(600c) Michigan Climate Venture: A Multidisciplinary, Student-Led University of Michigan Program at the Intersection of Climatetech and Venture Capital

Founded at the University of Michigan in 2020, Michigan Climate Venture (MCV) is the first student-led impact investing fund with primary focus on decarbonization. Tackling the challenge of CO₂ emissions is one of the grand engineering challenges of the 21^st century. MCV invests primarily in pre-seed and seed-stage startups with massive decarbonization potential in the Great Lakes region across three distinct verticals: food/agriculture, mobility, and materials/circular economy. Specifically, we provide patient capital which fills the “investment gap” between conventional grant funding and venture capital funding seeking market rate returns.

MCV places strong emphasis on deep partnerships outside of financial support – we work directly with our portfolio companies and provide pro bono consulting services to our portfolio companies to help them tackle one of the grand engineering challenges of the century. As a multidisciplinary fund of law, MBA, and PhD students, our core competencies include business strategy, sustainability, and technical/regulatory analysis.

In this talk, I will discuss three key focus areas for MCV:

• MCV’s partnerships with portfolio companies: example projects with portfolio companies to evaluate business strategy, sustainability goals, and regulatory landscape analysis.
• How MCV can partner with you: MCV is always looking for exciting early stage decarbonization startups from the AIChE and chemical engineering community - we would love to hear about and learn more about your company!
• Where MCV is going: As a student-led fund investing in an ever-evolving sector, MCV seeks to stay ahead of the trend. We would love to hear chemical engineers' thoughts on pathways towards decarbonizing chemicals and other hard-to-abate sectors!