Wallet Max Planet Positive Podcast with Investor Emma Mee

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, Bhuva's guest is Emma Mee, Head of Membership at Green Angel Ventures. Focusing on community building and strengthening the membership base of private investors, the syndicate of angel investors is the largest in the UK to focus on green investments, which has to date, invested over £52m into climate solutions.

​About Emma Mee:
​Emma has a 20-year background in climate and sustainability, starting at Cambridge University delivering executive education in climate and facilitating business groups to lobby for emissions regulations across Europe. After designing a start-up awards programme for Unilever, she moved to supporting impact entrepreneurs through leading a variety of accelerator programmes, including the UK's EIT Climate KIC. Emma then built a 350-strong international community of experts and mentors for climate venture builder Carbon13, and now she heads up Membership at Green Angel Ventures. Focusing on community building and strengthening the membership base of private investors, the syndicate of angel investors is the largest in the UK to focus on green investments, which has to date, invested over £52m into climate solutions.

​About Wallet Max:
Wallet Max is an inclusive global community of corporate executives and venture capitalists with a mission to expand fundraising access for high-growth startups in the technology, AI, fintech, and climate sustainability sectors.

Wallet Max's Planet Positive Podcast is a monthly interview with female investors driving impact globally. Aligned with our mission to challenge the status quo, we showcase personal and professional journeys of diverse investors (Angels, VCs, PEs, Family Office, Corporate Venture) looking to leverage inclusion and impact without compromising growth of investments. Supporting sustainable innovations is good for people's wellbeing, planet survival, and financial profits.

​​About Bhuva Shakti:
​​Bhuva Shakti (she/her) is the visionary founder and CEO driving sustainable innovation at Wallet Max, a global community of executive women and venture capital investors with a mission to expand fundraising access for high-growth sustainable startups. With an MBA from Columbia University in New York and as a senior executive director on Wall Street for three decades, Bhuva has managed diverse financial portfolios and launched several digital transformation products for investment banks, capital markets, and payment networks.

​​Bhuva’s leadership and risk governance oversight, during the global financial crisis and the pandemic, was pivotal for the success of regulatory compliance and mergers acquisitions at the world's top banks and credit rating institutions. Bhuva is a board director and fractional C-Suite advisor for social impact businesses, and a keynote speaker advancing economic inclusion and climate-fintech partnerships.

​​Bhuva is the USA country director for World Business Angels Investment Forum and the Chief Ethi

Join Bhuva and have a seat at the table to be on the forefront of planet positive investing at the Emerald Summit, part of NYC Climate Week.
Get your tickets here.

Would you like to promote your brand at the Emerald Summit?
Become an event sponsor.

Learn more about Wallet Max and our mission on the website.

Transcript

BHUVA:

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the June edition of WalletMax Planet Positive podcast, as we recover from the busiest New York tech week thus far and transition into the summer. 

I'm Bhuva Shakti, based in New York, and the founder of WalletMax. We are a global community of startups, investors, and executives focused on increasing funding access for women, especially in the climate tech, fintech, and AI sectors.

We interview one impact investor every month for our podcast to share their background and what differentiates them from the crowd in terms of prioritizing impact along with profits and planet. We deep dive into their personal and professional journey and their mission to uplift.

Today, we are speaking with Emma, an angel investor and a big supporter of diverse teams and green initiatives.

Emma is the head of membership at Green Angel Ventures, focused on community building and strengthening membership base of private investors. This syndicate of angel investors is the largest in the UK for green investments, with over £52 million in investments into climate solutions to date. 

Emma has a 20-year background in climate and sustainability, starting at Cambridge University, delivering executive education in climate and facilitating business groups to lobby for emissions regulations across Europe.

Let me now hand over to Emma and invite her to say a few words about her background and career path.

Over to you, Emma.

Emma:

Thank you so much, Bhuva.

Thank you for having me.

It's interesting to be talking across the pond. I'm sitting currently at home in my home office in Cambridge, the original Cambridge, the old one.  I've had a very privileged career in my early years, if you like, really getting stuck into a lot of climate change science and activity from business and things to start with.

For me personally, it's always been about climate. I'm very passionate about it. I'm passionate about lots of things, but I put climate at the top of the list because I do feel that unless we solve this one, there's a little point actually in solving so many of the other challenges that we're facing in the world.

I think I started writing a dissertation at university about something similar. It was obviously already coming out in early years, but I was very lucky to land a job with an institute in the university called called the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at Cambridge University.

We acted a bit like a consultancy, if you like, working with big corporates on the issues of sustainability, which at that time, I'm old enough to say, were not boardroom issues.

Climate change was not proven. People still thought that was a crazy idea of a hoax. Why would business take into account of anything, any of these externalities, basically?

It was always just deemed as costly and not important, the hair shirt brigade. We had a bit of a mission to try and bring sustainability as it was, CSR in the day, to boardrooms across the world and really engage with some big companies on that front. I got to hang around with some real bigwigs over the years as well.

