The Science of Startups with Activate's Cyrus Wadia
Cyrus Wadia is the CEO of Activate, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers scientists to bring their research to market. Having supported nearly 200 scientists in founding around 150 companies, including notable names like Fervo, Twelve, Sublime Systems, and Antora Energy, Activate offers selected fellows a unique blend of financial support, business capital, and access to a vast mentorship network. With hubs in Berkeley, Boston, New York, Houston, and a remote program, Activate nurtures the path from scientific discovery to entrepreneurial success.
Cyrus recently joined Activate after stints in sustainability leadership roles at Amazon, Nike, and the White House. This extensive experience, combined with his PhD in energy and resources from UC Berkeley and chemistry degrees from MIT, equips him uniquely for this role.
While the path from computer science to entrepreneurship is well-trodden, Activate champions the less common path from life sciences, chemistry, and physics to entrepreneurship. As we transition our energy systems, it seems inevitable that many new science-based businesses will become iconic industry-defining companies of the 21st century. And for this to be realized, we need to nurture the pathway for scientist-entrepreneurs. Our MCJ venture funds have invested in multiple companies founded by Activate fellows, and we were eager to hear from Cyrus about Activate and his vision for where it's headed.
Episode recorded on Mar 6, 2024 (Published on May 30, 2024)
In this episode, we cover:
[03:49]: The gap Activate fills between academic research and commercialization
[05:44]: Transition challenges for scientists becoming entrepreneurs
[10:42]: The role of tech transfer offices and the gap in supporting hard tech entrepreneurship
[16:34]: Activate's unique approach in supporting fellows through licensing and entrepreneurship
[22:52]: The ideal Activate fellow: ready to jump into entrepreneurship head-first
[24:57]: Selection criteria for Activate fellows
[31:26]: Overview of Activate's program, including support and community involvement
[34:03]: Financial and strategic support provided to Activate fellows
[37:52]: Cyrus Wadia's background and journey to becoming CEO of Activate
[42:04]: Future directions and impact goals for Activate
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Cody Simms (00:02):
Today on My Climate Journey, our guest is Cyrus Wadia, CEO of Activate. Activate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers scientists to bring the research to market. They have helped nearly 200 scientists found nearly 150 companies, including the likes of Fervo, Twelve, Sublime Systems and Antora Energy. Scientists who are selected to the program become Activate fellows and receive a cash stipend, capital for their business and the support and mentorship of the Activate team and network. Activate has hubs in Berkeley, Boston, New York, and Houston, and they have a remote program as well. Cyrus recently joined Activate after stints in sustainability leadership roles at Amazon and Nike, and at the White House prior to that. He holds a PhD from UC Berkeley in energy and resources as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from MIT, and he cut his teeth professionally in Silicon Valley. So he brings a broad amount of relevant experience to his new role.
(01:11):
The path from computer science to entrepreneurship is well-trodden and is the story of many of the world's largest companies today, the path from life sciences, chemistry and physics to entrepreneurship is a bit more rare. But as we transition our energy systems and the world around us to new cleaner technologies, I expect that many new science-based businesses will become iconic industry-defining companies of the 21st century. And for this to be realized, we need to nurture the pathway for scientist-entrepreneurs. At MCJ, our venture funds have invested in multiple companies founded by Activate fellows, and I was eager to hear from Cyrus about why he joined the organization and his vision for where it's headed. But before we start, I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (02:08):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (02:09):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (02:15):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (02:21):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Cyrus, welcome to the show.
Cyrus Wadia (02:35):
Great to be here, Cody.
Cody Simms (02:37):
Cyrus, you just told me, which I didn't realize, that you recorded an episode with Jason way back in the day that didn't ever air because you were in the middle of changing jobs at the time. And so, how exciting is this? We get to bring you back in and finally the MCJ listener world gets to hear from Cyrus.
Cyrus Wadia (02:56):
That was maybe even in the early days of MCJ, so it'd be fun to dust that archive off, but hopefully this one makes the cut and really excited to have a chance to talk to your audience.
Cody Simms (03:07):
So here's what I'm really looking forward to starting with today and diving in. We're obviously going to talk about what is Activate. We're going to talk about your background and how you got there. I'd love to start with the idea of entrepreneurially minded people inside universities today. In a world where Activate doesn't exist, if you are working on something and you decide, hey, maybe there's a commercial pathway. First of all, how do researchers even necessarily think about that as an option? And then B, if it is an option for them, what does that pathway tend to look like today in a world where Activate doesn't exist?
