we’d need aluminum and this, and massive industrialization, and then the ’50s and everyone has their, you know, baby boomer house period, and you kind of go from there, right? And that continued basically until the early 2000s. For the first time in the US history, we then had a 20-year period where we did not need more electricity than we did the year before.

In fact, some of these years ended up in decline. And part of that was for really positive reasons, like LED lighting. And some of those were made for less positive reasons, like offshoring all, all of our industrial capabilities. And so what’s happened, and happened before the data center boom, to Gabriel’s point, was we started to [00:55:00] re-industrialize a bit here.

We started to shift transportation from oil at the pump to electricity plugged in at your house. And those things were going, and then you had the data centers hit, which brings in this kind of like, not irrational, but a different rationality around time to power and kind of pulls it all forward and accelerates what was already happening.

And so now, you know, current forecasts like we need three times the grid capacity by 2050, which is, you know, on one hand insane, and on the other hand is back to the type of growth most of the US grid history went through. And so the problem is our technology, our actual like poles and wires, the utilities Are all coming out of this ossified no growth period where what they did was, you know, repair and just kinda keep the thing running, and we gotta, you know, figure out how to navigate this next phase.

So I think it will to, to like the, the venture story, like create… I mean, I think Susan said it very well, like you kind of slow down, reduce the velocity, and reduce the kind of some of the innovation bets. On the flip side, there’s not everything [00:56:00] great about this moment. It’s not great that sometimes the fastest answer is gas.

And so there’s a little bit of like give and take. It would be good if we had a little bit more time to say, this is actually like the most economical fast way, which is going to be solar and storage and, and nuclear and, and the things that we want to see deployed at scale. But it is providing a massive uplift and a massive opportunity to our whole sector in a way that I think like is a generational opportunity

Gabriel Scheer: I was gonna talk a little about the data center initiative that we’re running. Uh, one of the things that we see in this is the speed

I can talk on this one. Uh, the speed is a thing to take advantage of in some ways. We have this moment, this window in time where there is dramatic appetite for very quick deployment, and if you’re somebody who’s doing a thing in decarbonization that could help with that, now is your moment, right? Like, this is the time.

Uh, Elemental has a program called the Data Center Innovation Initiative, and we have partnered [00:57:00] with Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft to essentially run pilots with startups that we invest in, where all four can learn from those pilots. So instead of you as a startup founder trying to figure out, “How do I talk to Google and also Amazon?”

And also, you know, try to figure out who to talk to and demo, and then they all wanna see a pilot or proof that you can do the thing you say you can do. So we’re funding that for these startups to then share those results with those companies so they can see, “Oh, you pour green cement and you did it like this and it works like this.

We all now know that. And so now we can choose, do we use it in a data center? Do we invest in you? Do we whatever?” Uh, but the idea here is to take advantage of this moment and of this appetite, very real appetite for things, and try to do the things that are needed to be done in a variety of different ways.

Susan Su: Do your expensive things now I, I was, uh, well, I was, um, I was talking to the CFO of a portfolio company, and they’re about to go out and raise, um, some very large, uh, tranches of debt. And we were chatting about different debt providers and, uh, cost of capital. [00:58:00] And this CFO, who actually used to be a founder and CEO who took his own company public and then joined this company as a CFO, which says a lot about the portfolio company, said, “Actually, I don’t care what my cost of capital is today.

If it’s 14, 16, 18, 20%, because I’m never gonna raise as little capital tod- in the future as I am today.” This is a, a capital-intensive industry, and capital formation is gonna be an ongoing part of their business going forward. Um, they produce hardware, so they need money in to be able to create product out.

And he said, “What I really want is to buy down the cost of capital so that when I raise the really big money, then I’m at scale, and I can get it really cheaply.” And I thought that that was, um, really smart. I learned a lot in that moment, and I think there’s a parallel here, which is we have a lot of expensive R&D to do right now.

