Wallet Max Planet Positive Podcast with Investor Susan Schofer

​Join Bhuva Shakti, Founder & CEO at Wallet Max, as she speaks with female investors looking to leverage inclusion and impact without compromising growth of investments.

​This month her guest is Susan Schofer, a Partner at SOSV and Chief Science Officer at HAX, the world’s premier venture program accelerating early stage hard tech startups.

Transcript

Bhuva Shakti:
Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the January edition of WalletMax Planet Positive Podcast, kicking off 2025.

I'm Bhuva Shakti, based in New York, and the founder of WalletMax. We are a global community of startups, investors, and more importantly, executives from private and public corporations focused on increasing funding access for women. We are focused on climate tech, fintech, and AI, predominantly.

We interview one impact investor every month for our podcast, and Susan is our inaugural speaker for this year and this month.

We explore their background, what differentiates them from the crowd in terms of prioritizing impact in addition to profits and planet.

We also deep dive into their personal journeys, professional journeys, what led them to their mission today in uplifting others.

Today, we are speaking with Susan, an amazing human being and a big supporter of our community initiatives. Susan is a partner at SOSV and the Chief Science Officer at HAX, the world's premier venture program, Accelerating Early-Stage HardTech Startups. Susan works with startups via early-stage investment, defines key milestones, and go-to-market, and is responsible for scientific oversight to support portfolio companies.

[00:01:37.02] 
I'll now hand over to Susan and let her say a few words about her background and career path. Over to you, Susan.

Susan
[00:01:45.04] 
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me here. I'm excited for this conversation.

 I'm Susan Schofer, as you said. I'm a partner at SOSV and Chief Science Officer at HAX, currently investing into very early-stage companies in the deep tech and specifically hard tech space, focused on human and planetary health.

The path of my career has been varied. I started out by getting a PhD in chemistry because I was raised by academics and truly didn't know what other type of path there was to pursue in this world. But really enjoyed my time in academia and getting my PhD, but was lucky after that to find myself in industry where I learned a few things really quickly.

It's a lot of fun to use science and technology because they're core to innovation. But in order to really make an impact in the world, it's clear to me that you need to step out of the academic environment and really try to translate those technologies into adoption by the market.

[00:02:46.10] 
The second thing that I learned really quickly in my time in industry was that, again, while science and technology are core to innovation, it takes a lot more than just the best tech to win in the market. There's a lot more steps that really happen as you go to translate some of the innovation from the lab out into the real world and then really get people to uptake that and make that impact.

I spent my career really evolving from starting out as an R&D scientist at a just post-IPO startup in the chemicals and materials space. I moved into the biotech sector, spent some time on more of the product development and product management side, really transitioned onto the commercial side of the business from the R&D side, and had a chance to really think about how to structure thinking about new products.

[00:03:33.05] 
What do the specifications need to be?

[00:03:35.16] 
How do we get this incumbent industry to really accept these new products?

[00:03:39.22] 
Then I had a chance to do this at a company called Modern Meadow, which is a biomaterials company where I really was leading business development and thinking from the ground up, as we think about new materials, what do those need to look like and how do we bridge between what the customers want and what the technology can do and really find that space in between to define our product.

[00:04:01.02] 
So I've really enjoyed watching the entire commercialization journey from early stage idea and in the lab all the way through to first getting products into market and now have the chance to help our early stage companies do that and work alongside them as they commercialize breakthrough technologies.

 Bhuva
 [00:04:20.07] 
That's amazing. Then that's a very non-traditional and a nonlinear background coming into impact investing. First, for our community, I would like a couple of additional pointers in terms of what defines hard tech and deep tech within climate. Secondly, also, you come from an R&D background into the commercial aspect of it.

[00:04:43.15] 
Is that a plus or is that an advantage? Or are you challenging your startups much more because you have deep knowledge in this sector?

[00:04:53.17] 
How does it work?

Susan
[00:04:56.05] 
Well, the first question is, what is deep tech? I would say deep tech, typically, is really truly scientific breakthrough innovation. So, something that really is a new invention, something that you've created in the lab that's really brand new science.

[00:05:10.19] 
Hard tech, I think, is overlapping with that. I would say there's a Venn diagram where they do overlap. But hard tech, in general, I would say spans, by our definition, everything across the physical sciences. So that can be really, again, very deep tech innovation.

[00:05:24.18] 
Like, I've created a new material or I have a brand new electrochemical process to refine the this mineral and purify it. But it can also be mechanical engineering, which again could be really deep tech innovations, can also be things like robotics and automation.

