Convective Capital’s $85M Fund Signals Disaster Resilience Is Becoming Core Infrastructure
Convective Capital raised an $85M Fund II to back wildfire, infrastructure, insurance, and climate resilience startups across physical-world risk markets.
Bill Clerico is not building another climate venture fund optimized for conference applause and ESG buzzword inflation. Convective Capital raised an $85M Fund II because disaster resilience has quietly become one of the most urgent infrastructure markets in the global economy. The San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm, founded by former WePay CEO Bill Clerico, started with wildfire-focused “firetech” investments in 2022 and has now expanded into broader physical-world risk management across climate resilience, infrastructure adaptation, insurance innovation, and grid stability.
Convective Capital invests from pre-seed through Series A in companies tackling wildfire prevention, infrastructure resilience, insurance adaptation, grid reliability, forestry, manufacturing, and disaster-response systems. The firm says its first fund portfolio has already generated $100M in revenue and collectively reached $2B in value, with 79% of portfolio companies progressing from seed to Series A. In venture capital, those numbers get attention. In climate resilience investing, those numbers reshape how institutional capital evaluates infrastructure risk markets.
The broader market context matters because insurers are retreating from high-risk regions, utilities are under pressure, and governments are staring at trillion-dollar infrastructure exposure while pretending spreadsheets can negotiate with wildfire season. Convective Capital sits directly inside that pressure point, which explains why institutional investors, including insurance and asset-management players, are increasingly treating disaster resilience as economic infrastructure instead of environmental side work.
About Convective Capital
Convective Capital launched in 2022 with a $35M debut fund centered on wildfire resilience and wildfire technology startups. That focus was not theoretical. Bill Clerico splits time between San Francisco and Mendocino County, California, where wildfire exposure stopped feeling abstract years ago. Investment theses tend to sharpen quickly once smoke enters the conversation physically instead of academically.
Before launching Convective Capital, Bill Clerico co-founded WePay and led the company through its acquisition by JPMorgan Chase in 2017. Plenty of founders cash out and spend the next decade converting liquidity into podcast appearances, minimalist furniture, and opinions about human optimization protocols. Clerico moved toward infrastructure risk instead, which says something important about where sophisticated investors increasingly see long-term demand.
The leadership team includes Partner Kat Mañalac, formerly of Y Combinator, Partner Mike Trapanese, Principal Jay Ribakove, Director of Operations Amy Brown, Fractional CMO Lia Kennett, and Marketing Coordinator Avery Paulick. That mix matters because Convective Capital is not operating like a traditional climate fund chasing abstract carbon narratives. The firm is building operational expertise around resilience systems tied to governments, utilities, insurers, industrial operators, and physical infrastructure markets.
Why Convective Capital Matters Right Now
The climate conversation is maturing from ideological debate into balance-sheet mathematics. Wildfires, floods, grid failures, insurance withdrawals, and infrastructure degradation are no longer distant scenarios buried inside consulting presentations. They are operational realities affecting housing markets, municipal budgets, energy systems, enterprise risk planning, and insurance underwriting in real time. Convective Capital recognized that transition earlier than most venture firms.
The firm’s first wave of investments focused heavily on wildfire detection, mitigation, and response technologies. Fund II expands beyond wildfire “firetech” into broader climate adaptation markets because the economic signal became impossible to ignore. Bill Clerico told TechCrunch that roughly $60T in real estate sits at elevated disaster risk while the U.S. spends approximately $1T annually on mitigation and recovery costs. Those numbers feel less like “market opportunity” statistics and more like overdue invoices for decades of infrastructure complacency.
Venture capital historically favored software because software scales cleanly without requiring anyone to touch dirt, steel, transmission lines, aircraft, utility infrastructure, or insurance underwriting systems. Convective Capital is betting the next generation of major venture outcomes will increasingly emerge from founders willing to engage directly with the physical world again. That creates a different founder profile entirely. Less startup philosopher. More operational tactician. Markets eventually reward realism.
The Problem Convective Capital Is Solving
Modern infrastructure was built for environmental assumptions that no longer hold up under stress. That sentence sounds dramatic right up until insurance carriers exit entire regions, power infrastructure fails during heat waves, or wildfire smoke shuts down schools hundreds of miles away. The physical economy is increasingly colliding with environmental volatility, and institutional systems were never designed for this level of disruption frequency.
Convective Capital’s portfolio reflects that reality directly. Pano builds AI-powered wildfire detection systems using cameras and real-time monitoring. Raine develops autonomous firefighting aircraft. BurnBot focuses on robotic vegetation clearing designed to reduce wildfire fuel loads before fires spread. Stand approaches wildfire resilience through insurance products that incentivize homeowners to harden properties proactively instead of simply processing losses afterward.
