Member Spotlight: Claire Veuthey

This week, I spoke with Claire Veuthey, the Principal and Founder of Rizoma Ventures, a boutique sell-side advisor for climate companies providing specialized M&A advisory and capital raise services from a sustainability perspective. She reflected on the broadening of the sustainability industry, illuminated what factors determine the right time for a climate company to exit, and broke down a supposed knowledge barrier.

Will Hespe: You've been in sustainability for a long time. What's changed since you got started?

Claire Veuthey: When I started out in sustainability—this was in ESG data for investors—I thought I'd always work in a niche industry that drew people who are primarily moved by the broader moral and ethical imperative, with the hope of convincing the rest of the industry bit by bit. Over the last five years, that's really changed. Sustainability as a key business concern has become much more common. I think there's a generational component. There's an aspect of folks rethinking their careers and where they spend the bulk of their brain cells and their working hours, and wanting to put that towards something meaningful. It used to be that you had to claw your way into sustainability roles in businesses. Those intersectional jobs were rare, and I think they're much more common now as a reflection of corporate need for those roles, but also a broader recognition of the importance of interdisciplinary understanding from a company and government point of view. The industry has become much broader, much more varied, in a way that I think is really exciting.

Will Hespe: Do you have any guidance for people looking to move into climate?

Claire Veuthey: I get a lot of questions from people who are looking to move into sustainability. One important caveat: I've always worked in this space, so I haven't had to change lanes. But I think a lot of folks feel like they need previous experience in sustainability before they can work in sustainability. I try to remind them that they have useful skills and experiences. The odds of you pulling sustainability into your role are decent. So start by figuring that out. You don't need to come from the ground up in a totally new org. You can come in and have a functional role in an organization that's working on climate, if you're in finance or HR, for example. I think folks often feel stuck, like there's a knowledge barrier that they have to jump over. I want to encourage them to defang that a bit for themselves, and think of functional ways that they can slide in. 

Will Hespe: When is the right time for a climate company to think about an exit?

Claire Veuthey: So what I'm doing now, after almost 20 years in sustainability in business, is helping climate founders make more money and find the best fit when they are ready for an exit. A lot of companies may get unsolicited interest from a PE firm or another company asking if they’ve thought about selling, or being acquired, or starting a strategic partnership. If folks choose to explore it, they might be faced with an offer and have no context for how to evaluate it. What we do is manage the process to “make the market,” and build up to a competitive bidding situation where they receive multiple bids that they can compare, and then make a decision that's to their best advantage. There's a lot of value in the process, even if you already have an interested buyer or two. Sometimes there's an outstanding offer, we’re hired to run the full process, and then the previous buyer realizes they now have competition and need to improve their offer. So to answer the question: the right time for a company to exit really depends on a couple of things. Company maturity, to some extent. If you have a really unique IP, you can probably sell a lot earlier, but everyone else has to prove out a little bit of a business. You want your books to be in order and your IP clearly allocated, and other business fundamentals there that my team can help walk you through. Another aspect is how much juice the executive team has left. Some folks are like, “Hey, we've been at this for ten years. We're tired, I've taken this as far as I can, and I need someone else to take it on.” And there's zero shame in that. It shows real insight for people to recognize that it’s no longer fun for them. The question then becomes, how do we hand it off to the right party? The final piece of it is strategic timing in the market. We're seeing a really impressive strategic appetite for climate know-how and business models across various parts of the economy—there's a lot of interest in buying sustainability businesses. Generally speaking, the timing is pretty good now.

Will Hespe: What can Rizoma do for companies that no one else can?

Claire Veuthey: A big, important piece of what I do now with founders is help them figure out who they are willing to sell to, and some of that is mission alignment. In this field, and this is one of the bits that's so cool about climate, no one is really here by accident. You don't just end up in a climate job by accident most of the time, and you probably have aspirations as a founder beyond building a company—you probably also want to have an impact. We help folks ascertain that alignment from their potential buyers by setting up conditions for their impact to be maximized. That’s always part of the deal with us—the impact maximization—because that's why we're in it too. The other piece is that we're a lean shop, and we are young. We work with smaller entities than most other investment banks would. That means we give the founders and investors of earlier stage companies a good, complete process that they wouldn't get otherwise. We want those founders to have a full process, which means getting a response from the market on what your company is worth, and we can do that in a way that is lean and makes sense for all parties.

Will Hespe: Why did you join 9Zero?

Claire Veuthey: I really like the community. I came to an event or two and thought, wow, everyone here is doing something that's directly relevant to my business, or at minimum is of interest to me personally. And folks are keen to chat in a way that's rare in coworking spaces. The odds of there being some area of commonality are pretty high. I came for one of the free coworking days during Deep Tech Week, and there was a woman visiting from Toronto who walked around the whole floor and just said hi to everyone. I can't see that happening in other coworking spaces. Part of an active ecosystem is people who are willing to build the ecosystem, and that's obviously 9Zero. Members here show up regularly and contribute. That's what a community is, and I want to be part of that.