Episode 101 of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. You can listen on Spotify (subscribe there for ad-free), Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen. Paid subscribers get the ad-free version right here on the page.
Alexsandra Guerra hosts, and the room holds Christophe Jospe, Jason Horton, August Ritter, Zach Nies and Hannah Davis, from Techstars and The Nature Conservancy. They go round the table naming themselves at the top so the listener can follow the voices, which tells you how big this one is.
Nori had just come out of the programme, so this is the rare accelerator episode recorded by people who had been through it rather than people selling it. It takes 101 in the sequence, a gap that was sitting empty waiting for exactly this.
Zach Nies is the Managing Director of the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator, August Ritter serves as Program Director of The Nature Conservancy’s partnership with Techstars, and Hannah Davis is the Program Director of the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator. How does the program work and what did Nori get out of it? Listen in and see if it's a good fit for your startup.
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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still goofing around.
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Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You're listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I'm Alexsandra Guerra and I'm here with a big cast today. So excited. This is probably the podcast I have been looking forward to the most. Let's do this since we have six people today and we want to follow each other's voices. Let's go around this way and say our names.
Christophe Jospe: Hi there. Christophe Jospe.
Jason Horton: Jason Horton.
August Ritter: August Ritter.
Zach Nies: Zach Nies.
Hannah Davis: Hannah Davis.
Alexsandra Guerra: All right. So we are here with Zach Nies, August Ritter, and Hannah Davis from Techstars and The Nature Conservancy, which is if you have been living under a rock or just not listening to our podcast for the last three months, we've been working with these wonderful people in this business accelerator program. So can one of you tell us what is a business accelerator? What is Techstars? Who wants to go?
Zach Nies: I can take that one. Yeah, so Techstars, we were one of the first accelerators. It's a three-month program where we bring in 10 companies, in this case, many from the U.S. and one from Mexico. And we surround the companies with mentors. And a beauty of what we do is they're mentorship driven accelerators. So
Unknown speaker: We bring in hundreds of mentors throughout the three months of the program, and they essentially become part of the team to help all the companies that we work with. And these are folks from people who have taken companies to exit and people who have failed companies. And then we bring in the Nature Conservancy. They bring in their subject matter experts on the scientist side. So it's a mix of science and a lot of business experience. Also coaches to help on the leadership side of things.
Alexsandra Guerra: Christophe, can you just like point the obvious and like today is Halloween.
Unknown speaker: Yeah. I was wondering at like at what point you're going to call that out. Like if you guys are going to wait till the end to be like, okay, Hannah Davis is in a reindeer costume because it's October 31st and not something she normally does, even though she might like to.
Unknown speaker: I think that's kind of an excuse. I've seen Hannah wear that multiple times. It's really functional in the wintertime. It looks warm and cozy. And August is just probably going to get up and leave soon. She's like, I got to go trick
August Ritter: or treating. I got a three year old man. She's jacked up. She's ready to go.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, yeah. She'll be more jacked up when she has sugar.
August Ritter: It's true. It's true.
Alexsandra Guerra: All right. So yesterday was a big day and it was demo day. I feel weird. Like this is really weird to have six people on the podcast just staring at me. Who wants to talk about demo day?
Christophe Jospe: I mean, I didn't do anything. But I guess you looked at me like I should be talking. Jason, you were the clicker.
Unknown speaker: I was the best clicker.
Unknown speaker: Yeah, you should probably talk about that.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, it was a fantastic experience. I mean, we've been preparing for it for the past three months or so. And I mean, really getting into the nitty gritty for the past month. Been doing lots of really insane pitch practices. And we've got like all these rubber duckies here on the table where we would kind of just squeak things and throw some balls at our CEO, Paul. But demo day went fantastic. Went better than I could have expected. Yeah. I mean, I think that the point of Demo Day is to succinctly articulate your business to people who don't know about it and to get that point across.
And it was amazing, not just for us, but for the other nine companies that are in this program to see all of us get to this point where it made sense. We were all able to explain the business value that we offer and the problems that we're solving and why It matters what we're doing. And it really felt, even though I said I didn't do anything, that's because Paul, our CEO, got to pitch and Jason got to click. All of us got to provide input into the overall pitch. And I think it was one of those moments where it's like, wow, there are people here who are going to change the world.
And it's sort of humbling to be part of that cohort.
Alexsandra Guerra: So I'm going to add there, it's more than just a pitch. I felt immensely proud of the team when Paul was up there pitching. Also, you did a great job, Paul. Really, really good. Proud of Paul, but also proud of the team because what we presented was traction and revenue. Like two quarters ahead of the time that we actually thought we would. All thanks to you folks who kind of were very candid and challenged us in really good ways. We weren't planning to launch the Nori Marketplace until Q1 of 2020. And then we did. And we did the lightning sale. So podcast listeners are, I'm sure, very familiar.
We had a lot of lightning sale bonus episodes of Reversing Climate Change. And they've all come out and paid for carbon removal for their flights or et cetera. So the whole team put a lot of effort into it. And ultimately, this experience with you guys has been incredibly challenging and rewarding and probably one of my favorite things I've ever done. Wow. I'm only 30. I got plenty of time to go.
