Red flags to look for when considering climate tech startups : my experience with the worst of all Silicon Valley shitstorms

Photo by Antonio Garcia on Unsplash

Edit: the medium app messed up my markdown, but I’m out right now and will have to wait until tonight to fix the issues. Someone at medium please fix this.

Edit2: I have fixed the formatting issues, please let me know if you continue to experience difficulties reading.

Edit3: I edited the title because I got feedback that the OG made the problem sound common, versus sharing my experience with it. Thanks so much to Olya for the feedback! Olya’s one of the amazing people who’s doing actually great work, she hosts office hours to guide people on how to avoid pitfalls like the one I fell into. Honestly the next time I look for a climate company I’ll be going to one she recommends haha.

Greenwashing in Climate Tech is more prevalent than you think

TW: This is going to be a really stressful, possibly anger inducing post about a problem that I believe affects all of us. If you’re not in the best of mental space right now, it might be a good idea to skip. I had a hard time writing this, but I feel like it’s important to call out greenwashing in Silicon Valley so I bit my tongue and did it, but I did NOT have a good time writing this and I can’t imagine anyone having a good time reading it.

Here’s a breakdown of my entire climate tech journey over the course of 2 years or so, and where I am right now. I’m burnt out is what I am right now, so read with that in mind.

Keep in mind I did get fired from this job, but I already signed another offer and was in the process of transferring my VISA. Side note, never fucking trust a startup with your VISA, I got super fucked over with this and had to leave the US.

the stress

Climate change stresses me out, a lot. I believe it should stress all of us out because it’s a humanity extinction level event. Like, not to be a downer but we only have this one earth, and it’s gonna suck when or if we lose it.

BUMMER to not have a planet to live on yknow???

Because I’ve solved my personal problems of food, shelter and job security, I started stressing out about THE BIG WORLD PROBLEMS. And the biggest problem I see in the world is climate change.

Big ball of rock and water heating up is NO GOOD for us humans. Like, some animals love it, and they’ll do great, but we’re all gonna die in 100 years if we don’t change things.

Based on my research and talking to a climate tech friend, we (YOU AND ME FRIEND, YOU AND ME!!) are the LAST generation that can realistically do something to drastically reduce the effects of climate change.

THAT MEANS WE’RE IT FOLKS. THERE’S JUST YOU AND ME AND OUR FRIEND STEVE.

Our kids will have to LIVE with the results of our mistakes. They’re too young now, and by the time they graduate college, it’ll be mostly over. They get to live in a world that we saved, or they have to suffer the consequences of our inaction.

This is unacceptable.

This applies to millennial and gen Z. Boomers are mostly retired or resistant to change cause they’re gonna die before the climate gets REAL bad, and generation alpha are basically doomed if we don’t fix this.

the good

There’s like. Cool people who understand the above. And they’re doing some reaaaaallll desperate things to try to change this. Like, I read some of the new carbon technology that’s coming out and it makes me laugh (hysterical funny, not actually haha funny) because we’ve just gotten so desperate to me.

Here’s some things that people are working on that’s ACTUALLY pretty cool:

• inventing better ways to plant trees, faster
• artificial carbon capture: scrubbing CO particles directly from the atmosphere with artificial trees
• cool plant biomass that eats CO and produces ethanol
• plant based alternatives to meat consumption
• meat consumption and meat agriculture (factory farms) is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, specifically beef [tktk link https://drawdown.org/solutions/plant-rich-diets]. I personally am now eating mostly pescatarian and vegetarian to do my part on this front.

the meh

I’ve realized that, as a software engineer with my skillset (startup, product, ios, bluetooth, design, marketing), there is actually VERY LITTLE I can do work wise to make a big difference. Like, the most I can do is make a button to help the people who are doing things in ‘the good’ category. But realistically speaking, I am a useless blob looking in at a problem.

I am blob. I am a sad blob. Sad blob life for me. It’s no good, would not recommend.

