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John Doerr on Sustainable Investments (Podcast) · Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: M This is Mesters in Business with Very Renaults on
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Speaker 1: Bluebird Radio. This week on the podcast, I have yes
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Speaker 1: an extra special guest, John dor of the famed venture
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Speaker 1: capital firm Climate Perkins UH is here to discuss all
0:20
Speaker 1: things venture capital and climate related. He has a new
0:23
Speaker 1: book out that's really quite interesting. We talk about everything
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Speaker 1: from crypto to Tesla UH to beyond Meat, to all
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Speaker 1: of the opportunities that exist in order to help moderate
0:40
Speaker 1: and reduce carbon in the atmosphere, and the potential climate
0:44
Speaker 1: crisis that awaits us if we don't change our ways.
0:48
Speaker 1: So Dora is a venture capitalist. He invests money in
0:51
Speaker 1: order to generated return. These aren't just finger wagging b
0:55
Speaker 1: green for green sake. He describes their venture fund, which
1:00
Speaker 1: they put nearly a billion dollars into it ten years
1:03
Speaker 1: ago and now it's worth over three billion UH. That's
1:06
Speaker 1: how successful the returns have been. He describes the climate
1:11
Speaker 1: crisis as a multi trillion dollar opportunity. Yes, we need
1:15
Speaker 1: to do something in order to make sure we leave
1:17
Speaker 1: our children and grandchildren a habitable earth. At the same time,
1:22
Speaker 1: there is a massive opportunity in everything from food to
1:26
Speaker 1: electrical grid to transportation, on and on and on. It
1:31
Speaker 1: really is quite fascinating. Somebody like him sees the world
1:35
Speaker 1: from both perspectives. From the hey, we want to make
1:39
Speaker 1: sure we have a habitable place to live, but he
1:41
Speaker 1: can't take off his VC hat, and he sees just
1:45
Speaker 1: massive opportunities to do well by doing good. Uh. Really
1:52
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation with no further ado. My interview with
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Speaker 1: Clara Perkins John Dor. This is Mesters in Business with
2:03
Speaker 1: Very Results on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this
2:09
Speaker 1: week is John Dor. He is the fame venture capitalist
2:13
Speaker 1: known for his work at Klina Perkins, Coalfield and Buyers.
2:17
Speaker 1: The venture capital firm operates thirty two funds. They've made
2:20
Speaker 1: more than six seventy five investments, including such early stage
2:26
Speaker 1: fundings for companies like Google, Twitter, Amazon, and too many
2:31
Speaker 1: others to list. Door still holds a substantial steak in
2:35
Speaker 1: his initial investment in Google. His most recent book is
2:39
Speaker 1: Speed and Scale, An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis. Now,
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Speaker 1: John Door, Welcome to Bloomberg. It's a thrilled to be
2:49
Speaker 1: here with you. Very thank you, and I'm thrilled to
2:51
Speaker 1: talk to you. Let's let's go back to the early
2:54
Speaker 1: parts of your career. Before we start to uh get
2:56
Speaker 1: get current, you originally joined into else because you couldn't
3:01
Speaker 1: land a gig as a venture capitalist. To tell us
3:04
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. So I came to Silicon
3:07
Speaker 1: Valley with no job, no place to live in incidentally,
3:11
Speaker 1: no girlfriend. The lady I had been dating decided I
3:16
Speaker 1: was too persistent and dumped me. So I, Uh, my
3:22
Speaker 1: real goal was to win my way back into her
3:25
Speaker 1: heart and to join with some friends to start a company.
3:28
Speaker 1: I wanted to start a company, and I heard the
3:31
Speaker 1: venture capital had something to do with that. So I
3:34
Speaker 1: cold called all the venture capitalists and some of them
3:38
Speaker 1: returned my call in the mid seventies, and uh, they
3:45
Speaker 1: looked at my experience and uniformly concluded that I should
3:48
Speaker 1: go get a real job. That was their advice. I
3:52
Speaker 1: remember Dick Cramley said, we just backed small new chip
3:57
Speaker 1: company called Intel. Why don't you of view for a
4:00
Speaker 1: job there? And I did, and uh lo and behold,
4:06
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to me, my former girlfriend in Holland now and
4:10
Speaker 1: Holland Door had gotten a job at Intel. I got
4:14
Speaker 1: a job there, and when I arrived at first summer day, uh,
4:20
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see her there, and she was
4:22
Speaker 1: not happy to see me, so uh it took the
4:28
Speaker 1: rest of the summer to put our relationship back together again.
4:31
Speaker 1: But I loved Intel. It was a dynamic place. They
4:34
Speaker 1: just invented the microprocessor, and I seriously considered abandoning my
4:40
Speaker 1: graduate education in business as it turns out, to just
4:45
Speaker 1: stay at Intel. But I returned there after graduating and
4:48
Speaker 1: worked for I guess four or five years helping democratized
4:55
Speaker 1: computing as to get microprocessors used in everything from traffic
4:59
Speaker 1: lights to defibrillators to nuclear residents, magnetic imaging systems. And uh,
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Speaker 1: it was all because I've wanted to be part of new,
5:13
Speaker 1: rapidly growing companies. How did you work you away from
5:16
Speaker 1: Intel to venture investing? How would you find your way
5:20
Speaker 1: to client a Perkins? Well? I got a phone call
5:22
Speaker 1: one day from a friend who said, Hey, John, I
5:25
Speaker 1: just finished interviewing uh for a job at a ventry
5:30
Speaker 1: capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield and Buyers. It sounded to
5:34
Speaker 1: me like a law firm. I really didn't know them,
5:37
Speaker 1: but he said you should go interview there because what
5:41
Speaker 1: they want to add to their team is someone a younger,
5:46
Speaker 1: younger professional with a strong technical background, a good network
5:50
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley, and a passion for startups. I think
5:56
Speaker 1: you and they would make a great fit, so I didn't.
6:01
Speaker 1: They ran an ad actually in the Wall Street Journal
6:03
Speaker 1: for this position, which I didn't see, but I called up,
6:07
Speaker 1: I interviewed, and and got a job. There is an
6:13
Speaker 1: entry level professional, a gopher. I did everything, carried people's bags,
6:18
Speaker 1: I read business plans. Uh. But there was one important
6:23
Speaker 1: condition that I had, and that is I made them
6:26
Speaker 1: promise that they would back me with my friends in
6:30
Speaker 1: starting a company if I went to work there, because honestly,
6:33
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested in venture capital, wanted to be an
6:37
Speaker 1: early eighties entrepreneur, and they had. They agreed to that
6:43
Speaker 1: and pointed out that they had backed other young partners
6:47
Speaker 1: at Kleiner in writing business plans. Bob Swanson had written
6:50
Speaker 1: the business plan for Genentech that led to the whole
6:54
Speaker 1: biotech industry, and Jimmy Travig had done the same thing
6:57
Speaker 1: with Tandem computers. My current partner, Brooke Buyers, as a
7:03
Speaker 1: young partner at Kleiner, wrote the business plan for for
7:06
Speaker 1: hybrid Tech. So Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins were unusual,
7:12
Speaker 1: and I'd even say mythic or epic figures, and that
7:17
Speaker 1: they had technical backgrounds. They had started their own companies
7:20
Speaker 1: and they felt that was part of what their venture
7:24
Speaker 1: capital firm ought to do. So here's the key question,
7:27
Speaker 1: how come you never left Kleiner Perkins. Why didn't you
7:31
Speaker 1: launch your own start up? Well, I did. They backed
7:34
Speaker 1: me in doing it. The first was one called Silicon Compilers.