Cyrus Wadia (03:49):
When I think about what the world needs and why entrepreneurs matter, especially in the space of climate, I think a lot about commercialization being a function of technology diffusion and that's right idea, right incentive and right person. So when I come back to the person part of this, I think a little bit about a lot of the innovations that we are going to need to solve climate and accelerate the pace of climate change, they haven't been invented yet. But they're happening on the shop floor of these universities and national labs and other research institutions where scientists and engineers in the space of hard tech are going deep. I guess the way I would answer the question is, oftentimes when a scientist or a hard tech engineer or scientist, they get engaged with these questions, they really are in it for societal good, that part is pretty clear and they're thinking long-term.
(04:46):
So what doesn't exist in the world that needs to exist? That's a question that they often ask. So interestingly, when they get into the field of science, in many ways they are already thinking as an entrepreneur. What change needs to exist that maybe I have some expertise that I can bring to this. As you get down the road, you start maturing these technologies or ideas. There's no question you want to see them out in the world and being out in the world at scale is what's really going to matter for all of us as we think about how do we solve climate change faster? I think that it's a natural instinct and if you're in a lab, this is true for many scientists that are doing research, fundamental research in areas that could help us in the future. You're already thinking about what does commercialization look like? Now, you may not necessarily see yourself in that role yet. We should talk a little bit about that. I think that's a starting point.
Cody Simms (05:44):
It strikes me that scientific method is about what are your assumptions, what are your hypotheses and how do you go about validating them, or not validating them or validating them to be false, I suppose would be the more accurate way to say that. And so much about entrepreneurship, especially in early stage is about that same thing. Eventually it gets to be about how do you scale it and how do you operationalize it. But boy, in the early days it's, what are your key assumptions? Do you have data to prove that this assumption is true or not, and should you double down on this pathway? What are you seeing in your fellows in terms of them taking something they're clearly good at, which is doing it from a scientific perspective and learning how to do it from an entrepreneurial perspective?
Cyrus Wadia (06:31):
It's a tough transition. There are things that you can teach and help train and expose, and then there's the school of life where you learn by doing. Even if I think about all of the fellows that have come through our program, it's remarkable to me that 90% plus of those companies are still going. It's a larger number, and that is a really interesting sign to me that in terms of preparing, giving these individuals that level of support, the two years of support that Activate gives, is proving to be really a successful model and ensuring that the first time out of the gate we're taking this as far as maybe we can. That entrepreneurial mindset really is something that when you see it in the scientists and so you've tracked these scientists or engineers through their journey, I think it evolves. I feel like again, that comes from the experience of hitting a dead end or coming up with a complicated problem from how do you run a business around this idea, not just solve the technical problem.
(07:42):
And these are sometimes difficult moments that I'm really proud of our team, we help them through. And on the other side, we're in a way helping accelerate the fellows learning in those moments so that the next time that comes, they're in the right mindset and they're putting pace behind what they're trying to do. It doesn't always work. There's hardships are on the way, but any entrepreneur out there, whether they come from this background or not, they're trying to drive change in whatever environment they're in and it's never easy. This is a complicated endeavor for anybody who's trying to get involved.
Cody Simms (08:19):
I like to share with early stage founders, if you don't have data, you only have hope. You can base your business a little bit on your gut at the beginning, but ultimately you need to find the data to help you find your pathway. And it just strikes me that these types of fellows and founders you're talking about are naturally good at finding the data. That's what they do, it's what they know how to do, and so helping them apply it to entrepreneurship feels like a supernatural path. It can be very, very different, I'm sure as you've experienced.
Cyrus Wadia (08:49):
Interestingly, it's sometimes harder I've seen with some of our fellows to get them to trust their judgment when the data's not available, really trust their instincts and as they mature professionally, that obviously becomes a stronger signal. But when you're coming out early, you sometimes can get over reliant on data information and that could paralyze you from actually moving things faster.
Cody Simms (09:12):
A fatal flaw I often see in repeat early stage founders is overly trusting their gut when they don't have the data to say, "Oh, I did this once before and it worked. Now I'm solving a different problem and I'm going to make a leap again." And sometimes a second or third time they're starting a company that the leap didn't work this time, unfortunately. You're saying a little bit the opposite, which is with these heavily research or scientific oriented founders, sometimes they don't yet trust their ability to trust their gut and make a leap and at least form the first hypothesis and get a little bit down the path with just a hypothesis without the data.
