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Geology Meets Deep Tech - Danielle Bennett · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hey folks, today we have a really unique guest on Planet Geo.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Danielle Bennett.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: She is not a geoscientist, as we talked about in the intro, but she is working at a startup company that I've been talking to quite a bit recently, and she works a lot with geoscientists, and she brings a really interesting perspective on venture capital, deep tech, fundraising, etc., from her prior experiences.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is also a bit of a window into my entrepreneurship or geoscience entrepreneurship class here at Penn State that students are taking actively right now.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: I am interviewing people like Danielle and John Stock and people like this who are in this entrepreneurship space and using this in the classroom.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Danielle and people like uh Danielle are also joining us in class afterwards, after students listen to this podcast.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you're kind of getting a partial window into our class, our geoscience entrepreneurship class, and you're getting to follow along a little bit over the course of this semester.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, with that, Danielle Bennett coming at you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Ow, you type fast.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Holy cow.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's impressive.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I do that comes from.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's incredible.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: I um I heard a uh well, okay, let's just dive in.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Danielle Bennett, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining me.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm uh I'm excited to have this conversation.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having us.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having us.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is gonna be a fun conversation.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, just as I as I said this in the intro, but you're not a geologist, you're not a geoscientist by training, but you've you've talked to a lot of us now at this point in time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you'll provide some really interesting frameworks around uh around that and also entrepreneurship and funding generally.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really excited about this conversation, but we kind of always like to start out with a little bit personal questions here.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, what got you into entrepreneurship or venture capital or funding?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: What what what got you into the space that you're in?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not the job you're in, but the space initially.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I always start by having to kind of give credit where credit is due.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: My parents were entrepreneurs.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: My dad's a metallurgist.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: He started a company um when I was a baby.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I kind of grew up around very much more of an entrepreneurial space.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I actually grew up thinking that everyone's parents were entrepreneurs.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember being like, oh yeah, like, doesn't everyone's parents have like crazy work hours?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And do so that was that was my normal.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then so when I went to college, I started a company.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was just like, yeah, everyone does this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is not hard.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of the status quill.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I heard about venture capital for the first time.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: My parents had kind of bootstrapped their business for a long time again, uh, an engineering firm.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um, when I went to college, I went to NYU in the business school and heard so much about, you know, alternative forms of financing for early stage companies.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, what do those things need?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think my parents know about it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, they were kind of like the pinnacle of entrepreneurship for me.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, and also I just kind of grew up in a community of entrepreneurs.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: That is really cool.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: I and it's amazing, it's always amazing, you know, that that I don't know when that realization hit for me that everybody's not a teacher because my parents are both public school teachers, you know, um uh in Michigan.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so at some point you're like, oh wait, some people do other things, you know.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, it was probably like you know, high school or college.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't really know what those other things were.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we just kind of inherit, especially for for parents who are, you know, that we have good relationships with.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's so interesting.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: So um that okay, so Stern, is it Stern's or Stern's?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I always with no S on no second S.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: So uh NYU Stern, you um can you give us like uh the maybe the major mile markers in your career from from there uh to here?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you said you started a business in college.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: What was that?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I did, I did.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh alcoholic, like medical illiteracy.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the entire concept was being able to provide people in underserved markets, like uh markets that are inaccessible, access to medicine with access to that medicine.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it was partnering with pharmaceutical companies and as well as ground and field uh workers.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So typically those were sometimes they were churches, sometimes they were global nonprofits to help in the distribution of that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: You could argue like I had no business being in that space.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think retroactively, I I think, I think that's the case.