Kieran White (00:00:00):
I joined with the premise of being like,

Kieran White (00:00:02):
I'm going to be Elon's personal project manager within two years and he'll fund it

Kieran White (00:00:06):
and everything will go great.

Kieran White (00:00:07):
I think the biggest challenge we've had there time and time again is like, what is our goal?

Kieran White (00:00:12):
Is the goal to fundraise?

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:14):
Welcome back to Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs.

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:18):
I'm Somil.

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:19):
And I'm Silas.

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:20):
Each week,

Silas Mähner (00:00:20):
we publish the secrets to success from investors,

Silas Mähner (00:00:23):
founders,

Silas Mähner (00:00:24):
operators,

Silas Mähner (00:00:24):
and experts in climate tech around the world.

Silas Mähner (00:00:26):
Building a startup is hard.

Silas Mähner (00:00:28):
Building a climate tech startup is even harder.

Silas Mähner (00:00:30):
but we make it a little bit easier.

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:31):
We put a lot of effort into these shows, so we hope you enjoy.

Somil Aggarwal (00:00:35):
Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and let us know who you think we should have on next.

Silas Mähner (00:00:40):
With that, let's get into today's episode.

Silas Mähner (00:00:47):
Today,

Silas Mähner (00:00:47):
we are speaking with Kieran White,

Silas Mähner (00:00:50):
the CEO and co-founder of Kiro,

Silas Mähner (00:00:52):
a company helping fleets find reliable charging in a manner of days instead of weeks.

Silas Mähner (00:00:58):
They do this by understanding a fleet owner's need.

Silas Mähner (00:01:02):
then finding a place with existing underutilized chargers, and then they broker an agreement with them.

Silas Mähner (00:01:08):
So it's basically a virtual charging depot.

Silas Mähner (00:01:11):
So Kiro's clients can use the chargers when the owner is not.

Silas Mähner (00:01:16):
And this benefits them by saving their clients money from having to spend on

Silas Mähner (00:01:20):
building their own upgrades,

Silas Mähner (00:01:21):
or perhaps they don't even have the

Silas Mähner (00:01:24):
real estate to build their own charging infrastructure.

Silas Mähner (00:01:27):
And it also helps the owners of that infrastructure maximize their returns on their

Silas Mähner (00:01:33):
investment for their own charging infrastructure.

Silas Mähner (00:01:35):
So we've known Kieran for a bit.

Silas Mähner (00:01:37):
So this was quite a fun one.

Silas Mähner (00:01:38):
We have a lot of rapport.

Silas Mähner (00:01:39):
And today we get into the tech and the story of Kiro,

Silas Mähner (00:01:42):
as well as some more,

Silas Mähner (00:01:43):
let's call it internal game items,

Silas Mähner (00:01:45):
like how to stay focused,

Silas Mähner (00:01:46):
among other things.

Silas Mähner (00:01:48):
Before we start, we do want to give a huge shout out to Goodwin Law for sponsoring this episode.

Silas Mähner (00:01:52):
More about them later.

Silas Mähner (00:01:54):
All right, let's get into it.

Silas Mähner (00:01:56):
All right, man.

Silas Mähner (00:01:57):
Welcome to the show.

Silas Mähner (00:01:57):
How are you doing?

Kieran White (00:01:59):
Awesome.

Kieran White (00:01:59):
Great to be here.

Kieran White (00:02:00):
I'm good, Silas.

Kieran White (00:02:00):
How are you?

Silas Mähner (00:02:01):
I'm good.

Silas Mähner (00:02:02):
It's good.

Silas Mähner (00:02:02):
It's good to see you again.

Silas Mähner (00:02:03):
Obviously,

Silas Mähner (00:02:03):
we've had the chance of connecting before during Climate Week and have spoken a few times,

Silas Mähner (00:02:08):
so glad to finally make the pod happen.

Silas Mähner (00:02:11):
I guess we know you,

Silas Mähner (00:02:13):
but tell everybody else who doesn't know you a little bit about who you are and

Silas Mähner (00:02:16):
what you're doing.

Kieran White (00:02:17):
Yeah, totally.

Kieran White (00:02:18):
Well, thank you again for having me.

Kieran White (00:02:19):
I'm Kieran.

Kieran White (00:02:20):
My background's like very briefly in climate started by doing a bunch of stuff at

Kieran White (00:02:24):
Tesla when Model 3 went to Europe.

Kieran White (00:02:26):
And one of the projects I worked on was how we got cars from Fremont in California

Kieran White (00:02:32):
to some of the countries in Europe and then distributed them.

Kieran White (00:02:35):
And the big problem we had was trying to park and charge them overnight.

Kieran White (00:02:39):
So like fast forward through like a recycling startup we did,

Kieran White (00:02:42):
and then we started a company that ended up becoming Kiro.

Kieran White (00:02:46):
We now do Kiro, which is essentially we help fleets to park and charge their vehicles overnight.

Kieran White (00:02:52):
So yeah, that's me and excited to be here.

Silas Mähner (00:02:55):
Yeah, very nice.

Silas Mähner (00:02:56):
Tell me more,

Silas Mähner (00:02:56):
like how did you,

Silas Mähner (00:02:57):
I guess,

Silas Mähner (00:02:57):
get your start in entrepreneurship and how did you end up working at Tesla?

Silas Mähner (00:03:00):
Because I think that if I remember correctly from your background,

Silas Mähner (00:03:03):
you have like a relatively interesting or I guess you say non-traditional journey

Silas Mähner (00:03:06):
to get in there.

Kieran White (00:03:08):
I guess so.

Kieran White (00:03:08):
Yeah.

Kieran White (00:03:08):
So I didn't do so when I was 18, graduating high school.

Kieran White (00:03:13):
So for those of you that don't know,

Kieran White (00:03:14):
in the UK,

Kieran White (00:03:14):
you have sixth form,

Kieran White (00:03:15):
which like the last two years of high school.

Kieran White (00:03:17):
And my dad ran a sixth form.

Kieran White (00:03:19):
So his whole job was to put people into college.

Kieran White (00:03:22):
And so I think by subsequently like big bias against not going to college.

Kieran White (00:03:29):
So I was like, right, no college.

Kieran White (00:03:31):
So I basically just applied to Tesla like ten times because Elon was my idol.

Kieran White (00:03:37):
And I basically got denied every time I was 18.

Kieran White (00:03:39):
They wouldn't hire anyone under 21.

Kieran White (00:03:41):
So I just went into a showroom, the local showroom in the UK.

Kieran White (00:03:47):
I was like, hey, I think I could do this.

Kieran White (00:03:49):
Give me a chance.

Kieran White (00:03:50):
So they hired me the next day.

Kieran White (00:03:51):
So I potentially made me one of the youngest Tesla employees, although completely unconfirmed.

Kieran White (00:03:58):
And so I did that for two years.

Kieran White (00:03:59):
I joined with the premise of being like,

Kieran White (00:04:02):
I'm going to be Elon's personal project manager within two years.

Kieran White (00:04:06):
And he'll fund it and like everything will go great.

Kieran White (00:04:10):
And didn't quite turn out like that.

Kieran White (00:04:11):
I did email him a lot and ended up being good friends with his assistant because of that.

Kieran White (00:04:17):
And actually got to pitch them one idea, but it didn't quite land.

Kieran White (00:04:20):
But yeah, that was the unconventional route to Tesla.

Silas Mähner (00:04:24):
Yeah, I like that.

Silas Mähner (00:04:25):
I mean, I think that it's really great to see people just kind of like following a different path.

Silas Mähner (00:04:29):
Like I skipped college, so a similar thing.

Silas Mähner (00:04:32):
It wasn't as intentional.

