This Week in MCJ (5/16/20)
News, help wanted, and other topics of note from the MCJ community.
This Week in MCJ is a free weekly email curating news, jobs, new MCJ episodes, and other noteworthy happenings in the MCJ community.
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🌳Become an MCJ member
Hey all,
First, the big news. We are finally rolling out a paid MCJ membership offering!
This is a huge milestone. We’ve have had the luxury to focus only on value creation for the last 1.5 years, without any thought towards value capture. This has been liberating and has enabled us to have a real impact, but two issues: 1) it isn’t sustainable for long periods and 2) there is a lot more we want to do/build to increase our impact on the problem and help all of you be more effective that requires more resources than the tiny team we have today (just me and Thai!).
We knew we had to rip the band-aid and get a membership offering in place. This enables the people who are getting real value from what we have been doing to pitch in to make sure we can keep doing it. It also enables you to benefit from a host of additional members-only perks out of the gates, and more to follow. And finally, it will help us get the resources in place to accelerate our pace of innovation to fulfill the future potential of MCJ faster and more effectively!
A few things to note about the membership:
There are monthly and annual options, with a ‘founding member’ option as well, for anyone that feels like you may want to contribute more than the standard membership fee (no pressure, but hey, just in case!).
Membership initially gets you bonus pod/newsletter content (free pod/newsletter content will continue, as well), slack access (access to slack will be for members only going forward unless you are in there already), and virtual town hall meetings with the MCJ team and other members, so you can get to know each other, and have an opportunity to weigh in on the MCJ direction and approach.
There is an application process to become a member, similar to how there has been to access MCJ slack. This is not to be exclusive, but simply to keep the caliber of the discussion high and the spirit of the community intact. For those that are in the slack group already, you won’t need to apply again. If you are in the slack group and interested in becoming a member, just email us directly and we will send you the link to subscribe.
For everyone else, you can learn more and apply to become a member here.
We should also note that, although slack access will be a members-only feature going forward, we aren’t going to boot out the 700+ or so members of the MCJ slack community that are already in there. We have tremendous gratitude for the work they (you) have done to make it the vibrant, amazing place that it is! We do ask that current slack members consider upgrading to a paid MCJ membership, especially if you are getting ongoing value from being in the community. There are some additional perks that come with membership out of the gates, we will be adding more over time, and we also just really appreciate (and need) the support to keep doing what we do!
Thanks so much for helping us get to this important milestone. It is a needle to thread to get this next phase right, but if we do, it is going to catapult our little climate-focused community into a new stratosphere. If you like what you’ve seen from us so far, imagine what we could do if we had a business model 😜.
We are already hard at work on some improvements and new initiatives, and we can’t wait to show you what is in store. Thank you for coming along with us on this important journey.
Jason
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📼Episodes
Here’s this week’s episode, in case you missed it!
Episode 103: Timothy Hade, Co-Founder & CEO of Scale Microgrid Solutions
Scale Microgrid sells modular microgrid products to commercial and industrial customers. It addresses the problem of replicability, as microgrids tend to be highly bespoke to each customer and can be challenging to scale and price cost-effectively. The company recently secured a $300 million commitment of investment from Warburg Pincus. In this episode, Tim talks about his motivation to work on this problem, what he was doing leading up to the founding of the company and the company's origin story. He also provides a great overview of the microgrid market, how it works, and why it matters. In addition, I enjoyed our chat about how everyone can (and should) play a part in addressing climate change, and what the most impactful things are we can do.
🏗 What You’re Building
Projects and initiatives from the community.
MCJer, Baptiste Malaguti, announced the launch of Kuri, a sustainable cooking app.
You can download the iOS app here.
💼Jobs
Here are some jobs shared by members of the MCJ community that we think might be of interest to you.
Product Engineer at Watershed in San Francisco, CA (job description)
Head of Product at Terrafuse in Berkeley, CA (job description) (H/T Paul Straub of Wireframe Ventures, who invites those interested to contact him on the MCJ Slack)
Product Designer at Pachama (remote available) (job description)
Interested in sharing a job with the community? Use the button below to let us know, or just post it in #climatejobs in the MCJ slack room.
📰Recommended Reading
Below are recently published articles and content that we find interesting and/or that were shared by fellow MCJers.
Grist: “Opinion: Democrats will unify behind a ‘Climate President’”
Maggie Thomas and Jamal Raad, former staffers on Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s climate-focused presidential campaign and co-founders of Evergreen Action, detail how Joe Biden will have the responsibility of becoming the “Climate President.”
The Wall Street Journal: “The Former Goldman Quant Taking on Climate Change” (link to download PDF of article)
This article details how Goldman Sachs’ former head of quantitative investment, Robert Litterman, is applying his storied risk modeling expertise in sounding the alarm of climate change. In his new role as advisor to federal regulators, Litterman has testified before Congress, warning that “failure to act quickly could result in a tragic and potentially catastrophic mistake.’”
Axios: “U.S. renewable energy on track to surpass coal in 2020”
This article reports on recent projections from the Energy Information Administration that detail how renewable energy production in the U.S. will overtake coal this year, for the first time.
🤔 Food for Thought
ESG (“Environmental, Social & Governance) is having a moment in the media according to Bloomberg Finance Editor, Emily Chasan (h/t Daniel Ernst):
Monday’s MCJ podcast episode will dig into ESG investing, with a leading expert in the field.
💪Support for Startups
MCJer, Alexia Akbay, posted a great question about law firms offering support (in particular pro bono) to environmental startups. In response, fellow MCJers offered some helpful recommendations:
🎟Events
Past and upcoming events organized or surfaced by your fellow MCJers.
Upcoming
MCJ Community Chat: Carbon Removal (Sunday, May 17th, 3pm EST)
Eli Kariv & Chris Powers are hosting an MCJ Community Chat where the focus will be on the topic of carbon removal. The call we will have a 30-minute panel discussion followed by two separate 15-minute random breakout discussions.
Discussions will center around topics such as a broad overview of carbon removal, the current state of technologies, and trends in funding and startups in the space. If you’re interested in participating, please fill out this google form to RSVP and get a calendar invite.Demystifying Fast-Casual Food Supply Chains: Sarah Martin, Spyce (Tuesday, May 19th, 8pm EST)
MCJers, Erica Du and Eli Kariv, are hosting a virtual event next week as part of a new series called “Let’s Talk Food”:
Sign up and purchase tickets here.
Past
For those who missed last Saturday’s MCJ Study Group, featuring Max Tuttman (of Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) speaking on the subject of energy storage, you can view a recording here (H/T Gareth Gransaull). Also, organizer Amy Wang posted a poll for future topics.