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CleanTechies
#242 The 3 Most Common Mistakes Climate Founders Make | David Brekke, Goodwin
In This Episode:
- The story of him co-launching the Goodwin climate practice
- What’s happening in climate tech right now? (Market update)
- The 3 Biggest Mistakes Climate Founders Make
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What’s up, everyone!
Today’s episode is special since we’re speaking with David Brekke from Goodwin. In case you somehow missed it, Goodwin is the sponsor of our podcast, so yes, this is sponsored content. (tbh, even if it were not, we’d still have David on — but don’t tell him that)
With everything going on in the world of climate tech right now, it’s hard to know which end is up. But David has a great perspective.
You see, he’s always interacting with tons of founders and investors in climate. He sees the good, the bad, and the ugly.
For this reason, he’s one of the best people to get a read on the market from.
In addition to a market update, we get to hear the story of him going to Goodwin to start the climate practice.
Then he walks us through the greatest hits of what to do and what not to do. He’s been around the block, and in addition to his experience, they have an entire team with even more grey hair that knows how to guide founders.
This episode is value-packed — enjoy!
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Topics
03:11 Building a Climate Practice at Goodwin
06:08 Law x Climate Innovation
09:12 Personal Motivations in Climate Tech
12:04 Navigating the Climate VC Landscape
15:10 Challenges and Opportunities for Climate Founders
17:56 The Role of Legal Advisors in Startups
21:00 Current Climate Market Dynamics
24:03 The Future of Climate Investments
27:13 Rebranding in the Climate Sector
30:02 Reorienting Climate Tech Pitches
33:19 The Evolution of Climate VC Participation
36:42 Navigating Fundraising Challenges
37:11 Common Mistakes in Climate Tech Startups
48:01 Investor Relations and Stakeholder Management
Links
David Brekke | Goodwin
Book: Venture Deals
Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn
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This podcast is NOT investment or legal advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.
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David Brekke (00:00)
There's a reason you started the startup is because you had a special idea by extension, it can turn into something extremely valuable. Focus all of your creative energy on that. But the stuff that's not innovative about the fundamental of your company, it's often best just to like not innovate at all. Backstory on law firms generally, they often are organized like feudal France because of an ethics rule where you can't be an owner or a partner in a law firm unless you're a lawyer. There's a million ways to die as a startup. Your VCs are gonna be really, really helpful because they've worked with
10, 20, their portfolio, they've seen a bunch of stuff that's happened. But a lawyer weirdly
Silas Mähner (00:34)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Clean Techies podcast, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs. I'm Silas Manor and today I will be your host. So today we've got a very special guest. We are speaking with David Breckie from Goodwin. That's Goodwin Law. And in case you missed it, Goodwin has been our sponsor for quite some time now and we're very, very excited to have them on. The reason being Goodwin has extremely deep expertise and commitment to supporting climate tech companies. Dave works with a lot of climate founders at various stages.
And this gives him a very unique take on what to do and what not to do. He also gets a very good snapshot of kind of the pulse of what's happening out in the market. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We talk about the biggest mistakes that founders typically make, specifically climate founders, right? This is specific to climate founders because that's what he does. And number two, what the market's like out there with all of the turmoil going on. So please note this was recorded before the tariffs. So we did not talk much about that. Unfortunately, I guess, I know these days, I don't know actually.
if it's worth talking about these things unless you're talking about it literally minutes after it happens. anyways, just that disclaimer and all right, enjoy the episode. If you do need a law firm, cannot recommend Goodwin enough. They are the best. So definitely reach out to them. All right. Enjoy the episode.
All right,
David Brekke (01:51)
Thank you
for having me, Silas. Great to see you again.
Silas Mähner (01:54)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm super, super excited to have this. We've been trying to make this happen for a while. Now you've been a busy man. We did get to connect during climate week in person in New York last year, but glad to be finally making this podcast happen. So let's start us off with, give us a quick story on how did you end up kind of building the climate practice at Goodwin? Let's get right into it.
David Brekke (02:13)
That's a question. like that one. Yeah. So professional services firms generally, but definitely law firms. It's, it's not always so easy to kind of like create your own practice group. And it'd a lot easier if there was a, if there were generations of tremendous money being made in climate where you could, you could say to the group or to the head of the firm, wouldn't it be great if we had this specialty area guaranteed to make you a bunch of money? And their answers would be yes. It's a little bit different when, Hey, here's this new area.
and it's actually had its ups and downs. And is it okay if like I try to do this with all my time and get other people to focus on it. And eventually it'll kind of drive an outside return to this firm. takes a certain type of firm structure and it takes a certain type of leadership to see that. So good one was all over it. So when I was moving my practice here, they said, I think what you might say is obviously, wouldn't that be great if we had that? yeah, like, like, why are we even hesitating now?
And what can we do to help you do that? So that's great. You know, backstory on law firms generally, they often are organized like feudal France because of an ethics rule where you can't be an owner or a partner in a law firm unless you're a lawyer, which means that anyone who's running a law firm for the most part doesn't really have a native business specialty. And so the leadership at law firms is different from what you're going to get at any other major organization. Of course, there's consultants and there's
Practices that they use in our business practices, but the people who really decide how law firms work are not native business people They're lawyers, which is a challenge, but also it's like an ethics rule and a good thing in many respects So to kind of pitch this as an idea You kind of have to do it in a way where it makes sense in the very short term also I'm a law firm or revenue business and if you make money doing it then you can kind of Have the green light to do it and also like don't ruin the brand and all this stuff. So but good one
I, for their part, was immediately understood, right? And like, yes, we should do this. And which was a very welcome response for me. had a, some colleagues, my colleague, Andrew Sparks was with me at the time, really strong practice, really dedicated to the cause, just like we were. And there's a couple of things that we wanted to pitch about that. wouldn't it be so boring to be a lawyer if you couldn't connect your personal cause with the work you're doing? Like type in these documents.
could be really boring if you wanted it to be. Goodwin works in all kinds of stuff. It's like a 2000 person firm almost, attorney firm. There's more if you count non-attorneys, Europe, Asia, US, global firm, all kinds of crazy resources and specialists here. And people who have focused on cancer research drugs, like wouldn't that be cool if like that were the thing that were making me, getting me out of bed in the morning and I could do that area of practice. So same idea. Let's just have people who are, who are
who care about something in their heart when they go to sleep, wake up and be able to do it as in deliver like a lot of value to this like special part of the market. And that's kind of that was the internal message. We think we're going to have a really motivated team here. We build around this. like, by the way, we're seeing that this is an area where the growth in deployment of VC funds and other areas are going. The growth in the deployment of VC to climate has been outpacing VC generally during that cycle at the time.