And so when we have payers that are, uh, have in this current moment [00:59:00] unlimited appetite and are totally cost insensitive, this is like go out and grab it. Because eventually we’re gonna become, um, you know, we’re all gonna become Canadian Solar, um, or, or even like First Solar. By the way, First Solar is a great business now, and I think a lot of people overlook how mature businesses can ebb and flow.

They can, um, kind of go down on their multiples, they can go down on their margins, and they can come back up. And like you wanna set yourself up to the point where you’re getting all the expensive stuff out the door today because eventually you’re going to be so scrutinized, um, on every single dollar that you alchemize into innovation and into production.

And, um, I guess that’s a, a, a more of a comment for later stages. But, um- Just forget what we were even originally talking about

Jonathan Azoff: Well, I, I think, I think it was about the, the, the impact on, on VC specifically. And I, uh, the… where my mind went since, since you’re talking about solar [01:00:00] is, I think it was now two or three COPs ago, um, Al Gore had a big speech about solar, and he said, uh, I’m paraphrasing, but he said, you know, “VC is owed a bouquet of flowers for taking a bath on Solar 1.0, because if it were not for that investment, we wouldn’t have the sort of levelized cost of solar that we have today,” which is to say that solar, uh, when you consider its, you know, overall production relative to fossil fuels and things like that, it is just functionally very cheap.

Um, and I, I don’t know, I thought there was something beautiful there, probably foreboding for, for my own industry. But, um, but nevertheless, I, for humanity, I thought that was a good thing.

Gregory Heller: So perhaps another analogy would be like the dark fiber late in the ’90s, uh, that made sort of today possible- Yeah

because it was invested, wrote down, and then was still there and available.

Jonathan Azoff: Yeah. May- maybe, maybe the positive reframe [01:01:00] on it is, is to be bold again Right? Like VC wasn’t always SaaS, crypto, and AI. It, it, uh, you know, in the beginning, it was a guy building computers in his mom’s garage, you know, trying to convince companies to buy the first thousand.

And it was semiconductor companies, and it was, uh, you know, the, the, the very beginnings of the internet before that was even a thing we now take as all for granted and self-evident. I, I think we can come back to that, and where there’s great risk, there’s also great reward. I would have loved to be an early investor in Intel or Amazon, you know?

Ben Eidelson: I also think, like, just to connect the dots of that, this, this moment for the energy sector, like the ossification just meant that the, the kind of power structures, the regulations, like it all just was like locked in place. And so anything new, whether it’s a new idea, a new company, a new model to come in was impossible.

But in this moment, with, with all the urgency, you have not just bets on new technologies on the ground, but also [01:02:00] like fundamentally new business models. VPPs are a great example. So many people have been so excited, probably some of the people in this room, in the deployment of VPPs at their houses, and we’re gonna orchestrate all this.

It’s gonna be this beautifully designed thing with your battery and your car and like… But okay, but like the, the, the, the kind of economic spread and opportunity was always a hard sell. Well, now Google’s like, “Are there 200 megawatts there?” Like, “Sign us up. We’ll take it tomorrow,” right? And so, like it unleashes these kind of flows of capital, which unleashes business models and unleashes people to think about, not necessarily regionally here with our models, but, you know, in other markets, you know, do we disintermediate the utility in a new way?

Is that interesting? What does it mean when, you know, you have all these other, other models to play with? So I think it’s, it’s exciting.

Gregory Heller: Well, Gabriel, we’ve talked about distributed data centers, right? Where you can have one in your backyard, and you get the compute for free, and you get the high-speed internet, and you have battery storage.

And what’s the company called? Span. Span. Span. Yeah.

Christine Boyle: Oh, and just to do it by molecules, [01:03:00] not just electrons. It’s a similar moment like of the hyperscalers, the net positive that of water positive as was, uh, carbon neutral is kind of interesting, and we’re encouraging founders and communities and utilities take advantage of this generational moment in investment in reuse, advanced treatment, meters.

So very parallel. It’s– the urgency is different than what w- in water with the electrons, and there’s a lot to that. But, um, it’s not, it’s the same like I’m like telling like, “Get it while you can.” And, um, so…

Susan Su: Can I actually share something from our– W- w– So we did a panel yesterday, uh, sponsored, co-organized by Snowcap, and it was a debt panel.

