Climate Torch

Today I’m sharing a conversation where the tables are turned: I was a guest on the Supercool podcast with my friend Josh Dorfman, the cofounder of climate tech startup Plantd. We get into: Why I built Entrepreneurs for Impact, and what I’ve learned from working closely with 45 investor-backed CEOs. What climate and energy CEOs are struggling with right now, from fundraising and customers to hiring and scaling. Why the leadership style that gets a company started often won’t get it through the next stage. What I learned from moving between environmental science, private equity, entrepreneurship, and teaching at Duke and UNC. How 25+ years of meditation has changed the way I think about ambition, stress, leadership, and performance. And why did I create a cartoon version of my photo for this episode? I don't really know. Check out more episodes with Josh at Supercool: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supercool/id1758404839 -- Get more from Climate CEOs... Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 50 CEOs, plus 50 investors and post-exit founders, who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Most climate investors ask which project offers the best return. A better question: Which investment makes the next 100 projects easier, cheaper, and faster? This episode explores the Transition Acceleration Framework developed by CalSTRS, Generate Capital, and Rhodium Group, and why catalytic capital can have an impact far beyond a single project. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode: Why the best climate investment may be the one that unlocks the next 100 projects. How catalytic capital can lower costs and risks for future projects. Why first-of-a-kind projects often fall between venture capital and infrastructure finance. How early projects can build supply chains, workforce, permitting pathways, and customer confidence. Why different stages of commercialization require different types of capital. How investors can measure impact beyond the emissions reduced by a single project. Why the biggest opportunity may be funding the transition from 0 → 1, so conventional capital can fund 1 → n. Read more here: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/where-does-the-next-climate-dollar -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 50 CEOs, plus 50 investors and post-exit founders, who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Roughly 70% of U.S. substations were built before modern digital technology. Now AI, renewables, batteries, and EVs are forcing a century-old grid to become something fundamentally different. Company bio: NovaTech Automation provides automation, monitoring, and control technology for electric utilities, with equipment in roughly 25% of U.S. substations. Founded in 1979, the family-owned company helps utilities modernize aging infrastructure while integrating increasingly complex power sources and loads. Guest bio: Conrad Oakey is CEO of NovaTech Automation and the second generation to lead the 45-year-old company. A Duke MBA, he has helped expand the business while navigating utility sales, acquisitions, succession, and technological change. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode: Why the grid must shift from “plan and predict” to “sense and respond.” Why 4% power-demand growth changes the economics of grid innovation. How to sell new technology into deeply risk-averse utilities. Why customer pull matters more than technically elegant innovation. How a $10K product can expand into a $100K integrated solution. Why buying an established business can beat starting from zero. Why NovaTech kills roughly 98 of every 100 product ideas. -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 45 CEOs and 45 investors and post-exit founders who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Hiring mistakes can cripple a startup in energy, infrastructure, or industrial technology. This simple three-trait framework helps CEOs spot great team players and six dangerous hiring archetypes before they join the company. The Frramework: Adapted from Patrick Lencioni’s "The Ideal Team Player," this episode applies three traits to climate tech hiring: humble, hungry, and smart, meaning emotionally intelligent. Even talented candidates can fail when one of these traits is missing. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode: Why humble + hungry + smart is a powerful hiring filter. Why character can matter more than climate or energy expertise. How the Accidental Mess-Maker creates problems despite good intentions. Why the Lovable Slacker can quietly slow a fast-growing startup. How to recognize the ambitious, charismatic Skillful Politician. Why Bulldozers can deliver results while damaging the team around them. The one interview question that matters: Which virtue is missing? Read more here: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/which-climate-tech-character-did -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 45 CEOs and 45 investors and post-exit founders who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

