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Which is best for climate tech CEOs: Founder Mode or Manager Mode?

Ever feel like your team is waiting for you to clear a bottleneck, while you’re waiting for them to take ownership?

You’re likely caught between two modes.

Most CEOs unconsciously switch between the two dozens of times a week.

The friction starts when the CEO thinks they’re in one mode while the team assumes the opposite.

Founder Mode:

Ignore the org chart, move fast, stay in the weeds, and remain closest to the customer.

(Risk: Accidentally becoming the "VP of Slack replies.")

Manager Mode:

Scale through systems, build repeatable processes, and design the company so it doesn’t rely on daily CEO heroics.

(Risk: Creeping bureaucracy.)

Neither mode is wrong.

The Tradeoffs

Founder Mode = speed.

And also:

• Chaos

• Unclear accountability

• Learned helplessness

Aka: “All decisions paused because the founder was at Climate Week. Again.”

Manager Mode = scale.

And also:

• Bureaucracy

• Slow decisions

• Risk aversion

Aka: “The permitting process was somehow faster than our internal decision-making.”

The goal is not to permanently live in one mode.

Early-stage companies need Founder Mode during existential moments: Major offtake agreement negotiations, fundraising crunches, product pivots, or near-death cash situations.

But if you never exit Founder Mode, the company cannot compound without you.

The Action Plan: Name the Mode

Make the mode explicit.

Say it out loud:

• “We are in Founder Mode for the next 30 days.”

• “This is now a Manager Mode process.”

Then define:

• Who decides

• Who gives input

• What can be overridden

• What requires process

Most organizational confusion is not bad people.

It’s unclear operating modes.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris Wedding: CEO Coach, Founder, Investor, Board Member, Professor

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Every climate tech founder wants velocity.

But speed without direction is a fast track to burning cash on hardware that nobody actually wants.

Enter the Double Diamond framework.

A product strategy framework I use in my Duke University classes to avoid building expensive things nobody wants.

Question

How do we balance expansive thinking without wasting time?

In climate tech, founders often fall in love with their technology (the “Solution Space”).

But validating the customer’s deepest pain point first is wiser (the “Problem Space”).

I learned the hard way.

Example:

• Needing a reliable HVAC contractor…versus…

• Pitching a 40-slide deck on heat pump thermodynamics

Tradeoffs

You can’t have absolute certainty and infinite speed at the same time.

The Double Diamond balances these tensions:

• Rigorous Discovery vs. Capital Runway: Spend six months researching Sustainable Aviation Fuel feedstock constraints without a clear thesis, and you burn venture runway. Skip the work, and you risk building a multimillion-dollar pilot plant with no guaranteed supply.

• Brainstorming vs. Focus: Letting engineers test five battery chemistries can spark breakthroughs. It can also delay deployment windows, frustrate financiers, and make your CFO question their life choices.

Actions

Use the Double Diamond framework to separate problem discovery from solution design.

Structure two phases of divergent and convergent thinking.

First Diamond (Problem Space):

1. Discover — Talk to [30] potential customers before talking about your product: grid operators, developers, or utilities. Collect patterns, frustrations, delays, and costly workarounds.

2. Define — Converge on the single pain point worth solving. If everything is important, nothing is.

Second Diamond (Solution Space):

3. Develop — Generate [15] ways to solve that bottleneck. Push for range before narrowing too early. Otherwise, your roadmap becomes a group therapy session for engineers. Remember: commercial product, not science fair project. Your CTO and CFO both sleep better.

4. Deliver — Ruthlessly filter down to the single most scalable, cost-effective MVP. This is where you kill your darlings, like the complex features your CTO spent all night coding that customers will never click on.

Finally:

• Don’t skip steps. Follow the order. Don’t get bass-ackwards. (Yes, I’m from the South.)

• Create time boundaries for each step. Climate change isn’t waiting around for our endless brainstorming sessions.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris Wedding: CEO Coach, Founder, Board Member, Investor

P.S. Join our webinar tomorrow.

• “BIPOC Founders in Climate Tech: Capital, Credibility, and Community.”

• Three EFI CEOs share their candid insights: Doug Speight (AxNano), Phil Croskey (MD Energy Advisors), Randy Allen (Still Bright).

• 5/20, Wednesday, 12:00-1:00 ET

• Register: https://luma.com/7y6jsl4o

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In the high-stakes world of climate tech, the “urgency of now” is a constant roar.

The 600-pound grizzly that might eat you.

But if you’re always reacting, you’re no longer hunting. You’re the prey.

Permitting delays. Corporate negotiations. Interconnection queues. Customer pilots. Fundraising drama. Policy insanity.

But if you’re always reacting, you aren’t leading. You’re just a bottleneck with millions in paper wealth.

Here is how to reclaim the strategic high ground.

1. Question

Are you working on the business, or just being steamrolled by it?

Did your last breakthrough happen after the 11th meeting of the day?

Or during a solo hike, quiet morning, or shower, away from emails, pings, and cortisol?

Does that sound like a relaxed founder ignoring her duties?

Or one who understands Naval Ravikant’s line?

Hunt like a lion. Don’t graze like a cow.

2. Tradeoffs

• Urgency vs. Strategy: Dopamine hits of solving immediate operational fires. Or the slower, heavier work for long-term value creation. (See the Eisenhower Matrix.)

• Accessibility vs. Authority: Being available whenever your direct reports need you. Or letting them build domain expertise while you focus on step-change decisions.

• Presence vs. Perspective: A day in the woods to think feels like a “luxury.” But in infrastructure markets with 10-year timelines, strategic clarity compounds faster than founder responsiveness.

3. Actions

• Adopt Total Focus Tuesdays: Block the morning for deep work; keep the afternoon for essential external calls only. Zero internal meetings. No Slack. Protect your thinking time as fiercely as your cap table.

• Try Future-Back Fridays: Spend your final hour looking at the world in 2031. Work backward to see which of this week's "fires" were actually just smoke.

• Run a Bottleneck Audit: Identify the one decision that requires your unique battle wounds. Delegate the rest. If your engineering, project finance, or policy teams cannot move without the CEO in the weeds, your mission will fail.

Bottom Line:

Climate urgency can distort prioritization.

The bottleneck is often not capital. It is executive attention.

Urgency and importance are often negatively correlated.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris Wedding: CEO Coach, Founder, Investor, Professor

For climate CEOs
Private peer group to test strategy, capital, and leadership with 45 VC-backed CEOs
→ See if it’s a fit

For operators & investors
Weekly decisions on what’s actually working in climate tech
→ See how climate CEOs think

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1. Stop pretending: solar + batteries does not equal 24/7 Power

Industrial customers don’t buy sunshine. They buy uptime.