Obviously now we've had some instability. I think it's still pretty strong relative to VC overall, but obviously it is a subset. So it's going to be more volatile than VC overall. But yeah, that was kind of the idea. They got it. And thankfully we've had continued capital flowing into the area, which means that there's deals happening, which means that there's success stories in climate where now we have a new climate billionaire. like, now we have a business model that's premised on, on making money through creating valuable things in the world.
like isn't that novel, right? If that's the model we can propagate, we're all gonna be better off. And from my personal point of view, like I wasn't really concerned if this is a good business proposition. I was just more concerned with like if we fail at that, if it's not a good business proposition, we're all kind of screwed anyway. So might as well be on that side of the coin, you know, for my career.
Silas Mähner (06:29)
Yeah, now I think it's a really interesting perspective that if you have some sort of services organization that is generally short-term focused because they need to pay the bills, how long do you kind of invest in the future of what's happening? Because it's kind of undisputed. I don't think anybody really disagrees that clean technology will be the future, whether it's, know, it seems like we're in a bit of a setback period right now, but eventually it will be the case, right? And I noticed this with recruitment firms a lot.
you know, kind of went for the hills when Trump got in. They still do some clean energy work, but generally speaking, like, now we're just energy, right? We're just doing anything that's energy. And it just shows they don't have lot of tolerance to kind of stick with the mission. So I like it when I find people who have that shared vision to really keep things going despite, you know, the times not always being so good, Right. What influences did you have early on in your kind of life and career that kind of led you down this path of really like pursuing
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David Brekke (08:43)
Yeah. I mean, I had some really influential educators, I would say in college. got this, wonky guy who was really, really deep in, in socially responsible investing because he managed the university's pretty large endowment and was like, I have big decisions to make guys. I'm also like a trying to be a good person. And he was like doing it live with us in class and talking about that as a phenomenon and how impactful it can be. And like also the choices I'm making today and tomorrow about the portfolio of this, of this university. So cool.
And then that, among other influential educators, would say, you know, maybe you can say I went to college and got brainwashed to be a climate believer. But from, from then on, it was like, okay, well, I would feel, I think everyone, or you tell me the numbers on the, the sociology here, but climate anxiety is like super real for me. And I feel dread about it. Like doesn't ruin my day every day, but like, I'm worried about it. And to help me resolve that and feel like comfortable doing what I'm doing my day. I.
drive car, I eat food that comes out, it has plastic packaging, like unavoidably. And I can't like reconcile all that with what I wish the world were like. So for me to say my work is contributing to these solutions, of like indirectly, vicariously through these cool founders I work with and through these awesome investors that I work with, that helps me feel good, right? So that's what drew me. But I think going even further back,
Growing up in Texas and Houston on the Gulf Coast, I have an image in my mind. I can't actually tell you whether this is a genuine memory or an amalgamation in my mind. If you drive down the Gulf Coast, there are in one direction some of the most ecologically important estuaries and coastal bird migration landing zones and these wetlands and everything from hummingbirds to monarch butterflies and...
all the fish that spawn in these waters. And then you turn your head literally the other way and it's like the highest concentration of plastic production facilities in the Western hemisphere. And it's like, okay, it's putting in perspective what is at stake here and the scale of what the potential risk coming from. And also by the way, then you kind of look in the middle and you're seeing the whole community, right? Everyone's job is based on that. You can't just say,
can't do this anymore, right? You have to, these things coexist. They don't seem like they can. And like one might obviously overrun the other, but they do coexist. And it's like challenge all the time. So that being like in the back of my mind, like we have to find ways where that can coexist. mean, obviously transition from plastics is a big priority, but it's gotta be done in a way where you can look, turn your head and look at the community and say, you still have livelihoods, you still have jobs. So that's where, that's what drove me eventually to
innovating, right? And supporting innovators who have these solutions. These are job creating things. These are money making things. These are consistent with kind of like doing all the economic activity that we need to do and having a good environment and having the community be healthy at same time. So that's the, that's the image of them. actually don't know whether that like came from a book or I drove over a highway over fast and saw that, but I do definitely have that image.
Silas Mähner (12:04)
Yeah, I think it's a quite interesting juxtaposition is, you have these two things, but you also need to create the incentive structure for it to be the natural thing to want to build clean technology, right? To keep the jobs, to keep people employed, to keep their families, you know, fed while still making a better world, which is why it's so important to focus on these innovations in the early stages that eventually lead to lots of job creation and just a whole new way of doing things, which is the kind of optimism that fuels me within this fight.
Let's talk a little bit about, I guess, what you guys do. So can you give us an idea of the volume of work that Goodwin does and across what particular specialties in particular keep it relevant for the people who are working in climate, whether it's a fund or a founder? Yeah.
David Brekke (12:46)
Yeah, sure. As I mentioned before, Goodwin is a very big firm. We have folks all around the world where there's different ranking systems that firms use and like each firm tells its people that the ranking that gives them the number one spot is the true one. we, and maybe I'm not sure which one's which, we're all doing a lot of, we're doing a lot of VC deals. We do tons of them. You know, at any given time I'm working on five, six, 10. so start forming companies, getting them off the ground.
All the things that can go wrong between having an idea, raising money for it, growing your team, selling a product, exiting and beyond. Like we are, our tech group is focused on that process, longitudinal long-term partnership through that. And then all the things that come up as you go. So HR needs, you know, angry founder quitting. What do you do? That is a need for startups getting the IP into the company, having an IP strategy.