Christophe Jospe: Techstars has this motto, or they used to, maybe they still do, do more faster. And I think we've totally drunk that Kool-Aid and being in this program has really been phenomenal for us to look at where are those micro experiments from which we can learn and iterate and build quickly. So it was We're sort of still basking in the like afterglow of demo day and graduation and this whole program. But we should probably give you guys a little bit of credit because you did a lot of work too. And it's incredibly humbling and special to be with each one of you. So I'm curious, starting with you, then you...
Zach and you, Hannah, what's the story that got you here to Techstars, the sustainability? Like why? And then maybe Hannah will let you tie it all up. But like, what does the whole three of you, the trifecta make? Like, what's so special about that? Ooh, the special sauce. Yeah.
August Ritter: Yeah. So, you know, August here, right, with the Nature Conservancy. And maybe I kind of tell a little bit about the origin story of how the Nature Conservancy kind of came to launch this partnership with Techstars. You know, I think for a number of years now, leadership at the Nature Conservancy was kind of looking around at Other industries and really recognizing the disruptive power of technology and not seeing that same power being harnessed within the sustainability movement. I'm really quite disappointed that in a lot of ways, sustainability conservation is still operating kind of using a lot the same technologies we were a decade, two decades ago.
And so there's this recognition that we need to be leveraging technology in a much more serious way, particularly when you look at the scale of the challenges, right? Like climate change.
Alexsandra Guerra: You mean people aren't just throwing their money at all these solutions for climate change and environment?
August Ritter: Well, a lot of people are. A lot of people are throwing, you know, they're donating large amounts of money to try to figure this out. But the problem is like no amount of philanthropic money is going to solve these problems, right? We actually need to take a different approach. We need to be thinking about how do we funnel other Other forms of capital, right? Like VC money. I think last year in the US, there was over $100 billion that was put into the VC market. And you know, I don't want to be too critical here, but a lot of that money was put to companies who were like helping build an app to deliver pizza faster.
And that's just not OK. We need to be convincing investors that they should be putting their money into companies that are solving problems that actually impact people's lives. And so we kind of thought about, all right, well, who are the different partners out there that we might be able to engage With to kind of plug into this entrepreneurial ecosystem that's building this technology. Techstars was at the top of the list. And yeah, we launched this accelerator really as an experiment to say, okay, what's going to happen? How can we best utilize our, you know, our network, our expertise to really engage with this ecosystem of technology entrepreneurs to catalyze more technological development for the sake of solving the problems that we care about.
So that's kind of why we're here.
Christophe Jospe: And why are you, August Ritter, here?
August Ritter: Yeah, it's a great question. For a variety of reasons, but I would say maybe the biggest reason is my time in India. So my job before this was helping launch the Nature Conservancy's India program. So I spent about two and a half years really helping get that program up and off the ground and actually living in New Delhi for a while. Living in a place like India, you can't help but be confronted with the scale of the challenges in a very tangible manner. You see the state of the rivers, you see the state of the air quality, you see the level of Cool. And to your left is probably the embodiment of a tech entrepreneur.
Christophe Jospe: So Zach, who are you?
Zach Nies: What's your story? Yeah, so my journey with entrepreneurship, I grew up in a family business. So to me, starting a company seemed like the normal thing to do. And when I was a young kid, started a business, actually three, two of them, you know, before I even was in college. And it's always been around entrepreneurship. My interest in this program was about 15 years ago, I started as an executive in a little teeny startup called Rally Software here in Boulder. And Ryan Martins, one of the founders of that business, one of his main missions that he was on was to link in a virtuous way the business model of a company and the impact model that it could make.
And that was my really first experience of seeing what can happen when business isn't just about making money and what can happen when you integrate those couple of views into a business. And, you know, we were the first B Corp to go public and returned a lot of money back into the community through that process. And that's when I realized when you link these two things together, business and impact, as the business grows, the impact can grow. Mm-hmm. And that creates this really strong potential for a virtuous cycle. And you're not reliant on donors. You're not reliant on government entities to try to create that impact.
You're doing it intrinsically built into the business. And so when the opportunity came open to join this program, I jumped on it because the Nature Conservancy is an amazing organization. I had worked with Hannah in the past as a mentor in a program that she was a part of. And I just thought, wow, this is just an amazing opportunity. So that's how I got here.
Alexsandra Guerra: All right. Up next, Hannah.
Hannah Davis: I'd say my journey began when I was a freshman in college and I had no idea what I wanted to study. And a friend of mine, Holly Bordet, who actually passed away two years ago today, was really passionate about climate. And I knew I wanted to do something impactful. I didn't know if it was around poverty or kind of what it would look like. And inspired me to take an environmental studies class. And once I did, I was like, well, this is the most important thing I can be spending my time on. And as someone who really enjoys the outdoors and being active, it just kind of crossed everything I wanted to do in life.
And also ended up studying economics because I thought, wow, business can be a really powerful way to make the change I want to see in the world. So that's kind of what got me started on my journey. Before I was with Techstars, I ran another accelerator called Merge Lane. We invested in startups with at least one female in leadership. So kind of got the startup entrepreneurial background. And then once this one came to fruition, I was like, well, this is all the things I love in the world and was really lucky to get to join the team.
Alexsandra Guerra: So what type of companies do you guys typically look for to join the accelerator program with TNC? Sustainability.
Zach Nies: I can kick that off and then I'll hand it over to August. You know, we really look for companies that are aligned with TNC's core conservation mission and really thinking about, I mean, one way to think about it is what can we do to give nature an entrepreneur and, you know, provide creative ways to tackle some of the big challenges in nature. And then the critical part is linking it up with all of the expertise and great work that TNC does.
August Ritter: Zach, before I go, could you talk just a bit about the criteria that you guys kind of look at? I think that's helpful folks.
Zach Nies: When we're looking for companies, we evaluate because we're looking at generally companies that are a little bit early on in their journey. Although this program, we had a lot of companies kind of across the whole region. But we really pay attention to team, team, team, market, progress, and then the idea. And occasionally we'll invite a company into a program and we literally tell them, you're here despite your idea, which is why it's the last thing that we think about. But we really focus on the team, you know, great founders, a team that works well together, a strong group that can move things forward. So that was a big part of why you're in this program.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, you put us in a pressure cooker too, because we ended up living together for three months. Yeah. That
Unknown speaker: can happen.
Alexsandra Guerra: I was a little bit trepidatious about it at first.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, it went great. I think we came up with a lot of ideas that had we had those ideas outside of Techstars would have just been non-starters. But because we got to live and breathe those ideas, I think it played a big part of our whole lightning sale and it's just us making as much progress as we did.
Alexsandra Guerra: 12 hour days and then like coming home and hanging out on the couch and talking for another three hours in the morning. Like, yeah, this is what we should do for Nori. It was really pleasant.
Zach Nies: Yeah, we especially see that for distributed teams because more and more now startups are distributed and a big part of the program. Yeah. Because the problems can feel so daunting, it can be really powerful and important to have that sense of community around you. That's another piece that coming in, very few companies even consider that. But almost universally, like today, being the last day of program, it's a sentiment that's held pretty strongly by everybody in the class.
Alexsandra Guerra: I feel like so right before this, this is the last day. Yesterday was demo day and we had a brunch. Anna organized a beautiful like circle exercise, went through different things, what we're grateful for. And the biggest thing was for me, the sense of community and the support and the Connections with the people because Rochelle made fun of me from Mammoth's Water, but I'm like, what is life without really good connections and community to people? And you guys did such a good job on it, not only because you have wonderful culture that you share, but you did it with intention. And I think that that is what's going to make anybody's endeavor successful.
And you guys, I think, were very successful in supporting the entrepreneurs for nature that you were hoping to. I know that we are immensely grateful. I'm going to stop gushing about you guys. Now keep going.
Unknown speaker: It's cool. I was just going to add the community side is so important. I mean, people who are not entrepreneurs, they might watch like Silicon Valley or something and be like, oh, it's so glamorous being in a startup. Like, no, it is not. Like you stand out there and just get slapped around. I think I've at least underestimated how powerful and how important that support network that Techstars just puts right in front of you is. So...
August Ritter: Yeah, and then I'll just add, I mean, I think, so I think that's probably the case across all of Techstars Accelerators is that the entrepreneurs find a lot of value in that community. But I think in particular with this program, having kind of mission-driven founders across the board, right, that are really trying to solve problems that impact people and impact nature, that creates a whole like kind of another layer of bonding that, you know, that I'm not sure other programs experience in the same way.
Unknown speaker: Totally. I remember we had this retreat at Carpenter Ranch up north of Steamboat a little bit. And it was a little bit surreal that across the street, there was this massive coal-fired power plant just spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And I forget who said it, but it was like, this is kind of a reminder why we're all here and why we're working on these things.
Alexsandra Guerra: Greg Landway from Regen Network was pretty livid about this coal. I think it took him a while to like settle from it. I wanted to talk about something that you mentioned, Zach. You mentioned Ryan Martins, who was the founder and CTO of Rally when you worked there and he's now retired. He's a mentor in the program. So bringing up the topic of mentorship, why the mentor madness and what is mentor madness?
Unknown speaker: I can start. Mentor Madness is a couple-week period at the very beginning of the program where we bring in hundreds of mentors and make the teams go through many back-to-back 20-minute meetings all day, multiple days. Multiple weeks. Multiple weeks, actually, yes. And there's a couple of reasons. One is to get rapid feedback to the companies. From a lot of different angles. And we have something we call mentor whiplash, which is essentially a one mentor will come in and be like, this is definitely what you should do. And then 20 minutes later, a new mentor will be like, you should do the exact opposite of that. And so what we want to do is just provide a lot of data points that would take a very long time for folks to get that information if they're not going through the accelerator.
And we set up all these meetings. Then the teams can decide what to do with all that information. The other point is we match each team with three to five lead mentors. These mentors agree to connect with the team for one hour a week for the rest of the program as kind of their main core support family when it comes to mentoring. And so it's a matching process to find the folks that there's chemistry with as well as filling the holes of what Is needed on a team, whether they need someone that can do financial models or help them with sales or help them with leadership, kind of finding that group of mentors to really support them for the rest of the program and for some well beyond after the program is done.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, yeah. Ryan, you can't get rid of us. We liked you so much. It was really the most amazing thing was to work with the mentors. Just getting through the mentor madness was insane. But you brought us lunch. Like the first day, I remember we had like 18 meetings in a day with no break. They brought us food into the meeting room. And we had a scooter to get to the bathroom because the bathroom was very far away. Until we got banned from having a scooter in the office.
