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