Introducing Hot Flashes

All about the (climate) change

Welcome to this sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly newsletter about my adventures inside (and outside) of climate tech. I'll share quick hits of stories, learnings, and things I can't get off my mind. I hope that it gives you new things to think and/or laugh about :)

This first edition is an introduction to where I’ve been, where I’m heading, and what I’ll be sharing in the coming months.

I invite you to respond to these emails with your own updates and thoughts whenever you’d like!

Where I’ve Been

What I'm currently doing: I lead all climate efforts at On Deck across the $100m+ ODX fund, climate tech cohorts and Build for Climate.

What's led me to climate? Once my climate science major started feeling repetitively doom and gloom, I switched to business and policy, which felt more solutions-oriented. After college, I taught business communications to college students a couple of years younger than me in Singapore. Then I worked in microfinance in Cambodia and spent a few months traveling around Asia before I came back to Michigan. There, I wrote case studies for a University of Michigan business professor (I thought I might want to become one) and worked with the first Techstars Detroit cohort. NYC was my next stop — I worked in technical sales and then on the founding team of an AR company. But my NYC work left me uninspired.

That’s when I became obsessed with the ethics of AI. This led me back to the University of Michigan where I took compsci and math pre-req classes (I took theoretical honors math and calc 3 ten years after dropping those classes in my first couple of weeks of undergrad) and then got into their biostatistics grad program with a full-ride (praise).

I thought I would do a PhD and spend the rest of my career on AI ethics until I read the 2018 IPCC report. I felt a heavy dose of climate grief, only relieved when I acknowledged that environmental issues have always been my greatest and most enduring interest. The decision was obvious — I’d devote my full time and energy to climate issues moving forward.

I took sustainable finance classes as electives and spent a few months exploring options, like running my family's store while doing climate activism on the side. In the meantime, I wanted to meet people with deep climate backgrounds. At a pitch competition I formed with My Climate Journey, I shared the idea for a cohort-based program that would bring together people with complementary backgrounds to meet and start climate tech companies together. By wild coincidence, Erik, a cofounder of On Deck (and an old college friend), reached out a week later to say they were thinking about starting a climate focus at On Deck, and he didn't know what I was up to but knew that I cared about climate and could do this well. The timing worked out. I said yes to building with that team, and the company's gone from around a dozen people when I joined to ~300 a year and a half later. It's been a fantastic experience building out our climate network of ~750 vetted people with the five great folks on my team. I now spend my time investing in and supporting climate tech companies through the ODX fund.

In between those adventures, I won a trip to India off Twitter & drove a motorcycle on the second highest motorable road, finally read the Harry Potter books, learned how to scuba dive, published an academic paper, did improv and moth-style storytelling, played the Arabic drum for my sister's wedding, went to Afropunk, New Orleans Jazz Fest, and many more concerts, booked an AirBnB in the wrong Ocean City for my dad's 70th bday (which ended up being a much less crowded and better spot than the more popular one), got to be there for my dad's last few weeks thankfully, spent five years trying to enjoy coding so I could live a remote-work life until I realized that was unnecessary, started and have kept up with an Ashtanga Yoga practice, did the Artist's Way, bought and sold my first pieces of furniture within a year, got and gave away my cat in less than a year (she's with a loving friend now), got a cat for my mom (story to come in a future issue), and other things I'm forgetting.  

<Motorcycling views in India>

Where I'm Going

My next adventure is in Europe. I plan to spend a month in the UK, mainly in London, with a couple of short trips to Oxford and Brighton (and maybe Dublin), and then three months in the Schengen countries. I'll likely visit Berlin, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Vienna, Helsinki, Barcelona, Lisbon, Budapest, and maybe Brussels and Tallinn. My goal is to meet great folks in the European Climate Tech space — let me know if you think of folks I should meet!

I'm especially interested in uncovering and exploring the solutions that would have outsized impacts if only for new types of financing and/or business models. When is blended finance versus VC versus other sources of funding right for companies (and how do we make that information and funding more accessible to founders)? How will PE, project finance, VC, and other types of finance evolve to meet the future needs of climate solutions? What types of creative financial mechanisms can we form to help us fund and scale the most impactful climate solutions?

I'll dive into these questions & share learnings from folks I meet in the climate tech ecosystem with you all over the coming months. And I’m guessing some of these learnings will come from you all: I’m all ears for thoughts or resources you want to send my way!

Thanks for reading, and hope to hear from you soon,

Candice

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Temp Check: My Favorite Recent Reads

In this section of every edition, I’ll share at least one non-climate piece of writing that feels essential to climate work and one climate-focused piece that has changed or expanded my thinking.

• 🔥Can’t Hurt Me: Great read (if you can overlook some misogynistic language) on growth mindset, never giving up, and only ever competing with ourselves. I’m keeping these insights in mind for this lifetime of climate work

• 🔥Regeneration: Excellent primer on several impactful solutions we can embrace for a regenerative future