Silas Mähner (00:04:33):
I kind of got a little bit lucky, I'd say.

Silas Mähner (00:04:35):
But I love seeing people who go a different route.

Silas Mähner (00:04:38):
What were the key things that you learned through that experience that you would

Silas Mähner (00:04:41):
say kind of informed the rest of your entrepreneurial journey?

Kieran White (00:04:45):
Awesome question.

Kieran White (00:04:46):
I think...

Kieran White (00:04:47):
sort of something you i couldn't avoid is that the tesla mindset is very much like

Kieran White (00:04:53):
the company above yourself and so if you do not like subscribe to the mission it

Kieran White (00:04:59):
becomes very difficult to work in that environment um and so i think probably the

Kieran White (00:05:04):
biggest thing that i've taken away like working through to where we are today is

Kieran White (00:05:08):
just like

Kieran White (00:05:09):
the dedication and selfishness that you need in order to put company goes fast and

Kieran White (00:05:17):
whatever needs to be done is done.

Kieran White (00:05:19):
I remember when I was at Tesla,

Kieran White (00:05:21):
the people who ran Europe and some of the executive people from the US all came to

Kieran White (00:05:28):
this one showroom to deliver cars because that was the number one important thing

Kieran White (00:05:32):
for the whole business to operate,

Kieran White (00:05:34):
to meet end of quarter deadlines and then hit share price prediction.

Kieran White (00:05:39):
So everything was just geared around doing that.

Kieran White (00:05:41):
I think that's definitely something we've taken forward and something we try to

Kieran White (00:05:45):
preach at Kiro is when all hands are on deck,

Kieran White (00:05:47):
it doesn't matter who you are,

Kieran White (00:05:48):
you just go above yourself and do the thing.

Kieran White (00:05:51):
I think that's probably the biggest takeaway.

Silas Mähner (00:05:54):
Yeah, no, I think that's, it's quite interesting.

Silas Mähner (00:05:56):
And it's actually,

Silas Mähner (00:05:56):
I mean,

Silas Mähner (00:05:57):
obviously it's coming back,

Silas Mähner (00:05:58):
it feels like,

Silas Mähner (00:05:59):
but it was for a while,

Silas Mähner (00:06:00):
not actually the Collingwood culture with a lot of startups,

Silas Mähner (00:06:03):
unfortunately,

Silas Mähner (00:06:04):
but it's,

Silas Mähner (00:06:04):
you know,

Silas Mähner (00:06:04):
it's made a comeback.

Silas Mähner (00:06:06):
So,

Silas Mähner (00:06:06):
you know,

Silas Mähner (00:06:06):
tell me more about,

Silas Mähner (00:06:07):
we've obviously,

Silas Mähner (00:06:08):
I've been able to see kind of your journey as you guys were figuring out what to do

Silas Mähner (00:06:11):
with Curo and kind of pivoting.

Silas Mähner (00:06:13):
So tell us what exactly is the problem you're solving today and why is it important that you solve it?

Silas Mähner (00:06:18):
Give us some data points.

Kieran White (00:06:19):
Yeah.

Kieran White (00:06:20):
So we we've ended up sitting in this interesting place in the market where we solve two problems.

Kieran White (00:06:24):
Our customers, we define as fleets.

Kieran White (00:06:26):
And so commercial fleets typically distributed,

Kieran White (00:06:30):
um,

Kieran White (00:06:30):
where a fleet would benefit from having vehicles in two vehicles in 50 locations

Kieran White (00:06:36):
versus 500 vehicles in two locations.

Kieran White (00:06:39):
Um,

Kieran White (00:06:39):
and so their big problems lie in like,

Kieran White (00:06:42):
as you're electrifying the fleet,

Kieran White (00:06:43):
um,

Kieran White (00:06:44):
installing charges is difficult and time consuming and sometimes not possible.

Kieran White (00:06:50):
Even if you can do that, just the time ends up being too long.

Kieran White (00:06:55):
If you're not doing that, there's public charging, but it's unreliable.

Kieran White (00:07:00):
And then you have home charging,

Kieran White (00:07:01):
but there's a lot of things to figure out there and drive a turnover simply every

Kieran White (00:07:05):
nine months.

Kieran White (00:07:06):
And so you end up being in this weird position where

Kieran White (00:07:09):
very specific types of fleets just don't have alternatives.

Kieran White (00:07:12):
And so for them,

Kieran White (00:07:13):
we basically bring forward what we're calling a virtual depot,

Kieran White (00:07:16):
where we say,

Kieran White (00:07:17):
get all of the functionality you would in a depot,

Kieran White (00:07:20):
a private space,

Kieran White (00:07:22):
a charger,

Kieran White (00:07:24):
sometimes a daytime parking spot for a driver vehicle,

Kieran White (00:07:27):
bathrooms,

Kieran White (00:07:29):
very different for every different type of fleet,

Kieran White (00:07:31):
but in short,

Kieran White (00:07:32):
that is the product that they get.

Kieran White (00:07:34):
And then vice versa,

Kieran White (00:07:35):
like we work with a lot of private EV charging and parking owners who either have

Kieran White (00:07:42):
unutilized sites or just have sites where the operating model lines up with fleets.

Kieran White (00:07:46):
Like a big focus for us has been tech campuses where employees are there in the day

Kieran White (00:07:50):
and they're not there at night.

Kieran White (00:07:52):
Fleets typically dwell at night and are out during the day.

Kieran White (00:07:54):
So that ends up being like really interesting connections.

Kieran White (00:07:57):
And so we do a lot of work on the supplier side.

Kieran White (00:08:00):
who are our site hosts to really work on like how can we make it safe and secure

Kieran White (00:08:05):
and comfortable for a private owner to share their infrastructure and so like tying

Kieran White (00:08:09):
all of that ecosystem together is a lot of what we do day to day um so yeah we the

Kieran White (00:08:15):
problem we're mainly solving is just like availability of charging but in a private

Kieran White (00:08:20):
sort of structured return to base way

Silas Mähner (00:08:22):
Yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:08:23):
So let me just try to make sure I summarize this properly and see if I got it.

Silas Mähner (00:08:27):
So there's certain fleets out there where,

Silas Mähner (00:08:30):
and just to clarify,

Silas Mähner (00:08:31):
you're saying that there's some that you guys work with that have a couple of cars

Silas Mähner (00:08:35):
in many locations or many in a couple of locations.

Silas Mähner (00:08:37):
And you're trying to help those companies, those fleets.

Silas Mähner (00:08:41):
You're going out and identifying people who have charging infrastructure,

Silas Mähner (00:08:44):
who have downtime at a certain point of the day,

Silas Mähner (00:08:46):
and you're going to basically say,

Silas Mähner (00:08:47):
hey,

Silas Mähner (00:08:48):
we'll help you connect with people who need to charge,

Silas Mähner (00:08:50):
and then you can make some revenue for it.

Silas Mähner (00:08:51):
But then it also gives the fleet owner the stability of having a regular place they

Silas Mähner (00:08:56):
can charge their fleet.

Silas Mähner (00:08:57):
Is that correct?

Kieran White (00:08:58):
Exactly that, yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:09:00):
Cool.

Silas Mähner (00:09:00):
So I guess one thing I'm curious about, sorry?

Kieran White (00:09:02):
From now on, Silas is our pitcher.

Silas Mähner (00:09:06):
Yeah, well, it's always helpful to regurgitate, right?

Silas Mähner (00:09:08):
So what I'm curious about is,

Silas Mähner (00:09:12):
is there just already a ton of demand for,

Silas Mähner (00:09:14):
because obviously you're focused in California probably initially,

Silas Mähner (00:09:16):
right?