We did quite a lot of work with what was Prince Charles, who's King Charles now, of course, an adamant believer in climate change and a real facilitator, a convener, if you like, of business and agents to to try and do something about it. Regardless of people's thoughts on the monarchy or any personal opinion on the matter, very few business leaders turned down an invitation to dinner to Clarence House to go and sit with Prince Charles and talk about climate change, whether they believed in it or not.

That was really pivotal to get the right people at the table. He'd give them a real grilling to get them on board. We regularly ran events with him.

We did things with Al Gore, one of your own, came and visited. He was doing his Inconvenient Truth lectures, and we did some work with him. I was with him for about a week here in Cambridge and then over in Amsterdam as well, and talked about how to engage business leaders on all of that science and that messaging.

Lots of really senior business leaders, chairman, CEOs of the big companies, the big bad companies, the Shells and BPs of this world, the Anglo-Americans and the big mining companies like Rio Tinto and things, they're all part of the conversation.

Things were looking good.

It was being taken seriously. They were starting to make plans and put people in posts, notably. Looking back, it was an interesting measurement of success, actually, to appreciate that often a sustainability or a CSR manager in these big companies was often a young woman.

As it gained credibility, before you know it, soon older men were put into position and they were holding that up as a rationale for taking it more seriously and bringing it more into the boardroom and the strategy of the company going forward. Think of that what you will, but it was as it was at the time.

But I was there for 12 years. After a decade of this narrative changing and looking good. They're saying all the right things and doing all the right stuff. But I didn't seem to really be actually changing the needle in any way. We still were where we were and the problems were still getting bigger. Quite frankly, with the amount of GDP that was around the table, I would have thought that we would have actually changed the direction of where Big Business was going on there. 

I lost faith a little bit in that.

At the time, I was doing a bit of work with Paul Polman, who was heading up the Unilever program, who wanted to do something with young entrepreneurs.

My first opportunity to deal with entrepreneurs, I hadn't really had any experience with them. Along came these young, they were young, they were all under 30, scrappy, chaotic, slightly mad, crazed, passionate people that were doing things all over the world.

They were coming from all corners, all different countries and different sized economies.But they were really getting shit done. It was really inspiring to see what they were actually making happen on the ground. Stuff that these big companies had been talking about for years was actually happening under the leadership of some of these young people.

I was a little bit enamored, to be honest, because I thought, Wow, these guys can come along and break things. Maybe the future of dealing with climate change isn't with the big corporates. Maybe it's with the young disruptors and the ones that want to break things and move fast. I actually left that role with nothing else to go into. 

Spent a couple of months working around Cambridge, networking as you do, trying to reinvent myself slightly, and very quickly got into the space of running accelerators and helping advise and work with startups who are very much to do this, social enterprises and proper profit-making businesses, trying to deal with some real technical scenarios as well, really real big challenges.

I've been in this world ever since.

It made sense after many years of working with startups who are having to face the hurdles of getting finance, that I would follow them down that road.

Here I am now at Green Angel Ventures.

We are, first and foremost, angel syndicate where we invest all in green technologies to solve climate change. We only invest in the UK, but we are the largest angel syndicate in the UK to do so. We have, we think, the biggest deal flow that comes through. Around 85% of the UK's climate tech deals come through to us.

We really like the hard challenges, the hardware, the capital-intensive projects, the deep tech. And I'm very proud of that because I feel like I'm now in a position where money and experience is going directly to the heart of these startups and giving them what they need to be able to take this challenge on to the next level.

Bhuva:

No, you will say it.

When you come in Cambridge, Prince Charles and Al Gore, people have to come to those discussions, but then needle is not moving.

The same thing that I'm also seeing. There is so much money and influence that the big corporations can have, but I believe the system moves a little bit slow to make change.

So good pivot on the accelerator side of it. I would probably consider that a pivotal moment in your life that your journey has led you here.

What's your personal unique secret sauce in trying to support these startups?

Emma: 

Well, it has been a massive learning curve, and I think there's a couple of things here that I've really had to get to grips with.

Founders don't always know how VCs work, and they will approach them badly a lot of the time. They obviously need to be coached and their hands need to be held, and they need to get the right advice and the right practice opportunities as well.

But I understand why they do that.

I see the mountain that is go get investment, climb that mountain, get to the top of it. And this weird promise that once you've got investment, once you're VC-backed, everything will be okay.

Whereas, of course, for so many startups that get there, that's the furthest from the truth.

It's pouring rocket fuel on everything that's going on and can really exacerbate a lot of problems as well as benefits in any startup scenario. And that will often take them by surprise as well, because it's very much seen as this goal of what they're aiming for.

I understand that, and I like to talk to founders as they're coming to us and starting to go through this process. I mean, one of the interesting angles for being an angel syndicate of the size that we are, our typical deal sizes are around £600 to £1.2 million. Do the conversion to dollars. That's a seed round, effectively.

It's probably the first time that they're raising money properly, even if they've done a bit of a pre-seed round beforehand. With that middle gap between the friends and family or a couple of angels, and what will ultimately be Series A and onwards with VCs going forward.

