The session will include Candice Delamarre, co-founder and COO of Kit Switch, Angie Foss, Strategic Development Manager with Autodesk Research & Autodesk Outsight Network, and Matt Peterson, Director of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). The session will explore the many ways in which different types of public and private capital can be deployed to fund climate tech innovators.
Kit Switch is a construction company delivering kits of ready-to-install apartment interiors to reduce the cost, time, and carbon of building retrofits and conversions. Circularity and sustainability are embedded in Kit Switch’s business model and product design. Since its very inception, the team of two co-founders has been supported by climate tech and sustainability-driven programs and incubators, starting with the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University, VentureWell, Autodesk Research’s Outsight Network, the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), the US Green Building Council of Los Angeles’s Net-Zero Accelerator, Larta Institute’s Venture Fellows Program, the UC Berkeley Terner Center Housing Venture Lab and more.
This session is focused on discussing how impact-focused programs such as the ones listed above are structured and will use Kit Switch as a case study to explore how building an ecosystem of complementary capital and accelerators was instrumental in getting Kit Switch’s products to market. In highlighting LACI and the Autodesk Outsight Network, the panel will enable cross-learning and collaboration for program administrators to continue improving their suite of offerings and better collaborate, and for both funders and startups of such programs to better understand the ecosystem of resources to leverage.
