Climate founders are told to add. The best ones subtract.

In capital-heavy sectors, focus isn’t a strategy. It’s survival.

• Strategic sprawl kills startups - more tech, markets, and use cases increase execution risk in already complex systems
• Subtraction as strategy - the constraint is not ideas, it’s prioritization under capital, permitting, and time pressure
• Customer narrowing - don’t sell to utilities, corporates, and governments at once; pick the highest pain buyer and dominate
• Geographic focus - fragmented go-to-market across regions slows permitting, sales, and deployment velocity
• Cultural shift - replace “what should we build?” with “what should we kill?” to force tradeoffs and clarity

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Work with me (EFI)

• Private CEO group (capped at 50) for climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. entrepreneursforimpact.com

Newsletter (Climate CEOs)

• Read by 40,000 climate operators and investors annually. entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com

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