So a real training ground for them. They're going to make all their mistakes with us, I'm sure. It's very interesting to also see see from the members' perspective, our angel investors' perspective, quite how opaque and complicated and jargon-filled the world of finance is.

And there's lots of reasons why it might be like that. Sometimes a lot of what we do is very complicated. The world of finance is complicated for a reason. It's money. It's very important that we get it right.

However, I do think sometimes it could be made a lot simpler. I'm very keen on really attracting and appealing to all sorts of people who have never considered angel investing before and trying to get them on board, having a conversation where I can share what I've learned so far.

I'm still learning, no doubt about that at all. But to try and do the jargon busting. I like to promise to speak in plain English about what we do and how it works, and to try and really simplify a lot of things that don't have to be that complicated after all.

Bhuva:

Yeah, definitely.

Like you said, you have a unique position with Green Angel Ventures also, where you're focused on hard tech, which is really difficult on the software side of environmental or green investing, and then trying to rally around angel investors, around this early stage has less traction and capital intensive startups, especially diverse status, is going to be a challenge, right?

But with this already challenging work that you do, where do you see the opportunities?

Be it in US, UK, Europe, rest of the world, and what are the challenges you see outside of your own line of work that could influence your success or failure?

Emma:

I think it's important to acknowledge that climate change is serious, it's big, it's happening, and ultimately it's going to need to really...

Can you just pause for me one second?

I think it's really important to acknowledge that climate change is happening and it's going to be affecting every one of us in every corner of the world significantly.

The entire world does need to decarbonize.

It's something that is an enormous opportunity of our time. We have the ability to see what's happening in the future. 

That's rare.

We don't always see these technology and the changes that are required in different industry sectors. As coming up and coming up as fast as they are. But we do when it comes to climate tech and energy technologies and things. We see that it's imperative that it happens.

It's a wonderful landscape to be thinking of investing in. Every single element of our economy needs to decarbonize in the next 5 to 10 years, max.

The majority of people are knowing this, and the majority of businesses are working towards it, much as we've heard of the technology that we need is already there. It's really case now of scaling it, implementing it, refining it in many cases, and just improving people's usability of these things, particularly when it comes to industrial decarbonization and things as well, getting it all operating and efficient.

What other sector is there that you would want to invest in that gives you almost so many assurances that this is the direction of travel and that this is what business is going to be behind?

I'll say that regardless of the politics, this is happening anyway, right?

We know this.

I mean, even in the US, at a federal level, it might be an absolute car crash. But at a state level, we still see a huge amount of activity and projects plowing forward, even despite what's happening on the global stage right now.

And that's the same across the world.

So it's a movement.

It's a change which is taking place anyway, and therefore, a real opportunity to engage in what you feel passionate about. You don't have to cover all of it. If everything needs to decarbonize, it gets complicated to try and cover all bases. That's every sector on every front.

But if anybody is looking to consider investing, hopefully many of your listeners are, then the first example would be to think, what do you want to move the needle on?

What are you passionate about?

Because it all needs to happen. So what will get you out of bed in the morning and get you to dig deep, not just on the money. It's not just about digging deep into your pockets. It's about digging deep into your energy, your passion, your enthusiasm for supporting something, and also potentially your hard work and graft when it comes to making introductions or really digging down with a team that you want to work with, that you're passionate about what their impact is and what they're doing, and getting them through the rough patches and the hard times with some of your experience and some of your hard-won skills and things over the years.

Where can you apply that now into something that you're really keen on?

Because the future is going to happen, and I think it will be exciting to see where we are. But it's a wonderful opportunity for people to consider to angel invest in this space.

Bhuva:

No, you rightly said also, Emma, right?

It's not about just us today, but it's also about our children, the next generation. What are we trying to lead there, right?

And it's about people along with our planet. But then you rightly also We also mentioned about the current political landscape, especially US, and how it's impacting globally and the global wars that are happening that are impacting everyone else.

With so much going on, there are a lot of economic shifts as well, which means big corporations and private investors are already shifting priorities to step back from investing in green initiatives. They are more concerned about profits and return on investment.

What would you tell them about how this is also good for their pockets along with people and planet?

Emma:            

We are seeing a change in the narrative that a lot of these startups are using. I think actually it's a good thing, all in all.

Many companies came to us over the last five years or so, really shoehorning their venture under the climate umbrella, really trying to tell us that this was a climate solution when, quite frankly, it just wasn't.

It was trendy to be climate tech at the time, and it's perhaps been a little bit overused.

Now we see the winds blowing a lot of that fluff away. We see some true carbon-focused companies doubling down and saying, We're doing it anyway, and that's great.

I do think the winds will change again, and they will be in the right place at the right time as and when they do. There is a long game to play here, and I don't want to lose sight of that.

However, there's also this changing narrative, which does address some of those wind direction changes.

They're focusing more now.

These startups are saying more about the fact that they are cost-saving, they are energy-saving, they are more efficient, they are more circular, so they're more resource-efficient.

They're more secure because they're not relying on global supply chains quite as much if they're looking at a circular economy. They're more secure against energy prices and against potential wars in the future. They're more locally focused. They have more of a social engagement going on so that they're bringing more value to their local communities, perhaps.

All these things fall very sweetly in a Republican's agenda, do they not? And therefore, stand up on their own two legs very strongly with that narrative alone.

Now, what those companies do hasn't changed a bit. It's just marketing and messaging.

And of course, you do have to understand a company to a much deeper extent than just what they're saying on the label.

When you're thinking about investing in them, you really need to understand how they're going to be resilient, not just over the next couple of years when various trends are happening or political car crashes are taking place. But you need to see what they're going to be like in 5, 10, 20 years time.

That's what investment is.

So you are looking beyond that marketing narrative. But nevertheless, I think it's good. I think it's good to change the tone occasionally, refresh the message, and actually just really remind people what this is all about.

A company which is considered to be more sustainable is more sustainable by the very nature of the word. It is a better company. It is a better profit machine. It is a better investment for your cash and your time. It's going to be a better brand that's going to see us through some of the changes that we're experiencing in industry and with AI and with all the other changes that we're seeing in business as well. For that reason, I do welcome a reflection and a refocus under that challenge.

Emma:

You rightly said also because everything is trendy.

Like I saw, everything is an AI company as of last week at the Tech Week. Now there is this AI trend going on.

But when we look deeper into some of these solutions, they all meet the agenda in the sense you support local businesses, you bring more energy security domestically, and also more important is supply chain resilience. We've all seen that during the pandemic, and it's only fair that we prepare for it now.

If it's all provided through an energy revolution and a green decarbonization revolution. Why not for the businesses?

I hope the local action continues so that we get the support of big corporations and governments in the run.

But also you cannot expand or scale or run for a long time a climate initiative or even enter into new markets within your country or cross-border without thinking about the regulations that are going on.

There is so much happening in UK, Europe, US, rest of the world, and it's so volatile. It could be something today, tomorrow, it could be something else.

As a private investor, how do you plan for this?

Even though you're not dependent on the big corporations and government, some of these regulate you and limit the scale and the speed that you go in.

Emma:

The first caveat on this one, Bhuva, is to say that I'm not an investor as such. I mean, actually, I have actually made my first investment.

I'll tell you about that later.

I have started on my journey on this. But I am in a team of 16 of us. There are five of my colleagues that are officially in the deal team that actually manage and assess all of the applicants that come through and really take a very strong evaluation to all of the companies as to whether we're going to invest or not.

But the other thing to mention is that this isn't actually us investing in these companies.

This is our members investing in these companies. What we have within our membership base, being as broad and as diverse as it is, a huge amount of experts from all different sectors and geographical areas.

We've got quite a few Americans in our membership. There's international perspectives there as well. We have VCs who do big infrastructure projects by day, but like to do a bit of angel investing by night, by themselves.

We also have people who actually work in government and regulations areas themselves as well.

We have accountants, we have marketeers, we have real technical expertise, a lot of engineers. We've always attracted a lot of engineers, typically actually from oil and gas sectors as well, because, of course, they really understand the landscape of what's happening and the energy transition that is underway.

Through pooling our members' experience and expertise together, we can navigate most storms because we really have the experts in the room most of the time when we need one.

Now, there are some sectors that we don't have the expertise in the room, and I would be really, really keen to plug these gaps because we don't have the members, we don't necessarily have the companies going through, championing them, and we don't have them, therefore, in our portfolio.

Two key areas there that we're missing in is around food and around fashion and textiles. Massive impacts. 

We've got quite a lot in agri-tech. A lot of technical innovations for things like polytunnels and greenhouses, and for the textile side, a little bit here and there, but they're massive issues. I think because we don't have a groundswell of members who know those sectors, understand the regulatory landscapes, the go-to-market strategies that are required for startups, and how full supply chains and things work in those spaces, we haven't had the confidence to invest in those companies going forward.

So diversity is key because we need those experts around the table. For us as a business, we need the diversity in the portfolio going forward because that will make us a resilient business. But to get the diversity in the portfolio, we need to have the diversity in our membership base on that basis.

So that's an interesting angle that I'm always keen to talk to people about. And I'm seeking conversations with angel investors who particularly have experience in those areas, who want to come and make a difference and get busy with quite a lot of deal flow that we have in that space, where we don't necessarily have that regulatory overview.

The other thing I will say, the UK is very good at early stage technology developments.

We've got great universities, we've got some amazing venture builders, and a lot of startups coming through to us.We actually get over a thousand applications a year from startups wanting funding.

So there is there is no shortage at all of finding good quality deal flow with really great founders. They will get funding through us and go on to potentially raise a Series A in the UK.

But what typically happens then is because of the structure, we're not great at financing the latter stage of these startups, the Series B, the Series C. And what often happens is at that point, that company needs to expand overseas. It needs to get expertise to actually move abroad. And many of them, I know, do go to the States.