Cyrus Wadia (09:49):
It's a balance for sure. I think that's a good observation. The one thing I would say is that, that's something that can develop quickly. It's probably a little bit harder to develop that data mindset and that scientific mindset quickly, and so that gives us a lot of excitement around what we're doing at Activate.
Cody Simms (10:09):
Okay, so back to I guess where I started. I took us down a little bit of tangent there though. Super interesting one. What does the university system look like today? You hear the phrase tech transfer, you see some of these university maybe incubator type of programs. What is the state of today's research institution infrastructure for helping someone start to commercialize technology that they're developing in a world where Activate doesn't exist?
Cyrus Wadia (10:42):
With or without Activate, let me just throw a few numbers at you. So the US government spends about $65 billion a year in academic science and research. And the private sector, roughly speaking, $200 billion a year. What we started to notice when Activate started is that there was a gap that needed to be filled. There are mechanisms, universities have tech transfer offices, federal agencies support those tech transfer offices. There are patents being filed. Researchers have that opportunity. But the gap we noticed was that if you were a scientist or an engineer in this space of hard tech, the world of atoms, probably less bits, then you did not have a clear support model for you to go forward because the private sector wasn't ready to take as much early risk in these ideas, number one. Number two, we talk often about corporate research and development and innovation, and there was a moment in time in our country's history where that was a lot richer, that we had these companies that were more vertically integrated in terms of how explored science all the way through commercialization.
Cody Simms (11:56):
Kodak, Xerox, IBM, some of the names you hear today that you're like, "What? These sound like dinosaurs," but actually in their time they were incredibly science-driven companies, right?
Cyrus Wadia (12:05):
A 100%. They were covering a gap that we may not have really fully understood, and then once that went away, I would argue that we were not quick enough to replace it with something else, but we continue to invest and rely on the private sector and the government feels like in climate especially, they play a very important catalytic role, but this has to be private sector led. I believe that too. Incomes activate. The plain truth of it is, the companies and the fellows that are coming out of Activate, they just simply wouldn't have existed without us, and that's probably for the vast majority, I think that would be very true and you'd have to talk to some of the fellows to better understand that. But oftentimes what'll happen is, you're a scientist, you're in the lab, you've come up with something, you've gone through the tech transfer gauntlet of your university, but you got to still cook the thing. It's just not ready for prime time.
(13:02):
In this space, hard tech requires patience, patient capital, patient investment, and at the stage that we are coming in, there's still work that needs to be done on the science before it's ready for scale, before the investment community is ready to pour in. And I think that bridge is what Activate has figured out how to do extremely well.
Cody Simms (13:24):
When I think of a stereotypical tech transfer company coming out of university, I tend to think of a professor who is still full-time at the university who has put themselves on the cap table as a part-time co-founder or even some C-level title, but they're not full-time in the startup, and then you may find some hired gun CEO to go out and build it. The university owns the bulk of the IP and the company has some license to be able to go commercialize the IP that the university owns, and the university is hoping that this part-time professor and hired gun CEO, can go make them a bunch of money in the marketplace. That's to me, is the stereotypical tech transfer company. It feels like Activate companies are constructed quite differently than that.
Cyrus Wadia (14:19):
Yeah, I believe so. Part of how we're constructed differently is a large profile of our fellow demographic is a little bit earlier in their career, maybe have just finished a PhD or postdoc. Now we do have faculty in as well, and they're as open to the retraining. The other thing that I've noticed, I've spent time in national labs professionally and in research universities. If you go back far enough in my career. I think the one observation I made is that sometimes folks who have been in academic research for decades and they've built a career around that and they're in the business of creating knowledge for the world and the currency of that is often through publication. They may not always be the best judge of, is this the right thing to patent? They have probably a need for more support from the university and maybe the community at large in terms of filtering correctly.
(15:17):
If you don't filter correctly, I'm bringing this up for a reason, then you could clog your tech transfer system that's coming out of these places that require a venture capitalist to really sift through in detail to find the signal versus the noise. I may be projecting a little bit here, but I would imagine that could be the experience of folks that are really interested in this idea of can we commercialize all of this great work that's happening in universities and why there may be has historically been a barrier to those ideas more fluidly coming out of the labs.
