S7 E5: What 2024 has in store for climate tech venture capital, with Katie McClain of Energize Capital.

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Episode 5 • 16th January 2024 • The Keep Cool Podcast • Nick Van Osdol

Nick:

Welcome to the Keep Cool Show, the podcast in which we cover how cutting-edge climate technologies connect to the world in which we live. I'm your host, Nick Van Osdal.

Katie:

ally strong investing year in: 2024

Nick:

Yeah, makes sense. I'm glad that that's on your radar too around efficiency, because that's something I try to return to at least once in a while. There's so much conversation around how do we fundamentally shift the supply side of things, whether that's the fuel source or the electricity generation or the fundamentally type of vehicle that folks are driving. But there's also so much opportunity, especially inherent to electrification around you know, reducing or being more efficient with the way that we actually like use electricity or different fuels. I think often in how much of the conversation concentrates on the supply side, sometimes that demand side can get lost a tiny bit. But that is fundamentally such an exciting piece of electrification is like there are massive efficiency opportunities, suffice it to say.

Katie:

ght fit for us yet, but maybe: 2024

Nick:

All right, Katie, welcome to the Keep Cool Show. It's such a treat to have you.

Katie:

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Nick:

Yeah, so I'd love to dive right in to the investing work that you are doing at Energize. What has been some of the most exciting stuff that you've worked on in the past few months? And what's just really lighting you up right now that you'd love to get listeners up to speed on?

Katie:

Thanks. So I have a dual role here at Energize. And so on the investment side, I'm energized about the work that we are doing in the electrification of everything, and then specifically around software to help the renewable energy sector scale. I used to work at a renewable energy developer here in Chicago, and it's great to see the role that software can play in scaling the industry. And then on the other side of my role with my COO hat on, I'm looking forward to continuing to scale and invest in our edge platform. And so for us here at Energize, that's our portfolio support group. We've been building and scaling this group for the past 12 or 18 months. And this group works closely with our portfolio companies to support them in a number of areas like go-to-market strategy, commercialization, financial operations, ESG and impact, marketing communications, and talent. And we think that this enables us to be a differentiated partner to our portfolio companies, both in the areas that we support them and then also in the way that we support them.

Nick:

Awesome. Yeah, I'm super excited to kind of talk about both the hats that you wear, especially because we often get some perspective from investors on climate tech companies, but I haven't as often had the opportunity to speak to someone like yourself that also wears that operational hat. So much of talking about investments, that's often the first step and the companies have to actually go out and try to make good on their plans, which is no small feat. Definitely excited to dig into that as well. To start really on your and Energize's thesis around electrification, maybe it'd be great to just go ahead and dive right into some examples of what types of software products have you all identified and invested in that tackle all of the various challenges that electrification faces, whether it's backlogs and greater connection or an uprising interest rate environment. There's so much that we see from like a headline perspective of things that are making it more difficult to deploy projects in the US. So be great to get some color on the ways that companies that you support can help with all of that.

Katie:

Yeah, and so we track about 40 different themes and technologies at any given time at Energize, and we have research papers on all of them. And so a sample of some of the themes and then subsets within the themes, as we mentioned, are the electrification of everything, which includes solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles. And then we also look at carbon markets, which includes carbon accounting, offsets and measurement, and then also verification. Infrastructure resiliency is another area that's super important for us, and that includes things like climate risk, and water and the circular economy. And then we've also got this kind of catch-all bucket of industrial digitization, and that includes things like cyber security, drones, and supply chains. And so there's a number of different factors that are really accelerating these themes. And the main one is really the reduction in the hardware costs, which enables the broad adaption, which then opens up the opportunity for software to play a role and to help further reduce those soft costs. And so if you think about companies like Aurora Solar in our portfolio, they're a solar design platform for rooftop. And so as you see panels on either residential buildings or big commercial buildings, typically Aurora Solar will have designed those systems. And that can help to really reduce the soft costs, which that also helps to further the deployment and the acceleration of getting these solar panels on the roofs.

Nick:

kind of hitting the stride in: 2018

Katie:

t invested in Aurora in early: 2019

Nick:

ged in the five years between: 2018

Katie:

So I came to Energize in: 2018

Nick:

what you've seen this year in: 2023

Katie:

Yeah, from my perspective, it's all about how can these industries scale? So when I was at Invenergy, you know, working directly with the folks in the communities, building the projects. For example, if you were building out a solar project, maybe that project was 40 acres, which was big at the time, right? Big time. And so you would hire a consultant, the consultant would go out to the potential site, they would walk the site, they would measure it, look at the topography, go back to their office in a couple of weeks, give you a report of what they found. And that doesn't scale, right? So now you've got projects that are 15, 20,000 acres big. You can't do that anymore. And so one of the companies that we've invested in, DroneDeploy, what developers like Invenergy use DroneDeploy for is you can send the drone out. It's totally autonomous. They fly the site, they get you the data. It's more accurate because it's, you know, software's gathering and analyzing the data. You can get it in days, right? And so it's how do you get the information that you need to do your projects better, faster, and cheaper? That's what we're all about. And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about using software to ensure these projects get on scale.

Nick:

out if we think about kind of: 2023

Katie:

o within our own portfolio in: 2023

Nick:

Awesome, yeah. I'm glad you introduced that topic of grid complexity because that's something that I think about a lot. It's obviously exciting that we're seeing a lot more hardware get deployed, whether it's distributed energy or utility scale. But yeah, that seems like there's going to be so many more touch points across the grid in the future between things like rooftop solar, even homes adopting stationary storage, and folks talk a lot about the potential to build virtual power plants. But I often come back to the idea that like, wow, that's really going to require much more sophisticated set of systems to harmonize all the data from those different hardware assets and also just make sure they're all working together in concert with a grid that in many ways also needs to upgrade alongside all of that deployment.

Katie:

Yeah, the grid's a little old. It is not quite equipped for this world that we find ourselves in today. And especially as you mentioned, you look to the future, we're still so early in the deployment of a lot of these technologies that we haven't even really seen what kinds of tools we're going to need. And so for us at Energize, that's an incredibly exciting opportunity because as the grid becomes more complex, as managing it becomes more complex, as managing our energy, uses and sources, everything, the complexity that comes along with that. It's just a really great role for software to play, whether that's at the grid level or at the house level or with companies. There's just a lot of opportunity. The world is changing quite quickly.

Nick:

Yeah. And, you know, for the benefit of our listeners, but also perhaps for myself, maybe Amperon's a good example to dig into a tiny bit more deeply to understand how their system is going to help us navigate some of these challenges. So, you know, if I were five years old, how would you provide a little more color on what their software systems help do? I know you already spoke to it a little bit, but maybe there's an opportunity to go a bit deeper there.

Katie:

They're all about energy forecasting. And so you have to be able to forecast either what's going to happen on the grid or the weather that's going to impact the grid. And the way that we've been doing this historically just no longer works for the world that we find ourselves in today. So their customers could be utilities, could be energy traders. They have large corporates getting into the game of trying to figure out what is going to happen in the future and how can they adapt and adjust to that. I won't get the stat exactly right, but I think last quarter Amperon did a better job of forecasting the grid than the folks over at ERCOT did. I can't remember what percent exactly, but that's the kind of thing. We need this new accuracy. We need to be able to really put a fine point on what's going to happen with our energy sources and on the grid.

Nick:

Yeah, that definitely to me, it kind of speaks to what I mentioned around as you have more assets, whether it's generation or the ability to move energy across kind of time with batteries or space with transmission. Yeah. How are you really getting like the most juice out of what you are producing, whether from, you know, to keep costs down or whether to mitigate emissions? Yeah, it makes sense that like the actual forecasting of what does tomorrow look like and what assets do we have and how do we best use them? That's definitely compelling to me.

Katie:

That's exactly right.

Nick:

Excellent. And it's probably also a good time to introduce a little more conversation around your role as COO at Energize. So when you look at a company like Amperon and the firm has made the initial investment, speak a little bit to how that other kind of side of your job then comes into play. Like, what are all the things that you are now excited to help Amperon navigate as they grow and scale from an operational perspective?

Katie:

Yeah, and so as I mentioned, we have an edge platform with a number of different pillars that is a highly kind of curated program for the companies. And so what we like to do is meet the companies where they're at. We do not have a one size fits all for every company across our portfolio. The type of company, the stage, what they do all matters and how we work closely with them. And using Ampron as a specific example, you know, we like to bring our edge team in. That's, again, our portfolio support team. in during the diligence process. And so the team will get met, hooked up with different team members. Jeff on our team runs the go-to-market and sales strategy. And so he met with their sales leadership in the diligence process, identified some areas that we can work with them, then post-investment, and he's heading out there in a couple of weeks for their all-hand sales meeting to sit down with the team, talk about strategies. He helps our teams hire their teams if possible, or if that's what they need. You kind of really meet the teams where they're at and what kind of support do you need.

Nick:

Yeah, it's so easy to look at different climate tech or energy solutions and kind of see them as distinct based on what problems they're working on. But in that, it's kind of easy to forget that ultimately, they probably also face a lot of universal and common challenges of like, how do I hire the right people? How do I set up the right internal infrastructure to support those employees in doing their job? Yeah, I'm sure that you've helped hundreds of companies at this point.

Katie:

Yeah, and that's where we really try to roll up our sleeves. Like most of this stuff has happened before in other companies, right? So it's bringing expertise and folks that have seen this game before come in and help them avoid either pitfalls that early companies tend to fall into. Hiring is a big one of them. You know, hiring takes a long time. It takes a lot of resources. You want to make sure you bring in that right new team member to help your company scale.

Nick:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'd love to just touch on a few other portfolio companies that you're excited about to give some color to the breadth of the challenge areas that Energize invests in. What are some other companies that you're particularly lit up about?

Katie:

So when we're looking for companies, what we're really looking for is what problem is that company solving? We have a very customer focused diligence process. So we'll actually go to the potential customers, ask them, what problems are you trying to solve? Where are your budgets growing? And then we go out and we look for the companies that are solving that problem. And so one company that we're super excited about is a company called Banyan Infrastructure. And so what they do is they help a lot of the financing of these renewable energy projects is still done in Excel. It's still done through trading emails. And so their software really helps with that workflow automation. And really, again, how are we going to scale these industries? You can't scale the industry if you're still doing your project finance in Excel. So Banyan solves that problem. It can help reduce the project financing costs by 40%. just by adopting that software. And then another company that we're really excited about is a company out of Copenhagen called Manta. And so they have, think about an operating platform behind the electric vehicle ecosystem. And so their customers are both the electric vehicle drivers themselves, and then also the charging infrastructure networks. And so the chargers themselves. One of the biggest problems that you hear from folks, if you're an EV driver, is that you go to charge your car and the charge doesn't work or the payment system doesn't work. And so what Manta can do is help the drivers know where to charge, when to charge, and then also on the flip side with the charging station owners themselves, it lets them know when are your chargers down, you've got to go fix this one, this one needs maintenance. So it's that nuts and bolts and really making the whole system just work better. How do we scale? If it works, then we can scale it.

Nick:

Yeah, improving both the customer experience and also giving feedback more directly to the providers to help them increase uptime. Yeah, I saw, I think it was probably earlier this year, late last year, but you see stats floating around of like, you know, something like a quarter of or a third of public charging stations are out of service at any point in time. So yeah, definitely something to tackle. If we want a lot of people to adopt EVs, it's got to be a pretty seamless experience.

