Musings, recommendations and the occasional soapbox

A couple of years ago, when climate tech investment dollars were flowing freely, I wrote up some advice for pivoting your career into climate tech. Clearly, the macro environment has changed significantly since then, both due to rising interest rates and to the major new political headwinds from the U.S. elections last week. For those who are relatively new to the sector or contemplating jumping in now, in addition to the considerations I laid out two years ago, here are some new factors to weigh.

Why are your first customer wins stumbling around, delaying deployment and possibly shelving your product? 

Working with climate tech startups, I see over and over that they underestimate what it takes to ensure successful product adoption. Here are four common blind spots that frustrate customers and delay commercial liftoff.

Reflecting on 2023, I’m sharing some good things that happened as well as things I am grateful for– personally, professionally and beyond. Plus a few wishes for 2024.

3 key misconceptions about B2B buyers and 3 important actions that are often deprioritized or simply blown off.

Just wrapped up three days at RE+ and it was an exhausting blast. The show was not simply packed and buzzing. It was literally overflowing, a sign of both the eagerness to get back to in-person business, and the rapid growth of renewable energy.

Here are some of the things that stood out to me at RE+ :

• Resiliency

• Societal impact

• Top down planning

• China

• AI? Not quite yet

• IRL FTW

As climate tech companies ponder their business, product and market strategy, competitive research and analysis looms large. Most startups do a fairly good job conducting product-level competitive analysis. But there are some key competitive questions that are often overlooked or poorly answered.

• What are all the alternatives (not just the competitors)?

• Getting beyond feature lists. How do they do business?

• How are you unique? And why can’t someone easily copy that?

This blog focuses on the following questions: what product, who is going to buy it, who is going to use it, and how to deliver it. The key is to go beyond the relatively linear question of having a product and finding the right market to sell to. Instead, product and market need to be thought through holistically and simultaneously, as part of the product design process, in order to achieve true product-market fit. Remember:

Market and product are intertwined

Understanding of users and buyers is key in product design

Delivery can’t be an afterthought

This is part of a blog series on the key questions that climate tech companies should be asking as part of their business, product and market strategy. In this blog, I’ll be discussing how to dig more deeply into the questions regarding which market,  who in that market, and why are they going to care.

Which Market?

Avoid playing kiddie soccer where everyone just runs after the ball and tries to kick it. And don’t get distracted by bright shiny things.

Who in that market and why are they going to care?

Get beyond cocktail party banter when you are doing customer research and dig into who the people are.

I have been speaking with a lot of climate tech startup founders and leaders, who have a ton of passion and great ideas, and are working like crazy. But passion, ideas and effort alone are not enough to turn an idea into a commercial product, much less a successful company. 

I am observing a ton of focus on “what” (e.g. a technology of some sort) and a vague “why” (e.g. it will reduce carbon emissions), and not enough hard thinking and research on the more specific questions of: 

• which market, who in that market and why are they going to care

• what product, who is going to buy it, who is going to use it, and how to deliver it

• what are the alternatives (including doing/changing nothing) and how are you better in a way that can’t easily be copied

• how to reach the buyers and users, how do they make decisions, and why will they be motivated to actually buy

• how to accelerate product adoption and successful usage/deployment

• when should you go after the next thing

I worked in enterprise software for the majority of my career before shifting into climate tech. Nowadays, a lot of my software peeps are thinking about moving into climate tech and are asking about the specific sectors where their software skills will be most valuable.

Here’s my take on where software people should go, depending on whether you are an engineer, a sales person, a product manager, a marketer or a lawyer. For functions where software technical expertise is required (e.g. engineering, product, UX, etc.), the sectors that are the most software-intensive include:

• Energy management

• Energy efficiency

• Carbon accounting and offset markets

• Climate intelligence

• Green fintech

At this time, there is a lot of noise and a bit of froth in the climate tech market, which is mostly a positive sign of long-awaited momentum, but it can be overwhelming nonetheless. If you are new to the sector and contemplating a career in climate tech, I’ve put together a list of what I have found to be the most helpful resources and the five steps you should take to get started.

Step 1: Contemplate whether a career pivot into climate is right for you

Step 2: Find a climate tech sector (or two) that piques your interest

Step 3: Keep up with the news

Step 4: Listen to inspiring podcasts

Step 5: Find companies, network and look for jobs

Like many of you, my LinkedIn feed has been filled the last several days with people posting about their layoffs from Meta, Salesforce, Twitter, Zendesk and other tech companies. Layoffs just plain suck.

There are also many posts from climate tech/cleantech companies and investors encouraging those who were just RIF’ed to switch into this industry and pursue a career with much greater purpose than optimizing ad spend or making software developers slightly more productive. While I cheer that sentiment, let’s not be naive about what it means to switch industries. Pivoting your career into a new industry should not be a knee jerk reaction to being laid off.

So should you switch into cleantech? At the simplest level, it depends on your personal risk tolerance and how committed you are to dedicating your career to climate and sustainability. These factors may be exceedingly obvious, but it’s worth laying out in a 2x2 matrix.

Here’s my matrix for deciding whether to switch from tech to climate tech.

I just got back from attending the Cleantech Open Global Forum #CTOGlobalForum and the VERGE 22 conference which were held in conjunction in San Jose. It was my first big conference post-COVID, and it was definitely buzzing. I went to cheer on my mentees at Tycho Solutions who were one of the 6 finalists in the CTO Global Forum; to catch up with friends and former colleagues; and to get a broad view of some of the latest thinking on the #climatetech and #sustainability fronts.

Here are a few reflections on positive momentum that we have now, and the gaps we still need to close

• What we have now: Technology. What we need: Skilled humans and Friction removal

• What we have now: Investment Influx. What we still need: Patient capital and systemic signals.

• What we have now: IRA & CHIPS Acts. What we still need: Specific policies & programs.

• What we have now: General recognition of the problem. What we still need: Cease fear-based messaging.

Billions of investment dollars are flowing into climatetech/cleantech, renewable energy and sustainability right now, both due to the increasingly clear existential need, and due to a turn in U.S. policy., culminating in the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act. But this industry is relatively new, so there simply isn’t a deep and wide bench of talent who are expert both in climate/sustainability and in their respective business functions. The only way for climatetech and sustainability solutions to be validated and scale is for people from a wide variety of industries to jump into the space.

I often get the “what can I really do about climate?” question from those outside the climate space, including family, friends, and the majority of my professional network who work in software/tech. Yes, you can take action on protecting our environment and addressing climate change. It can easily be overwhelming– the amount of bad news, the complexity of the topic, and the politicalization of the issue. But everyone can do something, and if we work together, we will make an impact.

There are multiple ways to take action. I like to categorize them into 4 buckets:

• PERSONAL. Things you and your family can do to lower your own personal impact on the environment and reduce your carbon emissions.

• PROFESSIONAL. Things you do as part of your job that help the cause.

• FINANCIAL. Investment choices that can make a difference.

• SYSTEMIC. Pushing for systemic change– that means advocating for the structures, policies and politicians that will protect the environment and combat climate change.

Both energy and data are highly complicated networks of connectivity and flow (whether electrons or bytes) that are going through multiple-orders-of-magnitude steps up in pace and complexity. I’ve been thinking more about the commonalities between the two sectors as they both go through tectonic shifts in how they fundamentally operate. I also have laid out the common design principles required for success in both realms.