Reasons to Give Thanks
Image by Tate Kieto | Used with permission vis the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License
While “doomscrolling” is one of the more poetic recently coined words (we like the Gothic tang, and it’s a lot better than “JOMO” or “quaran-team”), it’s a habit that’s notably bad for your health. Yet the doom keeps coming—the world has passed 8 billion humans, COP27 was bogged down in the usual political wrestling, and no one knows what to do with their Twitter account. There’s plenty of doom to scroll.
And yet here at Activate we took note of two recent articles: one in the Economist and one in the New York Times. Is there something in the air? The world is awash in problems, yet there’s a small but exciting group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and funders who are aiming at a potentially better future with real—and perhaps revolutionary—solutions. The Times article quotes Kate Marvel of NASA as saying: “The world will be what we make it.” We agree.
Looking for other reasons for optimism? In the past month alone, Activate Fellows and alumni have made the news for awards, funding, and progress in deploying their world-changing technologies. Look at TIME’s recognition of Twelve and Gradient’s technologies as Top Innovations of 2022. Fervo Energy landed another power purchase agreement to bring 24/7 carbon-free geothermal power to several California-based community choice aggregators. Together, Concerto Bio, Anthro Energy, Nitricity, and AeroShield Materials announced almost $40 million in funding in the past month, indicating investors’ strong appetite for supporting tomorrow’s solutions.
The Economist states: “Another approach in vogue is to fund ‘people not projects.’” Most conventional grants fund specific projects for a set amount of time, usually a few years, which researchers worry prevents them from pivoting to new ideas when old ones do not work out and fails to allot enough time for risky ones to come to fruition.” Activate has been promoting this approach ever since we launched seven years ago. With “fellows first” as our motto, we’ve supported innovators like Tom McDonald (Cohort 2015) and Richard Wang (Cohort 2016) as their companies (Mosaic Materials and Cuberg, respectively) have been acquired. We’ve encouraged collaboration, with founders like David Bierman (Cohort 2017), co-founder of Marigold Materials, joining forces with Justin Briggs and Andrew Ponec (Cohort 2018) to go all-in on developing Antora Energy’s thermal battery technology.
Supporting innovators—not just their projects—also allows us to celebrate the multitude of ways entrepreneurs can benefit the ecosystem outside of a founder role, like Jill Fuss (Cohort 2018) and her return to Activate as Berkeley Managing Director.
We’re also heartened by the deluge of interest in joining Activate’s newest cohort. When applications closed on October 31, we tallied 670 applications—an all-time high and increase of more than 33% from last year. Each of these hundreds of applications represents an idea that could go on to change the world for the better, and an individual committed to spearheading this transformation. We’re grateful for everyone who applied to become a part of Cohort 2023 and for anyone who shared this fellowship opportunity with their networks.
What’s to come is difficult to predict, and it’s true that human ingenuity is at least in part responsible for some of our more intractable problems. But ingenuity, in its myriad and seemingly inexhaustible forms, may illuminate the road to a better world.