Europe’s industrial growth is increasingly about execution and innovation in new materials. The competitivness question remains: what can be built, financed, and scaled in the real world.
Marta Sjögren, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Paebbl, joins Carmel Rafaeli, Founding Partner at The Table, and our very own Andreas Munk Holm for a conversation that moves beyond climate ambition and into the mechanics of building industrial companies.
Paebbl has developed a process that takes captured CO₂ and converts it into a stable mineral, effectively locking carbon away while replacing emissions-intensive materials such as cement. It is a technically complex solution with a clear industrial application. But the real challenge is not only scientific. It is financial, operational, and systemic.
Marta brings a perspective that is rare among founders. Before building Paebbl, she was a Partner at Northzone. She understands how investors think, how they make decisions, and where processes break down.
Her core argument is direct. Most deep tech companies do not fail because the technology does not work. They fail because capital, timing, and conviction do not align.
This episode is part of Leaders Shaping a Resilient Planet, a series that focuses on founders who are building Europe’s industrial future with discipline, depth, and long-term conviction. And they happen to be women.
What’s covered:
00:00 Introduction
01:45 Europe’s Industrial Future & Capital Allocation
04:30 The Funding Gap for Women-Led Climate Ventures
07:10 What The Table Is Building
10:20 What Paebbl Actually Does (Turning CO₂ into Materials)
14:15 Why Deep Tech Doesn’t Fail on Technology
17:40 Fundraising as a System of Signals
22:05 How to Evaluate Investors
26:30 Designing the Capital Stack (Equity, Debt, Grants)
31:15 Why Rounds Stall in Europe
35:40 The Role of Strategic & Industrial Partners
39:20 Co-CEO Leadership in Deep Tech
43:10 Building with Long-Term Conviction
46:00 Closing Thoughts
Capital Allocation Is Still Uneven
Before turning to Paebbl, Andreas frames the broader context for climate tech in Europe.
Capital allocation remains uneven. Women-led teams receive a disproportionately small share of venture funding. Mixed-gender teams are also underfunded relative to their contribution and potential. This imbalance is not marginal and it shapes which companies are built and which ecosystems emerge.
That gap is the reason Carmel Rafaeli founded The Table. The goal is to increase both the speed and size of capital flowing into women-led climate ventures, while making access to that pipeline easier for investors and operators.
What The Table Is Building
The Table operates as a non-commercial co-investing community. It connects syndicates, funds, family offices, and corporate venture capital around women-led climate deals from pre-Seed to Series A.
The requirement is straightforward. At least one female founder must hold a meaningful and equitable stake.
Alongside this, The Table is building a foundation that provides recoverable grants to match investment tickets. This form of catalytic capital is designed to accelerate underfunded innovation and address structural gaps in funding.
The premise is simple. If capital allocation is uneven, outcomes will be uneven as well.
What Paebbl Actually Does
Paebbl manufactures construction materials that permanently store carbon. The company takes captured CO₂ and reacts it with abundant minerals through an accelerated mineralisation process. This chemically locks the carbon into a stable, solid mineral form - permanently.
The resulting material is a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) that replaces 10–30% of traditional cement in concrete mixes, without compromising on performance. Since cement production is responsible for approximately 8% of global CO₂ emissions, this directly addresses one of industry’s largest carbon sources.
The model delivers two outcomes simultaneously: removing CO₂ and reducing emissions in industrial production.
However, the technical solution is only part of the challenge. The larger question is how to scale it within existing industrial systems.
Fundraising as a System of Signals
One of Marta’s central insights is that fundraising is often misunderstood.
Founders tend to focus on pipeline size, the number of investors in conversation, and the total amount of capital in play. These metrics create the impression of progress, but in reality they are weak signals.
What matters is behaviour.
Investors signal intent through actions. They signal it through how quickly they engage with new materials, whether they return to the data room, and how they respond to updates.
A large pipeline with low engagement does not represent momentum. It represents noise. A smaller group of engaged investors, by contrast, can move a round forward with clarity and speed.
Fundraising, in this sense, is not primarily about storytelling. It is about interpreting signals.
Evaluating Investors
The relationship between founders and investors is often described as asymmetric. Investors evaluate founders, but founders must also evaluate investors.
Not all investors behave in the same way. Some build conviction early. They engage deeply in diligence and contribute before committing capital. Others remain passive, extract information, or disengage without clarity.
These behaviours matter.
Investors who engage, introduce relevant partners, and communicate transparently are signalling long-term alignment. Investors who do not are signalling something else.
The implication is straightforward. Capital is only one part of the equation. Behaviour under uncertainty is equally important.
Designing the Capital Stack
Deep tech companies require a different approach to financing.
Equity alone is insufficient to support industrial scale-up. Paebbl’s model reflects a layered capital stack, where equity is used to fund early development, debt or project finance supports infrastructure and scaling, and grants or catalytic capital help bridge early risk.
Each component serves a distinct purpose.
Equity is flexible but expensive. Debt is efficient but requires predictability. Grants can unlock early stages but introduce complexity.
The sequencing of these instruments is critical. Companies that depend on subsidies from the outset introduce fragility into their model. Companies that are designed to operate without them build resilience.
For founders, this is not a theoretical consideration. It is a strategic choice that shapes the company from the beginning.
Why Rounds Stall
Many deep tech companies in Europe encounter the same problem. They secure partial commitments but fail to close the full round.
The issue is often not the technology. It is alignment.
Momentum does not come from increasing the number of investor conversations. It comes from engaging the right stakeholders.
Strategic partners, industrial players, and early adopters provide validation that financial investors cannot replicate. They demonstrate that a real problem exists and that the solution has a place in the market.
Once that validation is established, capital tends to follow more naturally.
Co-Leadership as a Model
The episode also explores the role of co-CEO structures.
At Paebbl, Marta shares leadership with her co-founder. This is a deliberate choice. Deep tech companies require simultaneous focus on technical development, commercialisation, and organisational design, and co-leadership allows these functions to progress in parallel.
It also reduces the isolation that often comes with the CEO role. Decision-making becomes a shared process rather than an individual burden.
This model is not universally accepted. Some investors remain sceptical. But it is increasingly visible in companies operating at the intersection of complexity and scale.
Why This Episode Matters
Deep tech is often described as a technical challenge. In practice, it is a coordination challenge.
It requires alignment between capital, time, technology, and market demand. It requires founders who understand not only how to build, but how to navigate systems that are inherently uncertain.
Marta Sjögren’s perspective reflects this reality.
Building Paebbl is not only about making carbon storage possible. It is about aligning stakeholders, structuring capital, and executing with precision over long time horizons.
Europe’s climate transition will depend on companies that can operate at that level.
Listen on Apple or Spotify, and follow Leaders Shaping a Resilient Planet for more conversations with founders building Europe’s industrial future.
