Collectivizing Our Climate Change Actions Through Sustainable Investing - Zach Stein of Carbon Collective

What if you could invest your retirement fund into companies that are sustainable and working towards solving climate change? That’s hitting two birds with one stone and exactly what Carbon Collective does. One of Carbon Collective’s founders, Zach Stein, joins us today to educate us on the world of sustainable investing and why this matters so much in the world we live in.

In this episode, Zach shares his entrepreneurial journey creating Carbon Collective with his co-founder, James, with whom they’ve known each other since they were four year old. This is one of the main reasons they’ve cultivated a strong co-founder relationship, and he gives great advice on how to make this happen for you and your co-founder(s). He also talks about the importance of being vulnerable with your team along with sharing his highly suggested book recommendations for entrepreneurs and early stage founders. There is so much to be learned from Zach, so listen to this episode to hear what he has to say.   

Zach’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “How does the world change? How does the status quo change?," and the only answer I've really found out is when enough people say, "I'm going to break from the status quo." When enough people do that, that's when the world starts to change.” (27:14)
• “Talk is cheap. And often, that's seen as a bad thing, but it means talk is the cheapest place to ideate on something. Make sure you've thoroughly talked through something before you actually start building.” (36:51)
• “An effective co-founder relationship and just an effective team, it is not tension-free. Tension is actually really important. You just never want to let it sit.” (38:43)
• “A small effective team can do so much more than a large ineffective one.” (43:36)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• The impact of sustainable investing in addressing climate change  (9:06)
• How Carbon Collective works (19:23)
• Important entrepreneurial lessons Zach learned (34:29)
• Finding the right co-founder (38:22)
• Vulnerability and team culture (45:59)