Things I Learned from Five Years in Climate Tech

I can’t say much of anything about this project, due to the secretive nature of X.The following unordered and subjective list reflects my thinking about startups in the energy space, particularly those that aim to sell software to utilities.The ideal energy system is one that fades into the background. These companies aren’t going to pay $10 MM per employee or cater to your taste in programming languages or productivity software.This isn’t to say that energy startups can’t have exits that make money for founders and investors. In consumer settings, this approach can also help work around the fact that most consumers don’t care about energy (discussed above).Examples:The glacial pace of the utility sales cycle has a big impact on cash management and fundraising for startups. Staying alive as a utility vendor or service provider requires minimizing your company’s burn rate and scraping together enough early pilot projects to show traction to the next round’s investors.For instance, say you start a company with money from friends and family to build a product that will help utilities decarbonize the residential sector. It seems insurmountable given the current political climate, but you’d be surprised how much progress we’ve made.As I’m sure this essay has made clear, five years of building technologies for sale to utilities has left me rather burnt out by the slow pace and legacy nature of the energy industry.