YC Office Hours for Startups Tackling Climate Issues | Hacker News Reader

YC Office Hours for Startups Tackling Climate Issues

blog.ycombinator.com

121 pointskatm39 comments

I know a few startups that may be interested and that I'd like to show this to, but I'm not sure if they qualify as "tackling climate". I would describe their "category" as energy-transition related, but definitely driven by the consequences of climate change.

For example, one startup is focused at the intersection of energy suppliers and consumers, trying to create win-win situations that match supply (complex due to wind/solar/etc variations) and demand. This is intentionally vague, sorry.

Could someone at YC give a slightly longer explanation of the startups they encourage to apply for this coaching session?

I don't know if we're solving climate issues, but at conserve.org[1] we're trying to make it easier for everyone to pitch in and conserve land so plants can do their part via carbon exchange (and save habitats for fluffy animals).

Conserve land, one acre at a time.

All revenue right now goes right to our Land Trust partner. This is a nonprofit.

[1] https://conserve.org

This looks great, and I wish you all the success in the world. The domain is your key asset, IMHO.

1) When did you start, and how long does it take you to sell an acre?

2) How do you plan on "releasing" more regions? Is the next region going to be (drumroll) the adjacent 160-acre square? Do they want you to complete one square before opening up the next? Does anyone actually keep track of which acre belongs to whom? How difficult is it to get more land trusts on board?

3) I'm looking to offset my emissions, so my key metric is $/t – how much does it cost to sequester a ton of CO₂ that otherwise would have stayed in the air? Any rough estimates?

I'd really like to listen to the session that makes the best use of those 15 minutes. How do you prepare for and make the most out of such a short time?

1 minute pitch

4 minutes descriptions of problems

10 minutes of back and forth?

Interesting constraints!

shouldn't this be titled "Climate Crisis"?

absolutely

Cataclysm?

BTW, this wasn't meant as a provocation.

The faster we move the Overton window to match reality, the better out chances of survival.

The climate issues referred to in the title are possibly related to this Request for Startups, Carbon Removal Technologies: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

IMO, looking for a high tech solution to a low tech problem is a dead end (possibly in the literal sense!)

This is a human behavior problem. Consume less; ie growth at all costs is not a long term strategy for the planet. Don't define your happiness with things.

I was reviewing the US tariff lists and was thinking, what if all these items were just completely unavailable forever? I couldn't find any examples in the list of products I absolutely must have to thrive. Think of all the carbon saved (and landfill, and ocean plastic, etc) in producing all this stuff.

Maybe algae in the Sahara will be a silver bullet, but I'm not holding my breath.

I would instead spend resources educating and supporting farmers on sustainable agro, support a transition from a consumer-driven economy to one that is sustainable (also probably education). Promote/support sustainable, local plant-based diets. Etc. I'm happy to invest in scalable solutions in these areas!

>The size of the “global middle class” will increase from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030. The bulk of this growth will come from Asia: by 2030 Asia will represent 66% of the global middle-class population and 59% of middle-class consumption, compared to 28% and 23%, respectively in 2009, according to the figure below

http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3681/An_emerg...

How realistic do you think it is that people that have just escaped poverty will give up their new lifestyle? Technology is the only solution. It really baffles me that HN is a place where people think technology is the answer to all problems... except for climate change.

Culture is not universal. Although many people in the world aspire to an American style life, each culture has it's own roots. Appealing to those roots is probably important in guiding people to a different, but not worse, way of living.

For example, in many parts of South East Asia people avoid heating and air conditioning. It's considered unhealthy to over manage your environment in that way. Where I live, in Japan, I've always thought it was really unfortunate that western clothes became popular -- for most of the south western portions of the country it really is a under performing choice. If, when Japan was transitioning from a poor country to a rich country, an emphasis was made to prefer native clothes which are better suited to the climate, it would have made a significant difference in how people acted.

There will always be a subset of the population that are going to want the American utopia of a detached, climate controlled bungallo full the the brim with furniture and gadgets, but it doesn't need to be the goal of the entire population -- even if they want a comfortable and rich lifestyle. Appealing to the existing culture is a good way to get people to appreciate a different way of living.

Your comment contains one of the root causes of our problems but states it as a given and focuses on the consequences instead.

Population explosion is badly overlooked when looking at climate/environmental issues.

I don't think it matters what anyone thinks. The reality will hit the poor hardest. Those of us who ignore the root causes, continue the same behaviors and expect different results, and look for some magical solution are culpable.

I sincerely hope you are right and there is some wonderful tech solution to this. Meanwhile I am not buying land 90m from current sea levels.

It will hit the poor even harder if they dont have cheap reliable energy to grow more wealthy and secure themselves against the climate. Its always been a problem.

It reminds me of optimal philanthropy. For example one of the most effective ways to donate money towards mitigating climate change is to give to The Humane League for sheer outreach & promotional materials on becoming a vegetarian (even if animal welfare itself is not important to you).