So we're really looking to ensure that those companies have the right skillset on their boards, and that experience is brought in nice and early so that they are resilient and robust and can move according to where those regulatory changes and the policy changes and things are happening, to be able to navigate that journey and open new markets and grow in that sense.

It is a limiting factor in the UK.

We are talking about it a lot.

I hope we will address it for your sake. I hope we don't because otherwise it means so many great companies do come to the States and need a navigator, quite frankly, to be able to help them with that. That's at a slightly later stage, of course, than how we invest in them, but it's something that we're very aware of.

Bhuva:

It's a trend that I see quite a lot also.

When you're getting into Series A, B, expanding into other markets, even from Australia, Europe, UK, or from Latin America,Africa, India, you typically look for US investments because they are large scale.

VCs, private equity firms, and family offices already trying to do some of that. They just need traction which you provide from your angel investing side.

Like you rightly also I said, there is going to be shortage of fossil fuel and other resources. It's not going to be forever unlimited. It's only competitive that you invest in other natural resources like wind, solar, or decarbonizing everything.

When we talk about climate, not many people think about food and fashion because those are considered food and fashion, two separate industries, nothing to do with climate.

But like the Tech Week, FinTech Week, Climate Week that happens in New York City, we have Fashion Week happening two times a year, one in spring and one in fall. During those times, in the last two, three years at least, I've seen a lot of emphasis on circular fashion, sustainable fashion, circular economy.

The Fashion Week in New York is being transformed, coincidentally due to consumer demand and also from the perspective of the designers, that it is impactful to invest in sustainable fashion.

The food industry that you mentioned, we see a lot of traction even here in New York, like the regenerative agriculture, food security, because we don't grow everything here in New York, which means we have to rely on external markets.

How can we support with a lot of drought, wildfires, and so on happening. 

What I've seen very interestingly is in these, especially in regenerative agriculture, I've seen a lot of investments happening in the emerging markets like in Africa, Latin America, and India, because, of course, they have vast land that is still suitable for agriculture, we just have to make it more highly yielding.

In terms of fashion, there is one other challenge in the emerging markets also, where a lot of waste that gets accumulated in the developed countries gets dumped into these emerging markets. It's a contrary.

You keep dumping fashion waste in emerging markets, which are typically a source of food for other industries, and you pollute the soil and other things.

It's really interesting to hear your thought that food and fashion are also considered climate solutions, and you're looking for partners and experts in this space to invest more.

Now, with the sector that you have already invested in, what are some of your success stories, case studies, or companies that you've invested either from Green Angels or from your perspective? What has success been like for you so far with some examples of companies?

Emma:

We've invested in 53, I think it might be 54 this week, companies so far, and they're rolling through quite nicely.

We've had a few failures.

We've had a few successes in terms of exits and secondaries that have been happening.

A secondary is when a big VC floats in and says, We'll buy up all these shares and get rid of all your little angel investors. We'll pay you off quite handsomely because we think this company is going to go somewhere. So that's usually a very positive, exciting sign and something that many of our members are keen to see and also to stay in on the game. So it's not always an exit in that sense.

But they're broad and varied. Lots of things to do with wind turbines, lots of things to do with various industrial processes and things. I'm not too excited about some of those. I know that they're very important, and I know there's a lot of engineers that do get very excited about them. But for me, there's another big area that is massive, of course, plastics and e-waste.

We've got some really great solutions there. We've got a company called HaloCycle, which is just doing another round with us now, that uses microwave technology to break down plastics, the ones that contain the chlorine, so the PVAs and PVC and things of this world.

I might be wrong by saying PVA, clearly. Not a technical expert. PVC, definitely. That's really exciting because they're in the tens to hundreds of tons worth now in terms of scale and impact.

We've got a company called Decycle, which is recovering the metals from e-waste by using solvents, but they're very non-toxic, very low energy. It's a very sustainable ongoing process that can work at scale as well.

I think e-waste is another one, like you mentioned, fashion in terms of us dumping it, throwing things away when we have to realize on this little Pale Blue dot. There is no away these days. So I think they're really crucial innovations that we need to see come to scale very fast. We've got some nice things as well. They're quite different.

We've got a company called Nature Metrics, which is a technical solution that allows you to find traces of DNA in water, which allows conservationists to be able to come along, take a sample, see whether there's been a particular toad or a particular newt or a particular bird that's been present in that ecosystem over the last few months or so, and manage that for the species monitoring and the conservation work, which is crucially important, particularly as we're doing a lot more development and building houses and things. That's got big commercial applications actually as well.

So they've just had a secondary Nature Metrics, but I like that one. And then personally, of course, I did mention I have just made my own first angel investment.

Couldn't help it. Got a bit caught up in excitement. Just get on it. They were a bit addictive, aren't they?

But this is a lovely company called Carbon Cell, and they use biochar, so blocks of black carbon, that they effectively mix with a biological adhesive, and then they put an electric current through it, and it puffs up, and it's another version of polystyrene. So beautifully simple.

