Episode 88: How Kickstarter lets anyone fund climate startups

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood. 

This week I apparently can’t stop doing miniseries in 2025. I got a call from the folks at Kickstarter talking about climate and sustainability projects that have been funded on that platform and all the new projects that are popping up there every day. 

And since we ultimately we need every new idea and all of those new ideas need *money* and money doesn’t always have to be venture capital and probably isn’t going to be federal grants anytime soon  

It seemed like a good time to talk about this alternative or sometimes parallel funding mechanism  

Oh and not for nothing internet

This is yet another personal action that any of us can take if we’re looking for a financial way to get involved in helping create something amazing. 

And then in the next two episodes after this I’ll talk to two of Kickstarter’s biggest climate success stories. Fun! 

Let’s go 

Nathan Nalevanko 

Yeah, I'm Nathan Nalevanko. I work at Kickstarter on the design and technology team. So what that means is I work with creators. So these are inventors, engineers, kind of anybody with a creative idea to help them bring their projects to life. That's done via crowdfunding, which I'd be happy to talk more about.

Molly Wood 

Yeah, definitely. I think everyone is familiar, but just in case, talk about how Kickstarter has approached the crowdfunding model, because I actually do think there are some nuances that folks might not understand.

Nathan Nalevanko 

Yeah, yeah. And there's many forms of crowdfunding too, but yeah, Kickstarter is the largest crowdfunding platform in the world. And, you know,

We have a model called rewards based crowdfunding. So in your project, you offer a series of rewards. Oftentimes this is a product, but it can be other intangible things as well. And those are offered at different price points. And then somebody pledges or backs the project for one of those rewards. And then at some later time, know, a promise timeline, the, those rewards are fulfilled to the backer. So it's,

You know, it's not e-commerce, but it is a delayed, you know, funding model that allows somebody that has a creative project to get funds in order to bring it to life. One thing to note there is there's no equity exchanged in that.

Molly Wood 

which is I think a point that we'll dig into a little bit more further on. Now, this may be the point where people in my audience are going, aren't you a show about climate solutions? And so I wanna ask you about the extent to which Kickstarter is funding and how Kickstarter is approaching sustainability and climate innovation within kind of the crowdfunding space.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah. So yeah, our mission is to bring creative projects to life. under the broad umbrella of creative projects, there are many types of projects that we would consider climate tech or sustainability in nature. this may include many things that you may not classically call climate tech, but we have large categories like portable power that ultimately is taking energy off the grid in their applications. can be, but there are many other categories. things like renewable power, there are solar projects on Kickstarter. There are things like, know, drone reforestation companies like FlashForest and many, many other categories. I think the fun thing about Kickstarter is

You never know what you're going to see next. you know, it is a home for, for these creative projects that maybe don't sit within a traditional category or maybe haven't existed before. And that, you know, maybe somebody tried to find other more traditional types of funding and weren't able to find that. and so you end up a Kickstarter as, kind of, a solution to go to the crowd and see if, you know, others are passionate about this and want to help support.

Molly Wood

Is, tell me a little bit more about, before we come back to sustainability, tell me a little bit more about your particular job. how much, is sustainability a specific part of your job or no? And then like, what does it mean to do what you do at Kickstarter?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, you know, sustainability is a passion of mine. I have a master's in environmental engineering and have worked in, you know, before climate tech, we maybe called it clean tech before. And, but so yeah, you know, it's something I'm always considering in my job, but I'm working with many types of startups across the design and technology categories, which, you know, that we...

we have those categories that kind of exist as a spectrum of things that can be analog, they can be digital, but pretty much all of the breadth of physical products of the world. you know, I think how that gets into sustainability is that a lot of these projects are, you know, in being creative are unique in some way. So a lot of times that can be materials, know, bio-based materials, recycled materials, et cetera. can be, as we were talking about, kind of hardware technologies and things

as renewable power and others. yeah, think even if somebody is building a consumer product that maybe doesn't have a sustainability goal from the outset, we do work with...

the teams in order to consider environmental commitments. It's something we put public on every page for someone to be thinking about, okay, what is it going to take the inputs to this project? How could I reduce my impact throughout? That's something that we work, know, every project that's launching on Kickstarter is considering that and is built into our platform. But yeah, in my role,~~ 

Molly Wood

Right. And so, and that, you know, there's like a sort of a couple areas to explore here. One is these specific types of companies on Kickstarter, but also the idea of Kickstarter as this sort of alternative funding mechanism. I have certainly seen a lot of entrepreneurs move from trying to raise venture capital to trying to raise crowdfunding because venture capital is particularly hard for hardware, let's say, or, you know.

