What a difference a year makes.
Last fall, climate research, green energy and sustainable choices seemed to be on a roll. Millions of dollars of federal subsidies had been approved and were in the pipeline.
Until they weren’t.
Yes, elections have consequences. And few felt those consequences as acutely as ClimateHaven, a New Haven incubator/accelerator for climate-tech startups, and its CEO, Justine Lee.
Lee, a self-proclaimed “pragmatist,” declines to use the word pivot to describe what’s happening to the work of 42 startups — weighted toward solar, wind and grid efficiency technologies — under ClimateHaven’s growing umbrella. But, she acknowledges, there have been some “reordering of priorities.”
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Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in ClimateHaven’s offering in connection with New York City’s Climate Week in late September.
ClimateHaven’s Water Tech Future Forum brought together a mix of about 400 scientists, academics, the green community, government officials and Wall Street interests. Another 400 were on the waitlist, Lee said with a mix of surprise and appreciation.
Amazon and Xylem, a global water tech firm, spoke about their water challenges and the opportunities to do pilots and real-world demonstration projects, which are critical to a startup’s success. There was also a discussion, from the investor perspective, on the capital stack available for scaling new technologies.
The event put a bright spotlight on the Water Innovation Hub, a collaboration between ClimateHaven and the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (RWA). Xylem is also a partner in the hub, which seeks to give water startups a bridge to pilot projects and commercialization.
The Water Innovation Hub debuted in May at the Yale Innovation Summit and quickly launched a global competition in partnership with the Regional Water Authority. Three finalists are now working with ClimateHaven to prepare pilot programs in Connecticut.
Collectively, their technologies give the authority a range of potential tools — from autonomous underwater vehicles that inspect infrastructure, to biological sensors that detect pathogens and algae blooms, to robotic systems that feed data into analytics platforms predicting maintenance needs.
The entire Water Tech Future Forum was exactly the kind of stage Lee wants to provide so all of ClimateHaven’s startups can find their footing and their audience.
And that’s exactly the kind of “connector” role Lee has pointed her career toward.
But the shifting focus of grant dollars from Washington has changed the realities for ClimateHaven’s portfolio of startups.
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“We’re still waiting for a million-dollar (federal) transportation grant,” Lee said.
It’s the kind of situation that will test Lee’s skills in finding innovative solutions for getting these new technologies to market.
Her background suggests she’s up to the task.
Big-picture thinking
Lee is the daughter of a British mother and a Chinese father who had fled the mainland for Taiwan. There were a lot of stops along the way west before her father settled in as a human rights lawyer at the United Nations. Her mother also is a lawyer.
Lee recalls her years commuting from the New York City suburbs to the UN School — “a train, the subway and a bus,” she recalls — as a factor in shaping her sense of independence and confidence.
That experience also helped her earn early entry to Yale. Of course, speaking Mandarin and French may have helped too.
She tells the story of returning home after her first day on the New Haven campus.
“I told my father I’d met the man I was going to marry,” she recalls. Cooler heads prevailed and the then-17-year-old agreed to put a pin in that relationship.
A few years later, she circled back and married that Yalie. They’ve now been wed for 25 years.
Along the way to getting her law degree from Columbia, Lee had a State Department internship at the UN, worked in the office of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy and clerked for a federal appeals court judge.
After graduation, she joined Davis Polk & Wardwell, a global law firm specializing in corporate law, tax and financial regulation, as an associate in mergers and acquisitions.
There she encountered an unfamiliar feeling: she wasn’t positioned to excel. The firm prized meticulous attention to detail — a skill she had mastered — but her strengths, she realized, lay in big-picture thinking and relationship building.
She needed a change. And a connection she had made while working on an M&A case soon opened a new path.
Soon, she found herself as chief of staff to a firm leader. There she built relationships that would serve her well for years to come and saw the potential power of public-private partnerships to deliver positive real-world change.
It also brought her face-to-face with an opportunity that seemed a perfect marriage of her skill set and her belief in green causes.
