Don't Look Down: Surviving the FOAK Cliff
The hosts:
Conversation leads:
Christian Joelck, 2150
Michael Zöllner, DevCapita
Hosts:
Isabela Dobbs, Developer U
Sara Simonds, Venture Climate Alliance
What is this Ripple about?
A Ripple roundtable for VCs and founders navigating the structural valley between climate tech and infrastructure — where venture logic ends and project finance begins. The session focuses on what investors can do to best support their portcos across this bridge — before, during, and after the jump.
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
Nearly half of the technologies we need to transition to a low-carbon economy are not yet at commercial scale. Yet navigating the transition between venture capital and project finance to reach that scale requires a unique set of expertise unfamiliar to many investors and developers (founders?. As more climate companies approach first commercial deployment, the pressure on investors to help portfolio companies navigate this transition is no longer theoretical. The bottleneck is both financial and operational: a financing gap paired with a lack of project development expertise. This Ripple roundtable convenes VCs, project financiers, and developers to discuss what it will take to close both gaps and move more projects to deployment.
This Ripple is co-organized by Developer U and the Venture Climate Alliance (VCA). Developer U exists to bridge the gap between innovation and implementation, equipping climate builders with the project development and finance skills needed to turn technologies into bankable projects. The VCA supports its global network of venture GPs with practitioner-built frameworks, resources, intelligence, and opportunities to navigate the climate transition - driving climate-aligned value creation from inception to scale.
Key questions or challenges being explored
In your experience, what are the biggest challenges when supporting a portco through project development — and what has surprised you most about what it actually takes?
How do you know when your portco is ready for project finance, and what does meaningful investor support look like at that stage?
How should the relationship between venture capital and project finance evolve to move more climate projects from concept to construction?
The key tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
The core tension is a mismatch in risk language and expertise between venture capital and project finance — and whose responsibility it is to bridge that gap when a portco is caught between the two.
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
VCs with climate tech portcos approaching or actively navigating the transition from technology validation to first commercial-scale project development, project financiers looking to engage earlier in the pipeline, catalytic capital providers exploring innovative solutions to fund the bridge between venture and infrastructure, and founders who are building that bridge in real time.