The View from the Office.

I met up with Mark Taylor, co-founder of Sightline Climate, a research & data firm focused on energy transition and climate, at his office on 14th Street near the Meat Market.

Mark and I met a decade ago when we were colleagues at Bloomberg. He worked for the company’s New Energy Finance subsidiary.

He co-founded Sightline with Kim Zou in 2022. The pair raised $2 million from VCs including John Doerr and Tom Steyer to transform an editorial newsletter into a data product.

Kim’s newsletter, Climate Tech VC, had grown rapidly to 30,000+ subscribers. It had an impressive 65% open rate. They wanted to add data to the research on climate tech solutions.

The 30-person company sells research and data to investors, governments and corporations. In January, they announced they had raised another $5 million. 

Mark’s career journey to Sightline is a reminder that life can feel like a random serendipitous walk that looks seamless when you connect the dots backwards.

It started in 2007, when Mark went to a conference and met Michael Liebreich, founder of New Energy Finance. He was intrigued because NEF was doing research that seemed applicable to real-life problems in the world. He had decided the academic world was too theoretical. 

The two started talking. What started as a casual conversation about the human genome project escalated into a heated debate.

Mark, who had just finished a Masters in molecular biology at Princeton, left convinced he was right.

Ironically it was the fight that led to a job offer because Liebreich believed in hiring people who disagreed with him. He saw it as a sign of independence. 

Mark left NEF after 14 years to pursue an opportunity to track the massive growth in solar and battery projects. 

Now, he and Kim are building out Sightline. A new investment round, led by Molten Ventures and The Westly Group, will help scale an AI-powered platform, expand research capabilities and broaden sector coverage. 

Mark said the work is satisfying because it’s research that has practical applications. It’s a similar feeling to what attracted him to his first job. 

If you want to connect with Mark you can reach him via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.