What kills hard-tech startups usually isn’t the technology. It’s everything surrounding it: unit economics, supply chains, customers, workforce, financing, and the long road from demonstration to deployment. Guest bio: Dr. Vanessa Chan is an entrepreneur, engineer, angel investor, and educator who works at the intersection of technology, commercialization, and business. She previously served as Chief Commercialization Officer at the U.S. Department of Energy and now leads innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Engineering program. She was also a partner at McKinsey & Company, where she co-led its innovation practice. TIME named her to its TIME100 Climate list of influential climate leaders in 2024. She holds three patents and, outside of work, runs her own pottery studio. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode: Technology readiness isn’t enough: founders also need to systematically reduce market, supply chain, workforce, regulatory, community, and economic risks. A startup doesn’t need to eliminate every risk before raising capital, but it needs data, explicit assumptions, and a credible plan for driving each major risk down. Commercialization ultimately comes down to three questions: Do customers want it, will they pay enough for it, and can you deliver it at a cost that lets the value chain make money? The hardest financing gap in hard tech often sits between development and demonstration, when first-of-a-kind projects remain expensive, but traditional capital wants proven economics. America’s capital providers may need new structures that spread risk across the first several deployments instead of waiting to finance the eighth or ninth project. Founders trained as technologists need to replace “technology push” with “market pull,” including talking to customers long before the technology is finished. Some of the best entrepreneurial training comes from getting comfortable without a rubric: observe problems, ask why, experiment, build networks, and learn how to find answers you were never taught. -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 45 CEOs and 45 investors and post-exit founders who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Big projects routinely blow their budgets, schedules, and sometimes the companies building them. But research across 16,000+ projects reveals surprisingly consistent rules for getting them right. In this solo episode, I translate lessons from How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner into practical strategies for entrepreneurs building factories, energy projects, infrastructure, and other capital-intensive businesses. Seven lessons for entrepreneurs: Assume your forecast is too optimistic. Compare your project with what actually happened on similar projects, not just your own projections. Plan slowly so you can build quickly. Mistakes are cheap on paper and brutally expensive once construction starts. Don’t innovate everywhere at once. A breakthrough project can combine mostly proven components with a small amount of genuinely novel technology. Find your LEGO brick. Standardization, repetition, and modularity can dramatically reduce cost, complexity, and execution risk. Hire people with scars. Your first commercial project should not also be your contractor’s first attempt at building one. Shrink the window of vulnerability. Every extra month creates more exposure to inflation, tariffs, elections, supply chains, and other surprises. Align incentives before construction begins. Structure contracts so everyone wins when the project succeeds, rather than profiting from delays and change orders. Read about all 15 tips here: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/15-rules-for-building-big-projects -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 45 CEOs and 45 investors and post-exit founders who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Nitrogen fertilizer feeds billions of people. But producing it consumes staggering amounts of energy. Switch Bioworks is engineering microbes that could replace industrial fertilizer with biological alternatives at a fraction of the cost. Company bio: Switch Bioworks is a biofertilizer company engineering programmable microbes that colonize plant roots and then switch from growth to producing ammonia, giving crops access to nitrogen without relying entirely on conventional fertilizer. Initially targeting the roughly 100 million acres of U.S. corn, Switch has raised nearly $24 million in venture capital plus roughly $5 million in grants and is developing technology that could eventually extend to phosphorus and other biological applications. Guest bio: Tim Schnabel is the founder and CEO of Switch Bioworks, which grew out of his Stanford PhD research into genetically engineering plant-root microbes to produce fertilizer. A scientist-turned-entrepreneur and lifelong plant obsessive, Tim has spent roughly a decade working on biological alternatives to the century-old Haber-Bosch process while learning how to translate deep science into a venture-scale business. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode How engineered microbes can replace conventional nitrogen fertilizer by turning plant roots into miniature fertilizer factories. Why Switch’s microbes must grow first and produce ammonia second, and how a genetic switch makes that possible. How a few grams of microbes could replace tens of pounds of fertilizer, potentially driving production costs toward $1 per acre at scale. Why winning over risk-conscious farmers requires multiple seasons of field data and proof from neighboring farms, not just better science. How deep-tech founders navigate the catch-22 of needing commercial traction to fund R&D before the technology is fully proven. Why Switch’s programmable biology could eventually move beyond nitrogen to unlock phosphorus already trapped in agricultural soils. Why Tim believes “ferocious networking,” no-regrets decisions, and mindfulness are essential tools for surviving the long journey from scientist to CEO. -- Are you a VC- or PE-backed CEO building in energy, infrastructure, or climate tech? Join 45 CEOs and 45 investors and post-exit founders who help each other make better decisions on capital, strategy, scaling, and leadership. See if the CEO community is a fit → entrepreneursforimpact.com Get smarter on energy, infrastructure, and climate tech in 2 minutes. Join 40,000+ professionals getting practical insights on startups, investing, commercialization, strategy, and leadership. Get the free newsletter → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Help more people find this podcast. If this episode was useful, take 20 seconds to follow the show or leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps bring these conversations to more entrepreneurs, investors, and executives.

