This piece originally appeared on the DexMat blog during Climate Week NYC. Reposting here for the readers of this blog, who have been putting up with my moonshot metaphors for well over a decade. From mastering fire, to developing life-saving medicines, to sending humans to the moon, it is in our DNA to imagine newContinue reading “Why Our Climate Moonshot Requires – And Inspires – Optimism”
Category Archives: Leadership & Entrepreneurship
Building a Feedback Culture at a Startup
How I built a thriving feedback culture at a rapidly growing startup in less than one year
Chief Storyteller, Chief Listener
Anyone who has met me for more than about ninety seconds knows that I am not short on words. So, when Rice Engineering reached out to talk about communication, I braced myself for a gentle roast. Instead, we ended up in a conversation I have been chewing on ever since, and the result is nowContinue reading “Chief Storyteller, Chief Listener”
DEXMAT’s First Crisis: Bank Failure
DEXMAT made it through the SVB crisis; here is how we handled it and what we learned.
Introducing DEXMAT
Introducing DexMat, one of the most ambitious climatetech moonshots ever. DexMat makes steel, aluminum, and copper obsolete with carbon-negative materials.
Entrepreneurial Mentorship
In the call to action of my TED talk on the Entrepreneur’s Journey, I exhorted seasoned entrepreneurs to answer the call to service by mentoring less-experienced entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurship requires such different skills, heuristics, and calculi than other, much more common business arenas, having an experienced guide is invaluable to first-time entrepreneurs and can beContinue reading “Entrepreneurial Mentorship”
Third Derivative Launch: GreenBiz Covers Our Climatetech Accelerator Debut
Today is a big day. After nine months of building in stealth (well, stealth-ish), Third Derivative is officially launching to the world; our inaugural cohort of nearly 50 climatetech startups, nine corporate partners, and nine VC investor partners are all out in the open at last. Readers of my origin story and six month updateContinue reading “Third Derivative Launch: GreenBiz Covers Our Climatetech Accelerator Debut”
Third Derivative Six Month Update
It has been six months since I began as Cofounder and CEO of Third Derivative. Below is a very long assessment of how things are going, but the TLDR is that I am really thriving in this role, loving my team, and feeling really good about this decision! What is Third Derivative?A joint venture ofContinue reading “Third Derivative Six Month Update”
We Built Something Big: RMI Launches Third Derivative Climatetech Accelerator
Two weeks ago, I announced that I had become the co-founder and CEO of Third Derivative climatetech accelerator, a new joint venture between Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and New Energy Nexus. Now that we are fully live, I couldn’t be more excited to share what we’ve built. It still feels a little surreal. Two weeksContinue reading “We Built Something Big: RMI Launches Third Derivative Climatetech Accelerator”
Why We Built Third Derivative
I mentioned in my prior post that I shared our rationale for building Third Derivative on LinkedIn; here is the full text: Leading a climate tech startup is tough. You often have greater capital needs and longer paths to market, making it harder for you to compete with software ventures for funding. Commercializing climate techContinue reading “Why We Built Third Derivative”