Cofounder of a climatech startup - Full Stack Developer/Data Scientist

Become a co-founder of a scalable climatetech startup through Carbon13’s 5-months Venture Builder Programme for the Climate Emergency. We support founders at all stages of start-up development, from the very beginning of ideas and co-founder teaming, through to pre-seed investment and scale.

We\'ll kick-off our next programme in April 2026 and open applications in January. Please put your name on our waiting list to not miss any updates.

We\'re looking for software developers, data scientists, and/or AI/ML specialists to become co-founders of startups that will adjust economies for a net zero future. Your specialisation and skills on data and code are the core factors to really move the needle. With us you will find the right cofounder, whose strong entrepreneurial background will help you get what you build off the ground.

Our mission: Save the climate and aim big - before it\'s too late.

Carbon13 is the Venture Builder for the Climate Emergency. We are laser-focused on supporting founders solving for the climate, and the climate only. To do that, we ask every new founder on our Venture Builder to aim big, to build a solution with the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gases) by 10 million tonnes per year - and all our support is designed to help you reach that figure. You like solving problems, so come build with us and solve this one.

“As a scientist on the Venture Builder, yes it was great to join a group which also had lots of other scientists and engineers, but I was also taken out of my comfort zone and challenged by amazing entrepreneurs and commercial founders. That\'s what took it from an idea to a business.\"

Yubiao Niu, Co-Founder & CTO @Nium

Why participating?

We bring together a bunch of diverse people with many perspectives. There are about 75 people in our cohort with strong science, business or technical backgrounds. One of these bright minds is certainly a suitable co-founder for you.

• The climate doesn\'t have time for us to waste on false starts, tinkering at the edges, or greenwashing.

• When you join one of our cohorts, you\'ll be welcomed into a community with hundreds of other founders and experters all working on solutions to save the climate.

• Real transformation doesn’t come from a single individual but unencumbered communities with original thought. We care deeply about the success of those who choose to take giant steps.

• And of course carbon:

“One of the unique things that we are doing at Carbon13 is we are not expecting our founders to outsource this knowledge, we are very much training all of our founders, so they have access to the latest tools and techniques, so that they can assess their carbon mitigation potential, understand how to communicate it and of course be transparent in how they measuring it.”

Carbon13 Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer Dr. Nicky Dee

Flexible programme framework

Apart from nine in-person days in Berlin/Cambridge, you can do the programme from anywhere in the world. The rest of the programme is delivered remotely.

It is very important to us to make clear that you can also be a successful climatetech founder if you have children, care for elderly relatives, do voluntary work or have other obligations. We can\'t tackle the climate crisis if we don\'t involve multiple life circumstances on the entrepreneurial path. Our Venture Builder is desgined on that principle.

“There was people from all over the place. All different walks of life, ages, backgrounds and I think this was one of the great things that Carbon13 was able to bring together for me.”

Natalia Dorfman, CEO and co-founder of KITA from cohort 2 in Cambridge

From Food to Construction to Energy to New Materials to Carbon Capture

Carbon13 is sector agnostic so founders can explore ideas in any emitting industry. We tailor our support accordingly for science-based, deeptech or hardware ventures - whether it\'s support on team building, assessing carbon mitigation potential, go-to-market strategy, IP protection, fundraising, you\'ll be accessing a brains trust of hundreds of experts, peers, and partners.

More than 150 ventures launched through the programme and 71 ventures received our pre-seed investment, a total of £9Mio since 2021. More than two-thirds of these have already secured follow-on funding. Our ventures are working on technologies with great emission-saving potential, such as carbon negative concrete, methane capture, bioplastics, precision fermentation, quantum computing for materials discovery, green ammonia, green hydrogen, biochar or direct air capture.

You can view our portfolio of ventures here.

Working on a climate tech idea already?

The VC funding route is currently the faster and often surer route for launching complex projects with a high decarbonisation impact, which is why Carbon13 has been designed to give your venture the best possible entry point into this route. Our support is tailored to science-based startups with the ambition to reduce CO2e emissions by 10 million tonnes per year.

If you do not have an idea, you will either be supported to find an idea to develop which can significantly reduce emissions, or join a cofounder/team with strong insights into an emitting industry and together execute the implementation of their validated customer pain points.

Learn More

We are running a series of webinars available to everyone who would like to learn more about Carbon13 and how to build startups with breakthrough solutions for the climate. Our next one for developers and data scientists can be found here.

Carbon13 in numbers:

• £12 million investment across 93 ventures since 2021
• £40 million – Carbon13 companies have gone on to raise up-rounds totalling more than £40 million.
• 500 million tonnes – Carbon13’s portfolio is collectively working towards a decarbonisation potential at scale of 500 million tonnes per year.
• +10% of the Carbon13 portfolio is Earthshot nominated, including Kita, Samudra Oceans, Forge Minerals, and Nium
• 33% of our participants hold a PhD
• 90% of each cohort forms a cofounding team within Phase 1
• +500 domain experts, carbon experts, entrepreneurs in residence

We caused climate change. Let\'s fix it.