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what undergrad has any business starting anything, you know?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but why not?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta do it, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta start somewhere.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's awesome.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, very cool.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it started in a in a class.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a similar class to the one that you're teaching, it sounds like.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was all around like social impact, um, like combining that with the finance degree that I was in and just trying to figure out different ways of um utilizing the knowledge that we have about business building for social need.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was like, this shouldn't just be an idea.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like if this is a problem and no one's solving it, why can't I solve it?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or at least why can't I attempt to solve it?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was, I think, uh, you'll maybe talk about risk later, but I think my my high tolerance for risk really started to pan out there.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: There.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so that, okay, from there.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: So did you work on this after college for a job, or or was it kind of during college figured out and you're like, ah, okay, this isn't gonna work for whatever reason.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, so move on to something else, a real job after college.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: The latter.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And my parents, even though they're entrepreneurs, were kind of just like, yeah, what are you, what are you doing?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: The great thing though about me starting a company is that I learned about the world of VC.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I learned around about debt financing in a broader sense.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I learned about kind of a lot of the other things that I ended up starting to be a capital facilitator for later in my career.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, ended that company, went to go work in kind of the corporate finance space in New York City, as kind of one does.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I went from there to the tech space, which typically doesn't happen.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: What is the corporate finance space?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: For for those of us who did not go to college and with aims at at you know Wall Street, what does that look like for what people have a stereotype in their mind of what that is?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not sure if that maps onto your experience.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I bet it at least in somewhat does.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so my undergrad major, I was in New York for a year, then London for a year, then China for six months.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I flew back from China mid-semester to go to one of those long uh interview cycles that happens uh before you can get the internship.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's kind of like very well known in the finance space that there is typically like one or two weeks that every uh big finance firm, so bank banks as well as other corporate finance entities, I was at BlackRock, um, that they're all hiring all their interns in one slew.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you're typically interviewing sometimes seven to ten times in a day just to try to figure out, okay, like which firm do I want to be a part of?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And also like what are the things that I want to learn?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I did that switch, I think, more so because of the first time and maybe the last time in my life where I uh was a part of peer pressure, where I was like, Yeah, I think I should be a part of this kind of corporate finance machine.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am making it business for that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, I want to know what I don't want to be a part of.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard I I know this is a thing in business, like an MBA, uh, you know, uh when people are getting kind of graduate degrees in some way, but I did not know that this was the same kind of thing when you're in a business school as an undergrad.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same kind of vibe.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're you're aiming for an internship, you do that in the summer, then you go back to school, with and and the ideal is that you get hired by whoever you intern for, basically.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's idiot.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's really a job interview.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so typically what they say is that by the summer of your junior year, you kind of know at least like the next maybe four to five years of your life.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you land the right internship, big quotes on the right internship, then that should lead to a job.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's the first few years of your analyst career right there.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I I went and I was not interested in it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, having done entrepreneur being an entrepreneur before, I'd had a very it was a big switch to kind of um go from seeing the influence and impact of my work to not necessarily seeing that and just a larger um machine.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted to go back to tech and I ended up in fintech, which I think was the kind of like blending of both worlds.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, define fintech for those, for the listeners who uh for the especially the geologists listening to this.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, of course.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, it's just like where finance meets technology.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of um uh banking apps now I think are kind of participating in fintech.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one good example that maybe is uh more broadly used is like uh Robinhood is a fintech app.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of uh technology that helps you manage your finances and or that helps you maybe make more money or understand your finances better.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that kind of thing.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is Venmo the old school version of fintech maybe?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the new transactional mechanisms that okay, cool.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you went into that yeah, payment rails, all that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: You went into that from the company building side or from the investor side?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: From the company building side.