Welcome to this episode of Hardware to Save a Planet. Our guest today is Tom Chi, Founding Partner of At One Ventures, a VC with the mission to invest in companies that work towards a world where humanity has a positive impact on nature. Tom’s background includes being an astrophysicist and electrical engineer, developing products at Microsoft and Yahoo, and working as a founding member of Google X.
Tom’s background in technology and his personal experience witnessing the death of a coral reef in Hawaii have instilled in him a deep sense of urgency to address climate change. We discuss the slow pace of progress, the challenges of scaling companies, and the need for innovative solutions in venture capital.
Tom not only highlights the importance of mass transfer in carbon sequestration and the limitations of closed-loop plastics recycling but also stresses the power of collaboration and utilizing diverse skills to accelerate progress. He is optimistic about the future, and his optimism is contagious.
The main challenge is actually going from one to many. So, we think of ourselves as a one-to-many venture firm, where we’re investing in companies that have already proven their core technology works and are ready to scale. And the main hurdle at that stage is manufacturing. So, we believe that if we can help companies navigate the very difficult, challenging, and expensive process of manufacturing, then we can have a really big impact.
— Tom Chi
About Tom
Tom has worked in a wide range of roles, from astrophysical researcher to designer to corporate executive, developing new hardware/software products and services. He’s played a significant role in establishing projects with global reach (Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Search, Google) and scaling new projects from conception to significance (Yahoo Answers from 0 to 90 million users). Tom wears multiple hats, including that of an inventor, coach, leader, and keynote speaker. He is also a Board Member at Cuby and a Partner at Hack VC. Tom is inspired by Ayana Young’s podcast series For the Wild.
At One Ventures’ mission
Tom Chi and his team at At One Ventures are on a mission—to invest in a world where humanity is a net positive to nature. The At One Ventures team is driven by an insatiable curiosity and geeks out over the potential of technologies to tackle environmental challenges. The single-minded focus is accompanied by an energy directed toward increasing compassion in the world. The team cares deeply about the founders and their companies and believes that together, we will heal our planet. In a short span of four years, the company has over half a billion dollars under management across 39 companies.
Want to learn more?
Check out the key takeaways of this episode below. Better still, listen to the podcast!
Key highlights
- 05:55 – The challenge of slow pace of change: Tom explains that when he started out in sustainability, there wasn’t a team and resources pointed at the problem. Over the course of the last 10 years, more people have become aware of the urgency, and a lot more people have started to engage. And so, the pace of innovation has increased. But it’s still far too slow. The pace of the problem is much faster than the pace of the solution. To Tom, the frustrating part is that we know a lot of the solutions, we know a lot of the challenges, and we’re just not moving fast enough.
- 52:43 – A focus on carbon sequestering: Tom mentions that one of the focus areas they are looking at is called nature-based sequestration. This is the belief that we can use natural systems like forests, oceans, and farm fields to pull carbon out of the air and store it in the ground. Tom believes this area has been underinvested in and overlooked and thinks solving the measurement and accounting issues in this field is actually easier than solving the technical issues in direct air capture.
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