Moving from prototype to production in climate tech

The biggest obstacle in geospatial innovation isn’t technology — it’s the gap between research and real life decision making. Here's what I see happening: 🔧 The Scalability Challenge Many brilliant researchers work in R (and rightfully so - it's excellent for statistical analysis). But when it's time to scale these models for real-world applications, we hit walls. R Shiny servers become Band-Aid solutions that often buckle under production loads. ⚡ The Efficiency Gap Most climate researchers aren't computer scientists by training - they're domain experts doing incredible work. However, this sometimes leads to sequential processing where parallelization could dramatically improve performance. The logic is sound, but the code architecture needs optimization for production environments. 💰 The Infrastructure Reality Check University HPC resources are fantastic for research phases. But when models transition to commercial or public sector applications, the cost equation changes entirely. Suddenly, you're optimizing for cloud costs, not just computational power. DevOps becomes as critical as the science itself. 👥 The User Experience Blind Spot Researchers focus (appropriately) on model accuracy and scientific validity. But production systems need intuitive interfaces that non-experts can navigate. A technically perfect model that users can't effectively interact with won't achieve its potential impact. The opportunity? Building better bridges between research excellence and production engineering. We need more collaboration between domain scientists, software engineers, and UX designers from day one. What strategies have you seen work for bridging this gap? How do we accelerate the path from research breakthrough to scalable climate solutions? #ClimateModeling #GeospatialDevelopment #ResearchToProduction #ClimateInnovation #SpatialAnalytics #GIS #ClimateScience #SoftwareDevelopment

I need to get something off my chest. It is time to come clean... I do not know everything about hardware manufacturing! Ah, that feels better to say out loud. So, yeah, I do not have all of the answers. I have some degree of mastery of my specific part of the journey. But, that is maybe like .04% of what is needed to cross the finish line. Scaling from prototype to mass production is a GRIND. And, we will all need to leverage the knowledge of experts once or twice or 100 times along the way. Here are some people, way smarter than me, who are providing FREE information on some of the more complex parts of the path to mass production. What worked for units 1-10 might not work for units 11-1,000,000. In that light, check out these resources: ☑ Optimizing Design for Manufacturing (DFM): Caleb Vainikka writes about this a ton. What worked for one-off builds likely will not scale. ☑ Secure Funding: You are looking at $100,000 - $1,000,000 to go from prototype to mass production. How will you pay for that? Grants, loans, crowdfunding, VC, pre-orders? Mark Pecota 🚀 has the playbook for crowdfunding, check out his YouTube videos to get it for FREE. Check local, state, and federal sites grants. Explore niche or industry specific grants if applicable (NIH, cleantech, etc) ☑ Prepare Documentation: You need to relay, to strangers, how to make your widget. Get your BoM, Gerber files, CAD and test plans ready. Clear communication with your CM is crucial. (lean on your favorite PD firm, dm me for personalized recs) ☑ Tooling & Setup: Develop any necessary molds or fixtures. You did not need these at unit 1-10. You will likely need this for tens of thousands of units. Validate them for efficient production. Declan Coyle has a ton of good info here. ☑ Smaller Production Run: If you are just prototyping now, and are not ready to go full mass production, but still need some scale, a local/boutique CM might be a great in-between solution on the road to a mass-production partner. Performant Manufacturing Fitz-Thors Industries Andrews Cooper ☑ Quality Control: Set up testing processes to ensure consistent, high-quality products. Maybe you tested by hand when prototyping, will that method scale? (work with your CM on quality or find a consultant like Joshua Charles Woodard or Kevin Brisebois to assist. Especially if your CM is overseas and you cannot get there directly). DO NOT FORGET test fixtures. Either BYOB style, designed by your PD firm, or see if your CM offers this service. ☑ Logistics: Plan your supply chain to optimize shipping, warehousing, and inventory management. Unexpected tariffs, fines, or penalties can quickly nullify any profit. (for trade compliance, see Gabrielle Griffith) For those who’ve been through this scaling journey, what lessons or strategies have helped you the most? -------------- One of our customers went from building in their basement to scaling with SEACOMP. Link in comments to read about that.

