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John's carbon flex

August 18, 2022

I asked “Who wants to buy a first ton of carbon?” and got a ton of interest and offers to buy carbon!

John Sanchez jumped on it! He got in touch with a startup and is in negotiations to buy their “first ton”. I was curious to hear more about what happened so hopped on Zoom to talk (23 minutes, here)

Here’s my takeaways from talking with John about his “first ton” experiment

• It's a flex (Imagine someday when this startup has removed a billion tons saying “'I'm #0000000001”)
• Co-creation at the early stages, getting to know the team, work with them
• You're on the team, trying real experiments in forward financing, getting out of theory
• It pushes startups to ask hard questions about their ability to deliver. There were many people who wanted to buy a first ton, but only three wanted to sell.
• Startups want a credible customer, it's market validation, so it matters who the customer is
• The impact of catalytic dollars. How do you compare a $500 purchase today vs a $500k purchase a year from now?
• What's next? See how it goes. Maybe form a “Buyer’s Batch” group for startups to recruit early buyers to help them

I love the power of little bets. Can you spend $500 doing an experiment to try something new?

Here's a few ideas we came up with to get you started:

• Pay an AirMiner member to read research and do a report on an emerging topic in carbon removal?
• Take a carbon-negative field trip to visit a carbon removal company in person?
• Tell a startup you'll pay $500 for being on their secret update email list for a year?
• Send me $500 and you can sponsor someone else's experiment? (@titoj on Venmo)
• ????

Hit reply or post on Slack with the experiment you’re going to do in the next month!

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