Intro
👋🏼 Kia ora. My name is Will. ⛷️ I enjoy skiing, waterskiing, Arsenal FC, climate science, rum, traveling, puppies, and making coffee for friends. 🌲 I love the freedom most of us have to travel the world, the beauty we find in forests, lakes, and river ecosystems, and I love the fact human ingenuity can redesign our world so this beauty lasts for generations.
👨🏻🏭 I can serve as a climate science advisor to your fund or project — or join your project to work on operations & new programs if you’re scaling technology for our planet.
Background
- Sian Simpson — you and Kiwi Landing Pad sponsored a Kiwi’s dream to go abroad
- David Booth for going out of his way to give unending advice to a Kiwi leaving home — and supporting me during my move to London
- Derek Handley for leading the way for New Zealanders going abroad; Nick Winstone for mentoring me throughout my years of supporting Aera’s investing
- Elizabeth Brown, Jack McQuire, Ben Reynolds, and Matt Stenton for believing in a Kiwi kid in high school enough to give your time and care into helping me flourish abroad
- Janine and Craig Manning for bringing a young boy who naively thought he was a grown man into your community
- Felix Danczak for both helping me improve my analytical abilities, and mostly, reminding the boy he had a lot of growing up to do
- Jake Miller for so genuinely supporting young Kiwis off the bat. Rest in peace
- Bill McKibben and Dawn Lippert for leading the way for climate innovators
- Ashan Clark, Will Hewitt, and Rees Vinsen — you’re my inspirations back home
- My American parents, Michael & Jodi Wood, in San Antonio for housing a Kiwi lost during COVID-19
- Kieran and Rory O’Reilly for becoming best friends from the month we met ⇒ may our worldwide adventures continue
- My parents for, begrudgingly, letting me leave the country and then supporting my passions along the way — even though I’m not good at calling home
- Henry Elkus for so immediately believing that I can grow & achieve anything — while grilling me on my fundamental beliefs
- Josh Thompson for the pure role model that he is from his enthusiasm and belief in others
- hundreds more founders and humans who’ve given me their time and advice as I travelled the world learning
- critically thinking about ways to drive impact (on climate/planetary boundaries) or avoid greenwashing
- setting up investment processes
- identifying and setting up deal flow sources is my strength, but I have supported three funds’ processes and sit on the investment committee of a new fund
- accelerating projects as a catalyst focused on go to market and operations
- leading teams while focusing on people’s varying skillsets
- selling pants to a horse (whether that's an achievement because I am good at soft sales, or it's simply because it’s easy to place horse-sized pants on a horse...)
- recommendations on a variety of investors or partners for your stage
At 17, in high school I saw our future rapidly changing with growing risks. That future appeared shaped by technology I read about in Silicon Valley and overseas. So, after finding support and funding from New Zealand entrepreneurs, I travelled to learn from founders and investors in San Francisco, London, and China.
Since then, I have
- crafted operations for internal communication, operations and sales challenges at six companies in London and China
- studied sustainable fiber, ocean alkalinity, and polymers at Duke University (how can innovation reshape our material world).
- learned from the investors at Aera VC, worked at Helena.org’s growth stage think tank & climate fund, and assisted the climate arm of Ashton Kutcher's fund (SOUNDWaves) during my summers at Duke
- met ~400 climate startups, a variety of accelerators, and many investors looking to shape our world with capital
- founded and sold a nonprofit, YouChangeEarth.org, that had a team of eight researchers, a Green Party Minister as a contractor, and rotating volunteer engineers.
- why time speeds up as we grow older
- feasible pathways to transition economics to a renewable/ecologically sound view
- digitizing chemical & material interactions to make science faster, cheaper, and more accessible
- how to answer The Repugnant Conclusion paradox (~maximizing population but not minimizing individual pleasure)
- living indefinitely through biotech advancements
- creating a nutritionally-complete goop which you can program to taste like any food you want
If you have technology which can transform the world, or you want to work together, let me know at my_first_name@wreynolds.nz
Writing
Content I’ve loved
- A crypto-industry newsletter for climate investors
- How to email: respecting others and avoiding overload