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Ramez Naam

Founder & Managing Partner, Planetary VC · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorauthorexecutiveengineer@ramez ↗rameznaam.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

After 13 years leading teams at Microsoft, Naam became widely recognized for modeling exponential cost declines and learning rates in clean technology. He is an award-winning science fiction novelist and the founder of Planetary VC.

9statements → 5claims → 4claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.78/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓

4 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ramez argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Naam: Uber, Lyft, and WeWork burned more capital than cleantech
“If you look at, you know, some real darlings of The tech VC world, companies like Uber, or Lyft, or WeWork, you see companies that have burned through an enormous amount of capital, far more than most cleantech companies ever have or ever will.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 14:02 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ramez Naam on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Ramez Naam said on Catalyst that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Naam: Deep tech startups no longer need commercial scale to exit
“It's no longer the case that we have to wait all the way until we have a product commercially on sale or at scale for this to produce an exit.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 33:02 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Insight
Naam: App-based software businesses have weaker moats than hard tech
“We used to believe that, or companies like, again, I'll say Uber or WeWork, we thought, oh, they have natural network effects, they're gonna have a gigantic moat but it turns out switching costs for consumers are actually pretty low, and maybe lower, And some …”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 35:09 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Assertion Supported
Naam: Uber, Lyft, and WeWork burned more capital than cleantech
“If you look at, you know, some real darlings of The tech VC world, companies like Uber, or Lyft, or WeWork, you see companies that have burned through an enormous amount of capital, far more than most cleantech companies ever have or ever will.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 14:02 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Opinion
Naam: SPACs generated more upside for deep tech than other investments
“I think it's a fair case to be made that SPACs have generated more upside for deep tech in climate tech and in other sectors than they have for any other Type of investment”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 36:55 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Disclosure
Ramez Naam: Portfolio company ESS went public before achieving commercial scale
“ESS, you know, my portfolio just went public two weeks ago now when we're recording this, and they've got a commercial product, but they haven't certainly hit commercial scale at this point.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 32:35 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Naam: Addressing climate change requires $100 trillion in infrastructure turnover
“Or the early stages, honestly, of a hundred trillion dollar clean energy revolution, essentially. We're going to turn over, that sounds like it's just a made-up number, but when you actually look at the infrastructure turnover we need to address climate change…”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 49:06 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Assertion Supported
Naam: Cleantech VC funding dropped 4x to 5x between 2008 and 2015
“We saw this retrenchment of venture capital, and maybe it peaked around 2008, something like that, and by 2015, the dollars flowing per year had dropped by a factor of four or five, and especially for the earliest stage deals.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 7:33 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Assertion Supported
Naam: Steel accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions, tripling aviation
“Steel is like eight percent of global carbon emissions. It's three times aviation.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 29:40 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?
Assertion Supported
Naam: Global cleantech spend grew from $50B in 2004 to over $500B
“If you go back, 2004, the world was spending maybe fifty billion on cleantech, very broadly defined. Now we're spending well north of five hundred billion.”
Ramez Naam Nov 11, 2021 ▶ 42:26 Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?

The other half of the tape: Ramez Naam's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 7 episodes on Catalyst. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Shayle Kann 3Stephen Lacey 2

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0044882023episodesmentions
0482023episodes it came up in
000.54182023episodesmentions per episode
2023 7 mentions in 7 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change? Nov 11, 2021 19m
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