[Open Climate] What the FOAK is going on?

​If you’ve been following Climate Drift for a while, you know we care a lot about FOAKs, first-of-a-kind climate projects. Because let’s be honest: it’s one thing to pitch a bold decarbonization vision, it’s another to actually build the first plant, facility, or system that makes it real.

​FOAK is where things stop being theoretical. It’s where tech, capital, and execution collide and where a lot of climate companies run out of road.

​We're trying to cross this valley in the middle of a geopolitical storm. Policy volatility, inflation pressures, grid uncertainty: the stakes are rising, and the margin for error is shrinking.

Time to take a look at the State of FOAK: What the FOAK is going on?

​A 60-minute LIVE Open Climate Session + rapid-fire Q&A with four FOAK-scarred, FOAK-savvy insiders who’ve been on the frontlines of taking tech from first slide deck to first steel in the ground:

​Deanna Zhang
Climate tech deal whisperer. Deanna’s worked across finance, energy, and strategy — she knows what gets funded and what just gets foaked.

Nik Baumann
Industrial exec turned climate operator. From scaling COVID tests at warp speed to tackling the Keeling Curve — now helping corporates and startups survive the FOAK phase.

​Tim Woodcock
Engineer turned scale-up guide. Tim’s helped climate ventures go from lab to gigaton — and lived the chaos in between.

​Rushad Nanavatty
Climate-tech innovation leader who heads Third Derivative and Rocky Mountain Institute, drawing on prior roles at WeGen and McKinsey to scale breakthrough decarbonization and urban sustainability solutions worldwide.

​From financing nightmares to manufacturing hell, team chaos to tech pivots, this is the unfiltered truth about what it takes to scale climate solutions for the very first time and what is going on in FOAK right now.

​🚫 No fluff
🚫 No sales pitch
✅ Just war stories, sharp insights, and a few well-earned FOAK puns

​Come for the real talk. Stay for the FOAKing solutions. 💥

​​👉 RSVP now to secure your spot

​About Climate Drift:
Climate Drift turns seasoned pros into climate operators and connects founders and investors to them through firesides, deep dives, company challenges, resources and a tight-knit private community.

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