50:44 Feb 23, 2026
Building Climate Startups with Serena Dao, Climate Tech Operator & Writer
Serena Dao spent years at pre-seed to Series C climate hardware startups before the Engine, and argues carbon capture only survives if it...
Carbon capture and recycling sits at one of the most contested intersections in climate tech: the question of whether we can engineer our way out of excess carbon, or whether we are just buying time. On The Grove, we keep returning to this topic because the honest answer is more complicated than either camp admits, and the people building in this space are grappling with that complexity in real time.
Across episodes, the throughline is not any single technology. It is the decision-making process behind them. Founders, operators, and investors are weighing scientific uncertainty against investor timelines, public skepticism against genuine promise, and near-term deployment against long-term systemic change. In our conversation with climate tech operator and writer Serena Dao, for example, the discussion moved beyond technical specs to ask what it actually takes to build a company in a category that still has something to prove.
That is what you will find in this vertical. Not a consensus view, but a working one. Guests bring different vantage points on where carbon capture fits into a broader decarbonization strategy, what recycling carbon meaningfully requires versus what gets overstated, and where real traction is starting to show up.
If you are here because you are researching the space, evaluating it as an operator, or simply trying to form a more grounded opinion, these conversations are designed to give you something useful to think with.
50:44 Feb 23, 2026
Serena Dao spent years at pre-seed to Series C climate hardware startups before the Engine, and argues carbon capture only survives if it...
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