Bruce Anderson, a 40-year solar veteran and founder of 247Solar (modular solar thermal + storage for 24/7 power and industrial heat):

Don’t claim 24/7 if you can’t handle intermittency.

• Solar PV + batteries is not baseload. If it fails after sunset, buyers will see through it.

Keep the magic narrow. Buy the rest off the shelf.

• If you reinvent everything, you die slowly and expensively.

Pick a beachhead, not a buffet.

• Start with customers who feel the pain most and need exactly what you built, not everyone with an energy bill.

Customers buy risk reduction, not elegance.

• Reliability, fallback options, modularity, and financing beat clever tech. Even if you went to MIT.

Headcount is not a flex.

• More people can mean more burn, not more progress. Save the bragging for revenue and staying alive.

—

⚡ So what?

If you’re building in energy, this Climate CEOs podcast episode is 40 years of scar tissue in 42 minutes.

…Speaking of hardtech in energy…

2. 95 industrial decarbonization startups you should study.

We have a problem. And a mispriced opportunity inside it.

Impact Mismatch:

• 25-30% = GHG emissions from industry

• 10-15% = Climate VC dollars going to industrial solutions

Industrial decarbonization is underfunded because it's hard.

But difficulty is a moat if you can survive long enough to prove it.

Here’s why.

The Friction:

• Heavy CapEx: High barrier to entry and investor wariness.

• Legacy Drag: Decades-long replacement cycles of “brownfield” infrastructure.

• Technical Risk: Hardware scaling is non-linear and unforgiving.

The Edge:

• Defensibility: Hard tech is the ultimate AI hedge.

• Funding Mix: Add more debt, grants, vendor financing, and offtaker prepay.

• Order-of-Magnitude Advantage: Solve for 5x gains, not 5% increments.

• The Offtake Option: Reframe financial and career risk as a low-cost corporate hedge against future regulatory and supply-chain volatility.

—

⚡ So what?

Get inspired by these 95 startups innovating for industry below.

Shout-outs to Dexmat, Nth Cycle, Cemvita, and Vaulted — four companies in EFI’s climate CEO peer group orbit. And to Alessa Berg for curating the 95 ventures.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Founder: EFI’s confidential CEO peer group for VC and PE-backed climate CEOs Host: Climate CEOs podcast

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How women entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in climate tech rise up

2–3% of capital goes to female founders.

Yet they outperform on capital efficiency and speed: Faster path to unicorn status. High revenue per dollar invested. Disporportionate percentage of statups exits.

Investors are systematically under-allocating to higher-performing founders.

Last week, I hosted a candid discussion with six of our EFI Climate CEO Fellows and Mentors.

They shared insights based on serious credentials:

• Built and sold a private-equity-backed company

• Evolved from a PhD scientist to a VC-backed CEO with a $1.1B offtake

• Led an organization representing 250,000 professionals

• Raised $100M to grow their venture

—

1. Pre-Sell Your Authority

Action: Build a digital presence so the room is sold before you arrive.

• Use podcasts and LinkedIn to ensure your expertise is a known fact rather than a first impression.

2. Claim the Lead Immediately

Action: Set the power dynamic in the first 60 seconds.

• State your role and credentials upfront to shut down any assumptions that you’re a junior staffer.

3. Harness Silence

Action: Stop diluting your conviction to make others feel safe.

• When faced with a slight, ask “Why would you say that?” and let them sweat in the quiet until they answer.

4. Radical Investor Diligence

Action: Reference-check an investor’s “losers,” not just their winners.

• Contact founders of failed portfolio companies to reveal how that VC behaves when the ship is sinking.

5. Audit Board Chemistry

Action: Treat board seats like co-founders. Long-term. Aligned. Filling gaps.

• Introduce prospective VCs to current members before signing to ensure interpersonal dynamics won’t create future drag.

6. Shift from Expert to Architect

Action: Delegate technical deep-dives to veteran hires.

• Stop proving your expertise and start managing the vision. Scale by hiring specialists to fill functional gaps, freeing you to move from product expert to strategic architect.

7. Operationalize Your Allies

Action: Pre-brief a “wingman” to shut down interruptions.

• Don’t fight bias alone. Assign a specific board member or “the grey-haired male CFO” to step in if dynamics shift.

—

Get more insights here.

—

⚡ So what?

The bias reflected in that 2% funding stat is a tax on a CEO's bandwidth. The EFI leaders I spoke with treat this friction like any other technical bottleneck: they automate it.

By building brand in advance, sharing the "expert" load with veteran hires, and pre-briefing allies to absorb the "bias" load, they’ve built a system to bypass the noise and stay focused on the scale.

Shout out to these panelists for their insights:

• Abby Hopper - Former CEO, SEIA (solar industry)

• ​Kameale Terry - CEO, ChargerHelp! (EV charging)

• ​Lauren Salz - CEO, Sealed (heat pumps)

• ​Liz Dennett - CEO, Endolith (critical minerals)

• ​Megan O’Connor - CEO, Nth Cycle (critical minerals)

• ​Susan Hunt Stevens - Former CEO, WeSpire (exited); CEO, Tessi (disaster recovery)

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Founder: EFI’s confidential CEO peer group for VC and PE-backed climate CEOs Host: Climate CEOs podcast

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1. The $8B utility blind spot.

Climate startup Overstory has a solution.

Better vegetation management for fewer power outages and wildfires.

More satellites. Fewer helicopters. Lower liability.

And $68M of investor capital says they’re right.

In my Climate CEOs podcast, CEO Fiona Spruill gave these lessons for climate operators.

Kill optionality.

• If your ideal customer still reads like “utilities, infrastructure, municipalities, asset owners, and any humans with a head,” you’re not focused. You’re scared.

• Go deep on one customer with one acute pain.

• Build the wedge so narrow that people think you’re missing the market.

Sell value, not virtue.

• Customers do not wake up hoping to fund your mission. They wake up hoping not to get fired.

• Tie your pitch to avoiding outages, lowering fire risk, or reducing operating costs.

• Forget “climate impact.” Think: “Here’s why this saves your ass this quarter.”

Stop fetishizing AI.

• Don’t sell acronyms and models. Sell the decision advantage they create.

Curate your cap table.

• Treat investor selection like partner selection, not a fundraising trophy hunt.

Get on the damn balcony.

• Create weekly space to rise above the grind, get the big picture, and write down the 2–3 outcomes that actually matter. Not tasks.

• If you don’t, the company quietly becomes a machine for reacting to other people’s urgency.