Silas Mähner (00:09:16):
Is there already a ton of demand to electrify fleets?

Silas Mähner (00:09:19):
Is that just mainly because people are interested in it?

Silas Mähner (00:09:22):
Is it actually the ROI they're after?

Silas Mähner (00:09:24):
Why are they focused on that already, even despite the challenges of finding infrastructure to charge?

Kieran White (00:09:30):
from what we see in regulation,

Kieran White (00:09:31):
but by the end of 2024 and then 2025,

Kieran White (00:09:34):
a certain portion of your fleet needs to be electrified if it's in California.

Kieran White (00:09:38):
It's about 10%.

Kieran White (00:09:39):
And so these fleets have to now electrify.

Kieran White (00:09:44):
And some had been early adopters and gone out of goodwill and good PR, but

Kieran White (00:09:49):
Mainly it's around sort of complying.

Kieran White (00:09:50):
And so for them,

Kieran White (00:09:52):
it ends up not being like,

Kieran White (00:09:54):
how do we build the solution that we need for the next 20 years?

Kieran White (00:09:57):
It becomes like, how do we just launch?

Kieran White (00:10:03):
And to launch, it takes infrastructure that currently we don't feel is available.

Kieran White (00:10:08):
That's where we come in.

Kieran White (00:10:11):
So maybe through compliance.

Somil Aggarwal (00:10:12):
You know that feeling when you meet someone who shares your vision for the future?

Somil Aggarwal (00:10:16):
It just clicks like two peas in a pod.

Somil Aggarwal (00:10:19):
Well, that's exactly how we felt when we met Goodwin, who we are proud to have as our sponsor.

Silas Mähner (00:10:24):
Being the first major law firm to set up a climate specific startup and venture

Silas Mähner (00:10:28):
practice makes them exactly the kind of partner we are excited to work with.

Silas Mähner (00:10:32):
They realize that there are a plethora of challenges to building climate tech startups.

Silas Mähner (00:10:36):
And that's why they have built an entire suite of resources for founders,

Silas Mähner (00:10:40):
investors and entrepreneurs in the space.

Silas Mähner (00:10:42):
They even offer several tailored pricing methods.

Silas Mähner (00:10:45):
And guess what?

Silas Mähner (00:10:46):
It doesn't matter where you are listening to this.

Silas Mähner (00:10:48):
Goodwin is a global law firm that you can trust to be your partner through it all

Silas Mähner (00:10:52):
from incorporation to exit.

Silas Mähner (00:10:53):
they've got you covered.

Somil Aggarwal (00:10:55):
Go to goodwinlaw.com and tell them Cleantech is setting you to get exclusive access to startup resources.

Somil Aggarwal (00:11:01):
All right, back to the show.

Silas Mähner (00:11:03):
And I guess,

Silas Mähner (00:11:04):
do you view this as being like a pretty standard approach to charging for a lot of

Silas Mähner (00:11:09):
these fleets for a long time?

Silas Mähner (00:11:10):
Or do you foresee as infrastructure gets built out further that it will evolve in a different way?

Silas Mähner (00:11:15):
Like, is this going to be more of a temporary patch or like a long-term solution for a lot of companies?

Kieran White (00:11:21):
see this long-term solution a lot of our customers seem to as well i think where

Kieran White (00:11:25):
there is very specific example like each fleet has its own sweet spot and for some

Kieran White (00:11:30):
fleets typically like the larger blue chip fleets who who like a last mile delivery

Kieran White (00:11:37):
and like need need need need a depot with that in mind like a depot is the best

Kieran White (00:11:42):
option for that um but there's this like large middle group

Kieran White (00:11:46):
who maybe don't own the land of their depot so they can never install charging,

Kieran White (00:11:53):
can't find bookable charging another way.

Kieran White (00:11:55):
And so it becomes the only way that exists right now to park and charge your

Kieran White (00:12:00):
vehicle overnight in a structured way for years at a time that you know can be there.

Kieran White (00:12:07):
And so we see it as a long-term solution for the right type of fleet.

Kieran White (00:12:11):
We have a few customers who we've done a few sort of like stopgap solutions until

Kieran White (00:12:15):
their depot has been live.

Kieran White (00:12:17):
But we really honed in on those who need it long-term.

Silas Mähner (00:12:21):
Yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:12:22):
Are there any,

Silas Mähner (00:12:23):
I would assume,

Silas Mähner (00:12:24):
especially if a lot of these are charging overnight,

Silas Mähner (00:12:26):
there's maybe not as much of a need for curtailment issues like when the energy

Silas Mähner (00:12:32):
demand is high?

Silas Mähner (00:12:32):
Are you guys interfacing with a lot of these other softwares or is that typically

Silas Mähner (00:12:36):
just not too much of a concern because the energy demand is low at the time?

Kieran White (00:12:42):
It's not a massive concern right now.

Kieran White (00:12:44):
I think we have taken a very software light approach where we are just like getting

Kieran White (00:12:49):
fleets at chargers,

Kieran White (00:12:51):
no matter what the CMS,

Kieran White (00:12:52):
no matter what the charging operator,

Kieran White (00:12:54):
no matter what the company of hardware.

Kieran White (00:12:57):
Load balancing and stuff is useful,

Kieran White (00:13:00):
although typically a lot of our fleets dwell from probably like 6 to 7 p.m.

Kieran White (00:13:04):
through like 6 or 7 a.m.

Kieran White (00:13:06):
the next day.

Kieran White (00:13:07):
Like 6 to 9 is typically the big bottleneck when we try some load balancing.

Kieran White (00:13:12):
A lot of our stopgaps just been like pausing a charge until 9 anyway, because a lot of them...

Kieran White (00:13:17):
like at e-transits with probably like 100 kilowatt hour battery uh probably 60

Kieran White (00:13:20):
kilowatt hour battery um and can charge in eight versus 12 hours so um so like yes

Kieran White (00:13:27):
but it's from what we've seen that's a future benefit versus like a necessity today

Silas Mähner (00:13:33):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Silas Mähner (00:13:34):
I guess one thing,

Silas Mähner (00:13:35):
because you've poked around in different parts of this area for a while,

Silas Mähner (00:13:39):
how would you break down the market when it comes to this charging infrastructure,

Silas Mähner (00:13:46):
the different types of fleets?

Silas Mähner (00:13:47):
How do you, in your mind, separate each part out?

Kieran White (00:13:51):
A few of our team,

Kieran White (00:13:53):
we've been creating this charging stack internally where you have depot providers

Kieran White (00:13:58):
who have raised large infrastructure funding to build depots.

Kieran White (00:14:01):
Typically,

Kieran White (00:14:02):
it's for very large fleets or heavy-duty fleets because that layer only makes sense

Kieran White (00:14:09):
with large infrastructure funding when you have a large amount of kilowatts going

Kieran White (00:14:12):
through a site,

Kieran White (00:14:13):
which only heavy-duty or an autonomous fleet can do.

Kieran White (00:14:17):
um so there's that layer who is like struggling with timing right now there's

Kieran White (00:14:23):
you're building an advance sort of where you need a fleet commitment or like an

Kieran White (00:14:27):
anchor tenant to build a site so yeah the funding from your that you've been

Kieran White (00:14:32):
committed from from various property groups um which is very hard to do the way

Kieran White (00:14:36):
fleets are today so there's like depot providers who are trying to build out depots

Kieran White (00:14:41):
Then you have a lot of the in-between,

Kieran White (00:14:43):
like you have public charging,

Kieran White (00:14:45):
which is basically just a game of how many charges can you deploy?

Kieran White (00:14:48):
You have home charging,

Kieran White (00:14:49):
which is again,

Kieran White (00:14:50):
how many charges can you deploy and how can you streamline management of those

Kieran White (00:14:55):
charges and rebates?

