At last Thursday's Greentown Labs Climate Tech Summit, we didn't just hand out business cards. We handed out company snapshots: one-page overviews of how companies in the room are seen from the outside, and where they stand next to their peers.
Want to know how we got there? We took our own advice.
We have been using the program on ourselves (meaning we are our own guinea pigs) to close our own gaps and ‘know better do better.’ So before the Summit, we worked through the attendee list to understand who would be there (founders, investors, accelerators and incubators) and we ran our analysis on many of the startups attending so we could pull up a snapshot for almost anyone who visited our booth (and thank you to all of you that did)!
We called them 3-2-1 Reads. They're a small slice of the full, interactive roadmap we typically run for a company, and we made them mostly just for fun, and to see how they'd land.
And land they did. From the moment we stood at our booth, the conversations didn't stop, and the interest ran both ways. The piece that drew people in most was the quadrant: seeing exactly where your company sits relative to the hundreds of climate tech companies in our dataset.
What we learned.
- 🔶 Startups are our core audience, and "Close the gap between how you're seen and where you're going" resonated. Early-stage, growing companies need help that is clear, concise and repeatable. That's what we do.
- 🔶 Accelerators see value in an independent, outside metric they can show their donors and supporters.
- 🔶 Media are looking for stories, which is good news for any startup looking for visibility.
What we're working on.
With new feedback from founders and sponsors, we are fine-tuning the process, making the experience more interactive, and building out our comparison database of climate tech companies. Context is where the secret sauce is: knowing where you stand only means something when you know who you're standing next to.
What's next.
We are working with companies to move the needle and close the gap. Then wash, rinse, repeat, with real impact and measurable results for teams reaching for their next milestone. Know better, do better.
If you were at the Summit and we didn't get to meet, there's a good chance we already have a read on you. Want to see which of the four quadrants you land? Are you an ‘emerging brand’, a ‘quiet builder’, something else? Reach out. We're happy to share it.
Thank you to the Greentown Labs team for a well-run, well-attended day, and to everyone who stopped by for a Read or a packet of wildflower seeds.
Plant the seed. Compound the impact. 🌱 capitalenergy.io