⚡ So what?

The red pen:

• Rewrite your homepage without “AI,” “climate,” or “impact.”

• If it still converts, you have a business. If not, you have a story.

2. You need a sabbatical from climate.

You might say in outrage: “Take a break? No way. The climate challenge is existential.”

But martyrdom is a terrible scaling strategy.

High performance requires a different kind of maintenance.

These four sabbatical models could give leaders the clarity and recharge to build better climate businesses for longer.

(1) Circuit Breaker: Restore energy and perspective.

• Marathon > sprint. Return with better judgment and less emotional reactivity.

(2) Stress Test: Expose organizational gaps.

• Systems > Self. Identify exactly where the company is too dependent on the CEO.

(3) High Ground: Create space for higher-level thinking.

• Vision > operations. Create the next game-changing product or service.

(4) Exit Ramp: Prepare the company for the next stage.

• Scale > control. Go beyond founder-centric execution to empower the team.

⚡ So what?

Audit and action:

• Block two half-days this week. Cut Slack and email.

• Write down what you’d kill if you started over.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Founder: EFI’s confidential CEO peer group for VC and PE-backed climate CEOs Host: Climate CEOs podcast

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1. Nuclear meets AI. The perfect homecoming couple.

Nuclearn’s strategy is simple but rare: start painfully narrow, prove ROI fast, then expand AI solutions across the plant.

Their AI is scaling nuclear plants without touching the reactor, by automating thousands of required workflows.

Some of their lessons in serving 70+ reactors so far:

Niche until it hurts:

• If your beachhead doesn’t feel “too small,” your focus is too broad. A hyper-focused wedge beats a shallow “ocean” strategy.

Sell the paperwork, not the physics:

• Don’t disrupt the core technology; disrupt the compliance. At first. Targeting regulation-mandated pain points is a Trojan horse for horizontal scaling in risk-averse markets.

Solve for survival:

• In industries with a retiring workforce and a ten-year training cycle, AI isn’t an “efficiency play”. It’s critical infrastructure.

Price for trust:

• Targeting ~30% of customer savings and transparent contracts builds the multi-decade rapport required in “old boys’ club” industries. Don’t be extractive.

Audit your stamina:

• If you can’t sustain a year of bootstrapped “nights and weekends,” you aren’t ready for the startup grind. Wait for the fat pitch.

⚡ So what?

Listen to our Climate CEOs podcast: Nuclear’s quiet AI revolution.

Learn how Nuclearn’s founders (former plant operators) built a beachhead in the world’s most regulated industry.

2. Four scars. 10 climate CEOs.

In our last EFI climate CEO session, it wasn’t about chest thumping. Here’s some distilled grit.

Kill the “Range”:

• Pitching a “minimum vs. target” raise is a hedge, and investors smell the blood. Commit to one number that buys a specific milestone. Ambiguity is just expensive cowardice.

Bifurcate the board:

• Slides are for the group; secrets are for the 1-on-1. If a board meeting contains a surprise, you’ve already lost the room. Build rapport in the shadows.

Own the mess:

• When moving from lab to pilot, a “turnkey” contractor is a black box of expensive failure. Bet on ten internal zealots who see every leak, versus forty mercenaries who hide it in “sanitized” reports.

Liquidate your social debt:

• Don’t let old friend loyalties slow-walk a pivot or a firing. If you don’t prune the dead wood now, investors will use it to build your bonfire during due diligence.

⚡ So what?

The CEO Audit: Where are you leaking energy?

Pick one: Unclear asks | Mismanaged boards | Contractor reliance | Avoided conversations

Resolve it this week before the market decides for you.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Founder of EFI: Confidential CEO peer group for VC and PE-backed climate CEOs Host: Climate CEOs podcast

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1. Eight investors give one piece of advice for founders

Last week, our EFI CEOs asked some EFI Mentors tough questions.

The f-bomb was only dropped once (with a smile).

But the frustration is real.

The market is shifting from “promise” to “proof.”

Here is the condensed wisdom from Voyager Ventures, Decarbonization Partners, MassMutual Ventures, SOSV, SJF, EIF, Spring Lane, Climate Insiders, and Tailwind.

The Narrative

• The “Hot Toddy” Rule: If your grandmother can’t understand your moat after two drinks, it’s not a moat. It’s confusion.

• Data Informs, Stories Close: No one funds a spreadsheet without a plot. If there’s no “why” behind the “what,” you’re just assigning math homework.

• Own the Competition: Claiming you have no rivals makes you look delusional or suggests you’re in a dead market. Be upfront.

The Execution

• The “Skeleton” Strategy: Go straight to the closet with the skeletons. Investors will find the risks anyway. If you show them first, it’s a strategy. If they find them, it’s a red flag. Candor is the ultimate de-risking tool.

• Proof > Concepts: “We did” > “We plan to”. Especially in later stages.

• Laser Focus: If you build what the customer actually wants, investors will find you. If you don’t, your pitch deck won’t save you.

The Inner Game

• Hide the Panic: Urgency induces FOMO. But desperation = “creative” term sheets. Or being ghosted. Fine line.

• Stop the “Spray and Pray”: Nothing says “I’m desperate” like pitching a fund that doesn’t invest in your stage or already has a direct competitor in their portfolio.

So what?

Which one are you violating right now?

Which is costing you the next round?

2. What a 4x CEO gets right about scaling industrial heat

Pasquale Romano, CEO of Tempo, is tackling the $1T industrial heat problem.

He has exited four times because he knows how to turn science projects into infrastructure.

Here is his playbook for moving hardware without losing your mind.

• Avoid “Rip-and-Replace”: If your tech plugs into existing boiler or furnace lines, you win. If it requires a factory to shut down to install, you lose.

• Scale through Boring Logistics: If it doesn’t fit in a standard shipping container or on a truck, it doesn’t scale. Design for the road, not the lab.

• The “Phased” Flywheel: No industrial giant flips their entire heat system overnight. Start small, prove the thermal performance in one plant, and let the data do the selling for the rest.

• Constraints are Specs: Real-world limits (footprint, temperature, transport) aren’t blockers. They are the design specs that separate “science projects” from “industrial products.”

• Trust + Channels: Use your direct team to build the initial trust. But use partners (ESCOs, EPCs) to scale the volume.

So what?

If you touch energy infrastructure, industrial heat, or FOAK hardware, Pasquale’s full breakdown in my Climate CEOs podcast is a masterclass — The $1T industrial heat problem most startups underestimate | Tempo

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Founder of EFI: Confidential CEO peer group for VC and PE-backed climate CEOs Host: Climate CEOs podcast

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Welcome to Climate CEOs — where climate tech leaders navigate growth, capital, and quiet doubts. Built from conversations with 300+ climate CEOs and 25 years of meditation.

