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Welcome to everybody in the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis. I'm Molly Wood. This week, I apparently can't stop doing miniseries in 2021. Here's what happened. I got a call from the folks at Kickstarter.
talking about climate and sustainability projects that have been funded on that platform, and all the new projects that are popping up there every day. And since ultimately we need every new idea, and pretty much all of those new ideas need money, and money doesn't always have to be venture capital and probably isn't going to be federal grants anytime soon, it seemed like a good time to talk about this alternative or sometimes even parallel funding mechanism.
Oh, and not for nothing, this is yet another personal action that any of us can take. if we're looking for a financial way to get involved in helping create something amazing. So this week, I'm talking to Kickstarter. And then in the next two episodes after this, I'll talk to two of Kickstarter's biggest climate success stories. It's so fun! Alright, let's go. I'm Nathan Elevanko. I work at Kickstarter on the design and technology team.
what that means is i work with creators so these are inventors engineers kind of anybody with a creative idea to help them bring their projects to life done via crowdfunding which I'd be happy to talk more about. I think everyone is familiar but just in case talk about how Kickstarter has approached the crowdfunding model because I actually do think there are some nuances that folks might not understand. Yeah, and there's many forms of crowdfunding too. But yeah, Kickstarter is the largest
crowdfunding platform in the world. And we have a model called rewards-based crowdfunding. So in your project, you offer a series of rewards. Oftentimes this is a product, but it can be other intangible things as well. And those are offered at different price points. And then somebody pledges or back. the project for one of those rewards and then at some later time in a promised timeline those rewards are fulfilled to the backer so it's not e-commerce but
It is a delayed funding model that allows somebody that has a creative project to get funds in order to bring it to life. One thing to note there is there's no equity exchanged in that. Right. Which is, I think, a point that we'll dig into a little bit more further on. Now, this may be the point where people in my audience are going, aren't you a show about climate solution?
So I want to ask you about the extent to which Kickstarter is funding and how Kickstarter is approaching sustainability and climate innovation within kind of the crowdfunding space. So yeah, our mission is to bring creative projects to life and Under the broad umbrella of creative projects, there are many types of projects that we would consider climate tech or sustainability in nature. This may include many things that you may not classically call climate tech, but
You know, we have large categories like portable power that ultimately is taking energy off the grid in their applications. But there are many other categories. So things like... renewable power. There are solar projects on Kickstarter. There are things like drone reforestation companies like Flash Forest and many, many other categories. I think the fun thing about Kickstarter is you never know what you're going to see next.
It is a home for these creative projects that maybe don't sit within a traditional category or maybe haven't existed before. And maybe somebody tried to find other more traditional types of funding and weren't able to find that. And so you end up a Kickstarter as kind of a solution to go to the crowd and see if others are passionate about this and want to help support. Tell me a little bit more before we come back to sustainability.
tell me a little bit more about your particular job is sustainability a specific part of your job or no and then like what does it mean to do what you do at kickstarter yeah so Sustainability is a passion of mine. I have a master's in environmental engineering and I've worked in, before climate tech, we maybe called it clean tech. So yeah, it's something I'm always considering in my job, but I'm working with many types of startups across the design and technology categories.
We have those categories that kind of exist as a spectrum of things that can be analog, they can be digital, but pretty much all of the breadth of physical products. of the world. So, you know, I think how that gets into sustainability is that a lot of these projects are in being creative are unique in some way. So a lot of times that can be materials, bio-based materials, recycled materials.
et cetera, can be, as we were talking about, kind of hardware technologies and things as, you know, renewable power and others. But yeah, I think... Even if somebody is building a consumer product that... It doesn't have a sustainability goal. From the outset, we do work with the teams in order to consider environmental commitments. It's something we put public on every page for someone to be thinking about, okay, what is it going to take the inputs to this project?
How could I reduce my impact throughout? Every project that's launching on Kickstarter is considering that and is built into our platform. You know, there's like a sort of a couple...
areas to explore here. One is these specific types of companies on Kickstarter, but also the idea of Kickstarter as this sort of alternative funding mechanism. I have certainly seen a lot of entrepreneurs move from trying to raise venture capital to trying to raise crowdfunding because venture capital is particularly hard for hardware, let's say, or, you know, they got distracted by AI and less interested in climate tech, etc., etc., right?
What in your mind are the criteria that make a startup or invention more appropriate to Kickstarter than some other funding mechanism? Maybe one thing that I think is a misconception to say up front is that
venture funding or any other type of funding is not mutually exclusive to crowdfunding. So many teams, especially in the climate tech space, you're really doing... novel hardware it's an expensive project you know there's there's no way to get around all of the different types of engineering all the expertise that's required to bring something to market.
