Climate Salad collaborating with AWS to help climate tech founders go further

Climate Salad is on a mission to help 1,000 Australian climate tech startups by 2030. Core to that mission is working with key industry supporters who can lean in and materially help climate tech startups. Climate Salad is pleased to work with Amazon Web Services (AWS), who got involved early in our journey, more than a year ago to support our community of climate tech founders. 

Climate Salad is an AWS Activate Provider which allows the startups in our community to tap into that program for credits and technical assistance. AWS team members are actively mentoring in our community to offer both technical and commercial know how that our founders benefit from. This leads to better platforms and go-to-market strategies improving founders’ chances of success on the global stage. 

Colette Grgic, Head of Startup Ecosystem at AWS in Australia and NZ is leading the charge and I asked her why they were keen to work with Climate Salad. 

“Mick, you know that I am a big advocate for providing the maximum support from across Amazon for startups working on climate tech solutions – so our partnership to provide credits, specialist content and access to customers for startups in the Climate Salad community is incredibly powerful.” 

“Through the Climate Pledge Amazon has committed to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 – 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. As part of that commitment, Amazon recognises that we cannot achieve this alone and we set up the Climate Pledge Fund: a $2 billion venture fund investing in startups developing sustainable technologies and services that will enable Amazon to meet that net-zero carbon goal. We’ve already invested in more than 22 startups in sectors like energy, transportation & logistics, agriculture and food, and multiplying their impact by helping them scale through and with Amazon and our global network of customers.”

“These sectors are being transformed by automation, utilisation & demand planning algorithms, and machine learning – all of which depend on data – and hence AWS plays a big role in enable startups to accelerate their solutions. In the earliest days for a startup, we are making the Activate program available to all startups in the Climate Salad community – to access up to $100K of cloud credits to support them in building their technical products. “

“We will also bring in experts from across the business to run technical and business workshops, and for those companies who are ready to scale we provide fast track introductions into our global teams including the Climate Pledge Fund. There is so much to be done and we need to act fast; collaborating with Climate Salad helps us provide maximum support top startups doing incredibly important and impactful work.”  

Over the past twelve months, Climate Salad has seen great alignment with AWS. 

We have also asked a couple of our Climate Salad members to offer their thoughts on why the AWS relationship with Climate Salad is good for founders in our community. Allys Todd, co-founder of Val.Ai, early member of Climate Salad and a member of the AWS Activate Program for her thoughts. We asked Alice to give her perspective on what is good about AWS working with Climate Salad.

“Both AWS and Climate Salad have played a key role in our company's growth. To deliver our transition to a net zero global economy we need a collaborative mind-set. Val.Ai are grateful to be supported by a community of like-minded entrepreneurs dedicated to delivering climate solutions through Climate Salad.”

“AWS is well known for its digital infrastructure, talent and the support they provide in efficiency for growing startups to stay competitive and succeed in their industry. No sector today needs resources, support and talent more than those tackling our biggest challenge, climate change. We need to invite every industry along for this journey and have them share their knowledge and expertise toward a shared common goal - this collaboration is a great first start.”

When you were considering building your startup on the cloud, did climate impact play a role in your decision?

“Our company is values and impact-driven and all procurement decisions include our commitment to climate impact and gender equity. It is and will remain an important part of our triple-bottom-line approach to delivering the best climate data solutions to drive positive change. Our engagement with AWS was no exception.” 

Thank you Allys, we’re very pleased that our collaboration with AWS lines up with our members’ values and aspirations.

AWS also supports our international trade missions, startup round tables and industry events where we bring startup, corporate, and government stakeholders together to drive adoption of climate tech solutions across the economy. Jeremy Biggs, Founder at Misio participated in our US trade mission in October 2022. We asked him to give us feedback on the synergies he observed and benefited from when AWS and Climate Salad collaborate together to work for Founders. 

“The trip to San Francisco and Verge22 was a crucial milestone in Misio's journey as a company. This trade mission facilitated by Investment NSW, AWS and the team at Climate Salad was certainly a highlight in 2022. The time spent at the conference and at numerous functions helped Misio to identify international opportunities, strategic partners and set in place a strategy to prioritise international markets.”

“For any climate tech company seeking to expand internationally I would highly recommend investing the time to join others on the next trip. For us to accelerate impact we need to foster more collaboration between the corporate and startup ecosystems and the team at AWS and Climate Salad are leading the way.”

“I really appreciate the support from everyone who created an incredible experience that not only helped Misio with facilitated introductions but has also resulted in new partnerships and engagement with potential investors.” 

Thank you for your feedback Jeremy. We agree that the trade mission to Verge22 was high impact for founders and we’ll be doing another one this year.

We’re really pleased to see that the intent and value of the collaboration with AWS is delivering for founders to support their business growth and the development of the Australian climate tech startup ecosystem. 

We would like to thank AWS for being the first supporter to work with us. Without these supporters, we can’t achieve our mission which is helping Australian Founders succeed globally. Founders are our North Star here at Climate Salad and it’s great to hear about the synergies you’ve directly experienced with AWS supporting Climate Salad.

‍