We’ve had quite a year together: our community has grown from under 200 people in January to over 2,500 members! We’ve posted over 400 events across the city, and hosted dozens of events with partners like SOSV, Climatebase, WeWork, Spring Street, Brooklyn Grange, Diamond List, and more. Collectively, you’ve all read this newsletter more than 60,000 times, and many of you have met friends, founders, investors, and found connections through the growing climate community in New York.
All to say, NY Climate Tech is on fire (in a good way!) - and it’s all because of you!
And it’s not just us: as of this morning, there are 227 climate tech companies hiring in New York. Over 10 new climate accelerators, incubators, and venture funds have launched here over the past year and all have big plans for 2023. Our policymakers are moving the needle forward with the implementation of OneNYC: A Green New Deal and the NY Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act – all of which will help to shift us to a renewable energy grid, decarbonize our buildings, electrify our transportation systems, and so much more.
Today, we want to share some themes with you from our community survey and our vision for the year ahead. Our mission is to transform New York into the world’s most active climate tech hub, and ensure we build an equitable climate tech ecosystem from the very start. All of this starts with you!
Cheers,
Alec and Sonam
Events This Week
🍻 Green Drinks Brooklyn: Wed, Dec 21
🎁 Sustainable Gift Wrapping w/ FABSCRAP: Wed, Dec 21
Our community, by the numbers
The beauty of New York is that it’s the most diverse, creative, and energetic city in the world. We want our community to reflect exactly that - and we have a ways to go. While NY Climate Tech is at gender parity and is composed primarily of early and mid-career folks who are keen to work on climate (more on that below) - we must do better when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity. We’ve written extensively about how low income and minority groups bear the brunt of climate challenges, and we must ensure that the solutions to these problems are coming from these communities that are most impacted. This means we need to do a better job inviting and integrating these voices into our conversations, and building solutions hand-in-hand. Our ask: if you know an individual, nonprofit, or advocacy group that should be a part of this community, please reply back to this email and let us know. The more the merrier!
On the career front, 88% of the NY Climate Tech community already works in climate today or is keen to transition into this fast-growing sector. And what are we bringing to this space? Experience in all types of industries and functions! From tech, science, and engineering to government and nonprofits, we’ve got it all. Many of our members have significant tech backgrounds, experience in strategy, business development, and finance. In NY, climate isn’t a sector but a full transition of the economy - and that means every skill in every industry is valuable, yours included!
What else did we learn from our community survey? You all have built deep connections across the NY Climate Tech community, and we couldn’t be happier! From meeting new friends to deepening your knowledge on various climate verticals to taking personal action on climate, you’ve found your sweet spot amongst this group of rockstars. Almost 40% of people in our community are exploring startup ideas, and many are already in the process of raising money, launching, and scaling – we are glad to be a resource to connect you to each other, to experts, to investors, and everyone in between. It takes a village, and we’re here for you!
So, What’s Next?
We have big ambitions for next year: to expand our programming with monthly topics, to open chapters in other cities, to partner with other groups to welcome a broader community, and to expand our online presence. To do it all, we’ll need your help! We’ve posted six volunteer roles at the bottom of this email, scroll down to check them out and apply.
Topic-of-the-Month
Each month, we’ll shine a spotlight on one sector of climate tech, with an in-depth event and accompanying features in the newsletter. One month we may focus on buildings, the next on carbon removal, then food, finance, or the circular economy. We’ll be partnering with organizations and experts across the city to host events that go deep on a new topic each month, and highlighting the companies and issues related to it in our newsletter. Our hope is that with these events we’ll provide some depth to the conversation, while maintaining breadth each month across the climate ecosystem. If you have any topics that you’re eager to see featured, let us know!
A Community that Reflects the Best of New York
As we mentioned above, we want to make an active effort to expand the climate tech community to better reflect New York City! We’ll be hosting events in more locations (not just Brooklyn and Manhattan), and partnering with organizations across the city that are doing great work to help with outreach. We’re also considering early-career mentorship programs or ways to connect with STEM teachers working at the high school level. Once more, if you’re interested: let us know!
Expanding Online
No, we won’t be making another Slack group (sorry!). We will be building a website and online directory that makes it easy to find and connect with the key organizations and people in the city, and expanding our social media presence on relevant platforms. Climate tech can be overwhelming: there are so many different groups and companies and areas that are relevant. Our hope is to start to untangle them at a local level, to assist everyone from newcomers to old-timers in making sense of the ecosystem.
Volunteer!
To do all this, we need your help! With some help from Seed Consulting Group, we’ve decided to go with a volunteer system focused on skilled professionals with a lot of autonomy in their role. We want you to really own your contributions to the community, and make a real impact using your skills and experience.
We’ve posted six volunteer roles:
Check the listings and reply to this email with a short cover letter + your resume / LinkedIn to apply!
Beyond New York
We’re expanding the model of NY Climate Tech to other cities under the new Climate Tech Cities umbrella! Steven Zhang has already kicked off a great newsletter in Boston, Seattle has a budding climate tech series under the leadership of Ken Alston, and we’ll be reviving our SF Bay Area and London newsletters in January. A number of people have reached out about starting chapters in their own city. If you’re interested, let us know! We plan to have every city share the same monthly theme, tying them together across distances.
Season’s Greetings
We’ll end with holiday greetings, featuring our very own community rockstar Nicole Kelner’s beautiful artwork. Here’s a wish list for your landlord, along with a tip for your super. Happy Holidays! 🎅⚡️🎄