Should we patent this or should we keep this trade secret? What are other people in the space doing? What are success stories and failure stories that you guys have done before on the IP strategy? That's there for you. A different specialty area, but definitely there. Everything from now your commercial transactions. How do you actually sell a product? And it, that one is kind of a little bit different when you're talking about climate companies, because we often have a physical object component or tubes and wires and
Other things and you're interacting with stuff that can break or catch fire potentially. Unlike your enterprise software. I'm not picking on enterprise software. There are some climate companies that are enterprise software companies, but it just, it's a simpler model. the Silicon Valley model is essentially catering toward enterprise software. Like it's really, really well optimized system. How to start a company in Delaware.
how to get founders or shares investing is four years. Why is that? Cause that's about how long it takes to turn around a software company that deep, all the default settings, in other words, are kind of oriented around enterprise software. And that's the cookie cutter model that's been so, so successful to change the world. Right. When you come to climate companies, some of those assumptions are challenged. So we have some weird IP that actually lives in a university that we have to get out and co-exist with along the way. We have capex and like we have to
by big machines and or design big machines that should those be funded through equity funding or should be funded some other way, right? We're selling not just software, but something that actually like could explode and has like environmental attributes and something that's complicated to manufacture and have a supply chain for or maybe something that is totally binary, right? If we don't nail the, for example, like nuclear fusion reaction, the company's not going to be valuable at all.
But if we do, the company is going to be incalculably valuable. And so what things are important when you're a totally binary company, not totally, but effectively binary like that. So the assumptions on which the whole cookie cutter runway was built for enterprise software companies are different. So you need advice and folks with experience to say,
I really want to keep things simple. want to proceed down this roadmap. I want to look normal to investors. I want them to be excited about investing and not worried about all the weird stuff going on in my company. I want them to just instead be excited about it. It's helpful to know what's normal. How are, how are, how is my startup challenging those assumptions? How are we responding to those in a way that's optimal for this roadmap we're going on? So that's fun. Take some creative folks. We have a lot of folks from all around the firm. You were asking me about all the specialties. I forgot to keep listing them.
Obviously folks who do &A in the area, capital markets in the area, those are needs essentially later on. Definitely fund formation in the space. just to kind I talk about founders, maybe like I identify as a founder, guided founder advisor, but that's probably two thirds of my time. And the other third is with investors and those same founders. So I work a lot with, with climate venture funds to do the exact opposite side of the same deal. And so that's also helpful to say like, I can talk to you when you're forming your company.
because I know exactly what the investor you're looking to get money from is going to require at that point. So getting those answers in advance, kind of looking behind the door in advance, some people call it, you know, like a, like a startup, you know, mountaineering guide where I know what's around that next corner and like it's a bear. So like, let's go this way. So it's helpful. I mean, because what, just to say differently startup founders, it's often their first time doing this and it's like,
super, not easy. And a lot of it's not intuitive depending on your kind of like background or upbringing or professional education. There's a million ways to die as a startup. So your VCs are going to be really, really helpful because they've worked with 10, 20, their portfolio. They've seen a bunch of stuff that's happened, but a lawyer, weirdly, even though you don't think of them as a business advisor, you probably should because they've actually worked with 10 times, maybe a hundred times more startups, right? I helped.
on this transaction, it's kind of like a snapshot or maybe less deeply involved in every one. But I've seen this thing go wrong and I've seen that thing wrong and I saw how it was avoided, saw how it was resolved. And so it's really fun to kind of get that relationship with the founder. I haven't managed a bunch of startups myself, kind of like working at a law firm is like, is in a sense, like very not entrepreneurial, which is kind of funny because the service is to identify and empathize with all these founders who are like totally dedicated their whole life to this one big risky thing.
and all the pressures on them. But it actually works really well because I'm in this position where I've seen and touched a lot of people who've been in similar situation and can also have like friends in the firm who I can just call and be like, happened when this happened? What do we do here? And I can usually get that feedback right away. And that's frankly the valuable thing. That's how you make it not boring is helping someone with their life dream actually get there and not just pushing. Pushing the paper is obviously important and you got to get that right. It's table stakes.
But the part that's rewarding is like, hey, my friend Silas, I remember when this was just a gleam in his eye and now look at him. And I was there helping him with this stupid thing that could have killed his company. Or I helped him with this, you know, make this transaction so much more valuable and all that. So that's kind of the fun part to look back longitudinally with your kind of founder group and say, look how far you guys have come and I'm glad to have been on the team.
Silas Mähner (19:18)
Climate Tech founders are taking on a huge challenge. Not only do they need to know how to build a startup, but they also need to deal with hardware, have a strong handle on climate policy, know how to fundraise from diverse investor types. It's a lot. That's why we made Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs. In addition to our jobs, we devote 20 hours a week to producing this podcast for you. This way you can learn from the people who have walked the path before you.
learn from their mistakes and gain insights on navigating this complex journey. If this mission resonates with you, we are asking for your help. It takes a lot of effort and it's not free. If you are already a subscriber and want to help, start supporting us today by going to Substack and clicking Upgrade to Paid. Thanks for helping all the climate tech entrepreneurs like you. Yeah, it's so important to have people who have the reps. I mean, like if you're especially even if you are like a second time founder, right? You only have only you've only seen so many things, whereas
you maybe you have seen problems and you might be biased to solve for those specific problems. That doesn't mean you're not going to see other problems, right? And if you're a lawyer working across many, many deal types, technology types, different investors, you kind of get an insight as to what to look out for in a much broader spectrum. again, choose your law partner wisely. As people already know, would say...
David Brekke (20:30)
That's also a funny thing too, because I think founders and maybe especially climate founders are a little bit of assumption questioners. So everyone, any lawyer can tell you what is the cookie cutter way to go about doing this. And I can tell you how to drive the car on the road to the destination. But a lot of times it's important for founders, people with that mentality, be like, why? Like my whole, I started this company challenging assumptions and now you're telling me that there's a cookie cutter way to do something. Why am I doing it like that? Yeah. No.
So to be able to kind of take off the lawyer hat and this is, you know, and just put on the like lowercase a advising hat, right? And say, here's the place where you want to be really special. And here's the place where you want to be boring as you can. And also by the way, having an open mind because they might say, Oh, actually, no, I want to be weird in this way because of XYZ super valuable priority that I have. say, Oh yes, let's change and do it that way now. So you have to have an open mind.
