25. Mitigating climate change with venture capital: A conversation with Wavemaker Impact’s Steve Melhuish

The Venture

The founding partner of a Southeast Asian VC fund explains his company’s global ambitions to create economic opportunity, promote sustainability, and reduce carbon emissions.

Human activity began altering the climate in the mid-19th century, when the industrial revolution began unleashing unprecedented amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But an innovative new VC climate tech venture builder is trying to mitigate some of the ensuing catastrophic climate change with a laudable and lofty goal: reducing 10 percent of global carbon emissions by 2035. Wavemaker Impact plans to reach this goal by funding what it calls 100x100 companies, sustainability start-ups able to mitigate 100 megatons of emissions in 10 years while generating $100 million in revenue. Wavemaker Impact founding partner Steve Melhuish sat down with McKinsey’s Tomas Laboutka to discuss the genesis of the venture, why it chose Southeast Asia as the first of 15 global hubs, and why business model innovation is sometimes more important than technological innovation.

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