The Pitch · Josh Muccio

Climatta: Planet Vs. Money

March 4, 2026·42 min·3 clips

Iñaki woke at 3am to go duck hunting with his dad — 11 years later, the lake was gone and he built a startup.

Money opens the door. Lisa and Josh set up Clamata around a blunt tension: people may care about the planet, but corporations usually react to savings. That is the pitch. Iñaki comes in as an outdoorsman trying to help the environment indirectly, by helping large companies cut energy bills by potentially huge amounts. He is raising $750K, and the hosts quickly turn the climate promise into the harder question: can saving the planet become a venture-scale business? Purpose does not carry the room by itself. The excerpt moves into his founder story, including an earlier fleet and fuel administration system that did not work but taught him he wanted to build something else. He wanted more than software. After that failure, he worked at a consulting firm. Later, a very large sustainability consulting firm adopted him as entrepreneur in residence and helped him validate the model with major prospects. That generosity becomes part of the pitch, and part of the problem. When asked whether the firm invested, Iñaki says no. He describes people who gave him time, a playbook, and a deadline instead of taking equity. Then Francesc asks the sharper version: did the sales come from warm access through the consulting firm, or from Iñaki's own cold outreach using their name? That distinction matters. Iñaki says the work was his, while admitting the message and playbook came from the consulting team. The timeline tightens. He says he was working with the consulting company around May 2023, the first paying customer came in September or October, and the first sale was tied to that validation period. The room keeps asking whether early validation proves a repeatable motion. The ending turns back to the show itself, with a tease for next week's confrontation about a founder who made changes from investor feedback but did not call.

As heard by us

A climate pitch that has to survive on savings, not sentiment.

This episode uses Clamata to ask a blunt question: can a climate-minded company win by saving big corporations money first? Inaki’s story works because the pitch keeps running into the same test, whether the mission holds up once selling, validation, and persuasion get real.

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Why you'd press play

A climate startup pitch that tries to make sustainability win through energy-bill savings.

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