7:38
Speaker 1: I became the full time CEO founder of that with
7:42
Speaker 1: Caltech professor Carver meat H. Then as I've worked with
7:48
Speaker 1: companies like Compact and Sun Microsystems that were growing really rapidly,
7:53
Speaker 1: I realized I was not at all qualified to advise
7:57
Speaker 1: these entrepreneurs. So I took another month leave of absence
8:01
Speaker 1: from Kleiner to run the desktop division of Sun, and
8:07
Speaker 1: almost left Kleiner permanently to do that. But and I
8:11
Speaker 1: wanted to start a family, and she said, you know,
8:14
Speaker 1: you're doing this some thing and keeping involved in Kleiner.
8:18
Speaker 1: It's just not going to work. We have to make
8:20
Speaker 1: some choices here, and so I left my operating role
8:27
Speaker 1: at its son, but never gave up an interest in
8:31
Speaker 1: starting new companies and did that again at a later
8:34
Speaker 1: time with a company called at Home. You may remember
8:40
Speaker 1: that they standardized and commercialized the cable modem to access
8:47
Speaker 1: the Internet. Before the at home venture, access to the
8:51
Speaker 1: Internet was really very slow, and cable modems swept the
8:56
Speaker 1: United States, and our company was key in making that happen.
9:02
Speaker 1: So so I like this quote from you. If you
9:06
Speaker 1: can invent the future, the next best thing is to
9:09
Speaker 1: fund it, And so I guess that helps to explain
9:12
Speaker 1: your move from sun Over back to Klina Perkins exactly.
9:18
Speaker 1: You know, it was Alan Kay, the chief scientists at Apple,
9:25
Speaker 1: who said the best way to predict the future is
9:28
Speaker 1: to invent it. And well, I've made some inventions, their
9:33
Speaker 1: modest My my better fortune has been to find amazing entrepreneurs,
9:39
Speaker 1: identify them, and then help fund and accelerate their success.
9:45
Speaker 1: Quite interesting, Amazon, Netscape, applied material Citrix into a genentech
9:50
Speaker 1: e a sports compact, Slack, Uber, Square, Spotify, robin Hood.
9:55
Speaker 1: That is just an amazing, amazing list of startups that
10:00
Speaker 1: you guys were fairly early investors in. Any of them
10:03
Speaker 1: stand out as as uniquely memorable to you? Well to
10:09
Speaker 1: two of the standouts have got to be Amazon and Google.
10:14
Speaker 1: Now alphabet because what are they there there two of
10:19
Speaker 1: the four or five most valuable companies in the world,
10:22
Speaker 1: and I think both of them have profoundly changed the
10:26
Speaker 1: way that we live, communicate, educate, and form conduct commerce
10:33
Speaker 1: see the world. They both what they both have in
10:38
Speaker 1: common is exceptional founders and really strong management teams who
10:44
Speaker 1: have a sense of urgency and a focus on either
10:49
Speaker 1: large new markets or large existing markets that deserved and
10:55
Speaker 1: have benefited from disruption. So I remember when I was
11:00
Speaker 1: first offered a position at Kleiner Perkins. I told them
11:03
Speaker 1: that I thought it was kind of unfair that they
11:06
Speaker 1: would pay me to do the job that I would
11:08
Speaker 1: pay them for the privilege of working with these amazing
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Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and founders. So when you're thinking about putting money
11:15
Speaker 1: into Amazon in the mid nineties or Google in the
11:20
Speaker 1: late nineties, at any point in that process, are you thinking, oh, sure,
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Speaker 1: these can become two trillion dollar companies soon. Well, I
11:30
Speaker 1: had no really good idea how big they could be,
11:33
Speaker 1: so um I put the question to Jeff Bezos and
11:38
Speaker 1: his response was, well, John, I don't know, but we're
11:42
Speaker 1: going to get big fast. At the time, I kicked
11:46
Speaker 1: up something of a firestorm by proclaiming that the Internet
11:50
Speaker 1: had been under hyped. It might be the largest legal
11:54
Speaker 1: creation of wealth in our our lifetimes. But I was
11:57
Speaker 1: more clear and explicit with Larry Page when I met
12:01
Speaker 1: with him and Sergey, and I asked Larry how big
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Speaker 1: Google would get. I'll never forget this, Verry, he responded
12:11
Speaker 1: to me without missing a beat, ten billion. I said,
12:19
Speaker 1: Just to test myself, I said, surely you mean market capitalization,
12:23
Speaker 1: don't you. He said, no, John, I mean revenues. We're
12:28
Speaker 1: just beginning in the field of search, and you cannot
12:32
Speaker 1: imagine how much better it's going to get over time.
12:37
Speaker 1: And sure enough he was. He was more than right
12:40
Speaker 1: to say the very least. So so let's talk a
12:42
Speaker 1: bit about Google. You're known for introducing to both Larry
12:47
Speaker 1: and Serge your concept of okay RS, objectives and key results.
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Speaker 1: What was the impact of that on Google? How did
12:56
Speaker 1: they respond to to your suggestion on come up with
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Speaker 1: objectives and come up with ways to measure your progress. So,
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Speaker 1: for everyone in your audience, objectives and key Results or
13:10
Speaker 1: okay RS is a goal setting system that Andy Grove
13:14
Speaker 1: invented an Intel And that's because in the semiconductor industry,
13:18
Speaker 1: I'm a refugee from the semiconductor industry. You've got to
13:21
Speaker 1: get tens of thousands of people to get lines that
13:24
Speaker 1: are a millionth of a meter one micron wide exactly right,
13:28
Speaker 1: or nothing works, the chips fail. So you need exceptional discipline,
13:34
Speaker 1: attention to detail, focus and execution. And so Andy came
13:39
Speaker 1: up with this system. I was so enamored of it
13:42
Speaker 1: when I left Intel. I took it everywhere I went
13:45
Speaker 1: from not nonprofits to startups to large companies. Uh, the
13:49
Speaker 1: Gates Foundation in the early days, for example, how they
13:54
Speaker 1: they were. They were very large nonprofit startup, an important
13:59
Speaker 1: one of the planet. So I took Andy Groves system
14:03
Speaker 1: to Larry and Sergey, the founders of Google in the
14:06
Speaker 1: very early days, and I went through it with them
14:08
Speaker 1: and at the end of it asked them, so, guys,
14:11
Speaker 1: what do you think would you use this in in
14:15
Speaker 1: growing Google? And Larry it was, had no comment whatsoever.
