Mark Fishman

What’s easy to overlook is that networks and trust compound like any other asset, and every time you switch jobs or careers you reset the clock to some degree.

Banks and investors tend to be uncertain about lending to carbon-removal companies that want to build a facility to test their ideas, Ransohoff said. But with an offtake agreement from Frontier, a carbon-removal start-up can prove to a bank that it will have a customer once the facility is up and running.

This idea—that by committing to buy a product early, you can help bring it to market faster —was first pioneered in the field of medicine. In 2010, a set of donors committed $1.5 billion to buy doses of a vaccine for Streptococcus pneumoniae before it had been invented. That “advanced market commitment,” as it’s called, spurred the rapid invention... See more