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up, you know, doing I was in New York City and I was uh poor because I was a student and I was just trying to figure out exactly what I was interested in.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, funnily enough, some of the people that I'd um either worked with or I'd uh talked to when I ran my company, they were in the venture capital space.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was also a part of the NYU larger entrepreneurship ecosystem.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd met a lot of people just trying to run my company.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, they were like, yeah, this whole thing in tech is doing this, and this is fintech.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I was in the bubble of school at that time at Stern, it wasn't cool for you to work in startups.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was not cool.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was the traditional path was for you to kind of go the corporate finance route or the banking route.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would, I had I had been really lucky to have met those people really early at my time at school.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I went back and I was like, oh, what else are you guys doing in funding?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the companies that they'd funded was this fintech company um called Bond Street.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I went there, I went to a few other companies in the space, again, just trying to learn, trying to understand what I wanted to do.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I graduated, um, and the in the entire time while I was at school, I had a job, two or three of them, just trying to figure out just hustling what I was interested in.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Making money, paying rent, all those types of things.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But also learning, learning as much as I could about product building, which was what I really cared about, and also about like how do companies function, how do they work?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: What are alternative ways of keeping them alive?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how I parlayed into venture.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I went around the world a couple of times with that venture capital job, but yeah, I was in venture for like five and a half, six, six years.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd like to come back to the venture, um, the venture side and talk and the fundraising.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: You threw out a bunch of terms that I want to kind of come back and cut and cover.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, could we could we move forward?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because now you're working for a company, and our connection point is this company that you're working for.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that in our our our conversations, I know that you talk to a lot of geologists and geoscientists broadly, and you've been doing it long enough where I'm sure you have a pretty good perspective on us as a community.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm curious what your thoughts are.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it and you know, the origin of my questions are a bit critical, I would say, of our community in the kind of company building space because I think it's it's well documented that geologists and geoscience uh we don't have the entrepreneurship vibe or the entrepreneurship like vein that other sciences have, biotech or engineers, you know, other people coming out of college out of the sciences, hard sciences, we don't produce companies at the same rate that others do.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I and that so for me it's like a interesting.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm interested in the outsiders' view of our community a little bit and what your your take is.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what also what attracted you to this space to sort of build a company that's geoscience adjacent, at least.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I know it's a big wide open question.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Take it wherever you want.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's okay.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and I'll answer the second part of it first.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, what attracted me to this space?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really a person, my friend Christy, Christy Kapper, um, who hopefully you all will meet at another time.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we've been friends since living in um Berlin and Germany at the same time together.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I could kind of maybe uh build that bridge to like how I even got to Germany.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the main thing was I I moved there for a job in Venture Capital.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was really interested in trying to uh find VC firms that were willing to kind of take higher bets, especially in spaces that are now retroactively.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Does hire mean bigger numbers or bigger risk?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Or what what does hire mean?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Take higher typically for me what I meant was more risk.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also, and and by that I mean like it's not a traditional B2B or business-to-business software as a service model, um, which has been a little bit more modeled from a returns perspective, also from a financing perspective.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So like how this company could stay afloat.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think the B2B SaaS model has definitely more um case studies as to like what works, what doesn't work, why.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of other industries don't have that, including in, I'd say in the geology and geosciences space, but also in in more asset heavy.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: You're not building software that you sell into some other company, you're not building financial software that you sell to, you know, Geico or whatever.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're you're uh Exactly.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing something different from outside of that, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, all right.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: So so that you met Christy and and Christy was the this is interesting.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't actually know the story.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is very interesting to me.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you met Christy.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is such an exercise in relationships.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've highlighted multiple times how your relationships are the most important sort of uh they're they're providing you some direction.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, linchpin, that's a great word for it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so Christy was the origin of getting into this space.