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Mitch Rubin
Senior Director of Innovation at Elemental Excelerator
Mitch Rubin is a dedicated professional committed to advancing startups in the areas of food security, emissions abatement, carbon removal, and nature conservation. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Markets and Management Studies from Duke University, a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, and a certificate in Regenerative Agriculture from Terra.do's Climate Farm School.
Highlights
The Elemental Excelerator team has been working on this for a while, and I'm excited to share our new funding instrument: the D-SAFE 💸 🏗 . The D stands for "Development," and it's meant to address the specific financing needs of startups developing their first few pilot plants or commercial facilities.
As a modern twist on the standard SAFE (simple agreement for future equity), the D-SAFE gives the CEO the option to convert the equity into a loan once the project is fully funded and underway. This feature allows the CEO to redeem this capital to the investor – rather than automatically take on further dilution – and make it easier to finance new project developments with additional capital partners.
Our goal is to have the dollars recycle back to us as soon as the projects get larger financing so that we can re-deploy capital for impact. We've already issued eight of these D-SAFEs to various portfolio companies so far and are excited for more!
You can learn more about what this means in our announcement here: https://lnkd.in/gU74XqQU
And big shoutout to everyone involved! Dawn Lippert Avra van der Zee Danya Hakeem Amir Chireh Mehr Mason Darryl Gunter Aparna Reddy Mike Curtis Lisa Kanehiro
I'm thrilled to be officially kicking off the next Elemental Excelerator cohort! We'll be working with 17 inspiring companies that have real potential to create a more sustainable future for all, including a number of food/ag and nature-based solutions, such as:
- Decarbonizing + decentralizing fertilizer production with Nitricity
- Ocean-based carbon removal with Vesta, PBC
- Improving working conditions for farmworkers with Future Acres
- Avoiding emissions from ag residues with Xilinat
- Real-time ocean data and sea-level monitoring with Hohonu
👉 Check out the full cohort here: https://lnkd.in/g6J_Y2xC
Can't wait to get underway 🌎. #ElementalCohort11