The newest episode of "The Green Blueprint" is out. I loved this conversation between Lara Pierpoint and Douglas Chan. It offers a candid look at the challenges and opportunities of scaling direct-air capture. As the industry moves from demonstration to commercial deployment, a few key insights from Climeworks stand out: Strategic site selection: The intersection of clean power and storage geology proves critical for DAC economics. Iceland's case study demonstrates how access to carbon-free energy and suitable storage formations can dramatically impact project viability. Manufacturing & design evolution: The industry is learning valuable lessons about modularity and mass production. The progression from custom-built units to standardized, repeatable designs highlights a crucial shift toward manufacturability -- a key factor for cost reduction and scale-up potential. Project Finance: DAC projects are pioneering new financing approaches by: - Securing offtake contracts during construction - Blending public funding with private capital - Testing various project finance structures as facilities reach commercial scale Market reality check: Challenges center on demand creation. While voluntary markets provide early momentum, the industry recognizes that compliance markets and policy support will likely be crucial for achieving gigaton scale. This suggests the need for parallel tracks of market development. Scaling considerations: The path from thousands to millions of tons of annual capacity raises important questions: - How to optimize between plant size and geographic distribution - The role of modular design in risk management - Balance between standardization and site-specific optimization I couldn't recommend this podcast more! It's such a helpful breakdown of how companies are navigating the path to commercialization for a wide range of climate technologies. Subscribe!

Solar panels, batteries, heat pumps. All hardware. All facing the same Series A wall. Here's what survivors do differently. We just analyzed Series A success patterns for hardware startups. 97% fail. The 3% that survive ignore everything software VCs tell them. The Valley Myth That Kills Hardware: "Move fast and break things." "Get users first, revenue later." "Iterate based on feedback." Hardware doesn't work that way. You can't push a firmware update to fix a supply chain. The Data: Successful hardware Series A raises: $12M median at $45M valuation. Required proof: $1-3M revenue or committed pilots. Timeline: 18 months from seed. Burn rate: $200-400K/month. Most die at month 16. What Climate Tech Winners Actually Do: Month 0-3: File patents. Not "someday." Now. While everyone else is "staying stealth," they're establishing IP moats. Month 3-6: Lock manufacturing partners. Before product-market fit. Before big orders. Before they need them. Month 6-9: Hit 1:4 engineer-to-hardware ratio. One engineer maintaining 4+ deployed units. This metric predicts everything. Month 9-12: Prove 50% gross margins. Not projected. Actual. With real production costs. The Uncomfortable Truth: Your beautiful prototype means nothing if you can't manufacture 1,000 units profitably. Eclipse Ventures gets this. They write $5-25M checks specifically for hardware. They don't expect 80% software margins. Lux Capital gets this. They measure manufacturing readiness, not user engagement. Your local accelerator doesn't get this. Stop listening to them. The Pattern We Found: Failed startups: Perfect products, no production partners. Successful ones: Ugly prototypes, signed manufacturing agreements. The gap between prototype and product isn't engineering excellence. It's supply chain intelligence. Which manufacturing partnership are you avoiding while your runway burns? #CleanTech #HardwareStartup #ClimateTech #SeriesA #Manufacturing

Working in climate tech? What's FOAK and why you need to know about it: Solving the climate crisis requires reengineering how we produce and consume everything. Ultimately, this means moving atoms and molecules: i.e. hardware-based solutions. Tech startups instinctively go the VC route to achieve speed and growth but traditional VC models, while effective for software startups, often fall short when it comes to the substantial Capex required for many #climatetech innovations. Let's say a startup comes up with a new way for producing fertilizer; it's shown in the lab and it builds a small pilot facility that demonstrates the technology works well. So far, VC funding in the low millions should work fine. Now it's time to build a first commercial size facility to show that it can work at scale, say at Series A, and all of a sudden you need tens of millions (if not hundreds) to build that commercial facility. #VC economics break. There's little revenue to speak of, capital requirements are too large and you're nowhere near a valuation that makes any sense. It’s an inflection point for startups, which to navigate successfully we need to think beyond the traditional VC model in tech. This is where First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) funding comes in - capital for the first large scale plant that shows the technology and product can meet commercial needs. FOAK requires financial engineering right off the bat, which traditional venture capital is not accustomed to, or usually equipped for. In the last 25 years, VCs have overwhelmingly focused on “software eating the world”. The net-zero transition, the biggest economic opportunity of our time, needs a fresh approach. Following early stage funding at pre(seed) stages, FOAK may be a better approach for many companies, where projects are financed through equity funding separate from the startup’s equity. Eventually startups will want to access more traditional #projectfinance through PE and #infrastructure finance to build new plants and production facilities but these funds typically come in at much lower levels of risk. In between FOAK and project finance, another gap exists where early project finance is needed. In the example of the fertilizer startup, a FOAK fund would provide capital for the first commercial scale plant and once it’s proven and risk is lower, early project finance provides capital for the next handful of plants. Add to the mix things like venture debt and advance purchase agreements and we start getting a more complete picture of the funding required to commercialize and scale climate tech innovation. We need to be able to weave a continuous thread between VCs, PE and infrastructure investors, corporates, banks, and public funding. This was a hard lesson learned by the first wave of renewables startups in the 2000s and one that’s starting to emerge as a challenge for today’s climate tech sector. What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.