Gustaf Alströmer: commitment

Transcript context

…Awesome. All right. I have probably a hundred other questions I want to ask along these lines, but I want to make sure we get to another topic which I know is near and dear to your heart, which is climate tech. So my understanding is you're instrumental in pushing YC to focus on climate tech as a focus area. I believe you led the charge on their initial request for startups I think is the term where you all put out like, "Here's who we want to fund." I think you've mentioned you funded a couple dozen climate tech companies and the last few batches, is that all generally correct? Gustaf Alströmer First, request for startup was actually Sam Altman and a few other folks that was kind of that one who drove that. The second one that we wrote into our actual request for startup, I wrote that one, was carbon removal specifically focused on. And then naturally the people that apply with climate tech ideas get in my reading queue of applications and I read them and I interview them. Not all of them, but many of them. I think today we funded over 130 plus companies that are focused on climate tech in some way or another. Wow. Gustaf Alströmer The trend line is that really ambitious people who want to start companies in this area. Some of them want to start the companies because the climate tech is the number one problem, but they don't view this as a nonprofit. Now I want to really make this as a distinction. People somehow think that starting a climate tech company is doing good for the world, but it probably doesn't have a lot more than that. The truth is that the world have decided. Because climate is one of the biggest problems that we're facing, if not the biggest, we've decided that we are going to stop doing the things that we're doing and we're going to change our entire energy system and change all the things that we do that emits carbon. And we have just decided, governments have decided this. The question is how it's going to happen, but this decision has been made. In that transition, we're talking about trillions of dollars of money moving from things that cause climate change to things that don't. The scale of this transition is not something we've seen recently. Like software is not that big in comparison. It actually is much smaller than this transition. So I think if you look at something like Tesla, which now has, I don't know, $600, $700 billion market cap, that's just one company that currently provides a couple percent of all the cars in the United States, new cars sold. And that is already one of the biggest companies in the world and has now the biggest, richest person in the world. We've only seen the beginning of this. The economical motivation be behind the decisions that people are making are just as strong as I want to fix climate change because this is just a really good business. This change have attracted a large set of software founders that you and me know that listen to this podcast that said, "My skills is relevant here. There are a lot of things that I can do. And if not, I can learn those things." But most importantly, the skills of working for startups is really, really critical to join this transition. A lot of them have started companies or joining companies. I still get an email every week from some accomplished software engineer who asked me "Which software companies should I work for to fix climate change?" And I've gotten those emails for two or three years now. This thing just attracts really, really ambitious people. It's not stopping. It's accelerating. anies should I work for to fix climate change?" And I've gotten those emails for two or three years now. This thing just attracts really, really ambitious people. It's not stopping. It's accelerating. I feel lucky to work with so many of these great founders because they are uniquely interesting people.…

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