My Climate Journey: Rachel Naylor, MBA ‘22
Running across the Climate Ventures class in spring 2023 was the push that I needed to do more than simply think about starting a climate-focused business and start to take meaningful steps to create it. I had been interested in climate technologies for a while and had even studied engineering in undergrad, but over time other opportunities had taken precedence. Now, after finishing graduate school, it seemed like the time to take a risk and explore a new and different path.
In the first session of the Climate Ventures class, it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t alone in my desire to start something new. There were well over 100 like-minded individuals who were interested in exploring climate-related business ideas and attempting to turn them into reality. The ten-week class was divided into two sections with the first half focusing on identifying a business idea that you were passionate about and the second half focusing on evaluating and fleshing out that idea. Each week highlighted a specific entrepreneurial skill, such as identifying customer pain points or laying out your business model. However, the sessions went beyond the typical high-level discussion of these skills and offered both specific examples of how to implement them along with a wide array of guest speakers who would talk about how they applied them in their own businesses.
Beyond simply learning theories, community and connection were a large focus of the class. We had plenty of opportunities to engage with the other participants, who represented a range of backgrounds from technical to governmental to business and learn more about each other and our goals. This network has persisted through LinkedIn connections and group chats. In fact, it might be one of the most valuable takeaways of the class – that going down this path to creating a climate startup is not one that you can do on your own. Since completing this class, I’ve taken my startup idea and continued to research, refine, and develop it. While I’ve yet to launch a company, I’ve come to appreciate that this process can be messy, it can be non-linear, but sometimes the most important thing is coming back and continuing to try again and again.