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and what was it about those conversations?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like what was it that convinced you, or was it just trust in Christy?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like you trusted her, so therefore you were interested.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like actually, not a hundred percent, though I do trust Christy a hundred percent.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure, yeah, sure.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: The the the main um kind of I think glue that brought all of these ideas together for me was and retroactively, I didn't even realize the irony of like my parents running a company for multiple decades that worked in water quality and wells and understanding of groundwater for literally multiple decades.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I and is that really what they were doing?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Me or my yeah, they did so much work in that space, especially at the end.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: The business was focused on on groundwater and water quality management for municipalities.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it means none of my siblings wanted to be a part of that business.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, I never realized the irony of me then want being like, this is such a great company.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't I want to work at this space and subsurface mapping?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, Christy was was great at kind of highlighting the challenges that she saw.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then we just started riffing off of new areas, like new places for this space to go, this space kind of being the geology, geosciences space, the subsurface mapping space more broadly.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was really interested in building something that for people that potentially are not necessarily as uh tech enthused, but could be really could really benefit from this space.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why we've been talking to so many geologists and hydrogeologists and civil engineers, just to try to get a sense of like, okay, so what is the habit?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: What are the habits that you've currently formed with what tools?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then what are the different ways that you could we could incentivize people to potentially want to switch up to a new tool?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if there is no incentive that works, that's helpful information too.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I've met I've met so many geologists and geoscientists that I've I've fawned things.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: So so I uh I I have okay, oh man, two different tracks that we could go down.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do the let's do the geoscience one first and kind of stay on task with that one.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, what is your perspective on geoscientists?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I know you're you're working with uh you you know you liaise with with government people, but you've talked to so many of us now.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: What's your just one-sentence summary, and it can be critical uh or not of the field of geoscientists?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: What's the what's our vibe like?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to think of it in one sentence.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very friendly, typically non-confrontational, highly opinionated.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, interesting.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: I like that end-that's interesting.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was expecting you to put in like a traditionalist or something like that, or or sort of steeped in traditions and legacy.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: That no, that's really interesting.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I I I can appreciate that.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think that I think that matches.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: We're like broadly friendly uh group of people.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um incredibly friendly, I find, especially because it's such a communal, it can be a very communal industry because you kind of see the same people over and over again from a public agency perspective.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: People don't necessarily change jobs every year to two years.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you see the same people over and over again over at conferences and events and and what have you.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: So there's so many ways of building also that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So once you find the nodes of where they yeah, of where they commune, there's so many ways that I think that you could just get a better sense of how they work together, what data they do share with each other, what data they don't, how best practices are created, why there aren't that many best practices, which I I find really, really fascinating.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: But again, that I think comes back to the highly opinionated part.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I know you've experienced some of the opinionated uh things, probably including myself.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, one of the frustrations, and I have nothing but uh an appreciation for you and Christy, but um one of the frustrations for me is that companies like the one you're working on are created by people like you, meaning engineers and finance and serial entrepreneurs and sort of people out of finance, not geoscientists as much.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think part of it is just natural, that's just the way it is, and part of it is kind of cultural issues within the geosciences for that.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Have you detected any maybe hurdles or um cultural things that if fixed would allow or would incentivize geoscientists to to be on the founding team of something like you know, deep earth, like you're working on now, in addition to the necessary engineering and entrepreneurial background?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or is there something holding us back, I guess, that that is kind of cultural that you've picked up on?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because I a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about this, but I I'm not sure which one's right.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Right, I mean I assume that there's we don't know that the sample size of anyone that's that's provided uh data back yet, but I would say being somewhat underqualified to answer this question has just a bit in such a period of time.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: But but my my opinion is that there's a push for excellence in this field that's that's really laudable because of course so many things happen when you when you're not absolutely excellent.