August Ritter: And yeah, just real quick, you know, we launched off Mentor Madness with bringing in about 35, I think, TNC subject matter experts from really around the US. And so we partnered each team with three or four, you know, TNC experts in different kind of industries, different thematic areas, who we really hope could kind of, you know, lean in and engage with you over the course of the accelerator to really help think about, you know, how you scale the impact that you're having in the world.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, I remember those conversations being very... All the conversations, very candid, I think, which is the most thing, like this idea of radical candor, of out of care because we want to see you improve. We're going to tell you where we think you're short-sighted. Those meetings are really cool.
Christophe Jospe: I was curious, you know, I mean, part of this, let's just be blunt, there are a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to this podcast and maybe they might even want to apply to Techstars in the future. But what do you look for in the company specifically and what do you hope that the companies get out of this program?
August Ritter: So maybe I'll just kick it off with what we look for. Zach talked about the type of companies we look for and the emphasis we put on teams. In addition to the Techstars criteria that I would say they use across all of the accelerators, there's another filter, if you will, that's really And that's really kind of the Nature Conservancy's investment themes that we kind of work with Techstars to put together. And that's really, you know, what are the problems that the Nature Conservancy is working on solving? And particularly the ones where we think technology solutions can play a vital role. And so, you know, we put those together and really, We aligned that with what TNC calls our shared conservation agenda, right?
So it's our four priority areas, tackling climate change, providing food and water sustainably, protecting land and water and building healthy cities. And then, you know, those are all really high level kind of themes and we kind of dug in even layers below that. And said, you know, we want to find companies that are increasing soil health. We want to find companies that are leveraging kind of natural climate solutions. We want to find companies that are helping make the case for green infrastructure in cities, right? Like really specific problem sets that we are hoping And then Techstars does a great job of scanning the world for these entrepreneurs that are building companies around these problems and, you know, getting many of them to apply to the program.
And then we go through a pretty intensive vetting process to get to the 10. But that's kind of some of the filters. Do you guys have anything you want to add to that?
Unknown speaker: Yeah, I'll just say we like to say we're stage agnostic. So depending on what a company needs, you know, precede to Series A is the rough kind of stage of companies we look for. I don't like to say criteria hard and fast because it's really nuanced depending on the person and the idea and who they are because, you know, we're looking for companies that have big visions that can scale their businesses and therefore scale their impact.
Zach Nies: You know, just in my mentoring across the network, you know, one of the programs I was a part of, literally the company was signing incorporation documents as they were driving out to Boulder. And we've had other companies and programs that were making multi-million dollars of revenue per year. And each of them found something special. It's why we only take 10 companies into our programs and not more is because we try to create a bespoke experience for each company, tailor the program for the specific needs of each company that comes in.
Unknown speaker: I found the variety of that actually really helpful. It was very interesting to be able to be kind of living in the same space of all these other companies where some of those companies were, you know, far into their revenue cycles. We were still, you know, in the pre-revenue cycles. There was a lot you can learn from other companies who are in those different stages. And also, if you're slightly ahead, you can also teach to the other companies. So that was a very important part, I think, of this program to me. Just wanted to say applications will open the beginning of February in 2020. And you guys should just link to my email and your show notes if people want to learn more.
Alexsandra Guerra: Nice plug, Hannah. We'll get to you at the end where people can reach you. Yeah, for sure.
Unknown speaker: Making sure.
Alexsandra Guerra: So we have all these wonderful, good feelings. And the experience of working within the cohort with only nine other companies was, I think, brilliant. That whole bespoke model that you were talking about, Zach, is brilliant. I think the most valuable thing, because then we were able to work with mentors, work with you. I remember there were days like when we decided to do lightning sale, our team made that happen like what, in three weeks? I mean, it had its stresses. It does things to the team, but we pulled through. But I remember part of that was like, oh my God, I realized that we need to do a different type of interview for the five interviews we have scheduled tomorrow.
It's six o'clock and I just left. I kept asking Zach for things and I just started leaving sticky notes. I waited and you gave me like an extra hour just to go through the interview with Christophe and I and just the generosity of time. And it's not just a job for you guys. You can tell that you really care. And you give more than just like your nine to five. Actually, you guys do crazy hours. I don't want to know. I feel like it's just as much as the founders. So anyways, wrapping up on that then, like what for each of you, let's go this way.
Let's switch it up. Hannah, Zach, August. What are your hopes for the future with this?
Unknown speaker: I really have lots of hopes. I will start with inspiring other entrepreneurs to start businesses in these spaces. And that's one thing I really liked about our demo day yesterday. So there was over 1,100 people registered. We had almost 100 investors sign up for our kind of small private investor morning. And the impact that telling the stories of all the companies you guys are working on and the problems that we have facing climate – And the solutions that are possible is really, really inspiring. And I think getting the next generation and all generations to start working on these problems really gets me excited. And then also just the 10 companies we worked with are incredible.
And I really believe in the ideas and they believe in the people behind them and helping them continue to scale. That's one thing I don't think we mentioned is the three months is really intense. Yay. Yay. Yay.
Zach Nies: When I think about this, the first thing that comes to mind is I've got two teenagers at home and they participated in the recent climate marches. So they walked out of school and went down to our civic center and participated in the march. And when I talk to them and their friends, the sense that I get from them is... There's sort of this indirect action that they can participate in, which is having their voice heard. But there's a sense of frustration. There's no real direct action. They don't know exactly what they can do directly. And so one of the big things that I hope comes out of our program for kind of that next generation is the realization that there are things you can do to directly impact their future.
