What are the main lessons for clean tech startups like Patch from the struggles of clean tech companies a decade ago?

There were some phenomenal companies like Tesla that technically came out of that time, but a lot of the projects that ended up not working out were purely focused on technology and not focused enough on distribution and applications of the technology. 

You had these great chemical or battery or solar technology businesses that were getting spun up, but the unit prices if you wanted to commercialize these things were 5-10x more expensive than the next closest non-green version of that particular product.

That gap just became untenable to overcome. A lot of folks were just pumping money into these organizations, but the problem is you can't really hit economies of scale just through financing. You have to do that through really robust commercialization. 

I think this time around, folks are much more focused on distribution and not just R&D. It’s that classic founder adage that first-time founders are focused on products and second-time founders are focused on distribution. 

I'm personally a first-time founder, but I've heard enough horror stories of people focusing on product and not distribution that we’ve put a meaningful piece of our attention on distribution. I mean, Patch's core business is essentially distribution-as-a-service essentially for these suppliers.