They're using it for packaging, naturally. This will go on to potentially be insulation boards and things as well. But it's It's completely carbon-based. It's non-toxic in every sense. And as we know, with many insulation products, that's rare.

And at the end of life, you literally dig it into your garden or put it on the compost heat. And not in the way that they say with these bioplastics and biodegradable plastics that just obviously break down into microplastics. This is carbon. This actually improves your soil or your compost heat as you use it. I love the simplicity of a deal like that.

It doesn't take much to see the impacts of when a company like that could scale how you could be done with polystyrene and have packaging solutions going forward that just are better for all of us in terms of even getting rid of the stuff when we've had a big delivery of something.

Bhuva:

Yeah, no. Trying to dispose of carbon waste, but it's also good for agriculture, for the same thing that we spoke about today is really great.

Also the plastics are not just going to landfind. I see so many instances where microplastics are in our bodies, in the water, in the air, and it's in our clothing. We are all living with some amount of microplastics in our bodies already.

Emma:

It's in our brains now as well, isn't it? To the point where I think the last research I read, we've got a teaspoon of microplastics in our brains already, if you're of our age at the moment.

I know what's going to break this. I do know that the oil industry lobby has focused on plastics now, knowing that their time producing energy might be limited or certainly restricted going forward.

Plastics is their next big thing. So we really do have a lot of problems and challenges there to deal with that as a world, as a planet together.

Bhuva:

We have to do something about it because if it's affecting...Now, kids these days even born with some of this inherently. So it's now beyond protecting the planet, rather than protecting our children and their health and their future lives.

Emma:

And affecting fertility now, which is, ironically, even a bigger challenge to our next generation as well.

Bhuva:

FemTech is becoming quite a lot important now, only because not that it's newly picking up because no one has ever focused on it before. It's very It's very important to do some of these investments in women's health. Maintaining biodiversity is also critical.

The Nature Metrics, you mentioned, is a startup, I believe, beyond just looking at what are the different ecosystems possible, but maintaining the biodiversity with other living beings on the planet is critical.

So thanks so much for sharing all those examples, Emma.

One quick thing I also wanted to share is with so many different types of industries that you are investing in, your syndicate is focused on at the moment, what are some key emerging trends, futuristic trends that you're excited about and you are looking forward to learning more so that it can be incorporated into your syndicate's investment thesis?

Emma:

That's an interesting question because there's so much happening in this space. I think by the time this airs, I'll already be out of date.

Bhuva:

Yeah, I think so. There's going to be something else in the next three months.

Emma:

Yeah. I will happily make statements here.

For example, hydrogen. Hydrogen comes in and out of fashion like the tide. I think hydrogen is great. I think it's going to have great potential in aviation and shipping, for example. But I don't ever see that we're going to have hydrogen in our homes or in our cars or anything that's really consumer-focused. I think it's a bit too challenging to work with on that basis.

I'm open for many debates and discussions as the technology changes on this as well, because that comes from a place of technology, really, rather than the economics of it all.

But I would like to see more biodiversity-focused startups coming through.

I think there's a challenge sometimes to make them commercially viable, effectively to make them an investible proposition rather than just being a charitable philanthropic option.

There are biodiversity credits. There are naturally carbon credits that play here. We tend to stay away from them as best we can. It's not a profitable or a secure business model for us. We're not investing in things that rely heavily on those mechanisms because I see them coming and going. They're going to be a political football, aren't they? Soccer ball.

It's a bit risky for us in so many ways. I would like to see a lot more investment happening in technologies around carbon sequestration and storing it.

We've made a big commitment to this in the UK. There was a big number, 56 billion or something is going  to be going into CDR projects going forward.

I'm not seeing that yet.

I'm not seeing the technology at scale working to the level that we need it to, if that's going to be what we rely on. It's really sad that we're in the position that we actually need it. If you've seen climate graphs on where we're going, we're not just looking at the overshoot now.

We're looking at an overshoot of carbon emissions that put us into the bright red flashing light alarm zone. Then we have to look at actually drawing carbon out of our atmosphere and storing it long term, securely.

There's very key words there because there's a lot of solutions that store it for a bit, not very long term or not very securely or not commercially, acceptable as well.

We need this, right? We already need this today. We need a lot of it today to ensure the future for humanity.

I'm not seeing the technology development happening like I want to feel reassured that it is. But I also am scared that the more overshoot that we're expecting now, the more we're going to need something, which again just feels a little bit like it's got a lot of catching up to do. That sounds a bit negative, bit pessimistic perhaps.

But for example, when it comes to energy, of all sorts, the fact that we're seeing small-scale nuclear come back, we're seeing all sorts of different energy technologies, both in terms of renewable generation and also long-term storage, those solutions, they're all there. They're great. They just need some money, quite frankly, and a bit of support and a fair wind. We are good on all of those.

And naturally, we are seeing that in terms of a lot of technical aspects of industrial manufacturing and processes. There's a lot of goods. There's a huge amount of progress that has been made.