Kieran White (00:14:56):
One of our fleets,

Kieran White (00:14:57):
they have a portion of home charging and our executive sponsor goes home every

Kieran White (00:15:01):
night and for two hours reimburses driver charges at their homes.

Kieran White (00:15:05):
And so there's reimbursements is a big problem with home charging.

Kieran White (00:15:08):
So you have this in between of various charging techniques.

Kieran White (00:15:12):
Through that,

Kieran White (00:15:12):
you have mobile charging as well,

Kieran White (00:15:15):
which we consider more of a stopgap solution because it's quite expensive.

Kieran White (00:15:18):
So there's all of those little segments.

Kieran White (00:15:20):
From the fleet side,

Kieran White (00:15:22):
we're seeing a lot of it's been like a heavily built for area,

Kieran White (00:15:26):
which was an interesting one as we were diving in because we're trying to evaluate

Kieran White (00:15:30):
why the problem was still there and why a lot of software companies have gone the way they did.

Kieran White (00:15:37):
I think our rough thesis to date is that a lot of things can be software enabled,

Kieran White (00:15:42):
but the way fleets operate right now,

Kieran White (00:15:43):
sometimes,

Kieran White (00:15:45):
especially in EV and specifically EV charging,

Kieran White (00:15:48):
software seems to build far ahead of market need.

Kieran White (00:15:52):
Um, trying to more so meet it where it's at a little bit.

Kieran White (00:15:54):
Um, but you have a lot of like, you have routing software for fees to find charges.

Kieran White (00:16:01):
You have, gosh, you have everything else of like managing an EV fleet.

Kieran White (00:16:06):
Um,

Kieran White (00:16:06):
that's been,

Kieran White (00:16:07):
been largely and widely built for in terms of like the type of fleets that there are,

Kieran White (00:16:10):
um,

Kieran White (00:16:12):
so many different segments,

Kieran White (00:16:13):
but typically you have those who.

Kieran White (00:16:17):
dwell overnight, and those who dwell during the day, most dwell overnight.

Kieran White (00:16:21):
So that's anything from service and maintenance to last mile delivery to XYZ,

Kieran White (00:16:26):
and then you have the large ones and everyone else.

Kieran White (00:16:28):
A brief brain dump,

Kieran White (00:16:29):
but that's sort of how we've been thinking about mapping the market and how we play

Kieran White (00:16:34):
with it.

Silas Mähner (00:16:35):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Silas Mähner (00:16:37):
I guess, how do you guys go about... You mentioned incentives earlier.

Silas Mähner (00:16:41):
Maybe it's a little too early to dive into this, but I kind of want to get to it is

Silas Mähner (00:16:47):
If the administration changes in November and if any of the incentive structures

Silas Mähner (00:16:53):
are kind of going away or might be at risk,

Silas Mähner (00:16:56):
how do you guys look at that?

Silas Mähner (00:16:57):
Is that going to affect your business?

Silas Mähner (00:16:59):
And at large, do you think it's going to have too much effect on the industry as a whole?

Silas Mähner (00:17:03):
Because I know that there are also,

Silas Mähner (00:17:05):
like you mentioned,

Silas Mähner (00:17:05):
a lot of these regulations are actually California regulations.

Silas Mähner (00:17:07):
So what are your thought processes broadly when it comes to policy plus incentives

Silas Mähner (00:17:12):
versus your business model and others?

Kieran White (00:17:14):
Yeah, and I'd love your thoughts there too.

Kieran White (00:17:16):
I think the way we've been thinking about it is if a lot of the incentives to build

Kieran White (00:17:22):
charging goes away,

Kieran White (00:17:23):
that would be a detriment to the industry.

Kieran White (00:17:26):
probably be quite good for us because we like to think that we create this new

Kieran White (00:17:30):
incentive to financially justify smaller charger installations versus large depots

Kieran White (00:17:35):
or large public charging sites.

Kieran White (00:17:38):
The California regulations about electrifying fleets definitely will affect us.

Kieran White (00:17:44):
Our thoughts are that hopefully the way that California is set up,

Kieran White (00:17:47):
it will remain versus a lot of the larger federal stuff.

Kieran White (00:17:53):
But I guess we'll have to see.

Kieran White (00:17:55):
But definitely,

Kieran White (00:17:55):
I think the way it goes and the way the EV or electrification is treated,

Kieran White (00:17:59):
it's definitely going to

Kieran White (00:18:02):
effect because I think the way that EV as a general as an industry has gone, it went super, super hard.

Kieran White (00:18:08):
And then there's been this sort of like pause or dip where a lot of not bad press,

Kieran White (00:18:12):
but a few heavily funded players sort of went out of business or had to sell.

Kieran White (00:18:16):
And we had the whole Tesla debacle with all of their charging team leaving.

Kieran White (00:18:21):
And so there's definitely some movement.

Kieran White (00:18:25):
And so the more support, the better.

Kieran White (00:18:26):
But as a brief, I would love to hear your thoughts there.

Silas Mähner (00:18:29):
I guess I'm not super,

Silas Mähner (00:18:31):
super plugged in to the EV space,

Silas Mähner (00:18:33):
but I would say that my general read on the vibes in the room is that it seems like

Silas Mähner (00:18:38):
a lot more people want EVs now.

Silas Mähner (00:18:40):
It's become a very common thing, even here in Wisconsin, where there's not that many client people.

Silas Mähner (00:18:45):
You start to see Teslas everywhere.

Silas Mähner (00:18:47):
There's EVs a lot, even some of the newer ones.

Silas Mähner (00:18:50):
I'm a big fan of the Hyundai Iconic 5.

Silas Mähner (00:18:54):
I think it's sick.

Silas Mähner (00:18:55):
But I think that generally the sentiment is like this is going into the,

Silas Mähner (00:19:00):
I would say it's going into the mass adoption curve at this point.

Silas Mähner (00:19:02):
And I don't think you can change that.

Silas Mähner (00:19:04):
Like even if the administration isn't necessarily like pro incentives,

Silas Mähner (00:19:08):
I think there's going to be ways to figure this out because people want it.

Silas Mähner (00:19:11):
And it's too late to go back, right?

Silas Mähner (00:19:13):
Like a lot of people are going to stick with their cars.

Silas Mähner (00:19:15):
So there's going to need to be infrastructure.

Silas Mähner (00:19:17):
That's my thought.

Silas Mähner (00:19:18):
But I'm definitely not an expert.

Kieran White (00:19:20):
No, I think I sort of got to this point where it's hard.

Kieran White (00:19:24):
Like you say, it's just so hard to stop.

Kieran White (00:19:26):
So either you like support that or just like let it drag you kicking and streaming.

Kieran White (00:19:30):
One definitely seems more favorable, but.

Silas Mähner (00:19:33):
Yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:19:35):
I want to ask you about how you navigate understanding this.

Silas Mähner (00:19:41):
You've changed directions a couple of times as you were figuring this out.

Silas Mähner (00:19:44):
What is the general principle of a mindset you need to have as you're going in to

Silas Mähner (00:19:50):
figure out where do we want to go?

Silas Mähner (00:19:51):
How do we find product market fit?

Silas Mähner (00:19:53):
What is the core thing that grounds you?

Silas Mähner (00:19:55):
Because I'm assuming it's very confusing at times.

Silas Mähner (00:19:57):
You don't know exactly what's going on.

Silas Mähner (00:19:58):
You're

Silas Mähner (00:19:59):
kind of trying not to be too biased based on your past research and like you're figuring things out.

Silas Mähner (00:20:04):
Like, how do you go about that?

