Positive Climate Action of Stardust Startups North Carolina

This article was originally published as “Courage Investing: The Positive Climate Action of Stardust Startups North Carolina.” Read the full Stardust blog article by Julia Enright

In 2022, a video of a stilted North Carolina beach home collapsing into the ocean went viral. The 37-second clip of large waves in Rodanthe taking down the house was a wake-up call for those across the country. As many soon learned, North Carolina’s coastal towns have long been the front lines of climate change. Three homes in Rodanthe, all built in the 1980s, had already fallen that year, demonstrating the accelerated rate of change on the coastal edge. Home to tumultuous storms and some of the most rapid rates of sea level rise and coastal erosion on the East Coast, North Carolina beach towns are grappling with uncertain futures as their coastline recedes. As houses quite literally fall into the water.

As shorelines erode and waters rise, many coastal communities are relying on adaptive measures like floodgates and seawalls, which can be costly to build and repair. Others are installing buffers using salt marshes, oyster reefs, and other natural materials to create living shorelines for erosion control while protecting the natural beauty and productivity of the coastal ecosystem. With this awareness, Nicholas and George Thatos, founders of Coastal Technologies Corporation, are developing novel, deployable living defenses to grow oyster reefs that will help protect communities from land loss.

While the father-son team researched and designed the Oyster Stacks™ device (patent pending) on their own, they needed support to have them built and tested. Enter: Stardust Startups.

Dr. Laura Jean (Lj) Palmer-Moloney, ECU Geography Professor and resident of Carteret County, NC co-founded Stardust Startups (Stardust) in 2015. Drawing on her doctoral research in the ECU Coastal Resources Management program, she proposed a vast mission for the organization: to provide holistic support for early-stage entrepreneurs and startups in the areas of environmental sustainability, health, and learning. Since then, Stardust has supported international impact entrepreneurs by providing them with over $50,000 in recoverable microgrants. Coastal Technologies Corporation is the most recent project to receive Stardust’s support, including a $3000 microgrant to fabricate the Oyster Stacks as well as backing to get the devices pilot-tested in a North Carolina Coastal Federation living shoreline research effort set for Spring 2024.

On a recent Stardust team call, co-founder Nicholas Thatos shared how his outlook has changed since his involvement with Stardust, “Stardust’s support is expanding not just our initiative but the hope inherent in these new technologies.”

Stardust gives emerging entrepreneurs a unique, nurturing place to create products and services that can become the foundation of scalable businesses for a climate-compatible world.

Stardust does more than expand hope, it goes a step further. For early-stage impact entrepreneurs, progress is non-linear. Fear and uncertainty are the norm. To face personal unknowns and still choose to develop new products and services takes courage. In our climate reality of significant warming and destructive weather, climate entrepreneurs in particular, possess a special kind of courage. As Kate Marvel puts it in her article for On Being, “Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.”

The pre-seed funding and human guidance Stardust offers stands out amid the overwhelming landscape of venture capital funding, crowdsourcing, and bootstrapping — all processes often designed for projects well beyond the testing stage. For new initiatives with limited budgets and manpower, and those with the daring to enact their solutions, Stardust’s intentional and ongoing support takes the existing courage of these entrepreneurs and bolsters it.

The organization itself is no stranger to courage. Stardust has not run from the developments that have complicated and defined human existence on our planet. COVID-19 activated a shift for Stardust. Due to the global nature of the mission, the team was already familiar with Zoom, but the pause also allowed Stardust to realign. By increasingly coordinating its efforts with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Stardust was able to better position itself within the wider impact community. At the same time though, the pandemic was presenting the organization with significant resource challenges.

In this period of re-engagement post-pandemic, Stardust has officially targeted its work on eastern NC, Dr Palmer-Moloney’s home territory. Honing in on supporting planet-first entrepreneurs developing innovative climate solutions for the coastal plain of North Carolina, Stardust is taking its tried-and-true framework of microgrant support and focusing on climate action.

Although the focus is local, the mission of Stardust is still grounded in the needs of the international impact community. Sustainable Development Goal #13, Climate Action, and a commitment to the Blue Economy, the sustainable and innovative stewardship of oceanic resources are the guiding stars of the non-profit. In continuing to learn alongside the innovative Startups it supports and adapting its model, Stardust can apply its support framework to other communities in the future.

There has never been a more crucial time for impact entrepreneurs and impact investors to be connected to entrepreneurial climate initiatives through organizations like Stardust Startups North Carolina. Investments in workable solutions bent on creating positive environmental change boost the impact these initiatives have and, perhaps most importantly, boost the hope of communities and build the courage of future innovators alongside them.  

In a time when both hope and courage are in limited supply, depictions of waves wreaking havoc need to be offset by videos of a smiling George Thatos standing ankle-deep in water, drilling in his new Oyster Stacks.

To Join Stardust and invest in hope and courage, visit the website or contact Dr. Lj directly (jean@starduststartupfactory.org)

Are you a planet-first entrepreneur? Learn more about working with Stardust here.