![]() Steve Melhuish: The region where we operate here in Southeast Asia is home to about 600 million people. How are the tides shifting in Southeast Asia? We both know how many cities are predicted to be under water by 2030 or 2050, and yet, the percentage of the capital allocation is not matching the requirements. Tomas Laboutka: What does that look like in this region? There’s a disproportionate correlation between the impact of the climate crisis and how much money we’ve historically seen going into Southeast Asia. ![]() Investors seem to be increasingly focused on the sustainability space, which is encouraging. Steve Melhuish: Everyone talks about the so-called funding winter, but we haven’t seen evidence of that yet. Tomas Laboutka: That’s really encouraging, and congratulations for the portfolio being able to raise funds in this climate. In Southeast Asia alone, it will require a $2.7 trillion investment, so I’m seeing a move in the right direction. It feels like in the past 12 months or so, the economy has finally woken up to this green transition and the investment that’s going to be required to support it. We’re seeing VC players moving into that space, as well as established climate and sustainability investors. But the businesses I see investing in the region are fast-growing, delivering not only sustainable outcomes but also profitable economic outcomes. Clearly, there are some elements of the industry where greenwashing is still rife. Steve Melhuish: I think we’re already seeing it. Why does climate sustainability matter from an investor’s perspective, and when do you expect we’ll move past all the greenwashing and see a fundamental shift to differentiation and real value capture? Tomas Laboutka: Let me jump in straight away. Steve Melhuish: Great to be on the show, Tomas. Tomas Laboutka: Steve, great to have you on the show. ![]() He also cofounded Wavemaker Impact, a climate tech venture build fund, which is cofounding and building a portfolio of 100x100 companies, each with the potential to generate $100 million in revenue and abate 100 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions over a ten-year period. Over the past four years, Steve has focused on climate and social impact, investing in and helping over 25 green-tech start-ups. Steve is an entrepreneur who has built companies in Europe and Asia and is cofounder of PropertyGuru, a property technology unicorn listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In this episode of The Venture, we share a conversation with Steve Melhuish. In each episode, we cut through the noise to bring practical advice on how leaders can build successful businesses from scratch. For more conversations on venture building, subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Īndrew Roth: From Leap by McKinsey, our business-building practice, I’m Andrew Roth, and welcome to The Venture, a series featuring conversations with legendary venture builders about how to design, launch, and scale new businesses. In this episode of The Venture, 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.Īn edited transcript of the podcast follows. 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 ten years while generating $100 million in revenue. But an innovative new venture capital (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. Human activity began altering the climate in the mid-19th century, when the industrial revolution began unleashing unprecedented amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |