Back to the roots of VC: deploying capital boldly and early on
The hosts:
Alina Klarner, Impact Shakers Ventures
Jarno van den Heuvel, Carbonfix
What is this Ripple about?
The climate fund landscape is overcrowded with pitchdecks promising returns the underlying ventures and exit markets can’t deliver. Capital keeps chasing the same VC-spreadsheet-friendly verticals while the moonshots that would actually bend the curve go unfunded - a systematic retreat from the earliest, most uncertain bets means Europe keeps losing those moonshots to the US, where capital moves before consensus. This ripple is a blunt conversation about who should be deploying climate capital, how boldly, and what it takes to build funds and LP relationships honest enough to back conviction over consensus.
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
The past few years saw a wave of climate funds launch on similar theses, terms, and promises to LPs. That wave is cresting, a shakeout is forecast, and the GPs who survive won’t be the ones with the best deck - they’ll be the ones honest about DPI timelines, exit scarcity, and what funding a transition actually takes. The structures meant to hold this are buckling: top-quartile funds running 16+ years in practice, not by design but because exits aren’t materialising. Meanwhile public capital flooding into early-stage VC is pushing funds upmarket and inflating entry valuations to levels where European exit track records simply can't support the multiples needed for a return. Every year that goes unaddressed is a year European capital sits out moonshots built and backed elsewhere. Family offices, pension funds, and governments each have a different role to play, and most are still copying generalist VC playbooks never built for this asset class. 2026 is the year to be explicit about what climate capital actually needs from its investors.
Key questions or challenges being explored
The pitchdeck promises a 10-year fund, a clean winner/loser portfolio, and DPI on schedule. The reality is longer hold periods, a handful of exits carrying the fund, and LPs living a different story than the one they signed up for. How much of LP management in climate is genuine expectation-setting versus quiet hope - and what would it look like to design a fund honestly from the start - and is anyone bold enough to try?
Family offices can write patient, catalytic cheques that conventional LPs can’t. Pension funds and governments bring scale but tend to move once consensus already exists. Most of the ecosystem still acts as if every investor should behave the same way, and the result is everyone waiting for someone else to go first. What should each type of capital be doing differently, and who should be moving earliest on conviction rather than consensus?
Some climate verticals fit a VC spreadsheet - clean software, clear margins, fast cycles - and absorb most of the capital. The verticals that need the most help don’t. After years of climate funds piling into the same fundable corner, what does the coming shakeout mean for who gets called a winning GP, and is anyone still funding the pre-consensus moonshots, the unlikely founders, the solutions the market hasn't discovered yet?
The key tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
The moonshots that fundamentally change how our economy and society operate are never safe bets - and if we wait until they're obvious, Europe gets left behind. The tension is between the need to manage risk and return capital to LPs on a 10-year clock, and the need to back transformative, long-duration innovation at the speed the rest of the world is already moving.
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Climate GPs managing LP expectations on DPI and fund terms in a market with too few exits; family offices and other patient capital figuring out where catalytic money actually moves the needle; pension funds and government investors deciding what role they should play, rather than the role they’ve defaulted into; and LPs across the board asking whether the funds they’ve backed are built to win - or just built to look fundable.