“The key attribute of an innovator right now is storytelling."

Scott Galloway said something on the Diary of a CEO that I believe every cleantech founder needs to hear.

“The key attribute of an innovator right now is storytelling. And that is to make sure the promise is way ahead of the performance such that you can access cheap capital and pull the future forward.” — Scott Galloway.

Galloway’s framing: as AI commoditizes technology, products converge. Models converge. The moat disappears. What’s left is the relationship you’ve built, the mission you’ve made people believe in, the future you’ve made feel inevitable. Storytelling isn’t soft, but a mechanism by which capital moves.

He uses Jensen Huang as his example. Galloway says Huang fills “giant Buffett-like stadiums” not because of specs, but because of the story. He shows up like a rock star and makes you feel like you’re watching history being made.

What if more Cleantech founders were rock stars? They are in our eyes!

This is an industry where the promise must structurally precede the performance. Grid-scale storage, carbon markets, distributed energy, next-gen nuclear — all bets on a future that doesn’t fully exist yet. The timelines are long, the jargon is like molasses, and the technology is genuinely hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t already believe.

That’s the whole game, y’all.

And here’s the thing, we already know how to do relationships. Cleantech is a small industry. We’ve been building trust in rooms most people never see, but we haven’t made those stories public.

This isn’t about your investor deck. It’s about showing up consistently on LinkedIn, in trade press, in newsletters, at the conferences where your next customer is quietly deciding who they trust. It’s about your founder being a voice, not just a name on a website.

The companies that will win the next decade of the energy transition aren’t just building better technology. They’re building belief.

Tell me a story. DM me at melanie@alderagency.com. Link to the podcast.