Um, the panelists were the CFO from Regenerative Social Finance, Mark Diaz, and Min Lee from Stifel Bank. And we had the AI question come up, and they had a very, very different answer than what I think most VCs would [01:04:00] approach it with. They said, “If somebody comes to me talking about AI or now Span is suddenly a data center company instead of a power wall competitor, um, or like now we’re doing data centers in space, I am immediately skeptical I’m immediately like, now you are definitely guilty until proven innocent, and that’s because they’re a different color of capital.

It is so important to know who you’re talking to. Debt is a really, really important part of the stack, even early on, and, uh, those people are no bullshit. Like, they actually do underwriting. They have to, and they don’t care about your AI hype story. In fact, it’s probably counterproductive at this point because of how dominant the narrative is that we are in a bubble and that somebody’s gonna get hurt very soon.

Um, so like it’s probably almost irrationally taking the narrative to the other extreme. So it cuts both ways, and I think, [01:05:00] um, you know, they may not be 100% right about it, but it’s certainly the perception is influencing their behavior. So be careful, um, how you use that.

Ben Eidelson: Yeah. You’re, you’re probably a much better framework for this, but like revenue from your customers is sane, rational at the moment of time evaluation of is your thing useful, right?

And I think debt is the other spectrum of, uh, you know, I’ll give you this loan, but my job is to make sure you’re gonna pay it back over a long period of time. VC is the other end of the spectrum of what is the potential energy of this thing? What is the potential that this is gonna be worth 100X in 10 years, right?

And so there’s this spectrum of, of like capital actors that are giving you money for very different purposes. One is upside potential, probability of upside. One is decreased probability of downside, and one is like you’re actually giving me something useful. Of course, the customer is the best source of capital, right?

For a lot of reasons, um, and the mostly existential. And then these other two should complement each other as needed to scale up the things that are either low risk, because you [01:06:00] wanna pay back the loans that you have, um, or inject the unnatural steroid of VC to grow ahead of, ahead of your time. That’s my overly simplistic spectrum.

Gregory Heller: All right. We are coming very, very quickly to the end of our time together today. I feel like we could, maybe we can make, do this again sometime, maybe before next Pacific Northwest Climate Week. Um, so let’s just a quick lightning round to bring it back to the Pacific Northwest. Uh, we talked about batteries, we talked about nuclear, we talked about data centers and hyperscalers.

But is there some nascent technology or startup, uh, that you have seen that you’re really excited about? Just like call it out. In the Pacific Northwest, you know, Cascadia, right? Like is there something that’s really attracting you right now and you’re curious about going forward?

Jonathan Azoff: I don’t know how many people…

Gabriel has one portfolio company here, right there.

Gregory Heller: Yeah.

Jonathan Azoff: You’ve, you’ve got one, two [01:07:00] here? None. Do you have any? I

Ben Eidelson: have three. James is in the room from BioEnergy. I’m very excited about how they’re doing. Um, but for me, I was gonna say like, what am I most exci- just, you know, before you said, you know, what company- Yeah

I just think it’s the people and the energy- Yeah … and the sense of a community, and the sense it’s actually not just founders and VCs. It’s, I think what Gabriel was saying that, like the ports are here, the energy buyers are here, the city’s engaged, the county… Like, like it’s small enough, you can actually kinda…

I’ve, I mean, I’ve only been here seven years, and I’ve only been in energy and climate here for like three or four, and I feel like I kind of know people now. And like that’s, like that’s an immense asset we have to kind of then hold it all from a network perspective in your hands, and I think that as a toolbox to then build ideas on top and prototype and push Seattle City Light to try something and push, you know, the water utility to try something.

Like you can actually meet those people, and they’ll engage with you, and that is like a huge, huge blessing in this space. So

Gregory Heller: let me pivot the question then for the rest of you. So is [01:08:00] there something that needs to be added to that mix? That-

Christine Boyle: Oh, here’s my favorite. I talked about this in the other panel.