[00:05:41.03] 
So bringing robotics and automation and incorporating AI into that in order to be able to automate a process and take it from what's manual or what's one-off and really make it more efficient, enabling different kinds of advantages there.

[00:05:55.20] 
Hard tech is anything that...It's a physical object. We like to say if you drop it on your foot, it is going to hurt. But it spans from things that are very deeply scientific and need a lab to be derisked into things that might be more on the integration and taking pieces that are out there and using them for a unique application that hasn't been done before.

Bhuva
[00:06:18.23] 
That's perfect. Thanks so much.

 [00:06:21.02] 
If you're able to just quickly answer my second question.

Susan
[00:06:24.17] 
Yeah, sure. For me, I personally think I'm very thankful that I got a PhD in chemistry. I feel like I use those skills every day, maybe not specifically the chemistry piece of it, but the problem solving mentality, the scientific method that I learned.

[00:06:43.22] 
What is our hypothesis on this? How are we going to design an experiment to get some answers, looking at the data and analyzing it, and then making conclusions and asking new questions. So I think that type of problem solving is something everyone really uses, especially as you're starting a new business and really going from that zero to one and progressing from there. I feel like I use that every day.

[00:07:06.14] 
I think as you think about some of the innovations we really need in this world, having a scientific background and that technical perspective I think is very helpful because as you think about what tech is possible, how it could have an impact in the market, we start to think about economics. These things to me are all in a continuum. I would say it's a really helpful perspective in what I do every day thinking about new technologies and new opportunities and how we bring those pieces together.

Bhuva
[00:07:36.24] 
Yeah, definitely.

Susan
[00:07:38.02] 
Because if I have an investor who also understands my technology, it makes my work easier to fundraise than spending my time to explain my technology and then trying to fundraise. I would say it's a big plus to have an investor who also understands my technology.

Bhuva
[00:07:54.21] 
In terms of fundraising itself, I know you work with early stage, but it's a double-edged sword, for lack of a better word. You invest in early stage, you're also impact-focused, and in climate tech.

[00:08:11.10] 
With the current landscape in terms of politics and other geopolitical tensions, why do you still think that climate tech is still a good investment? Do you advocate for it?

[00:08:23.11] 
Is it more a US perspective or a global perspective?

 [00:08:26.14] 
What do you see in that sector?

 Susan 
 [00:08:29.00] 
I think ultimately this current political landscape is one trend. It's not forever in the US.

[00:08:37.18] 
We have obviously a new administration coming in, but that's not going to be forever. I think a lot of the trends that we invest into that align with climate tech are not necessarily going to go away during this time. In fact, many of those are being amplified.

[00:08:52.08] 
When I think about things like the fact that we want to be able to make things here in the US and have supply chain security, that's something that a lot of our companies are focused on. Even though it's things that are beneficial to the climate, it's also things like automation that can enable us to make things near shore where otherwise the cost of labor would be too high.

[00:09:16.03] 
Or things around critical minerals, which is another big area we invest in, which ultimately then maps to energy security. Things like we have a company that's using optical interconnects to really reduce the energy needed for data transmission, that's going to be super important as we see this huge growth in AI and a real big demand on electricity.

[00:09:39.09] 
Electrification is a really big theme, in general, and I don't think that's going away. I mean, even if we continue to use oil and gas, how do we decarbonize those things that will matter? How do we bring new businesses that can actually help us to continue to support our electricity needs, give us energy security, give us supply chain security?

[00:10:00.11] 
On the medical side, I think people are still looking for solutions for health problems that we still will be investing into because people need these things. With the current landscape, perhaps on the regulatory side, maybe that'll help those things get to market even faster, which I think is mostly a good thing, so long as we're sure that they're safe. But yeah. Yeah, I'd say maybe a silver lining in the current situation.

Bhuva
 [00:10:29.21] 
But there are a lot of, let's say, anxiety around automation and AI. On the one side, people are talking about there could be job loss in terms of existing labor. But on the other side, when you bring AI and more automation into the picture, there is discussion around ethics and responsible technology.

[00:10:53.08] 
Do you consider them in your investments or in your portfolio advice that you do?

[00:10:59.01] 
How do you balance? Yeah.

