Founder in Residence, Clean Cooling
Marble
About Marble
Marble is a climate tech venture studio. Our north star is to erase billions of tons from annual greenhouse gas emissions and create a thriving future.
We partner with scientists, engineers and operators to create new deep tech companies that solve hard climate problems — slash emissions, remove carbon from the atmosphere, and cool the planet — while reshaping multi-billion $ industries.
We're proud to be backed by leading climate investors across Europe and the US.
Ushering In Next-Gen Cooling
Cooling for built environments is vital for human health and comfort in a warming world. However, air conditioning is currently responsible for over 3.1 Gt CO2e annual emissions, and requires a lot of electricity, which stresses power grid at peak demand.
These issues are expected to worsen as warming temperatures and global development will drive the growth of AC deployment, which is forecasted up at 50x by 2050.
Status quo technologies have only experienced modest energy efficiency improvements over time and the majority sill use refrigerants with high global warming potentials.
Cooling will be critical for adapting to a warming world, especially among the most vulnerable populations. Further more, access to AC has been correlated with social benefits to economic productivity, performance in school, and life expectancy.
The world needs energy efficient and refrigerant-free cooling to deliver this promise without risking to compromise our climate change mitigation goals.
Innovations in cooling range from new mechanisms that reduce energy, remove harmful refrigerants, are flexible to accommodate clean power intermittency, or utilize waste heat. However, most of them have faced technical and thus commercialization hurdles.
We are exploring novel approaches to usher in transformative change in cooling.
The Opportunity
We are interested in a broad range of approaches to create and deploy the next generation of cooling technologies. The ideal one would bring step-change improvements on energy efficiency intensity, not rely on refrigerants, be completely silent, and widely applicable.
Any relevant approach would also require careful consideration on newly integrated business models to overcome consolidated channels, a very siloed industry, mixed incentives, inertia, and long sales cycles.
Some of the strategies we are considering include:
- Desiccants: Dehumidifying air prior can decrease the energy use of vapor compression by as much as 80%. The key bottleneck is desiccant regeneration, which could be addressed with new materials that integrate with existing hardware.
- New Driving Forces: Beyond standard compression and decompression of gases, different kinds of stimuli could create phase changes to drive cooling cycles. Examples include magnetism, electrochemistry, pressure, and tensile strain.
- Solid-State Cooling: Thermal cycles that do not require moving parts could be very efficient and silent at the same time. Solid-state cooling is mostly effective at small scales, but new approaches could potentially cool large commercial interior (>10,000 m2) spaces.
- New Heat Sources: Integration of cooling cycles with low-carbon heat sources - assuming these can be accessed in desired locations - may reduce energetic requirements. Possible solution should integrate with existing HVAC systems of relevant markets and low energetic intensity substantially.
- Commercial Innovation: New business model strategies to facilitate tech cooling deployment of emergent cooling technologies (overcoming barriers such as mixed incentives, consolidated channels, etc).
We are looking for a Founder in Residence to join our next cohort to explore these approaches further and create the most scaleable clean cooling company.
Skills & Profile
We are seeking a seasoned entrepreneur, academic rockstar, or industry insider with background in business development to build a high-impact cooling company with Marble
Examples of relevant backgrounds:
- Materials Scientist / Chemist / Chemical engineer with intimate knowledge surrounding next generation cooling materials.
- OR Process Engineer / Mechanical Engineer with previous experience designing and prototyping new hardware technologies in the HVAC sector.
- OR Industry Insider in the space cooling, sustainable built environment, or HVAC sector
- OR Experienced Startup Operator in the climate technology sector either through a previous role or side project of yours.
We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet all requirements. Above all, we value intelligence, creativity and Founder Potential.
Especially if you recognise yourself below:
- You can’t wait to start your own company (or your next one)
- You are a pragmatic optimist on a mission to tackle climate change
- You are outcome focused and action oriented - you make things happen
- You are a great communicator - you can convince others to follow you
- You love to break down ambitious goals into actionable milestones
- You understand that innovation starts with people - not ideas
What We Offer
As a Founder-in-Residence, you will join other stellar individuals who also believe in the need for deep tech solutions to solve hard climate problems.
Together, we would be scoping high potential approaches before converging on the most promising one and finding your future co-founders
We offer (among other things)
- A €2,500 to €3,000 monthly allowance during the programme
- A €250,000 pre-seed investment on startup creation if you’re successful. You and your team will own 80% of the company at pre-seed.
- Full-stack support in our venture creation programme
- Mentorship and guidance at every step of the way
- Hands on support across technology and market research, landing interviews with experts and customers, techno economics, roadmap and scale up strategy, IP strategy, team building, advisor sourcing, and more
- Access to an unparalleled network across science, industry, talent, investors, mentors, climate tech founders, curated vendors and suppliers
- Access to our research insights, knowledge base and founder resources
- Weekly check-ins, work sessions in our Paris HQ (or remote) and continuous peer learning with other programme participants
- Seed Fundraising support after the programme. Introductions to the best seed investors from our network and help with term sheet negotiation.
- Founder Visa sponsorship if you wish to relocate to France. Remote participation is possible, preferably from Europe and with regular in-person meetings.
How to Apply
We are looking for the best candidate - so you are welcome to apply as soon as possible.
➡️ Apply Here or see the Programme Structure
We believe that a diverse group of minds is key to solving the climate crisis. We encourage women and people of colour to apply.
Studies have shown that under-represented candidates are less likely to apply for an opportunity unless they feel they meet every single qualification.
We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive and mission-driven cohort. If you’re excited about the programme but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with what you read on our website, we encourage you to apply anyways!
FAQs
For a full list of FAQs, please visit our website.