We're joined by Helena Merk, CEO of Streamline Climate. Helena, who started as a coder, now leads the charge in helping startups navigate the tricky world of climate tech funding. What led her from coding to this niche? How do startups succeed in this complex world? Helena shares insights into different grant programs, the importance of building relationships with grant issuers, and the challenges startups face in the grant landscape. Helena also emphasizes Streamline's role in aiding companies to find and apply for appropriate grants. About Streamline Climate: Streamline Climate is an innovative platform designed to assist climate companies in the fast and efficient drafting of proposals, particularly for grants, RFPs, permits, accelerator applications, and awards. The service is geared towards teams looking to maximize their impact in the climate sector, providing a streamlined process for generating and managing documents. Streamline Climate offers a variety of features including templates, AI-driven suggestions for key points in proposals, and tools for building a compelling narrative, all aimed at saving time and enhancing the quality of submissions. About VSC Ventures: VSC Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Jay Kapoor and Vijay Chattha where we invest in industrial automation and climate adaptation startups and support our founders with hands-on PR, storytelling, and go-to-market work with help from our award-winning PR agency VSC Our fund has invested alongside Lowercarbon, NEA, Uncork Capital, Left Lane, Alley Corp, Obvious Ventures, Third Sphere, and other leading early-stage funds. Through our weekly conversations on our show CLIMB by VSC, we're excited to share our work with innovative companies like Paintjet, Glacier, Concrete.AI, Presso, Ample, Actual, Sesame Solar, Synop, and Vibrant Planet in addition to highlighting companies and leading voices across the early stage ecosystem