Greetings from Ottawa, Canada,
This selfie’s while on a ride at the Kanata Fun Fair. Owen hates amusement parks, even ones as small as this, so what looks like laughter here is not from fun but as a stress response. It’s crazy to think we were at this same fair a year ago, right before our wedding.
We’re in Ottawa for just a short few days, dropping off Kola before we head to Europe. We’ll be moving quickly between Tallinn, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, San Francisco, Seoul, and China in the coming months. We’re simultaneously excited and already tired thinking about it. Hit us up if you’ll be in any of these places!
Catching up from the last newsletter, after Japan, we spent 3 months in San Francisco. Outside of the first lockdown, this has been the longest we’ve stayed in one place since 2018. Why’d we stay so long?
The rest of this newsletter will be Owen writing about that.
Owen vs Climate
A big part of sticking around SF this time was for me to explore climate tech with Jamie. Initially, the two of us contemplated founding together, but we had an irreconcilable difference between me wanting to stay nomadic and Jamie getting energy from in-person collaboration. So instead, we just quested together, helping each other stay accountable in our separate but parallel pursuits.
What my pursuit was precisely was ambiguous. I knew that I wanted to be part of the solution to climate change, but I was (and still am) undecided on whether to found or join something. I also didn’t know the exact problem or industry to tackle.
When we got to California, I went part-time at Odeko (I gave my boss many months’ notice) to divert half my attention to exploring Climate. That half-time filled up with readings, calls, site visits, events, and existential dread. Every few days, I’d write pages of reflections on whether I’m working on the right thing and my next steps.
Califlorence
The first event I attended when we got to SF was an unconference called Califlorence. It brought together ~50 builders in Climate for a weekend to network and learn from each other. All sessions were participant-led, making for an intimate setting that really got people to know each other. The secondary goal of the event was to find members to fill a climate-themed coliving house in a one square mile radius of such houses called The Neighborhood. A very sneaky and unique premise.
This was the first conference I have ever been to, let alone one in an industry in which I have no expertise. It was a lot.
I returned home every night of it completely socially drained. I had several experiences akin to awkward first dates (but in a professional sense) that’ll be forever seared in my memories. Those I’ll save for sharing with my therapist.
Yet it was one of the most rewarding events I’ve ever attended. I came out of it much more optimistic about tackling climate change and with connections to some welcoming and talented entrepreneurs. Almost every climate opportunity I’ve had since has been an extension from Califlorence, including an angel investment, a job interview, and a tasting menu.
What probably looks like the odd one out of the three is the tasting menu…
A Climatarian Tasting Menu
At Califlorence, I gave a talk on “Climatarian Cooking.” The premise was that we could alter our cooking and eating habits in small ways to have outsized impact on the environment. I co-hosted it with two folks I met at the event – Doug, who had a similar passion for cooking and ran Chopped-esque events, and Amanda, who runs a startup making vegan bacon from seaweed.
Around the same time a year ago, Jon and I tried cooking our own tasting menu (mentioned in this newsletter). Building off our experience from it, we thought running another one this year would be fun - but with a different theme. With my current focus on climate and the recent talk on the topic, the theme practically picked itself.
Learning from the overwhelm in our previous attempt, we recruited a team to help us – Jamie and Janice on front-of-house and Doug on back-of-house. Other priorities came up, so we had just one week to figure out the dishes, run taste tests, and all the other prep. Jon PM-ed even harder, taking our spreadsheets to another level. If you’re interested in the result, I wrote a blog post about it.
It was such a blast that we plan on doing it annually from now on! We already have ideas for the next theme and changes we’d want to make to improve the overall experience. Let us know if you’d want to attend a future one.
With the fantastic help of our friends, the actual service ended up being a breeze. We had so much time on our hands that we were nibbling on food in the back and could have all the staff come out at once to simultaneously serve all the guests, making it feel like authentic fine dining. Jamie asked if this experience was what a professional kitchen is like. We laughed about how it might be the case if restaurants only served one table a night.
WYA?
Outside of these events and the existential dread, did I get anywhere in my journey? Jamie and I started out in the area of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), looking for an angle where software could help accelerate it. We agreed that we’d be better off going deep into one topic instead of bouncing around different ones at a surface level, as that’d give us the best chance of figuring out the problems worth starting a company on.
After talking to two dozen companies in and around carbon removal, and surprisingly, after just two months, we’d reached the frontier. By then, we had either spoken to or reached out to practically every company that actually removed carbon from the atmosphere, had mapped out the space, and were starting to hear the same problems repeated. Jamie wrote a very well-written and comprehensive article on our learnings.
Jamie’s continuing to pursue some of the leads within CDR while I found that once we got to the frontier, I wasn’t particularly excited by any of the problems that needed solving, at least not the ones that’d be software-focused. I’d be happy to work at some of the companies doing the removal, but none are compatible with nomading. Turns out you need to stay in one place to build industrial-scale machinery to suck out carbon.
Around the same time, Jamie told me about Artyc, a company trying to make the cold supply chain refrigerant-free. It sat right at the intersection of my experiences at Nest and within the food supply chain, and I found my energy levels much higher thinking about that problem space.
About a week before we left California, I decided to pivot into food and climate. I probably should have started there since it makes more sense for founder-market fit, but I’m grateful for my adventure with Jamie. I guess that’s how these things go.
I’ve already been able to apply what we learned about cold outreach and the network we’ve built to get started much faster. My current topic of interest is lab-grown meats. Let me know if you’d wanna talk about it or if you have any connections!
Outside of climate, what happened the rest of the three months we were in California? Stay tuned for our next newsletter which will be about that!
Onwards,
Ivy and Owen