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It's a great time to start a carbon removal company

February 25, 2022

It's a great time to start a carbon removal company. (video here, but the written version is better this week)

Funding continues to pour into the industry. Just this past week, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $45 milllion to carbon removal including two carbon removal companies, Twelve and Seachange. We also saw Watershed raise $70 million to help big corporations figure out their carbon strategy. Kevin Kung and the team at Takachar won Prince William's £1 million Earthshot Prize and Neeka Mashouf and her team at Rubi Labs raised $4.5 million to make fashion carbon negative (both of these startups graduated from batch #1 of Launchpad by the way!)

What this all means is that this is a excellent time to start a carbon removal company. There's funding coming in to support people like you who want to want to create new carbon removal solutions.

Got an idea or sketch? Don't go alone! The AirMiners community is made up of 1,300+ people fascinated with carbon removal just like you. Talk to other who can help you suss out an idea or get feedback on a sketch.

That's how Carbix began working on a carbon solution. The magic started when Quincy Childs posted a weird sketch to the #general channel for a carbon removal solution:

"Taking a cue from @Tito - AirMiners , I 've attached a short overview and description of what we're doing in the CarbonTech space with mineral carbonation. Appreciate any feedback Format is similar to @Jay Judkowitz earlier posts. Except we're focused primarily on using renewable hybrids to power a micro-reactor that carbonates olivine to lock up CO2. Design is still early but moving along. Thanks-Johann" (here's a link to the post)

People got to talking (and investing) an Carbix is now a real company and went on to the Indiebio Accelerator! All those things are possible when you get out and connect to other people and carbon removal.

Just ask Aaron Fitzgerald from Mars Materials! He was speaking at a AirMiners event and at the close asked for anyone with a chemistry background to get in touch:

"I'm gonna do a quick ask. I'm not a technical person by nature but I'm learning what I need to do to move my ideas forward alone. But if all you know of any chemical engineers who are mission aligned and want to work on decarbonizing chemistry, you can reach out to me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or the AirMiners Slack group" (here's a link to the ask on AirMiners YouTube)

AirMiner Kristian Gubsch got in touch and a few months later he's joined the company as co-founder of Mars Materials. Hell yeah!

The best thing you can do in carbon removal today is come up with a juicy problem that you need help solving. There are people ready to help you solve it.

Are you starting a company and have a problem you're looking for help on? Be like Quincy and Aaron -- go and share it to AirMiners and get solutions! To get started, post your problem on one of the channels like #general or a more specific channel like #oceans, #dac, or #carbon-markets.

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