Powerhouse's Emily Kirsch: “Investing in saving our species”
The Times Tech Podcast
Will Morley
4.9 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Emily Kirsch, founder of Powerhouse, to talk about starting the company in 2013 (2:50), launching a pilot venture capital fund (5:50), working as a community organiser and getting funding from Prince (7:00), taking lessons from her parents’ non-profit (10:00), starting in a bear market for green technology (13:20), the talent shift (16:45), getting big corporates to really change (20:00), why the software layer is important (24:30), choosing investors (31:05), creating a female-only firm (34:05), and the green investing wave (38:40).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Yo, technology. What is it all about? |
| 0:04.4 | Ultimately, this isn't about the environment. This isn't about saving the planet. |
| 0:07.9 | This is about sustaining our own species. And I think that that has shifted how we think about |
| 0:12.9 | climate technology and its applications in financial services, in insurance, in how we get around, |
| 0:20.5 | you know, all of these kind of fundamental areas of our |
| 0:22.5 | life. |
| 0:36.4 | Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech. |
| 0:43.9 | I'm your host, Danny Fortson, back for another episode. |
| 0:48.7 | That's a very good one, guys. |
| 0:51.6 | Really? |
| 0:52.1 | On the program, we have Emily Kirsch. She is the founder of a company called Powerhouse, really. On the program, we have Emily Kirsch. |
| 0:55.7 | She is the founder of a company called Powerhouse right here in my town of Oakland, California. |
| 1:02.1 | And Powerhouse is fascinating because it's actually, it's a climate tech company, but it's actually kind of two climate tech companies. |
| 1:09.7 | One is kind of a corporate connector, if you will, which they help big energy companies |
| 1:15.7 | and corporates find the startups in the climate tech world that they should be partnering |
| 1:20.3 | with, investing with, maybe buying. |
| 1:22.7 | And then the other is powerhouse ventures, which this month, March 22, announced a new $70 million fund, |
| 1:31.8 | which is going to use to invest in startups in a very important niche, which is the software |
| 1:37.9 | layer that we're all going to need to run this new kind of decarbonizing or decarbonized world. |
| 1:45.7 | We're very slowly entering. |
| 1:47.8 | Chino is full of electric cars and variable renewables and all the rest. |
| 1:51.9 | And just kind of, it's going to require a lot of rethinking of how things work, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Will Morley, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Will Morley and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.