ABOUT THE ROLE

This is an open application for expressions of interest. The role will begin in Q4 of 2024.

At DSV, we’re looking for future Founders: entrepreneurially-minded individuals with the technical and commercial expertise to solve urgent challenges through venture building.

You will join DSV’s venture-creation programme as a Co-Founder in Residence, working closely with the DSV team and using our methodology to spin out a new company. During the programme, you’ll work on derisking venture approaches, building a team, and building a viable business case. Once the new venture is incorporated with pre-seed investment from DSV, you and your co-founders will own the majority stake in the business. After spin-out you’ll continue to receive support from the DSV team.

The role is full-time and fully remote until venture incorporation and spin-out during the summer/autumn of 2025.

THE OPPORTUNITY AREA

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with around 80 x the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale. Year-on-year increases in the atmospheric concentration of methane, driven by anthropogenic activities and by the effect of a warming climate on natural systems, are responsible for around 30% of the current rise in global temperature.

If methane could be removed from the air within emissions plumes, or from air in the ambient atmosphere, it might be possible to slow or reverse the trend of increasing methane concentrations. To date, key technical and commercial constraints have limited progress towards this target: atmospheric concentrations of methane are extremely low (2 ppm), methane emissions plumes (while higher in concentration) are distributed over disparate sources, and current measurement capabilities are often insufficient to verify offsetting activities.

A technology that can effectively remove methane from atmospheric or emissions-plume air must therefore be implementable at low concentrations, across multiple sources, and must be verifiable. If these requirements can be met, the resulting technology would transform our ability to remove methane from air, and by extension our ability to limit further temperature rise related to methane.

OUR APPROACH

Using DSV’s unique scoping methodology, we have begun to systematically map the solution space to identify technologies capable of removing methane from atmospheric or emissions-plume air. This mapping identifies the principle constraints holding back current approaches to methane - concentration, diverse sources, and verification - and, through first-principles thinking, converts these constraints into spaces for radical new innovation. We are now searching for an individual with the expertise and drive to build an impactful venture around this work, with spin-out targeted in the summer/autumn of 2025.