In this blog series, we speak to founders, marketing teams and VCs from our climate tech ecosystem to find out what gets them out of bed in the morning, and what challenges they have overcome to get to where they are today.
It’s an opportunity to peer behind the curtain and hear directly from the people who are playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of our planet.
Hayden Young is the Marketing Director at SET Ventures, an energy tech VC based in Germany and the Netherlands. He joined the company four years ago after a diverse career in marketing, spanning the music, aviation and EV industries. SET Ventures had no marketing function in place prior to Hayden joining, so he has spent his time building its marketing efforts from the ground up.
Our relationship with SET Ventures began three years ago when we led a PR project announcing the closing of its Fund IV. It was such a huge success that SET Ventures is now one of our ongoing clients, so we work closely with Hayden and have witnessed his dedication and tenacity firsthand.
Our conversation will give you deeper insight into where Hayden finds his drive and how the quote, “greatness is in the agency of others,” has inspired his work.
1. What moves you?
For most of my career, I’ve worked for causes that have a positive impact on the planet in some way. It’s been good to dedicate four years of my life to solving climate change by furthering the energy transition – it helps motivate me.
Outside of work, I’m very much a people person, and I love experiencing different cultures. I travel as much as I can – it’s something that I get the most joy out of in life. I haven’t set a goal of trying to visit every country in the world, but when I look back on my life, if I can say I’ve been to over a hundred countries, that will feel like a pretty good milestone for me.
It sounds cheesy, but getting to experience everything the world has to offer is the main thing that motivates me.
2. What challenges do you face?
Even after four years, I’m still learning a ton about the energy sector every day. It is such a complex industry with many moving parts that seem to change every day. I definitely know a lot more than I did when I first joined SET Ventures, but our focus is on a very specific part of energy – digital energy technologies, meaning there’s a lot of nuance that takes a wealth of intense focus and research to understand properly.
But the job of a VC is more so to pre-empt and predict things, to get ahead of the curve and make an investment before everyone else. That’s how you make big returns. To do this in an industry that is so particular, it’s a challenge. At the end of the day, we don’t market a product; we market judgement. There is still a lot of fear and questioning myself as to whether I am saying the right thing. Do I feel confident enough to answer a journalist’s questions without referring back to the team? Do I agree with this line of copy?
I pride myself on being a fast learner and getting up to speed, but there are so many levels to this industry that I’m not sure if you can ever really understand it all. I always have to remind myself that my job is not to be an expert in energy; it’s to be an expert in marketing.
3. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever had?
This is more a quote than a piece of advice: “Greatness is in the agency of others.” It’s the idea that everything you’re doing, or everything that you’re achieving, is not just a product of your sole output. It takes other people helping you along the way.
I think that acknowledging this and valuing people for it has helped me recognise the team effort that is required in work and life, and to be comfortable asking for help when I need it.
When you’re the sole marketing person for a small company, it’s not ‘just’ you doing the work. For example, when redoing the messaging strategy for SET Ventures, I needed a wealth of input from the partners to get that right. It wasn’t just me coming up with brilliant ideas and putting them down on paper. It took a lot of back and forth.
Even when someone might not be an expert in the field that you are, this doesn’t mean that they can’t provide good insight.