Kieran White (00:20:06):
Yeah, it's probably similar to something they have like a complete

Kieran White (00:20:10):
figured out thesis for.

Kieran White (00:20:11):
But so when we started, Cura used to be called Return.

Kieran White (00:20:14):
And when it was called Return, we started as like blockchain carbon markets.

Kieran White (00:20:19):
And we've gradually over time, like we did that for a couple of months.

Kieran White (00:20:22):
Well, for six to nine months, actually realized that blockchain wasn't quite where we wanted it to be.

Kieran White (00:20:26):
And so sort of like defaulted to just carbon markets.

Kieran White (00:20:29):
Six months doing carbon markets.

Kieran White (00:20:31):
I was so invested in carbon markets.

Kieran White (00:20:33):
I had like this super well articulated, like 300 people inputs, like this

Kieran White (00:20:38):
this complete market segmentation and the way everything operated.

Kieran White (00:20:42):
And it's really painful to walk away from.

Kieran White (00:20:44):
I think the way that me and Andrew, my co founder, have gone about it is

Kieran White (00:20:50):
Like naturally with a pivot, like one foot is planted.

Kieran White (00:20:52):
We defined that that one foot is planted is like software for a climate or environmental benefit.

Kieran White (00:20:58):
And so that let us like sort of go around it.

Kieran White (00:21:01):
Another big one that we started to let influence us that I think upon reflection is

Kieran White (00:21:07):
okay is like,

Kieran White (00:21:09):
what are you interested in?

Kieran White (00:21:10):
Like, what are you good at?

Kieran White (00:21:11):
And I think naturally, like we were interested in that good at charging because I'd done it before.

Kieran White (00:21:16):
And that was something that I think we put off for quite a while because we wanted

Kieran White (00:21:20):
to find this really natural thing where it's like this picture book moment where

Kieran White (00:21:26):
you have the perfect customer call and everything comes into fruition.

Kieran White (00:21:29):
And it ended up not being like that.

Kieran White (00:21:31):
We came to Kiro because we went through

Kieran White (00:21:35):
we started in like energy and distributed energy and we ended up back in EV

Kieran White (00:21:38):
charging and we tried to sell this deployment software to CPOs and they said no but

Kieran White (00:21:42):
utilization is a problem and then we eventually came to it but I think

Kieran White (00:21:47):
We probably the biggest thing is that as we have tried each iteration,

Kieran White (00:21:52):
each one we probably felt like was product market fit when you're on a high from a

Kieran White (00:21:55):
sales call.

Kieran White (00:21:57):
But only now do I think we sort of understand what product market fit feels like

Kieran White (00:22:01):
even starting to because like we as a team now just fulfill fleets.

Kieran White (00:22:06):
We don't like do like we find it hard to do anything else other than just like procure like.

Kieran White (00:22:13):
procure sites and hosts to become virtual depots and then provide it to fleet

Kieran White (00:22:16):
demand that we already have far in excess that we can handle.

Kieran White (00:22:20):
And that's been having something pulled from you in that way we hadn't had before.

Kieran White (00:22:26):
But I think upon reflection, every time we said that we did.

Kieran White (00:22:30):
And so being honest with yourself was also quite hard.

Kieran White (00:22:33):
So definitely no thought out.

Kieran White (00:22:36):
distinct formula, but I think it was being honest with ourselves.

Kieran White (00:22:40):
That's what we wanted as founders more than anything really stayed us the right way.

Silas Mähner (00:22:43):
Climate tech founders are taking on a huge challenge.

Silas Mähner (00:22:46):
Not only do they need to know how to build a startup,

Silas Mähner (00:22:49):
but they also need to deal with hardware,

Silas Mähner (00:22:50):
have a strong handle on climate policy,

Silas Mähner (00:22:53):
know how to fundraise from diverse investor types.

Somil Aggarwal (00:22:55):
It's a lot.

Somil Aggarwal (00:22:56):
That's why we made Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs.

Somil Aggarwal (00:23:00):
In addition to our jobs, we devote 20 hours a week to producing this podcast for you.

Somil Aggarwal (00:23:05):
This way you can learn from the people who have walked the path before you,

Somil Aggarwal (00:23:08):
learn from their mistakes and gain insights on navigating this complex journey.

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If this mission resonates with you, we are asking for your help.

Somil Aggarwal (00:23:15):
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Silas Mähner (00:23:17):
If you are already a subscriber and want to help,

Silas Mähner (00:23:20):
start supporting us today by going to Substack and clicking upgrade to paid.

Silas Mähner (00:23:24):
Thanks for helping all the climate tech entrepreneurs like you.

Silas Mähner (00:23:27):
Yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:23:28):
I think it's easy to want to do something different when you're in a space.

Silas Mähner (00:23:31):
You don't want to, oh, if I had done this, it's kind of boring.

Silas Mähner (00:23:33):
I want to go do something more fun.

Silas Mähner (00:23:35):
And I think it's something that's easy to fall into.

Silas Mähner (00:23:37):
So I appreciate the honesty there.

Silas Mähner (00:23:40):
Knowing you enough,

Silas Mähner (00:23:41):
I have a feeling you guys have some really scrappy methods of trying to land

Silas Mähner (00:23:44):
clients and stuff.

Silas Mähner (00:23:45):
So I'm kind of curious to hear some of the growth hacks or the scrappy things you

Silas Mähner (00:23:48):
guys have done to get going or to land clients,

Silas Mähner (00:23:51):
etc.,

Silas Mähner (00:23:51):
right?

Kieran White (00:23:52):
Yeah, so we have high-vis vests in the office.

Kieran White (00:23:57):
And we'll actually put them on.

Kieran White (00:23:57):
I made fake badges.

Kieran White (00:23:59):
And we bought these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle walkie-talkies from Target.

Kieran White (00:24:02):
And we zipped them in a pocket so you couldn't see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle part of it.

Kieran White (00:24:07):
And we literally just put it on and just go to parking garages.

Kieran White (00:24:09):
And that's how we got our first few sites, was making up that we were meant to be there.

Kieran White (00:24:13):
And sort of just like...

Kieran White (00:24:16):
Dressing up was the rough part.

Kieran White (00:24:18):
I love it.

Kieran White (00:24:19):
We've done that to like,

Kieran White (00:24:21):
I've gone on foot with my electric scooter around a whole like city region to like

Kieran White (00:24:27):
figure out this one site that we needed.

Kieran White (00:24:29):
Our first site, the launch was with a scrapyard owner and he had to,

Kieran White (00:24:36):
clear out a large part of his yard, put up this canopy.

Kieran White (00:24:41):
I had to install the charges and by God, they won't get charged.

Kieran White (00:24:46):
But yeah, we've done everything under the sun just to get stuff ready.

Kieran White (00:24:49):
And from the fleet side,

Kieran White (00:24:50):
I mean,

Kieran White (00:24:52):
we've done a few corporate sales cycles that we largely didn't have a right to be in,

Kieran White (00:24:57):
but just got through because

Kieran White (00:25:00):
at a day's notice would fly to the other side of the country just to have breakfast.

Kieran White (00:25:04):
And that sort of thing has put us in good stead.

Silas Mähner (00:25:07):
Yeah.

Silas Mähner (00:25:08):
I guess what is the biggest challenge?

Silas Mähner (00:25:10):
Is it usually finding the fleets that need the help or finding the virtual depots?

Kieran White (00:25:17):
Virtual depots that match.

Kieran White (00:25:18):
I think we've not had a problem.

Kieran White (00:25:20):
We have proactive and reactive virtual depot supply.