Katie:

Can't scale the industry if the very basic fundamentals of it aren't working.

Nick:

Yeah, and it's also, I liked what you said about always really coming back to the customer perspective of like, if you're not fundamentally improving the customer experience, that's going to be very difficult to encourage all of society to adopt these solutions.

Katie:

Exactly.

Nick:

As you look ahead to: 2024

Katie:

had a little bit of a slower: 2023

Nick:

Yeah, makes sense. I'm glad that that's on your radar too around efficiency, because that's something I try to return to at least once in a while. There's so much conversation around how do we fundamentally shift the supply side of things, whether that's the fuel source or the electricity generation or the fundamentally type of vehicle that folks are driving. But there's also so much opportunity, especially inherent to electrification around reducing or being more efficient with the way that we actually use electricity or different fuels. I think often in how much of the conversation concentrates on the supply side, sometimes that demand side can get lost a tiny bit. But that is fundamentally- Absolutely. Such an exciting piece of electrification is there are massive efficiency opportunities, suffice it to say.

Katie:

ght fit for us yet, but maybe: 2024

Nick:

Yeah, I'm sure that there are interesting products to be built, even if I don't have a specific vision in my mind. But even things like, you know, making it easier for folks to quantify the potential savings of re-insulating their homes or what have you. No shortage of opportunity on that front. It definitely seems like the built environment and specific. would lend itself to a lot of data-driven software type solutions where if you can make it easier for folks to see the light around the potential value of building electrification, that should hopefully accelerate deployment. Anything in particular that you're interested to talk about that we haven't talked about yet? I've obviously got some more questions, but I always like to take a little pause just to see where your mind might be tracking.

Katie:

nnounced this week that since: 2021

Nick:

Yeah, that's great. I'm excited that we get to talk about this a little bit more, especially owing to the fact that you have deep kind of policy expertise in your background as well. I remember, you know, it's already been more than a year, but when the IRA was first announced, everyone was kind of thunderstruck because for a while folks thought it was dead and wasn't going to get through Congress and all that. When you think about like the past year since, has it exceeded your expectations in terms of the amount of kind of just deployment and catalyzation that it spurred? I guess, yeah, I'm just kind of curious for your top line perspective on that. Like when it was first announced versus now, how is your thinking on the IRA shifted or perhaps stayed the same?

Katie:

First, it was incredibly exciting. Last year when they passed it, I mean, we hadn't seen any real climate policy almost ever. And then to see this huge, completely, you know, industry shifting policy come forward was just, everyone was, you know, on cloud nine. I have worked in policy in the past. And definitely wasn't sure I was going to ever see anything like this in my lifetime. So incredibly exciting to see it come out. And I'd say it's a huge piece of legislation. So there's lots and lots in there to unpack. And some of the pieces, they're still writing the rules and regulations around. It's going to take a while for it all to get implemented. But you did see within the first 12 months, again, that private sector response to that, the building of new industrial plants, manufacturing. the projects that got announced, you saw that happen almost immediately. And what I love about it the most is just the certainty. If you're talking about specifically like the tax credits for wind and solar projects, that industry has never seen that level of certainty before. And so there was a tremendous growth in the industry up until last year. And now with that 10-year window of knowing exactly what the tax credit landscape is going to look like, you can just deploy that much more and have that much more certainty in the industry.

Nick:

Yeah.: 2024

Katie:

And along with all the benefits, there will be a lot of roadblocks that come because of this. There's tons of interconnection issues. Transmission is a big issue. And so by no means solve all of our issues. It creates opportunities to solve a lot more of these additional problems that the industry is facing. So I look forward to seeing, you know, how new technologies can play a role into helping to overcome some of these challenges too.

