Episode 207: Johanna Wolfson, Azolla Ventures

Today's guest is Dr. Johanna Wolfson, General Partner at Azolla Ventures. Azolla Ventures, created by Prime Coalition, invests in early-stage technology companies with the potential for gigaton-scale climate impact.

This is a discussion that was actually done live at the MIT Energy Conference on April 1st, 2022. It was a great discussion, so we figured we'd publish it as a podcast so that all of you can benefit from this discussion as well.

We cover a lot in this episode, including Johanna's background and what led her to doing the work that she's doing today, Azolla's origin story, it's recent spin out from Prime Coalition, the criteria that they use for making investments, and some of the recent investments they've made. We also have a great discussion about the role of catalytic capital in general, how it's different from other types of capital in climate tech investing, and what it will take to help these technologies reach wide scale deployment and impact. We talk about some of the barriers, some changes that would help the clean energy transition happen faster, and how you and I can help.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast), or @mcjcollective (company) and via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded April 1, 2022.


In Today's episode, we cover:

  • An overview of Azolla Ventures and Prime Coalition

  • How Dr. Wolfson began working with startups during her time pursuing her PhD at MIT

  • How catalytic capital works

  • How Azolla looks at deploying capital that is concessionary on risk as opposed to on returns

  • How Azolla measures impact in their investment portfolio

  • How philanthropists could think about working with Azolla Ventures


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