14:21
Speaker 1: But Sergey, who was more rebulliant. I'd like to tell you,
14:25
Speaker 1: Barry that he said, we love this, We're going to
14:28
Speaker 1: adopt it poleheartedly. Well, the truth of the matter is
14:32
Speaker 1: what he said was, we don't have any better way
14:34
Speaker 1: to manage this Google company, so we'll give it a try,
14:38
Speaker 1: which I took as a ringing endorsement because what's happened
14:41
Speaker 1: since then to this day, every Googler every quarter writes
14:46
Speaker 1: down her objectives and key results and publishes them for
14:50
Speaker 1: the entire company to see. And interestingly, they've never leaked.
14:54
Speaker 1: So there's a hundred and forty Googlers who are doing
14:58
Speaker 1: this four times a year. They're graded, but at the
15:02
Speaker 1: end of each quarter they're swept aside because they're not
15:05
Speaker 1: used for bonuses or promotions. They serve a higher purpose,
15:09
Speaker 1: and that's a collective social contract to get everybody focused
15:14
Speaker 1: and aligned and and committed and tracking their progress to
15:19
Speaker 1: stretch for almost impossible to achieve goals. And I'm telling
15:24
Speaker 1: you this story because the same system that Andy Grove
15:28
Speaker 1: invented has now spread pretty broadly through the technology and
15:33
Speaker 1: other sectors of the economy. And it's at the heart
15:36
Speaker 1: of this plan that we have called speed and Scale
15:40
Speaker 1: to deal with the climate crisis. Quite quite interesting. I'm
15:44
Speaker 1: I'm going to stick with some of the early investments
15:48
Speaker 1: that you made and and ask a really broad general question,
15:52
Speaker 1: how likely is it that a company you made an
15:55
Speaker 1: early stage investment in ends up looking like the company
15:59
Speaker 1: you thought you were vesting in. Meaning how often do
16:03
Speaker 1: companies iterate or pivot into something totally different from what
16:07
Speaker 1: you thought you were getting involved with. Well, I was
16:12
Speaker 1: gonna say not often if it's totally different, But if
16:17
Speaker 1: it's meaningfully different, that happens all the time. And that's
16:21
Speaker 1: why in the venture capital work that we do, it's
16:26
Speaker 1: so important to back to find fund and and build
16:30
Speaker 1: a relationship with the right people because the people in
16:35
Speaker 1: the quality of the team is going to affect how
16:38
Speaker 1: they pivot, how they adapt their their business plan to
16:43
Speaker 1: changing markets, changing technologies, changing opportunity. Very interesting. So you
16:49
Speaker 1: mentioned Amazon and Google as just uniquely memorable startups. What
16:56
Speaker 1: about some memorable ones that you thought would work out
16:59
Speaker 1: that didn't or I know vcs love to talk about,
17:04
Speaker 1: Look how silly we are. We had an opportunity to
17:06
Speaker 1: invest in X and we passed and now excess fabulously successful.
17:11
Speaker 1: What stands out in that space, Well, the standout in
17:15
Speaker 1: that space is the bad decision we made to invest
17:19
Speaker 1: in Fisker instead of in Tesla. And at at the
17:25
Speaker 1: time they had similar strategies, which was to enter the
17:30
Speaker 1: electric vehicle market with high end luxury, pretty expensive car
17:37
Speaker 1: and then to drive the costs of that vehicle down
17:40
Speaker 1: over time. Both companies were struggling to raise money. One
17:46
Speaker 1: of them had experienced the executive from the automobile industry,
17:52
Speaker 1: fundamentally a designer by the name of Henrik Fisker, as
17:57
Speaker 1: its founder and CEO. The other had Evon Musk, who
18:01
Speaker 1: had no automo industry experience. But I was determined to
18:06
Speaker 1: reinvent every part of the automotive car, viewing it more
18:11
Speaker 1: as a machine to run software than a collection of
18:16
Speaker 1: of subsystems procured from the automobile industry. We made the
18:20
Speaker 1: wrong call, and the rest is history. That that Fisker,
18:24
Speaker 1: that first Fisker car, was just a gorgeous design, and
18:28
Speaker 1: at the time, Tesla was taking old Lotus convertibles and
18:34
Speaker 1: filling them with laptop batteries. Between the two, it's pretty
18:37
Speaker 1: easy to see how the Fisker Um opportunity really looked
18:43
Speaker 1: more intriguing than Tesla did way back when. How typical
18:48
Speaker 1: is that for the world of venture It happens all
18:51
Speaker 1: the time, all the time. That's what makes the job
18:55
Speaker 1: of finding funding and accelerating the success of entrepreneurs hard,
19:00
Speaker 1: to say the very least. So there was just a
19:03
Speaker 1: new report that came out and said renewable energy in
19:06
Speaker 1: the US has quadrupled over the past decade. So we're
19:11
Speaker 1: all good, right, there's nothing else to worry about with
19:13
Speaker 1: the climate. Oh I wish that was true. No. I
19:18
Speaker 1: came to this book, this project, this passion back in
19:24
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when Al Gore's movie You Remember
19:26
Speaker 1: an Inconvenient Truth Shore and I took my family and
19:32
Speaker 1: friends to see it, and we came back for a
19:34
Speaker 1: dinner conversation, and uh, I went around the table to
19:38
Speaker 1: see what people thought. When it came turned for my
19:43
Speaker 1: sixteen year old daughter Mary door, she said, I'm scared
19:49
Speaker 1: and I'm angry. He said, Dad, your generation created this problem.
19:54
Speaker 1: You better fix it, and very I was speechless. I
19:58
Speaker 1: had no idea what So I set out with partners
20:03
Speaker 1: of my Kleiner Perkins to understand the extent of the
20:06
Speaker 1: climate crisis, even hired Al Gore as a partner, and
20:11
Speaker 1: over time, over three funds invested a third up to
20:16
Speaker 1: a half of the funds total about a billion dollars
20:20
Speaker 1: in some seventy climate ventures, most of which failed. And
20:26
Speaker 1: in fact, it's hard, it's very hard to grow a
20:29
Speaker 1: climate tech or green tech venture. It's pretty lonely in
20:33
Speaker 1: the early days of doing that, and we almost lost
20:36
Speaker 1: all of our investments. But we stood by these entrepreneurs
20:40
Speaker 1: and they produced companies like Beyond Meat or nd Phase
20:44
Speaker 1: or the Nest smart thermostats, and today are are worth
20:50
Speaker 1: some three billion dollars. But that was then. This is now.
20:55
Speaker 1: I think what's important about now is we need way
21:00
Speaker 1: greater ambition and speed two avert catastrophic irreversible climate crisis.
