00 – 4:10: Who are Aneri and Dash?4:10 – 8:30: Do startup prizes work?8:30 – 11:09: What is innovation theater? 11:09 – 16:17: Death by pilot16:17 – 17:27: Global experience17:29 – 21:22: What is venture clienting?21:22 – 26:41 : Can European business meet its climate goals? 26:41 – 29:07: Why databases are overrated29:07 – 31:26: What to expect in Klimatic Scale Podcast series

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿? It helps to remove binary implementer and investor bias when thinking about how to create an innovation hub. In biology, ecosystem is the full network that underpins a healthy environment. The interaction and connectivity between the elements, plants, animals, and humans that enables everyone to thrive. When one part is impacted, the ramifications can be felt everywhere. In innovation, the ecosystem is the full network that underpins a healthy innovation ecosystem. The interaction and connectivity between entrepreneurs, investors, customers, corporates, academia, government, and civil society enables everyone to thrive in collaboration. Add the word climate, and the same applies but to new climate technologies or approaches. As an ecosystem builder, the goal is to nurture the network, accelerate interactions, and help innovation flourish.

Aneri and Dash are two experienced ecosystem builders who have joined forces to scale climate tech solutions across Europe. We are unsettled by this chart below, which we have directly seen in our experience in accelerating climate and impact startups. For all the talk about accelerating climate solutions, why are they still stuck at the Experimenting/Piloting stage? After all, electrification and renewables have been around a lot longer than AI.

What is Venture Clienting?

Venture Clienting is a term we only learned of this year, but also neatly describes the process of embedding startup technologies to scale within a corporate or government.

Many B2B startups worry about a lengthy decision-making process, which ultimately might result them running out of cash waiting for payment. For startups, urgency is needed. Corporates, however, can take their sweet time dealing with long feedback loops and several levels of hierarchy. Buyers don’t like this either – they want fast and efficient processes that don’t delay their projects. Venture Clienting is a new practice, particularly in Europe, where corporates embed inside their innovation teams startup scouts. Rather than wait for startups to approach them, they actively look for startups to collaborate with based on niche topics. Venture Clienting focuses on becoming early adopters or customers of startup products, providing a quicker, lower-risk approach but with limited financial upside.Venture Clienting, though a newish term, has taken many different forms:

* Open Innovation challenges: A corporate works with an ecosystem builder to generate call for applications from companies seeking pilots with them. For example: Amazon Devices Climate Tech Accelerator with MIT Solve, Asahi Sustainability Growth Platform with Antler, Towngas Energy TERA Award with New Energy Nexus China, and multi-Utility program Free Electrons with Beta-i.

* Corporate internal innovation teams: an internal team that direct startup engagement and support to various internal business units. See Siemens Energy Ventures, E.On Innovation, BSH Home Appliances, and Honda Innovations as examples.

* Commercialization Accelerators: Nonprofits or Firms/Agencies create commercialization accelerators that help startups through the deployment valley of death, particularly with corporate clients. This is especially important for climate tech where raising early on without market traction is common. It is also from our assessment, where European startups are at most risk of failing, as the startup ecosystem in Europe is more mature at the earlier stages of a startup’s journey.

* Prizes: We recently attended a talk where a Chairman of one of the largest German corporates was speaking. Dash asked him, “what is the best way for startups to collaborate meaningfully with you?” His answer “we host many innovation prizes and challenges that startups can apply to”.

We get it. Corporates love prizes for startup collaboration – it’s good PR, fun for employees to work on, and increases morale. The prize competition format engages their employees in meaningful ways and it’s fun to operate.

However for startups, not so much. Typically a startup has to spend hundreds of hours to compete in the competition, even at the CEO founder level. Just for the chance to win an introduction to the right people at the corporate and the dangling of a potential contract. When runways are short and startups have to show traction to their investors, it’s tempting to land a big corporate by spending a lot of time to win such a contest. But this was not how business was done for many years – SMEs have long been contractors for corporates. So what’s changed?

Sales are not done via a gimmicky pitch contest. It’s done through building relationships and trust. Klimatic Scale aims to get to the heart of it – building relationships and trust to get to net zero faster.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klimaticgroup.substack.com