The newer Fund II investments continue the same operational pattern. The Lumber Manufactory, Drafted, Voltair, and Edge Technologies all operate inside sectors tied to resilience infrastructure, industrial systems, and physical-risk adaptation. This is not climate branding wrapped in venture language. This is infrastructure triage with venture economics attached.
Market Context
Convective Capital’s rise reflects a broader shift happening across venture capital, infrastructure investing, insurance markets, and climate adaptation financing. Climate technology increasingly splits into two categories: aspirational transition narratives and unavoidable resilience spending. The resilience category is accelerating faster because customers cannot postpone the underlying problems. Utilities cannot ignore failing grids. Municipalities cannot negotiate with wildfire season. Insurance carriers cannot absorb repeated catastrophic losses forever while pretending actuarial tables are motivational posters.
That urgency changes purchasing behavior across the economy. Enterprise AI may dominate technology headlines, but physical-risk infrastructure is quietly becoming one of the most important capital-allocation themes of the decade. Governments need adaptation systems. Insurers need risk intelligence. Real estate operators need mitigation technologies. Industrial operators need infrastructure hardening. Convective Capital sits directly inside that convergence between climate resilience, insurance innovation, and physical infrastructure investing.
Institutional investors increasingly recognize the shift as well. Fund II reportedly drew backing from insurance companies and asset managers, marking a notable evolution from the largely individual-backed structure of Convective Capital’s original fund. That transition signals something larger than one successful venture raise. Disaster resilience infrastructure is becoming institutionalized as a permanent venture capital category tied directly to economic continuity and infrastructure modernization priorities.
Leadership and Team
Bill Clerico remains the central figure behind Convective Capital’s strategy, but the broader leadership structure reinforces the firm’s operational focus. Kat Mañalac brings deep startup ecosystem experience from Y Combinator. Jay Ribakove previously invested at Munich Re Ventures, connecting directly to insurance and risk-management expertise. Mike Trapanese focuses on operations and strategic capital. Amy Brown oversees operational execution, while Lia Kennett and Avery Paulick support communications and ecosystem positioning.
That combination matters because resilience investing requires relationships across industries venture firms historically struggle to navigate. Utilities move differently than SaaS buyers. Governments move differently than enterprise software procurement teams. Insurance markets speak an entirely different language from startup culture. Convective Capital appears structured around understanding those realities instead of pretending every market behaves like cloud software. That operational maturity may become one of the firm’s strongest long-term competitive advantages.
What This Signals for Climate and Infrastructure Investing
Convective Capital’s $85M Fund II signals that climate resilience investing is entering a more serious institutional phase. The category is moving beyond experimental climate narratives and into sectors tied directly to infrastructure continuity, economic stability, insurance adaptation, and physical-risk mitigation. Sophisticated operators should pay close attention to that shift because it reflects where infrastructure markets are heading, not where venture capital used to be.
The next generation of major venture-backed companies may not emerge from another productivity platform designed to optimize calendar synchronization for exhausted middle managers surviving on caffeine and deferred vacations. They may emerge from companies solving grid instability, wildfire mitigation, infrastructure hardening, industrial adaptation, insurance recalibration, and resilience intelligence. That work is messier. More regulated. More capital intensive. More operationally difficult. It is also becoming increasingly unavoidable.
Convective Capital is positioning itself where venture capital intersects with physical survival economics. Markets usually ignore those categories until failure becomes expensive enough to dominate headlines. By then, the sophisticated capital is already inside the infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Convective Capital?
Convective Capital is a San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm investing in wildfire technology, disaster resilience, climate adaptation, infrastructure hardening, and physical-risk mitigation startups.
Who founded Convective Capital?
Convective Capital was founded in 2022 by Bill Clerico, the former co-founder and CEO of WePay.
How much did Convective Capital raise?
Convective Capital raised an $85M Fund II following its earlier $35M debut fund launched in 2022.
What sectors does Convective Capital invest in?
The firm invests in wildfire detection, grid resilience, infrastructure adaptation, insurance innovation, forestry, manufacturing, industrial systems, and disaster-response technologies.
What companies are in Convective Capital’s portfolio?
Portfolio companies include Pano, BurnBot, Raine, Stand, The Lumber Manufactory, Drafted, Voltair, and Edge Technologies.
Why is disaster resilience becoming a major venture category?
Rising disaster costs, insurance instability, infrastructure stress, grid failures, and climate-related operational risks are driving long-term demand for resilience technologies and adaptation systems.
Why does Convective Capital matter in climate tech?
Convective Capital focuses on operational resilience infrastructure rather than purely carbon-transition narratives, positioning the firm inside one of the fastest-growing segments of climate resilience venture capital.
What does Convective Capital’s new fund signal to investors?
The fund signals growing institutional interest in disaster resilience infrastructure, insurance adaptation, and physical-risk mitigation as major long-term venture investment categories.