Speed & Scale Quotes

“Fundamental changes don’t happen because they’re virtuous. They happen because they make economic sense. We’ve got to make the right outcome the profitable outcome, and therefore the likely outcome.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“the atmosphere as if it’s free. In classic economic terms, that makes it an unpriced externality. It means we’ve built trillions of dollars of capital infrastructure that makes a false assumption every day. And we’re continuing to build infrastructure today that makes that same false assumption. We need to stop doing that and take care of our planet.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“What excites me most about getting the world to net zero is that we’ll need end-to-end change—both big and bold moves and small but meaningful changes.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“But I believe it is critical to fund them, if only to determine whether the science can work at scale. When Bell Labs first demonstrated the solar cell in the 1950s, it was deemed technically brilliant but financially impractical—at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million to power a house. By their nature, innovations may seem impossible at first—even the ones that wind up changing the world.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“when solar and wind are so cheap. But I believe it is critical to fund them, if only to determine whether the science can work at scale. When Bell Labs first demonstrated the solar cell in the 1950s, it was deemed technically brilliant but financially impractical—at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million to power a house. By their nature, innovations may seem impossible at first—even the ones”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Education is one more powerful tool. Rolled out in 1994, the Food and Drug Administration’s Nutrition Facts labels are correlated with healthier eating: a 7 percent drop in average U.S. calorie intake and a 14 percent rise in vegetable intake. In similar fashion, climate guidance food labels could lead consumers to planet-friendly choices and expand markets for low-emissions foods. Consumers “underestimate the emissions associated with food but are aided by labels,” says a Duke University study.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Within four years, we’d reduced the cost of offshore wind by 60 percent, far beyond what we’d ever imagined.”
― John E. Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Philanthropic capital should not be doing what at-scale capital can do. It’s at-risk capital. We’re okay if 30 percent of our portfolio fails, as long as we fail fast, learn fast, and move fast. Another 30 percent can get spun out into companies that are structured in a way that is equitable and generous and can execute. And 30 percent are doing good things but might limp along financially, and that’s okay too. We have that 30x30x30 appetite for what success looks like. If we tell ourselves everything needs to be successful, we’ll miss out on a lot.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Communities are where climate solutions are deployed, and Elemental helps design how technology and people intersect at the very practical, local level. You can have the best technology in the world, but unless people accept it, it won’t get to scale. We’ve seen that while technology may have half the solution, the community has the other half.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“When I came to Hawaii, I was struck by the many energy-related challenges and got a firsthand look at how the climate crisis would exacerbate so many interrelated problems that communities were already struggling to address. For example, you can’t talk about energy for five minutes without bumping into issues about water, or transportation, or education, or the workforce. That’s the beauty of working on islands. Because of their size, we can see how the whole system connects.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Steve used to say: Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and to love what you do.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Climate action is wildly underfunded. To put things in perspective, philanthropic giving totaled $730 billion in 2019. The portion aimed at the climate crisis was less than 2 percent. Foundations make the bulk of their donations to health care and education.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Successful founders get on their surfboard and paddle out before there’s a single wave to be seen. Something in their gut tells them that the water is going to have the most beautiful wave coming and nobody else can see it. They work really hard to prepare themselves so when that wave comes, they can stand up and ride it.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“New entrants have something the incumbents don’t: agility. It is really hard to make decisions when you have seven layers of management. It’s hard for new ideas to percolate up when there are so many people and priorities. That was our M.O. at Nest: Be fast. Make quick decisions. Evolve more quickly than anyone thinks you can.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“whether with loans or grants, you expect some to go under. Since its inception, the Loan Programs Office has lent or guaranteed more than $35 billion. Less than 3 percent of the loans have defaulted, with current and future interest payments more than compensating for the losses.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“I look at the risk/reward dynamic in investing this way: You can lose only 1x of your money. But the upside can be many, many times the sum you put in—sometimes 1,000x or more.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Over the years, I’ve found that great ventures are set apart by a handful of factors: technical excellence, an outstanding team, reasonable financing, and laser focus—on either a large, existing market or a rapidly growing new one. Finally, a standout venture needs that paradoxical combination of persistence, patience, and urgency. Few young companies possess all of these qualities, especially at the start. The winners develop them over time.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Denmark’s capital contains 237 miles of wide, dedicated bike lanes. To keep riders safe, most of them are elevated and buffered by curbs from car traffic. By 2019, more than 60 percent of the city’s commuters and students made their daily round trips by bike, up from 36 percent in 2012.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“The Lodha Group, India’s largest real estate developer, is collaborating with the Rocky Mountain Institute to achieve Palava City’s net-zero target.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“At present, China pours more cement in two years than the United States used in all of the twentieth century.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“More than half of the world’s electricity passes through motors—in vehicles and appliances, in heating and cooling systems, in industrial machinery. Even when the motors themselves are efficient, poor controls can waste up to half the energy they consume. One novel improvement is a lighter type of motor—a “switched reluctance motor”—that allows for variable speeds and can run forward or backward.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“In the United States, more than two thirds of all energy produced from fossil fuels is wasted—partly in how it’s generated, partly in how it’s used.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“When Bell Labs first demonstrated the solar cell in the 1950s, it was deemed technically brilliant but financially impractical—at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million to power a house. By their nature, innovations may seem impossible at first—even the ones that wind up changing the world.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“As Bill Gates notes, we’ve yet to get the cost of direct air capture under $100 a ton. “If somebody comes along who can do it for fifty dollars a ton,” Bill says, “that would be really phenomenal. If you got it down to twenty-five dollars, it would be one of the largest single contributions to solving climate change that we have ever seen.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“The Greek root of crisis is “krisis”—to choose. Solving the climate crisis confronts us with a myriad of choices in redressing social and economic injustice, health disparities, and gender inequality. If we fail in our net-zero ambition, these problems will surely get worse. But here is a more positive outlook: the current emissions emergency is an extraordinary opportunity to address deep inequities that have persisted for generations.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“The beauty of this phenomenon lies in its ripple effect. When corporations make pro-climate commitments, suppliers tend to fall in line.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Between 1900 and 2006, according to a Harvard University study, every political movement that gained the active and sustained participation of at least 3.5 percent of the population wound up succeeding. In the United States today, that’s fewer than 12 million people!”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Movements are built by many thousands of individuals. But sometimes they start with just one.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Modi announced a national moonshot—a truly monumental effort—to reach 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

“Gareth Joyce, Proterra’s president and former chief sustainability officer for Delta Airlines, believes that we need a new currency for carbon removal credits. The ideal system would reward investments in future tech solutions and at the same time keep money flowing into the nature-based approaches used today.”
― John Doerr, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now