Juliette Devillard On Building the Human Infrastructure for Climate Innovation

Drawing on her own experience, Juliette Devillard understands the unique and often overlooked challenges that founders face. Speaking directly to the founder community, she shares how Climate Connection is actively supporting the growth and resilience of climate startups.

Climate Connection is championing a quietly radical cornerstone of the climate ecosystem by creating intentional space for like-minded individuals to connect, exchange ideas, and learn from one another.

In the latest ‘Profit Meets Purpose’ episode, Founder and CEO Juliette Devillard shared how a transatlantic move, and a pandemic-era experiment gave rise to the UK’s largest regular event for climate innovation.

Listen to the full episode here.

When Devillard relocated to London from the U.S. in 2021, she found a climate community fragmented by the pandemic and lacking a central point of connection. With in-person events stalled and few spaces for open exchange for climate professionals, she took a chance. The first event she held was a trial to test the waters on what the appetite may be. The small, 30-person gathering of like-minded professionals proved appetite was there.

“People came up to us saying, ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone in two years. We need this again,’ and that’s when it was clear that it couldn’t be a one off.”

Climate Connection is now a cornerstone of the UK climate startup scene, growing through in-person meetups, VIP dinners, and curated sessions that support both founders and funders. Devillard focuses on the quality of the connection at these events from intimate 10-person dinners to 150-plus mixers. Every touch point is designed to encourage people to meet new people in the community. She believes in the power of trust that is created when people meet each other face to face.

“One-off events waste energy. We run consistent series to build real relationships that move the ecosystem forward.”

Different events, different goals

Building on her initial success, Devillard has developed a variety of different events with slightly different goals. One example is their Female Founders Dinner, an intentional intervention in an ecosystem where just 2% of venture capital funding goes to women-led Startups.

“We didn’t just talk about the problem. We asked founders what they needed and then invited investors, marketers, and sales coaches who could help immediately.”

Importantly, the event welcomed allies of all genders, reinforcing the idea that closing the gender gap isn’t just a women’s issue—it’s an ecosystem imperative.

Climate Connection has also done something that would traditionally be as welcome as an uninvited wasp on a summer’s day picnic and uninvited investors from one of her event series.

Devillard realised that there are struggles founders are facing alone. Many are in a position where sharing their true emotions or strain risks bringing team morale down, putting off investment, Perhaps the most poignant part of Devillard’s story is her openness about mental health. “I started this company during a period of mental instability. But because I wasn’t beholden to VCs, I had the freedom to talk about it. Most founders don’t.”

That vulnerability inspired Founders Connect, a Chatham House-style rule series for

entrepreneurs to speak candidly about burnout, co-founder conflict, and personal pressures, issues often swept under the rug in pitch-perfect founder narratives.

By encouraging vulnerability, Devillard has created a more supportive and sustainable startup culture. She is delivering a crucial message that for startups to thrive, the people behind them must be supported.

Strengthening appetite

In terms of her approach to the startup ecosystem in the United Kingdom, Devillard encourages founders to look at the entrepreneurial spirit overseas. In the U.S., founders are often taught to boldly pitch, take risks, and seek out new connections, while in the UK, social norms around politeness often inhibit this behaviour. 

This reluctance, she argues, delays partnerships and weakens outreach, stifling momentum. But she’s optimistic, investor appetite for hard tech, - capital-intensive

technologies that require sophisticated engineering and manufacturing - is growing, London’s ecosystem is maturing, and founders are beginning to find their voices.

Speaking of hard tech, Devillard sees a pivotal shift in climate capital: the focus is finally moving toward physical infrastructure. The world cannot be decarbonised with software alone; we need to rebuild factories, energy storage systems, and machinery, to leverage digital technology she observes. 

However, as early-stage funding for hard tech startups grows, a significant gap remains at the Series B stage. To bridge this gap, Devillard advocates for creative financing solutions, including government guarantees, corporate purchase commitments, and hybrid financing models to de-risk scale-up costs.

Listen to the full episode here.