Mike Schroepfer: Lessons from Scaling Meta to Investing in the Energy Transition

Mike Schroepfer is Partner at Gigascale, a venture firm he founded and self-funded to back startups building venture-scale businesses with the potential for outsized climate impact. Previously, Mike served as CTO at Meta (Facebook’s parent company) from 2013 to 2022, having originally joined in 2008 as VP of Engineering.

In this episode, Mike and Cody discuss his career journey, key lessons learned, and their shared counterpoint to the often-repeated myth that "America doesn’t build hard things." They also dive into AI, energy’s role in its advancement, and the work Mike and his team are doing at Gigascale.

Mike has been a longtime supporter of MCJ, and we’re honored to count him among our investors. It’s inspiring to see a technologist of his caliber not only invest in climate solutions but also roll up his sleeves to help founders tackle hard problems and build the future.

In this episode, we cover: 

• [2:08] Mike’s early career working on video software 
• [5:28] Fundraising challenges and lessons from the dot-com crash 
• [10:12] Working at Sun, Mozilla, and joining Facebook in 2008
• [13:16] Risks and opportunities of early Facebook
• [15:40] Managing large engineering teams and the value of humility
• [18:30] The era of building hard things in the U.S.
• [21:25] AI and energy innovation: compute, chips, and power
• [27:49] How scale brings down cost curve and modularized technology 
• [32:01] How he thinks about software-based opportunities   
• [37:40] Shrep’s pivot to climate tech after Meta
• [41:04] The talent interest evolution in climate 
• [43:33] Gigascale’s investment thesis
• [49:49] Gigascale’s approach to identifying sectors
• [51:37] Storytelling and marketing in climate tech
• [54:10] Gigascales talent efforts for its portfolio 

Episode recorded on Mar 4, 2025 (Published on Mar 20, 2025)

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant