Here, we demonstrate that carbene systems can indeed be modelled like transition metal complexes and can be described by similar features as used in ligand design. This strategy allowed us to predict the activation energy for the H2 activation with high accuracy based on the substituent properties and correlate the energy profiles of different tetrylenes (silylenes and germylenes) with each other. These results allow for a further understanding of the substituent properties crucial for bond activations and may be employed to accelerate the design of future main group compounds for small molecule activations.