Susan
[00:11:02.23] 
On the automation side, I think we truly need some of the automation that's being implemented in order to be able to serve the demand of the market. We have a company called Solana that's in the space of automating cut and sew. If we want to be able to produce garments and really, of course, decarbonize that supply chain for clothing and apparel and things like that, we need to be able to bring these processes here. With the current situation of wages, it would be impossible to do so without some automation.

Bhuva
 [00:11:39.13] 
I think that makes a lot of sense.

Susan
 [00:11:42.01] 
Now, certainly, it means that people's jobs may shift, and I can understand that that can be somewhat scary. But I think the opportunity here is that we can take some of these menial tasks that need to be done repetitively, automate those, and then at the same time train people to do other jobs that hopefully are better for them, ultimately.

[00:12:05.21] 
What we do need, though, in order to bridge that, I think, is workforce development. That's something that as a country, we need to invest in if we're going to be able to make sure that people can maintain their livelihood and survive as these types of jobs shift.

Bhuva
 [00:12:22.03] 
Yeah.

Susan
[00:12:22.18] 
Reskilling, upskilling, integrated human, I would say, computer or AI or technology would be great. Just to touch upon one more thing that you mentioned earlier, hard tech and climate, they may take a little bit more time to innovate and then test, proof of concept and then commercialize. It is a much longer cycle and a little bit capital-intensive.

Bhuva
 [00:12:52.09] 
How do you find the right kind of startups or founders to do an early investment so that they are at least successful? I mean, we can't say 100% all the time, but how do you come to a most agreeable, positive opportunity?

Susan
 [00:13:14.02] 
Yeah. I mean, hard tech, obviously, like you said, takes more time, is more capital-intensive, both at the early stage in terms of just iterating and derisking the technology, and potentially at the later stage as you go to implement these things and need to actually get CapEx in order to fund building new plants and facilities and things like that.

 [00:13:35.14] 
Obviously, when we're looking at investments, the team is super important. I think finding people who really understand that it's important to iterate quickly, move quickly, engage with the market and customers for learning as soon as you can, whether that's with a very early stage prototype or certainly dialog with customers. Just understanding how important it is to get that market feedback from an early stage matters a lot I mean, one thing that we do, which is why we're unique, is that we really help founders and build alongside them. Look to accelerate that prototyping stage and really help them design, build, test quickly by having... We have our own engineering team that actually works alongside them, helps them move more quickly, and then also lowers the cost per iteration.

 And so reduces the time of iteration cycles from, let's say, a month to a week so that they can move more quickly and learn more over that time.

 Bhuva
 [00:14:37.20] 
Got it. Do you invest in the US market, global market? How do you identify the right market for you to be in?

Susan
 [00:14:46.04] 
We invest into companies globally, and we really are looking globally. We certainly invest a bunch into US companies, but also a number of companies coming out of Canada. We've traditionally had a lot of companies coming out of Singapore, a couple from Japan, certainly some from Europe. We're always looking all over for companies. Our global headquarters is in Newark, New Jersey. Our goal would be to bring all of those companies to our space, at least for a period of time, because that's really the best way that we can work with them closely, help to really accelerate their progress, get them into that ecosystem where they have a community of other like-minded founders who are going through that same type of journey as they are.

Bhuva
 [00:15:28.14]
All right. Perfect. Yeah. At the early stage, you need to be close together as a team in person to make good progress.

 [00:15:36.03] 
Now, this brings me to the question of learning a little bit more about HAX and SOSV. Who do you work with, typically, and how do you support founders? Especially, what's your differentiating factor from others in this space?

 Susan
 [00:15:52.17] 
Well, I think what's most differentiated about us at SOSV is that we really do invest at that very 

Our teams are across the firm are composed of people who have operational experience, have deep technical backgrounds.

[00:16:09.21] 
The reason that we have within SOSV two separate programs that we invest through is really because we want to be deep experts in what we're investing into. We have a separate team, our team at HAX, which is focused on physical sciences. We have teams of engineers, mechanical, electrical, people like myself who has a chemistry background and chemical engineers. We have that team.

[00:16:32.04] 
Then separately, we have IndieBio, which is our other program, more focused on life sciences and biotech, where they're really experts in their space and can invest more into things like therapeutics and biomaterials, things like that, that they have deeper expertise on. In that way, we're unique in that we really try to focus our efforts and be deep experts. The other thing is that we just work alongside our companies as part of their team.