Small things I have tried:

• personal changes like learning to eat more vegetarian (blog post incoming!), keeping more plants, walking more, biking more, using public transit more (I hate driving so this was easy)
• climate charities. I usually set aside 2–5k per year (well, back when I was making money and not funemployed) to donate to charities, and in 2020 I decided that I was going to shift more towards donating to climate related things. I’m pretty sure I’ve bought trees at some point in a desperate attempt to DO SOMETHING, but I just don’t have ENOUGH money to make a difference. its not NOTHING, but it also doesn’t change things massively.

big things I’ve tried

• climate angel investing. One of the interesting things about living in silicon valley is you’re surrounded by people who are doing interesting things. It’s not always impactful in a good way, but people are big dreamers there. and so I was in the unique circumstance where I could meet founders face to face and get invested into their projects! I had a great time talking to founders who were excited about climate change and what they could do to address it. Here’s some examples:
• https://climatebase.org/ this is my favourite investment that I’ve done TO DATE! I love the founding team, I love their mission, and I also love their designers lol CHECK OUT THAT WEBSITE it’s so sexy!!! peak design!!! peak graphics!! My artist AND engineering soul is happy looking at this website it’s so niceeeeeee. every once in a while I’ll just open this website to remind myself that there are enough people who WANT to work on climate change that this database can exist. PEAK!! YALL GREAT!!!
• https://www.terraformation.com/ I tried for a good month or two to invest in this project. I honestly wished I succeeded, I tried so hard, I believe in this team sooooo much, I love the vision, I LOVE TREES THEY’RE GREAT TO LOOK AT, but…
• I could NOT make the Republic website work for me. It was a NIGHTMARE honestly, even as an engineer who understands how to build things. I had payment issues, where I wired money to the company and THOUGHT I had invested, but it turns out:
• my money was just… sitting around… in my Republic account… doing nothing…
• and then I realized and I tried to move it and then…
• my authentication failed…
• and I didn’t realize… like I must’ve missed an email or something because my email box is… a mess… and uhh…
• they requested IDs and I missed it… and uh…
• then they asked for ID I didn’t have on hand…
• and was a pain to get…
• and by the time I realized this had happened I had already reached my angel investment quota for the year and I had quit working full time, so I didn’t have the funds to invest anymore.
• I’m a product engineer and enough things went wrong that I feel like it’s not ALL on me. Like, I’m smart and tech savvy and I still fucked up so it’s PROBABLY also something on their end. Like I’m PRETTY sure I submitted IDs at SOME point but… did it go poof??? did a request fail??? was it not the right documents??? WHO KNOWS??? NOT ME!! I’m now actively avoiding this website because… stressful sad times. stressful sad blob times. I’m so bummed because I think the terraformation team is awesome (I’ve chatted with a founder!) and I wish I could’ve done more to support them. like, TOTAL BUMMER, no good.
• I worked at a “climate tech” company. YEAH YOU SEE THE QUOTES?? THE QUOTES ARE THERE FOR A REASON! ITS A CONSCIOUS CHOICE BECAUSE I FELT FUCKING LIED TO LIKE MAYBE A 8 MONTHS IN. I forget the exact timeline but it went something like this:
• I quit my job at a healthcare tech company because I was burnt out.
• I love the team, I had fun working on that product, and my managers (two different ones) I had were all great.
• It was just the combination of unfortunate circumstances beyond any persons control that just kept pilling stress on and on (internally and externally)
• I decided that I was going to focus on climate related companies in my job search. this was BEFORE climatebase.org so I was like… super lost LOL yall have it easy I’m so mad I had to do SOOO much legwork! SO MUCH!! IT WAS NO FUN!! Because there’s honestly a lot of startups in SV that will claim they’re working on something big when in reality they just care about making VCs money, and I had to figure out if they were bullshitting me or not. That’s based on my experience of working at startups for 5 years in SV.
• I also interviewed pretty broadly, just to get a pulse on my market value and how much I should be paid (which everyone should do! highly recommend!!! Always get multiple offers if you can, and get it all in writing so you can reference it later)
• Joined Afresh Technologies August 2019 and…
• you can kind of tell from their landing page that what they’re selling is not a climate change tool…
• they’re selling a tool to grocery stories…
• to save them money…
• the idea is by reducing food waste, you can save the grocery stores money AND reduce their carbon footprint, win win!! RIGHT???

working at a green-washed startup

I thought I was working at a company whose main mission was to address climate change, and as a bonus they would make money to make that business sustainable. Like, making money is good, because it means the company can continue chugging along.

