Rethinking Climate Infrastructure from the Sidewalk U

A Conversation with Sonam Velani, Co-Founder of Streetlife Ventures

Greennex sees an inflection point in climate capital. As the market rushes toward gigaprojects and frontier tech, some of the most deployable climate innovations are happening on a different scale — at the city level. Rooftops, sidewalks, public housing, and logistics curbsides have become the new battlegrounds for emissions reductions, equity, and adaptation.

But this shift demands a different kind of venture investor — one that’s not only comfortable with physical systems but understands how urban infrastructure gets financed, permitted, and deployed in the real world.

Streetlife Ventures, co-founded by Sonam Velani, is built around that exact thesis. Focused on early-stage companies at the intersection of infrastructure, climate, and equity, the fund invests in what Velani calls the “nuts and bolts of cities”: housing retrofits, local energy systems, waste management, and curb-level electrification. Greennex sat down with Sonam to explore how climate infrastructure is becoming hyperlocal — and how investors need to meet it where it lives.

Q&A with Sonam Velani

Q: You’ve worked across finance, development, and city government. How does that inform how you back infrastructure startups?

Sonam Velani: My journey started at Goldman Sachs, where I was financing big infrastructure — energy, water, transit. Then I worked at the World Bank on urban resilience in Asia, and later in the New York City Mayor’s Office on affordable housing and development. Those experiences showed me that real climate infrastructure isn’t theoretical. It’s about what gets built, who approves it, who maintains it. That’s why we started Streetlife — to invest in companies that could survive and scale in those real, messy systems.

Q: A lot of your portfolio deals with very physical tech — EV chargers, heat pumps, low-carbon materials. How do you support startups working in these complex urban contexts?

Sonam Velani: Many of our founders are working on very physical solutions. They’re deploying EV charging infrastructure or building low-carbon cement. So our job is to help them figure out: who owns the sidewalk? Who gives you the permit? What does the real estate landscape look like?

Q: That’s not something most early-stage VCs touch. Why lean into public complexity?

Sonam Velani:Because you can’t do climate infrastructure without it. I’ve worked on the public side — I’ve been in city meetings. I know what it means to get a capital project approved. If you want to build something that lasts, you have to know how to work with cities. Otherwise, your tech will stay on the shelf.

Q: So what kind of founders are best positioned to navigate that?

Sonam Velani:We back founders who are not just builders — they’re translators. They can speak to technologists, but also to urban planners, utilities, or real estate operators. That flexibility is rare — but it’s necessary if you want to operate in civic infrastructure.

Q: Any examples of how you help startups localize their solutions?

Sonam Velani: We’ve partnered with the Brooklyn Navy Yard — a 300-acre WWII ship-building facility now turned into an innovation hub. We help our founders pilot technologies there, test their deployments, get data. It’s about proving your model in a real city, not a simulation.

Q: What systems do you think are most ripe for reimagination right now?

Sonam Velani:Water systems. Housing retrofits. Logistics at the curb level. We think about the systems cities rely on every day — and ask, how do we decarbonize that from the inside out?

Greennex Takeaway

Localized infrastructure is no longer a niche play — it’s becoming the front line of the climate transition. Streetlife Ventures offers a critical case study in how early-stage capital can move beyond theory and interface with the real systems that govern daily life in cities.

For investors and policymakers alike, Sonam Velani’s model highlights three key shifts:

• From scale to site: The most urgent climate solutions must adapt to real urban geographies — not just spreadsheets.

• From founders to translators: Successful infra startups require fluency across policy, planning, and execution.

• From VC as catalyst to VC as collaborator: Early capital isn’t just funding innovation — it’s designing how it gets built.

Greennex believes the future of climate infrastructure investing will belong to those who understand cities not as obstacles, but as operating systems — full of friction, yes, but also full of leverage. Streetlife Ventures is building a roadmap for how to fund within them