# VC10X - Why Climate Change Can't Wait - Tom Chi, Founding Partner, At One Ventures

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 17 Mar 2026, 47 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/116952600/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-15%2F420054828-44100-2-711d73c3c5905.mp3

Tom Chi was a founding member of Google X — the team behind self-driving cars, Google Glass, and deep learning AI. At the peak of that career, he watched a coral reef die outside his home in Hawaii. In eight weeks, it was gone. That moment changed everything. Tom founded At One Ventures to fund companies building that future. In this episode, Tom breaks down why the climate crisis is not a political debate — it's a physics problem. And physics doesn't negotiate. ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com We cover: - The calculation Tom ran in 2012 that predicted mass fires, floods, and displacement by 2022 — and why nobody was talking about it - Why "green premium" is a myth, and how AT1 Ventures finds climate tech that is cheaper than the incumbent - The physics framework he uses to evaluate every deal: matter, energy, time, and space - Why Venezuela is a live case study in what the petrol-first worldview actually produces - The difference between sustainable, net zero, and net positive — and why only one of them is the right target - Why freshwater scarcity is a management problem, not a supply problem - What ancient civilizations in Hawaii and South Asia got right about working with nature — that we've completely forgotten Tom is also the author of Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future (Wiley, Feb 2026). Timestamps: (00:00) - Why Tom Chi left AI and robotics to focus on climate change. (00:32) - Disagreeing with Bill Gates' "green premium" concept. (01:09) - Introduction to Tom Chi's background and AtOne Ventures. (02:54) - Tom Chi on his career and the mission of AtOne Ventures. (03:58) - The personal story of watching a coral reef die and how it changed his career path. (08:00) - Using physics to predict the rise in climate volatility a decade ago. (10:45) - The realization that climate change is a time-sensitive problem that can't be delayed. (12:38) - Discussing global inaction and the influence of the fossil fuel industry on geopolitics. (14:32) - Contrasting the US's fossil fuel policy with China's dominance in green technology. (18:25) - Why climate change is a physics problem, not a political debate. (20:47) - The thesis that green technology must be cheaper, not more expensive, to scale. (21:54) - The investment framework: Using physics to find economic advantages in green tech. (26:08) - How green energy can compete against the policy influence of the cash-rich oil industry. (29:15) - The difference between "sustainable" and "net positive." (31:52) - Is freshwater scarcity a real and urgent global risk? (32:11) - Reframing the water crisis as a mismanagement of hydrological cycles, not a scarcity issue. (36:08) - The real choice: Deciding the level of human misery, not "saving the planet." (39:34) - Rapid-fire round: Investment sectors and regions. (41:19) - Typical stage and check size of investments. (42:23) - How to get in touch with Tom Chi and AtOne Ventures. (43:16) - Final thoughts on the "category error" of treating scientific truth as a political debate. 🎧 Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts — links below. LINKS Website: atoneventures.com Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegoodtomchi/ Prashant Choubey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.com Subscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10X Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986 Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ VC10X website - https://vc10x.com For sponsorship queries, reach out to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of family office investing, private markets, and emerging trends in wealth management.

## Transcript

[0:00] Why did you leave although that exciting opportunity, let's say
[0:03] AI, self driving cars, robots to focus your all your energy onto
[0:08] climate change. We could invent self driving
[0:10] cars in this next decade, or we can invent them 100 years and
[0:14] kind of life goes on. But if we waited 100 years,
[0:18] there'd be no coral reefs on planet Earth.
[0:20] Bill Gates often talks about this green premium that you have
[0:23] to pay for maybe investing in into green solutions or maybe
[0:27] working with a greener solution that is somewhat of premium
[0:31] attached to it's more expensive. I don't understand Bill Gates's
[0:35] position in that we are finding a bunch of technologies that are
[0:39] cheaper and greener at the same time.
[0:42] You know, maybe he got into a couple that were super expensive
[0:45] where he had to pay a green premium, but maybe that
[0:48] indicates that he's not the best investor.
[0:51] The main thing that we're deciding is not whether we save
[0:55] the planet or not. The main thing we're deciding
[0:57] here is how much human misery we are willing to accept, and also
[1:03] how much, you know, loss of biodiversity and destruction of
[1:07] ecosystems we're willing to accept.
[1:11] Hey everyone, this is Prashant and I'll be host for the VC10X
[1:14] podcast. And today we have Tom T with us.
[1:17] Tom spent years at Google X building some of the most
[1:19] ambitious technology the world has ever seen.
[1:22] Self driving cars, augmented reality, deep learning, AI.
[1:25] He was part of the founding team that made all of it happen.
[1:29] But at the height of that career, he was the coral reef
[1:32] die outside his home in Hawaii. In eight weeks it was gone.
[1:35] And that moment sent him on a completely different path.
[1:39] He's now the founding partner at at One Ventures, a deep tech
[1:43] fund built on a single thesis that the best investments are
[1:46] the ones that make humanity a net positive to nature, not just
[1:50] sustainable, but regenerative. He's a physicist and inventor of
[1:54] venture capitalist and one of the clearest thinkers I have
[1:56] come across. And why the climate crisis is
[1:59] not a political debate. It's a physics problem.
[2:01] And physics doesn't negotiate. Let's get to it.
[2:04] This episode is brought to you by Podcast Enix, my podcasting
[2:08] agency for VCs. We help VCs start and run
[2:11] branded podcast that can serve as their entire content engine.
[2:16] Turn the conversations you're already having into a machine. 1
[2:19] recording becomes your presence on LinkedIn, Spotify, YouTube,
[2:23] and e-mail. Don't just build another VC
[2:26] firm, build a firm that can stand out to LP's and one that
[2:30] founders can brag about having you on their cap table.
[2:34] Check out the services at podcastnx.com.
[2:36] I'll put the link in the description below.
[2:39] Now enjoy the episode. Hey Tom, so good to have you on
[2:42] the VC10X podcast. How are you doing?
[2:44] Over on that to death. Awesome.
[2:47] To start things off, can we first have a little bit about
[2:50] your background and what you're building at at 1 Ventures?
[2:55] Sure, I'm a long time inventor, technologist.
[3:00] I was a technology executive, so I've shipped a bunch of things
[3:05] that people probably use Microsoft Office web search, and
[3:09] I was also one of the founding team members of Google XI,
[3:12] worked on things like Google Glass, self driving car, Google
[3:17] Brain, all these sorts of things.
[3:18] So, and yes, what I'm doing right now is I've started a a
[3:23] venture firm six years ago called at One Ventures, which is
[3:27] focused on helping humanity become a net positive to nature.
[3:30] Absolutely. And you worked at these
[3:32] companies which are working at the cutting edge of technology,
[3:35] you know, self driving cars and so on.
[3:38] But you choose to focus on tackling possibly the biggest
[3:43] challenge facing humanity that is climate change.
[3:45] So give us more of an insight into that.
[3:47] Why did you leave all the other exciting opportunities, let's
[3:50] say AI, self driving cars, robots to focus your all your
[3:54] energy on to climate change? Well, I mean.
[3:58] What happened in particular is I had had this great career, you
[4:04] know, starting as like a technologist and scientist on
[4:06] the lab bench and got good enough at making cool stuff that
[4:10] I eventually rose up the ranks and became technology executive.
[4:14] You know, first at Yahoo and then at Google is one of the
[4:17] founding team members of Google X and kind of everything was
[4:21] going amazingly in my career. Like Google, like the type of
[4:25] work that we're doing at Google X because I'm, I'm formally
[4:27] trained in physics and electrical engineering.
[4:29] I got to use my hardware skills. I got to, you know, really apply
[4:36] the full sweep of things that I had formerly learned to my job
[4:39] for the first time as opposed to when I was like, you know,
[4:42] helping to run these large software businesses or when I
[4:45] was doing some software engineering.
[4:47] Then that was just a small subset of the things that I had
[4:50] technically learned. So it was both super rewarding
[4:53] from the, the type of work I was doing and also the, the ambition
[4:58] of that work. But while I was, I was, you
[5:01] know, having that job, then I would go back and forth between
[5:06] California and this also had a second home in Hawaii and kind
[5:11] of spent some time in both. And basically while I was, you
[5:16] know, the head of product experience at Google X.
[5:19] Then there was a, a period in late 2011 where I basically
[5:24] watched the coral reef right next to my house completely
[5:28] bleach and die in, in less than 8 weeks.
[5:33] And I, I think, you know, for folks listening, like maybe it
[5:38] doesn't mean that much because maybe they've seen a coral reef
[5:41] on vacation. And yes, maybe it was beautiful.
[5:44] That's great. But when you live next to a
[5:46] coral reef, like I was, it was like a 2 minute walk from my
[5:49] front door, you know, to between being at the front door and
[5:53] being in the water in the coral reef surrounded by to, you know,
[5:57] still to this day, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen
[5:59] with my own eyes personally. But when you live next to a
[6:02] coral reef and you're in it that often, it was like an extended
[6:06] part of my neighborhood, right? Like I knew where different
[6:09] organisms lived. I knew who was friends with who.
[6:12] I knew who likes to hunt with who I know I I could see.
[6:15] Oh. The two of you just had a bunch
[6:17] of. Babies, that's exciting, right?
[6:19] And watching that whole reef die over those weeks was like
[6:24] watching all your friends and neighbors die or move away.
[6:27] And I, I'm a scientist and engineer.
[6:30] So it's really, this is very inexact language and, you know,
[6:33] compared to what I typically use, but it felt like it left a
[6:36] hole in my heart and I, I needed to go work out what I could do
[6:41] about it. And being a, a former scientist,
[6:45] I, I went to a bunch of other scientists.
[6:46] I went to marine biologists, coral scientists to try to
[6:50] understand what happened. And they informed me that not
[6:52] only had my reef bleached that year, but a large percentage of
[6:56] all reefs on the planet, you know, especially compared to
[6:59] historical, had bleached that year.
[7:01] And I was like, oh, gosh, you know, if we're losing corals at
[7:04] that rate or they're bleaching in that rate, how much time do
[7:07] we have left? And the consensus across a large
[7:10] number of coral scientists, because they got connected with
[7:12] the 50 Reefs initiative, which is some of the best coral
[7:15] scientists in the world, about three dozen of them.
[7:17] And I talked with about two dozen of them.
[7:19] Yeah, the consensus was we were on track to basically wipe out
[7:24] coral reefs as an ecosystem from planet Earth by the year 2055.
[7:29] And it basically. Reset all my timelines.
[7:31] Like up until then I was like, oh, I have this amazing career.
[7:34] I get to ship such amazing tech, you know, and look, I care about
[7:39] climate, but I'm looking at these, you know, IPCC reports
[7:42] and they're showing these scenarios by the year 2100.
[7:44] I won't be alive in the year 2100.
[7:46] So let me just have my awesome career and let me donate some
[7:50] money. Let me, you know, spend a little
[7:52] bit of time like like volunteering or advising if
[7:56] helpful to some of these efforts that are happening on climate.
[7:58] And that's how I'll play it. But like when I watched the reef
[8:02] die in front of my eyes and I realized that the same pain that
[8:06] I was experiencing, it was basically going to happen to the
[8:09] world in total and it was going to happen in a near time frame,
[8:13] not in the year 2100. Then I sat down and I started
[8:18] doing what I typically do with my background.
[8:21] I'm I'm a physicist. So I started doing some physics
[8:23] calculations. And one thing that I saw in the
[8:26] data that was not being widely talked about was that the the
[8:31] IPCC is modeling everything around average temperature rise
[8:35] scenarios by the year 2100. But if you don't just look at
[8:38] the averages, if you look at the way that the volatility has been
[8:41] evolving, actually volatility has been increasing way faster
[8:45] than the averages have been increasing.