Nick:

Yeah, and it does seem like there are specific, you know, whether you want to call it industries or sectors that, you know, we're already seeing kind of bump up against a lot of those challenges. There's a lot of chatter, for instance, around like offshore wind and whether those will be able, people will be able to deliver those projects. successfully in an economic way. But yeah, I like the point that you brought it back to is, of course, there's new challenges once you move from the investment step to the actual putting steel in the ground step. But that's always, again, both challenge and opportunity to then build supportive products and potentially also additional supportive policies that help navigate those challenges.

Katie:

Absolutely. The opportunity in front of us is just incredible.

Nick:

I know that there's so much in the IRA. I'd be curious from your policy perspective, are there other things that are perhaps less talked about whether within the IRA or in other countries or fundamentally different policies that you've been tracking that you find particularly interesting?

Katie:

Yeah, one of the things that's been kind of fun for us to watch. So historically, Europe has been way ahead of the US on the climate policy front. And so I think globally, the world was a little bit shocked when the US actually passed the IRA, and then became the front runner of climate policy. And so you saw Europe then quickly scramble to create their own new policies. And so now you have this kind of climate policy competition happening. between the US and between Europe, which from our perspective is terrific. We have about a third of our portfolio that is based out of Europe. They're years ahead of us in terms of where their grid is at and the clean energy transition has just moved faster and further ahead over there. And so having these two countries kind of competing on a climate policy front is kind of fun to watch.

Nick:

How do you see that kind of play through to, you mentioned a company from Denmark that you all invested in, and so it sounds like you all do investing both in North America and Europe. Do you see kind of some fundamental differences in startups that come out of different geographies, or is there more kind of similarity in terms of the types of challenges or questions that those folks are asking themselves than difference?

Katie:

Yeah, the way that we think about it is that, so using electric vehicles as an example, there's so much further ahead in the adoption of EVs over there. So the companies that are getting built over there are dealing with a much more, again, complex environment, a much more built out, robust EV industry. And so the tools that they are building are for that much more advanced version of it than we have here in the U.S. So we kind of like to go to these pockets where the industries have evolved more quickly and further along than we have here in the U.S. and see how are they solving the problems. Because those are the problems that we'll all be facing here in a couple of years when we get to that scale. And so when we make our investments over there, a lot of times they're looking for a U.S. investor to someday help them come then build out here in the U.S. when the markets have kind of caught up a little bit more with Europe.

Nick:

That's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that a ton, but yeah, it stands to reason that because some pockets of the world are fundamentally ahead in terms of deployment of certain solutions, there's a lot that we can probably learn from what companies are having success over there.

Katie:

We don't have to recreate it here in the US. Yeah, let's use their tech after it's been working for five years and then bring it over here and deploy it here when our markets have caught up.

Nick:

Yeah, and in the same way, a lot of the stuff that is challenging in the U.S. right now, that's a good testament to the fact that those will probably be challenging in other markets in the future, whether it's in developing countries or other kind of more developed countries that just haven't fundamentally made the shift to electrification yet. And so there'll probably be interesting expansion opportunities for U.S. companies in other geographies, the same way that some European companies are excited to expand to the U.S. Exactly. Very cool. Zoom out a little bit. I'm curious, even if it's stuff that isn't in the purview of Energize, are there other companies or even other investment firms that you just really like and are inspired by outside of the purview of the stuff that you focus on day to day? What is the most interesting to you in climate tech and energy?

Katie:

Yeah, I think what's super exciting for me is just to see the enthusiasm around working in the space. New York Climate Week was a couple weeks ago. We had some folks from our team out there, and everyone was shocked by how much bigger it was and how many people that they talked to that had been working in climate for months. Right. So like it's a magnet for people to come and work in this space, which is exciting, you know, and we need it all. We need it all. We need to solve these problems today. We're on the clock here. And so bring him in. We really want to scale up the technologies that we have today for us. That's really important. That's why we focus on software so much. We have technologies today. Let's get those things scaled because, you know, greenhouse gases reduced today are much more valuable than ones reduced in 10 years. And so how can we come together today and solve this big climate challenge that we all have?