Kieran White (00:25:24):
Um,

Kieran White (00:25:24):
reactive is when we have fleet demand for an area,

Kieran White (00:25:27):
we have the characteristics,

Kieran White (00:25:28):
it's sort of like a,

Kieran White (00:25:29):
an exchange request.

Kieran White (00:25:31):
So we then have to go and fulfill it.

Kieran White (00:25:33):
Um, like that is all that we do because we've had a lot of them.

Kieran White (00:25:36):
Um, the proactive side is more so like.

Kieran White (00:25:41):
launching in a city a little bit like Uber used to do,

Kieran White (00:25:44):
where you would batch a whole lot of drivers,

Kieran White (00:25:47):
batch the routes,

Kieran White (00:25:49):
do some pre marketing and go.

Kieran White (00:25:50):
And we've done that once and it sort of worked.

Kieran White (00:25:55):
But we need both.

Kieran White (00:25:57):
So, yeah, by far the biggest thing it takes our time.

Kieran White (00:25:59):
The biggest challenge is just like, how do you up?

Kieran White (00:26:01):
Basically, how do you cross that problem and bootstrap a network of virtual depots?

Kieran White (00:26:07):
And as soon as we do that quicker and quicker,

Kieran White (00:26:09):
that's what we really see as our secret sauce to,

Kieran White (00:26:13):
like,

Kieran White (00:26:14):
up fit.

Kieran White (00:26:15):
onto into an entire platform versus just like little dots here and there um so yeah

Kieran White (00:26:20):
because like we said at the start like the layer of depot providers it takes three

Kieran White (00:26:24):
three to four years from start to finish sometimes we like to think we can do it in

Kieran White (00:26:29):
like two weeks um so that's what we're what we're trying to to place ourselves

Kieran White (00:26:35):
within

Silas Mähner (00:26:36):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Silas Mähner (00:26:38):
So you've been at entrepreneurship for a while.

Silas Mähner (00:26:41):
And one thing I'm always curious about is how people...

Silas Mähner (00:26:46):
determine what to and what not to track and what to like basically reflect on

Silas Mähner (00:26:50):
because as you're going you're iterating a lot of things you're changing different

Silas Mähner (00:26:53):
things but at some point once you figure it out you need to basically systematize

Silas Mähner (00:26:58):
it all so how do you have do you have any particular methods of saying okay i'm

Silas Mähner (00:27:02):
trying to track these things so that later on when i recognize we're in the right

Silas Mähner (00:27:05):
bucket i can go back and just look at my system and then make adjustments from that

Kieran White (00:27:12):
Yeah,

Kieran White (00:27:12):
and I think the biggest challenge we've had there time and time again is what is

Kieran White (00:27:16):
our goal to where agreeing is the goal to fundraise?

Kieran White (00:27:20):
Is the goal to build for three fundraisers time or is the goal just to build for six months in advance?

Kieran White (00:27:28):
And every time that we figured out the goal,

Kieran White (00:27:30):
the metrics come quite quick and usually the metrics are just tied to the goal.

Kieran White (00:27:35):
And then it becomes fairly easy to see

Kieran White (00:27:39):
okay we want to fundraise in six months at these metrics like that would get us the

Kieran White (00:27:42):
valuation we wanted okay like we need to get backtracked to today so i do this and

Kieran White (00:27:47):
i think the execution of methods we've probably let come too naturally i think one

Kieran White (00:27:52):
learning we've had as a team is to more intentionally build out preliminary

Kieran White (00:27:57):
processes that we can iterate versus just like

Kieran White (00:28:01):
my natural inclination is just to like just go crazy doing everything for two weeks

Kieran White (00:28:05):
then hoping something will happen which usually it does but it's like not in a

Kieran White (00:28:08):
thoughtful way that you can repeat um so i think having a starting point versus

Kieran White (00:28:14):
just going crazy is something that we've that coupled with like having a goal i

Kieran White (00:28:19):
guess sort of just having like a point a and a point b always make it much for us

Kieran White (00:28:23):
at least has made it much easier to point out those metrics like for us it's

Kieran White (00:28:28):
It used to be virtual depots on the platform.

Kieran White (00:28:31):
Now it's just vehicles plugged in.

Kieran White (00:28:32):
It's vehicles plugged in,

Kieran White (00:28:34):
and then our second metric is time from fleet request to initial proposal,

Kieran White (00:28:39):
because that's the time of,

Kieran White (00:28:40):
like,

Kieran White (00:28:40):
reactively getting a site,

Kieran White (00:28:41):
or proactively reactively getting a site.

Kieran White (00:28:43):
So...

Silas Mähner (00:28:46):
So basically you're saying that even though you're going to write out like a kind

Silas Mähner (00:28:49):
of an outline of a system,

Silas Mähner (00:28:50):
and even though it's going to be wrong,

Silas Mähner (00:28:51):
it's better to have something that you're referencing for the future,

Silas Mähner (00:28:55):
because then you can be like,

Silas Mähner (00:28:55):
okay,

Silas Mähner (00:28:56):
we need to change this and we know it now,

Silas Mähner (00:28:58):
but then it's like a blueprint for the future.

Silas Mähner (00:28:59):
That's a, that's actually pretty, I like that a lot.

Silas Mähner (00:29:02):
That's a, that's pretty thoughtful.

Kieran White (00:29:04):
Yeah.

Kieran White (00:29:05):
And we would,

Kieran White (00:29:06):
we've only started doing that recently and it's ended up working really well versus like,

Kieran White (00:29:10):
yeah,

Kieran White (00:29:10):
just going wild,

Kieran White (00:29:12):
having like six months into the future,

Kieran White (00:29:13):
like a natural process that's arisen,

Kieran White (00:29:14):
but yeah,

Kieran White (00:29:16):
I'd largely forgotten what we had before.

Kieran White (00:29:18):
And so, yeah, how that structure makes sense.

Silas Mähner (00:29:21):
Yeah, that's what I'm always, I like to think about the kind of the inner game of the startup.

Silas Mähner (00:29:25):
It's really hard to figure out what to do because you don't want to get too bogged

Silas Mähner (00:29:28):
down with writing things down.

Silas Mähner (00:29:30):
I tend to,

Silas Mähner (00:29:31):
with building my recruitment business,

Silas Mähner (00:29:33):
want to make a list for every potential possible type of candidate.

Silas Mähner (00:29:37):
It's like,

Silas Mähner (00:29:37):
okay,

Silas Mähner (00:29:38):
I could do this,

Silas Mähner (00:29:39):
but I'm going to spend so much time every week categorizing every single candidate.

Silas Mähner (00:29:42):
Whereas if I just figure out, okay, here are the core things later on,

Silas Mähner (00:29:46):
that I know I need to be tracking for,

Silas Mähner (00:29:47):
I'll then make 10 core lists instead of 100 because otherwise I'm gonna spend all

Silas Mähner (00:29:52):
my time just updating my information.

Silas Mähner (00:29:55):
I have a tendency to wanna collect things.

Silas Mähner (00:29:59):
One thing I'm curious about is you,

Silas Mähner (00:30:02):
We've talked before, and you have a lot of ideas for things.

Silas Mähner (00:30:05):
I'm kind of curious how you approach,

Silas Mähner (00:30:07):
once you've committed to something as an entrepreneur,

Silas Mähner (00:30:09):
I mean,

Silas Mähner (00:30:09):
the whole idea of being an entrepreneur,

Silas Mähner (00:30:11):
often you want to start something,

Silas Mähner (00:30:12):
you want to build something.

Silas Mähner (00:30:13):
How do you suppress those ideas that you want to build?

Silas Mähner (00:30:16):
Or how do you go about dealing with the mentality of, hey, I've got another idea.

Silas Mähner (00:30:22):
Maybe this one's better than what I'm working on.