Cody Simms (15:52):
It seems like with Activate, you are very focused on finding people coming out of the labs who aren't going to be a part-time co-founder or whatnot, but yet are still full-time committed to their university. You're looking for people making the leap, "I am going to take this thing and I am going to go run it. I'm going to commercialize it. It's going to be my thing. This is what I do, this is what I'm going to do." We'll talk a bunch about what does that fellow archetype look like and how do you find those kinds of people? But on the IP side of things, are you also looking for that clean of a break that the fellow, this is their IP, or is there licensing happening with the university research labs that these fellows are often coming out of?
Cyrus Wadia (16:34):
No, oftentimes there's a licensing component to this.
Cody Simms (16:37):
Okay, so text transfer does still exist. It's just maybe the fellow has a different archetype than that cliche tech transfer program that I laid out?
Cyrus Wadia (16:46):
The way I would think about it is, who understands the technology better than the inventor of that technology? These are very complicated. Talk about climate, these hard to bait sectors. These are very complex ideas that need to live in the world. I think that we've probably overstated, this is now the societal way, we've probably overstated the strength of handoffs. We could bake something in the university and then an entrepreneur out there who may not be deep on the technology can now make that thing work. I disagree with that in a lot of the places that we see. So yes, I feel like the idea and the person have to come out together to make this work. And we're seeing the results of that. We've seen a lot of success with our fellow companies. For example, if you think about fundraising as a proxy for the success, our fellow companies have now raised about $1.9 billion in funding and that's across over 150 companies, and I think that speaks really well to the strength of the idea and the person coming together.
(17:56):
Now, it's important that I say one other thing. We are under no illusion that any one individual can do it all themselves. There are moments where you want to pair one of our fellows with someone with a different background. That is a strength of our program too. We have associate fellows, we could talk more about that, but we have a full community wrapped around these fellows that come from different walks of life that are there to support that fellow and their growth and development as they mature as leaders, but also to fill in the gaps so that the collective is really helping drive the ideas forward. It's not just the adventure of one individual that's going to make the difference here.
Cody Simms (18:40):
I'm hearing the target fellow for Activate would be someone in, could be university research lab, could be a national lab, some science-based setting who has unique insight on a problem and a solution and is ready to go make the leap and do this with their full being, or at least explore doing this with their full being. That was actually going to be my next question, which we can talk about all the successes you've had, and we have five portfolio companies in our portfolio that are Activate fellows. Just saw a huge funding announcement earlier this week from Fervo out of Houston. You guys have had an incredible track record so far. But I'm guessing also some folks go through the fellowship and then decide, "Actually, I have validated that there's not a path for this thing." Part of entrepreneurship is failing quickly, and I'm curious what that pathway looks like inside Activate?
Cyrus Wadia (19:35):
89% of our fellows are still with their original companies, but we have seen pivots. I don't have at my fingertips a crisp example of that, but I think this is an important point. Not every idea ultimately is a standalone company. We believe this is the right path. Entrepreneurship, starting an entity that brings this into the world is the exact right path to move it forward. We're starting to see not just companies persist but be acquired by larger companies that can then take them to scale. And we're seeing fellows migrate into other parts of society, testify to Congress and these other places where you could start to imagine the way these fellows move forward in their career adjacent to that original idea. There are many different possibilities.
Cody Simms (20:31):
That was Leah Ellis at Sublime who recently testified to Congress. We're a proud MCJ investor in Sublime.
Cyrus Wadia (20:37):
Yeah, you got it. And stay tuned because I think we're going to see more and more of that coming out of our Activate fellows, and I hope that's true. But the point I'm trying to make is, we're still early enough in this journey that a lot of our fellows are still with that first idea. Let's ask ourselves that question again in a couple of years and see what we've learned in that time period.
Cody Simms (20:58):
So your response makes me feel that there's a pretty tacit understanding between the fellows and Activate that when they come in, they are committed to turn this thing into a company. You're not a place for them to explore, should this be a company necessarily. Because it sounds like the vast, vast, vast majority not only turn it into a company, but at least have some significant amount of runtime running that company. It's not a explore, fail fast, decide either, "This isn't the company or I'm not an entrepreneur, this isn't for me." Most of them are ready to jump in head first it sounds like.
Cyrus Wadia (21:38):
I'd say that's true. We have had examples of fellows who started out as CEO of the entity and then made a choice, said, "You know what? I'm not the real CEO architect. I'm going to bring in A CEO. I'm going to be more of the chief technology." So we do have examples of that. I would clarify one thing, which is we do have a spectrum in terms of where things are in terms of readiness level. Is it ready to start a company today or is this going to take six, 12 months to really figure out is there a company here? We do have plenty of those fellows and I'd say we have a range, but your core point is correct, which is they're coming in with an intention to bring this into the world by becoming an entrepreneur, and often that means starting a company.
Cody Simms (22:23):
So it sounds like you have to look for people who are experts in their field and already are incredibly driven to decide they are, not only ready to take the leap, but they are itching. "You got to hold me back if I'm not going to make this jump." They are ready to go because to have that amount of success with longevity of your current portfolio, these aren't people in the, "Let me explore this for a little while," phase, they're ready to jump.
Cyrus Wadia (22:52):
I think that's right. We're currently doing our finalist week, which is part of our selection process. One thing that struck me in sitting in on these conversations where we're talking to these prospective fellows, it's their just core passion for the thing that they've figured out and their excitement to now grow into someone who can bring this out into the world.
Cody Simms (23:15):
What do you look for?
Cyrus Wadia (23:17):
There's a full complicated rubric of criteria and quality. It's a long process when we're doing the selection, we are way oversubscribed for the number of slots that we have, and I can say with a lot of confidence, a lot of the folks that we're not able to take would make great fellows for this program and can be great entrepreneurial scientists. We're looking for, I think certain leadership qualities, mindsets. So think about it this way, as you're going through a selection process, you're looking for the qualities and skills that could become a strong entrepreneur, someone who can adapt, maybe to your earlier point, someone who can balance the scientific mindset with one more of a managerial or a leadership mindset. There's ways that we can look for that. We can provide guidance, see what the prospective fellow does with that guidance. We can ask hard questions.
(24:16):
We can be really tough in the process and just see how they handle that. Communication is critical. I think we could all agree that that's a big part of success for anybody out there who's trying to lead any size organization small or big, that would factor in. I'm not giving you the 10 bullets. It's not so scientific in terms of all the aspects of what we're looking for, but we do have a clear methodology that we have honed and refined over the last eight years. And yeah, every year we come out with very exciting cohorts in the different communities in which we serve.
Cody Simms (24:53):
Do you have any favorite interview questions?
Cyrus Wadia (24:57):
They haven't let me in early enough in the interview process yet. I'm still too early and maybe that's by design, but I'll be excited to do more of that in the coming years.
Yin Lu (25:06):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams I've met, several nonprofits have been established and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly Women In Climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more.
(25:52):
Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to MCJCollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (26:07):
You may not know this Cyrus, but I was at Techstars for almost a decade and one of my favorite interview questions was to look at the CTO with the CEO in the room and ask the CTO, why aren't they the CEO, and see how the two of them interact around that question. That's a good one.
Cyrus Wadia (26:23):
Oh, that's interesting. Is that a standard Techstars model?
Cody Simms (26:28):
No, to me, the dynamics and interplay of the early stage team are so important at the Techstars-y stage. They're important no matter what, but especially in that really early stage. And so I can tell you, it was pretty often in a Techstars accelerator that within the first week or two of a program you would end up with a CEO conflict. You start doing things like having a special CEO dinner that only CEOs can go to and all of a sudden the COO or the CTO or the other co-founder is like, "Why am I not included in that? I'm important too." And teasing out that inner desire early on in a company, and if you can get to it in the interview, super important to helping that company get their issues on the table.
Cyrus Wadia (27:13):
If you do a good job in identifying the issues, whether you select them or not, now you have the right-hand holds for giving them the support they need. I like your example because it reminds me, ideas don't scale themselves. They don't bring themselves into the world. It's people, at the end of the day. It's an imperfect science, how people lead, how they interact, how they grow and mature as their own leadership style grows and evolves. And I think that's one of the things I'm noticing with our fellows, that we're seeing an acceleration in terms of their ability to grow and mature as really sophisticated leaders.
Cody Simms (27:50):
All right, I have one more question about the academic research track and then we'll shift gears a little bit. It strikes me that most people on an academic track to this day still don't really think of entrepreneurship or tech as a pathway for them. You go into this track when you start college at 18, assuming you're going to go get a PhD and you're going to become a college professor, or maybe you'll go into a government think tank or something like that. Is that okay? Is that good? Should there be more emphasis on entrepreneurship in higher education? What needs to happen here, or not?
