One of my favorite things as an investor is dreaming up startups — then hunting for founders building them. Here are 3 startups I’m looking for right now… 

Making Seawalls Cheaper and Faster to Deploy

The Philippines and Japan recently suffered another tsunami. 

Seawalls can help reduce the damage from tsunamis and hurricanes. But they’re expensive and time consuming to build. 

Miami Beach is spending $80 million just to refurbish and enlarge a 5-mile section of seawall. The project could take years. 

So I’m excited to find startups that can produce sea walls faster and cheaper. This could save countless lives.

Avoiding catastrophic floods is one important goal for cities. But there’s another critical piece of infrastructure that makes them livable: trees. 

Supertrees

Visit any town that doesn’t have trees. It stinks, doesn’t it?

Scorching summers. No shade. No wildlife.

Towns like this are often poor. Visit any wealthy town, and it has giant trees everywhere. 

What if everyone could have big trees, and soon? 

Imagine a bioengineered tree species that grows 10-20 feet a year. You could turn a treeless town into a forest in just a couple of years. 

Where I live in northern New Jersey, one of the fastest-growing trees suited to our environment is the Autumn Blaze Red Maple. It grows about 3-5 feet a year. 

That’s pretty fast! But what if we use CRISPR gene editing to make it grow even faster?

Giant trees help keep us cool. But we’re still going to need the AC sometimes. 

That takes power, which is in short supply. So how can we use less while maintaining our quality of life? 

Power Saving Technology

The biggest bottleneck in the AI buildout is power. And as the world gets hotter, we use more power to run our AC units. 

So I’m looking for technologies that can help conserve energy. 

What if our AC unit pumped out more cool air with less power? Or what if we did a better job in capturing industrial waste heat and using it for energy?

I’m excited about all kinds of power-saving tech. It’s easier to deploy it than to build a new power plant!

Wrap-Up

Right now, everyone is investing in B2B AI agents. And I’m not against it — I’ve got a few of these investments myself!

But there are some big, unmet needs investors are overlooking. Protecting our homes, making our towns greener, and saving energy are 3 critical areas where we need to build. 

If you’re a founder building in any of these areas, shoot me a message!

More on tech: 

You’ve Got Your First Customer. Now, How Do You Raise Money?

My Top 3 YC P26 Startups: Space Factories, Rentable Humans, and AI Doctors

How to Treat Founders with Respect — Four Simple Rules Every Investor Should Follow

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Fundrise

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