Nick:

e right. Can't just wait till: 2040

Katie:

Yes. And again, that's one of the main reasons that we focus on software is because that is something we can do today. When we make our software investments, the companies have to have revenue. They have to have customers. The thing has to be working because we really want to help them scale and take off and help these industries grow and transition more quickly.

Nick:

Yeah. And I'm curious, given that you've kind of lived and worked through a couple waves of different excitement about clean tech and climate tech. Obviously, there's always some cyclicality in markets, but to me, it definitely feels like, you know, this wave is fundamentally different than past waves. But having not lived through it myself, I'd be curious to pose that question to you. Like, does it feel fundamentally different this time, as folks sometimes say?

Katie:

Absolutely. No, it feels quite different. And we have a couple of things that we point to as to main differences between Cleantech 1.0 and where we're at with climate tech today. One of the main differences is that the costs have come down on the hardware so much. And so you know how you now have assets like the renewables, wind and solar, batteries, EVs, where the cost of the hardware and the assets themselves are now at cost parity with existing assets. So that's a complete game changer and one that really drives the adoption that we need to have happen today. And the adoption really then showcases why now is the time for clean tech to take off and for these industries to scale. Another big difference that we see is that you have corporates leading the way. You didn't have corporate commitments the first time around, and so now you have large companies leading the way, whether that's with their purchase of renewable energy, their commitment to actually build the electric vehicles themselves and to not be building ICE cars anymore, or their carbon neutrality commitments. Having that corporate sector really lead the way is a big difference. And this just creates a great opportunity for us as investors, right? It feels like a generational transformation. And for us to energize this means that investing in software can really unlock massive scale.

Nick:

I definitely agree with you, even though I didn't personally work through some of the other waves of clean tech excitement, that it does feel very fundamentally different in this respect, where it seems like a lot of people want to work on this stuff. Fundamentally, they want to tie their career to impact. There's, as you said, a lot more private sector excitement about it. And as we talked about a little bit, there's fundamentally very different public sector support for it. I would still be curious to hone in on what were some of the key pitfalls, perhaps, in the cleantech 1.0 period that you would still caution companies that you work with to avoid? What are some lessons that we learned from that first wave that we can carry forward into this wave?

Katie:

From the venture perspective, particularly, choose your cost of capital carefully. Venture is a great source of capital for certain things. Typically, funds are on a 10-year horizon, so that means you need to invest at exit within a 10-year horizon. So for technologies that are deeper tech or more moonshot-y, maybe venture capital is not the right source of capital for you. For building a solar manufacturing plant, for example. It's not a good use of funds there. And so really matching up the source of capital with the need and what you're trying to accomplish over what time horizon.

Nick:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I also think, like, I always come back as a communications practitioner, like, the communication around, like, if you say that you're going to hit a certain capacity by a certain date, being very judicious about the way that those things are communicated and announced, because something that can start to engender a little bit of discomfort, whether from investors or other stakeholders is when timelines start to shift or costs that are passed through to electricity customers start to shift. I mean, that's always good practice, but something I think about a lot too.

Katie:

Yeah, absolutely.

Nick:

that if we look ahead to say,: 2030

Katie:

At a very basic level, right, we're investors, so we're here to deliver outsized returns to our investors. That's kind of our North Star. We, of course, have a number of metrics that we track, like raising and deploying capital, revenue growth within the portfolio, how the companies are growing, adding new portfolios to the company. But when I think about success in the longer term, you know, it's really about how do we scale Energize as a firm for the future so that we are here to invest in companies at the venture stage, at the growth stage, and whatever's coming next for decades to come. So that includes successful growth in the companies, that includes happy LPs who will then continue to invest in us. Here at Energize, we have an internal ethos of putting our team first. And so we think that if we take care of each other and we take care of our team here at Energize, we can then all turn around and make good investments and help those companies scale. And then when the companies scale and are successful, that will take care of our LPs and then they will reinvest in Energize and it becomes this flywheel, and that's how we know that we're being successful. And then of course, as you can imagine, accelerating the energy transition and pulling a ton of carbon out of the sky. Super important as well.

