World Fund

About World Fund

World Fund is a European Climate Tech VC fund investing in startups that contribute to solving the climate crisis. It focuses on the key emitting sectors Energy, Food & Agriculture, Manufacturing, Buildings, and Transport. World Fund aims to fill two significant investment gaps for climate tech: when tech goes from lab to market and when it leaves the pilot stage to scale. World Fund will invest from Seed to Series B stage.

World Fund was established in 2021 by Daria Saharova, Danijel Višević, Craig Douglas, Christian Kroll, and Tim Schumacher. They have offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne and Munich.

World Fund have a really pretty website, but are short on details. They help to “decarbonise the global economy”. Anyway:

As a climate tech VC, we are driven by tackling the climate crisis and only invest in technologies with scalable businesses and significant emissions savings potential. We support startups from early to growth stage, focusing on Energy, Food and Agriculture, Manufacturing, Buildings, and Mobility.

Entrepreneurs who understand decarbonisation as a value driver are whom we back; those who think big, act macro; those who build tech for a regenerative world.

World fund raised €350m in October 2021.

World Fund Pitch Deck

White paper

I tried to find a proper description for the fund, but found a white paper in case floats your boat…

World Fund Deck Slides

Supporting reading

• World Fund is a new €350M climate VC fund incubated by green search engine Ecosia
• Berlin-based World Fund raises €50 million to give new air to climate tech investment

World Fund Details

• World Fund is Europe’s biggest climate tech VC intending to raise €350 million to back founders using tech solutions to tackle the climate crisis
• Over half of the funding has already been committed, with the first closing set to be in H1 2022, and the fund has begun making its first investments
  World Fund invests in companies with the highest climate performance potential (CPP) focusing on the emissions reduction potential of at least 100 megatonnes of CO2e per year in industries such as energy, transport, construction, food, and agriculture at early and growth stage
• To assess and measure the CPP, World Fund has developed its own methodology and cooperates with Project Drawdown, Crane, and TU Berlin
  Partners are investor and entrepreneur Tim Schumacher, VC investor Daria Saharova, sustainability investor Craig Douglas, and climate tech thought leader Danijel Visevic
• LPs are leading European tech founders, investors, and German Mittelstand that have built and scaled some of Europe’s biggest companies such as Trivago co-founder Rolf Schrömgens; Econos, a digital sustainability investment platform backed by Alexander Samwer’s and Jeremias Heinrich’s Pelion Green Future; serial female entrepreneur and author Verena Pausder and her husband Philipp Pausder, the founder of Thermondo
• World Fund has a deep network across the tech ecosystem, corporates, public institutions and leading researchers to help it source and advise the most valuable companies of the next decade
• World Fund considers climate returns to be an early indicator for financial returns; the most valuable companies of the next decade will be those enabling a decarbonized world

World Fund Partner Bios

Tim Schumacher, General partner:

‍Tim Schumacher is one of Europe’s foremost entrepreneurs and investors. He co-founded the world’s largest domain marketplace Sedo.com in 2001 before founding Eyeo – the makers of Adblock Plus. He has also invested in companies such as Ecosia, gridX, Zolar, Pachama and CarbonCloud and won Best Male Investor at the German Startup Awards 2020. He joins World Fund as a general partner to further his personal mission to back startups that will help fight the climate crisis.

Danijel Visevic, General partner:

‍‍Danijel Visevic is a recognised climate tech thought leader investing in startups that promise the highest financial and climate returns. Before initiating the World Fund, he worked for Project A, one of Europe’s most successful venture capitalists. Before that, he was co-responsible for the audio-visual appearance of Angela Merkel and worked as a journalist focussing on climate tech, startups and venture capital.

Daria Saharova, General partner:

‍Recently awarded Best Female Investor by Bundesverband Deutsche Startups e.V (German Startup Awards), Daria builds on 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship and finance. Before initiating the World Fund, she built the first German-based proptech and energy tech VC. Daria is an expert advisor to the European Commission and maintains a close relationship with international tech thought leaders as co-founder of the think tank 1E9 Denkfabrik.

Craig Douglas, partner:

‍‍Craig Douglas has been investing in climate tech companies over the past 10 years at one of Europe’s longest-running climate funds SET Ventures, where he specialised in new energy business models, built environment, energy distribution and storage; and transportation. In addition, Craig has pioneered ESG and Impact in the venture community after creating a leading ESG framework in 2012 as well as co-designing a model which links impact to fund performance and compensation in 2018, which is now used by over 30 funds. Craig actively advises funds on implementing their own ESG and impact activities in addition to his role as partner at World Fund.

Christian Kroll, venture partner:

‍‍Christian Kroll runs the world’s largest environmentally aware search engine Ecosia, which uses its profits from searches to plant trees. He came up with the idea for Ecosia while travelling in Nepal and then South America. Christian was shocked to find himself driving for miles and miles in vast soy plantations where rainforests used to exist. This gave him the determination to start Ecosia in 2009 – Ecosia is now one of the most prolific tree-planting organisations in the world, and also one of the world’s largest environmental movements. Christian stands against unregulated capitalism and wants to see the model changed for the better. He doesn’t believe being wealthy is the key to happiness nor does he believe overconsumption is appropriate in a world where we need to fight climate change. Christian made it legally irreversible for anyone to sell Ecosia or to take profits out of it, and is against evading taxes and selling user data. As well as being an entrepreneur, Christian is the author of Social Capital and the Happiness of Nations: The Importance of Trust and Networks for Life Satisfaction in a Cross-national Perspective. He joins World Fund as a venture partner to invest in the next generation of deep tech companies fighting the climate crisis.

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