8. Chris Bean

Chris Bean is Serial Entrepreneur, Technology Developer, and Edmund Hillary Fellow (LinkedIn). He is the CEO and co-founder of REVOLUTION Turbine Technologies (RTT).

RTT is "developing reliable, scalable, and green energy solutions for powering mission-critical equipment in remote locations" as part of "the world’s transition to a sustainable energy future".

Our conversation covers:
-How a niche new technology can be used to decarbonise energy use in gas networks.
-What it is like to be the CEO of a ' hardtech' start-up, including the funding rounds.
-How to protect IP to ensure you capture value.
-How the innovation ecosystem is shifting to prioritise sustainability.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters.  You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Transcript

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David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:06

Hello. This is one of several interviews on innovation, business and sustainability, primarily for the students studying for the MSc in sustainable resources at UCL. My name is David bent. I'm an honoree lecturer at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, co-leading the module on eco innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship. Most of the course gives people the latest economic theory and insight, these 30 minute interviews with practitioners to give some of the grit under the fingernails of innovating for sustainability today, I'm very pleased to say we're joined by Crispin. Hi, Chris. Hey, David, here with you. Great to be with. QUESTION 1. So first question is what is your role and your organisation?

Chris Bean: 0:48

So I am the CEO and co founder of a company called Revolution turbine technologies.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:57

What does revolution turbine technologies do? What does that mean?

Chris Bean: 1:01

Revolution has developed a clean energy technology that harvest what would normally be wasted gas pressure employing gas streams, and we convert that to emission free, reliable electricity.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:17

And so in the gas networks, which take gas or wherever it has been extracted, wherever it's been delivered into a port, those pipelines spread around, whichever countries it's in their spare pressure, and your technology can turn that pressure into electricity people can use in their houses,

Chris Bean: 1:34

exactly. Well, not necessarily their houses, let me kind of explain that a little bit deeper. As far as the application where technology is intended for those could be, it's primarily driven by or for oil and gas operators, as they're moving gas all the way from the wellhead, literally to to your door, there are a series actually many, many pressure drops along the way as that gas is actually being transported. So our technology can be applied at those already pre existing pressure drops, where you have very large pressure being dropped down to a much smaller level. And that's that that wasted pressure typically happens around about or a regulator. And a stock is isn't used in like any way. So we're taking advantage of a of a kinetic energy that normally exist, and putting it to good use now that the primary use of our clean power is is intended for the operations of those sites, first and foremost. But we are looking at additional opportunities where technology can be can be useful as we advance our technology, you know, and we are looking at much larger amounts of like power output, we have a number of potential customers that we've talked to that have identified other use cases for the power besides their own operations. Some of those use cases could be for local community power consumption, that could be things from streetlights to evey charging stations, just to name a few. And then you know, the other thing besides powering the gas operators own operations, for things such as those types of activities would include automated automation, process control equipment, sensors, IoT technologies, things of that sort is typically what this power would be used for. And when you think about it from a broad scale, our technology has the opportunity to to to eliminate pretty massive amounts of co2 e emissions per year. I think right now in in just the target market that we have identified or that that initial target market, which is North America, and Europe, we're looking at about 90 million tonnes per year savings, or elimination. Yep.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 4:18

And so just to unpack a couple of acronyms there IoT is Internet of Things and that little devices which typically are measuring something and then communicating that back to through the internet. And then there's another one co2 E is carbon dioxide equivalent, that's a way of converting the different kinds of greenhouse gas into one measure of how much they contribute to global warming.

Chris Bean: 4:41

And in our in our case, we're eliminating two different types of emissions. One is just straight co2 In our technology is intended to be a replacement for co2 emitting a Ah generation or combustion generators such as thermo electric generators, diesel gensets things of that nature where gas is actually being used as the as the as the fuel source. The other form of emissions that our technology is having a major impact on or will have a major impact on is by bringing electricity to many of these remote environments, we the the operators can can there can like thereby eliminate methane emitting devices such as like the pneumatic 1000 controllers that are used when there is not power readily available. And when you look at it from an impact scale, the methane emissions is it is certainly the largest problem that that our technology potentially solves. And then looking at some of the some of the equipment that our technology is likely going to be intended for. You know, you mentioned or I mentioned, IoT devices, many of the oil and gas operators globally are beginning to to deploy a lot of advanced digital platforms to improve their operations to improve safety efficiency. And of course, the industry is facing a an increasing power demand to, you know, put these these new technologies in place, while at the same time they're very limited on the on the the available power at their disposal, and specifically for locations where grid power is not is not currently available, or where they have a very strong greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in place. Yeah, where they're trying to actually eliminate forms of, you know, co2 emitting power sources.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 7:00