Super boring low-tech thing like sending out flyers & sharing videos of animal welfare in industrial farming turns out to be hugely efficient in terms of CO2 reduction per dollar.

https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-human...

https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/top-animal-charitie...

I agree that we shouldn't chase magical high tech solutions, but not for your reasons. We don't need high tech solutions, because we already have all necessary technology. It's just a matter of political will at this point. Wind, solar, batteries , electric cars, power-to-gas, home insulation, heat pumps; all this exists already. We just need to build a shitton of turbines and panels.

Smack in the middle of SPI (Solar Power International/Energy Storage International) seems like an odd choice of time.

Applied!

We don't deal with climate change, but we have a product to enable non-profits and political campaigns to run GIANT volunteer networks. I'm not sure if that fits their criteria, but if they want to create a mass movement that movement needs tools, right?

Carpool management on Slack

https://twitter.com/moflome/status/1165689379420946432?s=21

this is a fool's errand. You ain't gonna fix anything with startups in this field, you fix it with policy and frankly a collective, long, stern look in the mirror and almost inevitably war and a lot of dead people.

Isn't the YC business model 1. get lots of users 2. sell user data when you start running out of money and realize your business model doesn't work? Not sure how this would apply to actual issues like climate change...

They did invest in a fusion reactor startup:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/helion-energy-got-fund...

"Office Hours for Startups Tackling Climate Issues" is an awkward title. Lots of companies are "tackling climate issues" without that being their sole focus. My first read of the title was that this was about companies shifting their office hours to reduce heat/ac loads, or to facilitate commuting schedules.

> My first read of the title was that this was about companies shifting their office hours to reduce heat/ac loads, or to facilitate commuting schedules.

Came here to say exactly this. In fact if there are any articles about that, I'd appreciate if someone would post them here.

I don't see what you mean, but if someone wants to suggest a better—i.e. more accurate and neutral—title, we can change it.

I read it the same way. Perhaps simply changing it to `YCombinator Office Hours...` would be enough to guide the reader to the right meaning? Or `YC Open Office Hours...`?

Ok we've consed YC on there.

> "consed YC on there."

How to find a lisp programmer in the wild. They use cons in casual conversation. :)

Title makes perfect sense to me!

FWIW my interpretation was the same.

FFS. The apotheosis of disaster capitalism. Fiddling while Rome burns while demanding a hefty appearance fee.

I agree that we're all kind of watching ourselves die a slow death, but at least they're putting their money where their mouth is. What do you think a reasonable thing for them to do is? Even if yc divested from every company they have a stake in and donated it to climate efforts, would that make a dent?

Fund lobbying and political campaigns for candidates who support climate change mitigation efforts. YC will have no impact unless they get governments (with resources orders of magnitude greater than that of YC) set in the right direction.

No startup is going to solve climate change. The scale of the problem is simply too large. You need public policy to internalize the externalities of carbon emissions.

Successful ventures in this field make for more convincing lobbying

Then get out there and support Tesla and your local wind turbine/PV solar installer/commercial developer. Those are who are driving out fossil fuel and petroleum use at scale (BYD is arguably doing quite a bit of that with electric busses, but as a Chinese company, that’ll be a harder hill to climb in the current political climate). You must destroy demand for CO2 producing activities, and renewables and EVs do just that.

There is no need for a startup to deploy EV chargers at homes, condos, apartments, and public facilities. This requires community involvement instead, as there is little if any profit to be realized from the activity. But this is crucial for EV uptake. Someone has to do the legwork (I am working on automation for this, but alas, there are only so many hours in a day).

The tech is already proven. It’s all up to public policy now to nudge people in the right direction (renewables, EVs, carbon offsets for anything else where you absolutely cannot avoid CO2 emissions).

> What do you think a reasonable thing for them to do is?

I have a hard enough time figuring out what a reasonable thing for me to do is. Deconstruction is always the easy part. One thing we can be certain of at this stage is that 'startup' culture with its emphasis on catastrophic global entropy increase (ie. so-called 'economic growth') is a road to nowhere good.

You can go carbon-neutral yourself. It’s not cheap, but it keeps getting cheaper over time. Then eliminate meat from your diet and reduce your plastic waste.

If everyone did that, the biggest problems would be solved. So that’s a reasonable thing for you to do.

Don’t fall for the learned helplessness encouraged by fossil fuel companies.

> If everyone did that, the biggest problems would be solved

Any solution to a problem that starts 'If everyone did ...' is the deadest of expired ducks.

Global ecosystem collapse is a systems issue of vast complexity. While we need at a minimum to (1) take down capitalism and (2) explore social and 'economic' (scare quotes intended) alternatives, no-one really knows how to do these things. They're certainly far beyond my capacities to contemplate. This has little to do with 'fossil fuel companies'.

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