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What Is Impact Investing And How Will It Affect The Future Of Our Built Environment?

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Mar 16, 2022

Summary: For
the 10
th and final episode of Propcast season 8, Louisa
is joined by
Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at
Fifth Wall and
Jonathan Schulhof,
co-founder and CEO of FootPrint Coalition Ventures.
They talk through their roles and
what their funds are doing within the climate and sustainable
technology space. They explain the growth and trends that they have
seen in the market at the macro and micro level. Finally, they
speak about what the future looks like and what we can personally
do to reduce our carbon footprint. The key insight from this
episode is the simplest thing you can do for the planet is to
switch your thermostat down. 

Resources:

Companies Mentioned:

 

 

 

Shout Outs:

Key Insights From This Episode: 

 

  • Looking
    at climate tech today, the vast majority of them require some level
    of industrial tech. – Greg  

 

  • The technologies we’re investing in on the
    climate side are good for the planet, cheaper for the consumer and
    have higher returns. – Greg
  • We might be in the golden age of climate and
    impact investing. – Greg
  • We’ve had a washout of cleantech, 1.0 companies
    that weren’t sustainable without subsidy. – John
  • It is a travesty for the planet that for the
    last 20 years, the world’s best and brightest went through, and
    spent all of their time doing ad click-through optimization. –
    Greg
  • When you look at a problem that no one’s looked
    at in the last 200 years, you can come up with some solutions that
    are cheaper, better and faster. – Greg 
  • People are really looking and examining the
    food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that’s
    compatible with the planet. – John
  • 70% of the world’s natural gas is burnt inside
    buildings for either powering them or heating them. –
    Greg

Keywords: Climate Tech, Sustainable Tech, Future, Climate
Change, Sustainability 

About Our Guests:

Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at
Fifth Wall.

Greg is a Partner at Fifth Wall,
where he co-leads the Climate Technology Investment team. Prior to
joining Fifth Wall, Greg was a Partner at BMW i Ventures where he
led the Sustainability investing practice, investing in companies
such as Prometheus Fuels, and PureCycle (NASDAQ: ROCH). Before
joining BMW i Ventures, Greg led Finance & Operations for both The
Boring Company and Neuralink simultaneously.

Greg started his investment
career at Battery Ventures where he covered early-stage enterprise
technology startups, as well as industrial technology buyouts.
Successful exits from his work there include Nutanix (NASDAQ:
NTNX), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc.), and IST
(acquired by Scott Brand).

Greg was born in Pretoria, South
Africa, and currently lives in Oakland, CA. He graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School where he received a BS
in Economics and a BS in Computer Science.

Founded in 2016, Fifth
Wall
, a Certified B
Corporation, is the largest venture capital firm focused on
technology-driven innovation for the global real estate industry.
With approximately $3.0 billion in commitments and capital under
management, Fifth Wall connects many of the world’s largest owners
and operators of real estate with the entrepreneurs who are
redefining the future of the Built World. Fifth Wall is backed by a
global mix of more than 90 strategic investors from more than 15
countries.


Jonathan Schulhof
is
co-founder and CEO of
FootPrint Coalition Ventures,
a digital publishing and venture
firm he started in partnership with Robert Downey Jr., to back
environmentally focused sustainable technologies. FootPrint is a
cross-platform digital publisher that features sustainable
technology in news and short form video content for social media,
and long-form series for streaming networks. FootPrint uses its
publishing activity to originate and add value to investments in
high growth companies. FootPrint then makes these investments
accessible to investors that want to join in our movement through
funds and through co-investment syndicates. We invest in areas such
as alternative proteins, biodegradable plastics, electric vehicle
motors, and energy storage.  

Jon has over 20 years of
experience investing in clean technology startups.  He was a
founder and lead investor in Motivate, which owned and operated
Citibike and the other leading North American bike sharing systems
(sold to Lyft).  He started Loom Media to finance the rollout
of free public electric vehicle charging systems, and other smart
city amenities sponsored by corporate media (now part of
WPP).  Earlier in his career, Jon created ColdWatt, a high
efficiency power 81 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 8HY electronics
company (sold to Flextronics); and Glori Energy, a microbially
enhanced oil recovery business (IPO). 

In addition to his cleantech
work, Jon serves as non-executive chairman of GTI Capital Group, a
permanent capital investor in India.  Jon started this company
while living in New Delhi from 2010 through 2012.  GTI’s
holdings include Air Works (aviation maintenance), Samhi (hotels),
and WebEngage (B2B SaaS tools for ecommerce).  GTI has several
prior exits including Brattle Foods (refrigerated logistics, sold
to Future Group), National Stock Exchange (sold through secondary
trades), Sandhar (autoparts, IPO), and Nova Medical Centers
(healthcare services, sold to Apollo). 

