That's a wrap! 2021 in a salad bowl

Mick Liubinskas

Dec 14, 2021

6

min read

2021. What a year!

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If you had said to me a year ago that the industry would be this active, this strong, this big I wouldn’t have believed you. Now I believe. And 2022 is going to be twice as big.

What began as a blog in May has wonderfully snowballed into a highly active ecosystem. At the centre are the entrepreneurs building climate tech companies. This group is investing their passion, taking the risk and applying their skills to solve these big problems across agriculture, food, energy, transport, materials, waste and more.

Around them are their teams, the mentors, scientists, corporate supporters, government, service providers and investors who are all needed to move the world sustainable as fast as possible. We need a village and we need it now.

Sarah Wilson and Mick talk climate activism

2021 Showcase and Awards

The momentum of committed teams, building products and getting customers grew and grew, coming to a crescendo last Thursday December 9th with the first ever climate tech showcase.

In just 8 weeks the amazing team was able to produce a sold out event with 175 attendees, 32 pitches, 16 product demonstrations and 6 awards.

After a year of lockdowns and remote work the feeling of seeing people and their products face to face was exciting. To have a big room filled with positive, collaborative people was (no pun intended) electric. Check out the photos from the the night here.

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Thanks Sponsors!‍

The whole event was supported by the amazing people at these wonderful sponsoring companies:

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The Award Winners!

Rationale for the Awards: We formed Climate Salad with a vision to accelerate climate action with technology. We do this by helping climate tech companies grow with customers, talent, resources and investment by building a supportive community. Most of our members have joined to be part of the community of practice lifting the bar of what it means to create a climate solution with technology. As one of our members said "if one company succeeds, we all do, I share that success. It's in my best interest to see the whole community do well".

Categories:

Climate Tech Newcomer 2021 - presented by Investible Climate Tech Fund

Winner: Gridcognition
Finalists: Cecil Earth, Bloom Impact Investing, Vertus Energy, Zerojet, One Small Step, Gridcognition, Great Wrap, Avarni

Climate Tech Impact 2021 - presented by AWS

Winner: Goterra
Finalists: Trace, Emmi, Energy Synapse, Bygen, Fable Foods, MGA Thermal, FloodMapp, Goterra, Vow, Ripe Robotics

Woman in Climate Tech 2021 - presented by Main Sequence

Winner: Yas Grigaliunas, Founder of World's Biggest Garage Sale
Finalists: Yas Grigaliunas, founder of World’s Biggest Garage Sale, Lily Dempster, founder of One Small Step, Cara Cooper, Co-Founder of Your Food Collective , Lucinda Hankin, Grok Ventures, Olympia Yarger, Founder of Goterra, Pavina Adunratanasee, Smart Solutions Manager at Iberdrola

Climate Tech Mentor 2021 - presented by Twilio

Winner: Stefan Knight, AWS
Finalists: Zal Dastur, Founder, Advisor, Mandi Gunsberger, Founder, Advisor, Stefan Knight, AWS, John Wood, Noab Ventures, Bryan Rollins, Grok Ventures, Eytan Lenko, Founder, Director, Investor

Climate Tech Investor 2021 - presented by MinterEllison

Winner: Sarah Nolet, Tenacious Ventures
Finalists: Patrick Sieb, Investible Climate Tech Fund, Sarah Nolet, Tenacious Ventures, Matthew Pryor, Tenacious Ventures, Phoebe Harrop, Blackbird, Alexandra Clunes-Ross, Artesian, Alex De Aboitiz, Angel

Climate Tech Community Contribution 2021 - presented by Canva

Winner: Alex Logan, Co-Founder at Cecil
Finalists: Yas Grigaliunas, World’s Biggest Garage Sale, Alex Logan, Cecil, Matthew Stead, Ping Services, Bill Barden, Enosi, Marija Petkovic, Energy Synapse, Lily Dempster, One Small Step

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Founding Members

Climate Salad is a member focused organisation and we’re very excited to say that we have almost 100 founding members sign up which is a huge (and very much needed) sign of support of this growing space.

Membership costs $100 per year per person and includes access to the events, content, job boards and more. For entrepreneurs and their teams, it also includes access to the Climate Salad Slack space and mentoring programs