Climate founders: Stop adding. Start subtracting. (#224)

Hard Choices: 1 decision. 1 minute.

The decision

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?”

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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