Climate Entrepreneurship with Ben Soltoff, Ecosystem Builder & Entrepreneur in Residence @ MIT

Welcome to another episode of The Grove. Thank you to our partners, Crazy Friends, Clean Tech Growth Lab, for making this possible, but without them would not be possible to interview awesome people doing awesome things like Ben. Welcome. Happy to be here. Great to be with you.

this I held my excitement in the conversation before um uh this this interview, but I uh met Ben at a at a event at Greentown Labs, and I'm extremely excited to um learn more about uh your perspective on climate tech, uh on building in the space, in the world, how things come to be, all of these

things. Uh, and so before we get into it, if you could give a brief introduction of yourself and uh, what you're currently building. Yeah, happy to to talk about that. Thanks again for having me, Blake. My name is Ben Soul. I am entrepreneur and ecosystem builder in residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT

Entrepreneurship. The biggest thing I'm working on right now is a book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship for Climate and Energy Ventures. The book is written. It is released in November, November 25th. Uh so so it's it's ready. It's here and we're working on getting it out to the world. The book is the first how-to guide in book form for how

to start a venture in the climate and energy space. It's a really accessible, easy to use step-by-step guide with illustrations and actionable templates that you can fill out. It's based on the existing discipline entrepreneurship framework uh which has been wildly successful and and part of the source of of several best-selling books and it's

also based on the really successful climate energy ventures class at MIT which has spun out over 60 ventures directly. Another hundred ventures have been started by alumni and they've raised billions of dollars. So, I've worked with some really amazing co-authors who've made all those other things happen. And my job as the lead

author of the book was to take all of their insights and inputs and turn that into a framework and structure and useful set of steps. Yeah, that's right. So, it's that's what was so exciting about this episode. So uh before we dive into uh the frameworks and how you got into it, have you always

uh typically uh these questions are about you know people uh starting businesses and things but because it's uh authoring a book is also uh one of the most difficult things someone could choose to do. So have you always seen yourself as an author? Is this your first book?

This is my first book. Um so that is quite uh an exciting thing. And you know, it's always been in my mind that that it would be really cool to to write a book. I don't know if I've always seen that as a defining feature of my identity, but writing has been a

throughine in my life and career. It's something that I've always gravitated towards doing. I was an English minor in college. I did non-fiction, creative writing. I liked finding out out outlets where I could tell stories, particularly true stories. And in my work now supporting climate tech companies, telling their stories has has has been

something I've loved to integrate. So I was a freelance journalist for a while. I wrote for Green Biz, which is now Trellis Group. I've written for Canary Media, TechCrunch, and a few other outlets. And so I I've published a lot before, but never in book form. It's always been online articles, a few

pieces in print here and there. So that that writing skill has been something I've brought into my work. And when the opportunity came up to actually write a full-length book, that was really, really exciting. And it's been a lot of work, but but knowing that that's something I've wanted for a long time,

and having this opportunity finally come up has been incredibly rewarding. Have you always a lot of the uh outlets that you had mentioned uh are in the sustainability environmental space. Have you always uh gone in that direction with your work or was there at some point in your career where that became a

focus for you? It's been a pretty heavy trend, a pretty pretty constant thing that I've been in climate and sustainability. Uh certainly I've been in climate and sustainability much longer than I've been in entrepreneurship. You know, I I studied ecology and environmental science in undergrad. Even before that, I have old footage of myself making nature

documentaries in the Boston area, which is also where I grew up. And so, you know, that that sustainability has been a a a really core value for a long time. And I've worked on it from different angles. I've come through the policy angle. I've come through the the research angle. I've done actual forest

research and measurement. Um I've come through advocacy and um kind of informational uh outreach in the in the area but most recently it's been around entrepreneurship and startups either part of startups or supporting and coaching and advising people creating startups. So the sustainability has been uh something that I've been working on for a while and I've now seen several

waves and several different approaches of of how to navigate issues in the sustainability space. Yeah. So, I'm glad that you alluded to it cuz it was one of my questions is that uh you seem to have a perspective that that spans a lot of different areas where stakeholders in climate tech and clean tech exist. Like you said, policy,

uh there's also research, there's advocacy, there's entrepreneurship, these things. So um for someone that has been uh active in all of these areas uh you know and and to a very um very high degree uh what is your perspective on the role that each of these areas uh play in putting forward uh solutions to

uh climate or actually doing work that's impactful relative to uh building systems or or economies or companies solutions that that have, you know, tangible impact on improving um uh the planet, you know, whether it's like is it some version of everything working together? Is it some version of, you know, these these have certain places in

certain industries where they're more impactful? Um yeah, wherever you feel like you want to go with that. I'm glad you asked that question because it's something that comes up in my work and life in in various forms and now I'm in the world of entrepreneurship which is you know very close and and in the

current era somewhat married to the world of of tech and I think that there's a misrepresentation of folks in in this world of entrepreneurship that they think everything can be solved with a startup and with a a new venture and I think that there are people in the world of tech who think that the answer to

everything is tech. And I'm not going to say that's not a very real perspective. Uh but it it's certainly not the perspective of myself or the folks that I work with in the world of of entrepreneurship. And this is speaking not just about climate right now, but you know, I'm part of the

entrepreneurship center at MIT. I work with other amazing entrepreneurs and residents and lecturers and people with entrepreneurial experience and people who are building the ecosystem and I think everyone to a person in this world that I work in is says entrepreneurship is just this wonderful way of building solutions. It can be an incredibly

inspiring and empowering way of building solutions but entrepreneurship is not the only route to building solutions. Certainly not for-profit startup ventures, you know, fast scaling potentially venture-backable startup ventures. That is one route to impact and I think a very valid route to impact, a very root valid route to positive impact and as we've seen

sometimes in the last few years even negative impact and that's something we have to be mindful and cognizant of and work to avoid creating startups that are negative for the world rather than positive. Uh but there's lots of other ways to create change and I wouldn't say that those aren't entrepreneurship. In fact, in the book we very explicitly say

that climate and energy entrepreneurship is not just about startups. It's also about innovation within large companies and corporations, innovation within government, innovation within large institutions and nonprofits. This entrepreneurial approach, while we focus mainly on startups, the lessons can apply to any kind of innovation. And it's not just about creating startups.

And then there's plenty of ways that people can innovate and build solutions uh that are completely outside of the world of new technology and startups. And I hope that anyone who's building solutions will find value in some of the frameworks we've put together. But I also want to make sure that folks are

empowered and that we acknowledge and uplift the people who are doing great work in all aspects of this space. So getting back to your initial question, it is everybody. it is, you know, a whole bunch of efforts. And, you know, I think this is unique because climate isn't an industry. Um, sustainability isn't an industry. It's something that

cuts across a lot of different industries. I think it's a very helpful framing because it's what draws a lot of people to the space and to particular solutions, but you can do good work in this space in just about any industry with just about any skill set. So you don't need to be starting a climate tech

startup that is spinning out the latest greatest technology from MIT to be creating solutions. And I would not want anyone's takeaway from the book or from my talking about the book to be that that's the only way to create impact.

Yeah. Well, thank you for uh saying that because I'm on the same page and I think it would be really useful, you know, right before we again get into um most of what you're alluding to with the book and things like that if you could if there are people listening that uh don't

have aspirations necessarily for entrepreneurship or um uh you know be doing a startup. For example, you know, I have a friend who uh thankfully agreed to do uh an episode even though I had to go back and forth with her for a while because she is specifically a researcher. And uh she was like, you

know, I don't have a lot to contribute. And I said, yeah, there's so much for you to contribute to this conversation because research is such a huge um piece of uh of of the space and moving things forward, but it doesn't it's not as flashy and it doesn't move as quickly.

And so, you know, like like you're speaking to, it doesn't get as much of the spotlight. So if you could just briefly describe uh I guess or summarize for somebody that's listening it's like uh you know what what role does uh research play you know why is it important what role does policy play uh

the advocacy that you spoke to you know just um you know how they relate in this system yeah I'll start with research I've done research I grew up around academic research both of my parents were academic researchers in cell biology ology. So the world of particularly academia was very present and the whole

pathway there of doing research getting things published in journals the learning and apprenticeship model that exists in this world of going from your undergrad maybe to a master's and then this long arduous PhD and maybe posttos and you know this whole process of of learning how to do it before you're really driving the the research. I'm I'm

very familiar with it and and you know it's it's quite a remarkable thing really. I sometimes criticize folks in this world because they're too focused on just publishing research and not doing anything. Uh or not individuals necessarily, but the whole system is very much geared towards publishing research and sharing it. But there's no

guarantee that anyone will actually use it. and when we have really urgent and critical problems in the world that can that there can be a lack of urgency around research. But I will say to to the credit of the amazing folks in this world, this world that I'm very close to, I think it's one of the amazing

things in our society that we put out so much research for the sake of knowledge. That we have these large sprawling universities and one of their core functions is to create knowledge that benefits humanity and to pursue knowledge for its own sake. And in in the US, there's been a lot more limitations and there's been just a lot

more barriers for folks who are doing that kind of research. And I will say like it's so valuable that we have that and even if we don't know immediately what the impact is, it's really important to have folks in this space who are who are expanding the limits of of human knowledge and and I think we we

certainly need to support more of that and not less. And then on top of that, it's really pushing to think of, okay, well, now that we've expanded the knowledge, what do we do with it? And I think that that's the question that doesn't get asked enough. Uh, and I think in fact more folks would would

would be in support of this research and would have more more champions outside of academia and folks could see really directly what is this research doing for the world. It's sometimes very removed from the the origins of of research when it's used. If you think about, you know, vaccines and medications and treatments,

by the time that you as an individual are interacting with those solutions or in climate, I mean, it's at such a large systemic scale, uh, that you may never touch it directly at all. You may never even realize that you're benefiting from the storm that wasn't as strong as it could have been, the flood that didn't

happen. you know, it could it could very well save your life, but you you don't even know exactly all of the factors that that came from that, many of which started with research. So, to get to that initial question of of why is research important, you know, so many of the solutions that I work with on a

daily basis would not exist without research, without the the whole apparatus of of academic research. And and it's not just academia. I mean we've seen a larger cut back of research and development over decades within the private sector and I think private sector research also has a huge amount to to contribute particularly in terms

of of research towards solutions. So so research is is a really critical piece of the puzzle. Well so also and and and like you're saying this this aspect of taking research and then and then creating meaning out of it creating impact. I mean it's it's easy to see how the entrepreneurship startup tech uh

perspective does this but the um uh policy regulation is that another method of having this research um have impact bring it and be tangible. One of the big things that we focused on in this book that was different from other entrepreneurship books, even other books in the discipline entrepreneurship series is a focus on policy because you

simply can't create useful solutions in the climate and energy space without having some interaction with policy. And I think startups need to engage with policy probably more than they do. And there's there's a lot of value not just for climate and energy startups to doing this you know but there is this idea of ask

forgiveness rather than permission especially in Silicon Valley you just put your ride shares on the road you put your scooters on the sidewalks and hope people adopt them and that the city doesn't kick you out and if they do you ask forgiveness rather than permission.

But in climate and energy, you can't create a new small modular nuclear reactor, hook it up to the grid, and then ask forgiveness rather than permission. You need to work with the appropriate regulators and the appropriate, you know, powers that be to to make these things work. And there simply is no route forward without doing

it. So, so, so regulation and policy are essential considerations for startups. But your question is more broadly about the role of of policy and I think policy is is absolutely essential and I don't want to say that you can't create climate startups without a favorable policy environment because I think that's one of the fallacies in this

space particularly now that we don't have a lot of super friendly policies towards climate in the United States at the federal level at the state and local level many policies and in fact there are still some some things at the federal level that are quite helpful to to startups. Um so I don't want to say

you know if if certain regulators or certain government officials are not in your camp then you can't do it. There's certainly barriers there but you know no one says you know if if there's change in the department of education that education technology is is irrelevant.

You know, it's the same here. Like energy is something that we need. Emissions are something that we need to deal with. And we're going to have startups and solutions that work on those things. And that we we need startups to work on those things regardless of of the environment. But the the the way I often frame in terms

of policy is that policy can can set the table quite nicely. it can set the circumstances and then it's up to entrepreneurs within startups within companies within any kind of uh institution to come and eat at that table and and I I think one of the frustrations I found working at the kind

of purely policy level is that even if you put the right incentives and the right systems in place policy is not really good at that you know nuts and bolts rubber hits the road and that's where we need entrepreneurs and so it's not like if there's polic it's not you know policy is favorable and things get

solved policy is not favorable nothing gets solved there's there's this it's more of this constant interplay between government and startups and companies and all the different players so it gets back to what we were talking about before we need everyone and there's just a really crit critical role though for policy oh well thank you for indulging my

questions about that because uh again I think having uh you having experience in all of them I think breeds a really interesting perspective ive on how they work together like you're saying. And so, uh, just to kind of pivot a little bit, I'm curious, uh, within like across all of those experiences where you're

at, how did it come to be that it was the right thing to do to write a book? How did that happen in your life personally? Yeah. Um, I think think it's definitely uh a story of being in the right place in the right time, but also being the right person in the right place at the

at the right time. I've been at MIT almost 4 years now. Most immediately I was prior to that I was in a role at Yale. So I have a lot of experience in my recent career working within universities helping students build and launch climate solutions. And when I first came to MIT, the big project that

I was working on was a collaboration between MIT, the Greentown Labs incubator that we've talked about, and a consortium of universities in Texas because Greentown had had just recently expanded to Texas when I started working with them. and they were looking to learn from MIT so that they could better connect and engage with these

universities in Texas when they opened their Houston uh version of Greentown Labs. So I spent a lot of time going down to Texas engaging with the students and the faculty members and staff members and and other stakeholders across the ecosystem and working with Greentown and folks across that ecosystem. we built was now its own

nonprofit called TEX, Texas Exchange for Energy and Climate Entrepreneurship. And so I was spending a lot of time going back and forth to Texas, starting what became its own nonprofit that now works with hundreds of students every year across Texas. A bunch of them were just at MIT at this amazing hackathon and and

they had a huge role to play in in meeting students from around the world and representing the the Texas perspective, which tends to be a little more oil and gas friendly. Um, but once that nonprofit got started and once there was a team running it, I had a little more time and capacity. And so

that's why I bring that up. And I was thinking, you know, okay, got a little bit more free time than I than I normally have. What can I do? Let's let's write a book. Um, specifically that because I'd [snorts] been teaching throughout all of this, both in Houston and and also at a lot of different uh

occasions in MIT as teaching discipline entrepreneurship. This framework was started by Bill Olette, who is my boss, the managing director of the Martin Trust Center. It's based on his experience as a startup founder and teaching startups and entrepreneurs at MIT. It's the core of uh the oldest entrepreneurship class in the US, entrepreneurship 101. Uh used to be

called New Enterprises. It's been running for over 50 years, actually over 60 years, I believe, at this point. Uh, and so I've been teaching it and I've been translating it for climate and energy founders because that's my area. So I've been taking this 24step framework and figuring out what applies, where do I emphasize, what do I

maybe downplay or de-emphasize, what other things do I need to add around policy and finance and impact measurement. So I knew that framework really well. I knew the trials and tribulations of climate and energy founders really well. I had time and then most critically the publishers were very interested in a new book. So

the 10th anniversary edition of discipline entrepreneurship was just about to come out. A new book called Startup Tactics written by the amazing Paul Cheek who's our executive director and and started this class on really the the nuts and bolts of starting a business that was about to come out. So they were on the verge of releasing

these two new books and the publishers were saying what's next? I said well I have time and I have this expertise. let's do a a vertical specific version of discipline entrepreneurship because I think that's what's missing. Um how do we how do we apply it? And that that very much was in parallel to how we

teach this stuff at MIT. And so we were quite fortunate to get a book contract very quickly. You know, publishing you might not think of as a thriving industry these days. It certainly changed a lot. But publishers are interested in in known brands and known quantities and things that have a an established

audience. It's a little bit like media these days where where there's a lot of franchises and you know I think that is to the detriment of folks that are independent and that are creating something totally new. Um but there is something to be said for delivering something that that the audience is familiar with and that has a

built-in audience and that was discipline entrepreneurship. So I I I say all that because I was quite fortunate that we got a book contract very quickly because we were essentially the Marvel movies of books and [laughter] books. Well done. Well done.

And so we were able to get this and I take very little credit for for that opportunity. You know, I think being the right person and having the right knowledge, having the writing ability and having the the time and capacity and will to write a book were all factors, but we were also in the right place at

the right time and that we had this existing series and a publisher who was interested in expanding it. So then so then what uh I thought I I think that's really cool what you were saying taking this existing framework that has u proven to very positively impact a lot of entrepreneurs lives and make it um

vertical specific into the climate tech space. And so generally speaking what are the core differences between an entrepreneur startup uh in the the climate space versus one that's not? [snorts] Mhm. A lot of entrepreneurs in the climate space are doing what you might call deep deep tech or tough tough tech. They're starting things that have

complex technology quite possibly coming out of a lab at a place like MIT though not necessarily and it has a long timeline in order to get to scale. Often you're going from something that starts under a fume hood within a lab and goes all the way to massive infrastructure scale. And so you

need to scale up a novel physical process upwards of you know a thousand times. Uh and that's quite complicated and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of money to to do that. There are certainly opportunities for software solutions for B2B SAS for consumer software in this space. So I don't want to say that

everything in climate tech is all deep tech and tough tough tech but we do need tough tech solutions in energy and we do need it in climate and we need uh and I do see a higher proportion of things that are in climate and energy that are deep deep tech and tough tech. So that's

a big factor in this space and that's the perspective from from which we wrote the book. So there's the long timelines, the long uh the high high capital needs. We call that the high price of poker. Like if you're going to play a startup at like a think about it like a poker

game, there's a certain ante and the ante is is high because of the the the high capital needs, the long timelines for climate stuff, for a lot of climate stuff. For a lot of more general software stuff, the anti low and getting lower doesn't make it easy. It's still still not not an easy journey for any

startup founder and I don't want to say that that it is but the AI tools that we have to expand that are lower and then the ante gets higher each round because you're building something at a a larger physical scale. You need more capital and so you need to deal with that high

price of poker. You need to consider policy. The we talked about policy and you cannot get around government and regulation in this space. You need to consider complex capital stacks to overcome those higher anties also thought of like as a valley of death where a lot of ventures don't survive.

You need to go from usually grant funding, non-dilutive capital to some kind of patient venture capital, maybe angel investors, maybe um you know, long-term capital providers, maybe maybe climate specific venture capital. And then eventually you may need to get to infrastructure financing, things like project financing and debt. And the the questions that those investors ask, the

things they need to see are very different. And so you can't just go to Silicon Valley VCs usually to get all the capital that you need. You need to piece together these different capital sources and keep the venture going across those different capital needs.

And and I just want to go back then to this point about scale. You need to be able to scale things. You need to be able to scale complex physical processes. All of that needs to work. And and that creates unique challenges.

And so those are some of the difference. Oh, and the one I forgot, planetary impact measurement. Um, you know, if you're doing this work, you're probably doing it because you want to have some kind of positive impact on the planet and you're probably attracting people who are looking for that. And you need

to be rigorous in how you show that to them. And usually the the what I call the climate value proposition, how you measure value for the climate and the planet is different than your customer value proposition. You're probably going to try to bring in customers because of uh factors like cost and reliability.

maybe quality um very rare to get customers because of climate value alone but there are a lot of stakeholders who care about the climate value and so you need to do that whole whole measurement so there's this whole set of metrics you need to have in addition to your your your your normal startup metrics about

planetary impact measurement that's another factor so all these things are different in this space the core fundamentals I think remain the same you need to know your customer you need to start somewhere that's small and reasonable and gives you a good foothold at Beach Head Market and find the right stepping stones to move on from there.

You need to talk to your customer and understand your perspective. You need to create a reasonable plan that you can share with investors and other stakeholders. Like any startup needs to do all those things, but then this additional stuff around the long timelines and the high capital needs and the complex capital stack, the planetary

impact, building at large scale, going through government or regulation, those create additional layers on top of those fundamentals. Are there um or is there a common quality or um any common thread that you see between both uh founders that go after uh building in this space and are successful and also ones that are not?

I think I well I'll start by saying one of our our core beliefs and principles at the Martin Trust Center at MIT is that anyone can be an entrepreneur. And we very much fight against this myth that you're either born an entrepreneur or you're not. We see entrepreneurship as a craft. It's something that can be

learned and taught and our job is to to teach it. And so I very much don't want to give the impression that, you know, you you can't be an entrepreneur if you don't have certain qualities or that an entrepreneur only looks one way. Um and and the people often have a vision or

you know a picture in their head of what an entrepreneur looks like and and that's exclusive to to many groups of people. And so there are however qualities that I think are useful. A top one would be grit and that's for any entrepreneur. Um, I know there's there's there's recent research around what what

what does grit actually mean? But it's this idea of, you know, tackling something, trying and and not giving up when when it's hard and when the going gets tough. Um, that's part of it, but it's not it's also not just kind of pushing the boulder up the hill again and again and again and having it keep

coming down. Like there is a point where you need to know when to quit or when you need to quit a certain tac and try a different tac. Uh so there's also a a you know working smarter not harder but you have to work smart and work hard in this space and I think anyone can can do

that. And one thing I'll say about personality and and climate entrepreneurs energy entrepreneurs is that this is a space that really rewards nerdiness especially with you know deep tech and tough tech. It's a lot of folks coming out of labs. a lot of folks building challenging technologies or folks working with folks who are building or

or researching challenging technologies, complicated things. It's a f place place where folks don't shy away from you know really narrow understanding the very particular fields of of using a lot of technical jargon when they need to. You have to then translate that for a broader audience.

But but that all goes to say there's a lot of nerds in this space and uh I think that's a really great thing and so you can be that nerdy researcher and you can lead a startup and in fact your customers are going to really value how well you understand the technology. You

still do need to be able to communicate to a broad audience. uh you need to communicate across multiple audiences, but you don't necessarily need to be the like super charismatic tech founder who, you know, gets up on a stage and and presents this vision. You know, if you can if you can create an

appeal with an audience who's got a very narrow problem in in a you know, really, you know, unsexy industrial area, that's actually where we need a lot of climate solutions. And so if you can communicate to those folks on the factory floor, those folks in R&D departments of major corporations, those folks who are, you

[snorts] know, building and figuring out really naughty, difficult problems, uh I think you can you can go really far as a startup founder. Um and I I see a lot of folks who do quite well in this space who um you wouldn't look at them and say this is a startup founder. They

don't they don't have that kind of you know stereotypical charisma but I think what they do have in terms of how they describe tricky technical problems and work through them is even more valuable. So I uh a couple last questions for you and uh two of them are my favorite but my but my first one is with uh with this

project being completed uh with it being at this stage with the book and the release and everything is there uh uh is there a way are there any uh particular ways that you hope people utilize this book uh specifically?

Yeah. Uh I love that question. you know, we are going to have a digital version. There will probably be an audio book and people consume media in all kinds of different ways there and right now and it's usually digital. And one thing I will say is this is a book that's particularly useful to have a physical

copy um because it's a great reference text and and I think that that that's very much how it's designed. You can certainly sit through it in one read, you know, take it to the beach, take it to the park, take it to wherever. I've certainly taken the other discipline entrepreneurship books to the beach and

and read them there and uh maybe I looked weird, but but that that that I that I find fun. Uh but it's it's not meant like as a quick beach or airport read. It is accessible. It's not too long, but it's meant to be something that you keep on your desk, something that you keep on your table, and when

you encounter a problem, you go back to it. What was that one story in there? What was that? you know what was that one step that could be really useful and so you take out the book I have the physical copy here so for anyone who's watching you can see it and take out

that physical copy and flip to the right page and so so a reference book is the key word there uh something to keep around and if you if you do have the opportunity to get a physical copy of the book that would be my strong recommendation for for for how to to to

to get it u so you can use it more easily as a reference awesome and so uh you know releasing a book, writing a book I don't think is very different from uh you know launching a product starting starting a product. So I think there's a lot of similarities there and uh one of my

favorite things to ask is at the moment what is uh one of the biggest hurdles that you're facing at the moment and how is it also an opportunity? one of the biggest hurdles, uh, you know, it's it's a physical product, a book, and so the logistics of getting books to to where they need to be is

something that, um, that that that I wasn't necessarily expecting to to deal with. There's been a lot as an author, you know, especially in today's publishing environment, a lot falls to the author. You're not just writing the book. You're coordinating and project managing the entire process. you're you're out there selling it, engaging

with your customers, your readers, your your your your folks, you're, you know, creating content to to to be I'm here on this podcast. You know, it's it's a whole process and and you're involved with a lot of it. And one of the pieces has just been, you know, I've been the point person for not individual sales,

but for larger group sales, for getting books at events. And so just the logistics of of making sure that we get all of the copies of this book into the hands of people where they're where they're needed has been a challenge. And you know, it's not the sort of thing that you can just put on an app store or

you can send out by email. Once you're dealing with a physical book, which I just said was the the way to go. Uh then you have to ship physical books and they're not huge. You can see it's it's kind of thin, but you know, any any quantity gets heavy real fast. And so

those logistics um I've been still figuring out exactly how to navigate and how do we how do we get tables with this book at events where people might want want to buy it. We were just at this great event at Kresky Auditorium and and MIT this past weekend and people loved it. Um but it was no small feat to to

make sure we had those books available. Yeah. Well, good. Well, um, with all of this, uh, work to be done and, uh, all this work that has been done, uh, I'm curious what inspires you. Oh, it's the entrepreneurs. That's an easy one. You know, there's a lot that's entrepreneurial about writing a book,

but the the folks who are starting companies in this space, it takes years. It takes a lot of effort. It's often thankless. They often don't get the, you know, glory and attention, but they deserve it. and just seeing folks who commit their time and energy and lives to building solutions in this space.

I've worked with many of them across great universities and outside. The work that they do is is what inspires me and their ability to keep showing up to keep doing difficult sometimes seemingly impossible things. That's what inspires me.

Nice. Well, me too. So, I'm glad that you said that answer because we share that. But thank you. Um, thank you so much for coming on and and sharing your perspective. If anyone else was inspired to uh follow along with your journey, access the book, which uh I think is uh something that I'm going to do very

quickly. How would they do that? Yeah, the the book is called Discipline Entrepreneurship for Climate and Energy Ventures. The website is deforce CEV.com. DE for discipline entrepreneurship four is the number four and then CEV climate and energy ventures. So just those six characters.com it'll you can buy the book but you can also learn about the

steps, explore them, access some of our digital resources. There's a lot of great stuff available on that website. Awesome. Ben, thank you so much for what you're doing and for your time today. I'm excited to keep in touch.

Yeah. Uh thank you so much for having me, Blake. I appreciate the the invitation, the enthusiasm, and the great really thoughtful questions. You got it. I'm excited to see where you guys go. All right. Thanks so much.