Alt titles left on the cutting room floor:
Yes, SV, The Future is Bright
Move Fast, Green Things
2000
You're eight years old, and you're stuck.
You, your brother, and your grampa are out fishing again. "Family tradition", your grampa says.
Behind you, the green goes for
literally hours. In front of you, there's a small river and then you guessed it,
more trees. It's so
hoooot and there's stinky bugs everywhere, you don't get how you and your brother can stand being out here! Let alone fish, you think you can see straight to the bottom of the river and there's
nothing in this river!
Your grampa has his lines out, reading some newspapers or something. You're so unfathomably (you learned that word from the dictionary!) bored that you try and sneak a glance at his newspaper. "Bush Prevails," you whispered.
"Stop reading my newspaper and get back to watching your line, sonny," grampa immediately said. You jump, startled.
"If you pay too much attention to the world and not enough to your own line, you're going to lose your fish," he said, flipping another page in the newspaper.
You frowned. "That's unfair," you whined. "Aren't you just reading the newspaper? And besides, there's no fish in the lake!"
"That's not nice," your brother said. "Just wait, a fish will come – Grampa said so!"
Your grampa waited a beat.
Then, he sighed and put down his newspaper.
Faster than you could have reacted, his hands shot out for a line. Smoothly, his hands find the wheel and the rod. His eyes are fixed to the lake, but there's a gleam in his eyes you only saw when he caught something. The rod twitched, but his hands stayed steady. Once, twice, and in one smooth motion the rod jerked towards the lake and whipped back. Your grampa shouts in triumph as he reels back a foot the size of your arm.
"Ha HAH!" he shouted. "See that, sonny? There are still fish in this river!"
"Whoa…" you and your brother said at once. "How did you do that?!" you blurted out.
"Patience and practice, sonny! Patience and practice!"
2020
You're twenty-eight now, and you're stuck.
Behind you, the trees go on for an hour. The national park's been cut down to size, and the land given over to the foresters. In front of you, the once forboding forest now seems so thin you think you can see to the Rocky Mountains. The river has slowed to a muddy trickle, and you doubt any fish could swim up it.
You've worked hard. You've gotten good grades. You did what your bosses asked you to do. You know you have the skills. You got a degree from a top fucking school, got good fucking grades, shook the right hands and brownnosed the right asses, so you did every
fucking thing right, didn't you?
Your shiver in the cold December air, through your four heavy layers.
You look at your work phone. 15 unread messages. 17. Asking meaningless bullshit, asking you to do meaningless scutwork. Can you investigate another crypto shitcoin? You've been
telling whoever will listen that crypto's a fucking scam, but all that means is your work phone is bombarded with pictures of Sam Bankman-Fried. You shut the damn thing off. If you're not invited to the damn networking event you're supposed to be, you're not bringing your work with you.
You've been passed over for promotion twice now at your firm. You haven't been invited back to the boss' party. Maybe it was just a freshman thing. All the same, you can't help but notice Jared has been invited back to the party, despite both of you supposedly coming from the same class. Your girlfriend hasn't answered you in a month, but that's okay, you could tell that it wasn't going to work out. You're all alone on this riverbed for this
family tradition, but it's fine.
If you tell yourself it'll all be okay, you'll be okay.
You cast a line into the muddy water.
The sun peaks.
The leaves rustle.
The shadows lengthen.
The sky explodes a brilliant orange, wisps of long white clouds like forgotten dreams and abandoned coke drifting above you.
Your knees creak. You've had too many years behind a comfortable desk. But it still hurts less than you do.
Just as you look up and see the blinding disk of the sun drive you blind, you feel it. A twitch – a bite!
You're blind, but your hands still remember how your grampa made you hold the rod. One, two, and in one smooth motion, you haul the fish through the air, trailing tears the whole way.
You take a moment to wipe the tears – the
light – out of your eyes.
Now that you're seeing the fish properly, it's a small thing, still alive in the mud despite the choking water. But he's clearly been losing his battle, especially since somehow he got himself tangled in the paper wrapping of a water bottle.
