Proximity Inversion
The people closest to a problem hold the least institutional authority over solving it. We route capital toward that proximity.
Investor-Operator Syndicate & Fund · Est. 2021
Capital finds the crisis late. Foresight arrives first.
Cool Climate Collective backs visionary founders building systemic solutions to the risks reshaping global economies — before those risks are priced. We invest at pre-seed and seed across electrons, atoms, flows, and signals, then put a collective of proven operators behind every company.
35+Portfolio companies
$100k–$350kFirst checks
4Investment domains
1Operating ecosystem
How we decide
Five doctrines govern every check we write.
Our frameworks run as a pipeline — foresight identifies the constraint, screening finds the position, underwriting scores it, deployment de-risks it, and circulation compounds it. The full versions live on the thesis page.
Three Futures Test
We back a company only when three independent futures could each make it dominant — and only one has to materialize.
Causal Parallax
The best positions sit structurally upstream of multiple winnable markets. We score how many futures a company compounds across.
Bottleneck Backcasting
Start from the outcome the world needs, walk backward to the binding constraint, and fund the constraint.
The Circulation Doctrine
Resilient economies behave like circulatory systems. Shocks localize in fragmented networks; we build portfolios that keep value flowing.
Selected portfolio
Companies working at the seams of broken systems.
InventWood
Superwood — engineered wood stronger than steel, now entering mass production. Featured in the WSJ and TechCrunch.
Alga Biosciences
Feed additives that cut enteric methane from cattle — one of the largest single levers in agricultural emissions.
Nevoya
A zero-emission freight carrier proving electric trucking wins on cost, uptime, and service.
Shovels
Construction permit intelligence — the ground-truth dataset for how America actually builds and electrifies.
Wasted*
Turning portable sanitation into fertilizer — closing a nutrient loop the economy treats as waste. Covered by Bloomberg.
Natrion
Solid-state battery components built for domestic manufacturing and next-generation energy density.
The ecosystem
Cool Climate Collective is the founding node of the Emrgnce ecosystem.
Emrgnce is a fund foundry — the fund behind your fund — that turns domain expertise into investment vehicles. What began as a climate syndicate now operates as a connected system: funds, research, media, and instruments that move capital toward binding constraints.
Emrgnce
The GP-creation platform seeding domain-specific investment vehicles.
Fifth Wave Fund
Maritime deep tech at seed, built with lomarlabs.
Bottlenecks Institute
The research arm — backcasting from outcomes to binding constraints.
foundations_
Open research on systemic climate risk and opportunity.
Work with us
Six ways in.
Join the Syndicate
Invest deal-by-deal through our SPVs into climate startups we collectively source and diligence.
Learn About the Fund
Broad, diversified exposure to an early-stage climate technology portfolio.
Pitch Your Startup
We write $100k–$350k into pre-seed and seed rounds, with a rapid, ad-hoc investment committee.
Join an Investment Committee
We match scientific, domain, and industry experts to ad-hoc ICs on live deals.
Co-Invest With Us
Share pipeline, share diligence, share conviction.
Bring Us an Idea
We constantly incubate new initiatives and spin them out through the ecosystem.