Explain what Climatize does and why it's a key piece of the climate-change solution.

Climatize was inspired by the global climate strikes in 2019. There's this disconnect between pent-up demand for climate action and creating any tangible carbon reduction. For many people, climate change feels like an urgent problem, but they feel powerless to make a difference.

We saw an opportunity to build a more accessible and inclusive platform than anything that was on the market and make it at the kind of capacity so that anyone can participate. You can invest with as little as $10, and earn up to 10% per year fixed interest debt notes, which are providing project finance for distributed energy resources, including solar projects.

So how does investment in these solutions work?

Investing in Climatize is nothing like putting $1,000 to Tesla. It's not an ESG fund, and it's not an offset for a tree in some faraway country. It's, hey, look, here are John and Angela, the owners of Farmers Hardware in Somerville, Tennessee. They are trying to build a $264,000 solar and storage unit, but their local credit union and community bank have no idea how to underwrite a solar project. So Climatize is really filling that gap for those small to medium-scale renewable energy projects that have historically really struggled to attract financing.

We're up to about 820 investors at the moment and growing at about 16% month over month. As an investor, there are no fees, zero fees. We want to make sure that you are earning on 100% of your money.

Why is solar the main focus for Climatize?

On the platform, we actually ask our investors, "What are you interested in?" and solar is the number one thing they want to invest in. That's often just because most people's climate education is still pretty one-on-one. They understand that solar is good, right? Like that's pretty well established.

Additionally, I forced our team to really focus in on solar. You have to really become known for one thing first, before you go and try and expand that value proposition too quickly.

How did Climatize get its start?

Climatize was inspired by the global climate strikes in 2019. Myself and my co-founder, we joined the protests, and we showed up to the strikes to see 100,000 people protesting for climate action. And yet, I have this very vivid memory of standing on a bench and looking out over the sea of people, and being struck by this sad realization that we were all going to go home, and the next day, nothing was going to be different.

I also have a background with 10 years in renewable energy engineering. I've personally built 15 solar farms. That was really where my expertise came in.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from starting Climatize?

I thought that this business would be really easy to start. Every entrepreneur's superpower is they fundamentally underestimate the challenges of building their businesses, and then they're in too deep, and then they just have to follow through.

We are an SEC-registered and FINRA-regulated funding portal. We have consumer exposure on one side and a highly regulated industry on the other side. So both sides of our marketplace are regulated, so we had to go through a year of regulatory processes and register with the SEC, before we could ever even really go to market with the business.

What advice do you have for people who want to work in climate?

I think it's a deeply gratifying journey. When you can align your work and your passions and your curiosities and your skills, for impact, you will wake up feeling like you have a mission to go on every day.

Every job can be a climate job. And often there is a stereotype around climate really being for the engineers and the scientists, when nowadays, every climate tech company needs accountants, marketing people, HR reps, just folks to run the organization.

What does the future of Climatize hold?

I think that what's really exciting for us is when you think about how we can scale this to a global platform that actually enables everyday people to make a positive climate impact.

If you can democratize not only the generation of that energy but also who can become co-investors and co-owners of the generation of that, you have this opportunity to really break up a lot of these major power concentrations that have really held us back from progress.

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