Carbon Removal's First Wave

Lessons from Nori

Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash

After sharing how a single governance mistake cost Nori $2.5M, I wanted to tell you why I'm starting this newsletter. In 2015, I gathered a meetup of 15 people in Seattle to explore a simple question: how do we pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? Back then, carbon removal wasn't considered possible. We didn't even have the term "carbon removal". We called it carbon capture and met monthly to share whatever papers or articles we could find.

That monthly meetup grew into Nori in 2017, where we built one of the first carbon removal marketplaces. Along the way, we:

• Created the first soil carbon methodology focused on removal

• Raised $20M from cleantech angels to crypto and traditional VCs

• Grew to a 30-person team

• Helped catalyze an entirely new industry

More importantly, we learned critical lessons about creating new market categories. The kind of lessons that cost millions to learn: how governance choices cascade through years of company building, how to maintain vision through market pivots, and how to align stakeholders who don't yet see what you see.

This September, we sold off Nori's final assets and wound down operations. The timing wasn't right – our sales engine was just ramping up as investor appetite for voluntary carbon markets cooled. But looking back at what I told our advisor in 2017 – that I'd be happy if all we did was kick off the carbon removal industry – I'm proud to say we succeeded beyond all possible expectations.

Today, carbon removal is a given. AirMiners catalyzes new CDR startups regularly. Large companies make advanced market commitments to buy carbon removal. Policymakers fund everything from soil carbon to direct air capture. The question isn't whether we'll remove carbon at scale, but how.

While this chapter ends, the lessons from building something entirely new are too valuable to keep to myself. That's why I'm launching "Inevitable & Obvious" – a newsletter sharing specific patterns and frameworks for founders creating categories that don't exist yet.

Every founder building something new faces the same challenges: making high-stakes decisions without playbooks, aligning stakeholders with divergent visions, and protecting future moves while building legitimate scale. I learned these lessons the expensive way so you don't have to.

If you're creating something that feels obvious to you but doesn't exist yet, join me:

With profound gratitude to our team who believed in the vision, our investors who took a chance on an audacious idea, and everyone who supported us in creating an entirely new market category,

Paul