S2E19: Career Highlight - How to Drive Change: Navigating the Shift from Tech to Climate Tech with Christian Hernandez
In today's episode, Thomas Caleel is joined by a very special guest, Christian Hernandez.
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In today's episode, Thomas Caleel is joined by a very special guest, Christian Hernandez.
Christian, a technologist and experienced venture capitalist, has an impressive background. Prior to co-founding 2150, a venture capital firm focused on climate solutions, Christian launched White Star Capital, a venture capital fund with over 250 million dollars in assets under management and a global presence.
Christian also held leadership roles through the scale-up phase of some of the world's largest technology companies, notably as Head of International Business Development at Facebook and Head of New Markets at Google. Christian holds a BA in economics from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Key Points:
The Birth of 2150: Christian shared the story of how he transitioned from the world of technology and venture capitalism to co-founding 2150, a venture capital firm focused on climate solutions. He mentioned attending a Princeton executive education event on climate, which inspired him to apply his expertise to address the climate crisis.
Career Evolution: Christian's journey from considering a career in medicine to becoming deeply involved in technology and venture capitalism showcases the importance of flexibility and staying true to one's passions.
Encouraging Flexibility: Christian emphasized the importance of encouraging young individuals to explore their passions and interests, even if they change over time. Flexibility is key to finding the right path.
Summer Experiences: Christian discussed the value of summer experiences for students. While some may benefit from academic programs related to their interests, others might find value in working minimum-wage jobs to gain life experience.
Climate Action: Christian outlined three crucial aspects of addressing climate change: education on climate issues, voting for policy change, and taking personal agency to contribute to climate solutions.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Christian Hernandez's journey from technology to climate tech venture capital serves as a testament to the importance of staying true to one's passions and being flexible in career choices. His insights into climate change and the need for action, both at the individual and policy levels, highlight the urgency of addressing this critical issue. We appreciate Christian's time and wisdom on the Admittedly Podcast.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Thomas: Welcome to the admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And today we have a very special guest, a dear friend of mine, Christian Hernandez, Christian is a technologist and experienced venture capitalist. Before co-founding 2150, Christian launched white star capital, a venture capital fund with over 250 million in assets under management and a global presence. Previously, Christian held leadership roles through the scale-up phase of some of the world's largest technology companies, notably as Head of International Business Development at Facebook, and head of New Markets at Google. Christian holds a BA in economics from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School.
As Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, his personal commitment to sustainability and 2023 is to limit his meat intake to once a week, Christian, really grateful for you taking the time in what I know is a very busy schedule. a very dear friend and somebody who I turn to when I need advice on things and a good perspective. So glad we're having a chance to talk.
Christian Hernandez: Hey, listen, I've been listening to the podcast for some time. So I'm excited, to be honest.
Thomas: Yeah, well, both of us now, as parents and having high schoolers. We're, deep in this.
Christian Hernandez: Yes, it's taken a more relevance of the blades. Correct.
Thomas: Exactly. Well, I want to talk to you about a couple of things. But first of all, 2150. What is that? What is this new venture that you're working on?
Christian Hernandez: Yeah. So a couple of years ago, I went to a Princeton executive education event that was paid for by the World Economic Forum at the Climate Center. I was climate-curious, but not climate-educated. And I walked out of that both scared and excited, scared about the scale of the problem. And the fact that me driving a Tesla doesn't solve it at all. And then excited about the fact that the the tool of venture could be applied to climate, we need to innovate dozens of technologies, hundreds of technologies to protect the problem. And then at that point, this is four years ago, very few existed. What we now call climate tech wasn't even a term. So decided to fire me for my own venture capital fund that I founded and launch a new article 2150 That focuses specifically on hard-to-decarbonize industries.
So I launched with a couple of Danish friends of mine, for Danish now, friends of mine, and we are now I think, one of the largest venture capital firms focused on climate solutions in Europe.
