Author: Mehrad

The Mayor’s Luck (A Climate Tale)

In UncategorizedNovember 13, 2023Leave a comment

Once, a town stricken by drought innovated an irrigation marvel, turning barren fields lush. “We’ve bested nature,” they declared, but their mayor, mindful of nature’s caprice, said, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

Soon, the rains came, not as a trickle but as a torrent, submerging hopes under merciless floods.
The town’s pride washed away, and the mayor mused, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

From the deluge emerged a stronger town, with fortified defenses against nature’s whims.
As others

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Harnessing Eigenvector Centrality for Climate Impact

In Climate Tech, NetworksNovember 3, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

At Cool Climate Collective, I always say we are more than just Collective Capital, but our true strength to portfolio companies and the overall climate ecosystem is the combination of Collective Capital, Knowledge and Network.

So I get questions on what the network means (since it sounds fluffy, and everyone claims to be value-add in the VC space). So to better quantify the approach I’ve been applying since our initial start, I’ve been working on an approach to catalyze climate

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Asymmetric Collaboration (AC)

In Climate Tech, Portfolio, VCOctober 24, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

In my journey with Cool Climate Collective, our early syndicated work unveiled a potent strategy within the realm of climate tech investments. This strategy, which I’ve come to term as “Asymmetric Collaboration”, has not only enriched my understanding of the sector but has also fortified our portfolio, bringing to the fore mechanisms that translate theory into tangible results.

However, it’s imperative to understand that merely having this theoretical framework in place won’t magically foster collaborations. They need to

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Unpacking the Layers of Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) Through a Systems Lens

In UncategorizedOctober 18, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

Introduction

In the rapidly evolving landscape of climate tech and innovation, we’re often caught in the paradox of reconciling the promise of groundbreaking technologies with their real-world viability and impact. Enter Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA)—a tool that attempts to answer these crucial questions. However, a conventional TEA often falls short when it doesn’t consider the broader systems in which a technology operates. Let’s delve into the need for a more holistic, systems-based approach to TEA.

Our belief at Cool Climate

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The Universality of Weather Volatility: A New Paradigm

In climate change, UncategorizedSeptember 14, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

Gazing across the global landscape this September, a narrative as old as time presents itself anew. Our world has always known calamities, but today, it’s a tragedy repeated across latitudes and longitudes, from bustling metropolises to quiet countrysides.

There’s a phrase that’s been swirling in my mind, a new terminology for our epoch: Geo-Climate Equity. It recognizes that the atmosphere knows no distinction between emerging or developed nations. In the theatre of weather volatility, we are all equal actors.

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A Father’s Wake-Up Call: The Year 2040

In FutureAugust 12, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

Becoming a father changes you in ways that are both immediate and profound. For me, one of those pivotal moments arrived when I was setting up a custodial account for my daughter. I filled in her birth date, and the screen displayed a message saying she would turn 18 in the year 2040. That number struck me like an alarm bell. It was the same year mentioned in numerous IPCC and Net Zero reports that warn about reaching a critical

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My Evolving Master Plan (just between you and me)

In Capitalism, climate changeMay 27, 2023Leave a comment

Mehrad

Note: this is a working draft (compiled notes) – v0.2

Having delved into the climate tech ecosystem, encompassing a broad spectrum from global to local challenges, existing and emerging solutions, dialogues with policy-makers to private investors, my perspective on accelerating and scaling the implementation of climate tech solutions has matured and refined.

Last month, I started to see how the work I’ve been doing has been following this grander master plan, that I had yet to articulate. While

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Promethean Scale thinking for Humanity

In Future, Ideas, Innovation, UncategorizedFebruary 28, 2023

Mehrad

In our current era of exponential advances in AI, we are witnessing innovations on the cusp of a discovery that are Promethean in scale. These breakthroughs have the potential to transform our society’s fundamentals, including our economy, health, and material possibilities.

Just as Beethoven introduced a unique and distinctive musical scale called the “Prometheus scale” to push the boundaries of traditional musical structures, AI has the potential to unlock new ways to extract insights

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Climate Leverage Points

In climate changeTags climate, systemsApril 23, 2021Leave a comment

Mehrad

For those familiar with systems analysis, there is this allure for utilizing “leverage points” to create outsized outcomes given the relatively smaller shift. Typically these leverage points are found within complex systems whether it is a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem, etc. but the main premise still goes back to the idea of a small shift in one component can produce big changes through out the system.

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Media’s Role in Education

In EducationFebruary 12, 2021Leave a comment

Mehrad

The act of educating doesn’t simply occur in classrooms, lecture halls, or over zoom.

Media plays a role in exposing us to different viewpoints, mental models, and how others think. In an earlier blog, I outlined at a high level the themes we were exploring in a previous EdTech project I was involved in, and to continue that exploration I want to focus on the role of media and content consumption in

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