Great. And I think it's worth emphasising what you said about methane, I come up with a figure exactly off the top of my head bro has something like 200 times the global warming potential and co2. And it's also much faster acting. So if we were to avoid dangerous climate change, that one of the best things we can do is eliminate methane emissions in the short term. And I think the other thing is what you're saying about the way that the technology uses changing changes in gas pressure, which happen anyway, just reminds me about the brakes that you now have in electric vehicles in particular, which because you're braking anyway, turning that kinetic energy, which you're using up, instead of just into heat on the brake pad into electricity, which goes back into the battery, and then you can use that, again, it's a similar kind of thing. You're losing the pressure anyway. So why not use that loss of pressure? To drive other things?

Chris Bean: 7:58

Yeah, that's a great example. David, that's exactly what we're doing just just from a different source of kinetic energy. Yeah. But it's, uh, you know, it makes perfect sense to, I mean, why not leverage that loss, and educate us.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 8:14

And gas, although the underlying industry that you're serving is a fossil fuel industry, gas itself is likely to be used in huge amounts for decades to come. So

Chris Bean: 8:29

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, while the while there are a lot of exceptionally impressive energy transition technologies that are being developed in there is progress being made globally. You're right, it's gonna be around for a very long time. So when you look at some of the other benefits of our of our technology, you know, a lot of the gas, the only gas companies have put in place, what I would call more serious initiatives to lower their carbon footprint. And that's being driven by society, it's being driven by customers expectations, shareholder expectations in these companies. So you know, one thing I've noticed in the time that I've been involved in this, is there has been a shift in the conversations that take place today around clean energy technologies or clean tech in general, as it was, like, say, five years ago, for instance, I think, you know, just in that very short time span, you know, when I would initially be talking to some potential customer about our technology, the ESG portion of of our technology or all those great environmental clean energy benefits was not top of the list. You know, it was much further down today. The conversations, you know, are often beginning with that with that positive benefit how How can you help them achieve their internal carbon reduction initiatives? So there's I think there's, there's a bit less greenwashing going on today. I mean, it's still exist, yes, maybe it still exists, there's a long ways to go, you know, quite a large number of companies that are still like, painting this rosy picture, and, you know, a talking point, but there isn't a lot of seriousness behind it. But there has been a big increase in the, the initiatives being genuine and, and, and through effort being put into cleaning their operations up, so at least they can get your point A to point B, with a lot less, you know, carbon impact.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:50

Yeah, I think it'd be a topic for different kinds of podcasts, and then dive into the changes in green washes within the oil and gas industry. But I want to move on to our next question about your role in the organisation. QUESTION 2. So you're CEO of a startup, what does that mean? What are you going up to?

Chris Bean: 11:08

Well, I'm, obviously the CEO position, in general comes with tremendous responsibility. And I think certainly, that's more so with the startup, the startup world is not for the faint hearted, I think is a good way of putting it, you know, there's, you know, just from from a day to day basis, there's a lot of activities and movement and a lot of planning that takes place, you got to be nimble, to be able to adjust on the fly to, to changing landscape to the needs that you had planned, as well as the needs that come up on, you know, short notice. So it is definitely challenging to, to navigate. I'm very fortunate, in my current role with, with RTT. And what I mean by that is, I've got two, two other two other co founders, that are part of the organisation and the, they are huge, in you know, when we truly have an actual team in place that, you know, we're all leveraging our our skill sets and our experience sets. And that has, has helped me tremendously in like my particular role,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 12:25

yeah. And so your role when you're with your co founders is not a sole task, but you have the ultimate responsibility in at least in the eyes of external people around the duration of the organisation, what your target markets are, fundraising, the priorities within your innovation pipeline, from memory, I think you're in the middle of fundraising right now. Just talk us through what that means for you as a CEO.

