"Full Steam Ahead - Just Online!"

To our Cleantech Open Community:

Overview:

• The 2020 CTO Accelerator is on schedule, recruiting startups and mentors.

• Applications are due online by April 19 as planned.

• Recruiting events will be conducted online; no in-person gatherings.

• National Academy kickoff bootcamps will be run ONLINE: West on May 29-30 and East on June 2-3.

• Expanded recruiting to admit startups located ANYWHERE in the USA and Canada via online-only options. Limited spots available for international teams.

• Mentoring activities and business clinics will have online-only options, with in-person events scheduled as conditions allow.

• [NOTE: As of August 2020, Global Forum is ONLINE ONLY on October 21 and October 23!] Regional Finals and the CTO Global Forum (co-located with VERGE 20 conference in Silicon Valley) are still scheduled to be in-person events in September and October.

The Plan:

Climate change is continuing unabated, and so are we! Cleantech innovation is critical to solving environmental challenges, while also creating job opportunities by building the cleantech sector. We value solutions designed to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across a wide range of categories from clean energy to environmental sustainability.

This year, Cleantech Open celebrates its 15th year of accelerating entrepreneurs building innovative startups. Over 1,600 companies have participated in CTO - with thousands of mentors and volunteers contributing to this ecosystem. We have exciting events planned for the coming 2020 cohort and alumni, including the Global Forum in San Jose, CA co-located with GreenBiz's VERGE 20 conference in October 2020. This will bring massive visibility to CTO and the startups, with thousands of expected attendees.

Of course, nobody anticipated the impact that the Coronavirus and COVID-19 would have. As many of you have experienced, CTO has in-person events as well as online programming. While we are already a virtual organization with a small handful of staff and volunteers spread all across the country, there is great value to entrepreneurs, mentors, volunteers, investors and sponsors all inter-mingling at recruiting events, pitch sessions, business clinics, mock judging, investor 1-on-1's, regional events and the Global Forum. We get it! It's productive, and it's also fun.

Entrepreneurs don't stop innovating, just because there's a crisis. On the contrary! CTO's mission is to help them become successful.

Yet, as a consequence of Coronavirus / COVID-19, we must accept the fact that we cannot, should not, hold in-person events until at least the June timeframe, or as soon as government and health authorities allow. There is a lot of uncertainty.

Therefore, CTO's formal recruiting events will be online only, effective immediately, through the application deadline on April 19th. We plan to hold the National Academy West on May 29-30 and the National Academy East as scheduled on June 2-3 -- BOTH as VIRTUAL events. We will ensure that the content and value of learning at both events is comparable to traditional face-to-face interaction, and we will require every team to participate in one Academy as we always have. More details on that very soon. The 10 Accelerator Modules, launching in June, will proceed as usual, with online curriculum and perhaps smaller in-person events, if prudent. We anticipate having in-person Regional Finals in September and of course the Global Forum in San Jose in October - but we will prepare for Plan B.

Our NEW OPPORTUNITY here is that we will now encourage companies to participate in CTO who had previously been discouraged because they weren't conveniently located in an active geographic region of the US. We will be including companies from Canada, the Midwest, the Northwest and any other parts of the US where we might not have a strong local presence. We're recruiting mentors nationwide who are interested to work with remote companies.

We served a number of companies remotely in 2019, as a pilot, and we gained good experience and constructive feedback from mentors and entrepreneurs about how to maximize the experience. In 2020 we're stepping it up. COVID-19 is just the convenient catalyst.

We've gotten pretty good at running events online, including mock judging, expert webinars, recruiting webinars, mentors working remotely from their teams, even teams connecting to business clinics from as far away as Latvia, Singapore and Chile. This winter, CTO's HQ team has been running online pitching, due diligence and discussion programs for EPRI's Incubatenergy LABS Challenge. Because of COVID-19, EPRI cancelled their April Electrification 2020 conference, and therefore CTO will now run startup pitch sessions, dozens of utility SME participants and debriefing sessions - all online in Zoom - as a replacement for the in-person event.

We are thankful for the continued support of CTO from the nearly 1,000 volunteers in our program, and for the financial support of sponsors around the country, including our National Premier Sponsor, Wells Fargo.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, volunteer, mentor, investor, corporate partner or sponsor, we are committed to make your participation in the 2020 CTO Accelerator a worthwhile experience!

Ken Hayes
CTO National Executive Director
March 15, 2020