Dimitri Gershenson, CEO of Enduring Planet, critiques venture capital governance practices and misaligned incentives in the climate tech ecosystem.
0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The challenge that I have with that group of investors is that oftentimes the advice that they give to founders, or the guidance that they give to founders while they're on their boards, is often not as informed as it should be, but is given as very definitive.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Dimitri Gershenson
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Gershenson: Automated underwriting in 2019-2022 fintech lending was not real
“And a lot of that was built on the promise that technology had come to a place where you could underwrite basically automatically, which In retrospect, like, wasn't really true then.”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 7:36The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
Insight
VCs advise against debt due to their own equity allocation incentives
“The problem is that, like, there's a lot of misalignment of incentives in a lot of those conversations, and, you know, a VC who sees the opportunity for greater allocation in a business that they're interested in, obviously is going to want to take that alloca…”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 13:37The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
Insight
Financial instruments do not kill startups; founders and boards do
“The notion that a financial instrument kills a company is false.
Founders kill companies, and boards kill companies.
The people who hold responsibility are the decision makers in the company.”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 16:33The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
AssertionSupported
Gershenson: Venture capital is not the dominant capital source for US climate
“If you look at the data for how much money flows into climate in the US, like, VC is not the dominant.”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 20:40The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Gershenson: Enduring Planet's default rate is well under 1% across 80 deals
“Our default rate across, you know, nearly 80 transactions is dramatically below the average default rate for contract lending, and at this point it's like way less than one percent.”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 27:03The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
“Part of what allows us to have the default rate that we do is that people just don't give up. And so when stuff goes wrong, we modify alone, and they make it work.”
Dimitri GershensonJul 29, 2026▶ 29:21The missing capital for climate startups: more debt
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 100 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.