Dialogue Digest No. 2 — Building the new energy economy and accelerating hard tech
Dialogue is a community and newsletter on accelerating technological, industrial and scientific progress. We bring you perspective and insights from builders, investors and policymakers pushing the frontier forward. You can expect:
Curated reading, market analysis and deep dives
Latest companies, initiatives we’re paying attention
Upcoming events and job opportunities
Read on for a summary on accelerating our clean energy transition, building hard things, plus an upcoming event on deep tech storytelling. You can also read about reinvigorating our industrial workforce from Season 1 here.
Season 2: Diving into Hard Tech, Energy, and Climate
This month, we brought together founders, domain experts, and investors to find ways to accelerate hard tech, particularly around our new energy economy.
Two takeaways on building hard things…
“Sell your product before building anything.” We heard from several founders building in manufacturing and energy that getting market validation through paid pilot contracts with customers is an important first step to ensure you’re building something people actually want.
Capital really matters. Hard, deeply technical companies need to raise capital strategically in order to hire domain experts (with different risk appetites than your run-of-the-mill software engineer) and build resiliency when it comes to experiments that deal with atoms, not just bits. Raising less than $1 million is unlikely to get you far (although this is always case dependent). In addition to venture, there are alternative avenues to pursue (especially in spaces like energy). For example, Breakthrough Energy offers non-dilutive grant funding for deep tech founders tackling the energy and climate crisis.
Energy & Climate Markets:
The Inflation Reduction Act will spur massive investments in clean energy
Last month, Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant piece of legislation to tackle the climate crisis. At its center, there are $369 billion dollars that provide tax incentives, loans, grants to catalyze the private sector to go faster at deploying existing renewable technologies like wind and solar, accelerating widespread adoption of heat pumps and EVs and advancing innovative new technologies like green hydrogen.
Despite only being in place for a few weeks, the IRA is working at remarkable speed. According to research by Navigator, most Americans report paying less for gas compared to a few weeks ago, an increase of 24 points since a month ago (33% in July to 57%).
Nuclear’s comeback
Nuclear power has been in decline since the Fukushima disaster in Japan more than a decade ago, but there has been a resurgence in recent years as the climate and energy crisis worsens. Sentiment around nuclear power is shifting as governments increase efforts to cut climate-warming emissions. Only a few days ago, California legislators voted to save Diablo Canyon, the state's largest single source of electricity and last remaining nuclear plant. Earlier this year, the Biden Administration launched a $6 billion effort aimed at keeping nuclear plants running.
What we’re reading: Climate Musings / Capital Matters When You Build Hard Things / The End of the World Is Just the Beginning
Exciting job opportunities:
These are open roles at companies we believe will be breakouts, led by formidable founders addressing the most pressing problems facing humanity.
Charm (climate) - Field Operations Engineer
Impulse (energy) - System Engineer
Noya (climate) - Electrical Engineer
Up next:
Stories are at the heart of startups — science fiction expands our views on what’s possible while great storytelling, especially in a startup’s early days, is key to hiring top talent. Our next series will explore storytelling as a tool for startups building the solar punk future we were promised, plus a workshop on hiring top STEM talent. Stay tuned for updates.
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Until next month,
Lisa & Minn
Thrilled to be joined by our community members for Dialogue August 2022
Abhijoy Mitra — General Partner, Coatue
Alex Corren — Co-founder, Regenerative Community Land Trust
Akriti Dokania — Partner, Ridge Ventures
Anna Wang — Co-founder & CTO, Copysmith AI
Celine Halioua — Founder & CEO, Loyal
Chris Lengerich — Machine Learning Research, Meta
Darren Hau — Fleet Charging & Energy Infrastructure Product Manager, Cruise
Eric Deng — Co-lead, Waymo Angels Syndicate
Erik Schluntz — Co-founder & CTO, Cobalt
George Schmidbauer — Founder
Gordon Wintrob — Co-founder & CTO, Newfront
Helena Merk — Co-founder & CEO, Spirals Protocol
Jimmy Douglas — Director, Sales & Delivery Operations, Tesla
Josh Santos — Co-founder & CEO, Noya
Katie Holligan — Head of Operations, Charm Industrial
Keeton Ross — Special Projects, Patch
Kevin Bush — Co-founder & CEO, Molten
Lauren Mills — Chief of Staff, Living Carbon
Lauren Reeder — Partner, Sequoia
Loewen Cavill — Co-founder & CEO, AuraBlue
Malhar Patel — Engineering Lead, Applied Intuition
Michelle Lee — CEO, Medra
Oliver Hsu — Partner, a16z American Dynamism
Rajat Bhageria — Founder & CEO, Chef Robotics
Sam D’Amico — CEO, Impulse
Tevon Strand-Brown — Co-founder & CTO, OXO
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