Silas Mähner (00:30:23):
Should I go pursue it?

Silas Mähner (00:30:24):
How do you think about that?

Kieran White (00:30:25):
It's an awesome question.

Kieran White (00:30:26):
That was one of my biggest weaknesses.

Kieran White (00:30:29):
Even when I was at Tesla,

Kieran White (00:30:31):
I sort of worked at the startup in the interim before return Kuro was like,

Kieran White (00:30:36):
I was really bad at doing one job more than three months.

Kieran White (00:30:41):
Yeah, I just couldn't do it.

Kieran White (00:30:45):
And then similarly,

Kieran White (00:30:47):
especially when we were in peak pivot mode,

Kieran White (00:30:50):
I think I just enjoyed not being tied to something.

Kieran White (00:30:55):
But I think similar to defining the business that you want to build,

Kieran White (00:31:00):
what I found useful was just sitting down and really distinctly writing down a journal.

Kieran White (00:31:06):
In this journal, what is the type of founder that I want to be?

Kieran White (00:31:09):
And after a little bit of reflection and writing, it very much was like,

Kieran White (00:31:14):
someone who can build and scale something that is recognizable.

Kieran White (00:31:18):
I would love to be able to say for people to be able to say,

Kieran White (00:31:21):
Curie really built incredible tooling and processes that got them to that point.

Kieran White (00:31:28):
And that was not what I was practicing.

Kieran White (00:31:31):
So I think just being very intentional,

Kieran White (00:31:32):
like what I want,

Kieran White (00:31:33):
who I wanted to be as a founder,

Kieran White (00:31:35):
which was one of the honesty parts I didn't love.

Kieran White (00:31:38):
So I think,

Kieran White (00:31:39):
like you say,

Kieran White (00:31:39):
it's really nice not being tied to something,

Kieran White (00:31:41):
not having metrics that hold you accountable and also being able to like see friends,

Kieran White (00:31:45):
like founder friends in different industries,

Kieran White (00:31:47):
having hard times,

Kieran White (00:31:48):
being like,

Kieran White (00:31:49):
it's okay,

Kieran White (00:31:49):
I'm in no industry.

Kieran White (00:31:51):
Like you're sort of in like this safe haven,

Kieran White (00:31:54):
which gets addicting,

Kieran White (00:31:55):
but is,

Kieran White (00:31:56):
yeah,

Kieran White (00:31:56):
no progress is made,

Kieran White (00:31:57):
I guess.

Kieran White (00:31:57):
Same question to you, same thing.

Silas Mähner (00:32:00):
Yeah,

Silas Mähner (00:32:00):
I would say for me,

Silas Mähner (00:32:01):
the point being is it's very easy for certain personality types to not want to have

Silas Mähner (00:32:06):
to be tied to something like to be kind of like,

Silas Mähner (00:32:09):
oh,

Silas Mähner (00:32:09):
like I'm just going to do something new.

Silas Mähner (00:32:10):
Like this is the whole my kind of thought process when I got into around the time

Silas Mähner (00:32:15):
that I got into into recruitment within renewables was like,

Silas Mähner (00:32:19):
oh,

Silas Mähner (00:32:19):
at some point I want to have a business of building businesses.

Silas Mähner (00:32:22):
Like I don't want to have to build a business and stick with it.

Silas Mähner (00:32:25):
I want to build multiple businesses and just like launch them and have like minions go,

Silas Mähner (00:32:29):
you know,

Silas Mähner (00:32:29):
take it from one to 10 or something.

Silas Mähner (00:32:32):
I'll just do zero to one.

Silas Mähner (00:32:34):
But yeah, that's not necessarily realistic.

Silas Mähner (00:32:37):
I think it's something that each founder is different.

Silas Mähner (00:32:40):
They have different, you know, kind of a...

Silas Mähner (00:32:42):
ways they look at things,

Silas Mähner (00:32:43):
but on the topic of ideas,

Silas Mähner (00:32:44):
like if you,

Silas Mähner (00:32:46):
what are some other things that you like areas of the market where you see ideas

Silas Mähner (00:32:49):
for other people to go build and you say,

Silas Mähner (00:32:51):
Hey,

Silas Mähner (00:32:52):
in climate,

Silas Mähner (00:32:52):
there's this really light touch.

Silas Mähner (00:32:53):
Like it doesn't actually, it could be a sweaty startup.

Silas Mähner (00:32:55):
It could be something software.

Silas Mähner (00:32:56):
Like what are some of the things that you see in climate or ideas for people to build?

Kieran White (00:33:02):
There's so many, I mean, like,

Kieran White (00:33:04):
in carbon market specifically we left on the table like five ideas that all had

Kieran White (00:33:08):
customers the reason we left them at the time was that nothing we really struggled

Kieran White (00:33:12):
to gain conviction of like all round i guess like all round industry venture scale

Kieran White (00:33:19):
in the medium term like we really struggled to get like i really struggled to get

Kieran White (00:33:22):
that conviction and so like to name a few and these have started to be worked on

Kieran White (00:33:27):
since we we left but like

Kieran White (00:33:29):
automated PDDs,

Kieran White (00:33:30):
like the way that GPT-4 I think was the first model that let you do that with the

Kieran White (00:33:34):
number of pages it took.

Kieran White (00:33:35):
So like automatic writing and reviewing, like that gets super easy.

Kieran White (00:33:40):
Anything to do with providing payment

Kieran White (00:33:45):
sort of processes and then tracking that payment amongst carbon market participants

Kieran White (00:33:50):
like i spent six months making this huge like diagram and being able to track and

Kieran White (00:33:54):
enable people to pay and distribute payments from one person to another and then

Kieran White (00:33:58):
for the end buyer to like certify that the payment has got back to the right person

Kieran White (00:34:02):
and like we had a few developers wanting to pay for that pretty immediately those

Kieran White (00:34:06):
were two things that came up that was super interesting

Silas Mähner (00:34:08):
What do you,

Silas Mähner (00:34:09):
I guess,

Silas Mähner (00:34:10):
in the space within back to EV charging,

Silas Mähner (00:34:12):
what do you see as the general direction of the space broadly?

Silas Mähner (00:34:17):
Are there any core trends or things that you say,

Silas Mähner (00:34:20):
hey,

Silas Mähner (00:34:20):
I believe that in five or 10 years,

Silas Mähner (00:34:22):
this is where we're going to be because of these macro things?

Kieran White (00:34:26):
I think what really attracted us to it was that EV charging on a whole,

Kieran White (00:34:29):
even though so much money has gone into it and it's like,

Kieran White (00:34:31):
I think like 10,

Kieran White (00:34:32):
20 year old industry,

Kieran White (00:34:33):
like

Kieran White (00:34:34):
A lot is still up for grabs.

Kieran White (00:34:35):
Like a lot of the charge point operators who, who build and not build, but.

Kieran White (00:34:40):
deploy and operate the public charging networks,

Kieran White (00:34:43):
they largely still don't have a business model that makes sense.

Kieran White (00:34:47):
They've gone public,

Kieran White (00:34:48):
they've SPAC,

Kieran White (00:34:49):
they've done all of the things,

Kieran White (00:34:50):
but still really struggle to make money.

Kieran White (00:34:53):
And I'm like, yes, maybe that's a problem with the utilization of more people driving EVs.

Kieran White (00:34:57):
I feel it's more of the way the industry has been structured thus far,

Kieran White (00:35:02):
I don't think quite fits the way that the EV drivers and fleets and everyone in

Kieran White (00:35:07):
general wants to use things.

Kieran White (00:35:09):
And so I think the model that people have been trying to draw is like just gas stations,

Kieran White (00:35:13):
but electric and like trying to to pace that business model.

