Why We Invested: Make Sunsets

"The only source of knowledge is experience." - Albert Einstein

What is the project?

Make Sunsets wants to make it easy to cool the planet to solve climate change. Right now, that means they send balloons into the atmosphere filled with Sulfuric Dioxide in order to cool the planet and prevent climate change.

Who is building this?

Luke Iseman is the founder and CEO of Make Sunsets. Luke takes on hard challenges, and applies practical solutions to them. He applied this thinking to housing with shipping containers at BoxHouse, and automation for soil at Growerbot. He has even coached others in commercializing hardware while at Y Combinator as the Director of Hardware.

Why Does This Matter?

In the world of climate change solutions, I see two problems, one that is consumer based and one that is founder based:

• The average person doesn’t have a simple way to make an impact on climate change in their every day life.

• There aren’t enough people defaulting to action when building climate change solutions. Too much brain, not enough hands.

What Make Sunsets has done is solve both of these. They are building the easiest way to contribute in the solutions of climate change. On their website www.makesunsets.com you can already buy a “Cooling Credit”:

So the end consumer or company can offset the planets temperature with a method that has been proven to work. And they have already sent up balloons to do this!

So where is the controversy?

<Here is an MIT Tech Review article>

Most scientists are resisting the idea that experimentation and commercialization should be done at this time. The idea of sending balloons of particles into the atmosphere sounds scary to them. I’m not sure what they thing we need to wait for, this has been proven to make a different and experimentation at a small scale is necessary! The one thing that all political parties, and most nations can agree on is that the earth’s climate is changing at a dramatic rate, and we have to figure out solutions that will generate real impact.

What is our hope?

Boost VC invests in great people who are attempting to solve the most impactful problems on the planet (Sci-Fi). We hope Make Sunsets shows the next generation of climate tech founders to be bold. To default to action and attempt to make a real difference. Every industry needs rapid experimentation and that is something that has been lacking from the climate world.

The best startups are built on the fringe of what is socially acceptable in a field. I believe that Make Sunsets is ripe to make an important business to solve climate change for the world.