The programs we have created and supported have helped over 800 startups and led to over $600M in follow-on capital.
Our Approach
As a team of entrepreneurs, ADL has a proven track record in successfully launching and scaling startups. We understand the unique needs of young companies and what it takes to break through barriers to find a first customer. As our team also includes experienced corporate innovation experts, we know how scaled companies and government institutions prefer to engage with startups and the standards that must be met to bring climate tech innovations into the marketplace. We have designed and managed accelerator programs that span from broad, competitive prize competitions on behalf of government organizations to targeted investment- and partnership-based programs on behalf of corporates.
Whether you are a climate tech startup looking for support and guidance for your commercialization efforts or a corporate leader looking to broaden your tech partnership funnel, we invite you to learn more about our accelerators!
Accelerator Programs
Our accelerators are successful because they recognize that hard tech requires partnerships with major incumbents to achieve large-scale and lasting impact. That's why our entire company is focused on helping start-ups work with incumbents to make a scalable climate impact.
As we transform our relationship to the environment, we need to drive innovation and deploy climate technology at an exponentially faster rate. Uptake Alliance, the NYSERDA-funded climate tech accelerator launched by ADL Ventures, is a community of startups, corporations, investors and policymakers creating the market conditions for frontier climate ventures to thrive. We provide holistic support to climate startups with a focus on global community and New York impact.
We understand the problems vexing corporate clients across the energy, construction, manufacturing and transportation industries, and we ourselves have experienced the roadblocks startups face in bringing their ideas to market. Uptake brings the battle-hardened entrepreneurs, network and individualized platform to strengthen the feedback loop between real-life corporate problem statements with entrepreneurial innovation. By facilitating market adoption, we create a regenerative impact on corporate performance, startup revenue, and everyone’s climate future.
While ProblemSpace creates a dedicated competitive prize program on behalf of corporates as a mechanism for innovation sourcing and partnership development, ADL also helps government institutions deploy catalytic capital through structured challenges like the DOE/NREL American Made Challenges. AMC is a unique vehicle for a significant round of no-strings attached, non-dilutive capital: an exceedingly rare form of support to de-risk the earliest climate tech innovations. Beyond the funding support, AMC is an opportunity to join a rich ecosystem of OEMs, suppliers, startups and investors that help increase awareness and pathways to market.
The buildings sector faces a confluence of critical challenges: catastrophic climate change is on the horizon (in part driven by buildings-related emissions), construction industry productivity has declined in the last 50 years and a shortage of attainable housing is burdening families and the economy. In partnership with RMI and DOE, the Advanced Building Construction (ABC) Collaborative offers a powerful solution by bringing together a diverse network of incumbent and emergent buildings sector actors across manufacturing, construction, real estate, development and related areas. We work to accelerate the uptake, scaling and mainstream adoption of ABC while supporting—and leveraging—modernization of the US construction industry.
The Deployment Engine
Innovative technologies require innovative processes to go to market. The Deployment Engine is a decarbonization-focused construction tech accelerator program for innovators, by innovators. With an exceptional, hand-picked network of industry stakeholders and serial entrepreneurs, our startups learn how to identify pilot opportunities and close customer deals from our network of experts.
We break the cycles of accelerator fatigue and maximize meaningful relationship building during our programming and beyond, for a people first approach to decarbonization. Our mentors meaningfully engage the startups to help refine their customer-specific strategies and to make appropriate deployment opportunities at their organizations and/or within their far-reaching network from construction and development to software and material manufacturing. We’re the last accelerator hard tech construction solutions will ever need.
Join our cohort or mentor network: The Deployment Engine Website
Source: www.modulehousing.com
Key tools for success
It’s exceedingly difficult for climate tech startups to unlock traction in legacy sectors. Large corporates, however, have the resources to help startups succeed: domain knowledge, manufacturing capacity, distribution and sales. But in many cases, these industry leaders haven’t yet been able to solve certain vexing problems. ADL created ProblemSpace as a vehicle for corporates to challenge the tech community to propose innovative solutions to their most important problems. For the startup, it’s the first step in winning a customer and powerful ally while overcoming an otherwise dangerous stumbling block for many entrepreneurs.
Startup Scaffolding
Technical co-founders may have developed a product that beats the incumbent solution by 10X, but they may not have the hard-won experience on the commercial side of growing a young company. Not only do most emerging businesses lack the budget for an effective C-Suite, they also rarely need full-time resources in each of those areas.
However, every company requires strategic direction across business functions and a reliable execution team. ADL can provide a fractional team of experienced entrepreneurs capable of entering new markets, positioning a brand for an ideal customer, and tapping into various sources of funding.
Monetizing Innovation
Innovators within legacy sector corporations develop technologies to help solve vexing internal challenges. Many have material value to other corporations, but due to complex structures of regulatory and internal governance rules, corporations are often unable to scale impact and bring value to others.
ADL helps them turn their technologies into revenue streams by getting them into the hands of their peers. We unleash the value of these technologies through external pathways – expertly navigating spin-outs, joint ventures, and licensing agreements.
Manufacturing Hub
Manufacturing Hub, an online platform developed by ADL Ventures, connects hardware innovators with educational content and the manufacturing partners that can help accelerate their path to market.
Innovators rarely possess the holistic knowledge set required to bring a hardware product from idea to full-scale commercialization. Our content has been developed in partnership with the Department of Energy to identify the most effective pathways to support American technologies in their transition to market to accelerate commercialization.
