There are few who can say, as Ben Eidelson can, that perhaps his most important career decision came from an internal dialogue with his imagined teenage daughter.
Eidelson, an engineer whose first startup was acquired by Google and his second by payment processor Stripe, was struggling with the existential threat posed by global warming. His daughter was just a preschooler, but he was haunted by a vision of the teen she would become asking him if he’d understood the climate crisis, and what had prevented him from working to solve it.
“That ate at me,” Eidelson said.
So last year the Seattle dad assumed the role of Climate Papa. Eidelson purchased a web domain and quit his job at Stripe. He began investing in and advising climate tech startups. Along with his brother, he published a step-by-step guide encouraging other software engineers to seek out climate endeavors that needed their skills. In June, he launched the Climate Papa podcast. Now he’s raising money for Stepchange, a climate tech venture fund.
This week, Eidelson hosted the first Climate Papa meetup at a kid-friendly Seattle brewery. The event was part of PNW Climate Week, an informal climate summit held across Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C.
Eidelson’s focus isn’t on creating a social networking group, but he was glad for the chance to meet in person with like-minded people. More than a dozen adults attended the event, with roughly half as many kids in tow. Age depending, guests tucked into baby oranges and cheese sticks or pints of Stoup Brewing IPA.
Patrick Gold was one of the attendees, along with his 13-month-old daughter. Almost two years ago he made the jump from software engineer for companies including Deloitte Digital and Slalom Build to the nonprofit Climate Neutral, which certifies climate neutral brands.
“I just really decided to do something better for the world rather than making money for other people,” Gold said. “Having a new kid, I wanted to change the world.”
For Eidelson, climate investing is potentially his most powerful tool for world-changing impact. He’s managing partner for the Stepchange fund, which will focus on early stage startups with investments of roughly $100,000-150,000. He plans to wrap up fundraising in the next month or two.
He is seeking partners not just with financial means, but also with pertinent expertise to share with the ventures they back.
“It’s a lot of operational people who have built companies or products,” he said in an interview after the brewery meetup.
Other Stepchange participants include:
- Arthur Shwab, part-time venture partner for the fund; lead of design and engineering teams at Bilberrry; and Eidelson’s brother-in-law.
- Stephanie Hannon, fund advisor whose experience includes chief technology officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
- Jessyn Farrell, fund advisor and director of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment.
- Ari Steinberg, fund advisor and former head of the Airbnb Seattle office.
- Ian Wong, fund advisor and co-founder of Opendoor.
- Bradley Horowitz, fund advisor and former vice president and advisor at Google.
Eidelson isn’t sure if he’ll be organizing many Climate Papa meetups given his other initiatives in the climate sphere. And there is at least one other effort focused on empowering and connecting climate-concerned fathers: Climate Dads, an advocacy and social networking group that launched in 2018 in Philadelphia and has more than 800 members.
Eidelson is already taking action on the investment front, backing companies that include Seattle’s Line.Build. The startup has a platform for helping contractors find rebates, grants and tax credits for climate friendly projects. Considering his professional expertise, Eidelson will continue focusing — at least for the next few years — on software startups.
“It’s where I can jump in and have the most impact as quickly as possible,” he said. “We all have to get going. We are at war with the emissions we’ve released.”
