2024 - the year of the wartime CEO

Dearest climate tech founders,

It has been a difficult start to the summer here in the antipodes. Today the temperature was 5 degrees when I got up at 5am. ?It had both myself and the trees in the window shuddering with disbelief. ?Somewhere far to the north of me, the Baron River has flooded and destroyed everything in its wake. What I wouldn't give for seasons in their proper order. The syrupy hot summer days strung together, weeks in a row, marching toward the inevitable Autumn rains and freezing cold Canberra Winters. The sharpness of spring, with magpies and too much pollen. ?This weird grab bag of seasons in a week, just feels unsettled, tense and full of foreboding somehow.

I know you feel it too. ?

The omnipresent, looming?threat of our next fight. ?For us, cO2 eq kg aren't vanity metrics they are the sum total of our efforts on the battlefield in the climate fight this year. ? They are all our wins, all our customers, all our desires, all the staff we couldn't keep, the cuts we had to make. ?The hard decisions we made to win the fight on our respective battle fronts as humanity rises to the challenge of saving itself. ?

I see you.

More importantly I've felt all that effort. ?Felt it to my core as I watched you drag your vision into reality. ?Felt the tingle in my arm hair as you posted the first prototype, the second test, the first customer. ?Felt the roar of blood in my ears from the adrenalin spike that came in a rush at the promise of what you're building. ?

I share with others and say: 'Look!? They've pulled it off'.

In these brief moments, I?savour the taste of hope that comes when you recognise possibility. ?When you see yourself in others, when you realise you're not alone.

2024 isn't going to be easier, but not for any of the pragmatic reasons that people are writing about. ?It's going to be harder because the Baron River flooded, because of the 18.4 million ha of bushfires in Canada (That's North Dakota for those needing a size), the fires of Hawaii and California, the flooding of Haiti, the UK, Scotland, you get the drift. ?We're almost in the 4th year of the decisive decade, and we've tipped. ?

Don't get excited, I promise this isn't a sanctimonious rant about the virtues of shorter showers or veganism. I would not propose such a thing. Instead, I find myself in a half empty office, having just realised it's almost the end of the year.? And I find myself full of love and admiration for you, fellow climate tech founder, and the time we've spent on the front lines together this year.

I've been told that war euphemisms may not be the right message to send to the world. That perhaps the heaviness, the aggression and combativeness of the terms may not convey the message of solidarity, and collaboration to others that don't have a military background.

I get it. ?In a "quiet quitting", "work life balance" world, it's a delicate thing to assert. ?But I don't believe we can ignore any more that we're at war (in an unconventional way) and so, inadvertently, anyone leading a climate tech startup is a war time CEO. ?

Non- Military folks may connotate the phrase to meanness, a rash, bombastic in the wrong way, destroyer of things. ?I would suppose that these could be reasonable allegations. ? But these are also the observations of the civilian. The people on the seats in the colosseum. Those who want to participate by watching, by cheering, by picking winners and losers. They've not stood where we stand. They've not spent much time in the sand of the arena. ?They don't have the tangible connection to the impact of your technology's promise on the outcome of the climate crisis. So their connection to our fight is numbed somehow to the effort. Or maybe worse, they just don't see or believe the urgency. ?Because surely, if you understood we have such little time left before what we know is lost, they'd be fighting more ferociously too.

All of this and more make hardware tech hard. ?The startup playbooks weren't written for company's like ours. We behave differently, by design, than anything that's been built before. Our teams don't look like normal startups. We grow differently and its these differences that make it harder to do a lot of things. ??

70% of climate tech startups are hardware and yet only 30% of climate venture capital fund portfolio company's are hardware startups. ?Despite all this, here we are.

Somehow, we've built first in the world things, we've built?new industries and supply chains to support them. We fought, and we've won and maybe, we'll make it to the next stage, get our tired teams a kombucha?bar and help save the world.

I know you're tired. ?So am I. ?When you're tired even the smallest rise on the horizon can feel like Everest and a quiet inquiry from a passerby an interrogation. ? I know all of us have had just one too many slices of humble pie from all the learnings. ?(Thanks so much, I'm stuffed, couldn't fit another bite thank you though!)

There are days the cocktail of trying to get a hardware startup to evolve and the Weltschmerz of climate anxiety can feel lethal.

Stay with me won't you?

I take so much strength from your wins, from the times when you give me the opportunity to think on your problems instead of my own, from knowing you're out there fighting just like I am. ? We will make it, I'm sure of it. ?One way or another, because what we're building is so elegant, so enduring. A vision of the version of the world that has won in the greatest war of our time. ?

The world needs you.

I need you.

I'll see you at work.?