INTERVIEW — DANIJEL VIŠEVIĆ, WORLD FUND During Collision, Global Insider caught up with Višević, a founding partner of Europe's biggest climate tech fund, who reinvented himself after years working to shape Angela Merkel's global TV image as part of her communications team. What's wrong with venture capital today? Three things: One is VCs often only look at the obvious financial numbers. If you invest in climate tech, and in solutions that solve real problems, you need physicists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, biologists that also have venture capital investment experience. The second is short-term thinking, and the third is the lack of very good long-term relationships. It feels like many VCs and founders are better at siphoning money from a value chain than solving problems Yeah, I totally agree. Did you get your climate focus because you wanted to save the planet, or you thought it would make the most money? We are running towards a worst case where we'll make two-thirds of the planet uninhabitable for people. It was not an accident that I had my deep research moments in 2018, when Fridays for Future and Greta Thunberg appeared. I was working for a super successful VC firm, but decided I had to dedicate my life to tackling the climate crisis. My partners are really good, both are able to smell money even if it's behind a three-yard thick wall, so they're financially driven. Why did you choose to shape markets over your background in government and regulation? We won't change behavior by forbidding nice things. If we forbid eating meat, for example, there will be a revolt. It's better to create alternatives so that some will start to change. We want the meat eaters to eat our Juicy Marbles (fermented soya filet mignon). Vegans don't like it because it does taste like meat, but if it's cheaper and healthier, why should I still eat animals? What are you most excited to be investing in? We want to show that you will become richer by investing into real problems. We are looking at everything that can save at least 100 megatons of CO2 emissions or equivalents per year. Within energy, you have three sub-sectors: industry, transportation and construction. In agriculture, we could turn topsoil again into a carbon sink, or Qoa: It's a company developing a cocoa bean alternative in a lab to save rainforests and avoid child labor. What stands out about the climate tech companies compared to other tech? (There are) many more female founders in this sector where you solve real problems and it's not only about the money. But they will earn more money (in the end) because they solve real problems. Do you want to take over the traditional VCs? We co-invest with those leading traditional VCs. They invest with us after we've done a huge part of the job, but it's totally okay for them to jump on the bandwagon. So, you're subsidizing them but also gaining the scale of their money? They're also subsidizing us with their brands. It means we give a strong signal that we only invest with the best. The EU makes big research investments, and then a lot of it doesn't make it to market. Can you do anything to address that, with the people who don't gain investments from your fund? We give them to more than 150 high net worth individuals who invested into our fund, who also love to do investments as angel investors. That gives us the option to come back for later rounds of investment. It's a community, not only a fund. Does European venture capital also need to change? Yeah. Americans move fast and first. Germans only move when they have seen that something has worked 10 times. This is a cultural thing, and we are struggling with this at World Fund. I can tell you, very openly, that is why we stayed in stealth mode until we had half of our capital committed (to avoid any impression of failure). What's a climate risk you wish more people understood? The difference between compliance and impact. You can have a super ESG rating because of good compliance, and quite often the oil and gas industry has it because it's a highly regulated sector. But the impact is a totally different thing. Their impact is basically killing life on earth: it couldn't be worse. So this is something most investors don't understand. I love the concept of carbon shadow. The carbon footprint concept was coined by the oil and gas industry so that we are all aware of our footprints. But a person working for an oil company can bike to work everyday and have a nice carbon footprint, but a big carbon shadow. So let's focus on what's really important: what really matters for the sake of life. TECH — FACEBOOK SETTLES TO ELIMINATE DISCRIMINATORY ADS TOOL: Six years after ProPublica revealed that Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude Black users and others — one-third of the life of the young company — Facebook's parent company Meta has agreed to a settlement with the Justice Department to overhaul its ad algorithm system. COVID HERD IMPUNITY — VACCINE-PROOF COVID VARIANTS: While current vaccines will protect against severe Covid cases, "Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted" — according to new data from Harvard Medical School researchers. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 95 percent of the U.S. population (16 and older) now have antibodies against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. EU — UKRAINE BECOMES A CANDIDATE COUNTRY: As my Ukraine-based colleague Christopher Miller noted "8 years, 7 months, and 10 days — and revolution, war and massive bloodshed — after Mustafa Nayyem published his call on Facebook for Ukrainians to come to Maidan and protest President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to abandon a deal with the EU, Ukraine has been granted EU candidate status." In losing the U.K. and gaining only Croatia since 2004, this decision signals the biggest EU expansion in two decades. Where the other applicants stand: Moldova: Candidate status granted. Georgia: Denied candidate status, but offered a new list of conditions to meet in order to be accepted. Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili hailed the list as progress toward membership. North Macedonia and Albania: Already candidates, but EU leaders failed to break a deadlock over their stalled membership bids. Bulgaria is blocking North Macedonia's bid. Dimitar Kovacevski, North Macedonia's prime minister, called the outcome "a serious blow" to the EU's credibility in his country. UKRAINE — REPRESENTATIVES BEG FOR AID BEFORE SUMMER VACATION DISTRACTIONS: The war is not even half-over, visiting delegations are telling their American supporters. U.K. — DOUBLE DEFEAT FOR BORIS JOHNSON: The ruling Conservatives overnight lost two special elections — in traditionally safe seats for them. Former Conservative leader Michael Howard says Johnson must go. More Johnson allies are defecting: The first resignation was tended at 5:35 a.m. local time. More in POLITICO's London Playbook. Johnson, meanwhile, is in Rwanda, attending CHOGM — the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting— and has vowed to "keep going." Margaret Thatcher was in Paris for a European summit when her MPs finally turned on her in 1990.
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