And all of our futures and they're indirect things that they can do. And so there's not this sense that we only have one option that if they choose to, they can start a company. They can work toward finding a linkage between a business that works that then also intrinsically creates positive impact. That's kind of the hope on that side, you know, for the companies that come in. My hope is that things become possible. There's a reframe or a shift in thinking where they realize, and this can be at the individual level or at the company level, that things are possible that they did not think were even on their radar before coming into program.
That there was this fundamental shift that suddenly there's a whole new future open to them. And for me, I like to think about, okay, how can we try to create that moment for each company that's in our program?
Alexsandra Guerra: Quick aside on that, the march, there was, when Greta Thunberg was here in Denver, we left, like, my Rotearo team was like, we're going to the march, and I ran out, texted Brian Martins, he went with his kid too. Unfortunately, I had to leave, but Christophe and Ryan from our team ran into one of our investors and Nori fans passing out flyers saying, start the revolution, pay for your carbon removal. So, you know, including in those options there, you know, taking responsibility for your carbon emissions is an action that we'd love to see more people do.
Unknown speaker: And that totally validated a comment that was made during the course of the program, which is build a business where your customers are selling for you. And so that felt really good. That's like, wow, giving people, you, the listener, the agency to actually go out and do something and tell someone about this, like be an author in this story that we're trying to write, like be someone who wants to make this happen and feels good about helping other people make it happen with all of the best intentions, like in the name of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It's just really cool. Got anything there, August?
August Ritter: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I've got a lot of hopes right now. But really the one that kind of comes to mind, particularly when I talk to you guys, is this recognition that actually, you know, I talk a lot about we need disruptive technology. I also think we need to, as a society, better recognize the fact that nature... is a really effective technology to solve the problems that we care about. It's a really effective technology to clean air, to sequester carbon, to clean water, right? And so, you know, that's one of the things we talked about early on in terms of recruiting for this cohort.
How do we find companies that are building technology to really leverage the power of nature to help solve the problems that we care about? And so that's one of the things that I'm hoping is that the more companies we have like Nori and others that are out there helping society recognize the power of nature to be a part of the solution and not just as kind of the victim. I'm really excited about how that story is going to play out over the coming years.
Christophe Jospe: We always like to throw in some more difficult gotcha questions. I don't know if this is a gotcha to you or to us, but sometimes you're talking about taking a VC, which is venture capitalist for all you folk out there who don't like acronyms like... Taking a VC mindset to investing in nature or could be vulture capitalist. Is there a risk of potentially setting up a paradigm of a form of extraction and using nature in maybe not the best way? And I'm not trying to question the entire premise basically. So how do you think about that tension or how might that recognition help you navigate that space?
August Ritter: Well, I mean, maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but I would say you're asking that question as if that might happen in the future. And my point would be that's what we've been doing the past 100 years, right? We've been essentially building technology to better extract natural resources, to better degrade ecosystem services. And so, you know, I think what we're trying to do here is put a reframe on it. And it's not just going to be venture capital that's going to get the job done at the end of the day, but that is a tool that's on the table right now to help provide solutions. And so why not try to see what solutions that tool, venture capital money, can do as a lever to building those solutions.
Did I understand your question right, Christophe?
Christophe Jospe: No, you did. You answered it in the way I wanted to. I didn't need to put words in your mouth. But I did kind of want to get the juices flowing in terms of frustrations and challenges that you've noticed in your career and that you see a program like Techstars Sustainability potentially being able to address challenges.
August Ritter: Yeah. Anyway, I want to let you guys talk, but I'm in particularly frustrated at the amount of talent and resources that is being put into building apps and technology that essentially just makes middle class and upper class lives more convenient. It doesn't actually solve the problems that are needed to solve. That irritates the hell out of me.
Unknown speaker: Let's just add, I don't think entrepreneurship is the only solution that will get us out of this. And one thing I really like about the Nature Conservancy is... They're working on a lot of different pieces of the puzzle that we need. And so they're involved in policy. They're involved in kind of on the ground science and now involved in technology. They do a lot of grassroots work. And so there's so many different angles we need to be coming at this. Like, I think policy is really, really, really important. Personally, not in this moment, like my jam, I get energy from entrepreneurship in this area, but it's really important for the people working in all those different sectors.
And so I think that's the same with venture capital, but I also think we need non-dilutive capital and philanthropic money and grants and different, maybe profit sharing and lots of different models to make what we're trying to do together successful.
Zach Nies: Plus one. And if you think of venture capital as an asset class, it's done an incredible job of opening up the possibilities for technology to emerge and change markets, to disrupt and create things that are possible. And Often you think about business model innovation and that's what really frees up a company and often takes a fair bit of investment to create brand new business models. What we're talking about here I think is an interesting level of innovation on the business model where there is that, like I talked about, that linkage between the business working and the impact it's creating. Those tend to be more sophisticated business models because there's more going on.
There's two beneficiaries as a customer and then there's the environment. I think once we start to establish almost like a pattern language around those business models that work in this space, then scaling the business means scaling the impact that can be created. And whether that becomes its own kind of asset class, we'll see. But I think the underlying mechanism of tranched investment of money to fundamentally de-risk a business, which is the hallmark of what venture capital was created to do, I think is a really powerful financial mechanism here. I agree. It's certainly not the only one. Because there's other sources of capital for companies like these that's really critical.