21:09
Speaker 1: I mean, the evidence is all around us. We've we've
21:12
Speaker 1: got devastating hurricanes and floods and wildfires and and uh
21:19
Speaker 1: ten million climate refugees. H The I p c C
21:26
Speaker 1: says that if we don't reduce our carbon emissions by
21:32
Speaker 1: by fifty we will see global warming overshoot by more
21:40
Speaker 1: than two degrees celsius nearly four degrees fahrenheit. And the
21:45
Speaker 1: Paris Accords, which were agreed to in twenty if we
21:52
Speaker 1: were achieving them, would still cause us to land head
21:56
Speaker 1: around two degrees celsius. The bad news is we're not
22:00
Speaker 1: close to achieving any of those schools. So the latest
22:03
Speaker 1: report from the u N said this is a code
22:07
Speaker 1: read problem. And and I also see all problems as opportunities.
22:13
Speaker 1: Very I think this, this is going to be the
22:16
Speaker 1: greatest opportunity, human opportunity, social opportunity, economic opportunity of the century.
22:25
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about that opportunity. You're
22:28
Speaker 1: talking the book about cutting emissions in half by and
22:32
Speaker 1: net zero by, and you reference six main areas of
22:39
Speaker 1: attack transportation, the electrical grid, food, protecting nature, cleaning up industry,
22:47
Speaker 1: and then removing carbon from the atmosphere. Let's let's talk
22:51
Speaker 1: a little bit about each of those, because they're all
22:53
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. We were talking about Tesla. How quickly do
22:58
Speaker 1: we think that we're going to be passed internal combustion
23:02
Speaker 1: engines with a fully electrified transportation network. Well, that's a
23:07
Speaker 1: great question, and we can. I want to put this
23:10
Speaker 1: in context. Every year we dumped fifty nine gigatons of
23:16
Speaker 1: carbon greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere as if it's
23:21
Speaker 1: some kind of free and open sewer. And so the
23:25
Speaker 1: book and the research behind it has built a plan
23:29
Speaker 1: in electrifying transportation and the other five for which each
23:33
Speaker 1: of the objectives has three to five key results. These
23:39
Speaker 1: are HANDI Grove Intel style, very measurable, specific steps in transportation.
23:47
Speaker 1: It says that electric vehicles will achieve parity price, performance
23:52
Speaker 1: parity with combustion engines. In the US, it says one
23:58
Speaker 1: of two new personal vehicles purchased worldwide are electric vehicles
24:03
Speaker 1: by So, what I'm trying to say is this is
24:07
Speaker 1: a global plan. We've seen some nations of the world,
24:11
Speaker 1: some states like California, say they're going to ban the
24:14
Speaker 1: sale of internal combustion vehicles. And there's also key results
24:19
Speaker 1: for buses, for trucks, for miles driven, for airplanes in maritime.
24:24
Speaker 1: And this whole plan is available for free. You can
24:28
Speaker 1: download it at the website speed and scale dot com.
24:33
Speaker 1: So it's it's pragmatic, it's ambitious, it's almost unachievable. It's
24:39
Speaker 1: a total of fifty key results for the world numeric
24:44
Speaker 1: time bound, and we've got to get after them all
24:47
Speaker 1: at once. We can't take turns. We're not going to
24:50
Speaker 1: achieve all of these very It's uh. But if we
24:55
Speaker 1: fall short on one, we can make ground faster in others. Now,
24:59
Speaker 1: I don't want to intimidate people by how big, how tall?
25:05
Speaker 1: In order this is The book also includes thirty five
25:10
Speaker 1: stories from entrepreneurs and policymakers and leaders, innovators, leaders of
25:17
Speaker 1: indigenous tribes that describing their own words, their struggle, their successes,
25:25
Speaker 1: their their journey. H two two Change the World. One
25:31
Speaker 1: of my favorites is of across country team who got
25:35
Speaker 1: together to position to petition their their school district to
25:39
Speaker 1: go to cleaner buses. They were sick entirely running behind
25:43
Speaker 1: diesel buses with polluted air. And it shows that something
25:48
Speaker 1: that I deeply believe, and that is we're fast running
25:52
Speaker 1: out of time. And and so yes, we need individuals
25:57
Speaker 1: to take individual action to eat less meat, use photovoltake solar,
26:04
Speaker 1: and buy an electric vehicle if you can afford it.
26:07
Speaker 1: But I've really written this book for the leader inside
26:11
Speaker 1: of everyone, their inner leader, and that's their ability to
26:14
Speaker 1: influence others to act as a group, like this cross
26:19
Speaker 1: country team of runners in Maryland who uh got their
26:24
Speaker 1: schools are strict to adopt electric buses. But the book
26:27
Speaker 1: shows is that we can get this job done. But
26:32
Speaker 1: as I said, we're faster running out of time. So
26:34
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about that. By the way.
26:36
Speaker 1: By the way, the bus discussions in the book are
26:39
Speaker 1: quite fascinating, not just because China leapt out to a
26:44
Speaker 1: big lead and have been very aggressively replacing diesel buses
26:49
Speaker 1: with electric buses. But you helped fund an entrepreneur in
26:53
Speaker 1: the US that's gone around and has done a great
26:56
Speaker 1: job getting cities to purchase electric buses. The transportation grid
27:03
Speaker 1: is clearly an issue, but as you point out, that's
27:06
Speaker 1: only six gigatons. A bigger issue is the grid, the
27:10
Speaker 1: electric grid, which produces twenty one gigatons of emissions. Tell
27:15
Speaker 1: us about what we need to do to decarbonize the
27:18
Speaker 1: electrical grid. You're you're right. If we move to electric
27:24
Speaker 1: vehicles but we still use coal to generate electricity, we
27:28
Speaker 1: won't have reduced emissions. And the biggest opportunity is to
27:33
Speaker 1: decarbonize the grid and and and that's to take today's
27:37
Speaker 1: twenty four gigatons of emissions mostly from coal also natural
27:43
Speaker 1: gas to generate electricity, take that twenty four down to
27:47
Speaker 1: three giga tons. So the first key result, the biggest
27:51
Speaker 1: of them, is to get our electricity from zero emission
27:56
Speaker 1: sources globally by and get it down to get an
28:05
Speaker 1: get that would save us sixteen and a half gigatons.
