Here We Are Tour Diary: Overdrive
Kicking into "first gear"
From this —> this.
Fellow Climate Warriors,
I know everybody’s still processing the election and what it means for climate. I’m realizing my personal Here We Are tour experience traveling through the US and Canada is even more relevant these days, so let’s keep the show on the road.
After making my electric RV (ERV) leap of faith I pulled up a map of North America to plot the adventure.
As a reminder, there were a few hard dates and locations I had to plan around–picking up the ERV (now dubbed The Beast) on 9/14 in Detroit, Brooklyn during NYC Climate Week starting 9/22, Boston for Tough Tech Week beginning 10/8 and returning The Beast to Grounded’s Detroit HQ by 10/15 so I could fly to LA for our Tech Week event.
I sketched out a path that even Strava aficionados would be impressed with. I considered a number of factors when selecting the destinations:
Is the city somewhat on the way to my next stop?
Do I know any community “nodes” there?
Does the city have any of the critical ingredients needed for an innovation ecosystem, namely universities with strong engineering programs, incubators/accelerators, angel investors, and/or VC funds?
Do entrepreneurs in the city get enough recognition for their work (i.e. not SF, Boston, NYC, etc)?
Do I actually want to visit the place?
The “first leg” of the ERV tour came to me quickly and landed on the following: Chicago, Pittsburgh, DC, Philly & NYC. I was a little less certain what to do between NYC and Boston. Someone at an incubator told me there was actually a bit of activity in Rochester because NYC was so darn expensive–random, but interesting.
“Should I venture into Canada?” I wondered. F-it. Absolutely. I added Toronto & Montreal to the list. I’m honestly not sure why I included Burlington, VT. Because Bernie’s there? Perhaps I thought the fall colors would be beautiful? Could VT be a climate change refuge? Maybe I simply wanted to get a glimpse of this hippy enclave? Who knows, but Burlington, it was. With the initial list drafted, I realized the final destinations could look quite different when all was said and done.
I put out a call to action for the CTC community on August 6th, about 5 weeks before departure. I had no idea what I’d do in all of these cities–only that I’d be present with microphones, an iPhone camera, a DJ console (see below), and what was essentially an electric FedEx delivery van with Starlink and a mattress in the back. “Have faith in community,” I repeated to myself as doubt set in. Bottom line, I’d have an adventure–hopefully a productive one. I also understood that the magic of the tour could ultimately lie in serendipity. Fortunately, I received enough responses to the aforementioned Substack post to be encouraged, but it soon became clear it would take a considerable amount of cajoling on my end.
The function of the tour morphed like silly putty as I allowed the community to determine outcomes. “Pop-up” events, or later “hope doses,” took shape in addition to live podcast sessions. I navigated the maze with a strength-in-partnerships approach. I identified leaders in as many cities as possible to take ownership of the events and we pulled in as many community partners as possible.
I’ll get into specific pre-planning experiences in future posts, but let’s just say I quickly learned I had to personally get on the phone with potential partners in each city to convince them the water was warm enough with limited time before boarding my flight to Detroit. Naturally, everybody I spoke with wanted to know why the heck I was doing this. “To highlight climate tech startups in cities that are often overlooked and to provide people with hope during difficult times,” I implored. I’d absolutely need to will the tour into existence. “Nothing epic comes easily,” I told myself.
Speaking of epic, I decided I was tired of paying DJs to perform at our events. In the past, I provided DJs with crowd-sourced playlists from CTC event RSVPs which were largely ignored. No more. I worked in music production in a past life, loved music, and fully appreciated I’d be mixing music for attendees, not for myself. I immediately signed up for a DJ course on Thursday nights and practiced on weekends. LFG!
I got used to the DJ console in class, the Pioneer XDJ, only to discover the Brooklyn Paramount, our NYC venue, had a completely different house controller and wanted to charge me $2,000 to rent a Pioneer…oof…this was about the cost to purchase one. No joke. I decided to take the plunge. I bought my own controller to drag around with me. I’d make the money back by DJing myself, and, who knows, maybe I could DJ some of the hope doses. I then received an email that would make the tour even cooler.
Newlab, a Brooklyn-based climate tech incubator and fund, reached out wanting to connect. Grounded was a Newlab portfolio company, so they wanted to plug in somehow. I convinced Newlab to sponsor wrapping The Beast in a Climate Tech Cocktails design so long as Newlab’s logo was included. I shipped design instructions to our Berlin-based psychedelic graphic designer and we were off to the races.
Newlab also offered up their Brooklyn Navy Yard parking lot during NYC Climate Week. They’d provide me with a keycard so I could utilize their facility for showers and free coffee. I jumped on Newlab’s offer, especially considering how expensive hotels were that week. Plus, how many people could say they lived in the parking lot of a massive climate tech incubator for a week, except maybe Etosha Cave? Born and raised in Houston, Etosha lived out of her car in Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s parking lot while launching Twelve–check out our oldie but goodie podcast episode with Etosha here. Speaking of Houston…
My friends at New Climate Ventures (NCV) reached out at the end of June after announcing our Brooklyn, Boston, and LA events. Knowing I’m a born and raised Texan, NCV pulled on my heartstrings wanting us to do a Climate Tech Cocktails party at the inaugural Houston Climate Tech Week beginning September 9th. At first rejecting the proposition out of concern of being stretched too thin, the idea grew on me over time. Houston’s the belly of the beast (think fossils). We’d already done Austin and Dallas. Houston would be a statement piece.
We kept the Houston conversation going despite my reservations. Then NCV found an opportunity to plug into an event already in the works fully sponsored by Bank of America and Halliburton. After sleeping on it, I had to politely decline. BofA was one thing, but Halliburton…massive fracker, the Iraq War, Deepwater Horizon...I know climate tech needs all of the money it can get…but life is ultimately an accumulation of the choices we make, and morally taking money from Halliburton just wasn’t something I could do. I told NCV we were in if there were other sponsors (not fossils) and a cool venue–a good ol’ Texan honky tonk would be perfect.
Bless their hearts, NCV didn’t give up. I had faith the sponsorships would materialize after we announced the electric RV tour. As they say, fake it till you make it. We included Houston in our ERV tour announcement and lo and behold, the sponsorship money came together on August 19th, only three weeks before the event. NCV also secured the Houston Continental Club, a classic worn in Texan bar with a small stage. Yesss. It was on with one last lift–launching a Climate Tech Cocktails early-stage investment syndicate prior to hitting the road.
As I mentioned in previous posts, several of my VC investment mentors told me to keep waiting until next year before attempting to launch a new fund. I’d already pressed pause for a year waiting for startup investment conditions to improve, but what if next year turned into next year? The least I could do was help funnel CTC accredited investors into exciting opportunities that come through our pipeline. In the spirit of going from 1→10, I knew I couldn’t launch a new syndicate alone. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say a badass team came together within a month before kicking off the Here We freakin’ Are tour. September 14th couldn’t come soon enough…or maybe too soon…
Be a circle, not a square.
Warmly,
Matthew