Craig Shapiro and Tomas Alvarez Belon, Shared Future Fund

Today's guests are Craig Shapiro and Tomas Alvarez Belon from Collaborative Fund. Collaborative Fund is an investment firm focused on supporting and investing in the shared future. Their funds center around two macro themes, the growth of the creative class and the concept of the collaborative economy. Recently, Collaborative Fund announced their new Shared Future Fund which provides rapid funding and useful resources to early-stage entrepreneurs working to solve the global climate crisis. It's a programmatic fund and they aim to make 100 investments of $100,000 in 2022 alone, giving a decision within 10 days of application. Craig is the Founder and Managing Partner of Collaborative Fund. He currently holds a board seat or board observer seat in several pioneering climate focused companies, including: Brimstone Energy, Dandelion Energy, Kula Bio, and Quaise Energy. Tomás is a climate investor at Collaborative Fund focused on decarbonization and the Shared Future Fund initiative. Prior to joining Collab, Tomás co-founded Canopi, a Y Combinator-backed carbon accounting startup, and was a consultant at Bain & Company. He also advises Climate Tech VC, a 20,000+ subscriber newsletter focused on climate innovation. We cover a lot in this episode, including the origin story of the firm Collaborative, how their approach has evolved over the years, and what led them to get into climate investing. We also discuss the types of risk they're comfortable with, criteria they look for, and how they think about different sectors. And we cover the Shared Future Fund, what it is, how it works, Craig and Tomas’ vision for it, and how it fits in with the other things that they do as a firm. Enjoy the show! You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at [email protected], where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests. Episode recorded June 14, 2022.