Legendary venture capitalist Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars and author of Give First, explains how founders can use resilience, mentorship, long-term thinking, and non-transactional relationships to build stronger startups and startup communities, especially in climate tech and turbulent markets. This podcast was so important when we recorded it last year that I'm republishing it now. Company bio: Foundry Group is a venture capital firm that invests in technology startups and venture funds across the U.S. Techstars is a global startup accelerator and entrepreneurial network built around mentorship, founder development, and the philosophy of “Give First.” Speaker bio: Brad Feld is a legendary venture capitalist, entrepreneur, author, and longtime startup mentor who has spent four decades investing in and advising 4,000+ founders. His book, Give First, explores how non-transactional generosity can strengthen founders, relationships, and startup communities. Seven things entrepreneurs will learn in this episode: Why the best founders treat startup near-death experiences as “type 2 fun” and keep adapting when conditions turn against them Why “Give First” means helping without negotiating the return upfront, not giving endlessly or ignoring your own needs How to distinguish mentors, advisors, coaches, and investors, and why confusing those roles creates bad expectations Why healthy boundaries make generosity more sustainable for both founders and mentors How reputation and relationship capital compound over decades, often producing opportunities you could never have engineered transactionally Why failed startups still create valuable learning, talent, and technology that can compound across an entrepreneurial ecosystem Why climate innovation needs positive-sum founder communities that share knowledge and support each other through shifting markets, politics, and funding cycles -- Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs and 45 Mentors (investors and post-exit CEOs), representing $40B in enterprise value or investment capital. → entrepreneursforimpact.com Join 40,000 professionals who get our free newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Leave a 20-second podcast review. If you found it valuable, be a climate community builder and rate, review, or follow the podcast on Apple and Spotify. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Climate tech is scaling fast. But the data shows huge gaps in industrial decarbonization, carbon removal, energy storage, and the capital needed to turn breakthrough technologies into profitable businesses. Company bio: Speed & Scale is a climate action initiative built around measurable objectives and key results (OKRs) for reaching net-zero emissions, originating from John Doerr’s Speed & Scale framework. Its Climate Tech Map, developed with partners including Breakthrough Energy, Elemental Impact, Energy Innovation, McKinsey Sustainability, and Stanford’s Doerr School, organizes thousands of climate technologies into a navigable roadmap of decarbonization opportunities. Guest bios: Ryan Panchadsaram is co-author of Speed & Scale and an investor at Doerr Capital, where his work spans climate technology investing, philanthropy, and climate strategy; his earlier career includes entrepreneurship and public-sector leadership. Quinn is Director of Research at Speed & Scale, and an investor at Doerr Capital, where she helps translate complex climate, technology, and market data into actionable frameworks for investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and professionals entering climate tech. Seven things you’ll learn in this episode: Why steel, cement, and food may offer more climate-tech whitespace than the crowded energy sector. Why climate technologies need a green discount, not just cost parity. How deep tech founders can prove their path from expensive prototype to profitable scale. Why manufacturing talent often needs to join a climate startup earlier than founders expect. Why long-duration energy storage is emerging as a major investment opportunity. Where climate capital is surging—and where promising technologies are still starved for funding. Why successful leaders should spend more time creating than consuming. -- Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Climate CEOs are expected to project confidence. But acting invincible can make investors, employees, and customers trust you less. This minisode explores the "vulnerability paradox" and why selective candor can be a leadership advantage. Confidence and vulnerability aren’t opposites — CEOs need to project conviction, especially during fundraising, layoffs, missed milestones, and difficult customer negotiations. But pretending everything is perfect can undermine credibility. People connect through shared struggle — Investors, employees, and customers respond to leaders who acknowledge that building companies is messy. The perfectly scripted founder story rarely feels believable. Share challenges selectively — Vulnerability doesn’t mean telling everyone everything. Share the right mistakes, lessons, and unresolved challenges with the right audience. Replace perfection with learning — “Here’s what we’re learning” can build more trust than pretending everything is going according to plan. Candor can be commercially valuable — Trust matters in fundraising, hiring, partnerships, and enterprise sales. Sometimes admitting uncertainty strengthens the relationship instead of weakening it. The core lesson — Strong CEOs don’t need to look invincible. They need to know when confidence builds trust, and when honesty builds more. 👉 Get the written summary: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/climate-ceos-stop-acting-invincible -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

