50 Climate Pitch Decks Later…
Measurement and motion
So the fine folks at NatureTech Memos published an incredible resource; The pitch decks of 50 climate tech leaders who successfully raised money in the past few years, covering a huge range of industries, stages, valuations, and funding amounts. We read them. Yes, all 50 decks and 485 slides, in detail. Oh right, this is why our moms keep saying we need hobbies…
Anyways, there were a few compelling reasons to invest so much time digging through slides.
1. We’re now angel investors in a dozen or so climate startups, and want to give the best possible advice when our founders are going out for their next round.
2. We aim to eventually be in the position to lead Series A & B rounds and there’s much to learn.
3. The entire market, based on our conversations and network, is a little scared at the moment. Funding is scarce for anyone outside of AI hypergrowth, a bunch of businesses were built in whole or part on the IRA and, well, you know, and nobody quite knows where the tariffs and assorted chaos are going to land. Success leaves footprints in fundraising as much as anywhere else, so let's study the best.
This is the start of a series, with today covering our general impressions and themes from this exercise, largely copied from late night stream-of-consciousness notes. Yes, we sometimes slack each other while reading the same doc in the same room, stop judging. We’ll be breaking down individual decks in detail in the coming weeks. Let’s dive in.
Best deck; Dandelion Energy (slide 194). Great narrative and flow, super clear problem statements. This really nails the leveling of having enough technical depth to educate investors without being overwhelming or confusing. “This is an eco purchase and an econ purchase” is an A+ line, as is “become the Tesla of heating and cooling.” Love the confidence of having the market-sizing slide at the end, as they avoid the typical juvenile bullshit of opening with “we’re going to capture 80% of blah blah..” Centering the narrative around customer obsession is a great way to obscure the lack of company performance metrics. Interesting that there’s so little justification for the high funding ask.
Lesson for builders; Clear problem, clear solution, show why customers love you. Everything else is optional. You should probably delete it.
Would we invest based on this deck? Hell yes.
Worst deck; Rovilus (slide 341). Pro tip, having the first content slide of your deck be a picture of noted MechaHitler enthusiast Elon Musk, who does not work for your company, is a little weird. When you’re raising $150k, nobody gives a shit that you can make a spreadsheet spit out $200bn (!) as a TAM figure. You have not earned the right to even be thinking in those numbers. MOUs are not a metric (we hard pass anytime we see this presented as evidence of traction). The hilariously blurry “All Shapes & Sizes” slide did make us laugh. Also, a quick google appears that this company is out of business.
Lesson for builders; Use text! Metrics! Problem statements! Make sure investors can tell what the business actually does!
Would we invest based on this deck? Get out.
Lack of performance metrics. This is always a complicated topic, as it’s genuinely difficult for lots of climate companies to translate adoption metrics and technical milestone achievements into the digestible format of a pitch deck, but still. We haven’t done a full analysis, but maybe a third of these decks have real, substantive numbers in them? We expected much higher, given that these are companies that got checks. It’s always possible that more was shared during due diligence or verbally on calls, but we’re big fans of making the deck so good that the investor is most of the way to wiring money by the time the meeting starts.
Lesson for builders; Find a key, digestible metric that goes up and to the right. Make noise about it.
Why are most of these so poorly designed? We know climate founders are altruists and generally dislike the whole fundraising meat market, but that’s no reason to cut corners. And, while most of the decks were made before ubiquitous AI design tools, there’s genuinely no excuse now. We’re fond of https://www.beautiful.ai and recommend it widely. Take the extra few days, get your branding right, and have a designer or design consultant give it a once-over for a few hundred bucks. Money well spent.
Vertical we thought we’d see more of; Rooftop / balcony solar and wind. Yes, this is a curated list and nowhere near reflective of all the hundreds & thousands of companies that have raised capital in the past five or so years. The point still stands. It’s always worth tracking what connected curators consider worthy of highlighting in a list like this as a sign of market temperature, and those plays appear to be falling out of style.
Vertical we got excited about; Foodtech, especially alternative proteins (See Juicy Marbles on slide 81, Vly on 137). A weird space, still without a compelling / generational commercial event. We hope someone figures it out, and soon. Alternatives to meat consumption, along with vertical farming, still feel like two of the biggest unsolved climate adaptation plays.
Deck we’re pondering; Worldfund (slide 256). Grateful to have this one included, given that access to mission-aligned, patient capital continues to be the main thing for so many startups. The deck is, if we’re being honest, a little disheartening. Notice that there’s nothing in here suggesting an information or technical advantage in the job of picking companies. Instead, Worldfund is highlighting the narrative that it’s easiest to build a media company (ie, the metrics around social reach and platform follower counts), use this to acquire deal-flow, then yolo money into lots of startups. This is absolutely how most VC works in 2025, but still. And to be clear, we think they’re terrific investors and wonderful ecosystem participants. More power to them. It just sucks that this is the way climate money operates.
Slide we wish more companies included; Exact deployment plan for the capital infusion. Even something as simple as “We’re raising $7.5m total. $1.25m of it goes to headcount in the functional areas outlined in the following org chart, $1m for materials purchasing to construct orders, $1.5m to R&D, and the rest into our balance sheet for 2026 expansion.” These decks are weighted to early rounds when this degree of specificity isn’t always the expectation, but how compelling for investors to see it anyways.
Company we want to meet / work with / invest in; Include (slide 351). Love love love companies that are making unappealing infrastructure tech-forward and cool. The smart benches are gorgeous. We want one.
Lesson for builders; To look through your LI network and figure out if you have a way to introduce us 🙂
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