Sam Hasty — Building Venture-Scale Returns While Solving Planet-Scale Problems | FV Podcast Ep. 030

How do you screen out the founders most likely to burn your fund?

In this episode of Scaling with Clarity, Maxim Atanassov sits down with Sam Hasty, Partner at Active Impact Investments — Canada's largest climate tech seed fund. Sam walks through the 2x2 matrix his firm uses to assess every founder, why high-intelligence founders are often the most dangerous bet, and how reference calls reveal more than direct conversations ever will.

The conversation also unpacks why Active Impact's $110M Fund III is their highest-performing fund yet, what killed the 2021–2022 climate cohort, and where the next decacorns are most likely to come from. Sam makes a sharp case that climate tech hasn't lost its momentum — it's just consolidating around founders who understand both technology and capital structure.

If you're a founder raising in climate, a VC building a diligence process, or an LP wondering where the next wave of returns will come from, this conversation is essential.

Timestamps

00:00 — Sam's path from a Memphis classroom to climate venture capital
09:00 — How Active Impact raised Fund III: $10M, $60M, $110M trajectory
15:30 — The 2x2 founder matrix: intelligence and accountability, weighted equally
19:30 — The "how do you catch a cold" question and why it reveals founder agency
27:30 — The three impact buckets and why only one counts toward 10M tons CO₂
34:00 — Why the 2021–2022 climate cohort failed at the project finance gap
41:00 — Climate decacorns, Fervo's IPO, and the exit evidence problem
48:00 — Where the next decade of climate winners will come from

About Sam Hasty

Sam Hasty is a Partner at Active Impact Investments, Canada's largest climate tech seed fund, where he focuses on infrastructure and carbon solutions innovation. He is a Fulbright Scholar with eight years of venture capital experience and a portfolio spanning energy, logistics, agriculture, advanced materials, and climate resilience. Before venture, he taught seventh-grade math in Memphis and co-founded a nonprofit accelerator backed by major foundations and the Steve Jobs family office.

Links

Active Impact Investments: https://www.activeimpactinvestments.com/
Sam Hasty on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sam-hasty-a7530143
Future Ventures: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/future-ventures-corp

Видео Sam Hasty — Building Venture-Scale Returns While Solving Planet-Scale Problems | FV Podcast Ep. 030 канала Future Ventures