Thomas: That's incredible. And, you know, I live in California, so we have climate awareness, but at the level, you're operating, I think we were far behind, in, you know, so when I think back, but sorry to date us, but over 20 years, you know, when I first met you the first couple days at Wharton, you weren't a climate guy. Right? You were you've been attacked. I've always known you as the technology guy. So what was that evolution? What was that progress? And in not coming to Wharton, you were very focused on technology. But was that always what you wanted to do?
Christian Hernandez: Not really. I mean, if we want to go back to my application for college, I thought I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist, which in hindsight is one of the most depressing jobs for satisfying jobs in the world, right? And family history, my daughter, my sister had leukemia when she was young, she got cured. So I thought that people like that were amazing. Really, for years of pre-med realized I was not going to be a doctor. Organic Chemistry taught me that pretty harshly.
Thomas: But it's a very binary decision at that point. Yeah, exactly.
Christian Hernandez: Exactly. We'll come back to that. Because that's the organic chemistry story comes back to my Climate Reality now in a funny way. But I've been tinkering with logic since I was a young kid. I was playing with my dad's computer when I was 12. coding. And what back then was called Basic. And I tried to hide it kind of being a geek back then wasn't exactly cool. Now, it seems to be. But I kept on thinking about technology. I built my first website in 1993. And, in a way, by mistake by chance, I ended up in a technology company after college, in what became known as the.com. Boom. It was crazy. I mean, like the founder was worth 7 billion on paper. I was worth millions on paper at 23. And then I wasn't it was crazy.
Thomas: On paper the most important Asterix in your in your personal balance sheet.
Christian Hernandez: I know what exactly. You cannot buy it. You cannot buy real stuff with paper but with paper options. But when I applied to Warden Yeah, I wanted to say technology in the.com crash most of my most of our classmates who have been in technology, we're running away from it as fast as they could.
But I think to do that I actually think my specific case A rewarding read that I wanted to stay in wireless technologies focus on Latin America. The job I got during my summer internship was in wireless technologies at Microsoft focused on Latin America. So I think the hardest thing was Warden was actually not being attracted by kind of a social herd mentality. Everybody was interviewing for consulting and banking. I knew very clearly I did not want to be a banker, but I did do my own set of interviews for consulting, Bain, McKinsey, etc. Usually get swept along with it. But stay true to it and end up back at Microsoft after business school, then Google after that, and Facebook after that, and then investing in technology companies. So let's say I mean, I guess I was doing tech before we became sexy, but I'm, it's cool to know that geeks are now respected.
Thomas: Well, and ironically now, most of the students coming and talking to me would do anything to be a computer science geek. Right, that's their goal in life. And so and so you're in very good company. And I think it's, it's very hard sometimes for people outside the business school culture to appreciate I talk a lot about courage on the podcast, the courage it takes when you are in business school, right? And these cool, sexy, you know, consulting firms and banks, and if they're, it's very tempting, right? There's a lot of money being thrown at graduates, you can pay off this mountain of debt that you've accrued.
But I remember, sitting, at Wharton, our first year when the .com crash happened, and all of the tech the second year students who had offers from tech companies and consulting companies and tech and banking and tech, just getting their offers rescinded. And so what was what were you thinking at that moment, because the path that you wanted to take essentially vaporized almost overnight.
Christian Hernandez: In hindsight, I had another thing going against me, I was not a US citizen. So, three not a lot of tech companies, hire MBAs, and not a lot of companies hire important MBAs. And I think Microsoft, I wasn't excited about the size of Microsoft. I liked small companies, and I liked the hybrid growth cycle of companies. But Microsoft was hiring MBAs and my summer internship was amazing. I got to hang out a Bill Gates's house, the market, Seattle to you during the summer, which is great, except in the winter, you realize it's a bit different. But I had the offer was a great offer to work in this new fledgling business, there was a startup inside of Microsoft launching what would eventually become the first generation smartphones, way before the iPhone.
And so it was kind of a startup with it with the benefits of the big company scale. It included being involved and moving to Seattle, which was not necessarily a first choice. But I mean, a bunch of my friends from the team here ended up going to Google in 2003. Google definitely not hiring at least not foreign MBAs, they were hiring foreign engineers. So just finding the right fit. And there were not that many, many options. But I wanted to stay in the US.