[00:16:59.18] 
When we invest at that pre-seed stage, it's a mix of capital and cash plus also program investment. We have some equity for the program. But what that means is that we're really their partners for life. We take them under our wing. They're able to work out of our spaces which have resources like mechanical machine shop that we have a CNC machine. We have a chemistry lab in our space. We have a ton of 3D printers, and they get access to all these resources. Then in addition, access to our team who helps with technology progression and de-risking that, but also helps them think through customer discovery, helps them do an analysis on really what is my go-to-market and where's the beachhead market?

[00:17:44.10] 
How should I be progressing and thinking about getting to market, how do I think about raising my next round of funding? We do a lot with them week in and week out to really help support them because we understand what that journey needs to look like. By having this very technical I think it helps us look a bit around corners because we're at that very top of the funnel for the rest of the market. We have relationships with co-investors who, of course, continue to support our companies as they grow, but we're really looking at what are the next technologies that we need for the future and are able to have some of that expertise. Obviously, not perfectly because we can't predict the future, but have some of that expertise by having the deep technical experience and operational experience that we do.

Bhuva
 [00:18:29.23] 
No, definitely. In fact, that was one of my questions also. I was wondering, how do you coordinate between both of your entities? I believe they are complementing each other. In terms of one follow-up question there with what you said, are you a venture studio or not? Or are you like a venture studio? How do you differentiate yourself or do you collaborate with university technology centers.

[00:19:01.19] 
For example, I come from Columbia Business School. We have a huge lab and innovation center, and we have a technology transfer, and things like that happen. They are groomed. The founders and startups are groomed within our university campus and things like that. Within New York City, we have university centers like Columbia or NYU. We have a lot of venture studios, and we have HAX and SOSV. How would you differentiate between these two, or do you collaborate with these other entities as well because you complement them?

Susan
 [00:19:36.08] 
Yeah. I mean, certainly we collaborate a lot with universities, and that is where we are often building relationships, understanding what technologies are out there, really looking to scout for a very jagged landscape. One example would be companies that come to us seeking investment. They've already formed, they know what they're doing. Other examples could be research in a research lab where we learn about the research, we think that's super exciting. We can even can collaborate to help them as they think about forming a company, forming a team, all of that. We're not a venture studio, really, because venture studios, I think within themselves come up with these ideas and then maybe form a team around it. That's not necessarily what we do. We span a little bit into that, I think, because we have ideas of interesting technologies. We more try to go scout those and try to find an opportunity where they're at the right stage to perhaps spin out of a university. But we definitely work with the Columbia Tech Transfer Office and lots of different universities focused a bit on the northeast, but across the whole country to really find the best technologies and the best entrepreneurs that are ready to spin out businesses. We engage with universities also through a program that we run to have HAX fellows. We have, I would say it's about eight students that are PhD students, maybe MBA students, but mostly PhD students at universities that help us do some of the scouting, some of the landscape analysis, inform us of just, they're our boots on the ground to help us see what's going on in these ecosystems so that we can then find early-stage companies, really at the earliest of stages.

Bhuva
 [00:21:27.24] 
That's perfect because there's a lot of work happening within the university space, and collaborating is a great idea. You also mentioned about early stage investment. You have connections with co-investors and things of that sort. But once they are at a, let us say, a Series A, B stage, how do you continue to be in touch or at that point in time, you may not be potentially involved for the most part. How does it work once they are at a growth stage?

Susan
 [00:21:59.08] 
Yeah. I mean, we stay involved with our companies as long as we can be helpful to them. Again, it's more like they're within our family and we're investors into them, so invested in their long-term success. We definitely move the needle the most at those earliest stages, but some companies that are even at a Series A stage are still engaging with our engineering team or still engaging with our team in terms of sourcing and supply chain, so really using our team to help them find what they need, raw materials or inputs into their processes or products, so we still engage that way. Typically, we're often engaged with companies as board observers, sometimes as board directors. What we can really offer, I think, is a unique perspective to some of these companies that maybe helps them through these stages, even as they're going into seed Series A and possibly Series B, just by participating on their board and helping them through those early stages of commercialization.

Bhuva
 [00:23:00.23] 
Being on the board is a very good way to help them, especially this reminds me of the topic you spoke at our WalletMax summit during the Climate Week last year. You were a fierce supporter of advisory and governing boards in startups, and especially how we can bring more women in leadership.

[00:23:22.15] 
You mentioned about continuing to stay in touch with your startups at the board level, but given your scientific position and also advisory and governing board's position and bringing more diversity into leadership. How do you balance all this? Because you can be very scientific or very much in the leadership position. Sometimes they conflict with each other. How do you balance these and maybe some thoughts about your role in bringing more diversity in leadership and boards?

