Better options for buyers

DIY Cargo Bike (Not Mine), NYC 2020

This was originally posted on LinkedIn in March of 2019. I am reposting it here, to coincide with the first Climatetech Advisors Open Roundtable Discussion, coming up Nov 17 2020.

Best,

Matthew

Climatetech: It's About Better Options For Buyers

From 2016 to 2018, I had the great fortune to participate in the Manylabs Open Science Fellowship, where Impossible Labs Co-Founder Tito Jankowski and I hosted climate opportunity roundtable discusssions about water, computerized farms, and carbon. In 2018, we supported the shift of the Manylabs program from Open Science to Emerging Climate Technologies, aligning conversations borne in the house of Open Science with the fields of growth businesses. We stood on the shoulders of the mature Cleantech world, already well-established in Silicon Valley, and we created a new field of Tech for a new era, one where the climate-smart option is simply the best option, even without its environmental characteristics. We called it ClimateTech, stylized as climatetech.

We started by exploring the question: How might we grow environmental technologies at the scale of Twitter, Uber, Airbnb? We didn't know the answer, so we started with a framework. This framework is a container, one in which climate solutions are also growth-oriented businesses. It is the raised bed, the aquaponic farm, the energy microgrid, the biodigester, the zero waste coffee shop, in which solutions can emerge and compete within our existing system. And who knows, maybe we'll just get to the better system.

All of this, in service of the mission: better options for buyers.

By working within the Tech framework, ClimateTech, or climatetech, products and services must compete on cost and performance. They unfold into environmentally positive businesses. This is part of the plan from day one.

Whether the buyer is in corporate purchasing or a retail consumer, a focus on better options will prove to be a critical solution to our climate woes. Yes, it is complex to implement. There is no rest for the weary. But there is value in the simple reminder. Far from the complexity of international climate science, better options for buyers is easy to remember. It is for you to ponder over coffee, on a walk, while making a presentation. It is the source of the Delighters your customers tell their family about at the dinner table.

Real talk: The majority of customers will always go with the least expensive, most convenient, best performing, best looking option. We know this. When our products and services win on cost, performance, and environment, it is delightful.

Corporate and bulk buyers have a lot of power. Opening our eyes to these possibilities will have the results they will talk about ten years from now. As a consumer, and we all are, our power comes from our buying choices. The new checklist: Yes, it's within my price range. Yes, it functions the way I want it to. And yes, it is transparent, it gives as much as it takes, it's about healthy ecosystems. It feels good, doesn't it?

I will leave it there. For anyone with a resolution to invest in green systems, try this: it's about better options for buyers. The clean, green, option must be the best option before anything else.