Thomas: And I wanted to think about and I think so the very interesting thing here is that you had this determination, you had this focus and you know, I get a lot of students, a lot of parents saying to me, how does my 17-year-old know what they want to do? Right? And I always tell them, Okay, well, we want to think about what they're passionate about what they care about, and then equip them with tools that allow them to either stay on that path or change, right? And it seems like you've made some changes in your career and flexibility. What would you say to the students or parents in terms of preparing yourself for flexibility preparing yourself? Did you take a large career change later in your career? Right? It's, it might be surprising to some people.
Christian Hernandez: Yeah, I think so. So, when I was at Princeton, I found out the stat which I found a bit sad. So Princeton is amazing, right? It's like just research university, you're literally studying in the classroom where Einstein used to teach, I am surrounded by I don't know how many Nobel Prizes in something like 94% of the graduating undergrad class goes to consulting and banking.
So the best of the best of the best, who wrote that essay about how passionate they were about nuclear fusion or whatever it might have been? Yep, they have the debt or they have the incentive to go do consulting and banking. For some academia might not be right or becoming a PhD might not be right but for others, it could be and so the encouragement for them to be able to take that path in a society that still values kind of the monetary component, a bit much. I think for me it was a combination of on one side flexibility and on the other side, kind of a meandering direction in which I wanted to go I knew kind of where I thought I wanted to end but I was flexible about how to get it's it still sits in my office when I was a teenager, nos 2021. just graduated college. I went backpacking to Croatia, and I bought a poster that has a Latin phrase on it now you guys Unless you forgive my lab, it's actually something that one of the emperors said to their fleet during a storm that we didn't want to go out and say, oh, and he said, No, you gotta miss that to fail if necessary.
But I kind of misinterpreted and mistook that quote and applied it to my own life as having a steering wheel, alright, know which way the direction the boats gonna go, but allow yourself attack, you're never gonna go in a straight line when you're sailing a boat, but know the end destination. And actually have like, I wrote myself a paper when I was applying to business school around that phrase about staying in that standard direction. But no, there's never going to be a straight-line path. An example of that is, when I was at Microsoft, I was living in Seattle, and I wanted to come back to Europe or go to high school. So I applied and got a role in Paris. And then Microsoft culture was a big negative, why would you go from the center of everything headquarters out to the field as they called it? And, just didn't understand it. For me, for my own career development, being back in Europe was actually part of that, and I wanted to be in the field.
Thomas: And I remember the conversations around that we had.
Christian Hernandez: But in the career path of Microsoft, you don't do that you go through trying to go from the field back to headquarters, that's the aspiration. So it's actually like, planning your own frail, and then kind of try and stay true to it, knowing that it is going to change over and over again. And actually, the fun part is that it does change.
Thomas: It does. And again, you know, going back to courage, you know, having the courage to buck the trend, right, go against the conventional wisdom, that worked out very well for you. And it was a set of personal values, right, this is where I want to be this is where I want to be long term. This is the environment I want, I want to be in.
Christian Hernandez: I'm gonna have dinner with my parents tonight, and I'm gonna talk about a fun story. So two strong conversations with them when I was in college. The second conversation was about the fact that I wanted to drop pre-med. And I ended up graduating in economics. That's the only thing I could finish in four years. But I think computer science is on the side and taking technology classes on the side and coding websites, that one they were very supportive of. There are no doctors in the family.
So, they never really understood why I wanted to be a doctor I kept as long as you're passionate about what I wanted to do. The first conversation was after my first semester at Duke, I'd moved to Durham, North Carolina from Paris, so a bit of a culture shock, I came home and told them that I decided to transfer to Georgetown because I liked DC and I'd like the big city. And that's why they could have been supported. But they asked for the logic behind it. And I said, Well, there's a better Party in Georgia, and they're the Duke. And then quite a direct way my dad told me to shut up and go back to Durham.
