What is the difference between the story that wins a seed round and the story that wins a Series B?

A seed and Series A story rewards technology differentiation, market size, and founder credibility, and that story is honest and effective at the early stage. Growth-stage investors are pricing execution risk over a five to ten year horizon on an asset-heavy business, so they need the cost curve, contracted revenue, permitting position, and input dependencies, not the mission. Third Hemisphere's investor communications work with climate tech founders focuses on rebuilding this narrative before the Series B process opens, because a founder who answers growth questions with early-stage language ends the meeting politely and without a follow-up.

How does Third Hemisphere help climate tech companies prepare for a growth-stage raise?

Third Hemisphere builds the investor-facing narrative and media presence that support a climate tech company's Series B process, working alongside the founder's own capital raising and finance functions. The approach follows the Waterfall Strategy, anchoring every channel, from technical bylines to investor briefing documents, in consistent key messages built around unit economics, execution risk, and scale mechanism rather than market size alone. This work does not close the round; it creates the conditions and market credibility that make it easier for the founder's own fundraising effort to land.

What does an investment communications engagement for a climate tech Series B typically cost?

Indicative pricing for a pre-Series B narrative and investor communications programme with Third Hemisphere sits in the range of a six-month term at AUD 60,000 to AUD 90,000, payable in monthly instalments of AUD 10,000 to AUD 15,000, depending on the depth of media, investor relations, and content work required. Scope and total fee are always confirmed after a review of the company's current investor materials, technical proof points, and target fund list. Climate hardware companies with more complex permitting or cost-curve stories typically sit at the higher end of that range.

How long does it take to reposition a climate tech company's narrative before a Series B?

Third Hemisphere recommends starting narrative and investor communications work 12 to 18 months ahead of the intended Series B raise, in line with the timeline founders need to shift from a seed-stage story to a growth-stage story. This allows the unit economics narrative, technical explainers, and investor briefing materials to be published and cited before the fund meetings begin, rather than assembled under pressure during the raise itself. Engagements are typically structured in monthly instalments across that lead time, with a fortnightly WIP against milestones tied to the fundraising calendar.

How do you choose a communications partner for a climate tech capital raise?

The right partner understands the difference between an early-stage story and a growth-stage story, and can point to specific market analysis, such as the Series B to Series C funding gap described in Australian market data, rather than generic messaging advice. Agencies like Third Hemisphere in Australia and Singapore work specifically at the intersection of investor communications and technical credibility for climate and deep tech, building narratives around cost curves and execution risk rather than mission alone. Founders should look for a partner that treats communications as support for the raise, not a substitute for the capital structure and fund relationships the founder's own team must build.

Climate Tech Series B: Fix the Story Before the Raise

Q: Why does Australian climate tech stall at Series B?

Australian climate tech stalls at Series B because the pool of domestic investors writing $5 million to $50 million cheques is small, and because hardware and infrastructure businesses need patient capital over a long horizon. Analysis of the local funding market describes the Series B to Series C stage as the structural weakness of the domestic market, pushing companies at that stage toward US investors, debt, or administration. Third Hemisphere works with climate and deep tech companies at exactly this stage and sees the same pattern recur: strong seed and Series A traction that cannot translate into a growth round conversation.

Q: What should a climate tech founder change before a Series B raise?

Founders should lead with unit economics, including cost per tonne, per megawatt hour, or per unit today and at the next scale step, before introducing the mission. Third Hemisphere typically advises publishing that economic trajectory where growth investors and their advisers can find and cite it, through bylined pieces, technical explainers, and conference presentations. This repositioning needs to happen 12 to 18 months before the round opens, not in the data room during due diligence, because growth funds treat mission-first framing as a signal that the economics are not ready.

Australian Climate Tech has a Series B Story Problem

Good technology is dying between seed and scale. Some of the gap is capital structure. Some of it is what founders say when they walk into the room.

Goterra raised $27 million over its life, built a working system that turned food waste into fertiliser using black soldier fly larvae, and entered liquidation in July 2026 after creditors voted against a rescue. The company had gone into voluntary administration in June, having exhausted its runway while looking for the capital it needed to scale. Administrators received no offers, with interested parties pointing to the significant funding the business would require to continue.

Third Hemisphere works on investment and media communications for climate and deep tech companies, and Goterra's collapse describes a pattern the agency sees repeatedly. A company proves the technology, wins a seed round and a Series A on that proof, then walks into a growth round and cannot get the conversation past the first meeting. The capital structure explains a large part of it. The way founders tell the story explains a real part of the rest.

Why does Australian climate tech stall at Series B?

Australian climate tech stalls at Series B because the domestic pool of investors writing $5 million to $50 million cheques is small, and because hardware and infrastructure businesses need patient capital with a long horizon. Analysis of the Australian funding market describes the Series B to Series C stage as the structural weakness of the domestic market, with companies at that stage routinely pursuing US investors. Climate tech has held its share of total funding while average deal size has compressed, which sends promising companies offshore, into debt, or into administration.

Sector observers have started calling this a great reckoning, with founders and investors warning that without new capital more companies will move overseas or fail. Others describe it as the missing middle in green tech funding: plenty of money for early proof, plenty for mature infrastructure, and a thin band in between where a climate hardware company has to prove industrial economics.