28:11
Speaker 1: Simply put, we need to move to renewable sources like
28:15
Speaker 1: wind and solar and invest in longer term, durable storage
28:20
Speaker 1: so that we have reliable energy when the wind isn't
28:23
Speaker 1: blowing and the sun isn't shining. So so let's talk
28:26
Speaker 1: about that battery technology a little bit. We've seen a
28:30
Speaker 1: series of incremental improvements over time, but nothing has been
28:36
Speaker 1: like an order of magnitude improvement. Will we be able
28:40
Speaker 1: to get there soon enough? Do we need a Manhattan
28:43
Speaker 1: Project for batteries or are all those incremental improvements compounding
28:48
Speaker 1: and we'll get there eventually. Much much of the improvement
28:53
Speaker 1: that is needed in all these technologies is lowering their costs,
28:59
Speaker 1: and so of batteries today are still too expensive for
29:04
Speaker 1: electric vehicles in India and in China. They're barely affordable
29:10
Speaker 1: in the US marketplace. And so the book tells the
29:13
Speaker 1: story of quantum escape. I'll disclose the public companies that
29:18
Speaker 1: I've invested in and serve on the board of. And
29:21
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur by the name of jag Deep Singh, and
29:24
Speaker 1: he is going for a quantum improvement in batteries to
29:29
Speaker 1: more than double their energy density. The energy density of
29:34
Speaker 1: a battery is how much energy you'll get out of
29:37
Speaker 1: it for a pound of weight of a battery. And
29:41
Speaker 1: it's especially important in electric vehicles because the most expensive
29:46
Speaker 1: part of the vehicle is the battery, and it's the
29:50
Speaker 1: heaviest part, and you've got to use energy to move
29:52
Speaker 1: the weight around. So if you double the energy density
29:55
Speaker 1: of a battery, you can get a three or four
29:59
Speaker 1: times systems improvement in the vehicle itself. I'm I'm not expecting.
30:08
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone is forecasting in order of magnitude improvement.
30:12
Speaker 1: And we've seen considerable lowering costs of batteries over time,
30:18
Speaker 1: but the quantum scape innovation, which is an all solid
30:22
Speaker 1: state battery, would be a genuine breakthrough. Let's let's talk
30:27
Speaker 1: a little bit about food, another key source of emissions.
30:31
Speaker 1: How can we become more efficient in growing the food,
30:35
Speaker 1: affecting the menu of what we eat, and reducing enough
30:40
Speaker 1: food waste to make a difference. But there's there's three
30:43
Speaker 1: big things to do about food. The first is to
30:48
Speaker 1: reduce the meat and dairy in our diets, and I'm
30:51
Speaker 1: not saying cut them out entirely, but to replace some
30:55
Speaker 1: of that with delicious, healthy, plant based proteins. And the
31:00
Speaker 1: book tells the story of Beyond Me and the crusade
31:06
Speaker 1: of its founder his struggles. He mortgaged his house two
31:11
Speaker 1: lead the revolution in plant based protein. It turns out
31:16
Speaker 1: that there's a billion cows on the planet, and the
31:19
Speaker 1: book tells you their story as well. If they were
31:21
Speaker 1: in nation, it would be the third largest country in
31:26
Speaker 1: terms of the emissions. The second big thing to do
31:28
Speaker 1: about food is to reduce food waste. Globally, of the
31:34
Speaker 1: food that we produce is wasted, and taking some straightforward measures,
31:40
Speaker 1: we think that can be reduced. Our goal is to
31:42
Speaker 1: reduce it to ten of the food that we produce,
31:46
Speaker 1: particularly when you consider the population will grow to ten
31:49
Speaker 1: billion by the end of the century. Finally, we've got
31:53
Speaker 1: to get more efficient with how we grow food, and
31:56
Speaker 1: we can, for example, apply fertilizer much more are precisely
32:01
Speaker 1: with new technologies. All in all, the food sector is
32:06
Speaker 1: a way for us to reduce nine giga tons of
32:09
Speaker 1: emissions to two gigatons by or a net gain of
32:14
Speaker 1: seven out of the fifty nine gigatons that we've got
32:18
Speaker 1: to drive to zero. So we we spend a lot
32:21
Speaker 1: of time talking about beef and agriculture generally, but let's
32:25
Speaker 1: talk about commercial fishing. What's the impact of our fishing
32:31
Speaker 1: practices on the health of the oceans and its ability
32:36
Speaker 1: to absorb carbon and reflect heat well. Over fishing, together
32:43
Speaker 1: with over drilling and over development, have released huge amounts
32:47
Speaker 1: of carbon from the ocean floor and life. And if
32:51
Speaker 1: we prevented the destruction of mangroves and other ocean life,
32:55
Speaker 1: we could prevent a gigat ton of emissions from entering
32:58
Speaker 1: the atmosphere every year. Our plan calls to eliminate deep
33:03
Speaker 1: sea bottom trawling, which is an especially destructive practice. Bottom
33:07
Speaker 1: tralling releases one and a half giga tons of c
33:11
Speaker 1: O two equivalent emissions. It also calls for increasing the
33:15
Speaker 1: protection of oceans toy and I want to call out
33:22
Speaker 1: this is an area of climate ambition that Walmart is
33:26
Speaker 1: staking out an important and powerful leadership position. Not only
33:31
Speaker 1: have they said they're going to have their supply chain
33:34
Speaker 1: to be carbon neutral by but they are going to
33:39
Speaker 1: preserve protect millions of acres of land and ocean water
33:44
Speaker 1: in the effort to become the first scale regenerative company.
33:50
Speaker 1: Really really interesting. So very often the average person listening
33:56
Speaker 1: to a conversation like this things, well, what can I do.
34:00
Speaker 1: I'm just one person. What's the balance of responsibility between
34:04
Speaker 1: individuals on one side and government and institutions on the other.
34:10
Speaker 1: But what we need all the forces in our economy,
34:14
Speaker 1: in our society to come together and work on this.
34:18
Speaker 1: We need innovators, we need entrepreneurs, we need policymakers, we
34:24
Speaker 1: need investors. We need to hear more from impassioned youth.
34:29
Speaker 1: You know, in Gretta Thunberg was a single high school
34:33
Speaker 1: student skipping school on Fridays. A year later, in in December,
34:39
Speaker 1: she'd organized a million person march in a hundred cities
34:43
Speaker 1: around the world, and specifically, she made the climate crisis
34:50
Speaker 1: a top two voting issue in the nations in Europe.
34:55
Speaker 1: Very it is not a top voting issue in the US.
34:59
Speaker 1: It's not a top issue in China or even in India.
35:02
Speaker 1: So we have work to do, and that's one of
35:04
Speaker 1: our accelerants the ways we get all this done faster,
35:08
Speaker 1: and that's the turn movements into specific actions. We really
35:13
Speaker 1: need individuals to lead others in powerful ways. That's for example,
35:18
Speaker 1: employees pushing your employers to make net zero commitments, or
35:23
Speaker 1: shareholders and investors demanding changes in the boardroom it turns
35:28
Speaker 1: out that changing the light bulbs and eating less meat
35:31
Speaker 1: is important. But we've got to go further. We've got
35:34
Speaker 1: to change our laws or even our lawmakers in order
35:37
Speaker 1: to avert this climate crisis. Quite quite fascinating. I want
35:42
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the things you've said in
35:45
Speaker 1: the book that apply everywhere, but are especially applicable to
35:52
Speaker 1: the climate crisis. Let's start with quote, it seems every
35:56
Speaker 1: dozen years we witness magical for exponentially larger waves of innovation.
