All original scripts of Climestart's 105 lessons and exercises are AI-free.
That's not a brag. It's a choice.
Of course, I could have prompted ChatGPT to create a syllabus for an online academy for climate tech entrepreneurs. Then I could have asked it to write the script for each lesson. The whole thing would have been done in a matter of days. Efficient. Scalable. Tempting.
But I didn't.
Instead, I did something slower, harder, and — I believe — more meaningful. I sat down again and again with nothing but a blank page in front of me, building Climestart lesson by lesson from my own experience as a founder, coach, and mentor. I didn't follow a formula. I didn't copy a framework. I wrote from scratch. I wrestled with words. I restructured, revised, and rewrote. For months.
Was that stupid?
At times it felt like it. When deadlines loomed and my fingers stalled, when other projects flew by in sprints while I crawled forward in slow motion. But in hindsight — no, it wasn't stupid at all. It was necessary.
Because that process gave Climestart a soul.
Let me be clear: I didn't reject AI. I use it every day. I used it in this project, too — for researching edge topics, generating diagrams, crafting the visual tone of the platform, even experimenting with code snippets. AI is an amazing amplifier. But what it amplified had to exist first. The core had to be mine.
This is the part no tool can shortcut: the act of original creation.
What's the Core of Your Product?
I think there's a lesson here — not just for course creators, but for anyone building a product, whether it's digital, physical, artistic, or strategic.
Ask yourself: What's the part of this that only I can make?
What's the non-transferable, unpromptable thing that must come from your own depth — your experience, your pain, your taste, your weirdness? Find that. Shape that. Start there.
Don't outsource your originality.
Because AI can help you polish, extend, visualize, automate, and scale your ideas — but it can't be your ideas. It can remix, not originate. If you let it define your product's core, you'll end up with something generic, flavorless, and replaceable.
Climestart could have been one of those cookie-cutter platforms — smooth, competent, and utterly soulless.
Instead, I built a strange, personal, obsessive curriculum for a very specific kind of person: someone who wants to build something real in climate tech. Not just learn abstract concepts, but be guided through the psychology of starting up in an era of climate crisis. That kind of voice doesn't come from a prompt.
Amplify What's Already Burning
There's a pattern I see in creative work today: too many people are trying to start with AI instead of using it to enhance what already burns inside them. That's like trying to build a fire by blowing air into an empty fire pit. First, you need embers. Or even better: a flame.
For me, the flame was the painful clarity that the climate space is full of people who care but don't know how to build. Or who have ideas but no path forward. Or who feel isolated in their ambitions. I've seen this firsthand, again and again, in my coaching and mentoring. I wanted to speak directly to that.
So I wrote it all down.
Now, AI is helping me take it further — helping me scale it, improve it, and make it beautiful. But it's not defining it.
And that, I believe, is the right order of things.
If you're working on something new — a product, a course, a story, a startup — ask yourself: what part of this can only come from me? Start there. Then let the tools help you amplify it.
Because the world doesn't need more generic content. It needs more people who dare to create from the source.