[8:48] And back. And this was me doing the
[8:50] calculation back in like early 2012.
[8:52] And I basically tracked if we, if the volatility curve
[8:56] continues to increase, you know, at like, you know, at a super
[9:02] linear rate compared to the average temperature, then within
[9:06] 10 years. So by 2022, we're going to be
[9:09] having mass fires, mass floods, mass human displacement, all
[9:12] this sort of thing. And and this is just a matter of
[9:15] course now. Like these things all happened.
[9:17] We had major wildfires in 2020-2021.
[9:21] You know, we had entire towns disappear like Lahaina.
[9:24] We've had, you know, huge displacements of populations
[9:28] because of of, you know, thousand year storms, 100 year
[9:31] storms, flooding events, all that sort of thing.
[9:34] But if you think back to 2012, we weren't talking about the
[9:37] world yet like that. We were, you know, this was
[9:40] still three years before Paris was signed.
[9:43] And all that anybody said about how the actual life experience
[9:47] of people might change is like, hey, we might have more
[9:49] hurricanes and those hurricanes might be more powerful.
[9:52] Well, yes, that's also happening.
[9:54] But nobody was talking about these floods and droughts and
[9:57] wildfires. But my modeling, you know, back
[10:00] then said that it was going to have to happen.
[10:03] And I was sitting there as a, as a, you know, physicist and asked
[10:08] myself, well, do you think you did these calculations wrong?
[10:11] And the math is not particularly hard because I'm not trying to
[10:13] do like little regional CFD kind of things.
[10:16] I am trying to do like mass energy balance, like large scale
[10:20] calculations. And when I did those
[10:23] calculations, that's like, Nah, I mean, honestly, this is a very
[10:25] straightforward calculation. And if volatility continues to
[10:28] increase like this, things will be in chaos way sooner than
[10:32] people expect. And you know, that basically led
[10:36] to one last thought, which is the one that like had me
[10:39] actually fully decide that I should leave and, and try to
[10:42] pursue this direction, which is, yeah, I was working on the self
[10:45] driving car at the time and the team was making great progress.
[10:48] And I was like, a if we stick stick to this, we're going to
[10:50] have self driving cars on the road within the decade, which is
[10:53] basically what happened. Took like 11 years, not not ten,
[10:56] but it did happen. But I, I also had the thought
[10:59] like, yo, we could invent self driving cars in this next decade
[11:06] or we can invent them 100 years and kind of life goes on.
[11:10] But if we waited 100 years, there'd be no coral reefs on
[11:13] planet Earth. Like there are some problems
[11:15] that can't be translated in time.
[11:18] Scooted back, scooted forward, you know, and it'll still be the
[11:23] same. There's some problems that are
[11:25] time sensitive in a real way. And this is, yeah, this is a
[11:29] very important problem that is time sensitive in a real way.
[11:33] And I just had to ask myself, well, if you believe your
[11:36] calculations and it it comports very well with your formal
[11:40] training, then I think you got to do something.
[11:44] And for me, that meant leaving Google X and going on this
[11:47] intense sabbatical where I went to the front lines of the
[11:50] ecological damage all around the world.
[11:52] I also visited a lot of communities where people live on
[11:55] a dollar a day. These are intertwined problems
[11:58] and I really tried to get an up close view of, you know, where
[12:02] the problems are coming from, what they look like and, and who
[12:06] are some of the people on the ground that are trying to make a
[12:07] difference in which things are working and which things aren't.
[12:10] And that basically led me to a process of of, you know, caring
[12:14] about working with a bunch of these teams on the ground,
[12:16] starting to invest in some of them.
[12:18] And I realized at some point that I was basically, you know,
[12:24] becoming an investor like by by like supporting all these folks
[12:28] in this way and eventually decided to go formalize that.
[12:33] And let's just try to do that at 100 X, you know, the capital
[12:37] scale. Absolutely.
[12:38] That's, that's quite a story there.
[12:40] And like you said, we all see it happening in front of our eyes.
[12:45] It's all over the news and still a majority of people, I would
[12:50] argue, choose to ignore it, right?
[12:53] And like you rightly said, these are problems that cannot be put
[12:57] off to tomorrow. There are things that might
[13:00] sound exciting today like self driving cars.
[13:02] So let's say flying cars might be the next thing.
[13:05] But what if the world isn't going to stay that long, right?
[13:09] What would you do with those flying cars or self driving
[13:12] cars? The most precious thing we have
[13:15] here is life. And if we don't preserve it and
[13:18] make our practices sustainable, then it can cost us big time.
[13:23] And the question I wanted to ask you is when you look at the
[13:27] outlook the world is taking out, the governments are taking, even
[13:30] though the Paris treaty is there, Just recently we had, you
[13:35] know, US take control of Venezuela majorly for the oil, I
[13:42] would argue, although there are different reasons out there.
[13:46] But the president has set oil very many times so.
[13:49] I'm going to. He said that a lot more than he
[13:52] said that he cares about the Venezuelan people.
[13:57] Absolutely. So Venezuela is like almost like
[14:00] an add on that he puts in there just to be sure.
[14:03] OK, they are also there in the picture.
[14:05] But mostly it's it's for the oil.
[14:07] So when you look at things like these happening around the
[14:11] world, especially US, the biggest world power doing such a
[14:14] move, it also sends out a signal to the world that, OK, you can
[14:18] do things like these. That's one thing, but also for
[14:22] things like oil, right, For fossil fuel, again, which is not
[14:26] a very clean source of energy. So how do you look at that and
[14:30] what make what it makes you feel?
