hey! welcome to my newsletter.🌿 in case you do not know me: i’m mafer, an 18-year-old peruvian incoming freshman at stanford university, climate tech enthusiast and boba tea connoisseur. i’m very glad to have you here.
“the next big thing in climate change is long-duration energy storage.”
in the u.k. alone, 1.35 trillion watt-hours of solar energy were lost in the past two months. and the worst part is that this was enough power to light up 1.2 million households for the next seven months. all of this because there is still not an efficient method to store renewable energy for a long time.
that was the problem
and i presented for our final pitch in ari global’s program. but for context, i wasn’t exploring this topic two weeks ago. it was because of ari global that i was inspired to start off my journey in the climate tech industry. this is a program for students between 18-25 years who are curious to have hands-on practice on solution making in the emerging tech and science fields.after being exposed to so many types of climate technologies, i was constantly asking myself: where do i start? i felt overwhelmed at first as the expectations were high. we needed to develop a solution that is:
economically incentivized - made money or saved money for customers
scalable - could solve a large portion of the problem
neglected problem - meaning not enough people working on it
as we decided our problem focus, we then centered on the slide deck.
💡levelling up my slide deck design skills.
we delved around multiple sectors, varying from short-term energy storage to methane capture (you can tell we were overwhelmed by the magnitude of focus possibilities of climate tech). but before explaining where we landed in the end, let me tell you how we started.
this was the first slide of my very first pitch in the program. the low-quality picture, the vageness of the phrasing and the lack of a main takeaway were (painfully) evident. i designed it like that because, as a matter of fact, i did not think the design was that important. in the limited time frame we had, my mind said: “ok, if the info is there, then it should be fine.” but, by learning through practice, we got to understand how good looks like throughout the program. in our final pitch, we got from conglomerated texts to eye-catching slides. this slide had 3 main things to improve:
higher quality images
simpler visuals
less text - 1 takeaway per slide
in our final pitch, we could improve this:
clean background with open space for text
visual that reinforces our idea
data-driven problem
at first, i had the conception of “showing more is better” when it comes to presenting an idea but, in reality, it is the ability to get concise that makes or breaks others’ attention. we learned this and much more in the past two weeks. i feel very grateful for the learning curve that i could experience and how our final product condensed each day’s takeaways.
⚡SaveHeat, save energy.
the solution we presented was SaveHeat, a long-duration thermal energy storage system combining graphite pumps and aluminum oxide nanocoatings to improve both cost and storage efficiency. our main goal was to make the use of renewable energy much more efficient as it is intermittent, so we can store excess solar energy produced during the day and use it in more demanded hours afterwards.
if you’re interested in watching our final pitch, here you go!
we also wrote a blog post expanding more into our idea. let us know what you think about it in the comments!
🌎so, what does ari global entail?
as a rapidly growing field, we need rapid and viable solutions. in fact, we need the next big thing in climate tech, and quickly.
so, to be correctly informed, the program is designed with daily discovery sessions (monday - friday) focusing on one emerging technology every day. there is also 1-1 coaching with both co-founders and constant feedback to instill multiple iterations of presentations, pitches or blog posts. and last but most definitely not least, there is a community of people who are also passionate about the technology of tomorrow from who you learn from every second of those two weeks.
☄️changing my mindset toward action.
something that drastically changed the way i approach problems was the different 21st century mindsets —i truly overlooked the importance of reflecting about our thinking processes. the one that stuck to me the most is bias towards action.
these are some of the session notes we had. concretely, sometimes we have bias towards inaction due to:
the fear of looking unknowledgeable
a lack of primary experience in the field
or simply satisficing for the minimum requirements to do something
but it is a matter of embracing the fact that you are starting to lean more into your curiosity.
why starting with inversion? it is sometimes said how it is crucial to understand something by understanding its opposite, so by delimiting reasons why not to do something, you then get inspired to actually do it. i particularly resonated with the lack of primary experience in the field, as i had the idea of waiting to have a degree to have a say in the science industry. however, i practiced my bias towards action first embracing that i was starting.
