Cofounder of a Climate Tech Startup - Scientist/Engineer

We're looking for scientists, engineers and inventors to become co-founders of startups that fight climate change.

If you want to fight climate change, then Carbon13 is currently the strongest launchpad for you to build a decarbonisation or carbon capture venture from scratch—we've made pre-seed investments in 32 teams in the last 12 months. About half of these have been in software-driven ventures, and half in science-based/deeptech. You can view our portfolio of ventures at www.carbonthirteen.com/our-portfolio

Working on IP or a climatetech idea already?

Unlike accelerators, you do NOT need an idea to join Carbon13, though scientist and engineer founders usually come to us because they’re working on IP and are seeking to bring it to market through a venture capital route.

The VC funding route is currently the faster and often surer route for launching complex projects with a high decarbonisation impact, which is why Carbon13 has been designed to give your venture the best possible entry point into this route. Our support is tailored to science-based startups with the ambition to reduce CO2e emissions by 10 million tonnes per year.

Science-based founders use our programme to

• Find a complementary commercial cofounder capable of executing a high growth startup
• Move their concepts past TRL3-5
• Understand the highest impact opportunity for their IP
• Develop the appropriate funding strategy

If you do not have an idea, you will either be supported to find an idea to develop which can significantly reduce emissions, or join a cofounder/team with strong insights into an emitting industry and together execute the implementation of their validated customer pain points.

We only work with early stage founders who can team up with serial entrepreneurs, carbon experts and industry folks (who make up the rest of our cohorts) to build ventures that can reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes a year.

How does Carbon13 work?

On Carbon13 you are building a startup as part of a cohort of 70 founders. You are not sat in a room being told what you already know. Our programme is designed to amplify the work you're doing, because the planet doesn't have time to waste on theory or incremental ideas.

-Phase 1: Teaming & Ideation in 6 weeks

You will find a cofounder in the first 6 weeks. As a technical founder you most likely will team up with a founder with a proven track record in founding startups or industry leadership in emitting sectors. On average 90% of the 70 founders on the cohort form teams within 6 weeks.

-Phase 2: Ideation & Validation in 9 weeks

Your team will intensely work on:

Team strengthening | Carbon intelligence | Rapid iterations of concepts | Business model forming | Prototype testing | Intellectual property | Customer development | Stakeholder development | Behaviour change | Governance | Venture incorporation

-Phase 3: Acceleration in 4 months

After Phase 2, we invest pre-seed into 14 ventures. They then use Phase 3 to focus on market, product, business model and strategy to prepare the venture for further seed-stage investment.

We also help you look at scaling strategies, managing growth pains and developing a funding strategy.

The next cohort will begin in Cambridge, UK on 14th March 2023. (Apart from nine in-person days in Cambridge, you can do the programme from anywhere in the world.)

Learn More

We are running a series of webinars available to everyone who would like to learn more about Carbon13 and how to build startups with breakthrough solutions for the climate. Our next one for scientists and engineers can be found here - https://carbonthirteen.com/webinars/

Carbon13 in numbers:

- 50 startups launched since March 2021

- £3.5 million investment across 32 ventures

- 50% of the ventures are software, 50% science or hardware based

- 18 of the 32 ventures had at least 1 female founder

- 70 potential cofounders on every cohort

- 35 technical, 35 commercial cofounders

- 90% of each cohort forms a cofounding team within 6 weeks

- 100s of domain experts, carbon experts, entrepreneurs in residence

- 14th March, the start date for the next cohort

- 10 million tonnes of emissions every year. We only launch startups that have the potential to reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes.

We caused climate change. Let's fix it.