36:03
Speaker 1: So so let's start first with climate. How and where
36:08
Speaker 1: are those waves of innovation coming that will help ameliorate
36:12
Speaker 1: the climate crisis. Well, the innovations are happening on many fronts, materials, sciences,
36:20
Speaker 1: electro chemistry, biology. There the opportunity that the climate transition
36:28
Speaker 1: to a clean energy economy represents is the largest of
36:32
Speaker 1: our lifetimes. It's a bigger mobilization than even the effort
36:36
Speaker 1: of the Allies to defeat the Nazi axis in World
36:40
Speaker 1: War Two. You'll remember then we shut down for four
36:44
Speaker 1: years all manufacturing of automobiles and appliances and instead created
36:50
Speaker 1: two sixty thousand fighter aircraft twenty battleships. It was it
36:59
Speaker 1: was a monumental effort dealing with an existential threat, and
37:04
Speaker 1: that same level of innovation and ambition is required to
37:10
Speaker 1: win in this climate campaign other areas of breakthroughs or innovations.
37:18
Speaker 1: I'm even becoming a believer that will see nuclear fusion
37:22
Speaker 1: that's the kind of clean energy that comes from the sun,
37:26
Speaker 1: practical within a decade. Concrete and steal that's carbon free,
37:31
Speaker 1: long duration storage. The opportunities to reimagine and reinvent how
37:38
Speaker 1: we create, share, transmit, and use energy in every facet
37:43
Speaker 1: of our lives is as big an opportunity as we'll
37:48
Speaker 1: see in our lifetimes. So let's stay focused on that
37:50
Speaker 1: opportunity for a minute. This isn't a charity or or
37:55
Speaker 1: a foundation that's doing this for free, when when we
37:58
Speaker 1: look around there are actual venture investments that you've been
38:02
Speaker 1: making successfully. All right, So you passed on Tesla, but
38:06
Speaker 1: somebody put money into Tesla, wind turbines, Solar Beyond Meat
38:11
Speaker 1: is now public company. You were an early investor into that.
38:15
Speaker 1: You're looking at this as more than just hey, we
38:19
Speaker 1: have to do this in order to make sure that
38:21
Speaker 1: we don't have runaway greenhouse effect and earth turns into
38:25
Speaker 1: venus and becomes uninhabitable. But there are also very legitimate
38:29
Speaker 1: economic opportunities here also expound on those a little bit. Well, UH,
38:36
Speaker 1: there's no better example than Tesla, which has gone from
38:41
Speaker 1: a struggling company reliant on loans, thank you United States taxpayers, UH,
38:47
Speaker 1: to the seventh most valuable company in the world, and
38:51
Speaker 1: by some measures, Elon Musk is the most. This is
38:54
Speaker 1: the richest individual in the world. He took on huge
38:58
Speaker 1: risks and he delivered for his customers, at shareholders, his country,
39:03
Speaker 1: and his planet. And the best of the work that
39:06
Speaker 1: Ellen has done is inspired, perhaps through fear, but certainly
39:12
Speaker 1: by example the rest of the automobile industry to accelerate
39:16
Speaker 1: their shift to clean and electric vehicles. So this is UH,
39:24
Speaker 1: I like to say, the mother of all markets. It's
39:27
Speaker 1: a monster market. Batteries alone, the batteries to move from
39:31
Speaker 1: internal conduct bustion vehicles to electric vehicles are estimated to
39:36
Speaker 1: be four hundred billion dollars per year. Barry, for twenty years,
39:42
Speaker 1: we were going to we must recreate all the infrastructure
39:49
Speaker 1: that we use to power our planet. Let's talk about
39:53
Speaker 1: something we haven't gotten to when we were talking about
39:56
Speaker 1: those larger waves of innovation. Lots of folks are excited
40:00
Speaker 1: about blockchain and crypto and web three point oh, but
40:03
Speaker 1: when we look at things like bitcoin, it's a big
40:06
Speaker 1: energy hog. How do we reconcile all the wealth that's
40:11
Speaker 1: being created there with it's massive electricity consumption. It's electricity
40:17
Speaker 1: consumption is not sustainable. And so we're going to have
40:21
Speaker 1: to move to clean bitcoin, green bitcoin. Uh and and
40:26
Speaker 1: we'll get there by regulation, if not by other market forces,
40:30
Speaker 1: I would predict today. I believe that bitcoin uses as
40:35
Speaker 1: much energy as the entire nation of Sweden. So Bitcoin,
40:41
Speaker 1: I believe is here to stay, but it it's we
40:44
Speaker 1: can't peel it through dirty electricity. You mentioned concrete earlier,
40:50
Speaker 1: um and I also read the book that you want
40:53
Speaker 1: to um end single use plastics. What does the world's
40:58
Speaker 1: material science prom sus for replacing things in those spaces?
41:03
Speaker 1: How do you replace concrete? How do you replace single
41:06
Speaker 1: use plastic? Concrete is probably the hardest problem of all
41:10
Speaker 1: because in the production of the concrete you almost must
41:16
Speaker 1: create carbon emissions. Uh. We can reduce the energy used
41:21
Speaker 1: to make concrete. There are some concrete innovations that absorb
41:24
Speaker 1: the CO two into the material, but that's an area
41:28
Speaker 1: where we need more innovation. What was your second area,
41:32
Speaker 1: single use plastics? Single use plastics. Uh. The plan calls
41:38
Speaker 1: for the banning and really the replacement of single use plastics,
41:44
Speaker 1: the banning of single use plastics and in general to
41:47
Speaker 1: replace plastics with compostable materials that can be recycled. And
41:56
Speaker 1: I am confident that with investment and hot for or
42:00
Speaker 1: at work, we can get that done. So we haven't
42:03
Speaker 1: really talked about um pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.
42:08
Speaker 1: I get the sense from some people that they're expecting
42:11
Speaker 1: some technological magic bullet that's going to solve climate change.
42:16
Speaker 1: Tell us about how we can remove carbon from the atmosphere,
42:21
Speaker 1: and is there a magic bullet coming, you know? Our
42:26
Speaker 1: the Speed and Scale Plan calls for us to remove
42:29
Speaker 1: ten gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. I emphasize removed.
42:35
Speaker 1: These will be giga tons of c O two emissions
42:38
Speaker 1: that we were not able to eliminate, we were not
42:41
Speaker 1: able to cut, we were not able to slash. There
42:44
Speaker 1: will be some uses of aviation fuels as an example,
42:48
Speaker 1: or or other stubborn carbon to approaches to this, one
42:53
Speaker 1: of which is two innovate around nature based ways of
42:58
Speaker 1: removing CEO two, for example, growing greater kelp forests in
43:05
Speaker 1: the oceans. But the other that has captured a lot
43:10
Speaker 1: of attention is called direct air captured or that's engineered
43:14
Speaker 1: removal of carbon. Think of them as kind of mechanical
43:18
Speaker 1: trees and and this technology works today, but only at
43:24
Speaker 1: small scale. It it sucks the c O two out
43:27
Speaker 1: of the air. It requires a lot of electricity in
43:30
Speaker 1: order to do that, and so it's it's very expensive today.