Susan
 [00:23:55.21] 
Well, I think as we talked about, certainly, and I know this is a topic that you're you're passionate about, right? I mean, diversity is so important for companies. You need to have diverse perspectives. I think when it comes to thinking about innovation and what we need to do, right? We know we have some really big challenges to address. We obviously don't have all the answers. Having diverse perspectives is just going to be critical to being able to think through problems, see things in a different light, bring new things to clarity that we otherwise aren't going to be able to see. So I definitely think it's super important to embrace diversity and to make sure that different voices are being heard. The best way to do that is to be inclusive in terms of just diverse leadership, because I think it can't be overlooked how quickly voices can get shut down if they don't feel represented in a certain way.

[00:24:50.03] 
It's easy to think that people aren't speaking up or there aren't other ideas, but I think we need to really allow space for that to happen. Yeah, I think it's just super important to have diverse thinking and hopefully people with the breadth of experience that can provide that as companies grow. I don't know if that's answering all the questions you had.

Bhuva
 [00:25:17.01] 
No, yeah.

Susan
 [00:25:18.08] 
The research also indicates, especially because you are in the innovation, invention space, diversity ensures that all our products do work for all people in the world.

Bhuva
 [00:25:31.08] 
Thanks so much for sharing that. Over here, I just want to get a little bit into your personal journey because you had a R&D background and you're at HAX and SOSV today. How did you land here? What brought you here, specifically?

Susan
 [00:25:49.22] 
Like I said earlier in my short intro, I went to grad school because, like I said, I didn't know what else anyone really did in the world. Then when I, when I went to my 10-year high school reunion, I realized not everyone is in a PhD program for science. So that was a wake-up call. But as soon as I luckily stepped out of academia and got a role in a company, that was very lucky for me. The only way that that really happened was that the company was doing work that was very, very adjacent and aligned with the work I had done in my PhD. That was lucky.

[00:26:27.22] 
But it was very clear to me from day one that there's so many more pieces to this puzzle. R&D is super important. Having the best technology and having strong technology is table stakes to success. You won't survive and you won't win without that. But just having the best technology is not sufficient. As you think about what I was first doing in my earlier role was discovering new catalysts and new materials for the polymer and plastics industry. Petroleum-based plastics. We would do some upfront discovery and we would have some positive results, but what came next?

 [00:27:10.04] 
Then we would be talking about perhaps the economics of that particular system. What's going to be the cost of this? Is it going to be possible? We obviously need to test it out at a bigger scale, and sometimes when you go to do that, it would clog the entire reactor, so that would actually not work. There's a lot there. Third, maybe, is just performance. We need to really have a performance advantage that's measurable, that we understand that really has advantages, not just in the raw material, but really as it goes into the applications and the use case. Then Fourth is the narrative behind that, the context, understanding what that means. All those pieces are so important as you go to commercialize technology. I think it was just very clear to me that all these pieces need to be there and that they need to be stewarded from that early stage if you're going to successfully bring technology to market.

[00:28:07.18] 
And so I think early on I was like, oh, I need to learn more about this because it's something I just had no exposure to through my academic training. And it's clear also that it takes a lot of different types of smarts to figure this stuff out. I went to Caltech for my PhD. There's a lot of really brilliant people there, of course, but it's a one-dimensional type of perspective. We're scientists, we're the best scientists, yes. But how do we then translate some of what you've done and make sure that it really does have the proper impact in the world? I think for me, even earlier on, like context and narrative have always been an important part of how I think about things. I think that translates really well into, how do we frame out what this really means? We need to communicate this to a broader audience. In my first role, I went to a group that was very, very aligned with what my PhD was in. So communication amongst the team was pretty easy.

[00:29:08.03] 
Then I moved to a biotech company where I was a chemist now amongst a lot of biologists and engineers. Communication, then, shifts in that you have to really make sure you're hitting the key points of what matters about what you've done, or the context that you bring, or the expertise that you have to a broader audience. I think that's always been on my mind is like, how do we shepherd these things through and just understanding those different pieces. I think early on, I also thought, oh, I'll just be like an R&D scientist and then I'll just go to the business side, but it doesn't quite work that way. I think once I got to the biotech company, a company called Amaris, which is one of the pioneers of synthetic biology, I learned, okay, if I want a role on the commercial team, I really need to ask for that role. An opportunity came up as we were taking something from product development into really verticalizing and starting to launch, scale it up and work with a customer and all that. An opportunity came up to lead that product team, which I realized, okay, I have to ask for that opportunity and define that and go after it in order to be able to make this transition.

