Life is The Greatest Teacher

The events that changed my understanding of the world

Hello everyone! I'm Ahmed, a curious 18-year-old on a mission to solve climate change through carbon capture. Currently working on using Algae as the method to capture carbon while also producing as 3 carbon negative products: biochar (to replace fertilizer), hydrogen (to replace natural gas), and diesel (to replace fossil fuel diesel).

Thank You!

Thanks you for taking the time to read this newsletter. I wish you a happy new year full love, happiness, excitement 🥳. I hope you enjoy the read and find it helpful.

Purpose of This Newsletter

Update you on my progress and things I learn (which can be helpful for you).

How To Read This Newsletter

In the newsletter there are 5 different sections:

1. TLDR — Here you get the summary of the most important information.

2. Project Development — Gives context on what information is needed to deploy the algae products mentioned in the opening paragraph.

3. Cold Outreach — Gives you information on my cold outreach mistakes and how I fixed them.

4. Creating a Brand — Here I give my thoughts on what I realized about marketing.

5. Curiosity Reads — Here I include additional content from me on why to review you thinking and learnings from my trip to Egypt.

I recommend you skim to the content until you find something interesting. To identify different sections and sub-sections look for the bolded words.

TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) — 2 Min Read

1. Learnings From Cold Outreach — I sent over 1000 emails and only got 3 calls. There are reasons for this: lack of credibility, targeting the wrong people, and lack of personalization.

   1. Lack of Credibility — In my intro email, I had no social credibility (I was not an ex. Mckinsey, ex. Apple, or an Ivy league alumni). They had no reason to believe I can do what I was offering (mentioned in the first paragraph of the newsletter). I realized this from listening to a podcast with Shreya Dave (Co-founder & CEO at Via Separations). In 6 weeks she talked to 100 people. In the same 6 weeks I talked to 3. The big difference was she was a PhD at MIT and I was a random nobody.

   2. Targeting the wrong people — My no credibility messages got 0 replies from production and supply chain people. I got 3 responses from sustainability people. Here I overestimated how much production and supply chain people wanted to improve their process. With sustainability people, their job is to help their company reduce emissions which is why a few responded to me.

   3. Lack of Personalization — My original belief was if there is value then people will talk to me. Turned out that belief was false. When reaching out to sustainability people, my emails with no personalization had a conversation rate of under 1%. When I tried personalization I got a 15% conversation. This taught me people care more about the message being for them than the value that you are providing.

2. Why I Was Wrong About Marketing — I used to hold the belief that marketing was stupid. That’s not entirely accurate. I understood the value of marketing when selling products, but because it never came natural to me I wanted to create a label to take away my responsibility to work on it. This was until I had a realization, as a future CEO my entire job is marketing. Convincing scientists to talk to me about the cost factors of algae is marketing. Trying to raise money from investors is marketing. Convincing customers to buy your product is marketing. Recruiting people is marketing. Convincing people to work hard for the mission is marketing.

Changes To The Newsletter Going Forward

In previous newsletters, I focused on providing a summary of weekly algae progress. These updates included different cost factors, how I reduced them, and what products can be made from algae along with their economics. Currently the only thing I have left to do is to run an experiment to validate my cost (which I will be doing, just waiting on few shipments). My future progress will no longer be focused on algae itself. I will be focused on filling my skillset/knowledge gaps as they are building blocks behind the company. These gaps include (but not limited to):

1. The cost of project development for industrial processes to turn algae into products.

2. How to do good cold outreach.

3. Creating a Brand

I will sharing what I learn about these topics in future newsletters.

Why Did I Pick Those 3 Priorities?

Priority 1: Project Development - 1 min Read

During the implementation stage of algae, I need to deploy large industrial processes like pyrolysis and steam methane reforming (ones that already reached scale) to create products from algae. My previous work with algae was a cost optimization exercise not identifying a new technology. This means that my R&D time for initial product would be much lower than most climate companies.

This means that fundraising round number 1 (or seed) would include the cost to deploy at least 1 project with a customer. Knowing how much money I need for the first project would be helpful to know how much money should be raised. What I need to do is talk to project developers to understand how long it takes to deploy, the cost, and different points of failures.

It is completely possible I can get project finance (loan from a bank) and not need VC money for deployments because I’m using existing processes. To understand how bankers think when allocating capital for projects, I need to talk to project finance experts (who work directly with bankers) in the energy sector to get more details.

Side note: When I did a similar exercise with project developers in energy storage, I found 50% of project time was convincing utilities to give you a contract and banks to give you money for the project. There were work arounds that I ended up finding to not need a utility contract speeding up the process. I think it is possible that similar simple problems will be found when I talk to project developers of industrial processes used for algae.

Priority 2: How To Do Good Cold Outreach — 4 Min Read

Between now and the previous newsletter, I spent about 2 months reaching out to over 1000 people in production, supply chain, and sustainability at large oil and gas, apparel, and automotive companies. My end result was 3 calls. My low conversion rate is the reason I need to learn best practices of cold outreach. For now I will include my analysis of what went wrong.

Depending on the person I was reaching out to there was some permutation of the following message.

“Hi {name},

{Insert some opening line}.

I created a method to:

1. Cut your energy cost by 50% with a no-emission fuel (to replace natural gas).

2. Reduce the cost of your water in manufacturing by treating your wastewater (at no cost to you). The side benefit is you avoid potentially costing your company $90M because of wastewater dumping.

3. Decrease your plant emissions through capturing carbon in your flue gas stream (at no cost to you).

4. Remove transportation emissions through a carbon-negative diesel, cheaper than current diesel.

Want to learn more?”

If you were a supply chain person, I would only would send the diesel message since they deal with transportation. If you were a production person, then I would send the first 3. If you were a sustainability person, then I would send you all 4.

I thought this would do so great. It didn’t. I was confused, I didn’t understand why people would not respond to this. Don’t people care about reducing their cost? After I spent sometime reflecting, here is why they didn’t respond.

1. In my intro email, I had no credibility. They had no reason to believe I can do what I was offering. I realized this from listening to a podcast with Shreya Dave (Co-founder & CEO at Via Separations). She said in 6 weeks she talked to 100 people. In the same 6 weeks I talked to 3. The big difference was she was PhD at MIT and I was a random nobody. Who would you trust more? Definitely her. I never mentioned anything about my previous works with Shell, the UN, BenchSci (which works with 16 of the top 20 pharma companies). Mentioning the companies would have helped.

   1. Targeting the wrong people — My no credibility messages got 0 replies from production and supply chain people. I had 3 responses from sustainability people. It seems sustainability people are looking for anything that can help the company reduce emissions. Here I learned the sustainability people are more inclined to talk to you. This makes the sustainability the right first person to reach out to in your sales process.

2. I didn’t personalize — My original belief was if there is value then people will talk to me. Turned out that belief was false. When reaching out to sustainability people, my emails with no personalization had a low conversation rate (under 1%). When I tried personalization I got a 15% conversation rate. This taught me people care more about the message being for them than the value that you are providing.

Outreach Best Practices

Throughout the time of messaging 1000 people, I also learned about a few helpful methods to increase open rate.

1. Following Up — When you are emailing people at large companies one of the things you need to do is get past their security protocol. It seems to me that the more you follow up the less you seem like a bot trying to steal their information. As result, you get moved from spam right into their inbox. Below is data from different campaigns I sent out including my initial open rate (first number) and my final open rate (second number) after 1-3 follow ups.

   Example 1: 3% to 100%

   Example 2: 35% to 46%

   Example 3: 13% to 68%

   Example 4: 71% to 100%

   Example 5: 42% to 74%

   Example 6: 38% to 100%

   Example 7: 17% to 66%

   Example 8: 17% to 100%

   Example 9: 30% to 76%

   Example 10: 59% to 100%

   Example 11: 34% to 89%

   Example 12: 43% to 50%

   Example 13: 63% to 73%

   For me this is great data for why you should follow up, their is a proven increase in the open rate which increases the likelihood of the response.

