What I’m learning about building climate companies that scale.
Notes from the operating layer - what’s working, what isn’t, and what patterns keep showing up across companies at the same stage.
Why speed of hire is a strategic variable, not an HR problem
Eleven days versus eleven weeks changes which talent you can access, how fast you can respond to market conditions, and how much revenue you leave on the table.
What I learned building Reef: the systems that transferred and the ones that didn't
Building a business in 12 months teaches you fast which operating decisions compound and which ones just add complexity.
What a 90-day portfolio operating engagement actually delivers
Most portfolio operators are vague about what 90 days actually produces. Here is what the output looks like — and how to measure whether it worked.
The three operating bottlenecks I see in every climate pre-Series B company
After working across climate companies at the pre-Series B stage, the same three friction points show up every time. Not because founders are inexperienced — because the stage creates them.
Why portfolio operations compounds differently than consulting
A consulting engagement solves a problem once. Portfolio operations solves it once and then deploys the solution across twelve companies. The compounding is the point.
What Portfolio Operations Actually Looks Like at a Climate VC
Portfolio operations is a frequently misunderstood role — often imagined as strategic advice, when the actual work is infrastructure. Here is what the day-to-day looks like inside a climate VC, and why the climate context makes it meaningfully different.
The Hiring Infrastructure Problem in Climate Tech (And How to Fix It)
Slow, founder-dependent hiring is the most common operating failure in pre-Series B climate tech companies. The cost is measurable. The fix is a system, not a recruiter.