Anay Shah / Stepchange

Anay Shah is Co-Founder and GP of Stepchange, an early stage climate tech fund writing checks at pre-seed and seed.

Anay and his co-founder Ben aren’t career climate investors. Anay spent nearly two decades building companies: State Department working across 15 emerging markets, selling solar lanterns in rural India, scaling Remitly from 10 to 400 people, running a 250-person team at Tala. Ben sold two startups, one to Google and one to Stripe, before leaving to figure out climate.

Our conversation gets into what surprised them about climate investing. The community is unusually collaborative. “There isn’t as much pointy elbows of securing the deal and pushing everyone out. If these founders are gonna succeed against the headwinds in the macro environment, we need the best talent on the cap table and all hands on deck.” Because everyone feels the existential threat, investors pull each other into rounds rather than compete.

Their fund structure plays into this. They don’t lead, don’t price, don’t take board seats. They raised $7M+ total with 100+ LPs who are tech execs and energy CEOs that act as scouts. Bain Capital came in as anchor.

We also talk about their thesis: 60% of greenhouse gas reductions can come through technologies that exist today. The problem is adoption and deployment. While other funds invest in hard-to-abate sectors like nuclear fusion and sustainable aviation fuel, they’re focused on software solutions that have large customer demand today. “We’re looking at asset-light companies and products that have immediate commercial pull in the market. Technologies that don’t require government incentives.”

Full episode below, or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts