At 3 AM the lake is alive. Ice cracking under a canoe. Breath hanging in the air. Ducks overhead so thick they look like mosquitoes.That was Iñaki at eleven years old, duck hunting with his dad outside Mexico City. 

Fast forward eleven years. Same lake. Same ritual. But this time the water is shallow. The temperature reads 44°F instead of 5°F. The ducks are gone. Only mosquitoes remain.

“That’s when I decided to do something about climate,” Iñaki told the room.

It was the best origin story of the season. Everyone felt it. But what unfolded next wasn’t about climate. It was about incentives.

#180 Climatta: Planet Vs. Money

Story Opens the Door. Incentives Close It.

The investors leaned in immediately.

“Your story about going duck hunting with your dad was really impactful,” Josh told him afterward.

And it was. But venture rooms have a short memory. 

Lisa put it bluntly after the pitch:

“He gets the award for best story… but story alone will not get you money in the pitch room.”

The room loved the mission. They weren’t convinced by the mechanics. And that’s where things got interesting. 

For founders: your “why” is fuel. But your buyer’s “why” determines revenue.

The $300 Billion ‘Just Pay It’ Tax

Climatta’s wedge is deceptively simple. Buildings account for roughly 40% of global carbon emissions. Companies overspend an estimated $300 billion annually on utilities due to inefficiencies buried inside invoices that no one reads.

Iñaki asked the panel:

“Do you proactively read your utility invoice every single month, or just pay it away?”

The response was unanimous: “Just pay it.”

That shrug is the opportunity. 

Climatta plugs into utility portals, scrapes 24 months of data, and flags three primary savings buckets:

• Missed tax deductions
  

• Power factor penalties
  

• Operational inefficiencies

The results sounded absurd:

• $1.2M in missed tax deductions for one retailer
  

• $750K in preventable penalties for a manufacturer
  

• Savings identified in minutes, not months

“The payback is ridiculous,” Mike Ma said. “$18K ACV, $1 million savings.”

And yet, nearly two years in, Climatta had five enterprise customers and roughly $90K in ARR. If the ROI is that obvious, why wasn’t growth faster? 

ROI Isn’t the Same as Urgency

Enterprise math doesn’t override enterprise inertia. Elizabeth asked what she called her “A-hole-ish question”:

“You started in May 2023… it’s been almost two years… and you’re just shy of $100K ARR. Why?”

Jesse said what many investors think but don’t always say:

“If it’s truly as magical as it sounds, it would be selling more.”

Mike pitched a different strategy: “I’m not sure this is a venture business today. It could be a perfectly awesome lifestyle business.”

And that’s the tension: ROI ≠ inevitability. For founders: if the value is obvious but growth is slow, the blocker is structural.

Champions Feel the Pain. Buyers Hold the Pen.

The structural blocker became clear during questioning. Climatta had been selling into Chief Sustainability Officers. They feel the pain. They care about emissions. They understand the waste. But they don’t control the budget.

“Even though the chief sustainability officer lives the pain, they don’t necessarily have the budget,” Iñaki admitted.

Elizabeth asked, “So it’s strictly a money decision?”

“Strictly a money decision. A hundred percent.”

There it was. Sustainability feels it. Finance signs it. That extra internal hop stretches cycles and diffuses urgency. 

Six months later, Iñaki reframed:

“We have to stop pitching Climatta as a sustainability platform. It’s a way to generate more revenue if you optimize operating costs.”

Same product. Different buyer psychology.

Four Takeaways

1. Identify the budget holder early.
   

2. Test renewal logic before scaling acquisition.
   

3. A good business isn’t automatically a venture business.
   

4. If ROI is obvious but sales lag, incentives—not math—are the bottleneck.

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