2. Adding Emojis to Your Subject Line

   Imagine your opened your inbox and it looked like the one below.

   

   Which email grabs your attention? Immediately you went to the one with the emoji. Why? Here is what I observe.

   1. Emoji’s bring colour to black and white environment, making them more visible due to scarcity of colour.

   2. They have a different shape compared to normal letters.

   As a result of different colours and shapes, it is the unexpected thing which you look at it. Keep in mind, it is possible they never open your email, but they would have to make the decision to ignore it, rather than not see it at all.

   If you inbox looked like the one below, then emojis would not be differentiating factor.

   

   It seems to me that not enough people use emojis when they are sending outreach. As I learn more about outreach from things I test and different courses of people compiling together their knowledge, I will share with you the lessons as well.

Priority 3: Creating a Brand — 3 min Read

For the longest time, I believed that “Marketing is stupid, just create good product” or “Marketing takes no skill.” or “I’m not going to play those games {where I optimize for self-promotion rather than improving my skillset/continuing to make progress on the product}.

What I fundamentally did not understand is the entire job of a CEO is marketing. Convincing scientists to talk to me about the cost factors of algae is marketing. Trying to raise money from investors is marketing. Convincing customers to buy your product is marketing. Recruiting people is marketing. Convincing people to work hard for the mission is marketing.

The problem that I wasn’t facing was marketing is not a natural inclination/skill for me. When you are not naturally good at something, you complain about it even if it is completely your fault. I noticed in my circumstance, I just sucked at marketing my default. I can get better, but I would need to learn from other people. Intuition was not going to help here which is clearly highlighted by my initial low conversation rate in the cold outreach section above. I just didn’t know how to do it well.

I had heavy judgement towards people who play the branding game and don’t do much work. When I took the time to think, I realized: They are just playing the game. The problem here is I was operating under the idea, if I did the branding thing, I wouldn’t do the work to back it up. It just isn’t true.

You can do the work (in my case algae work). You can also make content, start podcast to talk to people, etc. By completely removing myself from the branding game, I took out any possibility of other people finding me. It always had to be me finding them. If you think about any sustainable recruitment strategy, how do you ever scale if you have to manually find each person in your entire company. In the early stages, it might work because you have a small team. As you grow overtime, manual recruiting is not a great strategy. You have to get the people to come to you. The only way you do that is through content.

I let my obsession with improving processes cloud my judgment on the value of marketing. I finally had the realization and I shall not do that anymore.

What Do I Need To Learn To Create A Great Brand

There are few essential skills

1. Design — Part of attracting attention. Step 1 is make your the initial visual look good and then step 2 is to create a good experience for people as they navigate the rest of your content.

   On website you have a landing page which should instantly provide them the best information. Then the rest of the website you want smooth animations with an intuitive experience.

   With a video, it needs to have good thumbnail then god content + cuts and visuals instead of just you talking. You also want words (like subtitles), it seems that having both written text and audio allow you to better grasp/understand the info. Notice how short-form content (tik-tok/youtube shorts) includes audio with subtitles to read on.

2. Copywriting — the act of good writing is useful for retaining people’s attention once you attract them with design. Part of your brand is your ability to publicly communicate clearly in ways people can remember. Something like ”Just Do It!” The line says nothing about Nike, but you always think of the company when you hear it.

3. Speaking/Storytelling — This is the skill that great comedians have. They can speak for an hour and keep people engaged and interested in what they have to say next. When reviewing videos of me. I realize I sound extremely boring.

What I’m describing above is general. Over the future newsletters, I will be expanding more on my understanding of each skill/discipline and methods of getting better.

Curiosity Reads

When writing this newsletter I also wanted to include two other topics, but I didn’t want to make the newsletter longer than 10mins. If you want to read about these 2 topics, then click on the buttons below.

1. Why you should review your thinking

2. Learnings from my trip to Egypt

If you made it this far, I appreciate you and I believe you are an awesome human being. I wish you the most happiness. It is truly the only thing that matters.