What if America could add gigawatts of nuclear power without building new nuclear plants? Alva Energy is upgrading existing reactors to produce 20–30% more power, potentially adding 200–300 megawatts per plant in just 3–5 years. Company bio: Alva Energy is developing technology to increase the output of existing nuclear power plants by upgrading their nuclear steam systems and adding a second turbine generator. The company is already working exclusively with six operating reactors, and estimates projects could add roughly 200–300 MW for around $1B, less than one-fifth the cost of new nuclear construction. Speaker bio: James Krellenstein is the co-founder and CEO of Alva Energy. A physicist by training and the son of a nuclear engineer and energy economist, James combines nuclear technology, project finance, and first-principles thinking. Alva has raised a $32M Series A led by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger with Playground Global. Five lessons for entrepreneurs: Look for billion-dollar opportunities hiding in plain sight – Alva’s core nuclear uprate approach had already been demonstrated in Sweden. The opportunity came from understanding why it hadn’t scaled in the US—and redesigning around that bottleneck. Go to the source material – James traces part of Alva’s technical insight to reading a 15,000-page nuclear engineering filing. Secondary summaries are convenient; sometimes the best opportunities are buried several layers deeper. Design the financing alongside the technology – Alva separates its venture-backed TopCo from individual project companies that can use project debt and equity. The goal is to make nuclear upgrades financeable like other infrastructure assets. Don’t let venture capital’s obsession with speed destroy execution – Demand grew faster than Alva expected, reaching engineering exclusivity with six reactors in under two years. James has deliberately tapped the brakes when necessary because nuclear engineering quality matters more than locking up TAM. Align incentives around getting projects built – Instead of relying on traditional time-and-materials contracts that can reward higher project costs, Alva uses fixed-price structures and invests alongside project investors. Everyone benefits from bringing projects online faster and cheaper. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Most hiring mistakes don’t happen because CEOs can’t recognize talent. They happen because interviews reward candidates who are good at interviewing. This minisode explores a more rigorous method for hiring executives (topgrading), and how climate CEOs can uncover performance patterns before making an expensive mistake. Look for patterns, not polish — Walk through a candidate’s career job by job to understand what they accomplished, where they struggled, why they left, and what patterns repeat. Ask the same questions about every role — What were you hired to do? What did you accomplish? What were the low points? Why did you leave? Consistency makes comparisons easier and exposes gaps. Use the Threat of Reference Check — Ask candidates what each former boss will say about their performance. Knowing you may verify the answer tends to produce more candid responses. Test for startup fit, not just executive credentials — A successful Fortune 500 executive may struggle when the job requires getting into the weeds during a funding round, factory scale-up, or major customer deployment. Spend more time before the hire — A rigorous interview process takes longer upfront. But that cost is tiny compared with losing six months to the wrong executive and starting the search again. The core lesson — Your goal isn’t to hire the best interviewer. It’s to find evidence that someone has repeatedly produced the results you need in environments similar to yours. 👉 Get the written summary: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/the-climate-ceos-method-for-hiring -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

What if commercial businesses could cut clean energy project costs by up to 45%, all while someone else finds, buys, finances, and operates on-site systems on massive real estate portfolios? Company bio: VECKTA Energy is a technology platform that helps businesses design, procure, finance, and operate on-site energy systems, including solar, batteries, and generators. Its platform can analyze thousands of data points across large property portfolios, identify the best opportunities, and connect buyers with a network of 4,000+ suppliers, developers, equipment providers, and financiers. Speaker bio: Gareth Evans is the founder and CEO of VECKTA Energy. An environmental scientist by training, his career took him from oil and gas projects in Iraq to leading a global power consulting practice, where he saw firsthand both the vulnerability of traditional energy supply chains and the complexity of buying distributed energy systems. Five lessons for entrepreneurs: Turn complexity into your moat – Vecta sits between consultants, developers, financiers, equipment providers, and customers. Instead of avoiding a fragmented market, it built technology to coordinate it. Align your business model with customer outcomes – Customers pay a subscription, but Vecta also earns a success fee when projects actually get contracted. The company wins more when customers move from analysis to steel in the ground. Sell economics before sustainability – Gareth has watched customer priorities shift from sustainability toward cost, predictability, and increasingly reliability. Meet customers where their budgets and pain actually are. Follow customers into new markets – Rather than expanding internationally because the TAM looks attractive, Vecta follows existing customers into new geographies, pressure-tests the model, and then decides where to invest at scale. Earn your stripes before chasing the title – Gareth’s advice to younger leaders: be patient, learn the craft, take difficult assignments, and build credibility. Responsibility is more valuable when you’ve developed the judgment to handle it. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Most acquisitions don’t fail because the deal thesis was wrong. They fail because integration breaks exactly what made the company worth buying. This minisode explores why climate tech M&A goes sideways and four questions CEOs should ask before signing the deal. Why good deals go bad — The spreadsheet may show compelling synergies (ugh, that word!), but value disappears when key employees leave, customers defect, or bureaucracy slows down the acquired company. Protect the people who create the value — Identify which employees are essential to technology, customer relationships, and execution. Then build retention plans before closing, not after they resign. Protect customer relationships — A customer who trusted the founder may not automatically trust the acquirer. CEOs need to identify vulnerable accounts and manage those relationships explicitly. Assign owners to every source of value — They need an owner, budget, timeline, and incentives. Otherwise, they remain as tentative numbers in an acquisition model. Know what not to integrate — Sometimes the best integration strategy is leaving parts of the acquired company alone. Preserve the speed, culture, relationships, or operating model that made it valuable in the first place. The core lesson — CEOs often spend more time negotiating the purchase price than planning the first 100 days. That’s backward. The deal creates the possibility of value. Integration determines whether it ever shows up. 👉 Get the written summary: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/the-climate-tech-acquisition-question -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Electric vehicles shouldn't just be gas trucks with batteries. They should be entirely different machines. That's the premise behind Tello Trucks' attempt to reinvent one of America's most iconic vehicles. Company bio: Tello Trucks is an electric vehicle company building a mini truck designed to deliver full-size truck utility in a much smaller footprint. The vehicle is engineered for city life, with easier parking, better maneuverability, and strong towing and payload capabilities. The company’s core idea is that electrification should enable completely new vehicle designs, not just “gas cars with batteries.” Speaker bio: Jason Marks is the co-founder and CEO of Tello Trucks. He is a mechanical engineer by training, a lifelong vehicle builder, and an automotive safety expert with deep experience in validation, radar/LiDAR systems, and vehicle crash safety. Before Tello, he worked across the automotive ecosystem, and he brings a highly technical, founder-led approach to product, manufacturing, and team building. Five lessons for entrepreneurs: Use a technology shift to rethink the category – Don’t just copy the old product in a new form factor; ask what the new technology makes possible. For example, EVs allow for a much shorter vehicle with the same or greater functionality. Start with a niche, but tell a big story – A focused wedge can get you moving, but investors and talent need to see the world-changing vision. Think A, B, then Z. Capital efficiency matters – Small design choices can dramatically reduce material, parts, and manufacturing complexity. Don’t ignore the beneficial cascade effect. Customer obsession shapes the product – Direct feedback from users can improve real design decisions, not just marketing. And even better when all your employees want to be customers of your future product. Founder credibility compounds when it comes from lived expertise – Jason’s technical background lets him make unusually bold claims because he can tie them to concrete engineering decisions, not just vision. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

What if the cheapest, largest carbon removal machine on Earth isn't a factory, but phytoplankton in the ocean? Company bio: Gigablue is building MCFS (Microalgae Carbon Fixation and Sinking), a marine carbon removal method that uses phytoplankton and carbon carrier pods to capture and store carbon in ocean sediment. They recently raised a $20M Series A to scale their work.  Speaker bio: Ori Shaashua is the co-founder of Gigablue and a serial technology entrepreneur, investor, and executive with a multi-sector track record across artificial intelligence, climate tech, cybersecurity, digital health, and smart mobility. Five lessons for climate entrepreneurs: Build for the real bottleneck, not the obvious one – In carbon removal, the challenge wasn’t just capturing carbon; it was exporting it durably. Great founders identify the true constraint and design around it. Trust is part of the product – In a market that depends on verification, transparency, and public credibility, open methodology and measurable outcomes become strategic advantages. Use the business model buyers already understand – Gigablue borrowed contract structures from commodity and energy markets, making it easier for large buyers to transact with confidence. Scale requires timing, not just ambition – Ori emphasized that the market is moving from experimentation to consolidation, and that entering at the right stage can lower risk for both founders and buyers. Tie the mission to durable economics. – A climate solution has to make financial sense, not just scientific sense. The strongest ventures are built where impact and commercial viability reinforce each other. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

