Mick Liubinskas' Investment Thesis

Climate Salad founder Mick Liubinskas has spent more than 25 years obsessing over one thing: backing incredible people. From building one of Australia's first online business databases in 1998, to getting wiped out in the dot-com crash, to co-founding Pollenizer, Mick has built his career on a radical philosophy: be the cheerleader, not the lone wolf. In this episode of Investment Thesis, Mick joins Kali to share why he no longer invests his own money directly, how a small check from a friend became the investment that shaped his entire career, and what it really takes to build a portfolio in climate tech when the playbook from SaaS no longer applies. They also dive deep into why climate tech has more singles and doubles than home runs and strikeouts, how blended finance breaks the traditional Angel to Seed to A then B then C model, and why his biggest edge is giving his money to better investors. Mick also reflects on the tension between optimism and pragmatism, the humility required for deep-tech founders to step aside as CEO, and why no one should be building an investment thesis alone. Episode Chapters 00:00 – Intro: A thesis in 30 seconds 00:38 – Welcome to Investment Thesis with Mick Liubinskas 02:11 – How two accountants over a beer created his first startup 02:59 – The full-circle story: his first investor became his CFO at Climate Salad 04:24 – From receiving checks to writing them: Pollenizer and Startmate 05:13 – The first personal angel check: Flightfox and the convertible note 06:40 – Small checks, help the founder 07:19 – The 80/10/10 rule and being sector agnostic 07:55 – The cheerleader trap: why he balances optimism with pragmatism 10:04 – Why he stopped investing his own money 11:13 – Ten years ago: moving to the US, Silicon Valley, and the Paris Agreement 12:51 – The double bump thesis: climate is a must-have + Aussie companies going global 14:27 – How Climate Salad invests today via Ventari and Electrify Ventures 16:32 – Running his own IC to avoid conflicts 17:14 – What cuts through: impact needs a business model 18:47 – Why climate tech portfolio construction is different 19:45 – Blended finance: grants, debt, project finance and why pro-rata doesn't apply 22:27 – Why raising climate funds is hard: no pattern of success yet 23:01 – Green flags in founders: belief in the problem + humility 25:30 – The deal that broke the thesis: backing Raj and Kapture 27:34 – Staying sharp when you're a generalist in a deeply technical space 29:01 – Engineering with Rosie and doing a Masters at Macquarie 30:33 – Advice for new investors: join a syndicate, find friends, learn in public 32:46 – Would he have invested in pre-seed Uber? And the Canva one that got away 35:54 – Outro Resources Climate Salad: https://climatesalad.com/ Ventari (formerly Aussie Angels) https://www.ventari.co/