Course

Course Description

The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our generation and demands more than good intentions… it requires profitable solutions that are positioned to scale. This intensive, hands-on course throws you into the deep end of climate entrepreneurship using battle-tested startup methodologies to solve for possibly our most existential challenge yet. You won’t write detailed business plans or sit through exhausting lectures; instead, you’ll form cross-disciplinary teams, tackle real sustainability challenges faced by industry partners, and get out of the building to conduct stakeholder interviews. Every week you’ll present your new hypotheses, pivot based on evidence, and benefit from direct feedback from mentors, investors, and climate professionals who’ve built real companies.

This is a real-world laboratory for solving actual problems facing business leaders today, ranging from renewable energy transition to fresh water pollution to waste valorization and much more. You’ll master customer discovery, rapidly prototype minimum viable products, and learn to build ventures that are both economically viable and climate-positive. Expect chaos, impossible deadlines, and being pushed past your comfort zone… all to arrive at deeply transformative learning. By the end, you’ll understand how to turn environmental pain points into market opportunities, validate solutions with real users in real-time, and develop the resilience and leadership required to build companies that actually matter. Whether you’re an engineer, policy expert, designer, or scientist, this course will fundamentally change how you approach problem-solving for our planet’s future.

 

About Challenge Labs

Challenge Labs are 4 unit courses for students of all academic backgrounds who seek a rigorous, interactive, team-based, and hands-on learning experience in entrepreneurship and technology. These courses use a unique pedagogy, The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship, that involves the use of games, industry guest speakers, team exercises, videos and labs to cover the early part of the startup lifecycle. In these highly experiential courses, students form start-up teams to create technology solutions or services to address a broadly-defined problem posed by an industry partner or social challenge.

Instructor

Nathan Sedlander

Nathan is a serial entrepreneur who builds companies that make money and regenerate the environment. He teaches environmental and social entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, and advises climate-focused researchers and innovators across the UC system on commercialization strategies. Previously he founded and scaled Starmaker, a global music platform that democratized talent discovery and enabled 100M+ everyday people to create art. His current venture, Trace Logic, is an AI platform used by Fortune 500 companies that gives every consumer product an accurate carbon footprint. In short, Nathan isn’t waiting for the world to change… he’s building the companies that will.

Nathan Sedlander Headshot 2026

Nathan Sedlander Headshot 2026