A Blockbuster moment: how climate tech became a hot startup sector

Unless you’ve been under a fossilised rock, you’ve heard about Mike Cannon-Brookes’ and the Canadian investment fund, Brookfield’s takeover bid for AGL.

Would love to be a fly on the wall at AGL’s next shareholder meeting when they explain why they knocked back an offer that represented a 20% premium and avoided a “potentially value destructive” demerger.

Although the first offer was knocked back, I have a feeling this could be pitch theatre and all part of the sales process. 

Irrespective of how that deal goes the sun is setting on the fossil fuel industry. The remaining two of the big three energy companies, Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia are also closing down their coal-fired plants years ahead of schedule. 

This reminds me of another keystone moment to seize the future or fade into antiquity.

Twenty-two years ago, John Antioco, the then CEO of Blockbuster struggled not to laugh at the founder of Netflix, Marc Randolph, when he offered to sell him the company for $50M.

Today Netflix has a market cap of $173.71 billion. 

Don’t be John! 

One industry that is showing no signs of slowing, is Climate Tech. The data is in, Climate Tech continues to burn hot!

You may have seen The Global Climate Tech Venture Report by our friends at HolonIQ with investment more than doubling pre-pandemic levels with $37 billion in 2021, accelerating startups and creating 45 Climate Tech Unicorns. 

The Climate Salad community of climate tech founders, investors, mentors and supporters has also more than doubled. Since December our community has swelled in terms of community, customers, teams and investment, it’s staggering, encouraging and the whole thing makes me proud as punch. 

From a recent sample survey, on average each member is looking to make 22.5 new hires this year – that’s over 3,000 jobs in Climate Tech across Australia and New Zealand shaping the future of our economy. 

In terms of investment, from what we can announce – FloodMapp raised $8.4 million in their seed round to help catapult them into the US, Gridcognition, winners of our Newcomer award, raised $4 million, World’s Biggest Garage Sale and Women In Climate Tech for 2021 Yas Grigaliunas announced Officeworks taking a majority stake in it’s latest cap raise and Accurassi announced a $2M investment in their energy technology platform, carbon offsetting subscription service, Trace has raised $1.5 million and Cecil raised $2.2M to become the global platform for natural capital. 

If you’d like to join Australia and New Zealand’s largest and leading Climate Tech community, please get in touch at climatesalad.com/join