But I think the scale dynamics here are what really excites me about using or thinking about this through a venture capital lens.
Alexsandra Guerra: Absolutely. So I want to try something new. By the way, this is the first time ever we're like recording on video too. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. But in addition to the new thing of video, we're going to try to flip the script.
Unknown speaker: And for the listener, Hannah just put her reindeer hat back on.
Unknown speaker: Yes, she did. I was getting a little hot earlier. Yeah, it is a small room. But flip the script and you guys can ask us questions because you guys are kind of like our mentors and teachers. I don't know. This was Zach's idea.
Zach Nies: Yeah, I've got one to start with. It kind of tags off of one of the comments I made earlier, which is, I'm just kind of curious for you, what were the fundamental reframes? What now is your leaving program three months after starting? The journey is just beginning. You've got a long road here. What do you now see that's possible that you had no idea that was possible? Do it, Jason.
Unknown speaker: So there, I mean,
Unknown speaker: there's so many things and a lot of the reframes, like they're so obvious when you look back on them. For a very long time, I think we, I mean, we spent about a year and a half developing a product that had zero like actual like daily users, right? Or maybe at one at most, but really that was kind of us holding the reins for them. So really, we built a product that had all these bells and whistles that was just for us, which was just crazy looking back. And over a long period of time and lots of discussions that happened, we talked about that a little bit earlier that happened just kind of like because we're all We came up with the idea of the lightning strike with some influence from one of our mentors, Ryan Martins.
And we just started discussing ideas and we started getting all these like interesting new tool sets that we had never really tried. Like the empathy interviews and problem invalidation. And so the reframe for us was to just like actually get stuff out to users and let them like, let us know if what we're building is useful instead of like sitting in a bubble for two years trying to figure out like, is this even something someone wants?
Alexsandra Guerra: So part of that, I think that allowed us to have those conversations. Like, you know, when we were saying we would hang out and it was just the three of us, that's why I We're here because we were living together and here full time. But Paul, our CEO, was constantly coming in as often as he possibly could. And like we would have these discussions of like, OK, what would it like? What are the self-limiting beliefs we have on our company? And once we were aware that we had these limiting beliefs, then we were able to like speak to them and say, well, what if we did this?
And then we said it was kind of like an idea, like, you know, how ideas are. We just started tossing it around. Paul would come in. And then he would take part. And I remember it was our remote week and Paul like slacks me a message. He's like, I have this idea and sends me a draft plan for the lightning sale. And I was just like, this is the most amazing thing that's ever happened. Let's do it. And we did it really rapidly. But I think that was part of the experience in the reframes was, okay, why are we limiting ourselves? Like, was there a good reason for each?
Some of them, yes, were good reasons, but A lot of them weren't. And then we were able to have these creative discussions.
Unknown speaker: And we're using the term lightning strike, lightning sail. That comes from a book which I highly recommend to anyone who is an intrapreneur, entrepreneur, trying to redefine categories and really shake things up called Play Bigger by Al Ramadan. Definitely recommended by Ryan Martins. Thank you, Ryan. But I think what was kind of cool is like we had been doing it all along. We just didn't recognize it. And so putting that framework that, yeah, Nori is trying to define a new category. Like we are building a carbon removal marketplace. Like carbon removal is a category that we're trying to dominate. We have a micro focus on making this possible in US croplands.
We already have been running this pilot, but like, what are the small things that we can do to tweak and learn and kind of prove out this model? And it just made so much sense that if we slightly And so I think that reframing has been helpful. I think the other thing that dawned on me, I mean, it can be really lonely. Yeah. I like to say we're all on the same team and I've always believed that, but feeling that even more strongly and that no matter what, this carbon removal marketplace will exist. And it's like we know that this is solving a real problem. And so it's just an incredible honor to be able to shepherd it to this point.
I have a question. As three co-founders with others in your team as well, why do you guys think that Techstars says we invest in team, team, team as our first three criteria? I'll take the first crack at it. I mean, teams are the number one reasons why startups fail. They can't get along. They have differing views. They just aren't even talking the same language. They're talking past each other. And when there's that sort of magic between the team where they act as one cohesive unit, you can really sort of have this emergent quality that no one individual can get there alone. So it makes sense to me.
And I'm just going to add to the question, thinking about maybe a listener that's thinking about starting a company and building their team, any kind of with that thought advice you might have for folks?
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, these are really good questions, Hannah. Elephant in the room at Nori, we have a lot of co-founders. We had seven originally, one unfortunately had to go for health reasons, and so we have six now. And the wonderful thing about that, because there are wonderful things, is that we were able to bootstrap a company for over a year just with our own resources and time and work together on something that was pretty complex. It's It's not a simple, oh, an app, or we're going to build a website. It's, okay, let's build a marketplace that has soil science embedded into it. We've got to work with partners.
It's a two-sided marketplace. You have supply, you have demand, you have the blockchain aspect, you have token economics that have to be considered. How does this go? It was immense. So I really don't think that we would have been able to get to where we are at this conversation today if we didn't have even our seven original founders at the time. What's wonderful about it as well is we are kind of like brothers and sisters, but then what's difficult about that is we're co-workers and we're co-owners of a company and sometimes our visions might depart. I think what's been helpful for Nori at least with Six co-founders is it's very clear that we all code in this company and we love it and we have the same mission and we knew that.