 Bhuva
 [00:30:15.08] 
No, that's perfect.

Susan
 [00:30:16.08] 
You don't ask for it, then you may not get it. You definitely need to ask for things, and you need to go out on that limb and bet on yourself, right? It's like, do I know what I'm doing? Kind of, but also no, but I'm going to try it and I'm going to believe that I can learn stuff. Yeah, it may not be perfect at the start, which brings me to the question which you also mentioned about measuring your success. You have this hard tech, a product that has some metrics for its performance, but also in climate tech, which includes impact metrics. How do you balance this? Especially as a scientist, you may be more leaning towards the actual performance of the product, but also wearing your investor hat. 

[00:31:00.16] 
You want to also focus on the impact that your technology creates, a small scale, large scale, whatever you define. Product performance versus your impact investment, how do you balance that?

Bhuva
 [00:31:13.06] 
Do you have a framework that you use to measure formally?

Susan
 [00:31:16.17] 
Yeah. I mean, I would say at this stage, we don't always measure formally. Obviously, we need to understand the technology and understand that it truly is something that will be beneficial. If you can eliminate waste from a process, it's pretty clear that that will be beneficial, right? So that's good for economics because waste has a cost, but it's also good for the environment and the planet and people because we'll use less resources and we won't have as much waste piling up.

We use, I would say, high-level metrics like that to understand what the impact of the technology would be. But I think those things often, very often, go hand in hand with the economic benefit or the performance benefit. I think, one thing to think about is what drives people to adopt new processes? It can be better, but are they really going to make a change? So it needs to be significantly better such that it's worth all the headache and brain damage of 

And then you have to make them stick to it.

Bhuva
 [00:32:26.13] 
Yeah, exactly. Adapt.

Susan
 [00:32:28.23] 
How do we understand whether the market really wants to adopt these new technologies? How do we make sure that there is enough of a unique differentiator in a moat such that once they do switch, they won't just switch again to something new. But also thinking through the benefits, we don't use things around, specifically, CO₂ reduction necessarily, but we can use rough estimates of things like that at an early stage to understand where we think that benefit will be and just, an example would be one of our companies that has a new process for refining copper, a company called Still Bright. They're using an electrochemical process. It's electrically driven, so it could be driven off renewables. It's much more modular and it's much cleaner and quicker. With a small unit, they could be able to refine copper on site here in the US, which today we need a lot more copper to enable electrification. We process a lot of copper through smelting, which has a lot of toxic off-gassing. A lot of that is done overseas in China. All kinds of reasons why this technology is just very clearly better.

[00:33:42.03] 
It's small, it's modular, it's cost-effective. We can quickly look at those metrics and say, This is better, and this opportunity is huge. If they can actually... They have the early stage tech, if they can really scale it and get it off the ground.

Bhuva
 [00:33:55.03] 
Yeah.

Susan
 [00:33:56.04] 
Once you prove it in the early stage, it is easily scalable, and the cost only goes down as you keep scaling it.

Bhuva
 [00:34:05.00] 
We spoke about one such technology at the moment, but I'm curious to learn more about some of the emerging trends that you see. What are you more excited about? Every day there is a new trend that's coming up. What's some of the key factors that you consider when you take up a trend?

Susan
 [00:34:25.23] 
We're doing some deep thinking about this now. One thing that I'm always interested in, but I think needs to be unpacked to a deeper level, would be around circularity. How do we really take waste and turn it into value? It's a challenging space, and we've looked at a number of things in the polymer recycling space. It's very difficult. We have a few companies doing this within the battery space where there are maybe bigger opportunities just because of the high cost of some of those materials.

[00:34:57.12] 
I would say in general, as we look at the massive need for electricity that we're going to have, both for data centers, but also for manufacturing as we shift from carbon-driven to electrification of manufacturing, how do we get the supply chain that enables that. A big trend that we've been looking at over the last couple of years is around critical minerals. What are the new technologies that allow us to refine minerals and get what we need, the lithium we need, copper we need, nickel, all of that here near shore. Whether that's through new techniques that can allow us to actually extract those or find those here. The other approach would be through things like recycling. We do have a lot of nickel/ cobalt/ manganese here in the US, but it's in waste. So how do we get efficient technologies that can really extract those things and turn them back into usable materials?