They got distracted by AI and less interested in climate tech, et cetera, et cetera, right? What are the, what in your mind are the criteria that make a startup or invention more appropriate to Kickstarter than some other funding mechanism?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah. Maybe one thing that I think is a misconception to say upfront is that venture funding or any other type of funding is not mutually exclusive to crowdfunding. So many teams, especially in the climate tech space, if you're, if you're really doing novel hardware, it's an expensive project. You know, there's, there's no way to get around all of the different types of engineering.

Molly Wood

Sure, yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

you know, all the expertise that's required to bring something to market. You know, there's no kind of magic solve that happens because you launched via Kickstarter. So, you know, I worked with teams everywhere along the spectrum from receiving, you know, a large sum of venture or angel funding before they launched to maybe that coming in the middle of the project or using the project as a data point and a proof point to

to investors that have like, we do have market demand. I think that's quite.

common as well. Especially for teams that again in hardware, know, we're talking, you know, high hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to bring these, these products to market. And, know, may you may or may not raise that in your Kickstarter campaign. Hopefully you do, but if you don't, you may need to be also looking for additional funds in order to fulfill on that commitment. So, yeah, I think there's all of those possibilities are available here. And, you know, I think

in the ways that all of the projects are creative in different ways, think the founders find unique ways in order to make it work.

Molly Wood

Yep, totally. Are you seeing, would you say, an increase in climate focus projects on Kickstarter?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, I think, again, with the broad, our broad definition of climate focused projects, I would say yes, you know, we're, we are seeing.

Molly Wood

Yeah. What are, me some examples of like surprises, you know, you've said broad definition, but like, are some examples of ones that, I, because I think this is actually an important conversation. Like almost every company is a climate company at some point.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

Sure, of course. And yeah, and as I said, I'm representing like the design and technology categories that launch on Kickstarter. across that, maybe some of the more unexpected ones would be like analog products, I'd say something like eyewear.

Genusee Eyewear is a really interesting project from a few years ago that made sunglasses from recycled water bottles from Flint, Michigan. So, you know, that's something that's, you know, maybe not climate directly, but, know, it's taking a recycled input to make a product and telling a very poignant story along the way and shedding light on that, you know, environmental issue and human rights issue that's happening there.

Molly Wood

Right.

Nathan Nalevanko

But there are many of these types of things, Bureaux skateboards made from recycled fishing nets that their product and material has grown. And now it's in Patagonia, clothing and many other brands products. Hero Technologies just launched a project in...

in December and they're making diapers that have plastic eating fungi in them. that, you know, diapers happen to be the largest source of plastic pollution to our landfills and they're using some really exciting,

technology, fungi, fungal technology in order to create this new product that will decompose in a landfill and that currently doesn't. you know, diapers are kind of the Trojan horse into this, but, you know, they have a much broader vision for all of the types of plastics that they can get, you know, this kind of like impregnated fungi. so, yeah, maybe not where you would go, your head would go for climate tech to diapers, but

You know, I think I think there's like really strong cases to be made even even from you know a life cycle assessment of those types of things but yeah, I Can talk all day about these types?

Molly Wood

I'm totally like and I could apparently listen like I'm just like, my god, keep them coming I mean that is the magic of Kickstarter right is that it literally is like I like to say that this show is about the brilliant minds who are working on the solutions and blah blah, but like the the sheer compendium of genius ideas that is Kickstarter is must just I mean, what a fun job just side note, you know

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I love it. And yeah, I don't know what I'm going to see tomorrow is like the special part about working in this role here. And, know, I think everybody that comes to Kickstarter has some special story to tell, certainly. But, you know, everybody has that same kind of angle of, know, they're trying to change the world. And, you know, in

almost always that is, uh, you know, coming from a place of idealism and, and, you know, envisioning a better world and trying to find a solution. Usually it's something, a problem that they've encountered in their life. Um, flash forest, for example, uh, you know, they, they, yeah, we're going to talk to you in a minute. Yeah. That, you know, two brothers that had a, know, they were living up in British Columbia and in their hometown had the largest forest fire ever. Um, in

Molly Wood

who you're gonna hear from on the show. yeah, let's yeah, use them as a success story.