And you have to be flexible in doing that and willing to tweak the adjustments as you go, just like the founders did. climate, climate founders often don't come also from this pipeline, right? I'm not picking on Stanford, but like, you know, Stanford, you know, people graduate from Stanford and they know how to run a startup. Like, it seems like half the time and it's like a huge advantage. But then you have people who are doing climate stuff and they spent their last eight years in a chemistry lab. Right. And like not.
following Jason Calacanis' podcast and they didn't have that education. So you do start from a different place and you have to meet people where they're at. And again, if the technology is going to work, there's a path. So you got to help people where they're at and go all way through it.
Silas Mähner (22:13)
Yeah, absolutely. speaking of, you know, lot of seeing a lot of deal flow and working on a lot of different things, I guess, can you tell us like, what is the vibe out there right now? What are we seeing as know, Trump has come in and there's many, many changes and kind of it's pretty certain that there's a lot of anti climate or, know, we're going to actually kind of punish the clean technology people. What are you seeing on your side?
David Brekke (22:34)
Everyone's
asking that question. I've seen that a lot. What's going to happen now and where will there be kind of acute pain? Where will there be a generalized headwind? And I think, you know, it's really hard to say that, you know, we might talk to, I think we might wait a quarter and look at some SVP or Pitchfork report about that. My guess is it's going to be mixed. It's going to be like, obviously, obviously I don't think there's going to be this huge, tremendous tailwind for climate VC.
But climate VC is a little bit attenuated from federal policy, I would say for sure. And more in certain areas more than others. So climate VCs, they already have a capital commitments. have the investments they have to make. So there's going to be this lag time between, you know, if you're raising a climate VC right now, I think that's, that's pretty difficult because the LP community is feeling that uncertainty and trepidation about deploying capital in the space right now. But if you're an existing VC, then.
you have the capital call, it's your job to deploy it, and that's going to continue. So I think, you know, the federal policy is going to is like a indicator of uncertainty for sure that I think is going to trickle through. Before the election, the idea was that people were maybe holding on their money and seeing what was going to happen. And then after the election, either way, like the capital starts to flow just because there would be some certainty. But I think what we found out was like, it's not really certainty. It's more like continued uncertainty, which is a challenge. Right. I mean, the past
two years or so, like since COVID has been over, right? There's been, it's been a challenging VC market in terms of valuations. Deals are still happening a lot. People are, think they'll retrenching into existing in their own portfolios to keep things alive, but there's really a high concentration of investing into startups that are already profitable, right? So that's a great place to put your money. You're taking a lot less risk there. And those companies are just demanding whatever terms they want. There's no valuation challenges for profitable startups. For example, though,
a space like carbon, company that relies on carbon trading, right? I think they were all hoping to see some kind of shift from voluntary to mandatory in the U S right. And standardization of rules so that everyone can like build this market and start transacting here in a scalable way. Right. I think the confidence level of that happening anytime soon is like not really there, but there is still optimism that there are customers for carbon solutions.
Right? That again, probably not improved prospects relative to before the election, but I don't think anyone's saying, people have forgotten about carbon. Right? I think that's still there. I anecdotally, I have seen a corporate VC commit to funding around and leading around like before the election, knowing that there was uncertainty about how the election would go. And then a week later saying, no, we're not doing this remotely anymore. We're doing a totally different, like we're not investing in climate anymore.
because of the election. It was like, thank you for telling us that. That's feedback. So anecdotal. So I think that it's probably not isolated. So yeah, as you know, some of these, some of these bigger companies, especially corporates with their interest in climate is a blend of strategic business, but also kind of PR. So, and brand. So people who feel like that there's still brand value. Some people have probably felt that the brand value of investing in climate or
adopting climate solutions is less now. Right. So that's going to trickle through in a few ways, but I think there's still a lot of people. Again, you, mean, we can, we can look at it at a industry report on this and for me it's anecdotal. There's still, it's not like every carbon credit company is dead. I don't think that I think it's still growing, but you do have people who are no longer participating, at least for now.
Silas Mähner (26:20)
Yeah, there's definitely, think it's the signals being sent from the administration are, you know, don't necessarily include these things in your public objectives because we're not exactly favorable to it. That's the thing that I was really disheartened by so far is that I thought they would at least say, hey, you know what, if you want to do clean tech, that's fine, go do your thing. But now it's kind of even gone the opposite way instead of just being neutral, it's quite negative, which is a little disheartening.
David Brekke (26:44)
Yeah, the thing that I have been, I mean, that my practice to the firm was premised on is like, guys, this, whole thing only works if there are startups, climate startups that are profitable making money, right? None of this works. We can't get 40 gigatons or 50 gigatons out of the air on a discount investment that doesn't scale. Like there is philanthropy, there is grants, but like those aren't going to translate into 40, 50 gigatons.
What are we talking about? We need scalable solutions and that means profitable solutions. So if you were a climate startup, even before this phase or the prior phases, there was a sensitivity to saying, we're an impact company, right? Because that sometimes can connote, this is not going to get you investment returns. This is going to be a passion investment, which is a category and an important category. I'm not disparaging it at all, but again,
scale deployment of capital, at least as far as I've always understood is going to need market returns. like that's great. The thing that I think is unfortunate about the current view on that is that it actually does affect demand some level. Like we're telling corporates, don't put it in your disclosures, meaning they're not going to actually procure something like carbon credits. I pick on that one because that's the voluntary market there, right? So people can easily opt in or out.
And it's highly, highly affected by federal policy, but things like advanced materials, things like increased efficiency, things like cool new batteries that can do things that couldn't do before. Solar is profitable. Like these other areas, like federal policy isn't going to directly impact those as much because they, because they create new value that is already profitable and can integrate into existing business models. So.
Whereas a carbon credit is like already we were struggling with with credibility already restrained. How did the transaction work? What are the rules for that? And like all of that was already a big challenge. So yeah, there are certain headwinds, but I do think there are going to be areas of success for sure. mean, there are so mixed mixed feelings about about the recent kind of like impact, but I don't I'm not a doomsday or at least at the at the climate VC level. If you were talking to somebody who's who's
later stage or like maybe public acquisitions or something like that, then that might be closer to sentiment on that side. I think there's still founders creating cool new stuff that creates a lot of value. like that's numbers that I'm excited. Yeah.
