It was truly incredible to join Overture VC in Washington, D.C. last week for their first-ever Overture Ventures Investor Day. 🏛
An Incredible Program
Overture brought together its LPs, founders, and leading public sector officials including Ali Zaidi, Jennifer Granholm, Ben Rhodes, Jigar Shah, and Ed Markey for a conversation about climate. 🤝
It was especially gratifying to reconnect with Ben (a fellow Rice alum! 🦉), and to meet Jigar, from whom I hired my first Third Derivative employee, in person for the first time. It was also inspiring to meet other portfolio founders (two of whom are also in Third Derivative’s portfolio!) pursuing their own incredible journeys of impact. 😍
Making the Most of my Time in DC
Outside of our packed program, I managed to set up meetings with policymakers (Thanks to Lizzie Fletcher‘s and Randy Weber‘s staffs for making these meetings possible despite all the chaos int he US House of Representatives!) and with some of DexMat‘s funders at the US Department of Energy. I even managed to squeeze in a few runs around my old stomping ground – the monuments, the National Mall, and the houses of US government. My moving meditation through these important places re-energized and re-affirmed my commitment to building a sustainable, prosperous, equitable future for all. 🏃♂️
Takeaways
This gathering demonstrated that, when it comes to climate policy and technology, we’re moving faster than anyone could have imagined possible—and it’s still not nearly fast enough. ⏱
As Justin Dawe of Earth Force Technologies reminded us, one bad wildfire season can release an amount of carbon sufficient to undo much of our recent progress on decarbonization. 🔥
That is why we’re committed to moving with purpose and speed to build DexMat into a company that displaces dirty industries with carbon-negative materials at massive scale. 🚀
We couldn’t be more grateful and proud to have the support of Overture, Boundary Stone Partners, and others as we do so. 🙏