Cyrus Wadia (28:34):
I love this question or this thought because you're right. Let's think about why. There's probably fewer examples out there of scientists who've made this transition. If you're asking me the question, do we fundamentally need a bigger pipeline of scientists going into entrepreneurship? A 100%. If someone did the math on climate alone, we are far underneath the number of startups and entrepreneurs we need in the world, period. Our argument is the fellows that are coming out of Activate are really well-equipped to solve some of the hardest problem, serious people solving these serious problems. I want to see more entrepreneurial scientists for sure. Fewer examples, so if you're coming up through the rank, and I was one of these folks, I was a PhD and I had a twinkle in my eye, but make no mistake, I had thoughts too about the academic path, but here's what you realize too.
(29:27):
This is one person's perspective, so take it with a grain of salt. But you get to the end of that degree, all of a sudden you realize there aren't enough academic jobs out there for all of us, so what are we going to go do? And then in comes the money that can hire you, the banks, the hedge funds, the big tech companies. They come in, they say, "Hey, you have a PhD, you've done something really interesting in chemistry, that's great, but we're hiring you because you're a really smart person and we want that talent." So right there, all the investment we've made as society in an individual who can really do something hard in a lab as an example, we're losing them and the societal good is then lost forever. Entrepreneurship is a way to, I think in a way, capitalize and extract the value of the investment we've already made. So let's do more of that.
Cody Simms (30:24):
Sure, you can go work at Google or Amazon or at JP Morgan Chase or wherever, but why don't you take your own idea and go run with it? You just have to know that's a path, you have to know that's even a thing.
Cyrus Wadia (30:36):
When Activate first started, this was very new. Given Activate's track record, now folks are realizing this is a thing and that's why we're oversubscribed every year and that's why you see other institutions start to invest in this as well. And you see federal agencies like the National Science Foundation, who's a big supporter of Activate, start to invest in more of this as well. I think you're seeing the movement and that gets us really excited.
Cody Simms (31:05):
Let's get more specific about Activate itself. What does the program entail? And you mentioned it's a two-year engagement that these fellows have with you. What does the program entail? How many folks are coming into it? And I think you're now in multiple locations around the US so what's the footprint of that look like?
Cyrus Wadia (31:26):
There's two big components. You've already heard the selection part. That's a big part of it. And when we're selecting, we're not just selecting for the individual talent, we're selecting for a cohort that will coexist together for that two-year period. And the chemistry and the balance of that cohort matters. The communities in which we serve, we have physical communities, Berkeley, New York, Boston, and now Houston. We're launching Houston this year. We're really excited about that. And then we have a virtual cohort called Activate Anywhere, and this is pulling from all pockets of the US and that part gets me really excited and we should talk more about that, how we're unleashing talent in places that don't have the natural ecosystems around them. In city communities that I mentioned, we tap into the ecosystem that's local like in Boston, Berkeley to help support our fellows and be integrated in that.
Cody Simms (32:25):
These would be mentors who come in and meet one-on-one with the founders or give talks or that sort of thing? Or the fellows, I guess you call them fellows, not founders.
Cyrus Wadia (32:33):
That's right. We're a pretty high-touch program. We have a dedicated team including a managing director, very sophisticated, experienced entrepreneurial scientist that's done it, coaching our fellows every day on anything. Think about how do I make my first hire or how do I actually incorporate this company all the way to, how do I build culture for my organization? Then you have a sea of mentors that are so excited to work with our fellows. It's been remarkable for me to observe how our community comes in with such strength and commitment and they're doing it on their time, and so that's also pretty powerful.
(33:14):
I want to underscore the community matters for how we grow and nurture and scale both the person and the idea in pragmatic terms. So you've got the selection, then you've got all the programmatic work that happens after selection, and that's fueled also by what the fellow gets. The fellow gets two years of salary and benefits support effectively to keep them in the game, and then they also get an additional a hundred K of research dollars that they can apply broadly speaking. So in total they're getting $300,000 plus all this other programmatic and mentor and leadership and coaching support.
Cody Simms (33:53):
And most of them have not raised outside commercial capital at this point. Most of them haven't raised a pre-seed or a seed round thing. Is that correct?
Cyrus Wadia (34:03):
We have a threshold. If you've already raised, you don't need Activate. Or if you've raised at a certain point, you don't need Activate. Now, what we've noticed is, some folks are raising very early in the life cycle of being an Activate fellow within the first few months, and that's okay. We are very careful to be at the right stage of the process where many of the folks are still trying to raise. And I gave you the fundraising number before, but even during the fellowship, even in that two-year period, the fellows are raising a little over $6 million on average. That's another good indicator that the investment community sees us as a critical role in helping identify, and then of course de-risk technology and individual that can take these things forward.