1. Atoms for prosperity — Is your climate positive vision bold enough?

Radiant Nuclear raised $300 million in Series D funding in December last year, valuing the company at $1.8 billion.

Most climate companies pitch products. They’re pitching a future where energy is modular, mobile, and inevitable.

Their grand plan?

Mass-produce 1 MW portable microreactors for military, mining, and islands.

From their online manifesto, Atoms For Prosperity: The Radiant Master Plan:

1. Energy as deployable hardware, not infrastructure

2. Selling a future where your product is inevitable, not optional

3. Framing investors’ underwriting as aerospace, not utilities

So what?

• Have you written your company manifesto? (I did.) Write the 1-page version of the future where your company wins. If it feels slightly uncomfortable to publish, it’s probably right.

2. Startup expansion opportunities — When should you ignore them?

In a recent EFI climate CEO peer group hot seat, I heard this:

• “Adjacencies are everywhere — EV chargers, dev capital, new geographies — and almost all of them are distractions.”

• “We do three things, we go deep, and we do them really well — that’s why we win.”

If everything looks like an opportunity, you don’t have a strategy. You have anxiety.

So what?

• Are you the cat chasing a laser pointer? Who enforces focus vs. distraction, concentration vs. dilution?

3. Clean sheet innovation — When do you trash current plans and start from scratch?

Rebuild when:

• You’re squeezing 10% efficiency from a system that’s 50% misdesigned.

• You’re compounding error, not improving output because inputs have changed (policy, AI, corporate behavior).

• You’re boxed in by organizational debt when every improvement requires workarounds.

Beware: rebuilding feels like progress without the constraints of customers.

80% good in 3 months beats 95% in 12. Customers want reliability, not reinvention.

And speed matters: Carbon mitigated/removed today is worth more than the same tons abated in 5–10 years.

I discussed this with Leo Banchik of Voyager Ventures in my Climate CEOs podcast: How a $475M Climate VC Investor Picks Winners

So what?

Rule of thumb:

• 60% confidence your path is flawed = iterate.

• 60% confidence your core assumptions are wrong = reset.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

Join: Confidential peer group for investor-backed climate CEOs ($15M to $500M raised) navigating capital, board pressure, and scale. Capped at 45.

Listen: Climate CEOs podcast with 280+ episodes

Read: LinkedIn insights from my work with 100s of CEOs

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P.S. Read by 40,000+ climate operators and investors annually.

Decision 1:

Vendor Financing as Short-Term Debt — Lean In vs. Run Away

Context:

Your next climate VC capital raise is taking longer than expected. Again.

How to extend your runway?

• Ask suppliers for net 90 terms.

• Push customers to net 30 terms.

Boom: 60 days of float, interest-free. You’re a working capital genius.

Cash improves. No debt. Less dilution.

Tradeoff:

Your financials look stronger. But that’s partially true. For now.

In climate and energy, where components are specialized, and suppliers are concentrated, this risk is amplified.

Suppliers could stop shipping critical components. Especially if they’re Goliath, you’re David, and this is not a fable.

Plus, you’re borrowing from people who don’t think they’re lenders.

Like thinking you have a girlfriend. But she doesn’t agree with that label. Yikes.

Decision:

Use vendor financing as a bridge, not a foundation.

Cap exposure, diversify suppliers, and secure backup liquidity.

Decision 2:

Avoid Fundamental Attribution Error — You vs. It

Context:

“They are lazy.”

Or, “They are running on little sleep due to their sick parent.”

Both could explain why a coworker didn’t deliver a better sales strategy for your electric truck rollout.

The cognitive bias: Overemphasizing character-based explanations for others' behavior while underemphasizing contextual factors.

Even worse? We often do the opposite for ourselves.

Tradeoff:

Slowing down to understand context takes time.

But mislabeling people compounds:

• Worse decisions

• Broken trust

• Weaker teams

And sometimes context doesn’t matter.

If coworkers consistently underdeliver, the company needs a new solution.

We can’t allow the pain of one, over long periods of time, to cause the ruin of the many. And the company.

Decision:

Curiosity > judgment. Then decide.

Empathy > impulse. It doesn’t remove accountability.

Decision 3:

How to Be a Great Conversationalist — Lead vs. Listen

Context:

You’re at an agtech event.

You need partners for your multispecies regenerative agriculture strategy.

But you can’t get desperate. Or force people to give you what you want, as if they’re secondary characters in a Hollywood film starring you.

Tradeoff:

These things take time. Startups don’t have much of it.

• Ask open-ended questions.

• Use follow-up questions.

• Speak <50%.

• Don’t ramble.

• Allow for silence.

• Seek to give, not get.

• Nod to show active listening.

Decision:

Be more interested than interesting.

Relationships compound. Transactions don’t.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

For climate CEOs:

Join: Confidential peer group for investor-backed climate CEOs ($15M to $500M) navigating capital, board pressure, and scale. Capped at 50.

For operators & investors:

Listen: Climate CEOs podcast with 280+ episodes

Read: LinkedIn insights from my work with 100s of CEOs

Explore 220+ past newsletters

P.S. Read by 40,000+ climate operators and investors annually.

Decision 1

Antelope vs Mice: Are you stalking the right customers?

Context:

Our one-year go-to-market plan is not the same as our five-year version.

And often teams just chase the next “yes” to revenue.

That feels practical. It is often expensive.

In climate tech, scattered customer focus can burn time, capital, and morale.

Tradeoff:

Antelope are few, large, and hard to win.

One deal can matter a lot. But they usually require long sales cycles, customization, and patience.

Think: utilities, hyperscalers, large corporates, government contracts.

Mice are smaller, faster, and more numerous.

They help teams learn, iterate, and survive. But too many mice can trap you in low-value motion.

Think: small C&I buyers, pilots, early adopters.

Decision:

Need faster product iteration and quicker sales cycles with < 12 months of runway?

Hunt mice.

Post product-market-fit and concentrated buyer market with a giant war chest?

Hunt antelope.

Decision 2

Stagnation vs Safety: Are you building stamina or just burning fuel?

Context:

If we’re always sprinting or hustling, we make dumb choices. We burn out.

And our teams with less founder-zeal and equity can burn out more quickly.

The antidote? Intentional time to recharge. To feel safe and stable again.

The goal is not less ambition. It is better pacing.

Tradeoff:

Rest can lead to stagnation and complacency. Lost momentum. Missed windows. Slow decisions. Softer standards.

