Quirky in Climate: Hampus Jakobsson w/Pale Blue Dot

"When he said that, it was like one of those before and after moments," Hampus recalls about the conversation that changed everything.

His colleague Ciarán had just suggested what Hampus hadn't quite admitted to himself yet: "It looks like to me like you're leaving and starting your own fund."

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That moment in mid-2019 launched Hampus Jakobsson from accomplished investor to climate fund co-founder, but it wasn't sudden—it was the culmination of a journey that began with a kid hiking through Swedish forests every summer.

Today, as co-founder of Pale Blue Dot, Hampus invests in startups building what he calls "upgrades to the planet's operating system." His fund excludes health tech and military applications, focusing instead on the massive inefficiencies he sees everywhere: copper we dig up just to throw away, burning "dead dinosaurs" instead of capturing electrons from the sun.

What makes Hampus different isn't just his technical background or investment thesis = "quirky" —it's his ability to see the planet as one giant, poorly optimized machine that humanity built without really understanding what it was for. "We have the grid, which is the largest machine we've ever built," he explains. "We have the stock exchange, logistics networks, everything. This massive machine that humanity built in cooperation, or sometimes not cooperation, with the rest of the physical planet."

The inefficiencies drive him crazy. "When you start looking at the world through the lens of 'in 200 years, a lot of the stuff we do is just gonna look so ridiculous,' that's where Pale Blue Dot's obsession begins."

Investing in People, Not Just Ideas

Hampus built his investment philosophy around a deceptively simple principle: only back stuff he actually wants to exist. "If somebody made a super cool casino game, I was like, nah, I don't really care. I don't want to invest in this." This wasn't a calculated strategy—it was instinct.

But people often misunderstand what this means in practice. It's not about falling for every compelling founder story or getting swept away by charismatic pitches. Instead, Hampus focuses intensely on whether founders can navigate the specific challenges their technology faces. "I meet people who are super interested in the problem, and they've thought deeply about it, but they haven't thought about the actual obstacles."

He referenced a company in thermal energy storage. The founders didn't just understand the theoretical elegance of storing industrial waste heat—they'd mapped out the regulatory hurdles, identified the specific manufacturing partnerships they'd need, and figured out how to price their solution competitively against established alternatives. "They knew not just what they wanted to build, but how to actually get it built and sold."

This people-first approach creates an interesting dynamic in climate investing. Many climate technologies are genuinely superior to incumbent solutions—more efficient, cleaner, often cheaper at scale. But superiority doesn't guarantee adoption. "The real question isn't whether the technology works," Hampus explains. "It's whether these specific people can navigate the path from working prototype to deployed solution."

He's learned to spot founders who've done this navigation work versus those who've spent all their time perfecting the technology. The difference shows up in how they talk about customers, partnerships, and regulatory approval processes. The best founders sound almost boring when they describe their business development strategy—because they've thought through every step.

This creates what Hampus calls "asymmetric opportunities." Other investors might pass on founders who seem obsessed with manufacturing details or regulatory compliance rather than pure innovation. But those details often determine who actually succeeds in deploying climate solutions at scale. "I want founders who are slightly obsessed with the unsexy parts of building a business."

Investing in Quirky Startups

When Hampus talks about "quirky startups," he doesn't mean weird for weird's sake. He means companies tackling problems that established players avoid—either because the problems seem too niche or because the solutions require rethinking fundamental assumptions about how things work.

"I get excited about startups that are doing something that makes incumbents uncomfortable," he explains. "Not because they're trying to be disruptive, but because they've identified an inefficiency that everyone else has learned to ignore."

One example: a company developing new materials for industrial applications. On the surface, materials science seems like a terrible startup category—long development cycles, heavy capital requirements, entrenched suppliers. But this particular team had identified a specific performance gap that existing materials couldn't address, and they'd figured out how to manufacture their solution using modified versions of equipment that already existed.

"What made them quirky wasn't the science—the science was actually pretty straightforward," Hampus notes. "What made them quirky was their business model. They weren't trying to replace an entire industry. They were targeting a very specific use case where the performance improvement justified the switching costs."

This is where Hampus's "operating system" metaphor becomes practical. Most startups try to replace entire systems. Quirky startups find specific inefficiencies within existing systems and build targeted solutions. "It's like finding a slow function in a massive codebase and optimizing just that function. The whole system runs better, but you haven't had to rewrite everything."

The quirky approach requires different investment criteria. Traditional metrics like total addressable market become less relevant than questions about switching costs, regulatory pathways, and whether the performance improvement is dramatic enough to justify change. "I'm not looking for billion-dollar markets," Hampus says. "I'm looking for million-dollar problems that lots of people have, where the solution creates real value that customers will actually pay for."

This philosophy extends to how Pale Blue Dot evaluates technical risk. Instead of avoiding complex technologies, they embrace them—but only when the complexity serves a clear business purpose. "If you need complex technology to solve a simple problem, that's usually a red flag. But if you need complex technology to solve a complex problem that nobody else can solve, that's potentially interesting."