43:33
Speaker 1: Some uh s per ton. If we've got to remove
43:40
Speaker 1: five giga tons per year at six dollars per ton,
43:44
Speaker 1: that's three trillion dollars a year, and it's hard to
43:48
Speaker 1: see how that's affordable. So entrepreneurs are hard at work
43:52
Speaker 1: to lower those costs, and I hope they do. So.
43:58
Speaker 1: There's a quote I like from another venture capitalists who
44:01
Speaker 1: said venture capital, properly deployed, can solve the biggest problems,
44:06
Speaker 1: filling a void left by shrinking scientific ambitions of governments,
44:11
Speaker 1: foundations and international organizations. What are your thoughts on that approach.
44:16
Speaker 1: How crucial is venture capital to our future and can
44:20
Speaker 1: replace these other entities. Venture capital is crucial and it's
44:26
Speaker 1: stepping up to the challenge. They will be an estimated
44:31
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars invested of venture capital in climate technologies
44:36
Speaker 1: this year. Our plan calls for fifty billion this year.
44:39
Speaker 1: But venture capital is not going to get this job
44:41
Speaker 1: done on its own. We need government funded research and
44:46
Speaker 1: development to grow in the US alone to forty billion
44:50
Speaker 1: a year. Other countries have got to triple their funding.
44:54
Speaker 1: We need project financing, We need philanthropic investing. Jeff Bezis's
44:58
Speaker 1: commitment of ten billion dollars to the Bazos Earth Fund
45:03
Speaker 1: is the largest philanthropic commitment to climate the climate crisis
45:08
Speaker 1: that we've ever witnessed or enjoyed. Uh. There's really four
45:14
Speaker 1: accelerators that will get this job done. One of them
45:17
Speaker 1: is investing, another is innovation, the work of entrepreneurs. But
45:22
Speaker 1: I think the hardest are going to be to turn
45:24
Speaker 1: our movements into actions so we get the politics and
45:28
Speaker 1: the policy correct, because it's going to take a massive, collective,
45:33
Speaker 1: coordinated effort to achieve our ultimate okay are and that's
45:39
Speaker 1: to take fifty nine giga tons of emissions to net zero.
45:45
Speaker 1: That's an ambitious target. Uh. And if we miss that target,
45:50
Speaker 1: what are the ramifications we'll leave our kids and our
45:53
Speaker 1: grandkids an uninhabitable planet. We'll see the Arctic sea ice
45:58
Speaker 1: surely melts away. We'll have the estimates are up to
46:04
Speaker 1: a billion climate refugees. There's ten million of them already.
46:09
Speaker 1: Hundreds of millions of people will start. It's uh, it's unthinkable,
46:15
Speaker 1: and so we must get this done. So so let
46:19
Speaker 1: me turn this back to to what's going on in
46:21
Speaker 1: the world of venture Now. When the early decades of
46:26
Speaker 1: your work at Clina Perkins was into a very friendly
46:31
Speaker 1: I P O market, how much does timing matter? Broadly, meaning, hey,
46:37
Speaker 1: if if there's an exit available, if there's a big
46:40
Speaker 1: I p O market, that makes it more likely people
46:45
Speaker 1: whore gonna invest in these companies and have a successful exit.
46:48
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about timing. Well, you know, investors,
46:53
Speaker 1: myself included, will stop at nothing to copy success. So
46:58
Speaker 1: the timing of today's markets for climate technologies, whether it's
47:03
Speaker 1: Tesla or Ribban or better Batteries or beyond me, is good.
47:09
Speaker 1: And I would say, in the long run is going
47:12
Speaker 1: to continue to be good because the size of the
47:15
Speaker 1: markets and and and the need, the economic need, the opportunity,
47:21
Speaker 1: and the planetary pressures. So if a younger venture capitalist
47:27
Speaker 1: or a newfound venture fund came to you and asked
47:30
Speaker 1: for advice. What would you tell them about this opportunity. Oh,
47:37
Speaker 1: there's so many different venture firms and the strategies. I
47:40
Speaker 1: would say to them that this is the greatest opportunity
47:45
Speaker 1: of the twenty one century. Uh, that they should be
47:49
Speaker 1: strategic about their contribution. Is it to work with early
47:54
Speaker 1: stage entrepreneurs in removing technical risks, or at the other extreme,
47:59
Speaker 1: is it to be smart and sharp about project financing.
48:06
Speaker 1: But the the overall costs of the transition from a
48:10
Speaker 1: dirty fossil economy to a clean new energy economy is
48:15
Speaker 1: four trillion dollars per year per year. That sounds like
48:20
Speaker 1: a big number until you compare it with the costs
48:25
Speaker 1: of dirty energy, the social costs, the disruption, the premature depths.
48:31
Speaker 1: One in five deaths are premature due to carbon pollution.
48:36
Speaker 1: Those come in at about ten billion dollars per year.
48:40
Speaker 1: So it's it's literally cheaper to save the Earth than
48:45
Speaker 1: it is to ruin it. Uh. And and there's just
48:49
Speaker 1: seems to be endless amounts of cash pouring into the
48:54
Speaker 1: venture capital sector. Arguably it's never been higher. What are
48:57
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this? Does it worry you what, what's
48:59
Speaker 1: the driver of all this money slashing around? Uh. Some
49:02
Speaker 1: people say that that we're experiencing a bubble, a bubble
49:06
Speaker 1: and fintech or bitcoin or climate technologies. I see it
49:12
Speaker 1: very differently. I think it's a boom. And historically, whether
49:16
Speaker 1: it was the advent of transcontinental railroads or the automobiles,
49:21
Speaker 1: we saw booms which lead to full employment, over investment,
49:28
Speaker 1: rapid innovation. And no, not all of those car companies survived,
49:33
Speaker 1: but I think the same will be true of the
49:38
Speaker 1: other fields of innovation. I think one of the things
49:41
Speaker 1: that gives me great hope is the power of human ingenuity.
49:45
Speaker 1: We got ourselves into this fix, and very I'm betting
49:49
Speaker 1: we're going to figure a way out. So what do
49:52
Speaker 1: you say to people who sort of pasture Silicon Valley's
49:55
Speaker 1: best days are are behind it? Do you have a
49:58
Speaker 1: response to any of those folks? Oh, I think they're wrong.
50:02
Speaker 1: I think provided we deal with this existential threat, the
50:07
Speaker 1: climate crisis, and that is not guaranteed, but provided we
50:12
Speaker 1: do that and we get a reduction in the next decade,
50:16
Speaker 1: I think we're on track for a wonderful, prosperous, healthy planet.
50:25
Speaker 1: Can I tell you and I should have mentioned this earlier,
50:27
Speaker 1: but you know, I read a ton of books for
50:31
Speaker 1: the show, and I found the book really quite fascinating,
50:35
Speaker 1: and it's pretty obvious to me that an engineer was
50:38
Speaker 1: behind this. There's just a lot of great slides and
50:43
Speaker 1: um charts and graphs, and it's not just all texted.
50:48
Speaker 1: Parts of it are narrative and parts of it are historical,
50:51
Speaker 1: and it reminds me of a well made slide deck.
50:54
Speaker 1: So um that I want to send you a bound
50:58
Speaker 1: version of the book if you'll email me your physical
51:01
Speaker 1: mailing address. There's one other thing, one other story I
51:04
Speaker 1: might tell you about the book. I was talking the
51:07
Speaker 1: other day with the reader, a mom who told me
51:09
Speaker 1: that every night she takes two or three pages of
51:13
Speaker 1: the book and she reads them together with her daughter,
51:17
Speaker 1: and then they talk about together what that means for
51:21
Speaker 1: the world her daughter is going to inherit. And I thought, Wow,
51:25
Speaker 1: that's the use of the book I never imagined, and
51:28
Speaker 1: one one that I'm honestly proud of. How it looks
51:33
Speaker 1: like this was the work of a lot of different people.
51:36
Speaker 1: How did you end up researching and writing this? We
51:40
Speaker 1: talked to a hundred different leaders in in the field policymakers, researchers, modelers, activists,
51:51
Speaker 1: UH and and from those selected some thirty five stories,
51:56
Speaker 1: we ended up with a thousand different data points we
52:00
Speaker 1: needed to verify and collected those into five notes which
52:05
Speaker 1: are in the book. And I did it with an
52:07
Speaker 1: amazing small team of three or four on the research
52:13
Speaker 1: and writing staff. I'm I'm an engineer, as you know,
52:18
Speaker 1: and and so I'm I'm not so good with words,
52:22
Speaker 1: and I had the benefit of a writing team that
52:25
Speaker 1: helped make this much more readable. Well, well it shows
52:29
Speaker 1: you can see the book is a fast read. I
52:32
Speaker 1: sat down with a bunch of stickies and a highlighter
52:36
Speaker 1: and found myself just plowing through a chapter after chapter.
52:39
Speaker 1: It was. It was a relatively quick read and and
52:43
Speaker 1: very easy to put down and then pick back up again.
52:46
Speaker 1: Each chapter is very distinct, and you've really laid out
52:51
Speaker 1: um a plan to UH prevent climate catastrophe from taking place.
52:57
Speaker 1: So thank you for that. But one thing I want
52:59
Speaker 1: to make sure your audience knows they can get a
53:02
Speaker 1: free infographic. It's a single poster sized piece of paper
53:07
Speaker 1: that has on both sides of it all the objectives,
53:10
Speaker 1: all the key results, all the measures and it's reassuring
53:16
Speaker 1: for people who are fearful that there is a plan
53:19
Speaker 1: and that if we do these things, we can find
53:21
Speaker 1: a way to a habitable planet. That's what we've got
53:25
Speaker 1: to do. So I know I only have you for
53:27
Speaker 1: a limited amount of time. Let me jump to my
53:30
Speaker 1: favorite questions that I ask all of my guests, starting
53:34
Speaker 1: with tell us what you've been streaming these days? Give
53:37
Speaker 1: us your favorite Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever podcast
53:42
Speaker 1: you're listening to. Well, so I haven't had time for
53:45
Speaker 1: streaming on netplace, doing research, reading books and papers on
53:52
Speaker 1: on on the climate crisis itself. But getting this word
53:58
Speaker 1: out I've listened to. I started listening to a couple
54:03
Speaker 1: of new podcasts, John Hilman's Hell and High Water and
54:08
Speaker 1: Tim Ferris's Show, both of which I think have a
54:12
Speaker 1: distinctive imprint from their hosts. Tell us about your mentors
54:17
Speaker 1: who helped to shape your career. So the biggest influence
54:22
Speaker 1: in my life was my dad, Ludor, an engineer, entrepreneur,
54:26
Speaker 1: and and hero. And I've been blessed by a number
54:31
Speaker 1: of mentors, perhaps most notable of them Andy Grove, and
54:35
Speaker 1: what I learned from him at Intel prompted me to
54:38
Speaker 1: write a first book called Measure What Matters, and that
54:43
Speaker 1: tells stories of a dozen different organizations using okay rs,
54:49
Speaker 1: which is what then I applied to the climate crisis.
54:52
Speaker 1: I will tell you Al Gore is a hero of mine. Ah.
54:56
Speaker 1: He's wonderfully resolute man who's impassioned, effective, and and and funny.
55:06
Speaker 1: He and I, he and I talked regularly about the
55:08
Speaker 1: climate crisis. Tell us about some of your favorite books.
55:12
Speaker 1: What are your all time favorites and what are you
55:14
Speaker 1: reading right now? So my current reading, No Surprises, is
55:19
Speaker 1: largely around the climate crisis. I love Elizabeth Colbert's Under
55:24
Speaker 1: a White Sky, which described the climate futures. And two
55:29
Speaker 1: other books are How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by
55:33
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, a very accessible book, and a profile of
55:37
Speaker 1: a new profile of Winston Churchill called The Splendid and
55:41
Speaker 1: the Vial two good recommendations. Uh, what sort of advice
55:46
Speaker 1: would you give to a recent college grad who wanted
55:49
Speaker 1: to pursue a career inventor investing. I would, I would say,
55:54
Speaker 1: to her gain experience as an entrepreneur. I repeat the
56:00
Speaker 1: advice that I was given early in my career, which
56:02
Speaker 1: was go get a real job in a real growing
56:06
Speaker 1: tech company and sharpen your skills in the real hard
56:14
Speaker 1: world of business knocks, and then take that experience to
56:19
Speaker 1: help other entrepreneurs succeed. And our final question, what do
56:24
Speaker 1: you know about the world of venture investing today that
56:27
Speaker 1: you wish you knew forty years ago? I wish I
56:32
Speaker 1: knew forty years ago. How important the team is. The
56:37
Speaker 1: leadership of the team, the recruiting of the team, the
56:40
Speaker 1: growing of the team. Because in the end, it's it's
56:45
Speaker 1: more than large markets, It's more than than compelling technologies.
56:50
Speaker 1: It's teams who know how to execute well, really really
56:56
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. Thanks John for being so generous with you time.
57:01
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with John Dore. He is a
57:03
Speaker 1: partner at famed venture firm Climate Perkins and the author
57:08
Speaker 1: of the new book Speed and Scale, an Action Plan
57:11
Speaker 1: for solving our Climate Crisis. Now. If you enjoy this conversation,
57:15
Speaker 1: be sure and check out all of our previous discussions.
57:18
Speaker 1: You can find those wherever you find your favorite podcasts, iTunes, Spotify,
57:24
Speaker 1: a cast wherever. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions
57:28
Speaker 1: right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net.
57:32
Speaker 1: Sign up for my Daily reads at rid Halts dot com.
57:36
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I would be
57:39
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank our crack staff that
57:41
Speaker 1: helps quit these conversations together each week. Michael Batnick is
57:46
Speaker 1: my head of research. A ticket Albron is our project manager.
57:51
Speaker 1: Paris Wold is our producer. I'm Barry Bridhalts. You've been
57:55
Speaker 1: listening to Masters and Business on Bloomberg Radio.