Recovery boosts the clarity and creativity for the next breakthrough in engineering or advanced materials.

Decision:

Default to sustainable intensity, not constant urgency.

Protect thinking time before you need it. Your job is judgment, not motion.

Companies that last are rarely led by the most frantic person in the room.

Decision 3

News vs history: Are you feeding anxiety or judgment?

Context:

News is the microscope. It causes recent bias.

History is the telescope. It allows for pattern recognition.

CEOs need both, but most consume too much of the first and not enough of the second.

We need the long view to set sound strategy.

Tradeoff:

News is low-effort, low-reward. History is the opposite.

CEOs are time-constrained, but history repeats itself. Be on the right side of it.

Decision:

Many before you have built companies with existential missions despite f-bombing-inducing policy risk.

Read two biographies by April 30.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

For climate CEOs:

Join: Confidential peer group for investor-backed climate CEOs navigating capital, board pressure, and scale. CEOs who raised $15M to $500M. Capped at 50.

For operators & investors:

Listen: Climate CEOs podcast with 280+ episodes

Read: Weekly LinkedIn insights from work with 300+ CEOs

Explore 220+ past newsletters

P.S. Read by 40,000+ climate operators and investors annually.

Welcome to Climate CEOs — where climate tech leaders navigate growth, capital, and quiet doubts. Built from conversations with 300+ climate CEOs, and 25 years of meditation.

This Week:

1. FINANCE — IRR vs. MCC: New project finance reality

2. TOOLS — The Four Culture Types: Which outperforms?

3. LEADERSHIP — Hope vs. realism: Insights from a billionaire VC investor

1. FINANCE

IRR vs. MCC: New project finance reality

The problem?

• Business-as-usual grid buildout could drive ~20% higher electricity rates, ~$500B in capex, and millions more high-burden households.

The solution?

• Solve for this new metric: Marginal firm Capacity Cost (MCC), or how much your project increases the average household electricity bill.

For example:

• Low MCC (efficiency, demand response, batteries) = quicker, cheaper debt

• High MCC (new generation-heavy builds) = harder diligence, more contingencies

Why chase affordability alpha?

• Cost-to-ratepayer = credit risk proxy

• Higher bills = more regulatory friction = longer time to cash flow

Further reading: “Affordability Is All You Need: Meeting New Peak Capacity and the Next Era of U.S. Grid Investment” by CREO

So what?

• Measure it: Add $/bill impact onto IRR and MOIC in underwriting.

• Think modularity: Avoid overbuilding, optimize right-sizing, speed up initial deployment.

2. TOOLS

The Four Culture Types: Which outperforms?

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Duhigg lays these out in his book: Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.

1. Commitment culture — “Everyone acts like an owner. Our mission is my mission.”

2. Star culture — “A few superheroes. Others are just support staff.”

3. Engineering culture — “12-tab spreadsheets are divine.”

4. Autocratic culture — “One god. Team input optional.”

Why does Commitment culture often lead to happier investors?

• Psychological safety → faster error detection and fewer fatal flaws

• Decentralization → faster decision-making

• Trust → fewer reporting layers, approvals, and politics

So what?

• Don’t fake it: If most decisions still flow to the CEO, you’re doing it wrong. More iterations at the project (not executive) level make project development and product R&D faster.

• Give up control: It leads to more trust. Unless you have weak standards. Then settle on an Engineering or Autocratic culture until you create them.

3. LEADERSHIP

Hope vs. realism: Insights from a billionaire VC investor

Bill Gurley was at Silicon Valley investor Benchmark for 21 years. His [$12M] investment in Uber grew to $1B. A perfect example of asymmetric bets paying off.

But I digress.

He’s also a fan of CEOs being shock absorbers for their teams.

• When things are good, inject realism. (“Great job, but don’t forget our cost per ton is still twice as high as the market competitor.”)

• When things are bad, be the Chief Optimist. Or the Chief Reminding Officer. (“Remember how far we’ve come on our critical mineral refining tech since its PhD-era origins.”)

How do CEOs get this wrong?

• Good times: Too much celebration → arrogance or complacency

• Bad times: Too much venting → terror snowball effect

So what?

• Three questions to ask: (1) What is the room’s current temperature: excited or depressed? (2) What is the opposite of that temperature? (3) How can I model the opposite state for the next ten minutes?

• Get inspired by history: To build your “equanimity” muscle, check out wisdom literature from the Stoics, Buddhists, Taoists, or yogis. It’s not a new idea.

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

Finally…

If you care about critical minerals, listen to our Climate CEOs podcast: Lithium Extraction: 40% Lower Costs with Electrochemistry | Mo Alkhadra, CEO of Lithios

If you know a CEO wrestling with team culture issues, forward this to them.

~ Chris

3 ways I might help you grow:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Invite-only forum capped at 50 climate tech CEOs

• Podcast — 270+ interviews with climate CEOs and investors on capital and growth

• LinkedIn — Real-time observations on climate capital and CEO psychology

P.S. Join 40,000+ climate entrepreneurs and investors who read Climate CEOs annually.

Explore 220+ past briefings

This Week:

1. FINANCE — Watt-Bit Spread: When customers will pay anything

2. TOOLS — Radical candor: Where are you in this quadrant?

3. LEADERSHIP — Autonomy vs. neglect: Have you moved in the wrong direction?

1. Finance

Watt-Bit Spread: When customers will pay anything

Definition: The delta between the cost of a watt and the value of the bits created by those watts. This ratio is extreme today in data centers.

Brian Janous, co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure and former Microsoft VP of Energy, coined the term.

For utilities: 1 electron in 2027 = 1 electron in 2030.

For AI companies: 2027 vs. 2030 might mean $10B of lost market cap.

He says we need a “new regulatory paradigm that enables utilities to capture some of these excess rents…to enable them to accelerate investment in their systems to capitalize on this load growth opportunity.”

So what?

• Speed: Where would customers accept an 80% solution today instead of a perfect solution next year?

• Profitability: How could you serve customers with higher profit margins, where their price inelasticity means quicker sales for you?

2. Tools

Radical Candor: Where are you in this quadrant?

Every founder claims to want radical candor. Until someone uses it.

Most leaders think they operate here: Care personally + Challenge directly

Reality is usually different.

The two most common modes I see in CEOs:

(a) Ruinous empathy

Avoiding hard conversations until performance reviews become awkward documentaries.

(b) Obnoxious aggression

Efficiency worship disguised as leadership.

Kim Scott built the famous quadrant after coaching executives at Google, Dropbox, and Apple.

Her insight:

Most people fail not from cruelty, but from conflict avoidance.

So what?

