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Highlights
From Ultra Running to Urban Wood: How This Founder is Building a Climate Tech Marketplace by Doing the Hard Things
The hardest problems require a certain type of founder – someone willing to embrace discomfort, push through rejection, and maintain unwavering focus. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Ben Christensen of Cambium Carbon shared how his background in forestry and commitment to climate solutions led him to tackle a massively overlooked opportunity in urban wood waste.
Finding the Overlooked Billion-Dollar Problem
While many climate tech startups focus on carbon trading platforms or enabling technologies, Ben identified a tangible problem hiding in plain sight: “It’s 46 million tons a year in the US. There’s more wood that comes down in our cities every year that’s salvageable than our national forests,” he explains. “It’s a crazy volume of wood that we pay over a billion dollars a year as a country to get rid of.”
The scale of the opportunity was staggering – potentially $50 billion in value from material that cities currently pay to dispose of. But recognizing the opportunity was just the beginning. Ben had to figure out how to build a marketplace that could efficiently connect large material buyers with local processors.
Early Rejection and the Power of One Yes
Like many founders, Ben’s early attempts to build a team met with crushing rejection. Despite having funding and what seemed like a low-risk opportunity, his initial pitch to ten close friends ended with everyone walking away. “I felt totally demoralized,” Ben recalls. “I had gone to grad school, and I went straight in from undergrad. I was the youngest one in my program, and felt fairly consistently like I couldn’t get my foot in the door.”
The turning point came from an unexpected source: “I then called my best friend from growing up who was just getting back from a fellowship and said, hey, I got this thing. What do you think about coming to work on it? And he was like, yes, sure. Didn’t hesitate.”
Building Trust Through Transparency
Rather than trying to compete solely on sustainability credentials, Ben’s team focused on solving fundamental supply chain visibility problems. Working with companies like Room and Board, they developed technology to track materials from source to final product. “One of the biggest challenges within sustainability always is clarity and transparency,” Ben explains. “You need a certifier when you have a third party coming in, because you don’t actually know what’s happening in the supply chain. For us, we’re able to help them see with total transparency, each step of the process, down to every single board.”
The Ultra Runner’s Approach to Building
Ben’s experience as an ultra runner has shaped his approach to company building in unexpected ways. He’s observed a common pattern where founders “raise a lot of money, get caught a bit in the hype train, and just get soft and soften their emotional resilience, soften their ability to give to other people, soften their focus, soften their drive, soften their commitment.”
His solution? “Don’t do good things, because we should only be doing great things.” This mantra of radical prioritization comes from learning to triage effectively: “We have a tendency as founders… to want to build everything, and there’s great strength in that. I think there’s greater strength in building in a stepwise manner where you’re able to take something that will get you to the next level and see it all the way through.”
Ben’s vision extends beyond just creating a more efficient marketplace. He’s working to transform how materials are sourced, bringing manufacturing jobs back to American cities while reducing shipping burden. “We just live in this world where so many things are optimized to be the same,” he reflects. “We really believe in sort of rethinking that and rethinking the uniqueness of products, the stories behind products.”
Actionable
Takeaways
Seek Marginal Impact in Addressing Big Problems:
When tackling massive challenges like climate change, Ben recommends focusing on what you, as an individual with a unique background and skill set, can do to make the most marginal impact. By identifying gaps and overlooked opportunities, you can carve out a niche where you can drive meaningful change.
Commit Fully to Your Vision:
Ben credits his success in pushing through the early challenges of starting Cambium Carbon to his commitment to seeing the vision through, no matter how difficult things got. Founders should strive to find a mission they believe in so deeply that they're willing to persevere even when faced with setbacks and doubts.
Build Relationships and Seek Advice in Fundraising:
As a first-time founder with limited connections in the climate tech and VC space, Ben learned the importance of building genuine relationships with investors and asking for advice rather than just money. By focusing on learning and improving his pitch, he was able to gradually gain traction and secure funding.
Triage Effectively and Commit to Great Ideas:
One of Ben's key learnings is the importance of triaging ideas and committing fully to the ones with the greatest potential, rather than trying to pursue every good idea. By focusing on a few big bets and seeing them through, founders can make more rapid progress and avoid spreading themselves too thin.
Embrace Uniqueness and Storytelling in Products:
Cambium Carbon's vision goes beyond just sourcing sustainable materials to creating products that people cherish for their uniqueness and the stories behind them. By rethinking the value of waste streams and the role of standardization in manufacturing, the company aims to foster a deeper connection between consumers and the items they use in their daily lives.
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