Environmental Entrepreneur Roots

Prize Capital’s new model evolved from a combination of factors.  It originated from the company’s founder, Lee Stein, and his personal interest in the environment.

A serial entrepreneur, Lee’s involvement with environmental policy started in 2000 with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and lead to starting a chapter of its group Environmental Entrepreneurs, which believes a healthy environment supports healthy business.  He became personally involved in passing ground-breaking legislation in California that would increase jobs and provide environmental protection. 

As an entrepreneur, Lee traveled the globe in search of new and unmet investment needs for dealing with environmental change, meeting with governmental and non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations and environmental associations.

Introduction to Prizes

In October 2005, Peter Diamandis, founder of XPRIZE, invited Lee to Las Cruses, New Mexico to attend the first XPRIZE Cup event.  While at the event Lee had an experience that proved to change his investment and philanthropic focus.

Lee met Dumitru Popescu, President of ARCA, the Romanian Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, a non-governmental organization, that promotes innovative aerospace projects.  At first it seemed funny, a “Romanian space team” (it sounded very much like the Jamaican Bobsled team). Soon Lee learned that ARCA joined the Ansari XPRIZE Competition in 2002 and since then it became one of the leading teams.

Lee found Dumitru and his team’s story to be fascinating. The raw spirit of opportunity and innovation was admirable, but was most intriguing for Lee was the fact that the ARCA team had invented a composite engine for their rocket launch, but had not filed any intellectual property protection due to capital constraints. The challenge was compelling: Figure out how to get capital to competitors so that others could follow in Dumitru's steps, but do so with the opportunity for financial gain.

So began the journey to develop risk mitigation methodologies which could be applied to solving future prize competitions for the benefit of those without access to financial markets.

The Prize Capital Model - First Steps

In June 2007, Prize Capital joined forces with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) - the largest financier of environmental initiatives worldwide - to launch and announce a $50 million Public Private Partnership (PPP), which was a strategic investment program to foster innovative technological and financial solutions to intractable environmental problems in developing countries.

The partnership launched with an approach that was developed by Prize Capital that generates capital for global competitions resulting in technological breakthroughs to solve complex environmental challenges.

What was dubbed the “Earth Fund” was announced by the Global Environmental Facility, IFC (a member of the World Bank Group), and Prize Capital.  The announcement took place during the COP-13 climate change negotiations in Bali in December, 2007.