The Torch Bearer's Evolution

What Happens When Your Identity Merges With Your Category

Photo by Marko Horvat on Unsplash

Eight years after I first set out to build a carbon removal industry, I was no longer CEO of Nori, and I found myself in an identity crisis. It wasn't the typical founder transition story you read about – this was something deeper, something specific to not just founding a company, but helping launch an entire category.

We were walking to get coffee when my colleague – once my employee – asked how I was doing since stepping down as CEO. I felt an unexpected wave of emotion as I responded.

"I'm not sure if I'm valuable here anymore," I admitted, surprised by the feeling behind my words. There was a rawness to it that caught me off guard – a recognition that my role had fundamentally shifted in ways I was still processing.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wasn't normal founder transition pain. This was the specific agony of a category creator - someone who eventually spent nine years (a full quarter of my life!) working to will an entire industry into existence.

If you're building something that's never existed before, understanding this journey might be the difference between surviving it and being consumed by it.

The Kindling Phase

You're not just starting a company - you're igniting something entirely new. For me, this began in 2015 with a simple meetup in Seattle. I remember putting together a pitch deck about different ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere and presenting it to other meetups with the absolute conviction that this was both inevitable and obvious.

Unlike many founders, I didn't feel alone or misunderstood during this phase. I had the zeal of someone who saw something that needed to exist. Every month, our group would gather to share research papers and discuss potential approaches. There was an infectious energy to these early days - we were uncovering something important, learning together, mapping out an industry that barely even had a name.

The kindling phase is marked by this pure connection to the problem and potential solutions. You're the researcher, the evangelist, the connector. Your value is in seeing patterns and possibilities that others miss. Your identity and the emerging category are perfectly aligned because you're defining both simultaneously.

Recognition signals

You're in the kindling phase when you find yourself collecting research obsessively, when explaining your vision takes twice as long as others' elevator pitches, or when you're building communities around ideas before products. Your nights are spent going down research rabbit holes, and you get a physical rush when connecting seemingly unrelated concepts. When you're in this phase, you're the encyclopedia of your category – you can cite every paper, name every player, and explain every nuance of the problem you're solving.

Questions I wish I'd asked myself

• How might I document my original thinking to maintain connection to it later?

• Which aspects of this work energize me most fundamentally, and how might I preserve them as things scale?

• What parts of this category feel so personally meaningful that losing connection to them would feel like losing myself?

The Torch-Carrying Phase

Then comes the shift. For me, it happened when we founded Nori in the fall of 2017. I started thinking less about carbon removal as a concept and more about how to build market infrastructure that would enable others to do this work.

I remember a pivotal moment when my cofounders and I were mapping out what types of carbon removal we should source. We realized there was virtually no supply available of direct air capture - a method that would have been easier to measure and verify. Instead, we had to shift focus to soil carbon, which led us down a path of building measurement and verification infrastructure for regenerative agriculture that ultimately defined Nori.

My day-to-day changed dramatically. Rather than discussing the latest carbon removal research, I was building systems, managing people, and constantly fundraising. The technical details I once obsessed over became something I delegated to others. My job was increasingly about translation - helping investors, partners, and new team members understand our vision.

A moment that crystallized this transition came when a friend in climate tech asked if I wanted an introduction to another startup. They had recently changed their name, and I didn't recognize it. I found myself quickly searching my team's Slack to see if anyone had mentioned this company before so I could pretend to be familiar with them. My friend noticed and gently admonished me: "Man, you should really know who that is. Maybe it'd be worth having an analyst on your team." I was taken aback, but he was right – I was so consumed with high-level concerns that I'd lost track of the evolving landscape I once knew intimately. The category was moving forward, with or without my awareness.

In 2019, Stripe committed to be the first major corporate buyer of carbon removal. After their RFP process, they anchored on exclusively pursuing long-term, durably stored, permanent carbon removal. I didn't think this would significantly impact us – we were heavily focused on regenerative agriculture and had received positive responses to our approach. But within a couple of years, initiatives like Frontier (what Stripe's program evolved into) were exclusively focused on permanence. This shift represented the category accelerating in a direction I hadn't anticipated, driven by a small group of influential players.

The torch-carrying phase transforms you from researcher to infrastructure builder. Your value shifts from knowing everything to orchestrating others who know specific things. Your identity starts separating from the technical foundations you once lived and breathed.

Recognition signals

You've entered this phase when you catch yourself searching Slack for your own past explanations, when you realize you haven't read a research paper in months, or when – like me – you find yourself frantically searching for information about companies in your own industry that you're supposed to know. The category creators' unique tell? When you hear yourself saying, "Let me check with my team about that" for questions you once would have answered passionately without hesitation.

Questions I wish I'd asked myself

• How can I maintain connection to the technical foundations while scaling the organization?

• What regular practices might keep me grounded in the category even as my role evolves?

• Who on my team might help me stay connected to the work that originally energized me?

• How might I design my role to preserve some direct connection to the problem we're solving?

The Passing Phase

I decided to step down as CEO in January 2023. The new CEO started in June. At first, I felt immense relief - finally, someone else would deal with our challenging board members and own the fundraising. I could focus on the parts of the business I still enjoyed.

But the passing phase isn't that simple. I struggled to find my footing. I was providing input and feedback but constantly worrying about stepping on the new CEO's toes. My role had become ambiguous.