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‘Intellectual horsepower’
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an acclaimed climate warrior, had invested in bicycle lanes and bike parking racks, which led to the birth of Citi Bike — the fleet of iconic blue shareable bicycles that captured New Yorkers’ imaginations.
But Motivate, the company managing the program, had hit a speed bump. It had exclusive contracts with New York, Chicago and six other cities. However, its efforts to expand were stalled by backlogged orders for new bikes. Internal divisions and management issues had started to appear.
The chance to make green-friendly transportation work was irresistible to Lee. She jumped in as vice president of corporate development and legal.
It was a wild time, she recalls. In quick order, she helped Motivate buy the bicycle supplier to assure enough supply to fill its own needs; brokered deals with New York City to facilitate expansion of service across the city; and started work on the next new thing — e-bikes. The first target was expanding from 12,000 bikes to 40,000 on New York City streets.
However, her crowning achievement was in finding an eager — and well-funded — buyer in ride-share giant Lyft. She shepherded Motivate’s sale for a reported $250 million.
Lee stayed with Lyft for a year before moving on to 25madison, a New York City-based venture studio that builds and invests in early-stage companies, where she became partner and chief operating officer. She worked with startups at the Apollo Global-backed firm — and remains a senior adviser.
Grant Silow, a partner at 25madison, had a front-row seat as Lee parlayed hard work, sharp skills and a knack for building relationships into success after success.
“Justine has a lot of intellectual horsepower,” he explains. “She is a critical thinker and, because she builds strong personal relationships based on mutual trust, she has credibility when pushing back.”
He waves off Lee’s self-characterization as a connector and enabler on behalf of the founders who bring the innovative ideas.
Silow holds his index finger an inch above his thumb as he considers the importance of the original idea to the ultimate success of a venture. He argues the art — the innovation — lies in assembling the right management team, developing a go-to-market strategy, raising funds, building partnerships and overcoming operational challenges.
And all of that is what Lee brings to the table, he said.
Lee had risen to be chief operating officer at 25 Madison, but craved a mission-driven environment in which doing good came first, he said. ClimateHaven seems an ideal fit.
The four ‘Ps’
In her role as CEO of the incubator/accelerator, Lee has assembled a team of six and is expanding the New Haven site to add about 6,000 square feet of space for what she calls “the dirty work.”
There, startups can do the scientific testing and modeling necessary to move toward proof of concept and eventually commercialization. ClimateHaven clients have been using lab and bench space with partner Biolabs New Haven, located in a new bioscience tower at 101 College St.
ClimateHaven’s operating budget in year two is about $1.5 million, including backing from Yale, the state of Connecticut, federal grants, private foundations and philanthropy.
Beyond the scientific needs, Lee focuses on helping startups sharpen their economic and marketing analytics as well as their presentation skills. A series of lunch-and-learn programs feature outside speakers on topics that cut across the various needs of the client base.
But ClimateHaven also plays an important role in offering a sense of community to New Haven’s burgeoning bioscience and bioengineering entrepreneurs, said Perry Bakas, CEO of Oxylus Energy.
“It’s easy to become isolated and trapped in your own startup bubble,” he said.
Interacting with others having similar interests and experiencing similar challenges is refreshing, empowering and often enlightening, he said. Conversations that start at ClimateHaven’s busy pingpong table often expand into collaborations and friendships.
Oxylus Energy recently graduated from ClimateHaven and is moving into its own space in a Bridgeport industrial park. The company has developed a unique method for turning carbon dioxide into methanol, a core product in everything from fuels to plastics.
It’s out talking to investors, hoping to raise up to $15 million to commercialize its reactor. Oxylus hopes to start generating revenue in late 2027 or early 2028.
That’s a path Lee wants other startups to follow.
She preaches the four Ps – problem, people, product and pathway. Help on each is available through ClimateHaven.
And she fully expects to shepherd great success across the portfolio. Of course, it will be easier if she can just find a way to navigate the anti-green crosswinds blowing from Washington.