Chris Bean: 12:49

Yeah, I mean, I think with any startup, fundraising is always forefront, you can't, you cannot get very far in developing your technology, without adequate funds in place. And I think, you know, the earlier the stage, the more difficult that the fundraising becomes, you know, currently, we're at about a tear of four or five, in our, in our technology development. And so we've had a little bit of work to do, he's left, you know, a small amount of additional refinement, our technology, we have to go through additional testing of our technology, safety certifications into pilot stage. So, you know, at some point, like, for instance, when we look ahead at perhaps our our series, a fundraising, that will be or should be significantly easier, because our technology will then prove it in the field and in the in the real world, environments where it's intended. But we're in that in that early seed stage. And you know, there is a limited number, I would say, a smaller number of investor types that will typically put their money into that stage. It's obviously at a at a potentially higher risk for them. So the fundraising right now is definitely challenging. I think that's the case for like most startups, there are a few exceptions to that. But yeah, it's it's definitely first and foremost with everything I do on a on a day to day basis right now,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:20

and just unpack one piece of jargon that people will come across quite a lot, I guess, Series A, what is Series A.

Chris Bean: 14:28

So there's, there's a variety of different terminology put into the stage in your fundraising where the company may be at so usually starts in like a pre seed stage. And that's literally the initial funding that some companies receive from a back of the napkin idea, you know, the very, very early stage and typically, the funding amounts for a precede round, are relatively small. You're looking at typically under a million US dollars in most cases. There are some exceptions. is that of course, but, and then seed is, is the next stage where you've got where you've got your technology further along. And you know that the dollar amounts in those stages are going to be more, they could be anywhere from a million dollars to five plus million dollars, depending upon really what it is that the company's developing how capital intensive that it is. And then series A is is usually around that's, that's put in place in the early pre commercialization period. And that round is typically meant to help scale help scale to bring that, that developed technology into commercialization. And of course, those rounds are, like I said, easier to typically put in place because the technology is validated, proven, its commercial ready. And then it's been significantly de risked. So investors, that's, that's a stage that a lot of investors will begin pursuing. Especially larger dollar amounts, you know, a Series A could be, you know, 5 million to $50 million, depending on, you know, like I said, what the company's doing?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:16

Yeah, I'm particularly into building big, big fixed assets and capital kits they're gonna need.

Chris Bean: 16:21

I mean, there's a lot of differences between startup technologies, and how capital intensive they are, as an example, that RTTs is developing hard tech. So it's typically more capital intensive than if you were developing a SAS Type platform or FinTech, where it's more just software driven. Those are typically, you know, in many cases, smaller dollar amounts that are gonna require that. And then hard tech also has, in some cases, a bit more risk involved with it. So what what I'm finding right now is when we look at the pool of potential investors, for hard tech in a seed stage, that gets a little bit smaller. Yeah. I mean, there's still plenty of of opportunities out there, but the field is narrowed. Yep.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 17:16

And for RTT, how do you think about sustainability? Is that a word you use a tool or? Oh, it's,

Chris Bean: 17:22

it's the essence of like, what RTT is all about, not only from an internal point of view, with, with the company, co founders, and our future vision of the company, as an organisation, but our technology is all driven off of increased sustainability, eliminating emission sources and leveraging a wasted energy source. So it's our entire world, both internally and externally. Great.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 17:58

So then to QUESTION 4., can you tell us a story of a good example of your work on on, which illustrates the innovation you've been doing for sustainability?

Chris Bean: 18:10

I think that there's that the story itself, just goes back to the technology itself, you know, what is our technology accomplishing? What is what is our technology intended for? Looking at the external benefits that our technology brings to the world? on a, on a global impact scale? You know, I mean, our our technology is not intended for a very specific region, it's a global technology that can be used in virtually every country in the world. So from an impact standpoint, that's, I think, very important to note. I mean, we're not looking at something on a very narrow basis. And then the, you know, when we look at what, what, what revolution is doing internally, you know, speaking from my co founders, and myself, you know, we're very sustainable focused as individuals. So it's really, like I said, the essence of what our entire organisation is about. And it's deeply embedded in our company's vision, as well as our culture.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 19:14

And the core technology itself didn't come out of a lab in a university. How did it come into being?