• Avoidance: Which conversation have you postponed for more than three weeks because it feels uncomfortable?

• Leadership signal: If your team were honest, would they say you care more than you challenge, or challenge more than you care?

3. Leadership

Autonomy vs. neglect: Have you moved in the wrong direction?

Research from Gallup, Stanford, and Penn State finds that autonomy produces:

• 20–30% higher engagement

• 20–40% higher job satisfaction

• 10–20% productivity gains

• 25–50% lower turnover risk

We hear about the value of “send-delete” people who get sh*t done. They just need clarity, not supervision. Tell them what matters, and it gets done.

But autonomy has a shadow.

When founders get busy, autonomy quietly mutates into neglect. Teams interpret silence as approval.

So what?

• Micromanaging: Where are you guilty of this? How might it create team churn?

• Leadership rhythm: Which critical direct report have you not had a substantive 1:1 with in the past 30 days?

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

Finally…

To hear why a climate investor thinks hard tech creates the best moats, listen to our Climate CEOs podcast: Deep Tech Insights: Investor with $500M+ of Assets | Tom Chi, At One Ventures

If you know a CEO who can lead with more radical candor, forward this to them. They’ll either thank you. Or stop inviting you to their events.

~ Chris

3 ways I might help you grow:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Invite-only forum capped at 50 climate tech CEOs

• Podcast — 270+ interviews with climate CEOs and investors on capital and growth

• LinkedIn — Real-time observations on climate capital and CEO psychology

P.S. Join 40,000+ climate entrepreneurs and investors who read Climate CEOs annually.

Explore 220+ past briefings

Climate tech founders are told to build everything:

More technologies, more use cases, more markets.

But in capital-intensive sectors, success often comes from doing the opposite.

They subtract.

Why this matters

Founders are overwhelmed.

Not because they lack ideas. Because they have too many.

In climate tech, complexity compounds fast: Gnarly engineering, permitting, policy risk, project finance, and long sales cycles make focus even more valuable.

Maybe these old philosophers were right:

• “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” - Tao Te Ching

• “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

But they also weren’t deep tech founders, so maybe they were wrong.

Startups don’t fail from lack of ambition. They fail from strategic sprawl.

(Inspired by reading Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz)

So what?

• Reduce your customer types: Don’t chase utilities, corporates, and governments all at once. Pick the buyer who feels the pain most urgently. Serve fewer, better. They’ll notice.

• Shrink your geographies: Everything Everywhere All at Once is a great movie, but a naive, ungrounded go-to-market plan.

• Teach your team to subtract: Before: “What new product should we build next?”

  Now: “Which products should we kill?”

If this clarified a decision you’re facing, pass it on to one CEO who’d benefit.

~ Chris

Climate tech CEO coach, Entrepreneurs for Impact

This Week:

• 📊 Finance — Speed > Purity: 30% of data centers are going behind-the-meter

• ⚙️ Tools — The Gap vs. the Gain: Confidence is built on evidence.

• ⛰️ Leadership — What’s the limiting factor? Get maniacal on one thing

📊 Finance

Speed > Purity: 30% of data centers are going behind-the-meter

46 projects. 56 GW. 90% announced this year.

But this behind-the-meter power is not all clean. Data provider Cleanview notes these oddball sources:

• Mobile gas generators strapped to semitrucks

• Aeroderivative turbines originally designed for aircraft and warships

• Reciprocating engines that ramp fast, but are less efficient

• Refurbished turbines acquired from industrial operations

Time-to-power beats carbon intensity. For now.

They confirm: Headlines mention renewables, hydrogen, or nuclear. But permits tell the truth. 75% of the identifiable capacity is gas.

And most of this DG power is happening in red states.

So what?

• Audit your Geography: For financial returns, fast permitting > Whole Foods per capita. Are you in the right states?

• Play the long game: Underwrite for 2035, not 2026. How can you partner on-site with natural-gas-powered generation today to enable more clean-energy GW in the years ahead?

⚙️ Tools

The Gap vs. the Gain: Confidence is built on evidence.

Which are you focused on?

• The Gap between where you are and where you want to be (future)

• The Gain between where you are and where you have been (past)

The CEO’s disease: Horizon watching. You keep staring but never arrive.

• I should have secured that offtake from the big tech giant.

• I could have led the engineering team to remove costs from our pilot projects.

• I would have done more if I weren’t torn between competing board priorities.

Switch your focus. Confidence compounds when Gains are measured. “We did it before. We can do it again.”

Thanks to Dan Sullivan for this framing.

So what?

• Build confidence: What are 3 major wins on customer traction and product development over the last 3 years? What role did you play?

• Institutionalize a monthly “Gain Review”: Quantify in contracted revenue, unit economics, pipeline quality, and customer feedback.

⛰️ Leadership

What’s the limiting factor? Get maniacal on one thing.

Elon Musk asks this question across his companies. Then he creates a “maniacal sense of urgency” to “help the team address that limiting factor.”

Having co-created [7] companies valued at over $1 billion, he’s worth listening to. Even if you don’t agree with his “fast way” to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons to warm its atmosphere.

Imagine a carbon removal tech that makes engineers weak in their knees, but it has one energy-intensive process that crushes its net carbon benefits.

One important caveat: Maniacal urgency on the problem, equanimity in the leader.

So what?

• Ask your team: If demand doubled tomorrow, what would break first?

• Ask yourself: How am I the bottleneck limiting the team’s velocity?

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

Finally…

If you care about virtual power plants and power grid resilience, listen to our Climate CEOs podcast: $40M for Virtual Power Plant Startup and Battery Backup-As-A-Service | Vinnie Campo, CEO of Haven Energy

If you know a climate CEO navigating data center rollout, forward this to them.

My final question for you: What limiting factor is your team tackling with maniacal urgency right now?

Hit reply. I read every response and appreciate the input.

~ Chris

Here’s how EFI supports climate CEOs:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Invite-only forum capped at 50 climate tech CEOs

• Podcast — 270+ interviews with climate CEOs and investors on capital and growth

• LinkedIn — Real-time observations on climate capital and CEO psychology

P.S. Join 40,000+ climate entrepreneurs and investors who read Climate CEOs annually.

Explore 220+ past briefings

This Week:

• 📊 Finance — Seek investors with dry powder

• ⚙️ Tools — Make better decisions: OOCEMR Framework

• ⛰️ Leadership — Take responsibility, give credit

📊 Finance

Seek investors with dry powder

To some of you, this is as obvious as a FOAK project going over budget. (Too soon?)

Others may be asking whether this powder is for explosives or cosmetic products.

