Key Takeaways from our 2025 NYCW event: Prove It. Sell It. Fund It

On 9/22 we brought together founders, corporates, and financiers in New York City for a series of deep-dive conversations on what it takes to move climate projects from concept to scaled reality. The half-day event featured three panels that examined complementary pieces of the puzzle: Pilots, Offtakes, and Financing. What follows is a synthesis of the conversations, capturing the practical insights and candid reflections shared by the panelists and attendees.

Panel 1: Pilots — From First Deployment to Repeatable Models

The day opened with a hard look at pilots: the proving grounds for climate technologies. Panelists acknowledged that while pilots are essential, they are often a double-edged sword — helping validate a product while also trapping founders in bespoke, unscalable projects.

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t mistake activity for progress. Pilots only matter if they create pathways to scale. Too often, founders celebrate landing a pilot without considering whether the structure will translate to a repeatable commercial agreement.
• Transparency is currency. Investors want to see not just a successful pilot, but what the company learned when things didn’t go as planned. Surprises erode trust; candor builds it.
• Corporate partners must evolve too. Several speakers noted that corporates can inadvertently hold back innovation by insisting on rigid procurement structures. Building room for iteration and acknowledging the value of co-learning is critical.

One founder summed it up neatly: “Pilots aren’t the destination, they’re a bridge. If we don’t design them with scale in mind, we’re just building one-off science projects.”

Panel 2: Offtakes — The Art (and Pain) of Securing Demand

The second panel shifted the focus to offtake agreements — widely viewed as the linchpin for bankability in climate markets. But the conversation underscored just how fraught these deals can be.

Key Takeaways:

• Paper vs. practice. A signed offtake agreement looks like success, but panelists cautioned that not all contracts are created equal. Flexibility on volumes or pricing mechanisms can undermine bankability, and taking the wrong deal can be worse than no deal at all.
• Timing is everything. There is no such thing as chasing offtakes too early. Being frank early on with customers can help build trust and educate them about risks before founders have retired them completely.
• The credibility gap. Corporates want assurance that startups can deliver on promised volumes, while startups want commitments that investors will recognize as binding. Bridging this trust gap requires shared risk — milestone payments, early deposits, or volume step-ups that grow over time.
• Investors read between the lines, and so should founders. Financiers on the panel emphasized they don’t just look at whether offtakes exist; they scrutinize the counterparties, the contract durability, and whether the deal is structured to survive stress tests. Equally as important, founders should be analyzing the internal political hierarchies and how decisions are made within their customers’ organizations. Having more than one ally internally within your customer can be a deal-making feature.

As one investor put it: “Offtakes are a process of building trust between investors and customers. There is no perfect agreement, and there is no one form of “bankable” offtake. Founders have to balance what an offtake can signal and what it can guarantee.”

Panel 3: Financing — How Capital Providers Choose in 2025’s Market

The final panel zoomed out to examine the financing landscape, with a focus on circularity and bio-based materials. The discussion highlighted just how noisy and fractured the market has become — and how financiers are adapting.

Key Takeaways:

• Signals can be deceiving. There’s no shortage of pitch decks touting the next breakthrough in materials or agtech, but panelists warned that hype gives way to fundamentals. Investors look for evidence of repeatable demand and early supply chain adoption. Underwriting also looks heavily at partnerships - with corporates, universities, or other investors – to validate both the science and the business case.
• Due diligence goes both ways. Technical and commercial risk rarely line up neatly, especially when exploring less mature verticals - like circular or bio-based solutions. While founders may cast their fundraising net wide, navigating various investor diligence processes and preferences can be a challenge and requires careful planning and strong attention to process. Savvy founders also build their own frameworks for identifying excellent investors that can be partners beyond the financing.
• Creative structures are becoming mainstream. From milestone-based tranches to blended finance, deal structures are evolving to reflect the unique risks in climate projects. One panelist noted, “There’s no one-size-fits-all. The best deals are the ones that recognize who’s best positioned to hold which piece of risk.”
• Pricing externalities can improve the business case. Corporate buyers with internal carbon prices – or prices on other resilience benefits – are often more able to make the business case for sustainability investments internally. Despite policy headwinds, many corporates still have an internal practice of setting internal carbon and nature-based prices to maintain cross-functional alignment of the full cost of doing business.

The panel closed with a practical reminder: “For founders, the best thing you can do is make your story legible. If investors can’t see how you get from today to a scaled business with credible partners, no amount of passion will save the deal.”

Final Reflections

Across all three panels, a common thread emerged: success in climate markets depends on aligning incentives across founders, corporates, and financiers. Pilots without pathways, offtakes without durability, and financing without creativity all stall progress. But when these pieces come together, the path to scale — while still hard — becomes navigable.

Or as one participant summed it up during a hallway break: “At the end of the day, it’s about trust. Pilots build it, offtakes test it, and financing rewards it.”

Acknowledgement: huge thanks to Laura Xu of ClimateX for her note-taking during the event! This summary would not have been possible without her effort!