I’m pretty jazzed these days about, um, wastewater treatment and biosolids treatment. Like, like the, one of the things that’s special about the Northwest is our water bodies and like the Puget Sound and, and, you know, we’ve got the salmon and the orcas and everything. And so there’s a lot of attention here to new forms of nutrient treatment and other ways that, that make it so that we don’t release our sewage in various different ways into water bodies.

And meanwhile, there’s PFAS going on and we can no longer truck and, um, dispose of our wastewater excrement onto, uh, fields, which is what we’ve done for the last 50 years. So biosolids and new ways to treat waste is, is my jam, and I’m, I’m looking for companies. [01:09:00]

Jonathan Azoff: Uh,

Gregory Heller: how do I

Jonathan Azoff: follow

Gregory Heller: that? How

Jonathan Azoff: do I follow that?

I mean, it’s just mic drop on biosolids and wastewater. I do like wastewater. I look at wastewater a lot too, so that’s, it’s good to know that’s exciting to you, uh, Christine. Um, so, so what do I answer? What’s missing or what’s- Yeah, like what’s,

Gregory Heller: what’s the one thing that maybe would be catalytic in, uh, the Pacific Northwest venture climate tech space?

You know, we’ve, we’ve got all these great assets we talked about, you know, but is there something that’s missing that would just like take us up a couple notches?

Jonathan Azoff: I mean, I’d appreciate if a lot of the largest pools of wealth here, whether that be the corporate buyers or just the, you know, the wealthy exited founders or executives, would, um, consider their wealth preservation strategy from more than a tax basis perspective and actually from, uh, enough capital can actually influence the tax code here.

So, like [01:10:00] you could also just change how things work by over-indexing on what this place can be. I think there’s just been a lot of capital flight, um, because of concerns around tax treatment, but it’s a lot… It’s largely, it’s, it’s, uh, um, sort of preemptive. It hasn’t actually been the case, right? I, I think, uh, a lot of wealth managers right now in particular, which just so everyone knows why I’m talking about this, it’s, it’s turtles all the way down, right?

The, the wealth managers work with wealthy people to fund, uh, funds and also often to advise angels on, on investing strategies, and that allocation and decisions ultimately have ramifications. In aggregate, they have political ramifications, and those are, are, I think life or death for, for founder and innovation ecosystems.

So, um, yeah, I mean, I think if I could change one thing, it would be like, look, the wealth preservation strategy in the Bay Area is invest in as many startups as you can because one of them’s gonna be massive, [01:11:00] right? The wealth preservation strategy here is how can I quickly move to Arizona, Palm Springs, or Florida for six months and one day of the year so that I can enjoy the summer here and my roots here, but not have my tax implications be here.

Um, I don’t think that’s a great founder ecosystem if that’s what we’re working with. It is nice that PNW Climate Week’s in the summer though, so we can still remind them that good stuff is happening here. And the

Gregory Heller: sun did come out.

Jonathan Azoff: Yeah. Susie, go ahead I

Susan Su: feel like I have to stand up for the rain, ’cause I hate hot weather, and I love the fact that it’s cool here most of the time, and that’s actually…

I think that’s a really good selling point. Um, I have a little bit of a different answer as to what we’re missing. So Gabriel and I last, I guess, like six weeks ago, were up in Canada for, um, a Canadian climate capital summit adjacent to Web Summit, and there were a bunch of founders that pitched. Um, it was all Canadian, um, funded companies and then [01:12:00] like Canadian funds.

And we were both like whispering and texting each other like, “God, these are absolutely devastatingly awful.” The pitches were the… And these were all good companies, really good companies, but zero story. And so I would say the number one thing that could really elevate our region, and I will include BC, I’ll go ahead and include BC in that-

Gregory Heller: They’re part of Pacific Northwest Climate Week

Susan Su: is understanding how to be a story founder. Whether you’re a s- whether you’re a founder of a fund, whether you’re a founder of a company, whether you’re a founder of a nonprofit, whether you are just the founder of You Inc., how to be a story CEO is absolutely the most important thing you can master because you’ve already got the substance, but you have to actually go out and perform it in an attention economy, which is what we live in.