Kieran White (00:35:17):
And the reason we want to cure and I think in five to 10 years,

Kieran White (00:35:20):
we'll probably look back and I like to think say that a lot of the business models

Kieran White (00:35:25):
and practices that were here today had iterated so much just because it hadn't

Kieran White (00:35:31):
quite found the right fit nor scalability nor sustainability of like keeping

Kieran White (00:35:36):
operating business.

Kieran White (00:35:37):
And so like

Kieran White (00:35:39):
The reason I say that is there's so many,

Kieran White (00:35:42):
like even just in our like small little fleet segment,

Kieran White (00:35:44):
there's so many unsolved problems,

Kieran White (00:35:47):
um,

Kieran White (00:35:48):
that alone probably aren't a startup,

Kieran White (00:35:50):
but you can see over time,

Kieran White (00:35:51):
like forming interesting stuff.

Kieran White (00:35:53):
So I think a lot is up for grabs.

Silas Mähner (00:35:57):
Do you fundamentally think that just like the kind of the petrol pump station

Silas Mähner (00:36:02):
analogy with just electricity will work?

Silas Mähner (00:36:04):
Like,

Silas Mähner (00:36:04):
is there actually enough margin doing that to pay for the infrastructure on a pure

Silas Mähner (00:36:09):
infrastructure plan?

Kieran White (00:36:11):
No, unless you have insanely high usage, which some places you do.

Kieran White (00:36:17):
But we're going to see this interesting thing in the next few years where a lot of

Kieran White (00:36:21):
the low hanging fruit,

Kieran White (00:36:23):
like sites with large electricity capacity,

Kieran White (00:36:27):
easy to build,

Kieran White (00:36:28):
cheap to run and operate and get up and running have probably been taken or the

Kieran White (00:36:33):
land grab has sort of happened or is happening.

Kieran White (00:36:36):
And so it's going to get to the point where

Kieran White (00:36:39):
There'll be this interim where the utilization that you can get does not match up

Kieran White (00:36:43):
to how much the site costs and the return.

Kieran White (00:36:48):
And subsequently,

Kieran White (00:36:49):
where the financing is coming from,

Kieran White (00:36:51):
no infrastructure investor will sign off on that site.

Kieran White (00:36:55):
So we're reaching this interesting in between of that.

Kieran White (00:36:59):
And a lot of fuel card providers, for example, who just make margin on gas

Kieran White (00:37:06):
via their fuel card in EV charging, that's not a business.

Kieran White (00:37:10):
And so we're going to see interesting innovations and pivots.

Kieran White (00:37:14):
I've already started seeing a few of some of the larger fuel card providers who are

Kieran White (00:37:17):
branching out really just rapidly trying to innovate or acquire startups and build

Kieran White (00:37:22):
an offering.

Kieran White (00:37:25):
So I don't think a lot of industry people quite,

Kieran White (00:37:27):
even though I think they say they do sometimes,

Kieran White (00:37:29):
I don't think anyone quite knows where it's going and who will emerge at the end of

Kieran White (00:37:34):
the day.

Kieran White (00:37:34):
I think like a few will have emerged thus far, but in my, in our opinion, like not in a sustainable way.

Silas Mähner (00:37:43):
Well,

Silas Mähner (00:37:43):
I mean,

Silas Mähner (00:37:44):
I would imagine that the way to actually make this work would be if you have other offerings.

Silas Mähner (00:37:49):
Like if you're,

Silas Mähner (00:37:50):
you know,

Silas Mähner (00:37:50):
I don't know,

Silas Mähner (00:37:51):
like a multiplex building and you have a lot of tenants,

Silas Mähner (00:37:55):
you can install the infrastructure.

Silas Mähner (00:37:57):
They'll maybe pay for the electricity kind of like at the rate they would by some

Silas Mähner (00:38:01):
ID card or whatever when they plug in.

Silas Mähner (00:38:02):
But because you're renting like this more green space or this place that has that

Silas Mähner (00:38:08):
infrastructure for your car,

Silas Mähner (00:38:09):
it's

Silas Mähner (00:38:09):
you then you make up the margins as a developer from the rents not from the

Silas Mähner (00:38:14):
electricity itself right which i think then it makes it a better case for it

Silas Mähner (00:38:18):
because you're just charging a premium and again whether or not that would work

Silas Mähner (00:38:20):
forever because if everybody has ep chargers eventually it won't it won't make a

Silas Mähner (00:38:24):
difference but

Silas Mähner (00:38:25):
I would assume it's going to be models like that based on what you've said.

Silas Mähner (00:38:29):
Like I don't have necessarily opinions until some of these things you've said.

Silas Mähner (00:38:31):
So that's kind of where my mind goes.

Silas Mähner (00:38:33):
But cool.

Silas Mähner (00:38:35):
Well, this is really helpful.

Silas Mähner (00:38:36):
I guess any core advice or tips on fundraising from your experience?

Kieran White (00:38:43):
Gosh, that's a good question.

Kieran White (00:38:44):
The one thing that comes to mind that one of our most trusted amazing angels told

Kieran White (00:38:51):
us or told me was like,

Kieran White (00:38:52):
you dig the well before you're thirsty.

Kieran White (00:38:55):
And that was the number one thing that I think sort of typifies fundraising in that

Kieran White (00:39:01):
either you have like a really strong round and then I don't think it matters so

Kieran White (00:39:05):
much or you build the well before you're thirsty,

Kieran White (00:39:07):
like build the relationships and then have people who you know that you like

Kieran White (00:39:13):
Internally, we call it a vibe check.

Kieran White (00:39:15):
You know you've just done the vibe check and you just both vibe.

Kieran White (00:39:18):
And I think that becomes even for us,

Kieran White (00:39:21):
when we did the pre-seed,

Kieran White (00:39:22):
a few of our investors and everyone's been amazing and amazingly supportive,

Kieran White (00:39:27):
but not everyone you vibe with completely.

Kieran White (00:39:30):
And so I think by working with people and digging the well before you're thirsty,

Kieran White (00:39:34):
I guess you won vastly increased the chances that you raised money.

Kieran White (00:39:39):
and like already have like after that in mind of having to work with these people

Kieran White (00:39:42):
for the next 10 years um because that's like amazing and like build theses with you

Kieran White (00:39:47):
which has been super helpful for us um but treating them as more than money i'd say

Silas Mähner (00:39:52):
has probably to typify that yeah awesome man well this has been great i i really

Silas Mähner (00:39:58):
appreciate you coming on any other things that you want to talk about that we

Silas Mähner (00:40:01):
didn't get a chance to or any closing thoughts

Kieran White (00:40:03):
Not at all.

Kieran White (00:40:04):
I mean, like a brief plug.

Kieran White (00:40:06):
If you have existing EV charging and parking infrastructure, we'd love to talk to you.

Kieran White (00:40:10):
And likewise with fleets.

Kieran White (00:40:12):
But always happy to jam any thoughts.

Kieran White (00:40:15):
And I'm always on LinkedIn if anyone wants to reach out.

Silas Mähner (00:40:19):
Absolutely.

Silas Mähner (00:40:19):
Just to clarify, you guys are working across the whole US, not just California, correct?

Kieran White (00:40:23):
Yeah, across the US.

Silas Mähner (00:40:25):
Nice.

Silas Mähner (00:40:25):
Very nice, man.

Silas Mähner (00:40:26):
Awesome.

Silas Mähner (00:40:26):
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on.

Silas Mähner (00:40:27):
This has been a long time coming.

Silas Mähner (00:40:28):
I'm glad we made it happen.

Kieran White (00:40:30):
Yeah, likewise.

Kieran White (00:40:31):
Thank you, Silas.