Yes SF: A Unique San Francisco Climate Tech Accelerator
From blue jeans, to the television to It’s-It ice cream, San Francisco has been the home of many inventions since the City by the Bay flourished in the wake of the Gold Rush. This past April, more than 750 organizations kept that tradition alive through SF Climate Week, demonstrating why San Francisco is a leading city for climate tech innovation.
No event underlined the exciting innovations at work in San Francisco quite like the showcase for SF Climate Week’s sponsor Yes San Francisco (Yes SF) Urban Sustainability Challenge, where startups demonstrated the climate tech projects that are poised to help make San Francisco the first among many resilient cities responding to climate change. We spoke to some of the current cohort of Top Innovators to understand how the Yes SF program helped launch their solutions, and what the program may offer the next cohort, which is currently accepting applications.
What is Yes SF?
The Yes SF Urban Sustainability Challenge launched in collaboration with Deloitte, Salesforce, the World Economic Forum, Citi, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and more than 20 other organizations. The Challenge is a unique call to action for entrepreneurs to submit sustainable solutions that contribute to the significant needs of San Francisco through scalable improvements to urban spaces in its downtown area. Ultimately, its purpose is to mobilize startups already working on sustainable solutions to meet the objectives laid out in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11 to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and, in doing so, contribute to San Francisco’s climate action and downtown revitalization goals.
Why Should Climate Tech Founders Apply to Yes SF?
In a city that has seen more than $42 billion for climate tech raised over the past five years, Yes SF is looking to tackle some of the most pressing sustainability challenges that traditional funding avenues and accelerator programs have overlooked.
The timeline for traditional venture capital returns have proven to be a persistent challenge for some climate tech hardware founders, along with the steep capital expenditures and technology risk inherent to moving atoms instead of bits. Yes SF is looking to break that cycle by putting together a cohort of climate innovators, assessing their individual needs and making connections to the talent and experience in San Francisco that busy founders typically don’t have the time or resources to make on their own.
Apply for Year Two of the Yes SF Challenge
Yes SF is now accepting applications for the 2nd Yes SF Challenge until November 13.
In the second year of Yes SF, the Challenge is looking for climate tech companies – at the beginning of their journey towards creating urban sustainability in San Francisco – to submit their impactful solutions that are viable and scalable. Some examples include innovations using AI and solutions for infrastructure, urban green and blue spaces, renewable energy and water and waste management.
Important Dates:
November 13, 2024: Submission deadline
November - March 2025: Review and selection by UpLink
April 2025: Cohort announcement during San Francisco Climate Week
Explore the application and submission criteria today! Innovators will be considered by UpLink from the five solutions areas listed below and will be selected based on their fit across four criteria, that demonstrate a commitment to providing solutions to San Francisco’s sustainable development.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency
Sustainable transportation and mobility
Resource management
Sustainable construction and materials
Other areas of sustainability
Interested in learning more about the applicants so far? All submissions are publicly viewable via the Uplink platform - check them out here!
Hear From the 1st Yes SF Top Cohort 1 Innovators from the 1st Challenge
We caught up with a handful of the Top Innovators from the first Yes SF cohort to tell us what they gained from the program, and why climate tech founders and innovators should apply.
Alexander Olesen, Founder at Babylon
Babylon creates remotely managed indoor vertical farms, which give businesses and communities a convenient supply of ultra-fresh produce. Whereas most indoor farming solutions try to address factory-scale indoor agriculture, Olesen and his team started Babylon to focus on small-scale nutritional needs that could be deployed quickly. In 2016, Olesen and his team set out to provide families and communities with a sustainable, reliable food source in refugee camps. That led to a process that drastically reduced water and energy consumption compared to existing indoor farming solutions, which are now providing on-site produce to businesses and communities.
It's a very well-organized program. We've done a lot out there and I think between having access to non-dilutive funding, that pulls a crowd of leaders from the founding collaborators – I think they've attracted an impressive bunch of people, which is hard to do. And I think the administration of the program, both in getting the cohort together to bounce ideas around and programming and general organization has been top notch. They're trying to provide very tailored support. They're not pushing you to attend webinars that aren't useful to you and stuff that I've seen at other programs. They're trying to design introductions and get help to the companies where they need it and meet them where they are.
