Caitlin Stanton

The Silicon Valley Dropout Myth is Dead For decades, the story of the college dropout founder—the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerbergs of the world—defined success in Silicon Valley. But Y Combinator just shattered that myth. 🤯 Y Combinator's new "Early Decision" program is a game-changer. It allows college students to apply, get accepted, and receive funding while still in school, with the option to defer their participation in the accelerator until after they graduate. This is a massive shift in mindset. It signals that you don't have to choose between education and entrepreneurship. You can have both. This move: ➡️ Validates Finishing College: It reassures aspiring founders that their education is not a barrier to their entrepreneurial journey. ➡️ De-risks the Startup Path: Students can now secure their future in entrepreneurship while completing their degree, giving them a safety net that previous generations of founders never had. This aligns perfectly with our core belief in vertical progress—creating something completely new. This program enables students to create a new path for their careers, a path where education and innovation are not mutually exclusive. It rewards the relentlessly curious who want to learn and build. What do you think of this move? Is this the end of the "dropout founder" archetype? 👇 #YCombinator #Startup #Tech #Entrepreneurship #Education #Innovation #Founder #Business https://lnkd.in/gga-pVgG

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Ready to dive into climate action, thermal energy storage, or energy management software? Read on! I spent the last year immersed in climate entrepreneurship and community. I joined two incredible programs: Boost, sponsored by the DOE, and the Climatebase Fellowship by Climatebase. Through Boost (July-December 2024)., I researched the product/market fit for a thermal energy storage (TES) innovation from a national lab. TES (think heat battery!) offers clean, firm, low-cost heat for industries. It's an early adopter market, with a growing number of vendors. Driving down the cost curve through deployments is key to success. Among my key learnings, understanding how to read patent claims for competitive analysis stood out. See my 5-minute pitch. https://lnkd.in/gqYK_syY This year I joined the Climatebase Fellowship (March-June 2025) on a full scholarship. Here, I led a capstone project to explore the market opportunity for energy management systems for large campus clients. New opportunities are emerging thanks to rising electricity costs, DER growth, and sustainability goals. We found that facility managers often struggle with a double jeopardy of lack of skilled staff and complex software. Leading a team of volunteers helped hone my project and people management skills. See my 8-minute presentation. https://lnkd.in/g6A_xYf8 Both programs are amazing. Boost (https://lnkd.in/giTJuDmU) is perfect for entrepreneurs looking to commercialize deep technologies. You pick from a curated list of technologies, and get matched with a potential founding team. Climatebase (https://lnkd.in/gHwXWkz3?) is wonderful for anyone looking to get into the climate space, with an extensive network, supportive community, and many educational resources. I highly recommend checking them out! By the way, the deadline for Boost is 6/20, and Climatebase 7/7 for their upcoming cohort. Good luck! And I'm interested in hearing about your next step in your climate journey. Evan Hynes, Emmanuel Moges #climate, #energy, #software

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As an early-stage entrepreneur, this insight from Hossam Shafick really resonates: “Revenue is not necessary (at early-stage) — but traction is everything.” Some of the world’s most valuable companies Facebook, YouTube scaled to billions in valuation before making a single meaningful dollar. What they had in common was traction: proof that people wanted what they were building. 💡 For us in the early stages, traction is the clearest signal: Quantity → how many users are engaging Quality → how deeply they engage Quote → what value they get & willingness to pay Queue → how easily more customers can be reached It’s a reminder that traction ≠ revenue, but it can be the strongest predictor of scalability when measured right. As I continue building my own early-stage startup journey, this perspective is both grounding and motivating. #Entrepreneurship #Startups #EarlyStage #Traction #Innovation

