What it takes to become a climate tech CEO, with Katie Rae
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’ve got the technology that can change the world, are you the best person to implement it? Investors pay careful attention to the CEO of any company, but in climate tech, they deserve special scrutiny – much of the science has never been brought to scale and they are competing against the status quo, massive trillion-dollar industries. It takes business acumen to launch a profitable business and the stakes are high, so some investors prefer a seasoned entrepreneur to a scientist.
Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi talks to Katie Rae, who has a different philosophy. Katie is the head of The Engine, a venture firm affiliated with MIT that invests in early stage climate tech companies, often helmed by scientists. How does she make the case to investors and what does she teach the scientist wanting to be a CEO?
Read a transcript of this episode, here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. |
| 0:03.0 | This week, moonshots, magnets, and monstrously smart people. |
| 0:08.0 | Sometimes the climate beat is fun. |
| 0:22.6 | Last summer, I got a chance to visit a nuclear fusion company, |
| 0:26.1 | multiple carbon removal firms, |
| 0:28.1 | and at least two startups using electricity to make iron. |
| 0:32.4 | And you'll hear some of these stories in future episodes on Zero. |
| 0:36.3 | The science behind these companies could not be |
| 0:38.4 | more different, but their business problems are the same, hiring, financing, supply chain. |
| 0:44.8 | The more I observed the pressures on each company, I started to notice that there was a split. |
| 0:50.7 | Some companies were led by serial entrepreneurs, someone who has experience in dealing with the problems of a business. |
| 0:57.0 | Other companies were led by a scientist or an engineer, the person whose deepest experience was studying the science that the company was based on. |
| 1:05.0 | The choice of CEO is something that investors pay careful attention to. |
| 1:10.0 | They often do not want a scientist as the CEO. |
| 1:12.6 | They want an experienced entrepreneur because the problems of running a business |
| 1:16.6 | are hard to learn and very high stakes. |
| 1:19.6 | My guest today is Katie Ray, who heads a large fund, |
| 1:23.6 | and she has a different philosophy about meeting people where they are. |
| 1:28.3 | We've certainly proven over the last five years that we've made some great bets on human |
| 1:33.6 | beings that are, we're currently engineers or postdocs, and now we're really fantastic |
| 1:39.7 | CEOs. Having that fundamental belief in people's abilities to learn and grow and run these things |
| 1:47.0 | mean that more of these inventions will get out. |
... |
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