Hard Climate (formerly BXVentures)

Their thesis, in full

Hard Climate (formerly BXVentures) is a Montreal-based venture studio: it does not simply invest in founders' companies but co-founds and operates new ventures itself, sourcing breakthrough technology directly from university and public research labs. It takes a hands-on operational co-founder role, acquires or licenses the underlying IP, provides initial capital, and de-risks each company from early lab stage (around TRL4) to field prototype (around TRL7). It focuses on hard, industrial climate and deeptech challenges: energy efficiency and decarbonization, batteries and long-duration energy storage, carbon capture and CCUS, and resource optimization. For a founder, this means co-building a company alongside an operator that holds a substantial equity stake and runs day-to-day venture-building, not pitching an existing startup to a passive fund. Its preferred outcome is a corporate trade sale once the technology is industrially mature.

Questions they usually ask

Have an answer ready for each one before the first call.

1. Does your technology originate from a university or public research lab, and what is its current Technology Readiness Level (roughly TRL4 to TRL5)?
2. What concrete industrial pain point and quantifiable techno-economic advantage (cost saving plus emissions reduction) does it deliver to a real industrial buyer?
3. Are you open to a venture-studio co-founder structure in which Hard Climate holds a substantial equity stake, controls the IP transfer, and co-pilots operations from day one?

Follow-on

Hard Climate co-pilots each venture as an active operational co-founder rather than a hands-off backer. It supplies initial capital, recruits executive teams and engineers, validates product-market fit with industrial buyers, navigates IP and regulatory strategy, and connects ventures to tier-one industry partners and follow-on investors. Support is intensive in the early years (it cites roughly two years of close day-to-day involvement) and is designed to carry a lab technology to a field prototype ready for industrial scale-up.