I'm not sure if I've answered your question. I think in some way, shape, or form, I've contributed to that one.

Bhuva:

No, you've addressed all the key trends. The hydrogen and nuclear, they have so much potential, the cleanest form of energy.

But definitely, we have challenges in the economic and the regulatory side of things, right?

Emma:

Yeah, we can't afford to be purists anymore. 

Twenty years ago, you got the Hairshirt Brigade demanding that everything be clean and pure and that hydrogen was like a hole in the head that nobody needs.

For large large-scale... Sorry, not hydrogen.

Did I say hydrogen? Nuclear. Nuclear.

But for large scale nuclear, I do still believe that we've got a lot of issues that we haven't solved. But unfortunately, we haven't got time to be purists about this anymore. Everything goes.

If it gets us closer to where we need to be, even if it's not perfect, it's good. It buys us time, and it improves the technological pathway that we're seeing as well.

I've bought an electric car, not because I think that this electric car is the future of all mobility challenges and it solves everything, and that it's clean and great, because of course it isn't.

Of course that lithium-ion battery has had to be mined. Of course, it's a new car when I could have bought secondhand.

We cannot afford to be purists anymore.

What that has done, I've invested my money into that car in order to progress the technological development that we need in these spaces before we get to a better place.

Battery technology is another one.

The technology that's happening with batteries all over the world today is incredible because we are already coming out of the lithium-ion bubble that we've been in, where we've all been very concerned, rightly so, about the cobalt mines and the lithium mining and the environmental degradation that happens to a localized part of economies that have been relying on this heavily. That's not necessarily any cleaner than coal mining has been, albeit more contained.

But we are already getting into a solid state battery, sodium batteries, other forms of energy storage that have got past all of those issues already. Investing in this space is helping us all just put our foot down on that accelerator and getting through some of these hard, sticky problems, getting through the challenges and getting out to the other side, because that's very much where we're heading. We just need to get there a lot quicker than we have been.

Bhuva:

Yeah, and with all this mining, there is also unfair labor practices. We have to focus on people as well as we have to do the best possible, if not the perfect solution.

And carbon credits, though it is a buzzword, many people use it as some greenwashing technique. Hey, I can do whatever I want because I've purchased X amount of carbon credits. 

But like you rightly also mentioned, it's not about not overshooting.

We are right now thinking about adapting because certain changes are irreversible at this point in time as we speak. So direct carbon capture, if we can do it in a scaled way with less expensive and more long term and secure, that's also something I'm also looking into it.

So great list of trends. I hope we get to see those in the next couple of years so that we can accelerate some of our transition.

Now, within Green Angel Ventures, also with so many things happening, and also you're focused on hard tech, you support founders in their early stage, right? So pre-seed, seed. 

So pre-seed, seed, early stage, no traction, capital-intensive, hard tech. How do you convince your members to come and join you and take that risk, even though how much of a due diligence you do, there is some risk, right? 

Emma:

Of course. Of course.

Bhuva:

It's a great combination. Would love your thoughts on that.

Emma:

It is risky. I think our investors are with us because it is risky, not because it isn't.

They love it. They love the early stage innovation. They are all very passionate about bringing these solutions to market. They're passionate about the impact that they're going to have and the course, the climate catastrophe. They want to really put their feet where their mouths are in terms of doing something about it.

We have a wonderful community of investors that are really on board with the mission of what we're trying to do here and what these companies are doing. Importantly, how they then help bring that to market and really make it happen, they put their hand in their pocket.

They'll do their due diligence.

Actually, we actually run the due diligence process and we share reports and things with our members. That's what one of the massive benefits of being part of a syndicate is, is that everybody is doing a bit of this work. We're taking the large lion's share and ultimately giving everything that you need, so all the information is given to you to decide.

But that due diligence itself is a very valuable process for the founders to go through because we are picking through it very, very, very thoroughly and challenging some assumptions and asking some really smart questions.

Again, our members have come from industry.

They're working in these fields. They perhaps have 40 years worth of experience more than the founders themselves at bringing technology to market in this space. 

That process in itself is like a bit of a consultancy project for free. Then they get some money for it.

I mentioned our deal size, but for individual investors,  who are members of Green Angel Syndicate, their minimum ticket is £5,000, so relatively small in terms of a contribution there. 

So lots of people can come and get involved and be part of many deals.

The average for each member on each deal is around 20,000. And as I say, that will go up to about a million overall for the whole deal size. 

So that gets them up and running. It means that they can hire a few people. It means that they can move from a pilot project or something where they've been working with a couple of commercial partners into a production facility or something along those lines.

And then we actually invite members to take part in the due diligence and take it through and join the board. 

So often one of our members of the syndicate will be a gas representative, a green agent syndicate person that will sit on the board as a board observer or a non-exec director and bring their experience to the table on a regular basis to really help steer the ship going forward.