Silas Mähner (29:22)
Do you see any, I mean this can be anecdotally as well, but do you see anybody re-branding to try to kind of take climate or clean tech out of their titling and just kind of focus on energy resiliency or what not?
David Brekke (29:33)
Yes. Yeah. And so it might've said, I think people were already sensitive to ESG and like, we're the E of ESG. Like, no, they weren't doing that already because that was already like just a political thing. So they were already saying, you know, carbon instead of ESG. But now it's like, are we, we're efficiency, right? And that means savings, right? And that's what we're pitching. So, so yes. And in fact, I've seen, I've seen a VC say to a startup,
change your deck so that it's more about this and that and like try, I'm investing you either way, but like target investors are reacting to these things and not those ones. like reorient yourself, same product, feel the same way in your heart, but to get capital deployed and to get, you know, these next few milestones. Yeah, this is a more effective, more effective pitch. So, you know, it's weird, but I think the good thing about, about climate tech startups,
Silas Mähner (30:27)
Okay.
David Brekke (30:31)
writ large is that it sounds really dumb to say, but like they're creating valuable things. We're not, we're not creating little things that have just like this, ephemeral, like it, or like we're creating real things that enable cool capabilities or cheaper same capabilities. And that's just valuable. That's valuable creation stuff. So you can bring that one. means there's a way to, to, to sell it. So
Silas Mähner (30:58)
Yeah, exactly. And then what about do you see more frequent participation of non climate specific VCs in deals? Is that kind of changed recently or is it staying roughly the same?
David Brekke (31:08)
That's a good question. If you asked me that a few years ago, was, that was happening. That was a big trend. So there was kind of, I think the climate startup funding history, if you will, and I'm going again, like not going to get this in the same way if I had a ton of data, but based on kind of what I've seen, there were these early adopter VCs, but there was like a heavy, heavy family office component because they just have a different thesis, right? I'm investing for also for my children future also because I'm not responsible to other LPs, my money. And I think this is really cool.
And then after that, there was a kind of a really dramatic growth in climate CBCs, right? Because folks saw it as again, tremendous brand value, potentially a lot of strategic support and also early access to cool disruptive technologies. Instead of being disrupted, can kind of definitely have lead time in terms of how the structure is going to go. If not access to that technology and like a total headstart and incorporating it into your operations. That did happen. Tremendous number. And it was like, you energy companies.
grid companies, but also manufacturing companies, also logistics companies, all types. And so it did kind of explode where these, where they weren't necessarily climate VCs, but they were, they were corporate VCs from companies with a big environmental kind of like branding exposure or an operational exposure, right? Price of price of fuel, you know, logistics or other things to real estate company, real estate, CVCs also incorporating that into built environment.
So that was a trend that definitely happened. And that was like a key feature of climate VC funding, probably, you know, late 20 teens pre COVID that was like well established thing. I definitely more folks have entered it, but I think it's just because it's become normalized, right? Here's CDC, the climate is a fact for everyone, every, every corporation. So I think it's definitely reached critical mass. There's a lot of it. There's definitely folks who like don't invest in climate except by accident.
Right. The solution happens to be operationally relevant or strategic, but there's, there's definitely a healthy and I would, would, I would venture growing continually growing climate as corporate VC participation in climate space.
Silas Mähner (33:19)
Yeah.
And then maybe one thing you mentioned slightly earlier is if people are raising a new fund, it sounds like it might be a tough time to raise a climate fund. So would you just probably say, listen, like, you're probably going to want to brand it slightly differently, maybe focus on efficiency. Like if you want to make an impact, pick an area that you can still do it, but brand it differently.
David Brekke (33:37)
Maybe I would modify that a little bit. think you're somewhat right. So for example, I think there used to be funds that were like climate funds. But climate is not a vertical. It's a horizontal. Like it's materials, it's energy generation, energy distribution, logistics, it's plastics, which aren't really climate. Except in the broadest sense, it's more like environment. It's all types of stuff that have nothing to do with each other. Manufacturing and all this.
So it's not a vertical, it's a horizontal. And so to pitch a climate fund, to me, the fact that that was a thing was an indication that it was an immature space. And also by the way, me, I'm a climate VC lawyer and startup lawyer, meaning that there's been no specialization within, which is a sign that market is not yet mature. The thing that I'm seeing in newer funds is we're going to create a really cool thesis within climate. We're talking about
short-term gases. We're talking about logistics. We're talking about innovating on the factory floor and all these. So we have this niche. instead of, instead of saying, Hey, we're exposed to public sentiment or federal policy about climate in general. We're not right. We're investing in solutions that if you look in the future, five, 10 years, everyone knows the factory floor is going to be a lot smarter. Right. That's, that's nothing to do with anything with, with federal policy or with public sentiment at all. Right.
So if that makes sense, so the specialization, which I think is kind of like the second wave of capital, we're seeing, you know, more tighter theses, theses in climate that to me, I think is a good thing. Right. Yeah. A lot of times you'll, you'll call, you know, all these VCs and you have this really unique, it's kind of the tension between, have this unique, innovative thing and no one knows how to evaluate it. Right.
because I'm a climate investor, but you know, I'm a generalist. I never heard of this. I don't know how to evaluate this new solution. So I think you're seeing more specialization as folks go from fund one to fund two and new folks come in. that's where the, that's where the, the daylight is, is, is to focus and go deep and narrow areas within climate.
Silas Mähner (35:47)
That's one thing I've been kind of preaching about on the pod for a while is I think that if my assumption was that if Trump got in, this is pre-election, that we would see the terminology change and they would go to kind of, they would find ways to be very, very on the surface, non-partisan in the way they brand things. again, climate is bipartisan, but it's become partisan. So if you find a way to brand things, like, you know, we're just working on
you know, industrial, you know, industrial manufacturing efficiency. Like that's what we're doing. Like that is technically almost all going to be climate investing because you know, you're going to be, you're going to be doing efficiency, et cetera. So that's, that has been my thesis for a while that this would happen. And I'm, guess I'm kind of excited to see it happen in some ways, cause I know it's like short-term pain, but once it becomes fully integrated into everybody's mind, it just, it just becomes a fixture, right? Like we want efficiency, we want to improve these things. And as soon as every industry is really like,
Well, this is just the movement, right? They're all going to be pursuing ways to implement it. think the sales process will be faster for these companies in this space and we'll actually see more people come into it and there'll be less distinction, which in some ways is kind of sad because it's harder to find your people. But at the same time, it's good that we just bring more people into the pool. So I do appreciate that perspective there. Let's talk about, we've talked about this a little bit before kind of offline, but you've seen a lot of core mistakes. I think there's kind of three big things that you've brought up to me in the past.
