The advice we give our founders also holds true for our angel investors: “go for the smart money.”

Founders choose Carbon13 as the first cheque in their startup because we’re the smart money. We don’t just invest, we don’t just find startups we like the look of, hand over the money,  and then sit back and wait ten years.

No, we’ve built one of the strongest ecosystems for climatetech startups in Europe (as ranked by the FT) and we laser it onto our startups.

And that’s also why angels have chosen to invest into our five previous SEIS Funds.

They know their investments are about to get advice, support and connections that money alone just can’t buy.

Here’s the smart part

Five-month accelerator phase

Once we invest, our startups begin several months of intense support on our accelerator phase. And not only is it intense, it’s bespoke and one-on-one. We embed an Entrepreneur In Residence into the team who works closely with the startup every week. Carbon13 EIRS are experienced, exited founders of the likes of Jerome Joag, Amrit Chandan and Sarah Dees.

Cambridge based ecosystem

Carbon13 grew out of the Cambridge ecosystem and we’ve expanded to Berlin, the leading edge of climatetech in Germany. We’ve brought together hundreds of Domain Experts who are all passionate about working with climatetech startups, and who embody the Cambridge Silicon Fen ethos of scientific rigor, innovation and entrepreneurship. We plug our startups straight into this ecosystem.

Investor network

Carbon13’s cheque is just the springboard for our ventures’ future funding rounds. Not only does an investment announcement by Carbon13 draw attention in the VC sphere, but we curate a network of Investor Partners who engage with the ventures throughout the programme.

VCs who’ve invested in our startups include Pale Blue Dot, Agfunder, Octopus Ventures, High Tech Gründerfond, Unruly Capital, SOSV, DCVC, Zero Carbon Capital and Ada Ventures.

We’re also an Innovate UK Investor Partner. Our ventures have received millions of pounds in grants from Innovate UK and others, including £470k for Ki Hydrogen in August 2024, and over £800k for Biozeroc in the last year.

Peloton effect

Just like a breakaway group on the Tour de France, our startups benefit from a peloton effect. We invest in batches of startups through each programme we run, meaning there’s a group of startups in the same place at the same time, going through the same challenges.

And they join the rest of our portfolio, we’ve made 72 investments through our funds so far.

They’re now worth £190 million, and their collective potential to reduce GHG emissions at scale has now reached 500 million tonnes, that’s around 1% of current global emissions. And our portfolio is aiming to do that per year, by about 2040.

Which brings me to our final and most important point.

Carbon13 isn’t just the smart money. We’re the passionate money.

We only exist to fight the climate emergency. We’re a response to that crisis. All the pillars of Carbon13 that I’ve just described were designed to try and make companies which will make a significant impact on emissions.

Our programmes? That’s to attract the very best mission-driven founders so we can help them unleash their talent and build solutions that scale.

Our support? We need to reduce the failure rate of startups and first time founders. We don’t have time to start again and again. There’s just a handful of years left to launch the startups which will make a difference before we hit Earth’s tipping points.

Our ecosystem and investor partners? We need to boost the scaling speed, for the same reason. Emissions avoided or captured now will have a greater effect on Earth’s warming than emissions avoided in 2050.

What’s good for our startups, what’s good for our funds, has to be also what’s good for our climate.

To learn about Carbon13’s SEIS Fund, our approach to investing, or to learn about our startups, reach out to our Head of Capital Min Dhillon on min@carbonthirteen.com.

You can also explore our SEIS Fund further here.