Cofounder of a climatech startup - Bio/Chemical Engineer

Become a co-founder of a scalable climatetech startup through Carbon13’s Venture Builder.

We're looking for bio & chemical engineers and inventors to become co-founders of startups that fight climate change, through joining our eight-month Venture Builder programme. Applications are open now to join our cohort for founders resident in the EU.

When you join one of our cohorts, you'll be welcomed into a community with hundreds of other founders all working on solutions to save the climate.

Carbon13's Venture Builder is tailored to support purpose-driven people, whether they're new to climate, entrepreneurship or venture builders, or if they've already accumulated expertise in those areas (about half of our founders have founded a startup before). And unlike traditional accelerators, you do NOT need to have a startup idea already - we can help with that - though half our founders are already working on ideas when they join.

Our mission: Save the climate and aim big - before it's too late

Carbon13 is the Venture Builder for the Climate Emergency. We are laser-focused on supporting founders solving for the climate, and the climate only. To do that, we ask every new founder on our Venture Builder to aim big, to build a solution with the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gases) by 10 million tonnes per year - and all our support is designed to help you reach that figure.

Why? The climate doesn't have time for us to waste on false starts, tinkering at the edges, or greenwashing.

Apart from nine in-person days in Berlin or Cambridge, you can do the programme from anywhere in the world. The rest of the programme is delivered remotely.

From Food to Construction to Materials to Carbon Capture

Carbon13 is sector agnostic so founders can explore ideas in any emitting industry. We tailor our support accordingly for science-based, deeptech or hardware ventures - whether it's support on go-to-market strategy, IP protection, fundraising or team building, you'll be accessing a brains trust of hundreds of experts, peers, and partners.

Ventures launched through the programme already include carbon negative concrete, methane capture, bioplastics, composite recycling, alternative protein, quantum computing for materials discovery, precision fermentation, and green ammonia.

These ventures also received our pre-seed investment too, a total of 32 teams in the last 18 months with another 14 to come in winter 2023. 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’s Venture Builder, though many scientist and engineer founders often 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, committed commercial cofounder capable of executing a high growth startup
• Move their concepts past TRL3-5 and into commercial operation
• Understand the highest impact opportunity for their IP or idea
• 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.

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: 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.

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:

• £9+ million investment across 71 ventures since 2021
• 70% of first 32 have already raised further funding
• 63% of our ventures have a female cofounder
• 50% of the ventures are software, 50% science or hardware based
• 70 potential cofounders on every cohort
• 35 technical, 35 commercial cofounders
• 90% of each cohort forms a cofounding team within Phase 1
• 350 domain experts, carbon experts, entrepreneurs in residence
• 10 million tonnes of emissions every year. We only launch startups that have the potential to reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes.