How to Start (or Restart) a Climate Business
Before you start a website, design a logo, or even think about your pricing model you need to make sure you’re crystal clear on the problem you’re solving.
Quick aside: We HIGHLY recommend building a B2B company, but you’re absolutely not required to do so. It’s a lot easier to be financially viable in the early days regardless of whether or not you have investment backing (like angel investors or VCs). You can solve bigger problems and charge more for your services by focusing on business customers.
Many climate and purpose-first entrepreneurs get married to their product or solution without taking the time to think about what customer problem it solves. Jumping into action too fast will set you up for failure, no matter how much effort you put in. This is why you need to not just think about the problem, but even interview people who you think experience that problem to deeply understand their perspective and needs.
Step 1: A Problem You Care About
Being an entrepreneur means that you’re totally free to do whatever you want. This is of course a huge privilege if everything works out, but it also means that you need a ton of motivation to keep going through the hard times. A few questions you can ask yourself:
What am I drawn to when I’m free to research or learn about things independently?
Thinking about people connected to that area of interest, what are their top priorities or challenges day-to-day?
Does fixing these top priorities or challenges speak to you or excite you?
Step 2: Interview People You Know
This is where it helps to work within a space you’re familiar with or have access to. Before you start building anything (nope, not even deciding a name) take some time to interview people to understand their life, and validate your assumptions from Step 1.
When you do a customer interview to develop your business idea, you shouldn’t talk much about yourself. Focus your time on understanding the person you’re talking to. Some things you’ll want to walk away understanding about your interviewee:
What is their job function (not just title, what do they literally do day-to-day)
What are their top priorities throughout the year (including what their bosses evaluate them on)
Prioritize those priorities to understand which ones matter most to the broader company’s success
For those top priorities, understand how those priorities would be or are already handled operationally
For those top priorities, understand what the larger company would achieve or unlock by having these priorities sorted
For those top priorities, understand how your contacts job or life would change if those priorities were done for them
You’re totally welcome to have these conversations with second or third degree connections too, so to make sure you don’t run out of contacts ask everyone to suggest one or two contacts who might be able to provide an interesting perspective in this space.
The most successful founders hold themselves accountable or have an ecosystem to hold them accountable. If you need help navigating any part of this process, consider joining Go-to-Market Sprints we can help you set up the systems to make efficient progress here!
Step 3: Review Your Notes
Take a look are your notes, and ask yourself if the direction you’re going down is aligned to that original problem you care about (or a problem you’re equally excited about).
Take a minute to also look at your broader vision and impact:
Are you seeing that your conversations were indicating that their priorities are aligned with your intended impact?
What would it mean for people and the planet to solve or not solve the main priorities you’re hearing about?
If you’re feeling excited about where you’re going, keep on going! If not, head back to step 1.
Step 4: Build an MVP
If you have good enough conversations with these contacts, it will be really clear what your product or service will need to achieve to solve a real, high priority, problem for folks that isn’t already being easily solved - maintaining your values and sticking to your why.
When you’re building your MVP, stay very focused on what the unsolved challenges and priorities that will be a meaningful addition to potential customers - do your best to not be distracted by adding in the beginning (those will be fun add-ons, but won’t necessarily be the core selling feature).
The goal here is to be simple, and not spend too much time and money over-building something that isn’t proven to generate any money yet.
Step 5: Iterate Feedback & Growth
Continue to speak with your contacts while you’re building out your MVP to get their feedback on how your current MVP would solve the main priorities that they’ve outlined.
If you’re listening and creating offers that solve the core problems you’re contacts have mentioned, you should be able to sign a deal, collect revenue, and build out a pilot or offer a full service at this stage.
This should be a seamless transition into a sales function. Sales is all about understanding your customer and working together to solve their problem - one step just happens to be signing a contract and collecting payment because it’s so worth it.
As long as you’re consistent, you eventually make a sale. If you need help navigating these conversations and staying accountable to continuing working consider joining Go-to-Market Sprints!
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Impact Zero empowers climate founders to turn their ideas into thriving, revenue-generating ventures. Through hands-on training, real-time feedback, and structured go-to-market frameworks, founders learn how to define real customer problems, validate solutions, and close sales. The goal is to build sustainable businesses that don’t just make impact—they make money too.