Home/Climate Tech Foundations/Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways

Your roadmap to climate entrepreneurship

Your Progress

Section 5 of 5
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🎯 Six Core Principles

🎯

Start with the Problem

Great startups solve painful problems, not showcase cool tech. Talk to 100 potential customers before building.

📊

Validate Market Size

TAM-SAM-SOM rigorously. VCs need $1B+ exits. Your SAM should support 10% of that for Series A interest.

⚡

Differentiation Is Everything

Being 10% better = noise. 10x better = defensible. Find your unfair advantage: tech, team, timing, or wedge.

💰

Capital Efficiency Wins

Climate tech is capital-intensive. Minimize hardware iterations. Use simulations. Show capital efficiency early.

🚀

Speed to Customer

Revenue beats roadmap. Get to first paying customer ASAP. Design partners are free consultants, not customers.

🔄

Build-Measure-Learn

Ship MVPs, gather data, iterate. Hardware takes longer but same principle applies. Validate assumptions weekly.

✅ Startup Readiness Checklist

Complete these before approaching investors. Check off as you progress.

Identified a painful, urgent problem worth $1B+ annually
Validated TAM using both top-down and bottom-up methods
Mapped competitive landscape and found white space
Defined clear differentiation (10x better on key dimension)
Assembled complementary co-founder team with domain expertise
Built minimum viable product (prototype or pilot-ready)
Secured 3-5 design partners or LOIs from potential customers
Modeled unit economics with path to profitability
Created compelling deck (problem, solution, market, team, traction, ask)
Built network of climate investors, founders, and advisors for intros

🏆 Climate Startup Success Stories

Rivian

Electric Vehicles • Founded 2009
Total Raised
$13.5B
Outcome: IPO 2021 at $67B valuation
Key Insight: Focused on underserved segment (adventure vehicles). Vertical integration (batteries, software, manufacturing).
Timeline: 12 years to IPO

Northvolt

Battery Manufacturing • Founded 2016
Total Raised
$9B
Outcome: Building 150 GWh capacity in Europe
Key Insight: Geographic wedge (European supply chain). Ex-Tesla founders with execution track record.
Timeline: 5 years to first production

Climeworks

Direct Air Capture • Founded 2009
Total Raised
$800M
Outcome: Largest DAC operator (10K tons/year)
Key Insight: Early mover in nascent market. Patient capital. Built while costs fell from $1000 to $600/ton.
Timeline: 15 years to scale

📚 Essential Resources

Funding Sources

  • •Lowercarbon Capital (lcap.com) - Seed to Series B, climate-first fund
  • •Breakthrough Energy Ventures (breakthroughenergy.org) - Deep tech, patient capital
  • •Climate Tech VC (climatetechvc.org) - Database of 600+ climate-focused VCs
  • •SBIR/STTR (sbir.gov) - $4B/year non-dilutive US government grants

Accelerators & Support

  • •Y Combinator (ycombinator.com) - $500K for 7%, world-class network
  • •Techstars Sustainability (techstars.com) - Mentor-driven, sector-specific
  • •Elemental Excelerator (elementalexcelerator.com) - $1M grants + equity for deployment
  • •Third Derivative (third-derivative.org) - RMI-backed, scaling focus

Market Research

  • •BloombergNEF (bnef.com) - Energy transition data and forecasts
  • •Pitchbook (pitchbook.com) - VC deal data, comps, valuations
  • •CB Insights Climate Tech report (cbinsights.com) - Quarterly state of the industry
  • •CTVC Climate Tech Startups Report (climatetechvc.substack.com) - Free annual analysis

Communities

  • •Work on Climate (workonclimate.org) - 50K+ members, job board, events
  • •MCJ Collective (mcjcollective.com) - Podcast, Slack, courses for climate careers
  • •Terra.do (terra.do) - Climate education, fellows program, hiring network
  • •Climate Draft (climatedraft.org) - Connects talent with climate companies
⚠️

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