We launched Congruent Ventures at the beginning of 2017 to exclusively focus on investing in early-stage companies that can effect positive change on society’s climate-related challenges. As hundred-year floods and fires become annual occurrences, smoke from thousands of miles away dims the sun, and coastal cities prepare to build sea walls, we believe the time has never been more critical to invest in companies that can mitigate climate change and slow this anthropogenic phenomenon. As noted in the IPCC AR6 2021 report, we’re at “Code Red.” In 2017, we were one of a very few venture firms actively investing in early-stage climate technology. Since our founding, we are fortunate enough to have launched two funds and supported 40 companies to date, making us one of the most active and broadest climate investors in sector.
We founded Congruent Ventures to reboot and reinvigorate climate-tech venture ecosystem by focusing on the first institutional venture rounds in companies often before product launch or revenue generation. As a result of our early-stage focus, we approached the quantification of our portfolio’s impact cautiously. We have resisted creating reports with false precision and grandiose claims. Instead, we have labored to capture the potential impact of our companies effects at scale. With our maturing and more seasoned portfolio, we believe now is the time to share what our portfolio has accomplished and give a sense of what is to come. In aggregate, our current portfolio, once scaled, can reduce global GHG emissions by 10s of gigatons of CO2-equivalent and sequester gigatons more — and importantly do so while bringing value, efficiency, and cost savings to their respective sectors. It is a solid start, but we need our companies (and others) to scale to meet the challenge.
We are pleased to share Congruent Ventures inaugural Climate Impact Report for 2020.
Our Portfolio at Congruent Ventures covers a variety of sectors across four themes: Mobility and Urbanization, the Energy Transition, Food and Agriculture, and Sustainable Production and Consumption. Within these themes, we invest in all business models including fintech, frontier tech, software, and services. Investing against the climate change thesis is both a broad and deep challenge, creating additional challenges to quantifying impact. A core tenet of our firm is that the greatest underutilized tool for impact is a financial tool: there exists above-market financial returns for those with the appropriate investment skillset. We have leveraged our team’s depth and our network’s breadth to develop fundamental views not just on technology and product but how companies and products get deployed, making optimal use of all tranches of the capital stack.
As of the end of 2020, we’ve catalyzed over $362M of capital into climate-related companies. Despite writing the first institutional check into four out of five of our portfolio companies with a weighted investment period of only 17 months, over two thirds of our companies have already launched or released their respective products and services. We have brought in or joined forces with over 186 different co-investors including numerous mainstream firms, which we are particularly pleased to see participate in the climate ecosystem. Despite the young age of our portfolio, 69% of our portfolio companies have raised follow-on capital since our initial investment.
Beyond our core climate focus, we value diversity. One out of four of our portfolio companies are women-led. While better than the average of one out of 50 in venture-backed startups, it is still a far cry from the 50% mark. We will continue to focus on adding diversity to our portfolio and our team.
We are proud to share our Climate Impact Report and will be updating it on an annual basis to reflect on our growing portfolio and progress across our companies. As climate-tech enters the mainstream, we continue to believe a bigger tent benefits all. Please reach out with feedback or comments.
Sustainably,
The Congruent Team