Pale Blue Dot: Upgrading the Planet's Operating System

The metaphor isn't just clever positioning—it's how Hampus actually thinks about investment decisions. "When I look at a startup, I'm asking: is this making the whole system more efficient? Or is it just shifting inefficiency from one place to another?"

This framework helps Pale Blue Dot avoid what Hampus calls "fake climate solutions"—technologies that create environmental benefits in one dimension while creating costs in another. "A lot of climate tech is just shifting the problem around. You reduce carbon emissions but increase water usage, or you solve waste problems but create energy intensity problems."

Real operating system upgrades improve multiple metrics simultaneously. Take their investment in a company working on circular manufacturing processes. The technology reduces waste, lowers energy consumption, and produces higher-quality materials—all while reducing costs. "When you find solutions like that, where every dimension improves, you know you're upgrading the system rather than just patching it."

The operating system metaphor also shapes how they think about timing and market readiness. Just like software upgrades, climate solutions need the right infrastructure and user readiness to succeed. "Sometimes the technology is ready, but the market infrastructure isn't there yet. Sometimes the market is ready, but the technology needs more development. We're looking for that sweet spot where both align."

This creates interesting investment opportunities in what Hampus calls "infrastructure for infrastructure." Companies building tools that help other climate companies succeed faster—better manufacturing processes, improved testing equipment, specialized software platforms. "These might not be the most visible climate solutions, but they're often the highest leverage. They help dozens of other companies deploy solutions more effectively."

Pale Blue Dot's portfolio reflects this systems thinking. Rather than concentrating in obvious climate categories like solar or electric vehicles, they've spread across materials science, industrial processes, logistics optimization, and energy storage. "We're not trying to build a portfolio in clean energy," Hampus explains. "We're trying to build a portfolio that makes the whole system work better."

Time is Now

The urgency in Hampus's voice becomes most apparent when he talks about execution speed. Not the rushed, break-things-fast mentality of consumer apps, but the methodical urgency of people who understand that climate solutions need to scale within a specific time window.

"I meet founders who have great technology and a reasonable business plan, but they're thinking about deployment timelines in the 2030s," he says. "I'm like, that's not fast enough. We need solutions deployed this decade, not developed this decade."

This perspective influences everything from how Pale Blue Dot evaluates technical risk to how they support portfolio companies. Instead of encouraging founders to perfect their technology before go-to-market, they push for earlier customer engagement and iterative development. "Perfect is the enemy of deployed. We need solutions that are good enough to create value today, not perfect solutions that arrive too late."

The time pressure creates interesting strategic trade-offs. Sometimes it makes sense to license existing technology and focus on deployment rather than developing proprietary alternatives. Sometimes it means partnering with incumbent players instead of trying to displace them. "The question isn't whether you're building the most elegant solution," Hampus explains. "The question is whether you're building the solution that can actually scale fast enough to matter."

This urgency also shapes how he evaluates founder motivations. He's become skeptical of founders who seem primarily motivated by the intellectual challenge of difficult problems. "I want founders who are genuinely impatient to see their solution deployed. Not just built, not just proven—deployed and creating impact."

The time pressure doesn't mean accepting lower standards or rushing bad ideas to market. Instead, it means being ruthless about which problems are worth solving and which approaches are likely to succeed quickly enough to matter. "Every month we spend on a solution that ultimately doesn't scale is a month we're not spending on solutions that could."

The Close

Perhaps most importantly, the urgency has crystallized Hampus's philosophy about action versus deliberation. "I have a friend who made a list of things he'll never do in life—not to avoid them, but to stop thinking about them. Things like 'I'd love to drive across America,' but he knows he won't actually do it. So instead of having it on his to-do list forever, he puts it on his never-do list and stops wasting mental energy on it."

The principle extends far beyond travel planning. "Either do it or don't do it," Hampus says, channeling Yoda. "I think that's the thing about grown-up people—they're so boring because they have so many 'I ought to do' or 'I can't do' items. Don't talk to me about what you ought to do. Either you want to do it enough to actually do it, or you don't."

It's a philosophy perfectly suited to climate investing, where the gap between good intentions and effective action determines whether solutions actually reach the scale needed to matter. Hampus has built Pale Blue Dot around closing that gap—backing founders who aren't just passionate about climate solutions, but impatient enough to actually deploy them.

In a field where everyone talks about saving the world, Hampus stands out for his focus on the practical details that determine whether world-saving actually happens. His vision of upgrading the planet's operating system isn't just metaphor—it's a framework for identifying the specific inefficiencies that, once fixed, make everything else work better. And his investment philosophy reflects the urgency appropriate to the scale of the challenge: either we're building solutions fast enough to matter, or we're just building them to feel better about ourselves.

The choice, as Hampus would say, is simple: do it or don't. But don't waste time pretending there's a third option.

To learn more about Pale Blue Dot's mission to upgrade the planet's operating system through early-stage climate investments, visit their website or contact Hampus directly via email. As he tells every university class he speaks to: "Just email me. I respond quickly." Follow their portfolio companies and investment philosophy as they continue identifying the system inefficiencies that, once optimized, make the whole planet work better.