Climate Fund Spotlight: Malaika Ventures
A “Green Tsunami” is upon us and with it is coming massive opportunities for ClimateTech investment, funding for startups tackling the climate crisis, and a host of new contracts and green jobs. The founding partners of Malaika Ventures – Kerry Bowie, Brahm Rhodes, and Juliana Garaizar – want to ensure that this wave of opportunity equitably benefits historically underrepresented startup founders and underserved communities.
“Malaika is Swahili for angel,” explains Kerry, “so we’re trying to put a little bit more of the angel back into the venture space.”
The $50M seed fund is doing this by investing in the next generation of startup founders building innovative solutions to achieve a rapid and just energy transition.
Climate Justice Focus
Part of the green tsunami is coming in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act which has pledged to invest $369 billion into climate solutions. Concurrently, the Justice 40 Initiative has the goal of delivering 40% of overall clean energy investments to the low-income neighborhoods and communities of color that are most affected by pollution and climate change.
The Inflation Reduction Act, however, is only pledging $60 billion toward environmental justice projects. “If you look at the numbers, it’s not 40%,” clarifies Kerry. “It’s more like 16%. So marginalized communities are missing out, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting the entrepreneurs on the ground that are doing this work.”
“The climate crisis is a collection of many hard problems,” says Brahm. “It’s important to seed many companies that are developing solutions to climate change, as well as really ensure that we’re not leaving anybody behind. Our thesis says it. We’re focused on a just transition. That means urban communities, rural communities, small communities in the South Pacific, we’re not leaving anybody behind. If we’re going to develop climate solutions, we have to include everybody.”
The Malaika Team
The unique strength of Malaika Ventures comes from the General Partners’ robust network of accelerator partnerships, deep expertise in the ClimateTech space, and profound operating, ecosystem-building, and investing experience.
Juliana Garaizar is VP of Innovation at Greentown Labs, the largest ClimateTech startup incubator in North America. She’s a Lead Investor at the Portfolia Consumer Fund, Rising Tide Fund, and Rising America Fund. In addition, Juliana is a Board Member of the Angel Capital Association, and an Advisory Board Member of the Cougar Venture Fund and the Houston Diversity Fund.
For over a decade, Kerry Bowie worked at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. After realizing that many communities of color were not getting the resources that they need, he founded Browning the Green Space, a cross-sector volunteer organization focused on increasing the participation and leadership of BIPOC and Women in the clean energy industry and related sectors. He also founded the Majira Project, a startup accelerator that has supported nearly 90 companies that have raised more than $400M in venture financing.
Brahm Rhodes runs an active investment syndicate with 200+ LPs and is an active angel investor. He has extensive entrepreneurial experience as a founder, engineer, executive, mentor, and investor. His background includes research, technology & product development, and business development with repeated success developing products from concept to customer in multiple industries.
“My personal network is less focused on ClimateTech and more focused on frontier technologies,” says Brahm, ”but that’s one of the benefits of why ClimateTech is successful on this go-around – as opposed to the first go-around about ten years ago with ‘Cleantech’ where much of the investing didn’t work out so well – primarily because a lot of the technologies that are being applied to climate solutions are coming out of other areas. So AI (artificial intelligence), big data, IoT (internet of things), cloud computing, and other technologies that have evolved and matured in other spaces are now being applied to ClimateTech which makes it a much more viable investment path for venture.”
Competitive Advantages
The combined expertise and experience of these GPs gives them several competitive advantages. Namely:
Their accelerator partners provide unique early access and deep knowledge of founders and their companies that position them to invest in the most promising startups and climate solutions.
The team brings deep technical expertise in energy, transportation, waste, environment, materials, data, AI/ML, automation, and policy to evaluate and back companies.
The GPs combined decades of industry and mentoring experience unlocks ClimateTech insights and identifies and supports portfolio companies to scale, grow, and exit.
VCI’s Climate Justice Initiative
With Malaika Venture’s focus and unparalleled experience in both ClimateTech and Climate Justice, we couldn’t have picked a better recipient for our Climate Justice Initiative for Diverse Emerging Fund Managers.
“We were lucky enough to be one of the ten teams to receive the Climate Justice Initiative award of $100,000,” says Brahm, “and it’s been instrumental in getting us as far as we’ve gotten as fast as we’ve gotten. It costs a lot to start a venture fund. We were able to accelerate the process of getting fund administrators on board, getting all our ducks in a row, and bringing on our legal team earlier than we might have been able to.”
But he explains that the Initiative’s significance is more than about the money itself. “It’s also validation that the mission, thesis, and approach that we put forward is a smart one.”
It certainly is.
VC Include is proud to support and champion Malaika Ventures as they invest catalytic capital into historically underrepresented entrepreneurs in order to build cleaner, healthier, more equitable communities across the country and around the world.
