Five Years of Climate Salad

Five years ago, Climate Salad didn't exist. Today it's a large, Australian climate tech community: 800+ member companies, 125+ investors, and a network that spans founders, scientists, policymakers, and capital. 

That didn't happen by accident. It happened because thousands of people decided climate tech in Australia deserved a home.

Where we started

This began with a simple belief: that Australia has the talent, the resources, and the ambition to build a serious climate tech industry, and that the biggest thing missing was connection. Founders working in isolation. Investors who couldn't find deal flow. Corporates who didn't know who to partner with. Policymakers without a direct line to the sector.

We built Climate Salad to close those gaps. Five years later, it's not a niche experiment. It's infrastructure for an entire industry.

The people who built this

Community doesn't scale itself. It scales because people show up for it, again and again.

To the 800+ founders who joined, shared, backed each other, and made this a place worth showing up to: you are Climate Salad. Every member shoutout, every intro made in a WhatsApp thread, every founder who answered a newer founder's question, that's the actual substance of what we built.

To the 125+ investors who leaned in early, who took meetings, who backed climate tech when it wasn't the easy consensus trade: thank you for believing the returns and the impact aren't a trade-off.

To our sponsors and partners, who backed the community with more than good intentions, and to the corporates and government bodies who chose to engage seriously with the sector rather than at arm's length: you made this sustainable.

And to the team, past and present, who turned a pivot and a hunch into a full-time operation: the newsletters, the reports, the events, the policy submissions, the thousand unglamorous tasks that make a community actually function. This milestone is yours as much as anyone's.

What we built together in five years 

In five years, Climate Salad has gone from an idea to a sector-defining institution. Together, we've published industry reports that shaped how Australia understands its own climate tech landscape. We've taken the sector's voice directly to Treasury on tax reform. We've built the connective tissue between founders and the capital stack they need to scale. We've represented Australian climate tech on the international stage, and we're pushing toward COP31 accreditation to keep doing that.

Critically we are deeply and tightly connected to the rest of the ecosystem. We support programs like EnergyLab, Climate 10x at UNSW, and Swinburne's FACET.  We partner with coworking spaces like Sanders Place, Stone and Chalk and Greenhouse.  We’ve done trade missions with NSW, Queensland, and Victorian governments to Asia, Europe and USA, and had support from CEFC and ARENA. 

None of it was inevitable. All of it was earned, by a community that decided to build something together instead of separately.

The Next Five Years

Here's the thing about momentum: it compounds. 

Every founder who succeeds makes the next one's path easier. Every investor who gets a good outcome brings more capital into the sector. Every policy win makes the next one more likely. We are past the point of proving climate tech works in Australia. We are now in the business of scaling it.

Climate tech is not a side bet on the future. It is one of the largest economic opportunities of our generation, in energy, in industry, in agriculture, in the built environment, in every sector that has to be rebuilt for a different reality. That rebuild means jobs. It means new export industries. It means Australian companies solving problems the whole world needs solved. And it means real, measurable progress on the only outcome that actually matters: getting emissions down at the pace and scale the science demands.

Five years in, this industry has never had more companies, more capital in the room, or more reason to believe in what's ahead. The foundation is built. The opportunity is enormous. The momentum is strong. 

Predictions

We believe that the following things will happen in the next 5 years

1. The energy and sustainability transition will be globally accepted as necessary, positive and possible by more than 70% of people.
2. The Australian climate technology industry will be proven to be successful. Support and investment will double.
3. Australia will have more than 20 climate tech $B+ companies, and more than 100 $100M+ companies
4. Climate technology in Australia will employ more than 25,000 people
5. Australia will host an annual climate solutions event, attracting thousands from around the world.

That's huge, and only happens if we all keep going, keep collaborating and keep growing.

Here's to the next five years, and to everyone who's going to build them.

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If you’d like to join as a member or partner, please contact us. 

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