Jon was a term member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the Board of Northside
Center for Early Childhood Development for 10 years.  He is
now a mentor at iMentor.  Jon holds a law degree from
Stanford, and attended Dartmouth College.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins


https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in
property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising
her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career
in recruitment. She now is a Director at
LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven
by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees
their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a
constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real
estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech
Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better
way to recruit.
LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus
delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are
passionate about the industry and passionate about people’s
careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an
extension of the business, and their transparency and core values
help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and
innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech
community.

Timestamps:

[02:05] Greg, can you talk us
through your journey? 

  • Currently, I co-head the climate investment
    team at Fifth Wall. 
  • I set up and founded the climate investing team
    for BMW. 
  • Prior to BMW, I was an Elon Musk world for a
    number of years. I was head of finance and operations at two of his
    companies. 
  • I started my investing career at a fund called
    Battery Ventures.

[06:10] John, can you talk us
through your journey? 

  • I didn’t set out to be a climate tech
    investor.
  • I have a law degree from
    Stanford. 
  • I started several companies that were
    venture-backed, the first was Coldwatt. 
  • I started my first asset management company as
    an investor in India and set up a permanent capital vehicle for
    investing. 
  • I partnered with Stephen M. Ross, Jeff Blau and
    Harvey Spievak and we turned around Citi
    Bike.  
  • Finally, I set up Footprint Coalition with
    Robert Downey Jr. 

[14:20] Greg, can you talk us
through impact investing and how it’s going affect our built
environment? 

  • Impact investing has historically gotten little
    bit of a negative connotation to it because in the capital markets
    people have always said there’s real investing and then there is
    impact investing.
  • A lot of these technologies that people used to
    think were expensive are now incredibly cheap.

[16:50] John, in your 20 years,
what major changes have you seen? 

  • We’ve had a wash out of clean tech, 1.0
    companies that weren’t sustainable without subsidy.
  • Technology is accelerating, the world looks
    nothing today, like it did 15 years ago.
  • The talent that has followed the capital that
    is flooding into this market is truly amazing.

[22:30] With technologies such
as Carbon Cure and cross-laminated timber, it is expensive for
buildings to put into practice and will the cost of these building
be higher? 

  • This technology is safer because these things
    are lighter and they’re easier to transport. You need smaller
    foundations for the buildings and they naturally are able to band
    with the wind and high-rise buildings. 
  • It’s cheaper, it’s better for the planets, your
    buildings go up faster and they weigh less. 
  • We’ve got to climb up a little bit of a
    mountain when it comes to training engineers and getting permitting
    done.

[24:50] John, you have
experience in alternative proteins, can you expand on that and give
an example of a technology in that space? 

  • People are really looking and examining the
    food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that’s
    compatible with the planet.
  • We look for investments in areas where through
    alternative methods of production, we can create more denser
    sources of the very things that we need to eat and that are
    healthier and just better alternatives.
  • Zero Acre Farms ferment in this case, vegetable
    oil and if you’re able to do that you have a much more energy dense
    way of producing that food without having to go and cut palm
    forest. 

[28:00] Is there something our
audience could be looking in to play their part in the future of
the built environment? 

  • The simplest thing you can do, inside buildings
    is turning your thermostat down.
  • What we need is to allow people to voice their
    opinions and give CEOs and the people who make policy decisions,
    the power and the space to change how they do business.

[30:55] The ‘LMRE’ part, Louisa
asks the guests to talk about; 

  • Lessons learned in your career
    • Greg:  Catch me if you Can and Inventing
      Anna, these people were to do outstanding things because they had
      the moxie and the guts to try. 
    • Greg: You fail at a 100% of the things, you
      don’t try.
    • John:  Never underestimate the power of
      human incentives.
  • Mention a person, product or
    service
    • Greg: Sealed.com
    • John: My wife
  • Rewarding parts of working in the
    space:
    • Greg: When you work on anything in climate tech
      it is quite rewarding inherently because the, technologies you’re
      working on are here to try and save the world.
    • John: I love the community
      feedback.   
  • What are you most Excited about for the future
    of the space?:
    • John: I drove a 1968 Volkswagen bus and this
      one was kitted with a salvaged Tesla engine.

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