This Month's Features

The Risks of Grief & Anxiety About Climate Change
Three Co-Founders' Intimate Experiences with Tragedy
Activate Anywhere is Nurturing Talent Across the U.S.
Four Crucial Reframes for Fundraising in Deep Tech
States Step Up to Fund Innovation

Plus

Activate Fellow wins
Ecosystem news
Job opportunities

Grief & Anxiety About Climate Change–Renée Lertzman Offers Help

The Journey to Well-Being: A Series on Mental Health and the Unique Demands of Entrepreneurship

Climate change is impacting more than weather, biodiversity, and travel. It’s impacting our humanity. Over the past decade, Renée Lertzman has gone from being one of the few voices raising awareness for the need to address climate anxiety through an integrative approach across the climate movement, to her current role as a climate psychologist and business strategist. We sat down with her to learn more about her approach and what she’s learned about supporting climate founders’ mental health at her own startup, Project InsideOut.

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How Three Co-Founders' Personal Experiences Shape the Cultural DNA of Their Deep Tech Company

The co-founders of SoloPulse Corp share one very dark and formative experience—they have endured the painful loss of a family member or loved one to suicide. As the team observes Mental Health Awareness Month, co-founder and COO Victoria Rische reflects on how the company’s leaders use these tragic scars to shape the culture of the company through three fundamental cultural values: compassion, open dialogue, and support.

Keeping Reading

Activate Anywhere Nurtures Talent Across the U.S.

Activate Anywhere is disrupting innovation with its distributed model and nurturing innovators across the United States. As Activate’s first remote community of fellows, Activate Anywhere started as an experiment. One year later, it has yielded promising results—including proving that you don’t have to be co-located to have a strong, close-knit community.

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Four Crucial Reframes for Fundraising in Deep Tech

Experts in venture capital and climate tech, Albert Dong and Daniel Beer of Godling Studio recently shared their insights on fundraising with Activate Fellows. Based on their experience helping hundreds of founders tell their stories to investors, here’s what they want early-stage deep-tech founders to know.

States Step Up to Fund Innovation and the Transition to a Sustainable Future

In pursuing our mission of empowering brilliant minds to solve some of the biggest challenges in our collective history, Activate receives and allocates funding from a variety of sources, including the U.S. government, private funders and philanthropies, and state governments. We are proud and grateful that in 2023 all of our geographic communities (in Berkeley, Boston, and New York; not including our recently announced Houston location) now receive state funding, and we are inspired by our state partners’ vision of funding scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs at the local level.

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Last month, Activate Fellows gathered for Demo Day in Boston. With a hand-selected group of investors in the room, fellows and alumni had the opportunity to pitch their innovations and network with potential funders.

Next month, we’ll announce Activate’s newest cohort. Spanning new technology areas and geographies, Cohort 2023 is our biggest yet. We can’t wait for you to meet them!

Make sure your friends and colleagues don’t miss this announcement—forward them this email and encourage them to sign up for updates.

IN OUR ECOSYSTEM
Upcoming events, relevant opportunities, and what we're reading.

Upcoming Events

The Spring SBIR/STTR Innovation Conference is happening June 20-21 in Washington, DC. Participants will learn more about submitting competitive proposals, finding free assistance, and increasing commercialization success. The event includes an SBIR Pavilion allowing direct engagement with federal SBIR program managers from many SBIR/STTR agencies.
On June 28 from 9-11:30am PT, join Activate and Terra.do for a free virtual job fair to meet Activate Fellows, alumni, and recruiters from climate-tech companies that are currently hiring for dozens of open roles.
Carbon Unbound, a two-day, in-person summit that brings together carbon dioxide removal leaders to accelerate innovation, investment, and collaboration in the sector will host its first European edition in London on October 3-4.

Relevant Opportunities

Elemental Excelerator is offering up to $1M in funding and in-depth support to deploy a transformational commercial project in any global market. Applications will be accepted through May 31.
Joules Accelerator works to identify, advise, and deploy early-stage climate startups while connecting them with the energy network in the Southeast and beyond. The 90-day program is free for startups and does not take equity. Applications for Cohort 12 are due June 1.
Village Capital’s Dream Climate Tech Launchpad supports Black and Latinx-led climate-tech startups building solutions in the built environment, electric transportation and infrastructure, food systems, the circular economy, and carbon-tech sectors. Applications are due June 12.
Evergreen Climate Innovations’ 501vc® Investment Fund invests up to $300K in early-stage climate-tech startups in the Greater Midwest region of the United States. Evergreen looks for companies that are developing innovations to solve environmental challenges. Applications are considered on a rolling basis.
Climate Vine is a membership community meant to accelerate individual and collective climate impact. Each curated group of experts has diverse backgrounds, ranging from policy, investment, corporate, nonprofit, entrepreneurship, and tech & science. The annual membership starts with a three-month themed cohort, during which members spend about one to three hours a week in curated small groups, socials, and off-the-record conversations with climate leaders. Applications are rolling.
The Direct Air Capture (DAC) Pre-Commercial Technology Prize awards up to $3.2M in cash prizes and $800K in technical assistance vouchers to teams that identify a critical need in the DAC industry, develop a solution to address this gap, and test the idea to a degree of scale. Submissions are due September 26.

Activate Voices

Vince Romanin (Cohort 2017), founder of Gradient, spoke with the Built for Earth podcast about how Gradient’s climate-friendly technology compares to traditional HVAC systems in terms of environmental impact, as well as his path to launching the company.
Leah Ellis (Cohort 2020) was a guest on the Watt It Takes podcast, hosted by Activate Leadership Council member Emily Kirsch. On the episode, Ellis discussed Sublime Systems' revolutionary approach to developing low-carbon cement.
Andrew Ponec (Cohort 2018) appeared on the What's Your Problem? podcast to discuss the challenge of storing renewable energy in a way that’s cheap and reliable enough for industrial use and how Antora Energy is tackling this problem.
Limelight Steel, co-founded by Olivia Dippo and Andy Zhao (Cohort 2022), was named to the 2023 Diamond List, a roster of early-stage climate companies identified by the climate investment community as being “ripe for investment and poised for impact.”
Pulsenics, co-founded by Essam Elsahwi and Mariam Awara (Cohort 2022), and Still Bright, co-founded by Jon Vardner (Cohort 2022), were selected for SOSV's Climate Tech 100, an annual list of the top climate companies in the SOSV portfolio.

Want us to highlight an upcoming event or relevant opportunity in next month's newsletter? Let us know.

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