Honghao Deng & Jiani Zeng, Co-Founders at Butlr
Butlr senses workplace occupancy through body heat and AI, letting businesses optimize their office planning and energy use without capturing any identities. The building and construction sector is one of the highest-emitting industries in the world: a full 37% of annual emissions come from buildings. That emissions profile will yield many solutions, and precise control of indoor heating and cooling is at the top of the list. Butlr optimizes building energy efficiency by detecting the size, movement and temperature of occupants in large buildings to perfectly synchronize heating and cooling to their needs. That reduces wasteful energy demand and makes buildings more resilient. Butlr also addresses a frequent concern with sensing technologies that revolves around the privacy and confidentially concerns of detailed data troves falling into the wrong hands. Butlr addresses that with total data anonymity for building occupants without compromising accuracy.
Being part of this program and on this list of innovators tells your early customers that your company is legit and reliable. That's something you cannot measure with a direct outcome. We can say the same for the business opportunities that have come through Yes SF– they help you grow your network and generate more impact and attention in climate tech. That's very valuable and it's hard to be measured by physical outcomes.
What's amazing about being part of Yes SF is that they are great at combining stakeholders from government entities, along with private sector actors and startups.
Zach Smith, Founder at Zauben
Zauben combines green roofs with solar panels and hydroponics, which absorb 10 times more water than ordinary green roofs and are 66% lighter. Green roofs are one of the most elegant and effective solutions to the emerging climate impact of urban heat islands. As cities built with concrete, steel and stone come under the stress of extreme heat, innovative new designs will become necessary to protect citizens, reduce energy and water consumption, and make cities more resilient. Zauben is creating a product that tackles all of these issues at once. Their biophilic designs have several practical benefits, including offsetting some of the heat that commercial buildings absorb throughout the day while largely conserving water and reducing HVAC demand. Beyond that, their green roofs and in-building plant services are inviting ecosystems back into our cities to re-connect people with nature in their everyday environment.
We've gone through a handful of accelerators, but I feel like what Yes SF has done really well is work with the large stakeholders, as well as working closely with the Chamber of Commerce. There's this cohesiveness of everyone who wants to drive change trying to accelerate it as fast as possible. Finding other like-minded people who are all tackling sustainability from different ways of telling stories to working on projects has been really great– it's been a really great experience.
Yes SF is looking to create an ecosystem and a blueprint that could be started in San Francisco, but ultimately with the intention of replicating it to other cities. As a founder, sometimes being a part of the conversation with these organizations acts as a social currency, and sometimes it is the only kind of currency you have.
Claire Xiao, Chief Operations Officerat RainStick Shower
RainStick Shower is an innovative shower appliance that saves 80% of water and energy while doubling the water flow rate. One of the near-term impacts of climate change has proven to be a growing number of extended mega-drought conditions impacting vulnerable regions the world over. Unlike other solutions which offer alternatives to existing technologies (think renewables displacing fossil fuels), the key to adapting to water scarcity in places like Northern California will land squarely on conservation. There’s been some progress– household appliances like washing machines, toilets and faucets have largely been made more efficient. But showering has proven difficult to disrupt, as showers still represent 17% of indoor water use. To date, the most common solution is low-flow fixtures, which forces users to compromise on their experience. RainStick is a high-flow recirculating shower appliance that drastically reduces both water and energy consumption without forcing you to replace your shower with a bird bath.
We have felt very privileged and honored to be innovators alongside so many other amazing companies in the Yes SF program. It has been incredibly encouraging for us as a team to motivate us to keep going and to achieve our company’s mission.
We have really appreciated being able to leverage the Yes SF team’s expertise and network. Having their marketing team act like an extension of our marketing team allowed us to take advantage of more diverse ways that we can talk about our product, to be able to educate and raise brand awareness in ways that perhaps we don't have the capacity or the resources to do. It helped us to get through those initial hurdles that are very typical of a startup.