[14:32] So when you look at what the US has just done in Venezuela, and
[14:38] it does seem to be primarily about oil, though obviously
[14:42] there's conversations that there may be some other aspects of it
[14:46] as well. Then it, it is fully in
[14:50] alignment with the, with the philosophy that the Trump
[14:54] administration has been advancing, which is this idea
[14:59] that all these green technologies are a scam.
[15:01] They're going to try to make everything more expensive and
[15:06] in, in the name of like doing all this green stuff.
[15:09] And and like, you know, really what America needs to be
[15:12] competitive is to do more in fossil fuels, more in oil.
[15:16] And here's the thing, what it means to do more in oil is to be
[15:20] this like a violent petrol state like ever.
[15:25] Folks, we know the history of oil.
[15:27] I think we should be relatively clear on what it does
[15:30] geopolitically. And at the same time that, you
[15:34] know, this administration is basically saying, oh, the
[15:38] previous administration was garbage because look at all
[15:40] these subsidies they are doing for green tech and blah, blah,
[15:43] blah. The that was actually not even
[15:46] true. Like the, the, the money that
[15:48] came from the government was dwarfed by private investment
[15:52] because there was smart things to do.
[15:54] Private investors don't throw a bunch of money into things just
[15:57] because, you know, there's charity work happening from,
[16:00] from the government. They have a responsibility to
[16:03] get to returns. And during that same time period
[16:06] where we were just barely getting off the ground with
[16:08] those policies, China's massively pulling ahead.
[16:12] I mean, they'd already pulled ahead on solar panels, but then
[16:14] they further pushed, and they're now kind of in a unassailable
[16:19] spot on several other key technologies like electric
[16:23] vehicles, battery technology. And these are all green
[16:28] technologies where they're currently positioning themselves
[16:32] as the global provider for all of it.
[16:35] And they're currently, you know, the BYD passed Tesla as the
[16:40] largest electric vehicle maker in the world in 2025, and
[16:45] they're making a Gigafactory where the factory is larger than
[16:48] the city of San Francisco, right?
[16:51] Nobody does that if that's not an economical thing.
[16:56] So we're living in these kind of like parallel realities.
[17:01] But the the US reality right now is a delusional reality.
[17:05] It basically says, well, this green stuff is a scam.
[17:08] It's not the future at all. And then we're seeing the
[17:10] countries that are actually starting to get these really
[17:14] meaningfully scaled economic outcomes from their green
[17:18] investments. These things are coming to
[17:20] fruition in other places, which makes it even starker.
[17:23] Like what it looks like When you succeed on the green side, you
[17:26] just make a ton of money selling useful things to the world.
[17:30] When you succeed on the petrol side, you need to make a bunch
[17:32] of excuses for kidnapping presidents.
[17:35] Absolutely. Yeah, that completely makes
[17:37] sense. Now, looking at what the
[17:40] situation is, how does that make you feel as an investor that,
[17:43] OK, there's a positive force which people like you are
[17:47] making, going all the way, you know, living your careers and
[17:51] giving your all to this, the most important thing I would
[17:54] argue, for a life to sustain on this planet.
[17:57] And then on the other hand, you we also have negative forces and
[18:01] which are very powerful forces which are acting against the
[18:06] force, the positive force that you are trying to create.
[18:09] How do you look at that? Do you think we are going to
[18:11] make any progress with this type of, you know, tussle or head on
[18:17] battle that's happening between the ones who are in favor of
[18:21] green energy versus the ones who want to stick to fossil fuels?
[18:24] Well, it's really simple, which is that you can't change the
[18:28] laws of physics and you keep on going down the fossil fuel route
[18:33] long enough and the physics of planetary atmospheres are just
[18:37] going to hurt us a lot. And that's not a political thing
[18:40] at all. You know, actually, the, the
[18:43] biggest grift was getting everybody to, you know, have
[18:47] this mental model that believing in climate change matters.
[18:53] You don't need to believe in gravity for you to be able to
[18:56] like stay on the Earth. That is just something that's in
[18:59] the laws of physics. And you don't need to believe
[19:03] in, you know, the physics of planetary atmospheres for
[19:05] greenhouse gases to make your, your planet way less livable.
[19:09] That is just the laws of physics.
[19:12] So for us to like, pretend as if it was a political debate in the
[19:16] 1st place. Now look, there is a debate to
[19:19] be had. One can go decide policy wise,
[19:22] what do you want to go do about the reality of physics, but
[19:28] that's not the way we've been having the discussion.
[19:30] We've been having the discussion as do you believe in climate
[19:33] change? It's like, OK, well, I feel like
[19:36] you're declaring yourself to be somebody who is either led by
[19:40] politics when whenever you're doing that, or you're just
[19:43] declaring yourself a person that doesn't realize that the laws of
[19:47] physics govern everything and they work whether humans are
[19:50] around or not. And they they work, whether
[19:53] human believes that, you know, the rain comes because of a sky
[19:57] God or whether, you know, it's it just everything that we've
[20:02] done about belief that diverges from the laws of physics.
[20:05] We set ourselves up to to be hurt where we said like what we,
[20:11] we pray to the sky God in the right way.
[20:13] And the locust still came. It's like, well, you could also
[20:17] just study, you know, the biology of grasshoppers and what
[20:21] makes them into locust. Like that that would be a way
[20:24] smarter way to approach this and and and similarly people are
[20:28] like what do you believe in climate change maybe we just if
[20:31] we could just pray to the oil gods then suddenly everything is
[20:34] going to be solved and it's like no man you could also understand
[20:39] you know planetary atmospheres and you can understand the
[20:41] function of these gases and we've actually understood the
[20:44] function of these gases for you know 150 years.
[20:48] Absolutely yeah completely makes sense.
[20:50] And Bill Gates often talks about this green green premium that
[20:55] you have to pay for maybe investing in into green
[20:58] solutions or maybe working with a green greener solution it is
[21:02] somewhat of premium attached it's more expensive and that's
[21:05] what he's trying to say but you argue that green technology must
[21:08] actually be cheaper in order for it to scale can you explain this
[21:13] thesis. It's really simple which is if
[21:16] you do make it cheaper than it gets adopt incredibly quickly.