🔛embracing my starting point through skillsets.
as we debriefed the session, i realized that my main problem was starting. i realized this during the very beginning of the session, as we focused on solution brainstorming. we were exploring the next big thing in synbio, and the task was to come up with 25 ideas in 10 minutes.
i, personally, got stuck with three. i had indeed brainstormed before, but this time was different. i considered brainstorming to be “putting ideas that could be your final product”, and to do so they had to make sense. i really struggled letting my creativity break through and just write the things on top of my head, but again, the fear of not having enough knowledge always came back.
we finally landed on the idea of exploring how synthetic biology can help strengthen the carbon cycle with trees. but in the reflection time in the end of the session, i figured that the fear of starting related to the mindset i used to have. so, i needed a to train the skillset of brainstorming without a bias toward inaction. it was hard for me to overcome that idea i had of making everything perfect (and if it wasn’t it was just better to not do it at all) but the research sprint and the time frames really challenged that and helped me overcome it. i now use that same methodology of brainstorming not only in solution ideation but anything when it comes to learning a new thing. coming into a new field also considering your input could change the complete focus of your research!
we were also encouraged to be intentional about specific outcomes we wanted to achieve by the end of the week. because, in reality, you can do more than what you think in 20 minutes! changing your mindset to fill in the gap between wanting to do something and doing it is key. for example, i had the outcome of finshing last week's net zero emissions blog post in a maximum of 60 minutes by the end of that same day. and in fact, if you put your mind into it, you will then think that the cost of writing a short article condensing what you learned is really not that big of a deal! just doing it enriches both your skills and also your knowledge.
🧠the knowledge: my personal favs.
on top of the skills and mindsets, the knowledge i gained does not fall behind. we could touch upon multiple topics, varying from synthetic biology to ai x climate. but with the daily sprints, i could find my two favorite topics: carbon capture and nuclear fusion — i attach the blog posts of both if you want to read a bit about what i learned :) i gained this knowledge mainly on a didactic way, both through group research and rabbit holes.
what? rabbit holes? as we immersed in the material, we had rabbit holes with more content than what we could digest in a span of 24 hours to get as much information as we want. in the end, how much you gain depends on the time you put into it.
in the beginning of the sprint, i started doing the minimum requirements to prep but, after the first couple of sessions, i realized that if i just took 20 minutes to read extra material, i could bring valuable points/perspectives to the conversation. this is because, as we all had the same prep material, we consequently had the same information in our heads. so, what a better way to bring something new to the table than actually searching out of it?
i could see the results of those extra minutes. i felt much more confident about what i talked about, i could come up with more ideas while brainstorming and i just felt better with myself overall. i am now conscious of how much one can do in such little time, and i want to continue doing so in the projects that lay ahead.
🌟what’s next?
as i mentioned, we were very intentional about the outcomes we wanted to have for the day. and after the final pitches were done, we had a time to reflect about the experience and what we want to do in the next 3 weeks, 3 months and even 3 years.
we looked beyond our projects and explored how we personally defined success in the next few years. we used a matrix technique that product managers at microsoft call the 3x3x3. 3 years connected to 3 months and connected to 3 weeks of goals.
for me, one area i care about is continuing to develop mt research skills in science and engineering to see where we can take our long-duration energy storage project. more specifically that looks like:
talk with 10 professionals to test our technical assumptions
search for 5 mentors for future projects
find resources on campus at stanford that i can use to continue my journey
these are just some short term goals and i am excited to continue my climate tech career. if you know someone who is in the long duration energy storage space, email me at mafer@stanford.edu!
💎my takeaways.
the next big thing in climate tech is long-duration energy storage. we need a cost efficient method to utilize 100% of renewable energy produced to partake the net zero energy transition!
feedback helps us level skills in areas like slide design, where visuals matter.
practicing the mindset of bias towards action helps get more done.
brainstorming means literally to storm ideas, no matter how unreal they might seem to be.
linking longer term solutions with shorter goals makes intentional your future goals. the 3x3x3 matrix is just an example.