But I thought the founders loved climate change tech more than they loved money.

But I WAS WRONG!!! TOTALLY WRONG!! if you do a visual sweep of their landing page you can see it’s mostly NOT about climate change. IT’S LIKE 90% ABOUT SAVING MONEY!! WHICH!! IS FINE!! MONEY IS GOOD IT MAKES THE COMPANY SUSTAINABLE! BUT!! When I joined this was NOT the website I saw, and I WAS SOLD TO as this is a climate change solution!!! And I was lied to!!! I don’t care about saving big business money!!! It doesn’t interest me!! If I wanted to save large companies money I would’ve gone to someplace else!!

I had an offer from a fintech company that was ~10% higher in base salary AND gave me a 30k signing bonus AND more comparable equity!! I gave all that up for the mission!! and I was LIED TO!!

I really liked some of my team, my manager was great, but I was soooo bored with building buttons all day and I DO NOT ENJOY MAKING BUTTONS FOR RICH PEOPLE!! SOME PEOPLE LOVE IT!! I DO NOT!! I WOULD NOT HAVE JOINED IF I REALIZED THIS!! URGGGHHH!!!!

I can point to a SPECIFIC project where I realized this and I remember FLIPPING OUT and having to call a friend and talk about this (I think this person might still be at the company lol). After that project I lost ALLLL motivation to work, and for a while I was SO MAD but trying to give them the benefit of the doubt…

the specify project

This project I worked on that gave me this realization was a meat product. YEAH THAT’S RIGHT. MEAT. And the goal was to reduce meat waste, which would reduce the cost to the company and eventually reduce the price for the consumer.

On the surface, nothing wrong with that. Sounds good, saving everyone money.

BUT!! BUTT!!!!!! IF WE DIG IT GETS SKETCHY!!!

Just from basic economics, we know when the price of X goes down, consumers tend to buy more of X. So if we reach this end goal of reducing the price of meat, we encourage consumers to eat more. WHICH!! IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!!! ITS NOT GREAT!! I personally am trying to do the exact opposite!!

And IF I was GENEROUS, I COULD say the company did some analysis, and MAYYBBEEE the meat waste reduction (throwing out rotten stock) would be more than the increase in consumer demand MAYBE!! MAYBE!! But I never SAW this analysis, and it was never present to the team. It was clearly NOT a priority. All I saw was a presentation with pictures of animal carcasses that made me feel sick to my stomach!!!

AND!! AND!!! Doing the meat product as our second offering DID NOT MAKE SENSE FROM A PRODUCT ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE!!! From what I understood, dairy and bread were categories we were considering (the first product was veggies and fruit), two products I can say to my product engineering knowledge, was easier to build on MANY FRONTS!!

I won’t talk about other engineering stacks because I don’t understand them as well, but as the LEAD IOS DEVELOPER AT THAT TIME (there was just me and one other dude who also stressed me out), I can say with certainty that meat did not make sense as our second offering!! There was too much engineering overhead to make it a quick product development process, and honestly it was a nightmare project in many ways.

On top of not believing in the product, the timeline also forced me to make engineering compromises I was NOT happy with. It made the entire app brittle, prone to bugs, and hard to manage when we needed to make rapid changes. I wrote code that I am NOT proud of to this day, and I was not given time to fix this after the meat product launched. NEVER!! Other projects came along and took a ‘higher’ priority!!! NOT TO ME!! I hope that code eventually got deleted because I’m SO ASHAMED OF IT!! My github was tied to that code last time I checked and I AM SO ASHAMED I HOPE IT’S ALL GONE NOW!! BURN ALL THAT CODE!!

My guess is a big client promised a contract in exchange for this meat product. And we had to do it, because another funding cycle was coming up and we needed to hit some numbers.

the ‘do good’ culture

The culture was. eh. I’ve seen better. Afresh is now being sued for discrimination (not by me!!) and honestly I’m NOT surprised.