[21:21] And actually I don't understand Bill Gates 's position in that
[21:26] we are finding a bunch of technologies that are cheaper
[21:29] and greener at the same time you know maybe he got into a couple
[21:33] that were super expensive where he had to pay a green premium
[21:36] but maybe that indicates that he's not the best investor.
[21:40] Yeah yeah absolutely makes sense and can you share any example of
[21:44] company where the sustainable solution was clearly.
[21:48] Cheaper and better even on unit economics from a business
[21:52] standpoint. Well it's actually our entire
[21:55] portfolio so it's what I'm saying like yeah he's probably
[22:02] not a good investor it's because we it wasn't hard for us to find
[22:05] one there's a bunch of them and actually I tell you exactly how
[22:10] to get it right. Here's the way to go understand
[22:15] whether technology has the potential to make that big
[22:18] difference so if you look at the the businesses in the world that
[22:22] are creating the physical damage to the world these are all
[22:27] physical businesses and if you look at the cost structure of
[22:31] any physical business there's basically 3 different sources of
[22:35] cost that represent more than 90% of the cost structure of any
[22:38] physical business it's the feedstock cost.
[22:41] Plus the processing cost plus the transport logistic cost and
[22:46] Simply put the feedstock is the atoms that you're going to
[22:49] transform the processing cost is the cost of transforming those
[22:53] atoms to whatever output product you want and the transport
[22:56] logistic cost is the cost of getting those atoms to you and
[22:59] getting the end product out to the places where it's.
[23:02] Going to be used. Simple enough so you can
[23:03] understand why that 'd be 90% the cost of any physical
[23:06] business so when we're evaluating a new technology.
[23:10] We're able to sit down and use physics fundamentals to go work
[23:13] out how we're going to get a major win economically from the
[23:19] from the technology and I I was a a working physicist I'm not a
[23:25] person that just like studied physics in school I was an
[23:27] astrophysicist for 6 years so I I know how to do the actual
[23:31] fancy math but but I like to boil it down for everybody that
[23:35] physics is really nothing more than the study of.
[23:38] Than of matter and energy moving through time and space so
[23:42] there's only 4 things so when we're trying to go figure out
[23:46] whether a new technology has the ability to displace the old
[23:49] technology and also have way lower unit economics then we
[23:53] just go head to head how did matter change between the old
[23:57] system and the new proposed one how did energy change between
[24:00] old and new how did time change how did space change if we can't
[24:05] find. A huge physics win on at least
[24:09] one of those 4 categories you can already pass on the deal and
[24:14] the reason is is that there's no way to cheat the laws of physics
[24:18] here if you don't have a win on any of those things you're going
[24:21] to end up in roughly the same unit economics as the existing
[24:24] industry and there's no reason to to do startup capital to end
[24:28] up with exactly the same unit economics or in Bill Gates 's
[24:32] case a green premium like that sounds like you're literally
[24:35] just a bad investor. If you try to invest in stuff
[24:37] where the unit economics are worse that's terrible right now
[24:41] when you do detect a big win in one of those 4 it translates
[24:45] directly to economic savings against the cost structure of
[24:49] physical businesses because let's say the new solution uses
[24:53] 1/10 the matter well 1/10 the matter means you're saving on
[24:58] feedstock costs let's say it's able to get a better result
[25:01] using 1/3 the energy well that means you're saving on
[25:03] processing costs? What if you could do it in less
[25:06] time what if you could do it in less space that's you saving on
[25:09] transport and logistics cost and there's actually a second
[25:12] meaning for time which is if you're able to go and make
[25:16] machines that have massively more throughput for the same
[25:19] CapEx then you basically can have a lower CapEx depreciation
[25:25] contribution to OpEx and really those are the 4 places where you
[25:30] can get the big wins from and you actually?
[25:33] Can hunt very purposefully because these industries that
[25:37] are doing the most damage to nature have been the same
[25:40] industries for the last 3 decades?
[25:43] It's not like most venture. Capital where every year is like
[25:45] a new trend oh it's NFTS and like 2 years later it's
[25:49] something totally different right it's it's been the same
[25:52] for decades and given that you can look at each industry you
[25:55] can analyze what is the weak point of this industry do they
[25:59] have a lot of processing cost. Do they have a lot of feedstock
[26:02] cost do they have a lot of transport logistic cost and
[26:05] that's where you hunt for the win absolutely completely agree?
[26:09] And what I've observed is the oil industry especially is a
[26:15] very cast rich industry it's it's been printing money since.
[26:20] A long long time and for that reason it is able to fund
[26:24] narratives and even policy making in its favour right so
[26:29] now the battle isn't just being a better solution or being a
[26:32] cheaper solution it's also about fighting those policy battles
[26:37] with the government and making them form policies that can make
[26:42] it lucrative for businesses to adopt these things as well.
[26:46] Because there is also a status quo that's established that they
[26:50] have a certain way of doing things already and to shift away
[26:53] from that maybe a certain nudge or a certain incentive from the
[26:57] government can help bring about that change but since the
[27:00] government is incentivized I'm not talking about any particular
[27:04] government here but since the government is incentivized to
[27:07] keep things the way they are just because the oil industry is
[27:11] so big and they can influence decisions.
[27:15] How can green energy make an entry and a difference in that
[27:18] case? Well look.
[27:22] I mean I think the the game is already half over right we
[27:26] actually we actually brought up more renewable capacity in 25
[27:31] than than coal generation. Right it's.
[27:36] That's the crossover point we're done now you you can pretend
[27:40] like OK yeah I'll I'll prop this up.
[27:43] But now we're getting into the the world where we're propping
[27:46] up these old industries that are literally less economic.
