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Scott Jacobs

Co-Founder & Former CEO, Generate Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@scottiej1 ↗LinkedIn ↗generatecapital.com ↗

In 2014, Jacobs co-founded Generate Capital alongside Jigar Shah and Matan Friedman, leading the platform for over a decade as CEO to finance, build, and operate sustainable infrastructure. Prior to Generate, he co-founded McKinsey & Company’s global Clean Technologies Practice in 2007 after working in venture capital and technology.

9statements → 2claims → 0claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.56/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

2 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 2 name 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 Scott argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

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 Scott Jacobs on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

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

Opinion
Jacobs: Most 2000s cleantech companies that failed deserved to die
“Back in the late 2000, when the first time we heard the Valley of Death moniker come out, most of the things that died in the Valley of Death deserved to die. They didn't have a good proposition to the customer. They didn't have an economic proposition to the …”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 39:19 Crossing the valley of death
Insight
Jacobs: Capital Markets Cannot Catalyze Underdeveloped Infrastructure Markets
“When you have an underdeveloped market, the capital markets are unlikely to be the catalyst for that market to develop. You really need to see customer demand first and foremost that is solid. You need to have products that have product market fit, as you well…”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 10:15 Crossing the valley of death
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jacobs: Supply chain inflation hurts infrastructure developers more than rising rates
“The supply chain and the cost of supplies have gone up far more than the cost of capital has gone up so far, and that volatility in the supply chain has been much more troubling for our partners than cost of capital changes has been so far.”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 23:44 Crossing the valley of death
Opinion
Jacobs: DOE loan guarantees require massive project scale and bureaucratic endurance
“It's not just loan guarantees from the DOE, which actually needs to be for very large scale projects and for companies that have a lot of time and money to deal with the government bureaucracy.”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 40:37 Crossing the valley of death
Insight
Jacobs: Even the US lacks human capacity to deploy needed climate capital
“We still lack the human capacity necessary to mobilize the 9.2 trillion dollars a year that McKinsey says is necessary for the net zero transition.”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 48:20 Crossing the valley of death
Opinion
Jacobs: Global climate discourse overindexes on capital and ignores talent
“I am particularly concerned that the discourse, whether it's at the G seven or at COP 26 or at other conversations we have in the climate tech community, it is, it's too much about technology. It's too much about capital. It's too much about policy, including …”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 49:03 Crossing the valley of death
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jacobs: US Anaerobic Digestion Projects Have Historically Lacked Profitability
“At the end of the day, what I'm saying is the projects in the U.S. Have not been very profitable historically. And it's for a whole host of reasons that those projects weren't profitable, and as a result, capital wasn't flowing.”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 10:52 Crossing the valley of death
Insight
Jacobs: Electric Bus Leasing Lags Because Cities Rely on Federal Grants
“It hasn't scaled because municipalities rely typically on federal dollars and are accustomed to doing so when they make purchases for new vehicles. And so the value proposition of a leased bus is actually very difficult to communicate to the typical buyer of t…”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 29:44 Crossing the valley of death
Insight
Jacobs: Four criteria determine if novel infrastructure technology is financeable
“Do you have stable customer demand? Do you have a stable ability to produce for those customers? Do you have a solution that has already demonstrated its ability to deliver the output as well as the margins necessary? Do you have resilience in all of the suppl…”
Scott Jacobs Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 45:14 Crossing the valley of death

The other half of the tape: Scott Jacobs's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on Catalyst. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Lara Pierpoint 2

Every mention by year

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0112025episodes it came up in
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2025 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Crossing the valley of death Jul 14, 2022 29m
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