Now, they bring their personal experience and passion for what they're doing, but they actually have everybody behind them as well. So at any point, they can stop and say, Right, we need an expert in bringing this technology to American markets, for example.

Who do we have in our membership group who can help with that? And can we set up a call? And can we invite them in to have a chat?

And so they have this pool of expertise that they can fish from. And that is obviously very crucial. For many of our founders that come through the journey, they really enjoy the initial assessments. They get to pitch to the members and obviously build rapport with investors in the room in person.

And then they have these fascinating conversations where they are challenged and they are held to account. And it may uncomfortable at times, but they come out so much stronger.

When these members are then permanently entranced in their business success, both with their cash and that time and effort that they've put in, then obviously it's a really strong team to take it forward at that point.

Bhuva:

Yeah, I know. The more feedback you get, you're only getting better. It's not going to inhibit your progress.

But looking at it from the other side of the equation, so if I am a startup founder, why will I reach out to you than a different syndicate or directly an angel investor or a venture capital fund? What invites me and what impresses me to be part of your network?

Emma:

Well, we've been going for a long time. We started into 2017, so we've got a nice long-standing reliable reputation in this space. We bring scale.

Again, I mentioned all of those applications coming through. It's a very streamlined process with a really large number of syndicate members and investors who will be taking a very close look at your deal. There's a crowd mentality there of winning hearts and minds and getting people on board on this journey.

Then we've got a very thorough due diligence process, as I mentioned, which is we're typically a lead investor and we will co-invest with other funds and things as well because they like our due diligence process. They rely on it fairly heavily. We'll often follow through with other rounds and things in the future as well where we bring this the other VCs and things in with us, too.

We're fairly unique being the only syndicate investing just in clean tech deals. If you fit within that remit and meet our expectations there, then obviously it works really well as a good partnership. Basically, it's the bridge. It's the stepping stone that gets you in front of the VCs later when you're looking at your Series A of 2 or 3 million.

You've got this suite of experts already on your board, already on your cap table, potentially reinvesting again and giving that credibility to the business as they go on.

Bhuva:

When you're trying to expand at Series A, B, that's all the venture capital and private equity funds look for.

I know we are coming up on time. I just wanted to check in. If there's anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we wrap up, how can they reach you, reach Green Angel syndicates, be it investors or startups?

Emma:

Well, I would love more investors to come on board, particularly women. We do need more women angel investors. We really do. Not just for the money side of things, but because of that diversity of thoughts.

Women ask different questions to men in that due diligence process. They focus more on different things. Then when we can potentially put them on boards, they're bringing really crucial female representation onto those boards going forward as well.

If you can imagine, I think, some of these hardware tech teams that are doing very deep tech science and things. They need a few more women, I think, holding them to account and with that stronger moral compass going forward, too.

I would love to speak to more female investors and male investors, too, of course.

You can reach me at greenangelventures.com.

If you go on to invest and look at our syndicate, then you will find a little button to arrange a call. 

You can put your time straight in my diary. That might be risky. I might regret that. I'd be very happy to have a conversation.

Our membership fees are very low and reasonable. It's £500 a year plus VAT to be part of the syndicate. I've mentioned the other prices and things because I think that tend to be quite surprising to people. They always think, I have to be a millionaire to do some angel investing. 

I can't possibly afford it.

Bhuva:

But often when I say- You don't have to leave your corporate career also, so you can just keep your career.

Emma:

Well, this is it. 

Bhuva:

There is no conflict of interest, right? 

Emma: 

Yeah, absolutely.

For many, it's a wonderful opportunity to actually expand their career, to look at getting board positions and non-exec directorships, and to expand their awareness of companies in other sectors, maybe up or down the value chain of where you're currently working in your day job, or maybe something just completely different that you just find fascinating that you've always wanted to have a little deep dive into.

Wonderful opportunity to have that experience. To meet other investors as well.

I mentioned I've got quite a few in America already, so it's great to grow that community. Happy to introduce you around to each other there.

Also to mention, as well as being a member of our syndicate, we do also run a fund, which is a diversified fund. Minimum of 15,000 to invest in that. It's your money would then be invested into 12 to 15 of our companies that the syndicate themselves are choosing and investing in over the next year.

That's for when you've got no time. That's for when you love it and you want a portfolio in climate tech, but you really the time to spend looking at individual deals and making that individual decision making. The fund is perfect for members who want to do that, too.

So very happy to talk about any of this and more with anyone who would like to reach out to me. 

Bhuva:

Well, thanks for sharing.

I mean, women bring diversity of thought, but plus also, if your consumers are going to look like part women and part men, why not have both of them on your portfolio?

And like you rightly mentioned, also, it's really important to have variety of options. You have membership, you have small investments, you can be deeply involved, or you can just invest in the fund and stay on the radar of Climate Tech.

So thanks so much for talking to our community today. I'd love to share all the links that you shared with our audience as well, and then I hope to keep in touch.

Thanks so much, Emma, for taking time to share us.

Emma:

I loved it, Bhuva. Thanks for having me.

Bhuva:

Thank you..