[27:51] Now you said something. Which I I think is actually the
[27:53] more interesting part of the question which is that Oh well
[27:58] these big companies are getting to write policy that's the
[28:01] problem right the the purpose of these governments are to to go
[28:06] and? And make decisions.
[28:09] That are going to be important for all the constituents.
[28:13] And that is means all the people it doesn't mean just a tiny set
[28:16] of corporations and if we've created a system where there is
[28:22] a major imbalance in that influence then you're going to
[28:25] get exactly what we have right now that to me has nothing to do
[28:29] with how much money the industry is made historically we've seen
[28:33] many industries that made lots of money historically that have
[28:36] like eventually waned over time and that's a very normal thing
[28:39] to do if they go past the their utility.
[28:43] Right there's a point where you get far enough in the timeline
[28:46] and technologies get better and the old thing just doesn't have
[28:50] the same utility and even if it made an insane amount of money
[28:53] for 100 years it ramps down that's what normally happens
[28:57] we're allowing this like insane corporate welfare because the
[29:01] people with their last you know they they built up a good money
[29:05] pile historically and we're allowing them to use that money
[29:08] pile to basically. By the future of these
[29:12] governments. Absolutely and and not.
[29:15] Not just governments but also future generations livelihoods
[29:19] and the quality of their lives will also be at stake in that
[29:21] case so you distinguish between sustainable and net positive
[29:27] right so how do you define that difference and how does it
[29:31] influence your investment decisions.
[29:35] Yeah. Actually this has been a long
[29:37] evolution. Like if you go back to like the
[29:42] the 90s then there's like a a big push you know on efficiency
[29:47] where like hunter levins you know amory levins were working.
[29:52] On things. Like just making higher
[29:55] efficiency you know production all sort of thing and that's
[29:58] great like that that that is a win for for ecology that is a
[30:02] win for economics. And actually generally speaking
[30:06] like things that you do that are that make your system more
[30:09] efficient is a win for both so this belief that like oh ecology
[30:14] and economy are basically against each other if you if you
[30:17] succeed economically you're going to hurt things that
[30:20] ecologically and vice versa is obviously dumb because if you
[30:24] could do the thing with less feedstock do the thing with less
[30:27] energy do the less thing do the thing with less transport
[30:30] logistic cost. Every one of.
[30:33] Those things is a win for both ecology and economy the reason
[30:37] that we think that these things are at odds at all is there's
[30:40] only one category of the 4 and I haven't mentioned that one yet
[30:44] where they are at odds which is pollution right and because
[30:49] pollution you know if regulated cost something to the company
[30:53] you know and if not regulated cost nothing to the company then
[30:56] that's mostly the political conversation that we've been
[30:58] happening because that's what they lobby for.
[31:01] But remember 90. Percent of the cost structure of
[31:04] these physical businesses is the 3 categories that I'm talking
[31:07] about where the ecological and economic goals are actually
[31:11] fully aligned and really like this last 5% like the cost of
[31:15] pollution is where all the legislation is gone because
[31:18] that's where the lobbying is gone but it's made us believe
[31:21] that like the there's like a fundamental battle between
[31:25] economy and ecology when the 90% they're fully aligned.
[31:29] It's just the we spend all the time on the contentious part
[31:33] and. Because we spend all.
[31:34] The time on the contentious part we have like this narrative
[31:37] capture where people believe the wrong thing about what's
[31:40] possible. Because the the.
[31:42] Companies like so wanting to not pay the 5% that's related to
[31:46] pollution have decided to destroy the world over it
[31:51] absolutely. Yeah and I'll do one last
[31:54] question before we move to the rapid fire round and it is
[31:56] somewhat a different angle that our conversation so far which is
[32:00] freshwater scarcity right so it is increasingly discussed as a
[32:04] global risk from your perspective how real and how
[32:08] urgent is this problem. Well the narrative is not
[32:15] correct the narrative is treating freshwater like a
[32:19] commodity you know like like gold.
[32:22] Or oil. And.
[32:26] The reason that that's. Not the right narrative because
[32:28] and the way that that narrative sounds is like it says like oh
[32:31] we live on a water planet but only this tiny part of his
[32:34] freshwater and only the tiny part of the freshwater is
[32:38] available to us and given that like look at this tiny commodity
[32:41] we're going to be fighting wars over it right because we have
[32:44] fought wars over other commodities as per Venezuela.
[32:50] Well the reason that's. Wrong is that water doesn't stay
[32:53] in place it's always in motion right like and the and the water
[32:57] that we use in particular is water that's in motion water
[33:01] that comes you know through rivers waters that flows through
[33:04] our pipe waters that go through our reservoirs waters that
[33:07] originally fell as rain right this is where our actual fresh
[33:12] water comes from and as the atmosphere warms every one
[33:17] degree C. Warming represents the
[33:21] atmosphere being able to hold 7% more water vapor so we're
[33:25] already at 1:00 0.5 degrees C above which means we have 10%
[33:29] more water vapor storage available in the atmosphere than
[33:33] we have had at any point in human history and what what that
[33:38] means is actually there's more rain than ever so there actually
[33:41] is more fresh water coming to us than ever.
[33:46] But the reason that we still may have shortages and fights and
[33:49] all this thing about it is because we have screwed up our
[33:53] managing of the hydrological cycles on a landscape where
[33:57] hydrology is really healthy you can have really heavy rains but
[34:01] the soils will absorb a lot of it and it will end up feeding
[34:04] the water table in a way that doesn't disrupt everything on
[34:07] the on the surface but in places.
[34:10] Where? You have kind of.
[34:12] Screwed up the way that that hydrology works on the landscape
[34:16] then you're going to experience it as floods you're going to
[34:19] experience it as cataclysmic events as opposed to as opposed
[34:26] to hey the soils got a little bit you know more saturated and
[34:30] we've like really fed our aquifer you.
[34:34] Know or the the. Rivers have you know the level
[34:36] went up a little bit but in a very you know like workable way.