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And by that I mean like a level of perfection that is somewhat required, of course, in different areas of the sciences and different areas of the engineering field.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like if something happens, if a civil engineer provides information that may be somewhat inaccurate in some capacity, there's not just a margin of error that kind of pops up on a screen that says 404, you can't compute.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes a bridge breaks, or some level of infrastructure, I think, doesn't work as well.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there's a there's a there's a level of perfection that sometimes may be a barrier to entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship is filled with imperfections and filled with, you know, so many people just kind of being like, well, we have as much as we can, you know, like we we have as much as as we're able to make an educated decision from.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: I've never thought of that plus that's a really maybe one other thing, but yeah.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: No, go ahead, go ahead.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: The the other thing that I I have thought about, especially as you asked me this question, uh, outside of the kind of high, high barrier uh that they have for themselves, I think that there's also a multidisciplinary aspect to things that could be really valuable.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so to the kind of point that we were talking about earlier in terms of like uh being highly opinionated, it makes sense that a lot of geologists and civil engineers and hydrogeologists are very opinionated.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times they work on similar uh areas or regions of the world of geography for years at a time.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so they potentially are be experts on certain areas in the world.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there's maybe two of them.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's them and this other guy, and they know that person.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there's and there's kind of no other person that has the level of depth of expertise that they do, and and that is quite clear, right?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: We also don't have interesting points.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So so sometimes it's like, I know this and you know this other thing, but it's like, but I don't, I won't be an expert if I go from this thing to thousands of other things or to a scale past me.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: These are two um ideas, theories, maybe that I have not.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: That I've haven't heard before, and I think this is I could put some thought into these, but the regionality, like how locally unique each geological thing is, how different, you know, an Ockford, New York from Texas or whatever, that breeds a little bit of like maybe empire building is the wrong word, but such like local knowledge and and uh such a local focus, maybe that's really interesting.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I gotta think that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's a well answered, Danielle.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate that.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so uh how how do you view then let's uh take it the other direction, the other prong here, and go into a little bit more of the kind of deep tech, I guess, or and and maybe if I I'll frame it from the my view a little bit, which you'll have a much better answer, I'm sure, and a much different view.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: But my view is I think that you know we move from this software, tech, you know, people building Facebook or people building software, which is kind of go quick, fail fast.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: If it doesn't work, figure it out quickly, iterate really, really quickly.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're shifting into, I don't know, people have called the deep tech or whatever, something that it takes uh years and a billion, many billions of dollars to build something for the defense industry or a mine, for instance.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we're moving into this, there's a big sort of shift there.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, the the deep tech is like geoscience.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's where we live.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like building a geothermal power plant, you know, that's going down to super hot temperatures, that's a big ask and is a decade project with a ton of money going into it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna fail fast quickly there.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: That seems like a massive shift, but I don't really know from what's your view on this from your world, from your your viewpoint and your experience.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I also just want to kind of start by define at least my definition of what deep tech even entails because I feel like sometimes sometimes they're just like, and another thing.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, I don't I'm not sure.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: But but my my definition or at least like if I could ask with some examples, Danielle, that people might know, like have heard about or or sort of seen the news if you if you could, of what that might look like.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'll I'll try to try to find some.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um my definition uh typically goes to either an asset-heavy business, you know, as you talked about, uh Jesse.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh geothermal power plant being an example here.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of amazing companies that are are doing work in this space.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's uh like asset heavy spaces.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So typically maybe it's they run hardware, um or they are in the manufacturing space in in some adjacent capacity, but they also typically, you know, or sorry, make the chips.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So they manufacture not just the physical hardware that sometimes is off the shelf, but then also the chips and and whatever software that needs to be alongside that hardware to allow for that hardware to function and take whatever task.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Asset heavy in this instance means like it takes a long time and a lot of money to build whatever it is you're gonna do.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that the diff difference that or you you need a lot of money to buy it?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you uh typically at least like the first part of what you just said.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So most times it's a space that takes a lot of upfront capital and it can also take quite a lot of time.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, most times people believe that like money equals scale.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so they said, okay, if I give you, instead of$100 million, if I give you$500 million, will that speed up your timeline 5x?