So we tested this out. We tested the idea out first and the team in a four-week hackathon. And that was a big deal for me. I wouldn't have joined. I was very much an entrepreneur looking for a great idea and a great team in LA doing nights and weekends all the time. And then Christophe told me that he had this idea with Paul. It's like, oh, you want to try it out? Talk to Paul. I like actually like took 30 minutes off of work and just took a conference room and talked to Paul and Christophe. But we had a shared vision and mission and purpose, which was let's remove CO2 from the atmosphere because of climate change.
So anytime we have a disagreement, we're like, is this going to help our mission? And then what also helps is there's a very clear decision making structure. Like the buck ends with Paul, who's our CEO. So Paul makes the final decisions. What's great about him is he at least listens and we all come to this together. Like we can't come to a consensus, like he comes in and he makes that decision. So it makes it a lot easier for us to not get stuck in the mud and like into that quicksand. But Think depending, thinking about those potential entrepreneurs out there, depending on what you're doing, try to be with people who share the same vision and values that you have in terms of like a team and that you can communicate clearly with and has some emotional intelligence and maturity because it's really difficult to work with people who are not emotionally mature, which is luckily not our case.
Unknown speaker: Early, early days in Nori, one of the things that held us like together and kept us to our core mission was like Simon's the next start with why. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for co-founders, like as long as you share your why, everything else can kind of just float around that. You can mold it. You just need to make sure that you have the correct foundation. First of all, I agree with what both of you are saying and I'm really glad that you brought up the hackathon because I would recommend to anyone who's thinking about starting a business that a hackathon is a very kind of low risk way to find out whether you mesh with other team members.
So that was a great way to get started. For me, this is my second company and I sort of had read somewhere along the way as an entrepreneur and I knew that I was crazy enough to take risks and that if you know that about yourself, I would say, good, lean into it. If you're someone who wants a little more safety, maybe starting a company is not the best. That's the best thing for you. I know he's the best of it, but I think we acknowledge it is that diversity is strength. And I'm not just talking like diversity in terms of race or gender, but age and experience and sort of perspective on the world, political beliefs, religious beliefs, kind of all of that.
And so when thinking about creating a founding team, the more diverse you can be, I think the stronger.
August Ritter: Yeah. Amen. So question for me, you know, you guys talked about one of the more transformational parts of this program was, you know, kind of launching the lightning sale and kind of doing more faster. It's kind of a cliche, right? In the entrepreneurial world, like learn by doing. I'm wondering kind of what was one of the biggest barriers you had to kind of getting over that hump to be like, okay, we're going to learn by doing and it's going to be scary. And it's not, you know, just kind of wondering culturally within Nori, what was the biggest hump you had to get over to get there?
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, man.
Unknown speaker: I think a lot of it was born out of fear, the fear of the fact that we're just building a brand new category, the category of carbon removal. And so in doing that and in trying to build something in this new category, there are all kinds of unknowns and uncertainties. And we didn't really... I would say none of the barriers that existed or prevented us from testing and breaking through in the same way that Techstars has allowed us to do. None of it, it was all imaginary, right? Like it didn't really exist. And it was just the fact that we could start to mesh with other companies and mentors and coaches that would allow us to break that imaginary barrier and just address it as what it is, which is imaginary and go forth and build things.
I totally agree. I think the recognition that this is our story, we can write it how we want because we're pioneering in a space. And so just because we said we're doing one thing one way doesn't mean the next day we can't wake up and say we can do it slightly differently.
Alexsandra Guerra: So many things in my head. I'm going to speak to two of them, I think. Yes. And to what you're saying, to the limiting beliefs that was mentioning earlier. We have thought through, like Paul and Alden, have thought through the very complex dynamics of a marketplace that's backed by a token. It's very well thought out. It's a robust system. Really believe that it will help us create this Backend API for Reversing Climate Change. That's our goal for Nori, right? So however you're removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we can do these microtransactions and this token is backed and there's this price and people can get paid in it, etc.
And then we had crafted a business. Yeah. And what was a barrier that we had to break through and we could only do it with Techstars and being here was with the mentors and with you guys. So having, again, radical candor, honest, caring questions. Why are you guys doing that? And not in a mean way, like, oh, like, why are you doing that? That sounds dumb. It's like, why? And then we would explain the circumstances that drew us to that conclusion. Okay, well, what about this? Couldn't there be like another way? And it just got us to just think a little bit more about like, what really are the things that we're trying to achieve?
And can we be a little bit more creative about how we get there? And root our business development in facts. Instead of like building something and hoping it'll make sense to people later, it's like, why don't we just... Do a customer discovery interview, whether it's empathy, problem of validation. Now I'm sick. Jargon. But if you're curious, you can send us an email, and I'll send you some of those templates that Zach has sent us. Techstars, toolkit.techstars.com. There you go. I don't have to even do anything. Go there.
Unknown speaker: Zach Nies created that website, and we get him as our managing director, which is awesome.
Alexsandra Guerra: I just, like, bow to you, Zach. He's just so amazing. So humble.
Zach Nies: It takes a team.
Alexsandra Guerra: We clapped him out. Okay, so we partied last night, let's be real. And it was really good. And we're all dancing at the bar and Zach leaves. And I just started saying, Zach, and everybody starts clapping. And I think you were pretty embarrassed, but we-
Zach Nies: Yeah, that was kind of ridiculous.