[34:42] Right so we could actually have incredible water abundance if we
[34:47] were to focus on really smart you know like healing of the
[34:52] hydrological cycles and just to be really clear we mostly are
[34:56] talking about surface hydrology there's actually 4 types of
[35:00] hydrology there's ground hydrology surface hydrology
[35:03] atmospheric hydrology and ocean hydrology.
[35:06] And right now we're we because of the ways that we've built on
[35:10] the landscape we've really screwed up surface hydrology and
[35:14] because of some of the things that we're doing in you know
[35:18] because of the melting of of Greenland we might be messing up
[35:21] hydrological you know sorry ocean hydrology in a second by
[35:25] kind of collapsing the conveyor absolutely it's probably a Mach
[35:32] yeah absolutely quite. Alarming and.
[35:36] So yeah this conversation has been quite interesting and with
[35:39] a lot of food for thought for a lot of people to think about all
[35:43] these different aspects that we have discussed and how the world
[35:45] is moving in a certain direction and where it should actually
[35:50] moving and this is actually not something that we can play
[35:54] around with and we have limited time on our hands to try and fix
[35:57] this so I hope it brings about that collective thought process.
[36:02] Well actually let me let me. Correct that a little bit which
[36:05] is that. The earth is going to.
[36:09] Survive all of this right and the earth is going to be here
[36:13] for billions more years the main thing that we're deciding is not
[36:17] whether we save the planet or not the main thing we're
[36:21] deciding here is how much human misery we are willing to accept.
[36:27] And also how much. You know loss of biodiversity
[36:30] and destruction of ecosystems we're willing to just you know
[36:32] accept and we can live on a planet with dramatically
[36:37] degraded carrying capacity you know maybe the carrying capacity
[36:41] the earth collapses to one billion or 2 billion you know on
[36:45] a world where we've like wiped out 90% of the biodiversity and
[36:49] now we like just need to grow a bunch of algae in order to go
[36:53] eat you know. That is still a world.
[36:57] That will exist and actually after humans die out then yeah
[37:00] like eventually the earth will get back to some form of health
[37:04] but why sit. Here on the misery.
[37:08] Curve. Right we are smart.
[37:11] Beings that can actually understand how natural cycles
[37:15] work and we can build an economy that is in alignment with those
[37:19] natural cycles in such a way that that our landscapes that we
[37:23] work on get healthier not less healthy.
[37:27] And not just healthier. For ourselves but healthier for
[37:30] all the biodiversity on that landscape and I say this not as
[37:33] like some pie in the sky dream this is actually something that
[37:36] was achieved by many cultures in history before now right like in
[37:44] it like in India the like folks like 1100 years ago like
[37:48] modified the the carvery river system in order to double the
[37:52] amount of arable land in that part of their of their world.
[37:57] And that meant that there was more biodiversity there was more
[37:59] habitat available and there was more you know more fertility in
[38:04] that land for those people to support themselves like we can
[38:08] work with the land and that's because they were well ahead of
[38:11] being able to burn you know fossil fuels and all these other
[38:14] things that would create big damage they were working on a
[38:18] technical stack that was basically providing huge wealth
[38:21] for those populations and also huge wealth for nature.
[38:25] I live in San Francisco and I also live in Hawaii and in
[38:28] Hawaii I live right next to this ancient infrastructure that was
[38:33] put together by the hawaiians like 200 years ago and it's
[38:36] still running fine like what industrial infrastructure that
[38:40] we built could be unmaintained for 200 years and still run
[38:43] fine. But like this infrastructure
[38:46] that they made hundreds of years ago still making the landscape
[38:49] that that it touches healthier still supporting better
[38:53] biodiversity and the hawaiians built that because it made it
[38:56] easier for them to harvest you know some aspect of that
[39:00] improved carrying capacity in those lands that they touched so
[39:04] we're really choosing between whether we want to have a future
[39:07] where we actively go after the carrying capacity of earth and
[39:10] reduce it. Or whether we want to use our
[39:12] brains at all and improve the carrying of the capacity of the
[39:15] places that we're on just like we've seen from the you know the
[39:20] the ancient folks of of South Asia just like we've seen from
[39:24] the hawaiians like we've seen from the so many indigenous
[39:27] cultures have actually worked this out and I've like a pretty
[39:30] long compendium of exactly how they did it.
[39:33] Awesome yeah that's quite. Interesting and I completely
[39:36] agree so I think we need to rephrase that that we are not
[39:39] saving the planet here because the planet is going to be still
[39:42] around for billions and billions of years.
[39:44] It's the life on this planet for humans and that we are actually
[39:49] concerned about and that is something that we need to work
[39:52] towards so the planet is still going to stay around whether you
[39:55] will stay around or not is the question we are asking right now
[40:00] to the rapid fire around wherein I'll ask you 6 quick questions
[40:03] about the investing you're doing and you have to give 6 quick
[40:06] answers sounds good. All right, so the first one.
[40:11] Is what are the sectors and regions investing?
[40:15] So we. Stack ranked the industries that
[40:18] are currently doing the most damage to air, water, soil and
[40:21] biodiversity. It's about 30 different
[40:24] industries, but luckily, you know when you do those Stack
[40:28] ranks the top two to five typically are like 90% of the
[40:32] damage that's being done to earth.
[40:34] So if. You.
[40:35] Could upgrade. How's those 30 industries work?
[40:38] Then you could potentially head off more than 90% of the damage.
[40:43] Got it. And do you have any regions that
[40:47] you focus on geographically? Yeah, the specific fund.
[40:51] That we have series of funds that we have created.
[40:54] We need to deploy 50% of our capital in the US, but we can
[40:58] deploy up to 50% of our capital in the rest of the world.
