Interview with
Lachlan Nixon, Founding Partner at Motion Capital
What we did together
Motion Capital is a partner with us for the Climate Response Accelerator 2024
Motion Capital is a new venture capital fund investing in founders doing good business by helping the world decarbonise. Lachlan Nixon, one of the Founding Partner of Motion Capital, shares his insights into the fund’s mission and why Motion Capital has partnered with Creative HQ to deliver the accelerator.
Tell us about your connection with Creative HQ
Our team’s connection and relationship with Creative HQ is long-standing over many years. We’ve collaborated closely on various initiatives, most notably the first Climate Response Accelerator 2019.
I personally participated in this accelerator as one of the co-founders of Cetogenix, which was a pivotal experience for us. For Cetogenix, the 12-week accelerator was transformative. We recruited our team, completed significant market validation, refined our product roadmap and even settled on our company name during the accelerator.
The showcase day proved to be a game-changer, culminating in a successful seed round for Cetogenix totaling $4.5m, with contributions from many investors that present at the event.
More recently, in early 2023, I set up Motion Capital to exclusively focus on funding companies focused on technology companies that help the world to decarbonise, so it was a natural fit to partner with Creative HQ to deliver the 2024 accelerator to support the next generation of impactful companies coming through.
Creative HQ’s expertise and extensive network allow us to amplify our efforts to support climate-focused startups and drive tangible change. We’re delighted to be collaborating with them on our journey towards empowering innovative ventures tackling climate challenges head-on.
What motivated you to support the Climate Response Accelerator?
The need for such an accelerator has been evident from our interactions with the numerous early-stage founders in NZ tackling climate change over the last year or so. Our analysis shows that there is an increasing number of these founders in New Zealand, and that this acceleration is expected to grow over the coming years.
Creative HQ has provided us a platform to support more of these ventures than we could otherwise, providing a framework of support to these companies alongside of our funding. We are also using the program as a kind of pipeline for our fund, allowing us to engage with these companies and support them early in their journey so that we can invest further in them as they develop.
Our mission is centered on driving real climate impact, and the accelerator has provided an ideal platform for collaboration in order to support the companies working to achieve this. Innovation rarely happens in isolation, and we recognised the need to create a community of support around such companies in order to maximise their chances of creating significant impact.
“Motion Capital is delighted to be partnering with Creative HQ for the 2024 Climate Response Accelerator. Motion Capital is a new VC firm that has recently raised over $10m to invest into kiwi startups that help the world decarbonise. We’re looking forward to working alongside Creative HQ to supporting and funding the next generation of innovative start-up companies tackling the largest commercial and economic development opportunity of our time – climate change.”
Lachlan Nixon, Founding Partner
Motion Capital
Why is innovation in climate change technology important?
Climate change is fundamentally an engineering problem as well as a human behavior problem. Innovation in climate technology, particularly when delivered via start-up companies, presents an excellent opportunity to move the needle. Technology companies are significant levers for engineering change at pace and scale, and that is exactly what is required due to the urgent nature of the climate crisis.
We’re optimistic that innovation can make it cheaper to save the planet than to destroy it. That we can harness human ingenuity and capitalism to restructure the global economy to sustainability, while continuing to grow it. Those successful in enabling this will take part in the greatest commercial, impact & economic development opportunity of the 21st century.
What kind of support and resource do you provide to startups in the accelerator?
As part of the partnership, we’ve established a $200k+ fund specifically for the accelerator. This fund is offering a $10k SAFE note to each company at the beginning of the accelerator as well as a $100k+ investment prize into the winner(s).
But our support extends beyond money, we’ve also been collaborating with the Creative HQ team to shape and drive the accelerator, ensuring that the team’s get the maximum benefit out of the program.
We’re big on showing leadership into climate investment. I’m personally committed to rallying the entire early-stage investment community to attend the showcase at the end of the accelerator and am urging others to join us in supporting their endeavours.
- Read more about the teams in the accelerator
- Motion Capital – find out more about them and their fund by emailing Lachlan
- If you would like to attend showcase day on the 20th of June RSVP here
- Email Joe Slater, GM Startups if you are interested in investing in one of the teams or more about the investment fund