There was culture things that happened that made me go ??? that I ignored because I was so stressed about other things (pandemic, personal) but the leadership team shielded some REAL SKETCHY PEOPLE for TOO LONG.

Personally, there was a dude bro we hired to work on iOS with me, and we did NOT get along. Like, he was onboarding from React to iOS and I low key felt like he belittled my engineering chops, even though at that point I had spent 3 years working on iOS (3 more years than him!!!) and I was doing things like architecting big new features (senior-ish stuff). It got so bad I had a breakdown in a bathtub, cried, and then told my manager I would rather take on the ENTIRE PROJECT rather than try to manage working with him.

My manager moved him to the frontend team, where he then proceeded to terrorize the front end engineer who was my friend!!! AWFUL! I also didn’t notice until we had a product team design meeting, where he interrupted her and spoke over her SO MANY TIMES I lost my mind and started DMing my manager AND our VP Eng! Because even though he was not actively making me unhappy anymore, HE WAS STILL BEING TERRIBLE!! He was just being terrible out of my view to my friend!! STILL TERRIBLE!!!

Culture is SUPER important to me, I’ve written it in this blog, so this was a huge red flag for me. This was just my personal experience, but I’ve talked with people who are no longer at Afresh who feel the same way.

My personal story was NOT the only sketchy thing I saw, and it’s my personal belief the company just does not care about it at SOME level. Profits >>> People. Which is FINE, but this was the SECOND lie I had to unearth and I am ALSO still MAD about this.

Startups can not care about DEI and it’s whatever. SV sucks like that, I’ve learned to live with it. Afresh not the only one. But if you SAY it’s important, you better walk that walk, otherwise I’m going to call out the bullshit!!! IT SMELLS SHITTY!!! I’M CALLING IT!!

Also, I can talk about this because I REFUSED TO SIGN AN NDA WHEN I GOT FIRED!! That’s how mad I was!!! They offered me something like 20k or whatever and I thought about it for a week, then decided I eventually (later, when I calmed down more) might want to write publicly about this, because I refuse to be paid off. SKETCH!!!

It’s been two years!! I’m still mad they lied!! I’ve gone through like two different companies and I’m still mad!!! I feel indifferently about some other startups I’ve worked for, some good some bad, but NONE of those startups made me SO MAAAAADDDD!! I can imagine going back to some of those other companies, but NOT THIS ONE!!

self reflection on Afresh

The thing that makes me the MOST mad is this entire experience made me question my own judgement. I spent SOOO much time vetting this company, thinking about the market, thinking about how they specifically tackle emissions, and I talked to all 3 founders, sometimes multiple times, and thought that they were good people.

Maybe the meat product actually does save carbon emissions! MAYBE!! I personally have NOT seen the numbers and there’s no way I can get access to it now. BUT!! I AM SKETCHED OUT!

I’m sure at some level they are good people, but fact of the matter is I felt lied to. They lied to me about the primary mission and they lied to me about how important DEI / culture is to them. MAYYYBBBEEE if I’m being generous, MAYBE they didn’t actively lie. Maybe they just did that thing Product Managers do where they lead you to certain conclusions. MAYBE!! WHO KNOWS!! I DON’T!!

May I’m just bad at reading people! Maybe I’m just bad at communicating what I was looking for!! I don’t think I am but maybe!! Maybe!!! MAYBE!!!

All I can say is multiple people have messaged me privately and I have told them DON’T JOIN AFRESH the company is sketch af. Some great people work there still, but SKETCHHHHHHHHH!!!

Maybe they’re good people in their own personal lives, but the remaining founders run a sketch company and to some degree that reflects badly on them. I DO blame them for a toxic culture, that comes from the top up, and they’re responsible for it.

the real shitty

Urgghhhh is the sound I want to make when I think about this, and it just about makes sense.

Separate from all of the above, there are LOTS companies that are like… super sketchy??? kinda sketchy??? a little questionable??? I don’t know how exactly I would put it, but they do NOT give me hope, they just give me more climate change anxiety. I didn’t work there, but I did do some digging while I was doing climate angel investing and the combination of all of the above drove me MAD.