Nick:

Yeah, no, I love that perspective. We talk about sustainability from kind of a green or emissions-based perspective so often, but for me, it's really also a question of like, how do you keep yourself, whether you're an individual working in climate or an individual just living in this world or a company, how do you keep yourself in the game for the long haul. And that's about a lot more than just like doing the actual emissions reduction work. It's also about am I actually working in a way that's exciting and sustainable and is making good on my commitments to various stakeholders. Broadening that perspective of what sustainability really means is something that I've started to think about more.

Katie:

Yeah, it's super important. We spend a lot of time at work and doing our work. And so let's make sure that we’re impactful and doing right by people. And, you know, we're having fun and having the impact that we want to have on our lives.

Nick:

Yeah, as much as we did say that emissions reductions in the next few years are super important, we don't always have to burn ourselves out in pursuit of that. It is also equally, actually probably more impactful that we all continue to work on this for the long haul and do it in a way that's super aligned.

Katie:

That's exactly right.

Nick:

All right, well, Katie, thanks so much. This has been an excellent conversation. Towards the tail end here, I'd be curious for folks who are listening in, you've already named a lot of excellent places that already both have a bunch of great solutions that are helping tackle challenges in decarbonization. And you've identified some that you're keen to look into more. But where are some places that you would just encourage folks to look deeper, potentially investigate if they're interested in working for climate tech companies? I'm sure that just looking at Energize list of portfolio companies is a good place to start, but I won't put the cart before the horse.

Katie:

Yeah, no, visit our website. We've got our job board on there. Most of our companies are hiring. And it's fun for us to see the team gets approached by people from all sorts of different sectors and walks of life that now have had success elsewhere and want to bring their skills and talent to climate. And so we're constantly fielding calls from people that we know or haven't met before that reach out to us. And they're like, hey, how do I get into climate? So we've got a job board of all of our open positions at our portfolio companies. And they'll look a lot like jobs at other companies, right? They don't necessarily have to be climate jobs. A lot of them are in how do you build and scale sales teams? How do you run financial operations for a company, right? Those are skill sets that we can bring in from other sectors. And we need that expertise, right? If we want these companies to successfully grow and scale, we need the expertise of folks that have done it in other places.

Nick:

Yeah, I think that's a great reminder. Folks can sometimes get a tiny bit discouraged or just cautious if they're like, well, I don't really have like environmental science background or I'm not an engineer. I'm like, well, you know, all of these companies still need super excellent marketers and salespeople and even HR people.

Katie:

Yeah, we need HR people. We need all the people to help these businesses grow and scale across the board.

Nick:

And for folks that are just keen to, and you also mentioned that you all have done a lot of deep dives on different kind of sectors within electrification and decarbonization. Are there resources like that that folks can use to kind of educate themselves and dig deeper on what might be interesting to them?

Katie:

Yeah, we publish a lot of our research. We have our Electrify Everything deep research report. We publish that. We've got another one that we call 10 Ways to Win in Climate Software that kind of highlights how working in climate is different than scaling a traditional software company. There are nuances to either the customer base or the sales cycles, or these companies grow in different ways. And so we outline, you know, again, 10 ways to win in climate software. We've got all of that on our website at energizecap.com. But yeah, and you can reach out to us on LinkedIn, visit the website, check us out. We've got a lot of resources that we'd like to publish stuff because it's such a new and growing space. We want to bring everybody in under the tent.

Nick:

Fantastic. Yeah, I'm excited to spend some time with those myself over the holidays. Well, in any case, thanks so much for making the time. I'm excited to check in again in six months or a year, and we can do some reflection on the things that we predicted or talked about this time and probably talk about fundamentally different stuff too. But yeah, much appreciated.

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