Here’s the headline & launch announcement we’re working to see from a new affiliated group of  successful entrepreneurs who see restoring the climate as the greatest startup opportunity ever. (The images come from the deck we’re showing to connectors and potential “UltraRestorers.”)  

Start here or at our much shorter intro pitch: Restoring our climate: most compelling startup ever? or our one-page UltraRestorers Pledge.

Elevator Pitch as Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs & Techs Announce “UltraWealth for Climate Health”

We’re the “UltraRestorers.” We’ll spark action for ambitious, hopeful, and urgent climate goals:

• Speed recognition and adoption of safe, scalable solutions to reverse global warming and restore a healthy climate.
• Find the best ways to rebuild Arctic ice before much more of it melts, sharply disrupting global weather patterns.

Publicly or anonymously, we each commit at least $1 million to strategic startups and ventures we can make happen. All are focused beyond 1.5° goals on Climate Restoration awareness, engineering, science, business, and diplomacy.

In addition to our investments and donations, we’ll help get the most promising strategies off the ground with our expertise and with team members from our networks. We’ll show how we’re starting and publicly share results as they arrive. Join us for this biggest startup opportunity ever!

Competitive landscape

We’ll be additive to existing incubators and we’ll bring them new investors. Here’s the nutshell version of how UltraWealth for Climate Health (UWCH) can add value:

• SCOPE: We zero beyond mitigation in on removing carbon and restoring Arctic ice.
• SCALE: We advance restoration-scale solutions to address removing a trillion tons of CO2.
• SPEED: Even 10 and definitely 100 UltraRestorers joining in 2019 will help the  “carbontech” industry take off quickly, as it needs to.
• SPIRIT: Beyond money, UltraRestorers will recruit teams and make climate restoration the latest and greatest.
• STRATEGY: Early news of potential, results, and successes will inspire public support/demand to companies and governments to end to Business As Usual.

Who are we?

Most of our first members are in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. We’re all “Ultra High Net Wealth individuals” (UHNW), with investable assets >$50 million. We’re in this supersized category above HNW individuals, well-known to those who seek investors in companies and donors to causes, campaigns and candidates.

Many of the Bay Area’s ~10,000 UHNW individuals are entrepreneurs and technologists like us. Many are under 35 and have diverse backgrounds. We’re seeking out those who, as we do, recognize the urgency and scope of our climate challenges — and love to be first and far-sighted. We invite them to join us in actions for Climate Restoration beyond the necessary “mitigation essentials” — price carbon & switch to renewables.

[NAME] is one of the first to sign on as an UltraRestorer, saying, “We’ve lived the excitement of building big companies from nothing. We’ve launched amazing products and services in giant enterprises. We’ve seen what well-directed seed investments can accomplish. Now we’re uniquely positioned to be catalysts on the biggest stage of all.”

[SECOND UltraRestorer] says, “We’re a key missing piece. We can bring  what we do best to this challenge. Creating new options and pathways,  investing in better futures, and inviting our colleagues and friends to join us — that appeals to our sense of adventure and wonder and our need for speed.”

What led us to become UltraRestorers?

• We’re now richer than we ever expected.  We want to invest our resources for maximum impact. We yearn for new challenges, greater opportunities and worthy legacies. There’s only so much we can buy!
• People everywhere look to Silicon Valley because we’ve invented, created, and launched so much of the modern world. Now we’re thinking even bigger! Our ambition is to apply our enthusiasm, experience, contacts, and resources to protect and improve all our futures.
• We recognize how strategies to restore our climate address intersecting issues including environmental justice and inequality.
• We want to help spur a Climate Emergency Mobilization, like the US did in WWII. And we aim for all-in, ultra-hackathon equivalents of the Manhattan Project scientists and engineers critical to winning then.
• We’re motivated by inspiration, not desperation. We won’t settle for just slowing the worst climate consequences. We can create a healthy future. We want life on the planet to flourish.
• We know we have the tools to reverse global warming and draw down planet-heating greenhouse gases. We want to launch startups and super-scale them to restore our air and water to their pre-industrial quality.

What’s our game plan to go global?

• We’ll boost and build projects, teams, and companies that can profitably create big economic opportunities. We’ll provide bridge capital for solutions whose “customers” are everyone. To position them to gain vast public financing, we’ll demonstrate their immense benefits to society and to the air, water, land, and all living things.
• Regions, governments and private sector actors will experiment, authorize, deploy, and monitor safe, reversible, scalable technologies. Beneficial climate interventions can undo the 200 years of heedless unintentional geoengineering that have put us in danger.
• As pilot projects show results, they’ll inspire millions everywhere to demand their adoption ASAP by leaders in business and society and by elected representatives and officials. Countries and international bodies will speed up post-Paris Climate Agreement plans. They’ll start global cooperation for the essential near-term action to protect the Arctic. And they’ll start actions to reach 300 parts/million of CO2 by 2050.
• Leaders can set in motion social and economic policies to employ people everywhere and stop wasting and destroying resources. They’ll promote renewables and other sustainable development goals, beginning by making sure everyone has clean water and energy ASAP.

How are we starting?

• By signing the UltraRestorers Pledge. We’ll each decide if we want to participate anonymously or be publicly identified (like over 180 signers of the Gates Giving Pledge and 200+ Patriotic Millionaires). And we’ll each work to recruit three more UHNW individuals like us to become UltraRestorers.
• We’ll each commit at least $1 million to near-term funding for awareness, engineering, scientific, business, and diplomatic projects on Climate Restoration. We’ll each choose the right mix for ourselves of contributions, tax-deductible donations, funding matches, and equity investments.
• In consultation with the 25+ companies, incubators and organizations in the Bay Area Climate Restoration Initiatives directory, investors, and others, we’ll help launch the most promising investment-ready solutions with our expertise and our networks, plus additional investments. We’re not creating a new investment channel. It’ll be up to us UltraRestorers, as a group and individually, to determine how and to partner with existing incubators and platforms.
• Beyond identifying ourselves as UltraRestorers, as a group we’ll create organizational structures and set goals, timelines and metrics to track our progress and impact.
• We’ll entice colleagues and contacts who’ll jump at the chance to be join project teams and get paid to do what they care about most. And we’ll each have a chance to bring on a “Personal Climate Asssociate” to advance our climate restoration activities.
• We’ll share our results as we help create hope, jobs, and prosperity, and begin to shift global climate systems.

How many UHNW individuals could join?

We’re starting with the thousands of  Bay Area UHNW entrepreneurs and technologists. Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Databook p. 124 tallies 150,000 with >$50M in assets globally, half in North America. And WealthX breaks out UHNW individuals with over $30M by city, with >6,000 in San Francisco alone. (Wikipedia defines UHNW.)

We’re gaining momentum as people start to believe UltraWealth for Climate Health (UWCH) can happen!

1. We’re pointing connectors to our intro pitch: Restoring our climate: most compelling startup ever? and our UltraRestorers Pledge.
2. We’re promoting UWCH with our networks and with our sponsors the Healthy Climate Alliance and the Foundation for Climate Restoration.
3. We’re trying out the approach and language on UHNW individuals and getting suggestions.
4. We’re asking them and advisors/connectors to set up F2F and virtual meetings with potential members.
5. There will be no stopping this as soon as we identify a few UHNW pioneers who say, “I’m in as soon as we have XX UltraRestorers signed on.”
6. As they commit, they’ll help determine the best ways to pick the most promising and scalable startups, and establish UWCH’s structure and style.

Do you know any UHNW individuals who’d like to hear how they can change the future? Can you help us meet with them? Or are you a potential UltraRestorer yourself?

Contact us!