- Juliette Devillard is the founder and CEO of Climate Connection, the UK’s leading network and events platform for climate professionals.
- She spent several years in the United States building early-stage deep tech and climate tech startups before returning to London to create a stronger climate innovation community.
- Juliette is passionate about fostering authentic connections, designing events that build trust, collaboration and real impact rather than just networking opportunities.
- She is committed to supporting founder wellbeing and closing gaps in funding and resources for climate-focused startups, helping the ecosystem scale effectively.
Tell Me About Yourself and Climate Connection
I’ve worked at the intersection of climate and innovation for eight years, initially starting my career in the United States supporting early stage, climate and deep tech startups to grow and commercialise their innovations.
Climate Connection brings together individuals passionate about climate and innovation to spark ideas, discussions, and new connections. Our mission is to catalyse climate innovation through the power of meaningful connections. To do this, we run over 40 events a year, with an emphasis on creating interactive experiences that ensure attendees leave having made as many new connections as possible. Since launching in 2021, we have facilitated over 25,000 connections amongst our attendees.
Climate Tech Time, the flagship event, has grown to become the UK’s largest monthly event for climate professionals, drawing crowds of 150+ attendees.
What Inspired You To Start Climate Connection? What Problem Were You Trying To Solve
I started my climate tech career by working at Greentown Labs, the US’ largest climate tech incubator. When I moved back to the UK I was struck by the difference in the speed of business in both countries. There were many reasons for this, but two things stood out to me. First, we were missing a strong convening power able to consistently bring together the ecosystem and facilitate connections across climate tech.
Second, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the British culture of ‘politeness’ holds us back from forging the connections that could push our work forwards, compared to the often outgoing, gregarious and go-getter nature of Americans.
These realisations fueled my approach to founding Climate Connection. We bring the whole ecosystem together, and we do it through high-quality, welcoming, and interactive events that help people to leave their comfort zone and lean into making new and valuable connections.
What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge So Far? How Did You Overcome It?
One of our biggest challenges has been communicating the value of Climate Connection’s work to funders and sponsors. When starting this company, I wanted to ensure that our events were as accessible as possible to the innovators and climate tech champions who needed them. This meant choosing a business model that relied only minimally on income from ticket sales, and instead working with larger sponsors and funders to support the events.
We know our work has had an outsized impact on the climate tech ecosystem – startups have found clients, board members, investors and more. Yet every funder has a different set of motivations, and we had to learn how to demonstrate our impact in terms that resonate for them.
This led to us developing extremely rigorous data collection processes – we run surveys at almost every event we host, which has enabled us to demonstrate some powerful success metrics, such as a consistent 9/10 satisfaction rating and 8+ connections made by each guest in attendance. We’ve also collected substantially more success stories from our attendees, and can now point to examples of individual startups receiving investments or hiring C-suite employees thanks to our community. These stories and statistics have been extremely helpful in communicating our impact and value to supporters.
Can You Describe a Pivotal Moment That Significantly Shaped the Direction of Climate Connection?
When I first began actively seeking sponsors for Climate Connection, I struggled to get the backing I needed. We got great reviews from attendees, but it wasn’t translating to sponsors. Then the really pivotal moment came – we lost our venue that had been our home for over a year. I was deeply worried that we wouldn’t find a replacement home.
Luckily, within a few months, we found new venues that were not only more professional but were also just as focused on sustainability as we are. We upgraded our venue, completely redesigned our brand, website, and logo, and generally upgraded our public-facing image to match the quality of the experience and facilitation we were providing. The sales and sponsors followed. This was a big lesson that no matter how impactful your mission, you still have to learn how to package your work in ways that will convince and attract people who haven’t yet seen you in action.
How Do You Define Success?
For Your Business: Climate Connection brings together individuals who are passionate about climate and innovation to spark ideas, discussions, and new connections. Success is ultimately about the impact we’re having on the climate ecosystem: How many people have met through our events? How many have unlocked business deals? Met co-founders? Hired new teammates? Received investment?
Success means our events are tangibly accelerating the pace of climate innovation.
As a Founder: Am I enjoying life? Do I wake up in the morning excited about my day, my week, my month? I seek to live life with presence and intensity. Balancing mindfulness and adventure. Success for me is thus defined by the richness of the experiences and the depth of the relationships that surround me.
What Advice Would You Give to Someone Thinking About Launching Their Own Startup?
Build your support team. Becoming a founder will hold so many challenges. You need to know who in your life you’re going to lean on for business support, emotional support, life advice, as well as who is going to keep you accountable for not getting so sucked into the work that you start to burn out.
As a solo founder, I couldn’t have built Climate Connection without the incredible friends I have by my side.
The fantastic teammates that work with me every day are also crucial – I know I can count on them, and walking into the office always brings a smile to my face. It’s a blessing to work with truly excellent people.
What’s Next for Climate Connection? Any Exciting Developments We Should Watch Out For?
We’re launching a custom events and experience design agency called Connection Studio. We’ve learned so much by building the Climate Connection brand and running over 100+ events. So many professional events today are too formal, mundane or boring. We’re going to help other companies and industries create high-quality, interactive events that create real impact.
Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.
Founder’s Five with Juliette Devillard
Being a successful entrepreneur and startup founder is an incredible accomplishment, but we want to know more about the man behind Veriam. Here’s our exclusive “Founder’s Five” with Martijn Kaag.
1. Favourite Business Tool?
The Granola notetaker. It spits out a near-perfect transcript of whatever call you’re on, and provides summaries, next steps, potential email follow-ups etc. It’s phenomenal. My god. How did we get anything done before all these AI tools came out!
2. One Lesson You Learned the Hard Way?
Balance is incredibly important. From personal experience, 80% of my productivity and wellbeing are determined by how I start my day. I leave my phone outside of my room at night so I can’t scroll mindlessly when I wake up, I start the day with a cold shower to build discipline and remind myself I can do hard things, I meditate to anchor into the joy of the present moment, and then I decide on my objectives for the day.
In stressful periods, it can be so tempting to skip parts of my routine. But time and time again, I’ve learned that doing so is pretty much always a mistake as my routine is what prepares me mentally and emotionally for the day and improves my decision making.
3. One Future Trend You’re Watching?
The trend away from picking solutions just because they’re more climate friendly. Accusations of greenwashing are creating a sense of caution and the difficult economic environment is creating greater caution around companies’ bottom lines. With this in mind, fewer companies are willing to use climate alternatives that aren’t also objectively ‘better’ for the business in other ways as well.
I think this is ultimately a good shift, as it will force climate technologies to be more competitive, making their uptake more resilient to shifting market trends.
4. One Quote You Live By?
“Welcome” – I’m deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy and Internal Family Systems therapy. So much of our suffering comes from resistance to circumstances that are unchangeable, or resistance to pain. No matter what comes up in life, if I can find a way to welcome and accept it, I know my path will be easier.
5. One Book or Podcast You Recommend?
“The Art of Possibility” by Benjamin Zander. This book taught me how impactful our view on the world and human nature is to our success, happiness and wellbeing. We can choose to see the world as a zero sum game where we have to fight for every scrap of success, or we can lean into “possibility” – find delight in everything and adopt a mindset of abundance and collaboration, where every failure is just a learning on the way to eventual success.
Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Know someone who deserves to be recognised as a founder making waves in the startup landscape? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.