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's I think some of the the case studies that we're starting to build today as we enter into deep tech more stably, I'd say, from the first few years of us being like, oh yeah, we'll do this um cool hardware company that, you know, maybe is a personal robot in the house to now I think we're building defense tech at scale and and doing things like Cobalt uh is a good example company for this, or like the uh mining company that, you know, um had multiple millions of dollars being invested into it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would even argue that like Rivian is a good example of this too, like the EV company.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hundreds of millions of dollars from everyone from Ford invested in them to Amazon, to so many huge, not just um VC firms, but also corporate venture capital firms or CVCs, spend a lot of time and energy investing into those spaces because they believe that it is going to be a habit switch.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a trend that will not just be specific to a certain locale, but they believe that there's like a complete habit switch, a trend that's changing an entire landscape in the US, but probably they're seeing some things, some kind of markers abroad of that habit also changing.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll be like, okay, it makes sense for us to invest in this asset up front so that we can own it.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe we can find some software solutions that are a lot like lift that we can sell on top of it.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that part, and then yeah, there's one other part of the definition that I say is tech solutions, depending on like they're solving more scientific or engineering problems, is typically what sits in deep tech.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it's not just software, it's not a bunch of people sitting in a closet writing a bunch of code.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually like technology in the broader sense.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I have this, I mean, I'm of the generation that the Facebook generation is stuff.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: So tech was always software, like tech means software in Silicon Valley, right?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that technology shift of, hey, you know, we need a new type of drill bit to get down.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's the tech.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: That that is the deep part, maybe.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a good example of again keeping it geoscience focused a bit?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it would be like even the fact that we're solving problems for engineers.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and definitely, you know, it doesn't have to always be hardware.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like uh the company that I'm working on right now, I would classify it in the deep tech space, even though we are uh software focused, but we help or support people that are building hardware, that are solving more complex problems in the geoscience space.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And thus I think it um it is not necessarily as easy as I have solved a problem for this one person.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you$500,000 more dollars, and now you can solve the same problem for 5,000 more people.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have that exact one-to-one scale that like maybe a fintech platform could have, but it's typically like it has a higher impact when done well.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times there's there's some sort of infrastructure impact.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why it's kind of tech solutions depending on like solving on scientific and engineering problems, which I think have a broader universal impact than maybe a fintech tool.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you said, you know, before we record that, you you have uh, you know, additional thoughts on this deep tech space.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm I'm maybe well, I'm curious what those thoughts are and what your viewpoint of it is, and maybe if you could after well, get let's start there, and then I might ask you to to sort of rank order geoscience sub dis geoscience spaces within deep tech that are interesting to you uh for the students.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like what should they be paying attention to?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, thoughts on deep tech, Danielle.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, I I would say like w when I first started, first started, it was like five years ago, but when I first got into kind of the venture capital space, this wasn't a term that was even around.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't coined.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And especially deep tech investing at the early stages of VC, so pre-seed, seed round, convertible nodes, safes, people weren't really investing this early.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was very much kind of like a revenue share joint venture game or private equity.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the people that invested in hardware and physical spaces and retail and areas that I think have overlaps with deep tech today, supply chains, manufacturing.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we're seeing the aperture of who is interested in investing in deep tech widen.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing capital go earlier into the deep tech space, which I think is really exciting because now we get to fund IP spin-outs of universities.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're funding at a higher rate, I'd say, um, also scientists and people that maybe are part of more traditional institutions like a public agency, and saying, like, hey, what are the challenges that you're seeing here?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Would you be willing, you know, or interested in kind of starting a company that does this work?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, interesting.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Not just kind of being a part of like an entrepreneurship sort of space.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: So there's there's uh people going kind of uh the funding entities, whether those are people or venture cut funds or or or what did you say, seat seat uh corporate venture funds.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um they're going in being proactive and going into like the university infrastructure and intellectual property and kind of pulling it out, dragging it out a little bit more than they used to.