Chris Bean: 19:21

Yeah, so let me tell you a little bit about the history of how I got involved in this and how it originally started. So in my former company, a company called Alltech that that develops and manufactures advanced lightning protection technologies. I exited from Alltech in early 2020. I spent like 29 years at the company as its founder and CEO, and during my time at Alltech, I mean, all Tech was all about innovation and developing advanced technology. So that's something that's been common with my entire career. I've always every business I've been involved in has been Developing new tech? Well, one of the biggest vertical markets that Alltech was focused on has been the energy industry globally. So that was always a big part of everything that we did we actually develop technology that were very specific to the energy industry. So as you can imagine, over, you know, 25 plus years, you know, a lot of relationships got established in that time. And it was through one of those relationships that I became introduced to the, to what I'm called the core technology, or the core innovation, of our current technology, and ended up acquiring a portfolio of patents that I think are the foundation of what we have today. I clearly saw the opportunity, almost immediately, with what I've been introduced to, and I think the timing of, of what we're working on right now is ideal, you know, it's really the right time for our technology to be worked on now. You know, Turbo expander technology is not new. There's, there's, you know, there's a lot of various types of turbo expanders in the marketplace. And from very different applications as well, you know, what's unique about our particular type of a micro expansion turbine system is is is, you know, some of the elements of this would be the specific use cases that we're targeting, you know, we're not incorporating megawatt scale, energy recovery, we're talking kilowatt scale, where it's more on a distributed power principle, we're powering operations locally, we're not necessarily pushing big amounts of power back into the grid, for instance, yeah, so look at our technology versus some of those other turbo expander technologies, it's quite different. The working mechanism of our of our technology is also somewhat different, and how we, how we're actually generating that and how efficient that our technology is, or will be at the end of the day. And it's a very small scale. So each of our turbans right now are about one cubic foot in size, right? And that's, that's for the industry that we're targeting that isn't big, that is very, you know, is a very big benefit for them. And then, of course, the inherent reliability of, of our design, makes it very low touch for the customers, and it can also be remotely connected, which is another big feature that, that helps, that that really brings a lot of new features to our technology that a lot of the the pre existing texts simply don't have.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 22:52

Yeah, and I think just some things to pull out there, which link to the course one of which is having patience means you're able to defend your value and actually capture more value from the contribution your technology makes. There's also your own history in the industry means, you know, the industry Well, partly that's about sales channels, you have networks you can sell to, but also you know what their pain points are, you have a real sense of what what they're struggling with. And then you're able to identify how this particular set of patients, this particular set of technologies, hits that pain point in a niche which you can defend you can succeed in, but it's big enough to justify investing in. And there's a big enough addressable market that you can make a return on it, even though it's a relatively capital intensive, hard tech play compared to software or something like that. So there's all of these different combinations into why chose to do and why why is ready for a startup. And then you add on top of that the pressures on oil and gas companies in particular, to deliver on their emissions targets that they're part of the solution on, on addressing climate change, all those things together mean that it's a good opportunity.

Chris Bean: 24:10

Everything you just said absolutely true in it very accurate, specifically to what RTT is about, you know, IP is always critical to most tech companies, you know. And I think for us, it's obviously a very valuable tangible asset that we have. I think, you know, in looking at our particular IP portfolio today, not only does it comprise those those early patents, but you know, we've we've obviously filed and have a number of much newer patents that have been put in place, you know, and we have a very specific IP roadmap ahead of us. We're already working on the next set of like filings literally as as as the speaking. We don't anticipate that changing for the foreseeable futures. You know, the one advantage that RTT has, in the IP piece anyways is, myself along with our company CTO, we have spent our careers focused on IP. So we, you know, we we understand, like the value, we understand how to navigate that. quite well. And so that's, that's part of the company value part of the future, you know, what's ahead of us, and like you said, helps us to, to defend any potential infringement in various markets? And so are our IP strategy is only going to grow? Yeah. And you mentioned something else, do you think that that's, that's also important is, you know, the, the market experience, understanding the customers pain points, and, and, and the whole, the customer mindset, the applications, that's something else that I think our team has seen a significant benefit from, you know, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I've got a very robust background in the oil and gas community, I understand the inner workings of that type of customer, the sales cycle be the applications, all of that is, I think, if I didn't have that, it would be very challenging to do doing and then to even further that. My co founders have significant experience in that same industry, like, for instance, our chief marketing officer, John Jeffers, he's a 30 year energy industry executive. You spent his entire career in oil and gas. Yeah, I cannot tell you how valuable that is to what we're doing. The relationships, the technical understanding. It's just priceless. And even, you know, our our CTO, Tim Moore, his last venture where he was we're, we're he's a co founder, and he was a former CTO, he went technologies. The biggest vertical market of HP one ended up being natural gas distribution. So he has spent many years in that same industry. So collectively, that's a big strength for our team. And I think if we didn't have that background, we would have a much larger set of challenges in front of us for sure.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:32