Nathan Nalevanko

you know, just in their backyard. And they said, what, can we do about this? You know, that after it burned, there was no replanting of trees and you know, they were like, when is this going to change? And, know, they,

they said, okay, let's go find some technology. And, you know, they, they created an amazing solution in order to be able to solve this problem that, you know, nobody else was, was picking up the ball to do that. And, know, they, you know, you'll hear more from their story about how, they were able to pull that all off, which is amazing. But, you know, I think oftentimes it's, you know, on Kickstarter, you're getting somebody that's solving a problem that, that is their own first. So they are the user. And, and that's why the, why,

the stories are so authentic and do resonate and you know there are many many other people that have experienced that problem as well and you know we love to connect those people in in order to bring things to life.

Molly Wood 

Are there other success stories in kind of this field that you can think of that come to mind?

Nathan Nalevanko

many. think the hard part about this is there are so many interesting things that have happened. Maybe to highlight BioLite is another creator that we'll be talking to here in a bit. They have launched five projects on Kickstarter before and

Every time they've kind of scaled up and their brand has become a very well-known brand, a large brand in the outdoor industry. And they have done different things along the way. They really started from a place of kind of a...

solving for disasters scenarios and kind of off grid power and then kind of emerging markets as a part of their business as well. But a lot of this, they also fund through kind of premium outdoor gear. And, you know, I think they make a range of products from fire pits to headlamps to now backup home battery solutions. you know,

You may not, you know, it wouldn't be a classic example to say like, one brand would make all of those things, but you know, they have a really strong thread that they pull through all of those. And, know, when they come back to Kickstarter, they have a very passionate community that's looking to support their next venture. And, you know, it's really exciting to see that and see the scale of a brand that, you know, it has gone from, you not, not being very well known to a household name.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the process of vetting climate startups on Kickstarter and also PROMOTING climate startups on Kickstarter. 

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We’re talking with Nathan Nalevanko from the Kickstarter design and and technology team about all the hand-holding that can happen when you list your company on the crowdfunding platform. 

Molly Wood

What if any, I mean, I think this is sort of always a question for crowdfunding platforms, right? Which is like, what if any vetting are you doing to make sure the claims aren't greenwashing? And believe me, I do not ask that with an expectation that it's your job, right? I just think either way, it's important for people to kind of understand their own responsibility when it comes to funding a project.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, you know, I think in a few ways here.

First, we have a trust and safety team and any project that's launching on Kickstarter is being vetted against our rules and terms and conditions of, you know, are they meeting all of those before they could launch and go live? you know, certain things, you know, we're requiring, especially in this kind of climate tech category, are a working prototype that you demonstrate that prototype and where it's at, its current status. You know, it doesn't need to look like the eventual final

thing, but you know, it should be pretty close and you need to acknowledge the gaps and your plan to get from where you are today to to what you're promising. So, you know, I think that's that's the biggest way. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, in that way, it's you know, you can't just throw up any old idea on Kickstarter, especially in design and technology and.

Molly Wood

That's like a lot more than some VCs ask, honestly.

Nathan Nalevanko

You know it one you're not going to be allowed to launch into the community knows you know that they're you know the vast majority of projects fulfill but there have been ones that haven't in the past, certainly to and you know I think over time, our backer community is very sophisticated these are.

Many of them are also inventors and engineers and designers and creatives and have, you know, are very familiar with products and they are the experts in many of these categories. So they can smell if the project, you know, has something wrong with it and, or if you haven't.

taken it far enough in development before you are launching it to the market, I think. So, you know, a little bit of that answer is we have some rules that you need to meet, but then ultimately the crowd decides. You know, one other.

part of my job and our outreach teams role is to curate the projects on Kickstarter and promote the ones that we're really excited about that are mission aligned, that are solving really interesting problems, especially climate tech, and have a great story and are coming from a great founder. And we're working with those teams directly in order to make them as successful as possible. you you'll see things like the Projects We Love badge on the platform. And, you know, this roughly represents like the

top 10 % of projects that are live at any one time. But we have newsletters and other ways that we feature projects on our social and other ways that we can get you exposure. So yeah, those are some of the levers that we're pulling to make sure that a lot of our audience is seeing the projects that we know are

Nathan Nalevanko

that are vetted and are very solid, coming from a solid team are very, very likely to fulfill and kind of downplaying a little bit the ones that maybe aren't meeting all of those requirements.