Christian Hernandez: He's a very wise man, your father. Courage, with some direction from people you trust around you, is probably the right way to go.
Thomas: Absolutely insane. And so let me ask you a personal question. Right? You have this wonderful experience, right? You have this great education pedigree, you're doing amazing cutting-edge, super cool. Climate tech and you're way out ahead of the curve there. What are you what are your own children thinking? Like, what? How do you support them and their education goals?
Christian Hernandez: Yeah, tell me. So we're in the UK, and where they're British schools, British schools have a positive and a negative that you specialize really early. Like you make a decision at 14 that you can draw some lessons, my oldest will never take a history class if he can in his life again, and they specialize even more. So effectively. You only do three, maybe four APS levels by the time you graduate.
So it means you've gone super deep on those subjects by the time you enter college, which is great, but you've lost the breadth of all the other stuff, which I could argue is also positive. A liberal arts system does have its benefits. I could never have switched in the UK from medicine to economics, like that. I would have to start from scratch literally. So each of them is different. My oldest is also a geek, and he's pretty set on some sort of science career. He actually wants to be an astrobiologist. I had to look up what that meant. Okay, yeah. It's a study of life on other planets and what human life will have to look like to survive and other planets are actually not subscribed to the NASA Astrobiology newsletter. It's the thing I just didn't know the thing. Okay.
So this summer he and his youngest brother went to space camp, which was awesome for them. Because obviously, the oldest one wants to go study aliens and the little ones are 30 He wants to be a rocket engineer to build the rockets to take his brother's face.
Thomas: Is that a brotherly competition thing? Like if I can send my brother in this space? I won't have to deal with him anymore. Is there a good working relationship?
Christian Hernandez: Things are gonna work relationship. daughter wants nothing to do with space. Like she's like, I'm never going to space even if it becomes really cheap and affordable. So she mean, stereotypical, and like that my daughter didn't go to space camp, but it was her choice that she didn't want to go. She has no idea. And I think for her, for example, a liberal arts system would probably have worked well for her to explore different avenues. I always joke that she's going to change something We're all I just don't know if that's gonna be for the good or for bad. She probably needs that breadth of opportunities to figure out if you wanna be a lawyer if you want to be a human rights activist, she wants to be a businesswoman.
And so for her, we're probably guiding her more towards a US-style system where she's very excited about the US dollar system, she went to visit a couple of universities in California recently. My oldest wants to go deep into science as quickly as he can, and he never wants to do history again. So for him, probably the British system will be better. The only thing we can do for them right now is exposure to both different systems, but also different experiences like Space Camp, like summer biology camp at Penn that I just discovered. So they can actually start realizing what it actually means to be a biologist professionally, it's not all fun and games, it's a lot of time in the lab.
Thomas: A lot of TDMA. Exactly. And I think it's very interesting, because, you know, people wrestle a lot with what do you do with your children over the summer? Right. And there's a balance between, you know, between these, the summer programs, right, and making them make sense in your overall strategy Right.
So, for the boys, it sounds like Space Camp was really an integral part of them getting deep into something that they think they like, and it, you know, has deepened their passion. Right. But for somebody like your daughter, there is an element of kind of looking around, right, and and thinking about, Okay, what do I do? How do I get exposure to different things? And you and I have talked about this, you know, that being a little bit careful about the summer academic programs and not overweighting in that, because the universities are pushing back on that a little bit. Right. Obviously, the if they're going to the British system, it's the British admission system is completely different. But on the US system, the universities are realizing that there's a strong element of privilege in that and not, you know, coming in with just expensive summer program after the expensive summer program, and looking at, you know, looking at what we're doing and how we're growing.
Christian Hernandez: I'm laughing because of the conversation we had in Florida last week with my wife, our whole family, and my wife, we went to the restaurant and my wife had been a waitress back in the day, as she goes, you get things to beat me to be waitressing here for at least one summer or at least one month, all the like Space Camp and entitlement and you can realize what it actually worked to earn a buck.