[00:35:57.11] 
And then maybe the third one in that space would be battery chemistry, right? A lot of the electrification and energy storage is so reliant on these critical minerals that we might not always have. How do we think about new chemistries that can really support that energy storage that we need as we... If we're really shifting to electrification, we're going to need to store a lot of energy. How do we enhance the batteries and energy storage to be able to do that really efficiently? Some of that is new chemistries, which is a super challenging area and certainly challenging at the early stage, I would say, but an area that we're pretty excited about. Let's see how that evolves over time.

Bhuva
 [00:36:39.11] 
Yeah. I mean, even at Columbia University, I work with quite a lot of startups. The challenge is not creating renewable clean energy. The challenge is storing them, scaling them, taking them across all the cities in the US.

Susan
 [00:36:53.15] 
I think battery storage is a very important component in achieving energy efficiency and clean energy targets.

Bhuva
 [00:37:01.02] 
You also brought up the point about lithium, especially. I know we have a scarcity in the United States, but that could be other countries or regions outside US that predominantly have a little bit of mineral resources. How do you balance that? If you are spending time trying to find them in US or reuse what we have in US, you might be sometimes limited in your scalability or time to market. Do you then coordinate with other countries in your inventions?

Susan
 [00:37:37.14] 
In that case, there are a lot of regulations that will come into play. How do you balance that when you have scarcity of resources in the US, but your innovation depends on it? For lithium, specifically, there's a lot of lithium that's in South America. We do have a company in the lithium space that's got a really efficient way of extracting lithium from brines and other things. They are partnering with companies in South America to be able to enhance their lithium recovery.

[00:38:14.07] 
Did I lose you?

[00:38:16.24] 
Sorry, I think we had a moment there.

 Bhuva
 [00:38:20.13] 
I can hear you.

Susan
 [00:38:22.00] 
You can hear me. Okay. As for lithium here in the US, it can be found in some of the hard rock resources in produced water, which is the waste material of a lot of oil and gas drilling. There's opportunities for them to be able to process it here in the US. But we definitely think globally, and so it's really about finding the resources where they are. Then I think, obviously, there's going to be some more friendly countries that we can partner with and then trying to think about how we get those resources here. I mean, certainly China is making announcements around not exporting things like the LFP battery technology. How do we find friendly partners, whether that's North America, but can be broader than that to be able to be the right geographies to scale these technologies.

Bhuva
 [00:39:21.24] 
Perfect. That brings me to the follow-up question I had in terms of the global cooperation and the regulations and things that you have to navigate in addition to invention and investments that you typically do. There are these global agreements. I'd say we had a Paris Agreement, a Zero Coalition. In fact, the World Economic Forum at Davos is happening next week. I'm flying tomorrow to be there to talk at some of the climate and fintech initiatives. Sometimes we are in, sometimes we are not in. How do you balance your day-to-day work with changing climate outside to still continue with your mission?

Susan
 [00:40:05.23] 
Well, I think the question really is, some of these trends obviously go up and down over time in the short term, but in the long term, I think the belief is we're going to need to make changes. Obviously, I think more and more people are realizing that we have a true climate crisis, and it just depends on the right market. Europe has certainly done a lot to create regulations around things like extended producer responsibility on, let's say, textiles or something like that. So thinking a bit more about the long term life cycle, that's beginning to be implemented there more.

[00:40:46.13] 
Perhaps if you're looking at circularity in that space or if you're looking at new materials, maybe those are your first customers and early adopters. So I would say looking at the global landscape of where there are opportunities from specific customers or due to a different regulatory environment, that would be the approach to make sure that you optimize there. I think being overly reliant on regulations for your technology and your business to succeed is probably a risky place to be, but certainly there can be, opportunistically, spaces in the market where you can prioritize going because of those different regulatory environments.

[00:41:25.11] 
Yeah, it's more like a business or a corporate responsibility or an investor than relying on the geography. I know Europe has made really stronger, stricter regulations in all aspects in technology and in climate in other areas. That's a good point where we can work with friendly nations, plus also enter into easier markets where there is cooperation for advancement and then maybe scale in other places.

Bhuva
 [00:41:55.18] 
So thanks for sharing that. I had one last question and definitely  happy to take anything else that you're able to share with our community. This is really great.