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Some big news in the energy podcast world: Caroline Golin, PhD is joining Open Circuit as our new co-host! Each week, she’ll be alongside me and Jigar Shah to decode how clean energy actually gets built. Caroline spent the last seven years inside Google as the global head of energy market development and innovation — helping shape how the company procures clean electricity, works with utilities, and navigates capacity constraints across global markets. That experience puts her right at the center of many of the hardest questions in energy right now. And it’s a hell of a moment. Here in the U.S., power markets are bending under the stress of new demand, while suddenly becoming central to politics. Tech companies have become some of the most influential players in the electricity system. And entirely new development models are emerging to serve data centers and other large loads. Zoom out globally, and the picture gets even more complex: the rise of the electrostate, looming peak oil demand, a highly unstable trade environment, and an AI race increasingly framed as a geopolitical struggle. All of that is the backdrop for the next chapter of Open Circuit. In 2026, we’re sharpening our focus on the physical constraints shaping the energy transition. This is no longer a conversation about whether clean energy can scale. It’s about whether the systems around it — markets, utilities, capital, policy — can move fast enough to support the next wave of industrial demand. This week also marks our first full video episode of Open Circuit! We will now have an audio version on all podcast feeds, and a video version on YouTube. (You'll find a link in the comments.) We’re thrilled to have Caroline along for the ride. Welcome to the new Open Circuit.

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We’re changing how we do engineering at Opal. We’re rebuilding our approach from first principles, with AI baked into how we work. As someone who cares deeply about good code - how it looks, feels & works. For a while I felt trapped between two extremes: writing everything by hand to keep quality high or using AI but ending up with vibe coded results which stray too far from my core engineering principles. At Opal going forward, AI isn’t just a helper - It’s part of the system. Our job isn’t to write code faster, it’s to make AI write good code, freeing us up to work on the minute details that people love. We're moving from "I used AI, then cleaned it up", to "I taught AI what great code looks like, I helped it build my vision and gave it feedback on the results". Engineers still own what ships, if you used AI, you still sign off on that code as something you’re proud to put into the codebase. High standards don't disappear, they get turned into skills, docs, and automation. Reviews shift from "fix this, change that" to "how do we stop this happening again?". We try to build everything from fundamentals, not habit or preference Vibe coding is great for prototypes but production needs systems, standards, and taste. Proud to be on this journey with the best engineers in the world + our friend Claude.

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Billions of dollars have been poured into AI wearables. Nobody's found product-market fit. The technology is genuinely impressive. The engineering is real. But consumers keep buying these things, wearing them for a few weeks, and putting them in a drawer. Nobody stopped to ask what people actually need. Before we wrote a single line of code for Taya, we spent months just listening. Not reading trend reports. Not studying competitors. Sitting down with people and asking where their lives felt heavy. What we heard changed everything: → The graveyard of a Notes app - full of things they'd never look at again. → The brilliant ideas that evaporate on the drive home. → The systems that work at a desk but break down in the real world. Daily interviewing forced us to confront the thing the industry keeps skipping over: the mental hum. The invisible weight of trying to hold it all together. We still talk to customers every day. Not a research phase, it's how we build. The product changes because the conversations do. That's not a slower way to find PMF. It's the only way. I’m sharing insights from these founder-customer sessions on Substack (link in comments)

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Sharing an interesting #climatepilot spearheaded by an amazing peer (Yeyan Shi) in #ClimatebaseCohort8 for my #BayArea network: NeighborCharge is testing peer-to-peer #EVcharging in Berkeley - think Airbnb for EV chargers. The concept: What if renters had a reliable charger 2 blocks away instead of hunting for available public charging stations across town? They're looking for: ✅ Berkeley EV owners (especially renters) frustrated with charging access ✅ Bay Area homeowners with EV chargers willing to share (especially Berkeley/Oakland/East Bay) If you or someone in your network fits this, express interest here: bit.ly/NeighborCharge Even if you're just curious, fill it out - early pilots need people willing to test new ideas. 🚗⚡ Huge advocate of finding optimal solutions for those in the rental market who also own/lease electric vehicles. Excited to see where this project goes.

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