QUESTION 5. Yeah. I still want to move on to the next question, which is about innovation management. You've mentioned your IP pipeline. What are the key methods and practices used for actually managing your innovation as you go forward now?

Chris Bean: 27:47

Well, I think there's probably a couple of things. I don't think there's one particular split or a specific tool that we use. I think it's a combination of things, I think, one, the company's vision and roadmap, I think it's the first place where all that ties together on a high level, you know, framework. And then I think, as we get deeper into that, technology management, we get into more granular timelines, and where we see the technology progressing. You know, because our ultimate vision that we have right now, is there going to be a modular and modular NISS to our technology, and ultimately, over the next few years will have an entire family of different size, turbans, maybe some different attributes, like for instance, one thing that's happening in the industry right now is the introduction of hydrogen into these pipelines. Yeah. As I mentioned to you in one of our previous conversation, David, we're doing work with the national gas distribution network in the UK. And I believe it's 2026 that they're planning to begin introducing hydrogen into their network. So that adds a forward looking piece of technology that we need to be prepared for. So as a result of the of the, of the use of hydrogen globally, we're looking at bringing advanced composite materials into our turbine framework, the actual body of the turbine to make it hydrogen proof, currently without hydrogen being in a system and we can use a lot of like stainless steel type materials as an example, and they work quite well but introducing hydrogen to that material is not a good fit. That's counter was called hydrogen embrittlement. And it deteriorates stainless steel at a rapid rate. So we're looking at non metallic composite materials which will not only make our technology hydrogen prove it But at the same time, we'll lower the the manufacturing cost considerably lower the weight of the units and a lot of big benefits of having this, this, this timeline of how our technology, you know, how we plan to actually evolve it and to grow it into a much larger portfolio of different models in use cases.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 30:25

QUESTION 6. Great. Question six? What are the biggest challenges you face? And how do you overcome them?

Chris Bean: 30:35

Well, I think there's a Well, as we've already mentioned, I think right now, at this particular stage, right now, fundraising is first and foremost, it's a big challenge for any startup, or most startups. It's key to progressing our timeline in keeping on that, because every month that we don't have the funding in place that pushes our timeline to the right. Yeah. You know, and so, so that's, that's probably number one. I think some of the other challenges that we face is, I think it's more typical for a lot of hard tech, startup startups, you know, finishing the actual development, getting getting further along in that entire TRL process, getting it, you know, feel ready. And for us, you know, there's not a lot of what I would call a government regulations affect us, you know, there are a lot of safety certifications that our technology has to go through to be filled, deployed. But that's not unusual, necessarily, you know, where we look at regulatory issues. It really, really is more affecting the potential customers or technology and a gas distribution environment. There are utility regulators that are approving the operators, you know, capital budgets as it relates to rates.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 32:08

Yeah. rates of return that is sorry. What's that, David? rates of return?

Chris Bean: 32:14

Correct. So that, that, you know, it affects us, but I think, I think, predominantly from a timing standpoint, you know, so a lot of the gas distribution networks as an example, their their capital budgets correlate to the gas rates that are approved by like the regulators. So when they look at as deploying new tech or making big infrastructure improvements, that has to be sort of part of the capital budget that's approved by that by like the regulator as it relates to rates? Yeah. So that's really one of the only things that really pertains to us, otherwise, we're not? Well, I think that that, you know, one other, you know, government regulation that I think is certainly relevant is the emphasis being placed on carbon reduction. Yeah. I mean, obviously, some of the more progressive countries are making that higher priority. They're pushing, you know, carbon emitters into a corner and saying this is these are the minimums, you have to do. Use your footprint. So that's, that's, that's a positive for us. Because as those government regulations begin to become put in place and a little bit more genuine, that's helping us make our sales case, right. It's an incentive for our customers to update their technology to something that's reducing their carbon footprint. Yes.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 33:47