• 30:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like what when I was at my last couple of funds, I worked with offices inside of universities.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: The name slips my my mind right now, but offices inside of universities that literally were doing spin-outs.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Corporate development or whatever, commercialization offices.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and and there were more and more universities.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: U U of M has a great program.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it has like maybe three or four different programs inside of the university that work with professors or with postdocs to be like, hey, like, do you have any ideas?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you can retain your IP.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is also how you can spin out a company if you want.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there's more investors doing that work too.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a big uh that's good to hear because I think that's a inside of universities that's becoming a big shift too, as everybody tries to get more more societally relevant really quickly.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And some universities do it exceptionally well and have for a very long time, and and many are less uh they're more you know focused on patents, is patents and licensing patents and less on helping startups get spun out and helping, you know, matchmaking science with entrepreneurial types or whatever.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that's cool to hear.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm interested.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: I uh curious to know more about that.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: But um Yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and sorry, I'll also just say a lot of universities, if they don't have those programs that are already built out, there another thing alongside these VC firms going earlier and being interested in more quote unquote higher risk spaces, like in the deep tech space um and in defense more broadly, sometimes as well, is that there's also some incubators and support or entrepreneur support organizations that are popping up that just focus on um asset heavy businesses in hardware.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a few in New York City that are doing some interesting things.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's programs like IndieBio that are, I think, are supporting on the healthcare front of things, especially if it's a therapeutic or something.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's also even like programs that are working across multiple universities, like Nucleate, that are saying, like, hey, undergrad students, if you have, if you want to be a part of entrepreneurship, here's a way to do it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: So uh even if your university doesn't do it, there's there's ways forward.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's very cool.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's that's a that's a bit of um incentive for undergrads or students listening to this.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um amongst the geosciences, I would say, and I'll I'll list just a couple that come to mind for me, but for deep tech stuff, we mentioned geothermal energy, mining, I think is kind of like deep tech mostly, most of the mining like startups are new ideas there.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what other ones come to mind for you that are kind of geoscience related deep tech fields or subdisciplines?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and which of them are interesting to you?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Or should would you advise students to kind of pay attention to this space, you know?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are like almost separate questions for me.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, because I I would say um like groundwater, for example, is really interesting to me.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I still don't fully have a grasp on how groundwater can consistently be seen as something to be backed by venture capital.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh shallow geothermal heating and cooling makes perfect sense.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Can you elaborate on that point?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Why not?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um this is maybe like a broader point that hopefully we can discuss at at further length.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe that there are certain spaces in venture capital that that people can that people have the ability of modeling the returns for a little bit easier.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the customer acquisition cycle is a little bit more um consistent and structured.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe even more importantly, there's a there's a very good understanding of who the users are, how they'll pay, and um that they can pay consistently.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's not like a whole bunch of bureaucratic structures.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: In in groundwater, as one example, uh a lot of times the people that manage groundwater systems, as well as um uh how and in what way we pay for groundwater is through public agencies.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are not necessarily as quote easy of a user base for from a payment perspective as let's say a um private company would be.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's maybe less layers of bureaucracy um and or it just kind of like less time that it may take for you to convert a public agency than, you know.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that complexity means that the the the potential funders of businesses in that space can't model any can't model outcomes very accurately.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: So they just kind of stay away from it.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: They say we're not investing in broad order because it's too complicated, we can't accurately evaluate the risks involved here or model outcomes.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, interesting.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and or they don't, they don't, they're not taking the time to understand it because they're like, okay, I could do that, but there's hundreds of other spaces that are way more easily modeled, understood, and I could grasp it.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's also just kind of like a um you're you're understanding exactly where your economies of scale could even potentially come from.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you're outlining, hey, okay, that's not this the space, at least not right now.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can't figure that space out right now.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: But but shallow geothermal heating and cooling has a little bit more uh, I think a grasp.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um it has a little less red tape around it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so people I think are way more interested.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to your point, like materials and metals, like the um excavation of that, as well as like the identification of where those sit, um, is definitely like very interesting from a nationwide perspective in the US right now.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there is a lot more mandates in the US for that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's pushing private investment there.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also we know that we have kind of like a data-centered demand and and race for so many things that require those materials and metals, so and minerals.