Molly Wood

Right. Tell me a little more about the sort of curation and outreach process. Like that feels important that you actually, in some cases, looking for different types of solutions.

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, yeah, of course. yeah, first, I don't know what's going to come in the door tomorrow. you know, there's always, you know, and there's many ways we're doing outreach from, you know, just cool stuff that I see online. You know, it could just be on whatever the verge or it could be on Instagram. because I'm in the crowdfunding space and that I'm looking at all of these products all of the time.

Molly Wood

huh.

Nathan Nalevanko

Everybody's ads are tailored to me. So I'm getting ads for all the stuff that's coming out next month too. you know, whenever I see something that I really like, I find, find that creator's contact and reach out. but yeah, I think.

Molly Wood

Right?

Nathan Nalevanko

There are so many projects launching all the time. There are thousands of projects live at any one time on Kickstarter. And our team is doing our best to support as many of them as we can. definitely picking and choosing kind of, again, based on mission alignment, based on the impact of the project, the story.

And all of that, yeah, we're deciding how to allocate our time and our marketing resources and all of that in order to make sure we pour gasoline on the fires that we think can burn bright.

Molly Wood

Yeah. What is the mission when you say mission online?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, bringing creative projects to life is the mission. I think there's a lot to unpack in those few words. yeah, yeah. And maybe something else to say here is that we're a public benefit corporation, which gives us a lot of license to operate that is beyond just optimizing shareholder value. And we have a detailed charter of all the ways that

Molly Wood

Right.

I know, I was like, so then how do we decide what's not, yeah, not creative.

Nathan Nalevanko

we want to operate and it includes things like promoting cultural categories and the arts generally, it's about promoting creators of all different types of backgrounds and diversity, it includes also environmental commitments. I think.

It's a little bit, you know it when you see it, whenever you've internalized our mission and all the ways that we're trying to drive impact in the world, you know, this project is telling a story that is also a Kickstarter story, in the ways that we've...

you know, impact to the world to date. You know, I'd say another thing with this is that there are many categories and subcategories that kind of just grow, grow organically of, know, you get one, you know, portable power solution, you know, a portable battery and then, you know, all the other success, you know, one success story begets.

many other projects that come in that category. So, you know, I think we're also picking and choosing on that where, you know, we see opportunities for like, okay, let's go find a bunch of exciting solar technologies or teams and also make sure that we're promoting them and, you know, make...

making them as successful as possible. you know, I think, again, it is kind of a grand curation exercise and, you know, something that we're always looking for new exciting teams and projects to help.

Molly Wood

How much involvement do you have in helping like a founder or an entrepreneur sort of shape their story? Like, are there certain challenges around storytelling related to climate companies that you help with?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

yeah, I mean, definitely. Yeah. I think it really depends on the team and, know, this, this is very kind of like solutions, based in my work and consultative. So some teams, know, they have a marketing department, they have a brand story. They were they themselves, like the founder is a marketer and, and they're very comfortable telling their own story and already have a very clear vision for that. So in that case.

Molly Wood

Or no? Like what's your involvement?

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

you know, I'm kind of validating, maybe tweaking some things, sometimes translating from someone that may be more familiar with e-commerce to crowdfunding and what really is successful there. It's definitely much longer form and you know, there's an opportunity to story tell about the product and really get into the details and nuance. Like you're not showing the product development process on your Shopify page, you know, whenever you're.

Molly Wood

Right.

Nathan Nalevanko

You're, buying a pair of boots. you know, you're on, on Kickstarter though, people want to see all of those details. Like as much as you can pull back the curtain, the better really. And, and so a lot of times it's encouraging that of like, you know, let's talk more about the founding team and your partners. And how do we be as transparent as possible to the backers to give them confidence that you're going to fulfill that this is going to be everything that you're promising it to be.

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Nathan Nalevanko

And, and that you're really clear of like, what, does this product do? you know, I think it's super common with Kickstarter that the inventor, the product person, the designer, the engineer is the person that came up with the idea and has this idea. And they don't totally know what to do from there. And, you know, marketing is a large part of this equation and, know, it's one half of product market fit. So.

You know, I think that's a lot of my job too, is educating product folks or people that have a prototype on, okay, you can't just come to Kickstarter and not tell anyone that this exists and hope that we do all of your marketing for you. mean, we, we, we are very effective at reaching a community of people that, will be passionate about your idea, but it's not going to scale to, you know,

Molly Wood

Right.

