🌱 How I got into climate #001
the origin story
Hi there 👋🏼 thanks for being here. A bit about me first. I’m originally from the swamplands of northern Virginia, but after moving to the Bay Area for college, I began to immerse myself in nature and spend time in places like Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Big Sur, and Marin. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself seeking out adventure in the form of skiing, surfing, hiking, and camping.
Do these inspire awe? They do for me, too. I’ve experienced the greatest joy (AKA stoke) skiing steep runs in Jackson Hole, surfing at sunset in Hawaii, and thru-hiking the Enchantments in Washington. And it breaks my heart to think that these natural wonders, along with many other regions, are jeopardized by climate change.
I wish I could say that from a young age I knew I wanted to fight climate change and help save the planet, but that’s not how this all happened. My story feels more personal and selfish than altruistic. This all unfolded in just the past four years.
During my final semester at UC Berkeley in 2018, the forest fires in California were so bad that my classes were canceled, our biggest football game of the year was canceled, and the student government started handing out N95 masks (I had to show student ID and it was one per person). At this point, I was still thinking more about how I was personally inconvenienced than the actual problem that was forcing us to have to wear an N95 mask. Two years later, on September 9th, 2020, the atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area went dark orange for the entire day because of drought-induced wildfires once again.
Last year, the impact of climate change was front and center when all the snow came early in January followed by six weeks of drought during peak ski season (this is not normal). The effects of climate change were once again meddling with my hobbies and preventing me from having fun.
I started to pay attention and learn about climate change for selfish reasons because it was affecting my everyday life, but now I’m aware and understand how serious the problem is. It’s abundantly clear that this isn’t about me, my community, or even my country - this is a big global problem. Last summer, the floods in Pakistan impacted 33M people, including 20.6M people who need humanitarian aid. The 2019-2020 Australian bushfires resulted in the destruction of 46M acres. In California, the combined recklessness of a couple doing a gender reveal via smoke bomb and monopolistic negligence of utility company PG&E has caused millions of acres and thousands of homes to burn. The list goes on. The least polluting countries are projected to bear the impact of climate change the most. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that this is unfair.
My next step
I’ve spent the last year thinking about how to be a part of the solution. I took an online course on climate called Terra and interviewed for climate tech startup jobs. For the past few months, I was looking for the ‘right’ climate tech startup idea. I thought I was going down the founder path which I think is one of, if not the highest leverage ways to make an impact. But after a false start and never finding ‘the one’ idea to pursue, I’m taking a step back. I view this newsletter as a vehicle for me to keep learning and exploring in the realm of climate tech.
As an optimistic capitalist, I believe in technology’s ability to bring about accelerated improvement. We need more people starting companies in climate. We also need more people who want to join those climate tech startups. Take it from a failed wanna-be climate tech founder. We need more people building in climate.
What is Build in Climate gonna be?
This newsletter will focus on deep dives in various sectors of climate tech to uncover the open opportunities and leave an initial bread crumb trail of what the possible solution could look like. As an avid newsletter reader myself, I aim to follow the footsteps of those that I’m deeply inspired by: Not Boring, Lenny’s Newsletter, Tsung Xu, and of course Climate Tech VC.
Some guiding principles that will help me focus and shape this newsletter:
ideas > companies
startups > venture capital
opportunities > competition
enduring content > news
You can also think of Build in Climate as the whitespace that market maps never show or YC’s Request for Startups, but for climate tech specifically. [since I first drafted this, YC has actually come out with RFS just for climate tech!]
The goal of Build in Climate
The mission of BIC is to catalyze and nurture the next generation of climate companies. If just one person decides to start a climate company because of something I wrote, I’ll consider that mission accomplished (in the short term, for now). What I do know is that it’s a privilege to even be going down this path.
you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. - Stephen King
I’m no expert, but what I do know is that we’re sure as hell not going to fix the planet with paper straws and telling people not to have kids. We’ll do it by banding together and creating the next generation of world-building companies. I’m equal parts nervous and excited.
Let’s build! 🔨