Thomas: You know, that's very funny because in the conversation I had two weeks ago with my wife, who worked her way through she went to a very good undergraduate and graduate program in in Toronto. She worked her way through she bartended she served she worked very long hours she said that to me because my oldest did an internship with a real estate investment group. And she's like, Okay, listen, next summer none of this cushy my dad got me a fancy internship stuff. You're working minimum wage. So you learn this, you know exactly what your wife said. So I think these kids are in for a very different summer next year.
Christian Hernandez: Exactly. Exactly. The floor I mean, just just work retail. Right. So yeah, like I might have thought it was really music that they play in the record shop, go work in the record shop, but I didn't know what an hourly wage.
Thomas: Yeah, no. And I think that's a very good point. Right? It can be anything, right? I mean, I know, I remember growing up working, I started working in a barn, which, you know, cleaning tack, feeding horses at five in the morning, throwing hay bales around in the heat, you know, 110 degrees summer heat. And then, you know, went down and took the train downtown and worked in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Back when they had open outcry pits, which was truly unique. I mean, be on the floor at 6 a.m. getting shoved around by these former professional football players. But I think there is I mean, there is value a lot of value in working there's a lot of value in learning the value of money but as you said, you can be flexible, you like music, great, go work in a music store, go be you know, go immerse yourself in what it is that you like and see if you do like it because there's no harm to and discovering you know what, I don't like this. And course correcting right, you can do that before you even get to college and decide that organic chemistry is your is your nemesis, right?
Christian Hernandez: oh, yeah. So we would like to go back to the organic chemistry story. So yes. So I dropped out of Ergo during the main the main semester, because I wasn't definitely not going to pass. I took what used to be called Go for Dummies over the summer, but it was just or Go for a Summer course. And my professor was called Eric Tune. And this will be important in a second. And even though it's taking kind of Oracle for Dummies, I still paid this tutor, this guy who just graduated from his Ph.D. and had gone to Harvard who would come back and teach us or go dummies, kind of extra tutorials and how it all links back to my life now is that Bill Gates founded this fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures is probably one of the best-known funds and climate tech the see To the key technology officer of Breakthrough Energy Ventures is Eric toon. And the young PhD, who came back to help me out is the managing partner for Michael Roberts. So my life of Origo has got a full third going out of character. And when I see him the next, we're not letting you become a doctor and allow me to go down this path.
Thomas: I love that what a wonderfully small world. I want to be respectful of your time would you've been very gracious and sharing? As we kind of wrap this up? What is not related to admissions? What are three things that all of us should be focused on in terms of climate technology, climate change, and doing our part besides driving a Tesla?
Christian Hernandez: Yeah, so it was with my kids all the time. So if I asked my kids or the average person on the street, what they could individually do to impact climate change, they would probably say, driving, maybe taking fewer flights, and eating less red meat. Okay, which is true at an individual level, your carbon footprint is influenced by the flights you take and the meat that we demand that we drive, for meat. And yes, switching to EVs is good. But at an individual level, you need billions of us to be doing that for us to move the needle.
For example, everybody focuses on innovation, aviation fuel, which is only 2% of world greenhouse gas emissions. 50% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are our buildings, how we build, how we heat how we call, and then the industries the stuff that we make, to consume as inside our homes, etc, office, and that receives a fraction that receives, like 4% of all climate tech money. And that's kind of what we're focused on. Right, these hard-to-abate problems actually drive the biggest impact. And it's not going to be the Tesla is not going to be the electric bike, it's actually how to make the mess that has a lower carbon footprint, how to actually cool houses more efficiently.
So educate yourself on that Wet Climate 101101 paper on our website, that just kind of helps lay out the problem itself. And then you realize the enormity of it, this is not, yes, an individual action helps. But actually, the biggest action you can take for the climate is your vote, because it's actual policy, and politicians at a national scale, need to define laws and incentives, like the IRA in the US, they will actually drive the necessary change and the speed that we need. We need to have our emissions by 2030. Unlikely it's going to happen. And we'd have them again by 2040, and half of them again by 2050, to get to the Paris numbers.
