We need more capital to bridge the FOAK “valley of death” in climate tech — but not at any cost. Lately, I’ve seen two worrying ideas gaining ground: crowdfunding that asks ordinary people to “invest like VCs,” and proposals to channel pension money into the riskiest stage of startup growth. Both sound democratic. Both are dangerous.

I spoke with a European founder developing his own battery cells. Just getting permits for the mixing and coating stages pushed his...

Over the years, I’ve distilled some patterns into a five-step framework for finding your clients—tailored to the realities of FOAK and climate tech.

How to build a supply chain for your FOAK

The lessons of Natron Energy collapse

In the end, it had to be a political decision. After half a year of sifting through more than twenty locations and countless meetings...

Cleantech startups usually sell to mature industries, and these don't like new stuff. How can founders overcome change inertia? Ports, especially municipally owned ones, are notorious for resisting any change to how they operate. Here is a story from Polina Vasilenko on how to sell floating solar to municipal ports.

How diverse teams are really built.

This post is about how Duke went from idea to operational factory in under 9 months—and what practical lessons it offers for cleantech scale-ups.

Scaling a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate venture isn’t about ideas. It’s about execution infrastructure. And that infrastructure begins with people

Would you consider using second-hand equipment for your pilot/demo/FOAK?

How to transform from project to product.

You don’t need to have a financial degree or a background in finance to understand the key principles of funding a FOAK.

Hear Olivier Mussat, the CEO and founder of ATOME, about the role of fertilizers.

A review of possibly the most comprehensive collection of real-world examples for getting cleantech from the lab to steel-in-the-ground scale. If you’re in the weeds of building a FOAK (First-of-a-Kind) project, or advising someone who is, this report deserves a place on your desk.

A climate tech idea that needs more energy than it saves? That’s not innovation. That’s a waste.

Climeworks is back in the news—and not for the reason they’d like. Reports from Heimildin and others claim that their latest DAC (direct...

During my time scaling up climate tech, I wouldn’t touch government grants. Even when they could clearly reduce my capital costs, help to...

Everyone wants to decarbonize industry. Not many talk about what happens after the pilot works. Scaling hardware isn’t linear. It’s...

We don’t have a cleantech innovation problem — we have a FOAK execution problem. Over the past year, I’ve been building something I wish I had when I started scaling my first climate tech venture: a practical, experience-based framework for getting First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects off the ground. In my latest article, I’ve pulled together my 50+ posts into a structured overview that maps the FOAK journey—from the moment you decide to leave the lab to the day your NOAKs are r