[00:42:05.22] 
Do you have any final words for our founders, especially within our startup community? We have a lot of women-led startups focused on Series A, B, fundraising in the climate and the financial inclusion and AI sectors. What are some advice, thoughts that you have, especially focused on this particular demographic of founders?

Susan
 [00:42:31.23] 
I think it's an exciting time because I think we're seeing more and more diversity in founders and more and more appreciation of the importance of diversity. I would say my I think that advice is maybe not that incredibly different, specifically for the female founders than others, but it's all the more important if you're coming from that type of underrepresented background or less represented in this world. I mean, networking is so key, finding some champions, how do you find advisors or board members or just community peers that can really help you to champion yourself. I think that's so important to just share the journey and have people that really support you and that they are out there and just finding them and partnering with them helps.

[00:43:23.01] 
Obviously, it helps keep you supported and happy and feeling like that you have a community around you. I think that helps a lot. Communicating and networking on the business that you're building, I think, is always something you need to do as a founder, and probably even more so as a female founder. But just finding those champions, finding those routes, and building a team around you that can really support you, that ultimately that diverse team can help you to progress and really keep the business as it's growing.

Bhuva
 [00:44:05.05] 
Yeah, definitely.

Susan
 [00:44:08.03] 
You're constantly networking every day. You're networking even when you're not fundraising.

Bhuva
 [00:44:12.24] 
Just a quick thought on that fundraising aspect. Is there anything specific when it comes to an impact startup or a climate tech startup that people should keep in mind when they are fundraising? Because it's not like the traditional fundraising that you have for any other tech-oriented startup. What should they specifically keep in mind for a hard tech when you are pitching to an investor, be it any founder in this space?

Susan
 [00:44:42.18] 
Again, I would just come back to the context and why it matters. Impact is part of that, and depending on your audience will be more or less important to them. I tend to feel like, again, depending on your audience, impact could be more or less amplified as the point. Ultimately, what you need to build is a great business that at the same time is doing something good in the

I would say, what is the context?

 [00:45:08.22] 
Why is this business going to succeed?

[00:45:10.21] 
What do we have that's unique?

[00:45:12.10] 
Framing that out for people and being able to adapt to different audiences in that framing, I think, is the most important thing.

Bhuva
 [00:45:20.15] 
Yeah, definitely.

Susan
 [00:45:21.15] 
Because if we are just focused only on impact, then it is considered a nonprofit. But we are focused on profits plus impacts, which means have a good business model, good financial projections, but showcase impact through your community or globally or wherever you want to scale.

Bhuva 
 [00:45:40.12] 
So great point to end the conversation here. I'm also curious to know how can people reach out to you? If you are a startup, how can they find you, reach out to you, and see if they are a fit for your program?

[00:45:52.10] 
If someone is an investor or wanting to get into this space, how can they also connect with you? What are some of or handles or ways to reach you?

Susan
 [00:46:04.07] 
I mean, LinkedIn is always a great place to reach me, either through connecting on LinkedIn or sending a DM there. If you're a startup looking to get funded by SOSV and HAX, you can certainly, again, reach out on LinkedIn. We also have an application within our website, so HAX.co that you can apply directly there. But reaching out to someone on our team, usually we're pretty attentive to that. We are always looking for new startups. We invest in around 30 new startups each year. So always looking for new ones, always looking at different decks and thinking about investment into new companies.

[00:46:44.15]
So LinkedIn is probably the best place. Directly through the website, people can email me. It's just myfirstname. Lastname@sosv.com Susan.Schofer@sosv.com.

[00:46:55.14] 
And so happy to hear from people and understand... Meet new investors, meet new startups, figure out what's going on in the world of innovation.

Bhuva
 [00:47:07.14] 
No, definitely. I think that's a great way to end the conversation here. If there are things that you would like to share, please let me know. But I am amazed at your journey and where we are headed irrespective of what's happening around us.

Susan
 [00:47:22.04] 
There is a lot of innovation and hope around us.

Bhuva
 [00:47:25.11] 
Thanks for that. Yeah.

Susan
 [00:47:26.19] 
Well, thank you so much for having me, and thanks for the great questions. I appreciate this dialogue, and looking forward to more discussions.

Bhuva
 [00:47:35.13] 
Thanks so much, Susan. Definitely, we'll be in touch. Once this is live, we'll have people connecting with you on LinkedIn or website or wherever else we meet in person in New York City.

Susan
 [00:47:46.21] 
Thanks again. Awesome.

Bhuva
 [00:47:48.15] 
Thanks so much.