Nathan Nalevanko

thousands of backers or millions of dollars without telling other people off platform as well in order to get the momentum going with the campaign. So, you know, I think a lot of it is education on that of how do you just create a marketing strategy and execute on

Molly Wood

Right. Well, and certainly, I mean, what I have found moving from pure tech to climate tech is that there are a lot of science based projects. And I would imagine that that is the case on Kickstarter too, that those are things that are like plastic eating fungus is easy to understand, even if you might have questions about putting that on your baby's butt. there are, I would imagine things in the climate tech space that are harder to.

Any really, any science based product that are harder to explain, right?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, yeah, definitely there's a translation and a science communication component to it. I do think on Kickstarter, you know, there's a bend towards consumer products. So I think a lot of folks know that they need to make this something that people want to buy ultimately. 

You know, I think talking about the core technology and all of the exciting science that's happening in order to unlock this creative solution is interesting, but it can't be the lead of your story. At the end of the day, adoption for any type of technology, but I think it's especially important in the climate space is, this is a consumer product. It needs to be something that appeals to the masses.

will have adoption of electric vehicles when they're better than fossil fuel vehicles in all of the ways that someone might consider. they already are better in many use cases. So it's really just solving those problems. I think engineers and scientists and inventors, designers, all of these folks.

you know, need to approach this from a design, a user-centered design perspective and really be clear with, okay, the science is under the hood, but it actually does this for you. And that's going to, you know, be valuable to you. And it's better than other solutions. And I think finding that story, you know, I think it comes out over time once you make it clear that, you know, the science isn't the only story to tell.

Molly Wood

Right, dear founders, here's why it's awesome, is what you wanna tell us. Here's why it's awesome, or better, or both. So how can, okay, so for people who want to back this, I mean, think this is such, what's so awesome about crowdfunding is that there are a ton of people who want to have some involvement in solutions and don't know where to go. So how do people go about filtering for these types of projects on Kickstarter?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah. Go to [kickstarter.com](http://kickstarter.com/). Yeah. And, you know, you can, you can sort by tags like environmental. We're actually, we're in the works on improving some of that tagging and sorting so that, you know, you will be able to search for something as specific as climate tech. Right now you could search for climate or sustainability or.

Molly Wood

Take your money, go to the website.

Nathan Nalevanko

fungi or whatever you would like. yeah, that would be one way. But yeah, going to [kickstarter.com](http://kickstarter.com/), creating an account, this also starts to track your preferences. if you back one sustainability-based project, you're going to see some more of those. I think, yeah, one is just kind of get on there and check it out. think a lot of people maybe have

have been to [Kickstarter.com](http://kickstarter.com/) and haven't been there in a while, you're going to see some really interesting projects on there. I'm always blown away by the quality of projects that are live at any one time. yeah, I think.

we're again, we're working to do the best job we can in order to say like, hey, I'm a climate tech person and show me just that. I think there's lots of ways from a user interface perspective, we are excited about improving. But yeah, I think going to design or technology and looking around, I'm sure you'll see some stuff you like.

Molly Wood

Do you think there's a, no pressure, but do you think there's a universe where it becomes its own category?

Nathan Nalevanko

Yeah, I definitely think that's kind of what I'm alluding to this year. I think you'd be able to hit a page and it's just that. I think in the one we're always looking for interesting climate tech projects. So if you have an idea, please contact us and would love to chat. And yeah, I think there's many ways that...

Molly Wood

Yeah, got it.

Nathan Nalevanko

we see this growing. another program that we have is called Forward Funds. And we've done this in other categories, but would love to partner with an organization or brand that would want to stand up one of those funds that we would be able to allocate directly to climate tech projects. It's something we've definitely talked about and hasn't happened yet. So we'd love to continue the conversation.

Molly Wood

Nathan Nalevanko, thank you so much for the time, [Kickstarter.com](http://kickstarter.com/). You all know it. Now just go there. 

Molly Wood Voice-Over:

That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening.

You heard Nathan mention Flash Forest and BioLite those are the next two interviews coming up next week will be Flash Forest and their technology for automating tree planting especially after wildfires. 

Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool dot com, the website. And if you want to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of the show, hit the link in the description in your podcast app of choice. And hey! Everybody in the Pool dot com, the website, got a little bit of a face lift. Go check it out and let me know what you think! 

Thank you to those of you who already have. Together we can get this done. See you next week.