The Promise and the Payback
If you never make big promises, very few people will care about what you’re doing.
But the other side of the coin, big paybacks, without those, you die.
The very best industries, companies, and builders exude this balance. They walk the line between big promises and big payoffs. They reward investors for taking the early risk on a better future.
If you never make big promises, people have no reason to care about what you are doing. Big promises attract customers, capital, and people - all need a great story to be attracted to the opportunity.
The first few years of the recent climate tech boom were full of promise and the future for certain segments is still very bright. Solar, storage, geothermal, and even nuclear have a lot of promise left in them.
But, we desperately need the paybacks, too. Ben Graham famously wrote that in the short term, the market is a voting machine, and in the long term it’s a weighing machine.
People vote with their hearts and minds, but we inevitably all must face the scale.
Love him or hate him, no entrepreneur in climate embodies this balance better than Elon Musk. The Tesla robotaxi event a few weeks ago was mocked on X - fake, robots controlled remotely, etc. But, it highlighted what’s possible (even if Waymo is ahead).
Then, just this week, Tesla beat Wall Street’s earning forecast and the stock soared.
In a world where more and more capital in the public markets has moved to the “short” side of the equation in climate, we need these types of payoffs.
And that’s why we need more the balance between promises and profits. Even the greatest storytellers in the world will eventually need to deliver the payback.
Otherwise, you kill the confidence of the market which ultimately has wide-ranging downstream effects - investors look elsewhere for returns and people search for more promise.
Bezos once said, “we pay close attention to the customer and tell them a story that will compel them long enough so that we can deliver”.
The enduring stories capture this equilibrium, climate tech needs to be one of those, and to do so, we must deliver.