But what are the biggest mistakes that we're gonna, for the sake of the pod still, call them climate tech startups. What are the biggest three mistakes that climate tech startups are making in your view usually?
David Brekke (37:22)
I'm still calling that they're not going to push me off that. That's my space. I have the luxury of, of, know, branding it that way. And I will. So, yeah. So that's imagery for climate tech founders, Jen often they overindex for geographically diverse, if not diverse in other metrics. They don't necessarily come from the traditional startup founder pipelines. And that means they have like a different set of going in what to do, what not to do things that are.
maybe intuitive to people on the YC circuit aren't intuitive when you, again, when you, when you spent your last several years in the lab or doing something cool in manufacturing. So it does call out and raise more of these, these mistakes you normally see. And I definitely three buckets are being, are being what I call short term scrappy or short sighted scrappy where every founder is supposed to be so scrappy and your bootstrap as much as you can.
in software, might be able to just raise actually you've made a working product. Like you can make it, you can bootstrap an MVP. You can not bootstrap an MVP and advanced materials. You can't bootstrap an MVP for like advanced logistic. has to, it has to be tested. It has to be built. It has to be deployed for it to work. You can't just say this is going to work like you can for software. So you have to be even scrappier and you have to like really know if I'm going to defer investing in this area of my business.
Like, is that okay? Or does that break something that like totally blows up in my face? And so I think that obviously depends on the facts and circumstances of what you're working on, but having a good sense of what can I be scrappy about and what's a good place to invest in. like things that are intuitive to your YC track companies are getting the IP into the company, right? Anybody who touches the company has to assign IP into it, right? You can't have a company if there's somebody out there who can be
later when you're a unicorn claiming that it was their idea and they were there and they did contribute and they never assigned IP and it is there. It is not your property. Um, that's a huge thing. We see that blow up on people. As soon as they raise money, they go back to the investor says, didn't this person sign something? And they say, no, I have to go back to the person now that there's millions of dollars on the table. That's, that's the worst time to do it. Do it when there's no money on the table as a courtesy. Like, yeah, of course you have signed the paper like everyone else did. So like that's not an area to be scrappy.
sign, know, adopt the, incorporate the company the right way. You know, there's a million ways to do it right, but definitely have advice there because there's a lot of ways to do it wrong. It's not a big investment. It's annoying paperwork, but incorporate them to come in the right way, getting all the team members to assign IP and then also the cap table, right? The cap table, it's kind of funny because, you know, I have a colleague who trains on cap tables, our lawyers, and he's like,
There's a lot of paperwork and documents out there. There was going to draft this draft that you think drafting is your job. The cap table of these companies is actually like the whole thing. Nothing works without the cap table. No founder wants to, wants to work all these hours. No team member wants to join the team. If they're not in the right place on the cat table, that is the whole incentive. Right? Cause if the company sells for a trillion dollars, what's my participation in that in decision-making? like equity ownership, the economics are often coupled with.
governance, right? How much say do I have and all these matters that depends on the cap table, right? And by the way, it's heavily regulated tax situation regulated from securities law perspective. So shares are securities regulated by the sec. There's every single time you transact and securities, there's a law on that and it's super boring. You want your lawyer to like definitely boil it down for you. And that's definitely a place you don't want to be innovative, right?
Do that the boring way. Issue shares the boring way possible. There's laws on how it has to go. And also there's taxes too, right? If I issue equity when the company is, is just formed, I can do it to you for nothing. You can get 50 % ownership and an eventual unicorn for nothing. And if I do it to you after a series a, that could cost a couple of million bucks on a tax basis. And like that's, that is money out of your pocket that you're being taxed for today. Never knowing whether the company might ever be successful.
I said it one way to a founder and I said, yeah, if you do it now, the shares are worthless. If you do it later, the shares are really like, Hey, the shares aren't worthless. I said, right, right. The value in the shares is prospective. It's like, yes, the value of the shares is perspective. So they're not worthless. There is prospective value in the shares. So definitely doing that and staying on top of that. Obviously you hire people later and they have to come on at the time. But like one big rule from the IRS perspective is if I'm getting equity,
It is taxed at the value at that time, not when you told me about when I was going to get it. So like if you did your series a and then gave it to me, that equity is demonstrably more viable now. And there's no way to go back in time. That's like, I think you, I think you would go back to Enron for the rules about how that, the rules were generated from that time. So getting the cap table, getting the IP and just having a good sense of knowing which corners are okay to cut. Can you defer having a terms of service on your website? Like, is that a big risk generally?
it's okay to do that a little bit depending on how core that is to your, to your business. Is it okay that like I have people in various States and like have I done all the proper things to like do the employment and all the locations? Let's think about that. Let's talk about who are these people? How many are they? Right? What if I have people overseas? Is it cool that I don't have like an overseas subsidiary? How do I manage that? Like these are things that if you wanted to, you could spend all your budget on getting exactly right.
And that would not be wise. So you have to have a sense of what is mission critical, what's critical path for the milestone of getting a bunch of money and or like getting product in the market. So that again comes from reps, right? It won't necessarily be intuitive how to make those decisions unless you have good advisors, whether they be VCs or founder friends or attorneys. Another one, I guess that was bucket one. Do want to talk about that a more?
Silas Mähner (43:33)
No, I think it's good. think those are really good points. A lot of those things I haven't even thought of on the podcast. I guess I'm disappointing myself for not asking better questions.
David Brekke (43:42)
podcast, there's no problem. There's no risk in podcast you
Silas Mähner (43:46)
I
mean, I mean the people that we've had on these exact problems haven't a couple of them have come up Especially the IP one, but that's interesting stuff. So yeah, I know that's that's bucket one. Let's keep going
David Brekke (43:55)
Yeah. Bucket two, would say is, is being creative beyond your core value proposition. And that kind of just means like, there's a reason you started the startup is because you had a special idea and that by extension it can turn into something extremely valuable. One strategy is focus all of your creative energy on that. And like the things that, you know, evolve out of that, obviously you want to develop your IP and to have a bunch of different revenue streams and all that.
