⚡$28M in VC for Smarter Timber Tech as Global Wood Demand Up 3x by 2050 (#190)
$242B Company's 5-Bullet Strategy Tool. 16 Network Effects: Are You Missing Out? $3.6B for PhD Scientists Founding 200 Startups.
Welcome to my newsletter from Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI).
I share lessons learned from working with 400 climate tech CEOs and investors—plus 25 years of meditation practice—to help people fight climate change profitably and maybe even lead a happier life.
Join 20,000+ folks and access 180+ prior issues.
Four topics:
$28M for Smarter Timber Tech
Strategy Tool from a $242B Company: 5 Why’s
$3.6B for PhD Scientists Founding 200 Startups
16 Network Effects: Are You Missing Out?
1.
$28M for Smarter Timber Supply Chains. Global Wood Demand 3x by 2050. Half Coming from Fallen Trees. TIME’s Best Invention 2024.
Ben Christensen, CEO of Cambium, was guest #221 on our Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) podcast.
Cambium is on a mission to build better supply chains for the timber industry.
Their operating system, Traece, makes it easy to source sustainable and local Carbon Smart Wood™ from fallen trees on a large scale.
Consider this:
Global wood demand will triple by 2050, yet half of U.S. needs could come from salvaged timber.
They’ve won awards, including Fast Company’s “Most Innovative” and TIME’s Best Invention 2024.
🎯 Listen to the podcast and share your thoughts on my LinkedIn post.
2.
Strategy Tool from a $242B Company: 5 Why’s
What is it?
A delightful diagnostic from the same folks who brought us sushi, Zen gardens, and inexplicably soothing toilets.
Born at Toyota, this method digs into problems like a TSA agent determined to find that rogue tube of toothpaste in your bag with 3.5, not 3.4, ounces in it.
How?
You just ask “Why?” five times.
That’s it. Like a precocious toddler posing as a wise, bearded mountain sage.
🎯 Consider an example from startup land:
Situation: The product launch flopped.
Why? — No one used the feature.
Why? — It wasn’t solving a real pain point.
Why? — We didn’t validate the problem.
Why? — We skipped user interviews.
Why? — We were “too busy” fundraising.
3.
$3.6B for PhD Scientists Founding 200 Startups. 1,000 Applications for 50 Fellowships. Corporate and University Partnerships. Nike, Amazon, and the White House.
Cyrus Wadia, CEO of Activate, was guest #220 on our Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) podcast.
Activate helps scientists and engineers bring their transformative technologies to life.
Through a two-year paid fellowship, these science entrepreneurs receive the support they need to turn their ideas into hard-tech startups.
Fellows work on climate solutions, advanced manufacturing and robotics, new uses of chemistry and materials, reimagined food and agriculture, space innovations, and more.
As a nonprofit organization, Activate partners with philanthropies, universities, government programs, the corporate sector, and VC investors to help fellows bridge the gap from lab to commercialization — all without taking any equity in their startups.
Cyrus was previously director of worldwide product sustainability at Amazon, vice president of sustainable business & innovation at Nike, and assistant director of clean energy and materials R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
🎯 Listen to the podcast and share your thoughts on my LinkedIn post.
4.
16 Network Effects: Are You Missing Out?
Over 70% of the value created by tech companies since 1994 is linked to their use of network effects (source: Andreessen Horowitz).
Maybe we should ask how they can be applied to our businesses.
Luckily, NFX* has summarized 16 types of network effects to make it easy for you:
Physical (e.g., landline telephones back in the day)
Protocol (e.g., Ethernet—standardizing interoperability between devices)
Personal Utility (e.g., iMessage, WhatsApp—tools becoming more valuable as more friends join)
Personal (e.g., Facebook—your identity or reputation is synced)
Market Network (e.g., HoneyBook, AngelList—combining marketplace and network elements)
Marketplace (e.g., eBay, Craigslist—platforms where more buyers attract more sellers, and vice versa)
Platform (e.g., Windows, iOS, Android—operating systems attracting developers and users)
Asymptotic Marketplace (e.g., Uber, Lyft—marketplaces where additional users have diminishing incremental value)
Data (e.g., Waze, Yelp—services improving as more users contribute data)
Tech Performance (e.g., BitTorrent, Skype—systems improving with more users sharing resources)
Language (e.g., Google, Xerox—brands becoming verbs through widespread adoption)
Belief (e.g., currencies, religions—systems gaining strength as more people believe in them)
Bandwagon (e.g., Slack, Apple—products gaining popularity simply because they're popular)
Expertise (e.g., Figma, Microsoft Excel—tools becoming more valuable as more professionals become proficient)
Tribal (e.g., Apple, Harvard, NY Yankees—where loyalty is blind, and logic is optional)
Hub-and-Spoke (e.g., TikTok, Medium—platforms centralizing content distribution)
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🎯 Which best applies to your business?
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* Why trust NFX? Before becoming investors, they were founders who built 10 companies with $10B in exits.
That’s all, y’all.
Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.
~ Chris
Climate CEO Peer Groups | Podcast | LinkedIn
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P.S. Big congrats to Vaulted Deep on winning second runner-up in the $100M XPRIZE for carbon removal! Special shout out to Julia Reichelstein, CEO and Co-founder of Vaulted Deep, and an EFI Climate CEO Fellow in our Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) CEO peer group community. 👏