Programs +
On Thursday, September 12th, ClimateHaven announced the exciting appointment of our second CEO, Justine Lee. An experienced senior executive and investor in early-stage companies, Justine will expand our portfolio of climate tech companies, accelerate their growth through new funding opportunities, and build strategic partnerships across the industry.
To introduce Justine to our readers, we brought in Claudia Reuter, Director of The Roberts Innovation Fund in Yale Ventures, former Techstars GM and MD, and ClimateHaven Board Member to interview Justine. In this conversation, the two innovation experts discuss how sector-focused incubators can catalyze a startup’s success, an epic public-private partnership in micromobility, and why empathy is a trait climate tech champions need to lean on.
Claudia Reuter (CR): Before joining ClimateHaven, you worked closely with startups at venture lab 25madison where you were Partner and COO. How will your learnings about startup incubation inform the way you build and grow ClimateHaven?
Justine Lee (JL): I feel strongly that venture studios, incubators and funds are most effective when they are sector-focused and specialized. What drew me to ClimateHaven is the commitment to building and supporting a community of startups tackling the most difficult challenges of our generation.
We are further honing our offerings within the various climate tech sectors, in areas where our startups, partners, research institutions create a natural hub of expertise. For example, we currently have seven green chemistry startups, so we launched a partnership with BioLabs to ensure access to wet lab space and state-of-the-art resources for them.
I think there are some aspects of company-building that are the same for all companies (business formation, cap tables, stock options, fundraising, compensation) that lend themselves to systematic, replicable programming -- and that's why we created the Climb series. And then there are other aspects of company building that are specific to each company and need 1:1 mentoring and advice, which we want to provide through our full-time staff and through an expansive network of experts-in-residence and seasoned industry professionals.
CR: What was that work like? What perspectives have you developed on the challenges startups face, and how will you help founders navigate these challenges towards a successful outcome?
JL: At 25madison, we built startups from the ground up: Ideating, validating, prototyping, concept development, venture formation & launch through scale-up, fundraising and growth, with go/no-go stage gates at each point in the process. As a studio, we had a full stack team of engineers, product, marketing, branding, legal & finance personnel, and we brought our collective experience, resources and network to bear to accelerate the development of successful ventures. We invested in founders at the Pre-seed stage, often as the first or only institutional capital. We made more traditional ventures investments in startups raising capital at the Seed and Series A rounds.
Having been through these cycles and work streams with our incubated companies and with companies in our portfolio, I am keenly aware of just how hard it is for the entrepreneur. Most startups fail, and our job at any of these venture platforms is to bring resources, expertise, and network to bear to stack the deck to help you succeed.
CR: You are part of the founding team at Citibike in NY and its national affiliates. What lessons from growing Citibike and selling it to Lyft will you bring to ClimateHaven?
JL: When Citibike first launched, it was a hugely popular but terribly run company, with an unsustainable business model. We knew we had an incredible idea based on the positive customer feedback we got. But the system had so many flaws: From dead solar-powered stations in dark shadow canyons of NYC to a lack of data analytics and forecasting on where bikes were needed and where stations were full (this concept of "station rebalancing" is actually incredibly complex, and led my colleague Collin Waldoch to develop, among other things, the Bike Angels program which gamifies the system to incent riders to park in an empty station or pick up a bike from a crowded on, as profiled in this fascinating New Yorker article). Working through these issues and finding hacks to solve them were both the challenge and the reward of company-building.
Our business model was to white label our product, then sell the naming rights to corporate sponsors (i.e., Citibank is the title sponsor for the NY system and named it Citibike, similar to how MetLife Stadium got its name), and this model worked great for big, high profile assets like NYC, but was less successful when we tried to launch Ford Go Bikes in San Francisco-- pairing a sleepy, corporate giant with a liberal, activist town led to acts of vandalism and protest.
I have many more war stories and battle wounds to share, but the point is that these types of growing pains are common to every startup, especially tech-enabled companies in hyper-growth, and they give me enormous empathy and respect for our ClimateHaven founders. Working through these issues and finding hacks to solve them were both the challenge and the reward of company-building.
Notwithstanding those challenges, in my first three years at Citibike and its parent company Motivate, we were able to stabilize operations, acquire our software provider, bring our hardware production in house, and triple revenue. And we went on to raise new rounds of capital, expand, launch ebikes and get acquired by ride hail company Lyft. At Citibike, it was our team's shared mission and values of transforming urban transportation, decreasing emissions, and electrifying micromobility that helped us navigate some of these challenges, and I believe that same shared sense of optimism and hope drives all climate companies. That, and a constitution for really really hard work.
CR: You’re a Yalie, so I’m sure you are happy to be back in New Haven. What excites you about working in the Connecticut innovation ecosystem?
JL: I'm thrilled to be back in New Haven, which holds a special place in my heart from my undergraduate days at Yale. I actually met my now-husband on the first day of freshman year on Old Campus! But as a transportation nerd focused on liveable, walkable cities, I really believe New Haven has a special opportunity. I'm excited to part of the effort to support innovation and economic development here. And of course, the food.
CR: Finally, what is your long term vision for ClimateHaven?
JL: I think ClimateHaven has built an incredible and passionate community of entrepreneurs, innovators, funders and experts. We have light prototyping space, and as we grow, I'd like to add wet labs and tooling, and flexible manufacturing facilities so that we can continue to grow with our companies. I think the other major challenge for our startups is funding. We are focused on building a network of climate investors to support our startups as they grow, and when we are ready I would like ClimateHaven to raise its own venture arm as well.