Cody Simms (34:49):
And Activate is not making equity investments or taking equity or anything in these companies. Is that correct?
Cyrus Wadia (34:56):
Yeah, we do not take equity.
Cody Simms (34:59):
I'm assuming many of the companies, in addition to trying to raise capital during the two-year fellowship, there's a significant amount of grant funding available to many of these companies. Is that a hands-on resource that you help them with as well?
Cyrus Wadia (35:13):
We do. We try to think about it this way. We put the fellow that entrepreneurial scientists at the center, the team talks a lot about fellows first. And what our job is, there's a sea of resources out there and it's confusing to anybody trying to get into this space. Our job is to make that easy for the fellow, so that's navigating dilutive sources, non-dilutive sources, including government grants, to your point. Other functional resources out there that might help lead to stronger business, talent... We feel like we play a role in all aspects of making that individual and the company successful.
Cody Simms (35:53):
The fellows first mentality that you just mentioned is so evident in your website and your materials. You have what I think you said, close to 150 companies that have been founded by your fellows and you can find those companies on your website and go through them of course, but the first thing you put people toward is actually the profiles of the fellows themselves. So you're highlighting the individuals on the website and helping people see who these humans are before you even dive into necessarily what are the companies that have come out of the program. And that's such a unique orientation, I think. Very different than almost any other early stage whatever you want to call it, accelerator, incubator seed fund, pathway for entrepreneurship.
Cyrus Wadia (36:39):
Absolutely. I'm glad that's evident to you, and I think that's true of most people who get to know us. And this is what makes us different. This is why we have a role to play. We are very person centric and we build our programs with that in mind, and I think that's the power also. Because to me it's a bit of an opener for trust with the fellows, providing them the right type of support requires them to be ready to receive that support. If you don't have a stake in their business and you're building this program that's entirely about them. I think what it does is, it helps them grow faster, interestingly, because they are more open to our coaching, our mentorship, our thoughts, and in other circumstances people might be a bit more skeptical of those things or believe, "Oh no, I've got all the answers," and that's just not true of our fellows. So I think that's an ingredient for what we're seeing out there in terms of our numbers.
Cody Simms (37:41):
Cyrus, you are relatively new in the CEO role here at Activate. You joined last fall full-time, if I have my dates correct. How did you decide this was your next chapter?
Cyrus Wadia (37:52):
So I'm four months in, maybe a little over four months in, and it has been amazing. I love this team, our culture. I'm really proud and excited to be part of this community and we're doing something really important. I think that's probably clear through some of the things we've talked about earlier. So how did I get here? That's a good question. I just came off of 10 years on the corporate side. I was leading sustainability in two massive at scale organizations, Nike and Amazon. And prior to that, I had spent many years in government in DC. I was a policy leader in the Obama White House, and that was in the space of climate energy materials. And then prior to that I was an entrepreneurial scientist. So here I am, about the tail end of the corporate experience.
Cody Simms (38:45):
Specifically on that, just to make sure, you got your PhD and then you moved to Silicon Valley. Is that the Cyrus story?
Cyrus Wadia (38:52):
All right, I'm going to go even deeper for you here.
Cody Simms (38:54):
Do it.
Cyrus Wadia (38:55):
Because it's the actual the opposite. I was a chemical engineer, I got my masters. Believe it or not, I was admitted to a great PhD program at that moment in time and I declined to go out to Silicon Valley to take a very low paying job to get me into tech because I wanted to basically immerse myself in business and entrepreneurship and I had a door open. And then the next thing I know is I am part of a startup. We're doing software for palm devices and I'm getting super excited. I was a product manager and so I was driving actual product. And we did it, we built a company, we took it public, we did the whole thing. And then we watched the other side too, which was very common back then in the early 2000s.
(39:44):
And so after that entire experience, I said, "You know what? I am in love with product, I'm in love with entrepreneurship. This is really the right path for me, but the space that I'm excited about is clean energy, specifically solar energy. And so I'm going to go back." As I say the story now, it feels a little bit audacious. I said, "I'm going to go back, get a advanced degree that gives me the opportunity to do fundamental chemistry research and invent something that I can then commercialize." That was the whole goal. I was an entrepreneur, turned entrepreneurial scientist in a way. So that's what I went and did. And we had some success, but sure enough, you have success in the lab and you get to the end and you're looking around, you're looking left, you're looking right, and well, who's going to fund me to continue to do this work? I guess I got to stay in an academic track. This goes back to your very first question.