But the stuff that's not innovative about the fundamental of your company, it's often best just to like not innovate at all. know everyone is by training and just by being an American, that's like the question things and let's do things our own way. But in terms of if you want your company to be successful and like not waste money and confuse people along the way, have the interesting thing, have the unique thing be in this bucket and then have the way you set up your company. Like, should we incorporate in Wyoming? Right. I've heard about that in the news.
And it's like, good question. But like even I don't even have to talk about whether that's a good idea or not. I can talk about that. You will experience a bunch of questions for your investors about why you chose this and why, and how is this different for me as an investor, Wyoming? don't know. Right. It's like, well, if you wouldn't ever have to have that conversation at all, if you go to Delaware, right. People know that they make a lot of assumptions for right or wrong. You can avoid a bunch of questions and conversations that distract from the thing you want to talk about, which is a cool invention.
Right? By just doing everything else quicker, better. Hey, what's your investing schedule like? Oh, we created these exotic milestones to perfectly align everyone's incentives around these like amazing milestones that I developed myself with my team. Okay. I need to, in order to be able to tell you that's a good idea and that I want to invest on that, I have to like super understand your milestones and it's going to be a long conversation. Also have to understand the personalities on your team. Or if you told me to use the standard for your investing with one year cliff, then
I stopped talking about that because I know all the things there and I know that you're going to get good advice on that because it's a very common thing to navigate. So even if there is a chance to optimize on investing or corporate structure, like you're going to experience inefficiencies because you have to explain these again and again to other people who have to buy in on that. Putting your team like, what about this milestone? What if we pivot? Right? So like, yeah, you can optimize in every way you wanted to. And an engineering mind like is, is tempted to do that in every area, but
the, and sometimes you do it. Like I'm not saying it's never worthwhile and definitely being creative to get folks where they need to be is the job. And there is value to create and some of these cookie cutter areas. I'm not saying it's a hard, hard rule globally, but generally folks are more interested in overoptimizing than is necessary or helpful. keeping the innovation to the innovative area and keeping everything else simple is like the thing I try to help people understand.
Silas Mähner (46:47)
Yeah, mean, it's a core point that you make there is that if you try to do all these other things, you're going to suck all the air out of the room, especially if you have limited time with the VC when you're trying to pitch them, right? You don't want to complicate it. You want to be able to focus on kind of selling that future, right? And by doing some of these other things, you just make it make it a bit messy.
David Brekke (47:04)
Like, are you
an expert in managing team incentives, Mr. Chemistry Guy? Like, no, you're not. I mean, you're not, right? So do that the normal way. Your team will understand it intuitively because they can Google it. It's like super publicly available. Otherwise, like you have to be like really whole life bet on, I know how to manage this unique thing that I invented. Do that in the thing you actually invented. So yeah, that's one tendency we often.
We often help folks go away from and yeah, a lot of wasted, you know, late nights for people who are understanding like, no, I made this exotic unique structure and now I have to undo it because my investors said, just make it simple. like, would have said the same thing when we first started, but.
Silas Mähner (47:49)
This is it's important to get help at the very beginning, Yeah, yeah, definitely. Some of those consequential decisions happen at the beginning when it doesn't feel like it's important, right? But very good. Okay. So that's bucket two. What about bucket three? What's behind door three?
David Brekke (48:01)
Door three is everything is investor relations and I might broaden that to say stakeholder relations. So if you're a startup founder, I started my company, I got some people on the cap table. These people I'm effectively married to, right? You're a co-founder in my startup or you're one of the first employees, right? This is a big deal. They're on the cap table. Sometimes they'll be there for years and years and there's not a way that you could unilaterally get them off if they're vested.
Same with investors, right? These are going to be stockholders in your company, right? And so that can be like a realization of like, this guy just gave me 50K or this guy just gave me 100K and all this. But here's a fact. Everybody who's on your cap table, whether they be a team member or an investor, you will be going back to them periodically saying, can you please sign this piece of paper that's like really long and legallyistic and negotiated with between me and some other investor? And I need you to
to join into this and sign this long thing. I know you can't read it and neither can I, but you know, we all have to sign this piece of paper. That conversation goes really, really bad unless there's a lot of trust between those two people. Right? If my father asked me to sign a piece of paper, I'll sign it. Right? Maybe, maybe not my father, but my brother, he asked me to sign something. I definitely would. And I wouldn't have to like scrutinize every line, but if it's a founder who I gave a hundred K two six months ago and I never heard from him again,
And he calls back, calls me back. now we've got to sign this please for the new round. And unless it's like perfect, unless, your valuation jumped 10 X like, yeah, whatever. I'll sign anything like great, but let me know. People can get suspicious. People get, it's very idiosyncratic. This stuff you have to respond to, especially with angel investors who aren't necessarily professional. I've seen every situation a bunch of times. So these, especially early investors and they're not wrong. I gave you a bunch of money. Aren't I entitled to kind of like,
a conversation here. Did so anyway, yeah. Making sure that everything you're doing and informal investor update emails, when you meet people for coffee, they, you will need a signature from them at some point, right? That is going to require them to trust you and to have this like good rapport. Now, not, not every single person you will always need a signature from. Sometimes it's just a bare majority and it often kind of goes in that direction. But so many times it's like,
We need to approve this ordinary course thing. Hey, we need to adopt an option pool for these new hires or we have a really great series. They were so excited about it has to be approved and here are the people who need to sign. Oh no, that guy hates me. Like what am I going to do? I'm like, I don't know. Like we probably should have thought of, you know, like obviously there's solutions there and that you develop a strategy, but so much savings by just like being nice and understanding at the beginning.
that you're laying the groundwork for a bunch of favors that you're gonna ask them to do going forward. So I don't want you to feel like you had, like they own you, like they don't, but basic stuff. And I'm sure you're, you're some co-founders. Some founders are really, really good at this. A quarterly investor update email. Hey, here's things we did great this last quarter. Here's things we didn't do great. Here's things I'm excited about. And I got a new dog and Steve had a baby and all this stuff. And like, it just creates this feeling of nice people in there. I'm glad I gave my money.
