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I’ve been close to the challenges of shifting the built environment toward NetZero for a couple of decades now. First in venture capital, then as a founder in the residential thermal energy domain, and since as a board member of Windfall Ecology Centre. The goal has always been to simplify and incentivize changes in behaviour and technology adoption. Turns out, massively multiplayer coordination challenges can prove to be incredibly sticky. ...

The impacts of climate change are everywhere, giving rise to new risks and accelerating the need to adapt our physical infrastructure and societies. Regulators are introducing new regulations to disclose those risks to protect the financial system. Investors are adjusting portfolios and adopting new products to accelerate infrastructure adaptation to manage risk and returns. Governments are planning large-scale investments into new infrastructure to prepare for an uncertain future. People are wondering if they are safe and secure where they live and work. ...

As the twin crises of climate and inequality continue to ripple through society, we have a growing imperative to address them both. If either continues unabated, neither can be resolved. From a venture perspective, we are starting to think of the set of solutions that venture can contribute as economies of Transition and Cooperation. The Transition Economy recognizes the need to accelerate decarbonization and adaptation. It is not about climate or environment, but rather the solutions that allow us to build a future in harmony with both (e.g. CalWave, Leap, Wren). ...

Putting a ‘dent a in the universe’ is the goal of many mission-driven ventures. Those that succeed will create the new normals for a more vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive future. At Possibilian, we call them transformative ventures. Seeking and achieving transformative impact is what we are most interested in. It’s also different than achieving incremental improvements, regardless of how valuable they might be. To bring more colour to the differences, and what we’re most excited about in the years ahead, we’re pleased to share our perspective on: ...

At Possibilian we are interested in how ventures can create a better future, a future that is more vibrant, prosperous, and sustainable. In this post, we’re highlighting a few areas where we see extraordinary opportunity for progress in the next few years as we emerge from the pandemic. While these overlap with existing transition pathways, and will evolve over time, they focus in on certain characteristics of the types of innovations we think have particular momentum and potential for transformative impact. ...

TLDR: We already see signs for how our world might change, we just can’t be sure which changes will stick. There’s a wide range of possible futures ahead. Over the past two weeks I’ve been collecting a range of perspectives on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, to get a sense of what the world might look like after. Here’s where I’m at. Why is this so disruptive? Systemic failures as a result of the pandemic are impacting daily life and order. The speed and severity of these breakdowns is leading to rapid testing of what were previously ‘radical’ ideas. This creates an opening for meaningfully different futures to emerge. ...

A few weeks ago I started sharing how we think about the transformative potential of ventures, or in other words, what’s the potential for a company to ‘change the world’. While it’s impossible to predict if any venture will actually ‘change the world’, we can be sure that if it does, it will have done so through some combination of the following: introducing meaningful new capabilities; sparking a change in behaviour; enabling new systems of people, things, and information. Let’s take a look at Twitter as a simple example. ...

I’ve started an experiment to share how I think about ’transformative’ or ‘future defining’ ventures. Transformative potential is the core of what we look for at Possibilian and it can be hard to describe. In our thesis we talk about it as the potential to: …change the way we think and act, shift power and relationships, and create the foundations of a vibrant, sustainable and inclusive future. But what that looks like and how a venture might get there is not often obvious. Using basic diagrams and the constraint of short-form video I’m going to see if I can make it a little easier to dive in and explore. ...

{ height=“480” width=“640”} I just read Tris Lumley’s post Transforming our Anti-Social Sector along side three posts by Dom Potter: The Story of Social Investment; Rethinking how we support impact driven organizations to start-up; and Collaborative and collective impact for social change. Together, they tell a story of how our best approaches to investing in impact-first ventures are falling short. Incremental improvements to what we are doing are not enough. At the same time, the answer is not in trying to replicate the financial-first startup support ecosystem. Nor is it likely to be ‘something in the middle’. ...

It’s a simple question and it’s the heart of Pine’s daily check-in. As we’ve been building Pine over the last six weeks, I’ve answered it about 120 times. This is my experience. At the beginning I’d look at the question, not sure where to start. Often I’d quickly tap in a few words. Sometimes those words turned into paragraphs. Sometimes I’d check-in with a simple emoticon. After a while, I started noticing things throughout the day. Little thoughts. Sudden reactions. Sometimes I’d reach for Pine and tap them in. Sometimes I’d just pause and watch them play out. And then, it hit me. There was a pattern in my responses, a common theme lurking below the surface that had been shaping my days. Now it’s not like I’ve even done much to change that pattern yet, but simply noticing it lessened its influence and my days are noticeably flowing a little more lightly. Not bad for a simple question. ...