There was one project I got to lead - evaluating new partners for measuring soil carbon. I hosted an on-site meeting with a potential partner (ironically, the very same company who I was admonished for not knowing before), walking through how we would work together. It felt invigorating, reminiscent of my earlier days before we raised significant VC money, when I was more directly involved in operations. But as soon as that project concluded, the feeling evaporated.

The passing phase forces you to confront a difficult truth: the category you helped create no longer needs you in the same way. The very success you worked for has made your original role obsolete.

Recognition signals

You know you're in this phase when you feel a strange emptiness after successful meetings, when you notice people in your industry no longer asking for your opinion first, or when you find yourself unsure whether to speak up in discussions about topics you once dominated. The weirdest sign for category creators specifically? When you realize you no longer have strong preferences about technical approaches in a field you once had passionate opinions about. You're watching debates about implementation details that once would have consumed you, and discovering you're content to let others determine the path forward.

Questions I wish I'd asked myself

• What aspects of my identity exist independent of this category?

• Which relationships transcend my professional role?

• How might I honor what we've built while creating space for new leadership to take it further?

• What new problems interest me that might benefit from my pattern recognition abilities?

The Paradox

The specific challenge for category creators is this: The actions required to successfully create a category are the very same ones that separate you from it.

So many advisors cautioned me about associating my identity with the startup. I nodded along, thinking I understood, but I had no idea how to actually separate myself. How do you disentangle your identity from something you've spent years evangelizing? How do you step back from a vision you articulated hundreds of times to investors, partners, and employees?

Success means watching your creation outgrow you. The better you are at bringing something new into existence, the more completely you'll eventually be separated from it.

In some ways, this separation is accelerated by the category's growth. Carbon removal advanced much faster than I ever anticipated, though in different directions than I expected. I built pitch decks in 2018 where we estimated Nori alone would be transacting a billion tonnes by the end of the 2020s. Obviously, we never came within anywhere close to that. But the category itself has evolved rapidly, with new companies emerging with approaches we hadn't considered and the industry narrative shifting dramatically after Stripe's RFP.

This creates an agonizing question: Do you pivot to follow the evolving category, or stay true to your founding vision? We never fully resolved this tension. There was probably a middle path of some sort, but I’m not entirely sure it was possible.

This pattern repeats across industries. The early Bitcoin evangelists who eventually moved on to other projects. Streaming video pioneers who stepped aside as the technology became mainstream. The torch-bearer's journey isn't unique to climate tech - it's fundamental to category creation itself.

The Recovery

After leaving Nori, one of my advisors recommended I read Transitions by William Bridges. He describes moving from ending something to starting something new, with a crucial "neutral zone" in between - a time when you should resist the urge to jump into something new and instead sit with the discomfort of the in-between.

I've spent the last year deliberately staying in this neutral zone, forcing myself to say no to new things and focusing on internal healing. I spent more time in nature, exploring the beauty of western Washington, deliberately disconnecting from the constant flow of carbon removal news and announcements. I needed this space because my identity had become so intertwined with my work that I couldn't separate grief about the company from grief about myself.

Only now do I feel ready to emerge from it. Taking this time wasn't failure - it was necessary reconstruction after the deep identity fusion that category creation demanded.

The typical guidance to "separate yourself from your company" fundamentally misunderstands what category creation requires. The total commitment is often necessary - but so is the eventual unwinding.

What helped most during this time wasn't rushing to replace my old identity, but rather allowing myself the space to heal and rediscover what energized me before Nori consumed my identity.

Looking Forward

Recently, I was talking with my friend Tito, the founder of AirMiners, about our shared frustration that carbon removal isn't fringe anymore, because it was more fun when it was weird and new and there were people interested in it precisely because it was weird and new. We reflected on how the category has matured but not scaled as quickly as we once hoped.

This conversation rekindled something in me – strong opinions I'd left dormant started to resurface. I found myself drawn to questions about how we might buy more time for carbon removal to scale. We're facing tipping point problems – ice sheet melting, coral reefs dying off, methane release – that won't wait for carbon removal to reach the necessary scale.

I'm not committing to a new venture yet, but I'm certainly in that familiar and exciting kindling phase again – doing research, reading interesting books, reaching out to scientists, and trying to get a better lay of the land. There are so many people who have been working on these challenges for decades, and I'm excited to learn from them.

All the while, I continue to believe that the carbon removal industry needs reform and needs to scale faster. The fundamental challenge hasn't changed, but my relationship to it has evolved.

What's different this time for me is that I see the pattern. I recognize this exploratory stage for what it is – the beginning of a cycle that could lead to another deep identity fusion. But having lived through it once, I can approach it with a different perspective.

The question isn't whether to avoid the identity fusion – after all, it may be necessary for bringing something truly new into existence. The question is how to survive the eventual passing of the torch.

Maybe what category creators need isn't a way to avoid the journey, but a map to navigate it with eyes wide open – understanding that each phase requires different skills, different support systems, and different definitions of success.

And perhaps most importantly, recognizing that when the torch is finally passed, there will be a period of feeling lost before you can see clearly again. That's not failure – it's just part of the journey.

If you recognize yourself in any of these phases, know that you're not alone. The path of bringing something new into existence has always required this peculiar fusion of identity and vision – and has always eventually required letting go. The difference is that now you can see it coming.