Alexsandra Guerra: We all just appreciated you so much and you got like a standing ovation as you're like walking out of this bar.
Unknown speaker: Yeah, it's not all work here at Techstars. I've described to my friends and family like this is like summer camp meets grad school meets like training camp for becoming a pro athlete as you're on some level to be an entrepreneur. But like you got to have fun while you're doing it.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, too bad like my exercise plan went out the window like two weeks into Techstars. And meditation. All these things will come back next week. Any other questions? We're like in the hot seat.
Zach Nies: I got a real quick one. I'm curious for each of you, what was the high point of the last three months? I mean, I think
Unknown speaker: it was the first launch of a store where we have a product and we have a thing to sell. And I think the recognition Dang, this changes everything. I've been going out and I've been doing business development and I've been talking about things in a very theoretical sense. But once you can start getting someone to the point where they will actually put in their credit card information on a website, I think I just got such a high from that. And that's not to say that Nori has completely solved the product market fit, but we have some kind of product which fits some kind of market and we're starting to replicate and learn from that.
Yeah, plus one. It's really hard to really narrow down and say, what was it that caused that high point? Because the high point, for me, to put a simple definition on it was us hitting revenue. And there are so many... There were so many things that went into play that allowed that to come into existence. There were the meeting of the mentors, Ryan Martin dropping the lightning strike idea. There was all the different interviews we did with all the various companies. And ask them like trying to get a little bit more sense. There was, you know, this whole synergy between or kind of energy between us here and then the rest of our team out in Seattle, just kind of all of that at play.
It's really hard to identify really, I think, what caused it. But I think the high point was just all of it and just how it like kind of comes together instead of it being just like all of these talking points, right? It all comes together and it's very well defined.
Alexsandra Guerra: There are lots of highs and like in terms of like yesterday was demo day. That was amazing. I mean, like just my bot, like it was just so energizing. But I have to think if like the moment that was the most vivid in my memory was sitting over there in South Platte. And when we closed our first sale with Boots and All, and that was like, yeah, we sold 454.5454545454 CRCs at the time now called NRTs. Bug number one. Yeah. You know, you do something quick. But that, I remember, was just such an exciting thing, Kristoff and I. I took a little video selfie with Kristoff and I.
I was like, Kristoff, what just happened? But then what was great after that was that we actually had more logos to put on that slide for Verge, which was awesome. And then there was Demo Day. But back to what you were saying, what was the thing? One memory that stands out for me is, again, back on our couch at Nori House, we were chatting really late into the night about how do we stick the tokens in the background? How do we not require people to buy SAFs first? Or just how do we make this easier for people to participate in without having to touch the token?
We had, dude, that night was so incredible because we had like three rapid ideas and I think we were all kind of shaking. Jason was like, oh my God, oh my God. And I ran upstairs. We talked about it and then we repeated it like Back to each other three times, all of the ideas, all three ideas, just to make sure we were all in alignment. And I ran upstairs, got my journal, and I just wrote all of it down. And I actually saw it the other day. I'm like, oh my God, this day. So it was just like a night just hanging out on the couch because I had to live with my co-founders because of this program all kind of came together.
And that to me was a catalyst. It wasn't the whole purpose or the whole reason. And there was more to it, but it was very memorable for me. That's awesome.
Unknown speaker: Well, we should probably wrap this up because August is going to get in trouble on the home front.
August Ritter: My three-year-old is just, you know, standing at the door in her Ariel costume, just ready to rock.
Alexsandra Guerra: I love Ariel. The live action's coming out. Excited for that one. Anyways.
Unknown speaker: We're coming for you, Disney.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, thank you, August, Zach, and Hannah from all of us and all of the other teams in this cohort. You were amazing. You were generous with your time and your energy and your experience, intelligence. And there are no words for how grateful we are to the culture that you have. And I hope that we can, at Nori, bring some of this back to Seattle and continue to progress and make you guys proud. And you can't get rid of us. We will continue to bother you.
Unknown speaker: Yeah, I kind of feel obligated to say some cliche like it's not over. It's just beginning phrase because that's truly it. Like we've we've drunk the Textiles TNC Kool-Aid and I don't think we've fully appreciated like what that tastes like or feels like or is even going to do to us. But I'm pretty sure like this is just the beginning of
Zach Nies: some really exciting things. It's been an honor to be with you over the last three months. And I'm so excited about what the next year will bring and what the next decade will bring.
August Ritter: And I'd like to just kind of add or maybe end with a quote that I ended last night at Demo Day, if that's okay, because it's still so meaningful to me. And, you know, I know I speak on behalf of the whole program team. Last night, we thanked all the entrepreneurs in the program. And we did so by quoting a pretty famous environmentalist, Paul Hawken, who said, if you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and you aren't pessimistic, then you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor and you aren't optimistic, then you don't have a pulse.
What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people who are willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. And we really see you guys, the entrepreneurs, the founders that are building these companies as working every day tirelessly to restore grace, justice, and beauty to the world. And we are grateful to you. So thank you. Thank you.
Unknown speaker: Thank you. Thank you, guys. Love you guys. I love you too. And thank you, listener. Hopefully you are expired too and go out and do something amazing because we're all in this together. See you next time.