Once you peel it off, the little guy starts thrashing harder.
You look from the fish. You look at the label, with its kitschy-ass picture of mountains, lakes, and trees.
You start laughing, long, hard, and joyously.
Swifly, you unhook the little guy and send him back to his stream. He deserves to fight for his life.
You look at the art on the bottle.
Yeah, fuck it. You're cutting bait.
You're going to throw a new line.
"Throwing the planet a lifeline," hm.
You'll write that down for your biography.
2021
Not for the first time, you hope your coffee and your makeup are keeping you in rough shape. You're here because your senior recommended an executive recruiting company.
You look out the walls of the modern office, deep in downtown San Francisco.
From here you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.
From here you can see the tents of homeless encampments.
You shudder with revulsion and turn your attention back to the tastefully featureless paneled wood table. You pull out your phone to catch up on some last second reading, but just as you're reaching for your phone, a shape appears in the opaque glass, and you put your hands up and above the table.
"I'm sorry," your executive recruiter says. "Have I been keeping you waiting long?"
Your heart skips a beat.
Long blonde hair goes down behind her long white coat, hung over a grey dress that seems almost skin-tight. But it's the face you remember. A gentle smile, and a confident measuring gaze. A young woman who sees you, and whose eyes crinkle a little when they see you.
"No, there's no need to worry," you say. "I don't mind waiting for you. How have you been, Cynthia?"
You still remember your first crush.
"I've been well!" she says, laughing. "Forgive me, it's been years….?"
[X] Write-in.
"You're forgiven, you're forgiven! I'm just surprised to find you in this line of work," you casually brush off.
She cocks her head and smiles slightly. "I'm just doing what I've always liked to do," she says, leaning forward with interlocked fingers. Your foot starts drumming against the floor. "Seeing the best in people and finding them the resources they need."
You have an irresistible urge to shove your hands in your pockets – and you find plastic crinkling. You relax.
"I'm starting a greentech VC firm," you happily say. "I think the Earth deserves investors watching out for
her bottom line."
Crap, you bungled it. Might as well carry on. "If we're going to avoid the worst climate disasters, we've got to move fast and green things."
She smiles a little wider.
"That sounds wonderful. Let me know what I have to work with, and I'll do my best to set you up."
Who are you a veteran of?
[] Soft Bank
You're a VC who wanted to follow in the swashbuckling style of Son Masayoshi, investing however much you want into startups at any phase. You bet on companies, but above all, you invest in
people. If you can fish out the right startup, you can instantly leap into the all-time investor greats.
- Freedom to invest in startups whenever you want or hear of them.
- Freedom to invest however much you want into them.
- Freedom to bet it all on a flop, like, say, FTX.
- Prioritizes learning about startup team - will receive team information with initial startup bios.
[] Sequoia
You're a VC from Sequoia – you enjoy watching companies in proven markets, and watching out for disruptions. But above all, you specialize in looking for the eddies – the secondary companies that sprout up in the wake of innovators. If only you were in the right place for Doordash, you could have invested into Instacart - !
- "Limited" to Existing Markets
- Prefers investing in Series-A and beyond
- Prefers lifetime investment in proven startups
- Prioritizes learning about market conditions - will receive market information with initial startup bios.
[] Y Combinator
You were one of the people keeping Y Combinator afloat – before you were quietly shuffled off the frontlines, and to crypto. You invest in companies well before anyone else can, often investing directly in grad students who just come up with something which
might change the world. But being here means that most of your companies
will fail.
- Prefers investing in many small companies with small investments.
- Prefers investing very early.
- Startups will frequently fail.
- Prioritizes learning about fundamental science - will receive fundamental idea viability with initial startup bios.
Welcome to Greenwash, Greenlight, Greentech! This is a quest where you play a venture capitalist examining climate tech startups, and putting (fake) money into the startups you find most promising! Where possible I will try to link to real world analogues if there is one, or link to a post that I'm basing the theoretical climate tech startup on - I want to show more people some cool stuff happening in the climate tech world!
Bonus: did you hear about the first successful "net-gain" fusion reaction?
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