(40:41):
So in my case, I would've had to go the academic route. I would've had to become a faculty to continue the research in the way that would need to happen for that to mature. And then all of a sudden there would be other forces that are twisting my work in different directions. So that pathway was not very clear.
Cody Simms (40:59):
What was the timing of this? When did your PhD end?
Cyrus Wadia (41:02):
This was in 2008, 2009.
Cody Simms (41:05):
So also a challenging time to necessarily come out and say, "Hey, let's start a company right now."
Cyrus Wadia (41:10):
That's right. So back to your core question. Last year when I was transitioning out of the corporate space, there were a couple of things that were very clear to me personally. The first is, I was ready to get back to very mission-driven work where climate and sustainability is the top priority. Number two, I was really hungry for more entrepreneurship invention, science and I wasn't quite sure what that next move would be. But then as soon as Activate had reached out, I had some familiarity of course, because I was very close to the founder, CEO, Ilan, Gur. And next thing you know, we're having these conversations and this feels like the right fit.
Cody Simms (41:53):
What's next for you? What's next for Activate? Four plus months in, I'm sure you're building your thesis of where the organization goes. What should we expect to see?
Cyrus Wadia (42:04):
We have a lot of runway ahead of us as Activate. That gets me really excited. The core questions our team is now grappling with is, how do we continue to evolve and grow? But growth really in the form of impact. Getting out there, thinking a little bit more about ways that we can scale our impact, either through the fellowship or potentially other possibilities is on our mind. We want to keep pace on our objectives on climate and what that's meant for the climate space in particular. But we're also exploring more ways to talk about the trajectory of our fellows post company. And like I said earlier, we're going to start seeing more and more of that. And that gives me a lot of interest in the underlying leadership qualities, the company and the commercialization and the, here's the mitigation potential of what they've built. That's all a wrapper around this individual. And the beating heart of Activate is really focused on that individual.
(43:02):
And so I'm very excited to see how do we trace that into the future a little bit further. And all of those contribute to how we grow and scale, and that's what we're working on now.
Cody Simms (43:14):
It feels like there is an opportunity, one you have to probably approach cautiously, but an opportunity to re-engage and involve some of your incredibly commercially successful fellows back in as mentors of the new crop, if you will. You obviously want to be very careful to not steal a bunch of time from somebody now running a big giant company because they've got a lot of priorities and a lot of things to do, and yet I find a lot of these people are also fairly wired to want to give back and want to help.
Cyrus Wadia (43:45):
You are a 100% right. So they are asking for this, and that's exactly a focal point as we build out this strategy, how do we pull the alumni of our program much closer in, not just to be part of our community, but to be materially involved in the success of the next generation of fellows that are coming through the program. They're asking for this, I'm asking for this. Right now I'm on a road show a bit to meet some of the alumni that are further along and go deeper on this exact question.
Cody Simms (44:18):
Well, Cyrus, what else should we have covered? We've covered a lot of base today.
Cyrus Wadia (44:23):
I'm really glad you're pushing on the entrepreneurial science pathway. I think that's a really critical piece of what we talked about. We didn't go deep on what we're seeing out there in terms of climate solutions. And I guess the only other thing I'd want to add to this conversation is this idea that climate ultimately right now, one way to think about it is it's a market failure. It's a failure of incentives and the system, and we as a society have to get better at that. That alone is not the only problem we face. I do believe that we have a broader leadership gap that's working hard to cultivate the right scientific mindset at the table where these decisions are being made and also work hard to fix the system too, so that we could have a much faster rate of technology moving out of labs into the world.
(45:15):
I would just, I guess leave with that final thought, that more investment in people, period, as the tool that's going to help us do that is absolutely critical. And Activate is one player in this, but I'm very excited to see more and more of this happen out there.
Cody Simms (45:31):
Well, congrats on your new role. Can't wait to see what more is to come of everything that you all do. And thanks for taking the time to join us today and share more about it all.
Cyrus Wadia (45:40):
Hey, it was really fun, Cody, thanks so much.
Jason Jacobs (45:43):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (45:47):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem-solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (45:56):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at MCJcollective.com, and if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter, @MCJpod.
Yin Lu (46:09):
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Cody Simms (46:19):
Thanks, and see you next episode.