[41:01] And given the geopolitical situation that we're probably
[41:05] going to hew a lot closer to doing the full amount in the
[41:08] rest of the world. You know, up until this point
[41:12] it's been, you know, about 35% in rest of world and 65% in the
[41:16] US. Got it.
[41:19] What is your typical stage of investment?
[41:23] We enter at. Seed in A and we, you know,
[41:26] follow on and build the rest of most of our ownership in that
[41:30] following round. So if we entered at seed then
[41:33] we'd we'd build the do the follow on in A.
[41:36] If we entered in A, then we'd do the follow on B.
[41:40] Got it. What is the?
[41:41] Usual check size you put in we. Aim to own 20% of the company in
[41:46] the first placement and kind of enter with a average first entry
[41:51] valuation of about 20 million post, which means roughly half
[41:55] our investments happen before that and half of our investments
[41:58] happen evaluation a bit after that.
[42:02] Got it do. You typically lead rounds.
[42:07] When you're aiming to own 20. Percent in the first placement,
[42:09] it means that you often lead the round.
[42:12] We, we don't require to lead the round, but but yes, I'm going to
[42:17] say in our first placements, it's probably 85% of the time
[42:21] we're leading the round. Absolutely.
[42:24] Where can founders or listeners follow you or get in touch?
[42:28] Yeah, you can just go to. Www.at.at1ventures.com so ATON
[42:35] eventures.com. Oh, and if you want to go.
[42:39] Follow me on social media or whatever, then my handle is the
[42:42] good Tom Chi THEGOOD Tom Chi, but I don't really do that much
[42:47] on social media. Awesome.
[42:50] I'll I'll be sure. To put those links in the show
[42:52] notes below so our listeners can get there easily.
[42:55] Thanks so much for doing this with the storm.
[42:57] And this has been a very important and eye opening I
[43:01] believe for a lot of people because this these are things
[43:04] that we are already seeing in front of our eyes.
[43:06] But for some reason we are ignorant.
[43:09] Just because we are still able to breathe and life goes on
[43:13] doesn't mean all is well. And I think it's for other
[43:15] reasons. Too, Which is we're, we're
[43:18] social organisms. And because of that, when, when
[43:21] a political party or a person with a charismatic argument or
[43:25] all that sort of thing says it in a way that sounds like
[43:28] something we want to believe, then a lot of people just go
[43:31] with it. But you know, like I'm a, I'm a
[43:35] physicist and just the physics works how it works.
[43:39] And like, I think we've been spending a lot of our energy,
[43:44] you know, putting this is called a category error, like when
[43:48] you're trying to go and use something like social proof to
[43:52] go solve something that is actually about scientific truth,
[43:56] right? Oh, all the people are voting
[43:58] with me. I must be right.
[43:59] And it's like, or that's not how you resolve scientific truth.
[44:03] It's not something that's about votes.
[44:04] It's not something that's about like the most convincing
[44:07] argument. It is about repeatable
[44:09] experiment and data that that and like exploring the mechanism
[44:13] underneath the repeatable phenomenon that you're able to
[44:16] measure. Like that is not the type of
[44:18] conversation we're having about climate, which to me is like a
[44:21] full category error. And that said, I don't want us
[44:24] to give up on being a social Organism.
[44:27] That is also the the place where we create community and many
[44:31] other things, right? So there's places where that is
[44:34] the right, you know, approach to create connection and
[44:37] resolution, but not in this spot.
[44:40] And I think if we could just be clear that there are some things
[44:43] that are that are scientific truth and scientific truth, you
[44:46] can tell that there's scientific truth because they would be true
[44:49] whether humans existed or not. Gravity works.
[44:53] Whether humans exist or not, planetary atmospheres work the
[44:56] way they do. Whether humans exist or not, we
[44:59] see this between the difference between Mars, Earth and Venus,
[45:03] right? One of them has got a ton of
[45:04] greenhouse gases and you can lead melts on the surface.
[45:07] Another one doesn't have enough atmosphere.
[45:09] And we're talking about trying to put some atmosphere there in
[45:12] order to like try to terraform it.
[45:14] And the one that we have we're being super irresponsible with.
[45:17] But that's just the physics of planetary atmospheres.
[45:19] Again, it predated humans and it will post date humans.
[45:22] So why are we pretending like some political argument changes
[45:25] that? Now, that said, there are things
[45:28] in the social sphere and the if I had something to say about
[45:32] social truth, the point of social truths is to get together
[45:35] toward how to make a beautiful life together.
[45:38] It's not about like dunking on each other politically.
[45:41] So even though that, you know, those sorts of arguments are the
[45:46] at least not a category error, then we're using it for the
[45:50] wrong purpose. We're using it to tear each
[45:52] other down as opposed to working out the things that we agree on
[45:56] and building, you know, thoughtfully together.
[45:59] So so we're in a very irresponsible world right now.
[46:01] On the physical side, we're making a bunch of category
[46:04] errors and we're making things political that are actually just
[46:08] scientific. And you that is just a set up
[46:12] for suffering, right. And on the on the social truth
[46:17] side, then we're using that quite irresponsibly as well, you
[46:21] know, to consolidate, you know, well, a tiny group of us are
[46:25] doing it to consolidate power or to seize power as opposed to
[46:29] create community and do the pro social things that human beings
[46:34] like kind of pulled ahead of these other animals.
[46:36] Because we can empathize with each other, we can cooperate
[46:39] with each other. And we've now decided we don't
[46:42] care about that anymore. Like the one thing that actually
[46:45] allowed us to build a civilization, we don't care
[46:47] about that anymore. That's that's chaos, my friends.
[46:52] Absolutely. Yeah, that's a perfect note to
[46:55] end this conversation. It's it's been great talking
[46:58] with you, Tom. I hope that this conversation
[46:59] brings about the change in people's thinking.
[47:02] And also kudos to you for the work that you're doing and
[47:07] initiative that you've taken. And I wish you all the best.
[47:10] Thank you. Thanks so much.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.