Dry powder refers to the amount of capital investors have left to deploy in a fund.

Imagine two climate tech investors:

• Fund A raised in 2022 and is now 3 years in.

• Fund B raised in 2024 and is early in deployment.

Fund strategy changes with age. Your pitch shouldn’t ignore that.

• Years 1-3 = investing aggressively

• Years 4-6 = conserving capital for follow-on investment in the current portfolio

• Years 7-11 = exiting

If you approach Fund A, your odds of getting an investment are as low as a VC investor who says, “Super exciting. A TAM of $100M. Please fly to meet me tomorrow.”

Choose Fund B. Go where the money is.

So what?

• Audit your investor CRM. Reprioritize your target list by fund vintage and by who has the most dry powder.

• Use Pitchbook, CB Insights, Crunchbase, or friends with (those) benefits to get the data you need.

⚙️ Tools

Make better decisions: OOCEMR Framework

Tony Robbins is the world’s best-known coach and strategist. Like a human espresso shot for ambition.

As a partner or owner in 100+ businesses doing $10B+ in revenue, he knows a few things about making good decisions.

Here’s his OOCEMR framework. Use it for your next capital raise, big hire, pricing shift, or plant location decision.

O – Outcome
What do I actually want?
Name the result. Not the complaint. Not the thing you’re avoiding. The scoreboard.

O – Options
What are my real choices?
If you only have one, you’re trapped. If you have two, you’re stressed. Find at least three, so your brain stops being dramatic.

C – Consequences
What do I win? What do I risk?
Play it forward. Sunshine on the upside. Punch in the mouth on the downside.

E – Evaluate
What’s likely, not just possible?
Stop planning for asteroid strikes. Optimize for probability, not paranoia.

M – Mitigate
How do I make the downside smaller?
Insurance. Pilots. Contracts. Pre-mortems. Helmets are cheaper than head trauma.

R – Resolve
Pick. Move. Own it.
No half-commitments. Decide like an adult. Execute like you mean it.

Scaling climate tech isn’t magic. It’s disciplined decision-making. Don’t wing it.

So what?

• Audit your last 3 major decisions. Where did you skip a letter?

• Decide which letter is your team’s weakest. And its strongest.

• Create systems to fix the former and codify the latter.

⛰️ Leadership

Take responsibility, give credit

Dwight Eisenhower elaborates:

“Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

Most CEOs say they believe this. Few behave like it when things break.

So what?

• Do you follow Dwight’s advice? Or do the opposite? Ask your EA or Chief of Staff for honest feedback.

• Restructure your weekly memo or town hall with these two sections: “What I got wrong” and “Who crushed it this week.”

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

🎙️If you care about AI and wildfire risk, listen to our Climate CEOs podcast:

• $100M on Wildfire Defense: AI That Actually Gets Used | Bryan Spear, CEO of Technosylva

My final question for you:

Which OOCEMR letter do you skip under pressure?

Reply and tell me. I read them all and appreciate the input.

~ Chris

Here’s how EFI supports climate CEOs:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Community capped at 100 climate CEOs and investors

• Podcast — 270+ conversations with climate CEOs and investors

• LinkedIn — Short takes on climate startups, capital, and leadership

P.S. Join 40,000+ leaders who read Climate CEOs each year. Explore 220+ past briefings.

Subscribe now

Do you want to work on your idea?

Or the best idea in the room?

Why this matters

Founders are paid to have conviction. The risk is confusing conviction with correctness.

Especially for hard-charging founders who are usually right.

Example: Choosing a technically elegant decarbonization pathway that customers won’t pay for.

The problem is, no one is the most insightful person all the time, regardless of their fancy title or years spent at a company.

For organizational behavior nerds, this could be a toxic cocktail of the Overconfidence Effect, Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) norms, and the First-Instinct Fallacy.

How do we empower teams to tell us our baby is ugly? In your next meeting, ask:

• The Failure Filter: “What’s the single biggest reason this fails?”

• The Early Warning: “If we’re wrong, what early signal would prove it in 30 days?”

• The Data Pivot: “What specific piece of data would change our minds today?”

• The Kill Switch: “If a competitor wanted to kill this project, how would they do it?”

So what?

Beware of chasing passion projects over real market needs in climate tech. Climate urgency does not excuse poor capital allocation.

Given the scale of the climate challenge, we don’t have the luxury of time to let ego win over impact. Despite how smart we think we are.

If this clarified a decision you’re facing, pass it on to one CEO who’d benefit.

~ Chris

Climate tech CEO coach, Entrepreneurs for Impact

This Week:

• 📊 Finance — Gross Margin: Quality > Percent

• ⚙️ Tools — Quiz: The 5 Types of Wealth

• ⛰️ Leadership — Motivation: Identity > Consequences

TL;DR:

• Customized “snowflakes” kill valuation. Fire your most difficult customer.

• Balance your 5 types of wealth so you don’t win the wrong game.

• Lead via long-term identity, not just the fear of short-term consequences.

📊 Finance

Gross Margin: Quality > Percent

Which is better?

1. Gross margin of 60% that is unpredictable, project-based, and tied to personalities

2. Gross margin of 30% that is predictable, product-based, and tied to systems

Most investors would say #2.

If you require 12 footnotes, 9 appendix slides, and 6 calls to explain exceptions to gross margins across time and customers, then you might have a problem.

Investors lose interest, and valuation multiples will suffer.

They don’t value the “heroics” of a custom climate engineering project. They value the boredom of a repeatable low-carbon deployment.

• Project (custom) = lower multiple

• Product (scalable) = higher multiple

—

👉 So what?

This week’s action:

• Audit your pipeline today. Identify which 20% of “snowflake” customers are eating 80% of your engineering time. Consider firing one to protect your long-term margins.

Next steps:

• Ask your heads of engineering and business development to identify 10 ways to shift your go-to-market from a project-based to a product-based model.

⚙️ Tools

Quiz: The 5 Types of Wealth

If we only solve for financial wealth, we may just get it. And win the wrong game. The dog chases the car and gets a meal of metal.

Cheesy? Maybe.

But also true. And it helps us avoid founder burnout, divorce, and kids who hate us.

I recently read this book and used its quiz for a breakout discussion in our EFI climate CEO peer group meeting.

• The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life

They include:

1. Time

2. Social

3. Mental

4. Physical

5. Financial

We manage what we measure. So measure more stuff that matters more.

—

👉 So what?

This week’s action:

• Take the 5 Types of Wealth Quiz.

Next steps:

• Track your score every quarter. Over time, ask: Do I like where I’m headed?

• Do this with your teams in off-site meetings. Let them know that you care about them as humans, not just team members.

