Heard Around The Grove
By Blake Newcomer • January 19, 2026
New year, new climate solutions, and new opportunities to build more reliable systems. I know that's on everyone's minds. It's time to dust off that old water monitoring startup or nuclear investment thesis or climate adaptation strategy or whatever idea it is you've been developing, and get building. This week's issue is about creating trustworthy technology that delivers on its promises, democratizing access to overlooked energy sources, and discovering what language means. Let's go!
In this week's issue
- Our Toxic Lover, Water
- Upgrading the 'Planetary Operating System'
- Democratizing Nuclear Investment Access
- How are Narratives Shaped, Especially in Climate?
- This Week's Playbook
- Resources
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Featured Theme: Our Toxic Lover, Water
Water has a trust problem. In aquaculture, entire farms collapse overnight due to invisible toxins. In municipalities, $10,000 is a price tag for simply mislabeling and leaving a sample in the fridge. In research, well, where did all the funding go?
Nili & Russell episodes tackle water from vastly different places in the industry, but they share a mission. Nili's revolutionary sensor technology and Russell's data management Saas both provide reliability. The more drastically the environment around us (natural, social, political) changes, the more important reliability companies like these become.
"Water Tech Breakthroughs with Nili Persits, Founder & CEO @ Dottir Labs" Discover how uncompromsing reliability principles create novel sensor platforms that provide real-time toxicity alerts to prevent mass mortality events in aquaculture. article | youtube | spotify
"Low Flow, Big Impact with Russell Schindler, Founder & CEO @ SampleServe" Learn how 20+ years of geological sampling expertise led to AI-powered scheduling software that reduces wastewater treatment onboarding from 120 minutes to 10 minutes. article | youtube | spotify
Dr. Elizabeth Whitney, on the other hand, discusses the research of water. While we do cover what her fascinating PhD work was on, we also get into the economics of running a research lab. Get this: while labs don't make revenue, they still have to pay for things. Crazy, right? In response, traditional frameworks put funding in the hands of government and nonprofit entities. This current funding environment is far from traditional and we discuss the downstream impacts of it.
"Climate Science with Dr Elizabeth Whitney, Biogeochemist @ NOAA National Ocean Service" Understand groundbreaking carbon cycling research across forest, agricultural, and urban environments that informs practical climate resilience strategies. article | youtube | spotify
Additional Themes
Upgrading the 'Planetary Operating System'
save the planet upgrade the planet
Hampus Jakobsson from Pale Blue Dot sees Earth as a massive, inefficient machine. We dig up copper and throw it away. We burn dead dinosaurs when we could capture sunlight. Opportunities is just about building obviously better systems.
"Backing the Planet with Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner @ Pale Blue Dot" Learn how viewing Earth as an interconnected machine reveals massive efficiency opportunities across energy, logistics, and industrial systems. article | youtube | spotify
Bonus: Since Pale Blue Dot is so human focused in their thesis, Hampus and I get very philosophical about life and humans towards the end of the episode. Worth the watch if I do say so myself.
Democratizing Nuclear Investment Access
Traditional VCs won't touch nuclear. It sits "between cannabis and weapons" on their exclusion lists, thanks to decades of financial disasters like Westinghouse and Washington Public Power System.
Rod Adams at Nucleation Capital found a workaround: rolling funds on AngelList. Now accredited investors can get nuclear exposure (without the radiation) starting at $5,000 per quarter. In my research, I couldn't find another VC firm applying this model to the nuclear space. From this perspective, Rod & his team are doing something novel for the space.
"The Future of Nuclear Energy with Rod Adams, Managing Partner @ Nucleation Capital" Understand how rolling funds enable broader participation in nuclear innovation while building portfolios for investors who recognize nuclear's potential but lack sector expertise. article | youtube | spotify
Bonus Everyone's talking about nuclear powering AI data centers. Rod thinks bigger. "There's lots of other customers out there"—metals, mining, shipping, industrial applications. A fuel pellet the size of your pinky tip contains the energy of a ton of coal. That kind of power density opens markets far beyond server farms."
How are Narratives Shaped, Especially in Climate?
Fact: even if we stopped all emissions today, we have decades of worsening climate instability ahead of us. This is because the climate is made of a billion little dominoes, some bigger than others, that take different amounts of time to fall into each other and create climate events.
In the history of climate tech, the story has always been about mitigation - "let's capture the carbon from the air the make the co2 levels go down". Cool and important, but unfortunately we still progressed climate change at an aggressive clip. A growing acceptance of this truth has pushed 'adaptation' into the light. Louie Woodall from Climate Proof focuses on exactly that—preparing for the reality we're actually facing.
"Climate Adaptation with Louie Woodall, Climate Adaptation Publisher" Learn why focusing on adaptation rather than mitigation alone addresses the "unavoidable reality" of climate impacts we're experiencing today. article | youtube| spotify
With the adaptation space still relatively nascent, Louie & I discuss how language impacts social movements and what it means for adaptation right now.
This Week's Playbook
Nili's Reliability Framework for Hard Tech
Reliable technology earns trust through consistent delivery. Nili Persits learned this during 15 years in defense, where tech needs to be rugged and when "no one's going to be around to support this thing. You have to make it good."
Her approach to building Dottir Labs' water sensors offers a practical framework any hard tech founder can implement.
The Three-Layer Reliability System:
- Promise Management: "Don't over promise. This can be hard because when you're an entrepreneur, you always have to have that vision in mind." Take a margin on what you're confident you can deliver, but don't promise the moon.
- Component Selection: "Don't always go for the cheapest option. You might want to upgrade the things you're using just so they last longer, that they actually deliver." This is painful when funding is tight, but if it breaks, people will never use it again.
- Customer Validation: "Trust your customers when they tell you what they need. Sometimes technical entrepreneurs with fancy PhDs think they know better. We don't." Address their actual pain points—don't gloss over them saying "we'll figure it out later."
Resources
Louie from Climate Proof on climate events costing billions "There’s a quote widely misattributed to one of history’s greatest monsters that I feel underlines the inadequacy of large numbers as persuasive devices: 'The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.'"
Jamie Skaar on harsh economics of carbon capture industry
Global Cleantech 100 Annual Report isn't exhaustive by any means, but still a really cool read. Have to give up that email data, but worth it in my opinion
Inosculation in The Grove
A throughline with these episodes is an interpretation of constraints as advantages. When NOAA SBIR funding was halted, Dottir Labs doubled down on bootstrapping and community support. When traditional VC funds rejected nuclear investments, Nucleation Capital created new funding structures. When mainstream climate media focused on mitigation messaging, Climate Proof carved out adaptation as a distinct, underserved market. The examples go on~
The lesson extends beyond climate tech: the most resilient businesses emerge when founders combine deep domain expertise with flexible execution strategies.
Perhaps most importantly, these founders emphasize community and accessible mentorship. The most impactful climate work happens when knowledge and opportunity are shared broadly rather than hoarded.
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With love, Blake
See you next week!
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