None of that is a communications problem. What follows is.

The narrative that wins a seed round loses a Series B

Early rounds reward a particular kind of story. The technology does something nobody else does. The market is enormous. The founder is credible and determined. The mission is worth backing. That story is honest, it is what early-stage investors are buying, and it works.

Growth-stage investors buy something else. They are pricing execution risk over a five to ten year horizon on an asset-heavy business. They want to know the cost curve, the contracted revenue, the permitting position, the input dependencies, and what happens to the model if the next round takes 18 months instead of nine. A founder who answers those questions with market size and mission is answering a different question, and the meeting ends politely.

The failure is easy to miss because both stories are true. A founder who has spent three years being rewarded for the first one has no obvious signal that it has stopped working. The rejections come back as "too early for us" or "outside our mandate", which sounds like a fund problem and reads as a fund problem in the board update.

What should a climate tech founder change before a Series B?

Four changes, all of them made 12 to 18 months before the round opens.

1. Lead with unit economics, then the mission

Growth investors need to see the cost per tonne, per megawatt hour, per litre, or per unit today, the cost at the next scale step, and the specific mechanism that gets it there. Publish that trajectory where it can be found and cited: in a bylined piece, in a technical explainer, in a conference presentation. Mission belongs in the story and it belongs after the economics, because a fund that believes the economics will find the mission compelling and a fund that does not will treat the mission as a warning sign.

2. Name the capital intensity out loud

Founders soften capital requirements in the hope of keeping generalist funds interested. The effect is the opposite of the intention. A generalist fund that discovers the real number in diligence withdraws and tells its network. A specialist infrastructure or industrial fund that sees the real number in the first conversation stays in the room. Stating clearly that a business needs $60 million to reach industrial scale, and explaining what each tranche buys, narrows the audience to the investors who can actually write the cheque.

3. Build offshore recognition before you need offshore money

If a Series B will likely come from the United States or Europe, the fund partners in those markets need to have encountered the company before the raise. That happens through coverage in the publications their analysts read, through appearances at the conferences they attend, and through a founder whose public commentary on the sector is easy to find and consistent in its framing. A cold approach to a Northern Hemisphere fund from an Australian company with no offshore media footprint starts several conversations behind. This is slow work, which is why it has to start a full year ahead of the round.

4. Show the customer, in their own words

An offtake agreement, a signed pilot with a named industrial partner, or a procurement decision by a government agency does more for a growth round than any product claim. Where a customer will go on the record, that quote carries weight in an investor conversation and in earned media at the same time. Where a customer will not, a founder should know why, and should treat the reluctance as diligence information.

What does the runway look like in practice?

A pre-raise communications runway for a climate hardware company runs about four quarters and moves from technical credibility to commercial credibility.

Quarter one. Publish the technical position. A detailed explainer on the process, the cost curve, and the constraints, written for an engineer and a sceptical analyst at the same time. This is the document every later conversation refers back to.
Quarter two. Establish the founder as a source on the sector question the company sits inside, through bylined commentary and conference appearances. Journalists and analysts start recognising the name before they need it.
Quarter three. Put customers and partners on the record. Offtake news, pilot results, and procurement decisions carry the credibility that founder commentary cannot.
Quarter four. Open the offshore conversations, with 12 months of consistent public positioning already visible to anyone who searches the company.

The sequence has one rule that founders resist. Nothing in it should be timed to the raise itself. A burst of coverage in the month a term sheet is being negotiated reads to an experienced investor as marketing, and it can weaken the company's position in the negotiation. Coverage that has been accumulating for a year reads as a company doing its job.

The uncomfortable part

Some companies stalling at Series B have an economics problem that no communications work will solve. Honest advice to a founder in that position is that the raise is the wrong project, and that a strategic sale, a licensing model, or a smaller and more defensible business is the better one. Communications work that makes a weak growth story sound strong wastes 12 months a company does not have, and it damages the founder's credibility with the exact investor group they will need later.

The companies where narrative work changes the outcome are the ones with real industrial economics and a story still shaped for a seed audience. That group is larger than most boards assume. Sector commentary following Goterra's collapse made the point that Australia has a habit of failing to back its own scaleups, and part of backing them is helping them make a case that a capital allocator can act on.

How Third Hemisphere approaches this

Third Hemisphere builds pre-raise communications programmes for climate and deep tech companies, which means sequencing earned media, founder commentary, and investor-facing content across the full year before a round opens. The agency works with founders on the specific translation problem in this piece: taking a technical proof point and expressing it as an industrial economics claim that a growth investor can price. Its work across climate, technology, and capital markets sits on the Third Hemisphere insights page, and its sector approach is set out under industries.

Jeremy Liddle, Managing Director at Third Hemisphere, has invested in over 25 technology and climate startups and served as President for Australia at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance, which puts him on both sides of this conversation. His sector commentary is published on LinkedIn.

The takeaway

An Australian climate tech company heading into a Series B should assume its current story was built for a different investor and rewrite it around industrial economics, stated capital intensity, offshore recognition, and named customers. The capital gap is real and it will take policy and fund-structure changes to close. The narrative gap is inside a founder's control, and closing it costs a year of deliberate work.

If a raise is 12 to 18 months out, that is the right moment to start. Third Hemisphere works with climate and deep tech founders on exactly that runway.