Is age an asset – and not a handicap – for climate startup founders?

Is age an asset – and not a handicap – for climate startup founders?

When I did my first startup – and that was during the dot com boom – venture capital firms did not even bother to return calls if you were over thirty years of age – you were too old. Luckily, I was twenty eight then, and double lucky, landed an investment for our search engine solution just before the market crashed 🙂

Fast forward about 25 years, and things have changed somewhat. You see a lot of thirty somethings and a few in their forties found high growth startups. But mind you, youth is still valued a lot in the startup ecosystem. I reckon you got to be a teenager to be convinced – and be able to convince VCs – that the whole world is dying to get their food within 10 minutes.

I do not know enough to comment about other sectors, but I can say this positively about climate tech: Age is definitely an advantage in the climate tech startups. It is the nature of the sector, stupid.

Even given this, I was plesantly surprised when I heard from Dr. Sivaram Pillai, cofounder of Proklean Technologies Pvt. Ltd. that all the founders were over fifty years of age when the startup was founded.

Today, Proklean is considered one of the few Indian startup success stories in the challenging domain of green chemicals.

To pick his brains on the specific topic of age & climate startups, I had a discussion with Sivaram.

How did being in their fifties help them as a startup?

And what would his suggestions be for those in their forties and fifties who wish to found a startup?

Here’s the video of the interview- https://lnkd.in/gePE9j5V

This CLIMAFIX TikTalk Interview Series is done as part of the CLIMAFIX India Climate Startup Summit, organized by EAI Energy Alternatives India & Energy Consortium – IIT Madras. The summit will see 200+ climate tech startups at one place along with 100+ VC & angel investors.

CLIMAFIX Summit also welcomes Sivaram to the event, where I’m positive that he will be able to motivate many experienced professionals to give their startup dreams a real push.

See my LinkedIn post on this topic