Activate Stories

This week saw an announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) that the administration was awarding $6B to transform America's industrial sector, strengthen domestic manufacturing, and slash planet-warming emissions.. It’s a big win for early-stage science entrepreneurship, and as a result of these new awards, Activate marks a significant milestone by announcing that the 147 companies founded by its fellows were on their way to securing over $2B in follow-on funding collectively.

“Surround yourself with people who you trust, who are there to support you and shape your success,” says Rok Sitar (Blaze Energy Technologies, Cohort 2023). This is universally sound advice, and chances are you already have a select cadre of mentors or advisors to whom you’ve turned for guidance during your education and career. For up-and-coming entrepreneurs, this advice takes on new significance as you assemble a board of advisors to bolster your success.

By Dan Recht, Activate Boston Managing Director
When Juicero shut down on September 1, 2017, the news spread quickly through San Francisco’s Mission District, which was then ground zero for hardware startups in the city. At that time I was CEO of a hydrogen storage startup based in a shared building down the street. Juicero may have been making juicers and not hydrogen tanks like my startup, but the success of both our companies relied on one thing: entrepreneurial community support.

Activate’s CEO, Cyrus Wadia, discussed how Activate focuses on empowering scientists with the resources, mentorship, and community needed to navigate the challenging journey from the lab to the marketplace in a recent Invested in Climate podcast episode.

Parenting and entrepreneurship are both transformative and highly demanding journeys, and many Activate Fellows embark on them simultaneously. How do they balance both? How do the roles of science entrepreneur and parent intersect and even complement one another?

By just about any measure, 2023 was a powerful year for Activate and our fellows. Here are some of 2023’s most significant wins.

By Dan Recht, Activate Boston Managing Director
You can start the story of the Boston climate-tech ecosystem in a lot of ways, but I begin with the founding of the MIT Energy Club and the Harvard Energy Journal Club within a few months of each other in 2004 and 2005. That means our community is turning 19 this year—and finally emerging from an adolescence characterized by rapid growth in size and maturity along with a fair amount of teenage awkwardness. What does it mean for our community to enter adulthood? 

By Matt Price, Co-Founder and CFO at Activate
I just returned from COP28, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held this year in Dubai. Every year, COP presents a powerful opportunity to bring world leaders together and set goals for climate action. Here are my biggest takeaways.

We sit down with our new CEO, Cyrus Wadia, to discuss his history with our organization, his vision for Activate’s future, and how our fellows continue to create impact beyond the companies they build.

Catie McVey (DairyFIT, Cohort 2023) is using livestock data analytics to build more resilient cows. These cows can withstand the volatility of climate change, and in turn, unlock greener farming practices. Her innovations are deeply rooted in North Carolina, where she grew up and recently returned.

Today, Activate announced that applications are open for their 2024 cohort, starting September 19 and closing October 17, 2023. The window to apply begins during Climate Week NYC, at the tail end of the hottest summer ever on record, where Activate Fellows and partners will be presenting hard-tech solutions to our most pressing decarbonization challenges and beyond. 

Activate’s new CEO brings impressive science, business, and government experience to deliver impact at scale.

After living through the hottest summer on record, leaders from across sectors and the world will gather at Climate Week NYC from September 17–24 to accelerate climate action. Activate is hosting or sponsoring a series of thought-leadership-driven gatherings during the week, including a showcase of Activate Fellow technologies followed by a fireside chat between Evelyn Wang, Director of ARPA-E, and climate journalist and former Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood.

Josué López (Cohort 2020) is modeling a new kind of success story as the first Activate Fellow alum to become a venture capitalist. An MIT-trained electrical engineer and nanoscientist, López founded Kyber Photonics, a chip-scale semiconductor company building sensors for autonomy, which he led for two-and-a-half years. Now he’s enriching the innovation ecosystem in a new way, bringing his experience as a technologist, science entrepreneur, and diversity and equity leader to venture capital.

We are excited to welcome Dan Recht as managing director of the Activate Boston Community, where he will use his technical and business expertise to mentor fellows.

The Journey to Well-Being: A series on mental health and the unique demands of entrepreneurship

Paramedics. Social workers. Soldiers. Those are the kinds of roles you might associate with workplace trauma. But as we’ve explored in parts one and two in this “Journey to Well-being” series, being a founder comes with a significant emotional weight that should not be ignored.