And in another one of the interviews for the series, I spoke with seven Trent, which is a water company in the UK, they are heavily regulated, and what you're saying there about what the regulator allows in terms of their rate of return on investments, how that relates to the capital spend, what they use that capital spend for, and how that slows or speeds up. Innovations relating to carbon emissions was part of that conversation, too. So it's, it's true across lots of different regulated industries. I just wanted to pick up on your last point there, though, that second last question is, QUESTION 7. if there's one thing policymakers could do, which would make your work significantly easier, what would it be?

Chris Bean: 34:33

Well, I think it's basically what I was saying earlier, I think that and this is beginning to happen, maybe not at the rate that we would all like to see. But I think, you know, a lot of, you know, governments around the world are, you know, putting some efforts into incentivizing some of these companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Putting in you know, mandatory, you know, minimums or maximums that are helping to further energy transition at a more robust pace. Now that sounds a ways to go. Even in some of the more progressive leaning countries where there is a much higher genuineness to those programmes, they still have a ways to go. But there's a lot of other countries that are really way behind that have little to any incentives or requirements for companies to clean their operations up. I mean, so that I think, would be the number one thing that that policy makers could and should do. And that's, I'm not talking about that, just from our technology. Yeah, I'm talking about just from humanities point of view. And it's still it's still way behind, you know, where it should be. And I, I often refer to this as like, The Great buy in, if you don't have a great buy in this problem is going to persist for a very long time. And then I don't think that we're there yet. We don't have the amount of buying that we really need to really begin reversing some of this yet. But I'm still optimistic.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 36:10

And and your views the buy in is growing, it just needs to grow faster.

Chris Bean: 36:14

It is it is, I mean, think education in general, is helping that the awareness, the media, you know, science is finally, you know, become validated with a lot of people that, you know, 1015 years ago, simply wouldn't look at it. It's, you know, you can't hide from it today. I mean, it's, we're being affected in our everyday life today. So that's helped. But But still, we have a long ways to go. I mean, it's, we're clearly not there yet. And that's something that I'm excited about being involved in and having a positive impact on.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 36:49

QUESTION 8. And so that leads nicely to the last question, which is about the future. What are your organization's priorities on innovation going forward?

Chris Bean: 36:59

Well, I'm in besides RTG, I'm involved in some other startups as well. And, you know, So sustainability is part of pretty much everything I'm doing today, in various ways. So I think personally, I don't really have any interest in being involved in a business that isn't in that space somehow, you know, there's one as a personal passion of mine, I can, you know, have I can see some some direct impact on my work. And it's something that I think that the world needs, the world needs more clean tech, and it needs the broader community to buy into it and to to adopt it. Yeah. And there's still a little bit of resistance, you know, the old school people are still there. And if they think it's not broke, they're not going to fix it. I think that I think that is changing. It's just like I said, a lot slower than I'd like to see.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 37:57

Yeah, but more ventures more ecosystem that supports those ventures, more public policy and resources which support the direction of adventures or for addressing climate change. That's those the things that you're working on the priorities that you have.

Chris Bean: 38:14

Yeah, you touch on that and the ecosystem, David, and that's, that's, that is something that's happening today. That is, that is nice to see. You know, when I first started in business in the early 90s, there simply wasn't resources available, like we have today. For startups in general, you know, that you get to find it on your own. And that was if you're lucky, we find those types of resources like today. That's a reality in most countries, there are resources available to help startup founders and tech companies, let alone even just general small businesses be more successful and to get their, their technology, commercialised and that's, that's, I think, making a clear difference in every market that I'm involved in. I mean, it's not just, you know, here in the States or in Europe. I'm seeing it globally. Yeah. That'd be nice.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 39:13

That's a nice and hopeful moment to draw a conversation to a close so thanks very much to Chris been serial social serial entrepreneur, in high tech and for sustainability. It's been wonderful speaking to you. Thanks so much.