How do you turn degraded farmland into an investable climate asset? Living Carbon has raised $76M in equity and unlocked $500M in project finance by combining reforestation, biomass, and long-term infrastructure thinking. Living Carbon restores degraded agricultural and mine lands through reforestation while developing biomass supply chains for industrial customers.. Maddie Hall is the co-founder and CEO of Living Carbon. Before launching the company, she worked at OpenAI, Y Combinator, and Sequoia Capital. How to unlock project finance for climate startups — Why demonstrating repeatable execution, securing blue-chip customers, and reducing underwriting risk enabled Living Carbon to raise $500M beyond traditional venture capital. Why degraded land beats pristine forests — How abandoned farmland and former mine sites create stronger economics, lower land costs, and higher carbon additionality while avoiding competition with food production. Building two businesses within one company — Why Living Carbon separates its carbon credit business from its biomass platform, generating multiple revenue streams without relying entirely on voluntary carbon markets. Ignoring carbon market hype — Why Maddie focuses on building a business that will still matter in 2030 instead of chasing today's policy changes, pricing swings, or investor excitement. Leadership lessons from scaling startups — Why founders should catastrophize less, become comfortable with rejection, stop optimizing for being liked, and build routines that support long-term resilience. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Smart CEOs make bad decisions all the time. Often, the problem isn't intelligence; it's solving the wrong problem. This minisode explores the Double Diamond framework, a decision-making tool that helps climate CEOs avoid premature conclusions and improve strategic choices. The first diamond: discover and define the problem — Many leaders jump straight into execution mode. The Double Diamond encourages CEOs to first expand their understanding of the challenge before narrowing it to the real problem worth solving. The second diamond: develop and deliver solutions — Once the problem is clearly defined, leaders generate multiple options, evaluate tradeoffs, and then commit to a solution. Why founders get trapped — Climate entrepreneurs are often rewarded for speed and action. That can create a tendency to lock onto the first plausible explanation or solution. Applications across climate tech — Hiring decisions, fundraising strategy, product-market fit, customer segmentation, project development, and market entry all benefit from spending more time in discovery. A practical question for CEOs — "Are we debating solutions before we've agreed on the actual problem?" The core lesson: many costly mistakes occur because teams converge too quickly. The Double Diamond creates deliberate divergence before convergence, helping leaders avoid solving symptoms while missing root causes. 👉Get the written summary: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/why-smart-climate-founders-still -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

What if your home could cut electricity bills by 60%, survive weeks without the grid, and earn money while you sleep? Lunar Energy is building an integrated home energy system combining solar, batteries, load controls, and AI-powered software. Its GridShare platform already manages 650+ MW across 150,000 homes, including third-party hardware. Founder and CEO Kunal Girotra previously led Tesla Energy from 2015 to 2020, helping bring Powerwall into residential energy storage. He has since raised more than $230 million to build Lunar. Here’s what we discussed: How to turn homes into distributed power plants — Why combining batteries, solar, controllable loads, and virtual power plants can lower bills, provide backup power, and create new grid revenue for homeowners. Why software matters more than battery hardware — How Lunar uses device-agnostic software to manage its own products and third-party equipment across 150,000 homes and 650+ MW of capacity. How AI can cut electricity costs by another 10–15% — Why localized, real-time optimization against changing import and export prices outperforms basic solar-plus-storage self-consumption. Why leasing is becoming the default for home batteries — How zero-down financing, tax-credit changes, and immediate monthly savings have pushed roughly 80% of Lunar customers toward leases. How to raise $230M for a climate hardware company — Why proving product-market fit, securing Sunrun as both an investor and distribution partner, and demonstrating resilience under adversity mattered more than ambitious promises. -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

The skills that help climate tech founders survive the early years can become liabilities as companies scale. This minisode explores the tension between founder mode and manager mode, and how CEOs can know when to optimize for speed versus systems. Founder mode creates momentum — Fast decisions, direct involvement, and relentless problem-solving are often essential in the earliest stages of a company. Manager mode creates scale — As teams grow, CEOs must shift from personally solving problems to building systems that solve problems repeatedly. The risk of staying in founder mode too long — Teams become dependent on the CEO, decision-making bottlenecks emerge, and organizational learning slows. The risk of switching too early — Excessive process, bureaucracy, and meetings can suffocate innovation before product-market fit is secure. A practical leadership question — Is this situation best served by speed and direct intervention, or by creating a repeatable system that works without you? 👉Get the written summary: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com/p/climate-urgency-is-distorting-ceo -- 1️⃣ Join our confidential CEO community. Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs. → entrepreneursforimpact.com 2️⃣ Join 40,000 professionals who get our newsletter. Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read. → entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 3️⃣ Leave a podcast review. If you got value, take 30 seconds and do the community a favor. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.