Become a co-founder of a scalable climatetech startup through Carbon13’s 8-months Venture Builder Programme for the Climate Emergency. We support founders at all stages of start-up development, from the very beginning of ideas and co-founder teaming, through to pre-seed investment and scale.
We're looking for experienced entrepreneurs and venture catalysts with strong insights into emitting industries and a skillset that enables to scale quickly to become co-founders of startups that will adjust economies for a net zero future. With us you will find the right technical cofounder and the best possible basis for building a successful climatetech start-up.
Our mission: Save the climate and aim big - before it's too late
Carbon13 is the Venture Builder for the Climate Emergency. We are laser-focused on supporting founders solving for the climate, and the climate only. To do that, we ask every new founder on our Venture Builder to aim big, to build a solution with the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gases) by 10 million tonnes per year - and all our support is designed to help you reach that figure.
"I’ve always loved the hustle of entrepreneurship. Climate tech entrepreneurship is the icing on the cake. It’s doing what I love to make the world a better place for everyone else. For climate tech to have maximum impact, it needs a diversity of founders who represent all set to benefit from it."
Sioned Owen – Founder and Chief Product Officer at Unbound Energy from cohort 3.
Why participating?
We provide a shortcut to meet a lot of great science professionals to be tech co-founders with whom you can create extraordinary climatetech solutions.
Climate doesnt have time for false starts, begin your entrepreneurship journey the right way with us, avoid the dead ends or incremental impacts.
We train you deep carbon knowledge that will enable you to build your startup in a way that climate tech VCs will need to invest.
“One of the unique things that we are doing at Carbon13 is we are not expecting our founders to outsource this knowledge, we are very much training all of our founders, so they have access to the latest tools and techniques, so that they can assess their carbon mitigation potential, understand how to communicate it and of course be transparent in how they are measuring it.”
-- Carbon13 Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer Dr. Nicky Dee
Flexible programme framework
Apart from nine in-person days in Berlin/Cambridge, you can do the programme from anywhere in the world. The rest of the programme is delivered remotely.
It is very important to us to make clear that you can also be a successful climatetech founder if you have children, care for elderly relatives, do voluntary work or have other obligations. We can't tackle the climate crisis if we don't involve multiple life circumstances on the entrepreneurial path. Our Venture Builder is desgined on that principle.
“There was people from all over the place. All different walks of life, ages, backgrounds and I think this was one of the great things that Carbon13 was able to bring together for me.”
Natalia Dorfman, CEO and co-founder of KITA from cohort 2 in Cambridge
From Food to Construction to Energy to New Materials to Carbon Capture
Carbon13 is sector agnostic so founders can explore ideas in any emitting industry. We tailor our support accordingly for science-based, deeptech or hardware ventures - whether it's support on go-to-market strategy, IP protection, fundraising or team building, you'll be accessing a brains trust of hundreds of experts, peers, and partners.
More than 90 ventures launched through the programme and 46 ventures received our pre-seed investment, a total of £5 Mio since 2021. More than two-thirds of these have already secured follow-on funding.
Our ventures are working on technologies with great emission-saving potential, such as carbon negative concrete, methane capture, bioplastics, precision fermentation, quantum computing for materials discovery, green ammonia, green hydrogen, biochar or direct air capture.
You can view our portfolio of ventures at www.carbonthirteen.com/our-portfolio.
Working on a climate tech idea already?
The VC funding route is currently the faster and often surer route for launching complex projects with a high decarbonisation impact, which is why Carbon13 has been designed to give your venture the best possible entry point into this route. Our support is tailored to science-based startups with the ambition to reduce CO2e emissions by 10 million tonnes per year.
If you do not have an idea, you will either be supported to find an idea to develop which can significantly reduce emissions, or join a cofounder/team with strong insights into an emitting industry and together execute the implementation of their validated customer pain points.
How does Carbon13 work?
On Carbon13 you are building a climate tech startup as part of a cohort of 80 founders. Our programme is designed to amplify the work you're doing, because the planet doesn't have time to waste on theory or incremental ideas. This is what the three phases look like in which the programme is divided.
-Phase 1: Teaming & Ideation
You will meet many inspiring people and finally decide on one or more co-founders to form a team. It is up to you whether you put the idea or the personal connection first.
-Phase 2: Validation
Together with our Domain Experts and your personal Entrepreneur in Residence your team will intensely work on:
Team strengthening | Carbon intelligence | Rapid iterations of concepts | Business model forming | Prototype testing | Intellectual property | Customer development | Stakeholder development | Behaviour change | Governance | Venture incorporation
At the end of the second phase, we invest in a selection of the teams that convinced us the most with their concept. With these teams, we enter the third phase.
Don't worry, if your team doesn't make it, your entrepreneurial journey doesn't end and neither does our support.
-Phase 3: Acceleration
Your team will use phase 3 to focus on market, product, business model and strategy to prepare the venture for further seed-stage investment.
We also help you look at scaling strategies, managing growth pains and developing a funding strategy. We guarantee you many conversations with relevant (impact) investors from our network who can't wait to get to know your venture.
Learn More
We are running a series of webinars available to everyone who would like to learn more about Carbon13 and how to build startups with breakthrough solutions for the climate. Our next one can be found here.
Carbon13 in numbers:
- £9 million investment across 71 ventures since 2021
- 64% of the ventures we have invested in have a female founder
- 80 outstanding cofounders on every cohort
- 50% have a strong scientific or technical background, 50% are experienced commercial cofounders
- 100s of domain experts, carbon experts, entrepreneurs in residence provide individual support
- 10 million tonnes of reducing CO2e emissions per year. When at scale. This is the benchmark.
We caused it. Let's fix it.
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