And that's the second thing is realizing that even if we hit the Paris number, so keeping the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees, the world will change. So at 1.5 degrees, the IPCC, which is this council of scientists, believes that the global water level, even if we hit that number will increase by point four meters. If we don't hit that level, and we go up to two degrees, it'll increase by point six meters.
So even if we hit the Paris numbers, there's still a bunch of actions that we'll have to take, right quite quickly to start adapting to the changes that will come to the planet. And this summer has been a great example of just how quickly it happens, the change that happens, you know, floods in Beijing and heat waves all over the place, hurricanes.
Thomas: In California, exactly.
Christian Hernandez: And then the third, point, and the deeper you go into climate, the more depressed you should be. The final point is what I'm doing about it, which is having agency, the idea that you can actually have an impact on the work that you do in the startup you create in the job that you set out to do. So I feel that I might not solve it, but at least I'm doing something about it. And so that carries weight and responsibility, but it also makes me feel good that I'm taking action.
Thomas: Absolutely, you're putting the rest of us to shame. And we'll make sure to link to the paper you mentioned. We'll put links to your website into the paper in the show notes. One quick question. You talked about buildings and everything going into buildings, which is a major contributor to climate change. Is that something? Can you retrofit I know I'm very ignorant about this. Can you retrofit those? Or is it something that needs to start kind of now like Neil in Saudi Arabia, where they're kind of just building something completely new?
Christian Hernandez: There are both new builds and retrofits in the developed world. It's mostly about making our existing buildings more efficient. And that could be something as simple as ventilation double pane windows, or heat pumps, Heat pumps are all magical, the physics for them. The majority of the surface area that has yet to be built, the megacities of the future are mostly in the global south.
So making sure that those solutions are price affordable for the developer in Nigeria, who I bet you are not going to be choosing green cement they're going to be choosing low-cost cement that does the job So it's actually having and we've tried to invest on both sides, like new builds and retrofits. I mean, the single action, the single best action you can take is actually installing April.
Thomas: Fair enough. Well, Christian, thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, but really to talk to you both as a fellow parent and to learn, because I'm always trying to learn, you know, about what you're doing at 2150. It's fascinating. It's way over my head. I appreciate that. So that's why I asked for the advice. Appreciate you coming on, look forward to seeing what the kids do in their own academic journey. I'm sure I'll hear about it. And look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Christian Hernandez: Fair enough. And now I just give you one more anecdote in case she wants to, she wants to edit. And we talked about courage earlier earlier. And I think, if I was thinking about courageous decisions, while in school, it was taking two courses one an undergrad, and one in business school, they were completely orthogonal to what I was studying or what I wanted to do, but actually opened up doors and insight into stuff I never would have learned. One was a literature graduate-level course at Duke, online American literature taught by a fairly socialist professor, which talks about like part of the world, and a lot of the conflict, but forced me to read some books, I never would have read and write Communist guerrillas and their books. And it was me like the neoliberal posh kid fighting against these graduate-level literature students who were very, leftist about right and wrong, but actually just having that be able to understand the other side.
And so the ability to University is a magical place where you're allowed to do that. And you're encouraged to do so. And then the second class was with our Wharton, which was actually a strategy class with a professor who's now retired. And if he taught strategy through chess, he actually made us play chess. And he taught us grandmaster strategies, about thinking about the fact that it's not about the pawn, it's about using the pawn to get to the next move. So always thinking and strategy about the moves that come after. And this and all my other friends, and you included, we're taking an advanced called finance, I was not I was taking a strategy through chess class, which was orthogonal, but taught me a valuable lesson about how to think about two steps forward. So it's the one time in your life when you're encouraged to take risks and have the courage to do that. Agreed.
Thomas: Agreed, And in fairness, I did not do well in advanced corporate finance, which is why I love great non-disclosure, I thought I was helping build out the communications department and taking entrepreneurship through acquisition courses, which were much more fun. So thank you, Christian.