⛰️ Leadership

Motivation: Identity > Consequences

It’s hard to move a team when the “path” is a 10-year decarbonization goal.

That’s why you need to read this book:

• Switch - How to Change Things When Change Is Hard — Chip and Dan Heath

They use a simple metaphor:

1. The Rider = rational (analytical brain)

2. The Elephant = emotional (instinctive brain)

3. The Path = environment and systems (clarity of the actions to be taken)

As you can imagine, #2 is more powerful than #1, despite the Rider’s attempt to use a bullhook to “control” the 8,000-pound elephant.

Consequences are about #1.

• Based on fear.

• Feels imposed.

• “If we don’t achieve 50% YoY growth, we’ll have big engineering layoffs.”

Identity is about #2.

• Based on belonging, values, and self-consistency.

• Feels chosen.

• “We are visionary builders helping customers tackle climate risk profitably.”

Are you managing by the “Runway” (Consequences) or by the “Mission” (Identity)?

Appeal to the Elephant, not the Rider. If your life (or company) is on the line, you know which will win.

—

👉 So what?

This week’s action:

• Rewrite one internal update to focus on who your team is, not just what they might lose.

Next steps:

• Ask your head of people to read the book (or my short summary) and suggest five ways to change internal messaging and incentives.

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

If this helped you, forward it to a CEO friend.

~ Chris

How Entrepreneurs for Impact supports climate CEOs:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Community capped at 100 climate CEOs and investors

• Podcast — 270+ conversations with climate CEOs and investors

• LinkedIn — Short takes on climate startups, capital, and leadership

P.S. Join 40,000+ leaders who read Climate CEOs each year. Explore 210+ past briefings.

Subscribe now

This Week:

• 📊 Finance — Your goal: Uncapped upside and capped downside.

• ⚙️ Tools — The Lean Canvas: Your business plan is wrong.

• ⛰️ Leadership — Stories do what strategy can’t.

📊 Finance

Your goal: Uncapped upside, capped downside.

I’m not a genius investor or strategist. But these folks are. And this is their mantra.

Seek antifragility, where the cost of a mistake is small (capped) but the potential gain is huge (uncapped).

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile

Wait for the “fat pitch” — an obvious opportunity where the downside is strictly limited (often by a margin of safety) but the long-term upside is vast.

— Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger

“Heads, I win; tails, I don’t lose much.”

— Monish Pabrai, the “Indian Warren Buffett”

👉 So what?

Does your team believe that all risks and rewards are proportional?

Do you assume that all asymmetric risk-reward bets need to be moonshots?

Neither are true. Below are some examples to inspire your next executive team meeting.

Price increase on new customers only:

• Downside: Slightly slower sales conversion

• Upside: Higher lifetime value, better unit economics

Narrow the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) aggressively

• Downside: Fewer inbound leads, internal anxiety

• Upside: Higher win rates, faster sales cycles

CEO-written investor memo (not a deck)

• Downside: A weekend of thinking and writing

• Upside: Faster conviction, better capital partners

Carbon removal offtake pre-purchases

• Downside: Limited spend

• Upside: Uncapped learning, supply optionality

⚙️ Tools

The Lean Canvas: Your business plan is wrong.

Maybe you think you’re past this “basic” step in startup land.

Think again. Our business plans are always changing.

Tesla started with the Roadster, not Model Everything.

The key questions:

• Are those changes accidental or intentional?

• Is the whole team aligned on those changes?

The Lean Canvas is a close cousin to the Business Model Canvas, made famous by Stanford professor and serial founder Steve Blank.

It organizes a business into nine boxes with a suggested sequence for filling it out (from 1 to 9).

👉 So what?

What would happen if you gave a blank Lean Canvas to your team, asked them to complete it, and then compared the results?

I bet they will be different. That could mean:

• You need better communication and training to get alignment.

• The variation could be bad (e.g., poor sales due to the wrong selling points).

• The variation could be good (e.g., new insights lead to better distribution).

Try it. Then let me know.

If you hit reply to this newsletter, it goes right to my inbox.

⛰️ Leadership

Stories do what strategy can’t.

“Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”

— Author and environmentalist Barry Lopez in his book Crow and Weasel

It’s as relevant to startup CEOs as the pitch deck and financial model.

Consider Ørsted’s pivot from fossil fuels to renewables: Climate hardware and infrastructure teams perform better with mission-driven clarity and a new future-orientation.

Why? Because stories help us:

• Live “without despair” in the face of challenges

• Tap into the “genius of community” and find meaning

• Find order among chaos (aka, a startup’s typical day)

• “Breach the indifference” of business as usual

👉 So what?

What stories are you telling your team? How often do you tell them?

Do they believe you? Do you believe yourself?

Leading with your head (spreadsheets, org charts) is not enough.

And “touchy-feely” warning…

You need to lead with your heart, too — stories that absorb us in something way bigger than our personal and company goals.

Share Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups

If this helped you, forward it to a CEO friend.

~ Chris

How Entrepreneurs for Impact supports climate CEOs:

• Climate CEO Peer Group — Community capped at 100 climate CEOs and investors

• Podcast — 270+ conversations with climate CEOs and investors

• LinkedIn — Short takes on climate startups, capital, and leadership

P.S. Join 40,000+ Climate CEO readers. Get 200+ past briefings.

Subscribe now

“This is not a democracy, but I want your opinion.”

— Dr. Will Fitzhugh, CEO of Adden Energy (solid state batteries)

How do you balance these two?

• “I know best.”

• “We know best.”

Aka:

• “I hired you because you’re smart.”

• “Please stop being so smart at me right now.”

Why this matters

We all want our teams to feel valued and heard.

Cue the Avatar line from the blue people: “I see you.” So wise. Despite those creepy tails.

Many minds are smarter than one mind.

In our sectors where mistakes are expensive, timelines are long, and second chances are rare, we want geniuses and bulldogs at our tables.

But not everyone has the same level of expertise, experience, or gut instinct. All opinions are not created equal.

Mismanaged expectations are the real problem. If you ask for input, signal alignment, then ignore it, quiet resentment builds.

Clarity is kindness:

• “Help me think.”

• Not: “We’re deciding together.”

• Definitely not: “We’re deciding together unless I disagree.”

So what?

More equity, more power, more risk, more reward.

And when the bucks stops here, and here is the wrong destination, own it.

Diagnose it.

Share those lessons learned.

Be humbled and humble.

Earn the trust to make the next right decision.

If this clarified a decision you’re facing, pass it on to one CEO who’d benefit.

~ Chris

Climate tech CEO coach, Entrepreneurs for Impact