Customer First, Not Tech First
July 1, 2025
In climate tech it’s easy to fall in love with the tech — your elegant algorithm, your breakthrough chemistry, your cleverly-optimized control system.
But the graveyard of climate startups is filled with great ideas that never found a customer.
The best climate companies don’t start with code.
They start with customers — specifically, customers in pain.
Because the difference between something that demos well and something that scales fast isn’t technical sophistication; it’s urgency. Urgency turns exploration into commitment. Urgency closes deals. Urgency is the lifeblood of traction.
This is where we separate pain-killers from vitamins.
“Is what you’re building a pain-killer or a vitamin?
Is it ‘wow, we can’t live without this’ or ‘sure, nice to have’?”
— Jason Cahill
Pain That Signs Checks
| Customer | Burning Platform | What They’ll Buy (Today) |
|---|---|---|
| Electric utilities | 40-year-old grid meets AI-era loads + RE targets; 60–70% say they’ll lean on AI for congestion/outage risk by 2030 | Any software that removes a truck-roll or a reliability penalty |
| NYC REIT owners | Local Law 97 fines begin in 2025 — up to $268/ton | Turn-key retrofit orchestration that spits out compliance docs |
| Enterprise shippers | Scope 3 rules force disclosure of every diesel mile | Route-optimisation that chops fuel and pipes data into CDP reports |
| K–12 school districts | $500M Renew America’s Schools grants but zero staff capacity | Grant-to-project bundles: heat pumps or solar PPAs filed and managed |
Three Customer-First Habits
- Budget archaeology – Map line items, fiscal calendars, and authority limits before sprint planning.
- Procurement path-finding – Treat RFP templates and indemnity clauses as design inputs, not after-thoughts.
- Pilot-kill deadlines – Contracts that auto-convert to paid deployment unless the customer opts out.
Mini Case — From Idea → Paid Pilot on a Shoestring
| Pillar | Insider Wedge (Pre-Seed Reality) |
|---|---|
| Code | Founder spent 4 yrs in a utility data-ops team; left with 10 TB of anonymized fault logs and Python notebooks the utility granted for research. |
| Capital | $450k NSF SBIR Phase I + $200k angels — just enough runway to build the MVP and clear the utility’s cyber-security audit. |
| Customer | Municipal utility (250k meters) signed an LOI + $30k paid pilot contingent on cyber-audit pass; target = 5% truck-roll reduction. |
| Community | Private Slack of 35 grid-ops peers supplies sample data, bug reports, and candidate referrals — zero recruiter fees. |
Outcome: MVP ran on a read-only data feed, flagged six latent pole failures in Month 1 → pilot converted to a $120k/year SaaS contract after 90 days. Team now raising a $1.5M seed on real ARR, not promises.
Checklist — Are You Ready?
- Can you point to the exact budget line that pays for your product?
- Do you solve a 2025 regulatory headache, or just look futuristic?
- Will ignoring you hurt your buyer this quarter?
Innovation doesn’t move markets — adoption does. And adoption belongs to founders who speak customer before code.
At Capitol Stack we fund the pain-killers, not the vitamins.
Got a customer bleeding? Let’s talk.