And we’re so anti that here culturally. Like we don’t [01:13:00] wanna look too good. We don’t wanna like have a haircut that looks like we actually cared about our haircut. We wanna be like super low-key all the time, and it translates all the way to the way that we represent our businesses and our ambitions. And I would say it doesn’t matter what you wear, it doesn’t matter what your hair looks like, it doesn’t matter what you look like at all, but it does matter how you show up in the spaces that count, and people need to have really big voices.

So we need to get more comfortable with being more loud. That does not mean being more verbose or showering investors with a wall of Claude-generated density. It means knowing how to play the rests Knowing how to drop the mic and knowing how to tell an incredible story, not just about yourself, but about your entire community around you.

Gabriel Scheer: I’ll plus one the storytelling. I’m not sure we used the word awful. Uh, there were some actually [01:14:00] amazing companies, but it was, it was interesting to see the differences as well. Uh, and I don’t disagree on the need to just tell the story. I think Seattle is famously not, not eager to tell our story. We’re, we’re much more, “Let’s go just do the thing, and the story will tell itself.”

I, I’m personally that way as well, but I don’t think it’s necessarily to our credit. I’ll add one other piece, which is the ecosystem matters, and whether it’s the policy side, it’s the nonprofit side, it’s the people buying, to your point, Ben, the customers, uh, you need it all. And there’s some really interesting initiatives right now.

The Climate Surge is one of them that Climate Solutions has put together with some support from Ruben Carlisle and some other folks to try to figure out how do we build stuff with abundance? How do we get out of our own way? And that could mean policy changes. It could mean all sorts of stuff, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they can kind of put out.

They’ve just hired a, a person to lead the effort, and so, uh, there’s a lot going on that way. But the more you can collaborate, the more you can figure out what are the blockers and get those blockers out of your way, I think the better. And that means working with the community, working with the policymakers, not just focusing on what you’re building on your own.

Gregory Heller: All right. I think we’re gonna have to leave it there. Uh, as a storyteller and someone who teaches professional [01:15:00] communication, I appreciate that you brought that up. Susan, I didn’t pay you to do that, and I know it’s come up on the other panels as well.

Jonathan Azoff: That’s why I didn’t say it. I was like, “I was told I couldn’t say it again.”

Gregory Heller: All right. So let’s have a, a round of applause for our participants here.

Speaker 7: That was a live conversation with five Pacific Northwest climate tech investors, Gabriel Shear, Jonathan Azoff, Susan Su, Ben Eidelson, and Christine Boyle, recorded at the Pacific Northwest Climate Week 2026 at UW’s Foster School of Business Founders Hall. Three takeaways before you go. First, human referral now beats cold outreach, full stop.

Gregory Heller: AI has made it nearly free to send a pitch or an application, which means investors and hiring managers default to trust signals instead. If someone you know can make an introduction, use [01:16:00] it. Second, what you’re evaluated on starts before the meeting, your response time to emails, your tone in those messages, how you treat the people around you in the room.

Christine Boyle called this out directly, and it maps just as well onto a job interview as it does a pitch meeting. And third, consistency reads as competence. Susan Hsu made the case that founders and leaders who can think from first principles in the moment instead of running a rehearsed script are the ones investors actually trust with hard problems.

Again, great advice for the job interview as well. Thanks to Gabriel, Jonathan, Susan, Ben, and Christine for an unfiltered conversation. Learn more about them and their firms and Pacific Northwest Climate Week at the links in the show notes at conversationsoncareers.com.

Gregory Heller: [01:17:00] Thank you for listening to Conversations on Careers and Professional Life. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or classmate.

Help others find the show by leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Did you know that you can find conversations on careers and professional life on YouTube or Spotify? One thing you can do to help others find the show is by subscribing and rating on those platforms.

Conversations on Careers and Professional Life is produced by me, Gregory Heller, with support from the Foster School of Business, office of MBA Career management. learn more about the show. Find show notes in past episodes and get in touch with me@conversationsoncareers.com.

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