My stomach is literally turning thinking about this because this makes me so mad. SO MAD. I’M SO MAD!! THESE COMPANIES. MAKE ME. SOOO MAD!!! I’m fuming as I type this because urgggghhhhh…

I would take calls where I was sketched out, would do like… BARE MINMUM research for an hour to vet the idea and/or founders and there were so many companies that were greenwashing their mission. It was obvious!!! Did they think I’m dumb??? That I wouldn’t do ANY research??? It was SO EASY to verify their bullshit and did they just NOT expect me to do ANY reading??? Where they actually scammers??? WHO KNOWS?? NOT ME. I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!! I’M JUST MAD!!

the conclusion: do your own research

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE YALL!! It’s the wild wild west, and startups will say anything to get your money, skills, time and resources.

For all angel investments, do your own research. Climate tech companies are NO BETTER than your average SV startup, it’s all up to the individual founding team to push their vision, and their push might look REAL DIFFERENT from what you’re looking for. Don’t get burned like I did.

Engineers have very little decision making power at the end of the day, so only trust your close friends when they talk big dreams.

I hope none of you will ever work at or invest in a climate company and realize how full of bullshit they are, because climate change is a serious problem and we really do need to do something about it.

I’m super thankful for the community and individuals who held my hand and gently introduced me to this frankly complex and confusing space. I tried to take your lessons to heart but I cleared failed, hopefully you’re not disappointed with me. I hope my story can help someone who’s at the beginning of their journey and keep them from some of the pitfalls.

Stay safe, stay sane, and continue to tackle climate change one step at a time! We’re in this together. It’s stressful and we need to support each other.

asks

• tell me about changes (big or small) you’re making to address climate change! It can be as small as you ate vegetarian today and you’re proud of that! small personal changes like this gives me hope that we can make a difference together
• explore vegetarian food in Toronto with me! I had a safe vegan option when I lived in SF, but that is sadly no longer available to me. For my SF friends: Miss Saigon’s vegan shaken beef is amazing!! It’s better than their real beef version honestly. ITS GREAT! very safe vegan meal!

offers

• I will make intros for people who want to work in climate tech. I’ve… read wayyyy too much and have thought about this wayyyyy too much and honestly I’m willing to hold your hand while you think about switching from any company (accounting, tech, startup, marketing, etc) to a climate focused companies. I will personally hold your hand and walk you through climatebase.org, even though I don’t think I’ll need to it’s so user friendly! Totally non judgemental offer, you don’t have to be actively interviewing. Just. sit on it. think about it. hit up yo girl, I’m looking for projects while funemployed (for a year).
• I will take intros to companies who have founder teams you PERSONALLY know, as in PERSONAL FRIENDS. I got burned by trusting a not personal friend team and I am NOT looking for intros to anyone. I don’t trust valley startups and honestly yall should be skeptical about any company that has VC funding. There’s a huge misalignment of incentives there if the VCs the team brings on isn’t climate focused, and to be honest MOST VCs in the valley don’t care. They want to make money, a lot of it, in the shortest time period possible. BAD VALUES ALIGNMENT!! This is literally how I got burned!! stay away!! stay cautious!!! don’t believe in shiny SV speak!! Startups will say literally anything to get you to join their team and it SUCKS to be lied to.

anti-asks

• I’m processing all of this with one or two friends who’s also doing climate work right now, and I do NOT want to talk to just anyone about this topic. Like, he’s helping me process, and I’m good on that front. This is a really triggering topic for me and makes me REALLY upset. I am SOMETIMES down to talk about this but I’m mostly just ANGRY about the state of the world and I’m dealing with it right now by NOT THINKING ABOUT IT and repressing that shit most of the time. It’s not entirely healthy but it’s where I’m at right now. Please don’t read this and reach out to talk about this blog in particular. That will just make me more upset and these days I am already in a bad mental state, and I’m actively avoiding the topic. This blog took literal YEARS to write because I kept getting super angry when I thought about it.

Editing note: I like… chewed on this for literal years before posting because v0, v1 and v2 were all even MORE angry and inflamatory. I edited this version to remove swear words, and then I put them back in because I felt like the sentences didn’t have the impact I wanted without the sheer amount of fucks I dropped.