There's no kind of magic solve that happens because you launched via Kickstarter. So I've worked with teams everywhere along the spectrum from receiving a large sum of venture or angel funding before they launched to... maybe that coming in the middle of the project or using the project as a data point and a proof point to
to investors that like, hey, we do have market demand. I think that quite common as well, especially for teams that Again, in hardware, we're talking high hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to bring these products to market. You may or may not raise that in your Kickstarter campaign. Hopefully you do. But if you don't, you may need to be also looking for additional funds in order to fulfill on that commitment.
Yeah, I think all of those possibilities are available here. And, you know, I think in the ways that all of the projects are creative in different ways, I think the founders find unique ways in order to make it work. Yep, totally. Are you seeing, would you say, an increase in climate-focused projects on Kickstarter? Again, with our broad definition of climate-focused projects, I would say yes.
what are give me some examples of like surprises you know you've said broad definition but like what are some examples of ones like because i because i think this is actually an important conversation like almost every company is a climate company at some point Yeah, and as I said, I'm representing the design and technology categories that launch on Kickstarter.
Maybe some of the more unexpected ones would be like analog products. I'd say something like eyewear. Genesee eyewear is a really interesting project from a few years ago that made sunglasses from recycled water bottles from Flint, Michigan. So that's something that's...
you know maybe not climate directly but you know it's taking a recycled input to make a product and telling a very poignant story along the way and shedding light on that environmental issue and human rights issue that's happening there. But there are many of these types of things. Vario skateboards made from recycled fishing nets. Product and material has grown and now it's, you know, in Patagonia clothing and many other brands' products. Hero Technologies just launched a project.
in December and they're making diapers that have plastic eating fungi in them and that diapers happen to be the largest source of plastic pollution to our landfills and they're using some really exciting fungal technology in order to create this new product that will decompose in a landfill and that currently doesn't.
you know diapers are kind of the trojan horse into this but you know they have a much broader vision for all of the types of plastics that they can get um you know that this kind of like impregnated fungi and so yeah maybe not where you would go your head would go for climate tech to diapers but um you know i think i think there's like really strong cases to be made even even from a life cycle assessment of those types of things.
yeah i can talk all day about this i'm totally like and i could apparently listen like i'm just like oh my god keep them going i mean that is the magic of kickstarter right is that it literally is like i like to say that this show is about the brilliant minds who are working on the solutions and blah blah but like The sheer compendium of genius ideas that is Kickstarter must just, I mean, what a fun job. I love it. And yeah, I don't know what I'm going to see tomorrow is like the...
the special part about working in this role here. And I think everybody that comes to Kickstarter has Some special story to tell, certainly, but... you know, everybody has that same kind of angle of, you know, they're trying to change the world. And almost always that is, you know, coming from a place of idealism and envisioning a better world and trying to find a solution.
Usually it's something a problem that they've encountered in their life flash forests for example you're from on the show so yeah let's yeah use them as a success story two brothers that had to They were living up in British Columbia and in their hometown had the largest forest fire ever, just in their backyard. And they said, what can we do about this? After it burned, there was no replanting of trees and they were like when is this going to change and you know they
said, okay, let's go find some technology. And they created an amazing solution in order to be able to solve this problem that nobody else is. picking up the ball to do that and you'll hear more from their story about how they were able to pull that all off which is amazing but you know I think oftentimes it's On Kickstarter, you're getting somebody that's solving a problem that is their own first. So they are the user. And that's why the stories are so authentic and do resonate.
There are many, many other people that have experienced that problem as well. And, you know, we love to connect those people in order to bring things to life. Are there other success stories in kind of this field that you can think of that come to mind? Many. You know, I think the hard part about this is like,
There are so many interesting things that have happened. Maybe to highlight BioLite is another creator that we'll be talking to here in a bit. They have launched... five projects on Kickstarter before and every time they've kind of scaled up and their brand has become a very well-known brand, a large brand in the outdoor industry.
you know have done different things along the way they really started from a place of kind of solving for disasters scenarios and kind of off-grid power and then kind of emerging markets as a part of their business as well but a lot of this they also fund through a kind of premium outdoor
gear and you know i think they they make a a range of products from fire pits to headlamps to now backup home battery solutions and It wouldn't be a classic example to say one brand would make all of those things, but they have a really strong thread that they pull through all of those.
When they come back to Kickstarter, they have a very passionate community that's looking to support their next venture. And it's really exciting to see that and see the scale of a brand that has gone from not being very well known to a household name. Time for a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the process of vetting climate startups or any startups on Kickstarter and also promoting. startups. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
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Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking with Nathan Elevenko from the Kickstarter design and technology team about all the hand-holding that can happen when you list your company on this crowdfunding platform.
What if any, I mean, I think there's sort of... always a question for crowdfunding platforms right which is like what if any vetting are you doing to make sure the claims aren't greenwashing and and believe me i do not ask that with an expectation that it's your job right i just think either way it's important for people to kind of understand their own responsibility when it comes to funding a project.
