Key takeaways from our 2026 NYCW event: fundraising for climate hardware and deep tech

On 9/21 we brought together founders, investors, lenders, and advisors in New York City to talk about fundraising for climate hardware and deeptech. The afternoon covered three parts of the process: getting ready to raise, putting the pitch to the test, and financing growth as capital needs increase.

Below are the main takeaways from the conversations and some of the practical lessons founders can glean from them.

Session 1: Preparing your Financial Operations Ahead of a Raise

Speakers: Cassandra John, Managing Director at Sif Capital Advisors, Randy Lewis, Partner at WSGR, Jordan Peckham, PaceZero Founder

The first session focused on everything that needs to be in place before a raise gets serious. A good story might get an investor interested. Once diligence starts, though, the details matter.

Key Takeaways:

• Clean up before you open the data room. Stale financials, a messy cap table, unclear entity structures, or a patchwork of customer contracts can slow a raise down quickly. None of this is exciting work, but it is much easier to fix before investors are asking questions. One panelist put it simply: “Your data room is not the Da Vinci Code.”
• Build a model someone else can follow. Keep the assumptions visible, show the source of important inputs and make it easy for someone outside the company to understand what drives the business.
• A lender is not underwriting the same story as an equity investor. Equity investors spend more time on the upside. Lenders are thinking about what happens when things go wrong. A debt raise needs to put risks, mitigants, cash flow, and repayment front and center.
• Leave room for reality. It’s common knowledge that hardware takes longer and often costs more than planned. Using your data room and financial model to communicate timelines, with delays baked in, is a critical part of the storytelling that’s often hard to get just right. Founders should understand the downside case in detail, and be ready to walk investors through their planned mitigation strategies. 
• You need cash in the bank to raise debt. Near-term cash forecasting is easy to neglect when everyone is focused on growth. But lenders want companies to demonstrate solvency, forecast reserves, and maintain coverage or quick ratios that keep their risk at manageable levels.  

Session 2: Live Pitch of Growth Equity Raise

Speakers: Edward Chiang (CEO, Moment Energy), Grace van Bark (Managing Director, OIC), Ben Hogan (Director, Blue Earth Capital), Tanuj Dutta (General Partner, Congruent Ventures)

This session featured a live pitch from Eddy at Moment Energy, followed by a moderated discussion which let audience members observe how investors interrogate a compelling story in real time. The questions quickly moved past the deck and into customers, costs, manufacturing, and what it would take to grow.

Key Takeaways:

• Proof beats another slide. For a hardware company, a product in the field can answer questions that projections cannot. Real deployments show what works, what still breaks, and what needs to be solved before the business can scale.
• Show what changes after the first project. Early facilities and deployments are often expensive. That is not necessarily a problem, but founders need to explain which costs disappear, which fall with scale, and which will still be there the fifth or tenth time around.
• Every round should earn the next one. Investors want to know what this round actually gets the company and why hitting that milestone makes the next raise possible. The model should tie each raise to the projects it funds, the proof the company will have by the end and where the next dollars will come from. This will show that the business can keep up with scale.
• Don’t vertically integrate just because you can. Sometimes the market does not offer what you need, and building in-house makes sense. But that decision is easier to make after you have deployed something and learned where the real problems are.

The most straightforward advice of the session from Eddy to the audience was to “‘just build it.’ The more you can prove in the field, the easier the fundraising story becomes.”

Session 3: Early Infrastructure Deployment & Structured Finance

Speakers: David Ulrey (CFO Fervo Energy)

The final session looked back at how Fervo, a capital-intensive climate company, moved from early equity and grants into debt and project finance. He depicted how, as a company matures, more forms of capital become available and founders have more options for what comes next.

Key Takeaways:

• Know where you need to end up. If the business will eventually depend on project finance or another form of structured capital, start thinking about that early. You may not be able to raise it yet, but you can start building toward what those investors will need to see.
• Use each raise to make the next one easier. In addition to providing cash, early financing can help build a track record, teach the team how to handle new kinds of diligence, and show future investors that the company is ready for a different kind of capital.
• More options give you more leverage. Once a company can raise from several places (such as equity, debt, strategic investors, or project-level capital) it becomes less dependent on any one source. That can change the conversation with investors.
• The wrong deal can cost more than the capital is worth. Price is only a part of the financing. Governance rights, covenants, restrictions, and control can matter just as much, especially when they limit how the company can operate later.
• Expect it to take longer. Large debt and project finance deals can involve months of technical diligence, legal work, and negotiation. A financing plan needs enough room for delays, as well as a backup if the first option falls through.
• Make the new parts feel familiar. Climate companies are often asking investors to take technology risk they have not seen before. It helps to remove uncertainty everywhere else: prove what can be proven, lock in what can be locked in, and structure the deal in a way investors already understand.

You don’t need to have the perfect capital stack figured out from day one. You just need to know what kind of capital you’ll need next, what you have to prove to get there and what tradeoffs you’re willing to make. As David put it, “There’s no right answer. There’s just which way do you want to be wrong.”

Final Reflections

Across the afternoon, one theme stood out. A successful raise depends on more than finding investors. It depends on showing that the business is ready for the kind of capital it is asking for.

That readiness looks different at every stage. Early on, it may mean cleaner financials, stronger customer relationships, or more proof in the field. Later, it may mean a structure that lenders can underwrite.

For climate hardware companies, the financing strategy has to evolve with the business. The better those two stay aligned, the easier it becomes to keep moving forward.

Thanks to Lupine Finance, Wilson Sonsini, Blue Haven Initiative, and everyone who joined us in New York for the afternoon.