Climate Community, Part 2
ODCT at the highest level
In last week's issue, I shared why I still believe climate change is a coordination problem and how thoughtful, outcome-oriented community building can help solve for that.
This week's issue is the first of three that goes into more of the practical lessons learned building On Deck Climate Tech (ODCT). I hope these pieces help inspire others to build climate communities, however they may look. (If that's you, count me as a sounding board!)
ODCT's Genesis and High-Level Vision
The idea for ODCT came from a gap I noticed in the climate space. Having come from an eclectic business and data science background, I didn't know how to meet folks with deep climate backgrounds. And like I wrote last time, "Beyond my desire to go deep in climate, I had a broader thesis that climate change is, in many ways, a coordination problem." I believed bringing people from different ecosystem parts together would help them learn from, work with, and make more significant impacts together. So I pitched my idea at an event I started through My Climate Journey. A couple of weeks later, On Deck coincidentally reached out about joining their dozen-person team to build all things climate, and ODCT was officially born.
Over the following months, we brought to life my vision for a highly-curated, cohort-based and globally diverse community of experts interested in and working in climate. It would be time-bound as a forcing function for people to meet and create together. And everyone would be an expert in something; I would let people know this was not a course and had no curriculum, but everyone would learn from others in the cohort.
Guiding Principles
Before ODCT started, I created a 2-page vision of what I hoped the community would look and feel like in a year if we got things right. I also documented a mission and vision statement for the community that iterated as our community and team developed. The latest version of our mission was, "ODCT catalyzes global climate solutions by curating the world's most dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem."
However, the initial guiding principles for ODCT remained consistent, anchored in the fact that the climate tech ecosystem was still (and is, some might say) in its early days.
Our goals were:
Bring lightness, joy, and stubborn optimism to a sometimes heavy & emotionally taxing space
Get all hands on deck: bring more people into the climate ecosystem to accelerate our shift to a sustainable economy
Allow for more shots on goal: help folks throw new technologies and business models at the wall to see what sticks and makes the biggest impacts
These clearly stated goals helped people self-select into the community and feel a part of something bigger than themselves.
Cohort Composition
I believe that folks with complimentary backgrounds create better founding teams and more impactful organizations. I also believe they have the most to learn and give to each other. But they were often not talking with or even aware of each other. So we sought to bring previously siloed people together through a micro-ecosystem of the macro-climate-ecosystem.
For this reason, I’ve always stated that ~80% of ODCT’s success would come from getting the right experts into the community. We could still screw up after that, but if I didn't get the right people in, the community was already screwed.
We were stage and industry agnostic and sought to bring together the most talented people looking to get into climate tech alongside those already in the space. We looked for regulatory and policy experts, investors from project finance to venture capital, previous founders of companies and folks who could commercialize and implement scalable business models. We also looked for climate scientists, technologists, and the talent who can help build out these companies: marketers, designers, and engineers. We welcomed all types of experts into this fellowship, knowing we need all hands on deck to work on climate.
I became pseudo obsessive about the cohort makeup. I started the community with almost no climate connections, but I quickly reached out to hundreds of folks and networks. I was lucky to make so many connections quickly through cold emails, shameless persistence, and eventually warm intros from new connections who saw my passion and believed in the vision. I'd explain to other climate organizations that I wanted ODCT to be additive, not duplicative, to work others were doing. We intentionally worked with every other climate organization we could think of by bringing leaders of those organizations in as speakers or fellows and helping more of them meet and build with each other.
We meticulously tagged everyone based on their expertise and accepted about 10-20% of applicants. In the end, we got close to our intended ratios pictured in the diagram below.
I was also obsessive about making the cohort as diverse as possible in all ways, from geography to gender and more. Many of my emails shamelessly asked folks to refer people from underrepresented (historically marginalized, untapped, underestimated) groups in climate tech. I’d reach out to every group at the intersection of diversity and climate tech I could find, as well as some DEI organizations in general tech, to promote the program. This intentional and lengthy effort helped, but I still had dreams of more diverse cohorts.
In the end, ODCT became a place for some of the most talented, giving people from the climate tech ecosystem to meet, learn from, and work alongside each other. I remember interviewing a cofounder of some exited billion-dollar company in general tech in my first week of interviews. He wondered who else would be in the cohort. I explained that he'd have to sign up without knowing that for sure, but I promised him that I'd get the best people that I could. He said that, for some reason, he believed me. And when the cohort started, he reached out (as did so many others) to say he was surprised and intimidated by the caliber of folks in the cohort and was glad he believed my promise. Meanwhile, others were probably intimidated by him! Funnily enough, we quickly learned we'd have to talk about imposter syndrome during our early events for this reason.
I hope this issue on high-level intentions and learnings, especially around shaping the composition of cohorts, was helpful. The next issue will dive into goals, culture and tactical tips. The last issue in this series will go deeper into managing a remote community and team. Until next time!
Temp Check: My Favorite Recent Media
In this section of every edition, I'll share at least one non-climate piece of media that feels essential to climate work and one climate-focused piece that has changed or expanded my thinking.
🔥 A Buddhist Concept of Nature by the Dalai Lama
“Human beings are social animals. In order to survive you need other companions; without other human beings there is simply no possibility to survive; that is nature's law, that is nature.”
🔥 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known by Kevin Kelly
Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated.
When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.
When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other.
Don’t bother fighting the old; just build the new.