Yeah, so, you know, I think in a few ways here. First, we have a trust and safety team and any project that's launching on Kickstarter is being vetted against our rules and terms and conditions of... Are they meeting all of those before they could launch and go live? So certain things we're requiring, especially in this kind of climate tech category, are a working prototype that you demonstrate that prototype.
and where it's at its current status um you know it doesn't need to look like the eventual final thing but It should be pretty close and you need to acknowledge the gaps and your plan to get from where you are today to what you're promising. That's like a lot more than some VCs ask, honestly. In that way, you can't just throw up any old idea on Kickstarter, especially in design and technology. One, you're not going to be allowed to launch, and two, the community knows.
the vast majority of projects fulfill but um there have been ones that haven't in the past certainly too and I think over time, our backer community is very sophisticated. Many of them are also inventors and engineers and designers and creatives and have
are very familiar with products and they are the experts in many of these categories. So they can smell if the project has something wrong with it or if you haven't taken it far enough in development before you are launching it to the market, I think. So, you know, a little bit of that answer is we have some rules that you need to meet, but then ultimately the crowd decides.
One other part of my job and our outreach team's role is to curate the projects on Kickstarter and promote the ones that we're really excited about, that are mission aligned, that are solving really interesting problems, especially climate tech. and have a great story and are coming from a great founder. And we're working with those teams directly in order to...
make them as successful as possible. So, you know, you'll see things like the Projects We Love badge on the platform, and, you know, this roughly represents... like the top 10% of projects that are live at any one time. But we have newsletters and other ways that we feature projects on our social.
and other ways that we can get you exposure so yeah those are some of the levers that we're pulling to make sure that a lot of our audiences seeing the projects that we know are that are vetted and you know are very solid coming from a solid team are very very likely to fulfill and and kind of uh downplaying a little bit the ones that maybe aren't meeting all of those requirements.
Tell me a little more about the sort of curation and outreach process. Like, that feels important that you actually... in some cases, are looking for different types of solutions? Yeah. First, I don't know what's going to come in the door tomorrow. So, you know, there's always, you know, and there's many ways we're doing outreach from, Just cool stuff that I see online, you know, it could just be on whatever, The Verge, or it could be on Instagram.
Because I'm in the crowdfunding space and that I'm looking at all of these products all of the time. everybody's ads are tailored to me. So I'm getting ads for all the stuff that's coming out next month too. So whenever I see something that I really like, I find that creator's contact and reach out. Yeah, I think there are so many projects launching all the time. There are thousands of projects live at any one time on Kickstarter.
You know, our team is doing our best to support as many of them as we can. But, you know, definitely picking and choosing kind of, again, based on mission alignment, based on the impact of the project, the story. And all of that, yeah, we're deciding how to allocate our time and our marketing resources and all of that in order to make sure we pour gasoline on the fires that we think can burn bright. Yeah.
What is the mission when you say mission aligned? Yeah, bringing creative projects to life is the mission. And, you know, I think There's a lot to unpack in those few words. I know, I was like, so how do we decide what's not creative? Yeah, yeah. Maybe something else to say here is that we're a public benefit corporation.
gives us a lot of license to operate that is beyond just optimizing shareholder value. And we have a detailed charter of all the ways that... we want to operate and you know it includes things like promoting cultural categories and the arts generally. It's about promoting creators of all different types of backgrounds and diversity. It includes also environmental commitments.
I think it's a little bit you know it when you see it. Whenever you've internalized our mission and all the ways that we're trying to drive impact in the world, you know when this project is telling a story that is... also a Kickstarter story in the ways that we've impacted the world to date. I'd say another thing with this is that there are many categories and subcategories that kind of just grow organically of, you know, you get...
one portable power solution, you know, a portable battery, and then one success story begets many other projects that come in that category. So, you know, I think... We're also picking and choosing on that where we see opportunities for like, okay, let's go find a bunch of exciting solar technologies or teams.
and also make sure that we're promoting them and making them as successful as possible. So, you know, I think, again, it is kind of a grand curation exercise and, you know, something that we're always, you know, looking for new exciting teams and projects to help.
How much involvement do you have in helping like founder or an entrepreneur sort of shape their story like are there certain challenges around storytelling related to climate companies that you help with or no like what's your involvement Yeah, I think it really depends on the team. And, you know, this is very kind of like solutions based in my work and consultative.
Some teams, you know, they have a marketing department, they have a brand story, or they themselves, like the founder is a marketer. And they're very comfortable telling their own story and already have a very clear vision for that. So in that case, You know, I'm kind of validating, maybe tweaking some things, sometimes translating from someone that may be more familiar with e-commerce to crowdfunding and what really is successful there. It's definitely much longer form.