When he calls me and says, we're doing our series A, even if it's not a great series A, I'll know and have trust that it's the best that we could get and therefore the signature will come easily. And so many times it's like, you got to chase some person who hates you. And it's like, where do you start that? It's inefficient for sure.
Silas Mähner (51:42)
Yeah, that's a really solid advice there. I appreciate you bringing that up. That's a good one. I wasn't quite sure what you meant by that when we talked about that point before, so I appreciate that. We're getting towards the end here. So I guess a couple of last things. One, you've mentioned a lot of things that are kind of difficult to understand, but is there any particular resource or just way that you think founders can educate themselves on how to kind of navigate the fundraising processes, like generally being able to understand kind of what's going on with all these different documents, being able to speak lawyer, if you will?
David Brekke (52:12)
Sure. Okay, there's a book that I read. This is not a paid plug. It's called, what is it called? Startup, How to be Smarter Than Your Lawyer. Okay. When I was starting, a senior attorney gave it to me and said, it's gonna take you a long time to figure out how to this job, but just read this book. It'll take you half the time, right? And it's a weekend read, I would say, maybe like a four five hour read. You do not have to memorize it.
but just let it wash over you. Like there's five documents for a series A. Here's generally what they accomplish. None of them are crazy, but they're all really important. I read that book really helpful. It's called, I believe it's called startup, how to be smarter than your VC. It's like really, helpful tool. Later on, you know, there's definitely resources from, your attorneys and your VCs that will have, I wrote an article called 15 minute founder's guide to series A documents. And it's just like it.
I've had, I got the idea for it because every time a founder did a series a, I'd have to sit down with them and have this conversation, which was one hour long. And I would explain to them document by document, generally what this is trying to accomplish and the two, three things in each that investors going to ask you for that you're going to want to negotiate. are the important ones. These are the ones that don't even worry about it. And that are standard. So like I wrote an article called 15 minutes founder's guide to series a documents that, know, is like the conversation I had with founders every time they get a term sheet. And so I found myself repeating myself.
And so let's write it down and make a resource out of it. Stuff like that's out there. There's obviously these, these accelerated programs, are, which are some are stronger at that than others. Some are more, some are stronger with commercial relationships or product development, but definitely super important transaction. mean, that your series a or your, your fundraising, even if it's pre series, A or C or whatever, I kind use that term generally your first funding and your second funding are like maybe the biggest transactions of your life. Like, and we want it in you. And so it's like,
the big new area for you as a, as like a, in a learning mindset, like this is important to me and everyone I care about and my children. And like, you got to dedicate time to thinking about that. And that means having some, know, your, your mountaineering guide there with you, whoever it might be lawyer or, or VC or co-founder friends. So definitely getting advice and smooth reps on that. That's what I would say. There's resources out there, but like how to choose which have friends who know. Yeah.
Silas Mähner (54:35)
got it. Now that's really helpful. think it'll be good for good research people. And I guess to wrap things up, are there any I guess other things you want to bring up or any call to action or final offer that you would that you would give people?
David Brekke (54:46)
Yeah, I guess, guess great. Thanks for asking that. Now I'm thinking on the spot. So I think that the call to action is, you know, the thing that I did that I'm so happy that I did as I got, I got advice from a senior partner when I was really junior and he had a really nice enviable practice and I was on his team. I'm looking up to this guy and I was like, so how do you, how do you go about getting a bunch of new clients all the time doing this business development stuff? And to me, I'm thinking like sales awkwardness, pitchy, like I'm not.
trying to do that. It's not my style. And he was like, you know, no, I just talk about the things I'm interested in and cool, like regenerative agriculture idea, like, boy, I bet you I could help you with that. Right. And then you're, and then you're just kind of like, not only are you gravitating towards things you care about, but you're genuinely putting yourself in proximity of things that you are motivated to contribute to. You're going to do a better job. And now you have genuine connections with people.
Right. And that, that snowballs. So it was kind of funny. was like, you you prepare, you prepare to pitch clients and like, you get a bunch of materials. He's like, no, dude, don't, prepare. Be yourself, bring yourself and like, just talk about the things you care about. And then in your career and your life, you'll end up in proximity of those things with an opportunity to contribute. Right. I was like, Whoa, that's really authentic and straightforward. And I can do that.
was looking, I was dreading him saying something about like, you know, preparing special materials and being aggressive or something, but no, it was, it was great. So I think everyone can do that a little bit, right? Whether, whether you're at a big company or whether you're starting up, just making sure everyone knows here's it. Here's an opportunity. The person I talked to last thing was excited about this was, was you. Right. That's frankly, that's, that's my BD strategy. Like I care about it. Right. And I actually focus on it and I can try to bring extra value to it.
So when people think of an opportunity that's relevant to me, they end up calling me. I think everyone could probably do that a little bit, whether it be climate or anything else.
Silas Mähner (56:48)
Yeah, I think it's a really good advice. was actually just telling one of my friends, he was trying to do some business development for his software he's building, not climate related, but he was dreading the pitching process. was like, it's not pitching. You just go and see what they need. And if you understand what they need, then it's easy to tell them what you're working on because, hey, I can clearly help you with this. Let me help you. Just have an attitude of helping. think once you do that, once you develop that mindset, it's never a pitch. It's now just like...
getting to know each other and just, you know, chatting about things, like you said, like we care about and then being helpful. Right. So awesome, Dave. This has been really a pleasure. Like I said, I've been looking forward to doing this for a while. We're really, we're really appreciative of all the things you guys do to support what we're working on from Goodwin. So thank you for doing that. And we're looking forward to probably having you on again in the future, but thanks for all of the great insights today. care. Hey everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you liked what you heard, give us five stars on your favorite podcast player.
David Brekke (57:36)
Sounds great, man, thanks.
Silas Mähner (57:44)
And if you're not already, go give us a follow on YouTube so we can get to a thousand subscribers. And again, just drop us a mention sometime when you leave a review. Let us know your favorite episode. can always feel free to comment on the post or reach out to us. We're pretty responsive there. So thank you again for tuning in to Clean Techies and we will see you next time.