There's an opportunity to story tell about the product and really get into the details and nuance. Like you're not showing the product development process on your Shopify page, you know, whenever you're buying a pair of boots. like you know you're on on kickstarter though people want to see all of those details like as much as you can pull back the curtain the better really and And so a lot of times it's encouraging that of like, yeah, let's talk more about the founding team and your partners.
How do we be as transparent as possible to the backers to give them confidence that you're going to fulfill, that this is going to be everything that you're promising it to be, and that you're really clear of what does this product do? I think it's super common with Kickstarter that the inventor, the product person, the designer, the engineer is the person that came up with the idea and has this idea.
and they don't totally know what to do from there and you know marketing is large part of this equation and you know it's one half of product market fit so you know I think that's a lot of my job too is educating product folks or people that have a prototype on okay You can't just come to Kickstarter and not tell anyone that this exists and hope that we do all of your marketing for you. I mean, we are very effective at reaching a community of people that will be passionate about your idea.
it's not going to scale to thousands of backers or millions of dollars without telling other people off platform as well in order to get the momentum going with the campaign. So I think a lot of it is education on that of how do you just create a marketing strategy and execute on it.
Right. Well, and certainly, I mean, what I have found moving from pure tech to climate tech is that there are a lot of science-based projects. And I would imagine that that is the case on Kickstarter too. And that those are things that are like plastic eating fungus. is easy to understand, even if you might have questions about putting that on your baby's butt. But there are, I would imagine, things in the climate tech space that are harder to really any science.
base product that are harder to explain right yeah definitely there's a translation and a science communication uh component to it i do think on kickstarter you know there's a bend towards consumer products so i think a lot of know that they need to make this something that people want to buy ultimately. I think talking about the core technology and all of the exciting science that's happening in order to unlock this creative solution is interesting.
but it can't be the lead of your story. At the end of the day, for any type of technology, but I think it's especially important in the climate space. This is a consumer product. It needs to be something that appeals to the masses. We'll have adoption of electric vehicles when they're better than fossil fuel vehicles in all of the ways that someone might consider. And they already are better in many use cases.
So it's really just solving those problems. And I think engineers and scientists and inventors, designers, all these folks. need to approach this from a design, a user-centered design perspective.
really be clear with, okay, the science is is under the hood but it actually does this for you and and that's going to you know be valuable to you and it's better than other solutions and I think finding that story you know I think it comes out over time once once you make it clear that you know the science isn't isn't the only story Right. Dear founders, here's why it's awesome, is what you want to tell us. Here's why it's awesome. Or better. Or both.
so how can okay so for people who want to back this i mean i think what's so awesome about crowdfunding is that there are a ton of people who want to have some involvement in solutions and don't know where to go so how do people go about filtering for these types of projects. go to kickstarter.com Take your money, go to the website. You can sort by tags like environmental. We're actually...
We're in the works on improving some of that tagging and sorting so that, you know, you will be able to search for something as specific as climate tech. Right now you could... search for climate or sustainability or fungi or whatever you would like. um yeah that that would be one way um but yeah going to kickstarter.com creating an account um this also starts to track your preferences and you know if you back one uh sustainability-based project you're going to see some more of those so
One is just kind of get on there and check it out. I think a lot of people maybe... have been to kickstarter.com and haven't been there in a while you're going to see some really interesting projects on there you know i'm always blown away by the quality of projects that are live at any one time And yeah, I think, again, we're working to do the best job we can in order to say like, hey, I'm a climate tech person and show me just that.
You know, I think there's lots of ways from a user interface perspective we are excited about improving. But yeah, I think going to design or technology and looking around, you know, I'm sure you'll see some stuff you like. Do you think there's a, no pressure, but do you think there's a universe where it becomes its own category? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what I'm alluding to this year. I think you'd be able to hit a page. It's just that. You know, I think in the...
One, we're always looking for interesting climate tech projects. So if you have an idea, please contact us and would love to chat. and yeah I think there's there's many ways that we see this growing and Another program that we have is called Forward Funds, and we've done this in other categories, but would love to partner with an organization or brand that would want to stand up one of those funds that we would be able to allocate directly to climate tech projects.
It's something we've definitely talked about and hasn't happened yet. So we'd love to continue the conversation there. Nathan Nalavenko, thank you so much for the time. Kickstarter.com, you all know it. Now just go there. Let's hang out.
That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thanks so much for listening. Now you heard Nathan mention Flash Forest and BioLite. Those are the next two interviews coming up. Next week will be Flash Forest and their technology for automating tree planting, especially after wildfire.
Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool.com and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool.com the website. If you'd like to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of this show, hit the link in the description in your podcast. And hey, everybodyinthepool.com, the website, got a little bit of a facelift. Go check it out and let me know what you think. All right, see you next week, everybody. Together, we can get this done.
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