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's so many people that are spitting up companies that can help support that like larger nationwide effort.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would continue to say that renewable energy is is a space that is really interesting to so many people, whether it's from um offshore uh wind, an understanding of subsea cabling and spaces there.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I still find a lot of those spaces really, really important um and really valuable, especially because you know, we're dependent on it as a uh as a nation.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're dependent on our telecommunications that are typically laid below the sea.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're dependent on on so many other spaces here, um, even if we don't have as much grant funding and subsidies that we used to at the nationwide level.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: But you're still saying upticks.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: I saw I think it was a McKinsey report about you know um alternative energy or renewable energy investing actually has been going up, you know, substantially despite um the current administration's sort of pullback from incentives, uh government incentives.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of you know, the ship has sailed because of the private industries you get is serious about it and uh and support.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't really matter what the government does on this anymore.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which is interesting.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And demand is just high, you know, like utility bills are skyrocketing skyrocketing.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there has to be other ways, I think, of people um supporting themselves.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, from a on the grid is equals better.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: More than just on the on the grid.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: VPPs unite.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, so I you you've uh man, I want I want to be cognizant of time here, but I do want to cover a little bit of the funding side.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you outlined a couple terms that maybe I'll just ask you to define a few of them.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: You said I think your parents bootstrap their company.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: What does that quickly bootstrap mean?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um okay, you want to do all the words and then I can define the words.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh boot, I want bootstrap, I want um private equity, I want venture capital, uh, let's see, debt finance, and rank those in order of um or maybe define them and say what types of companies typically go this route, or some something a little extra tidbit about about each definition.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all right.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: So uh just going chronologically, Bootstrap typically means that you take like you you share no ownership with um any external entities.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's the most uh lay people's definition of it.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um most times also you take no additional financing.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: So no external entity can invest or has invested in that company.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um but sometimes the reason why I'm kind of like uh is sometimes you take debt.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you take debt.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: So so uh my grandfather's electrician's company was bootstrapped because he didn't go around and say, Hey, I want a hundred thousand dollars and I'll give you 10% of the company to anybody.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: He just said, Oh, I'll take money from customers and I'll use that to hire the next guy that I hire or something like that.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um debt financing, you said that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: What is debt financing?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there was um you you probably heard of like the Silicon Valley Bank sort of explosion of sorts a few years ago.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of their biggest like vehicles of financing early stage companies was a debt instrument, and it was something that kind of filled a gap where banks weren't able to provide debt financing because the company hadn't been around for long enough.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't have as as much revenue.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so most times banks need to see certain um certain metrics of kind of stability, and typically also would take at least like uh one or two things as collateral to ensure that you know they get their money back with interest.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I mentioned um Silicon Valley Bank just because they were a great kind of in-between, you know, they were a helpful in-between for so many early siege teams that couldn't get debt from maybe their local banks or maybe even nationwide banks, but also didn't want to sell part of their company, sell ownership and so go and say I'll take a loan from you, I'll pay you back with 6% interest.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: If I don't pay you back, you get the building I built or whatever, the the summary basic thing.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so I didn't know that.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Silicon Valley Bank was better at that or or did it differently than traditional banks for for startups.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, way more flexible.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I there were so many companies that I worked with that had at least a line of credit.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh right.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um SVB.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and there's a few companies that are coming in to kind of fill that gap, but uh it's it's it's somewhat still vital, especially to companies that um hold inventory, um, are in the kind of manufacturing spaces.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: When when you have so many um, you know, accounts payable, but the pay is not yet, you know, reached cash flow.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's so many you know, spaces where you're like, I just I still need to pay payroll and things like that.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so debt financing comes um in support there.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right, and then uh maybe private equity than venture capital, because we can spend more time on venture capital or something.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, sounds good.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh private equity, I'm definitely not an expert here, but um, it typically is around buyouts.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it's a later stage of a company's growth, but you also see a lot of uh private equity in middle market.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying a lot of VC terms is what I and and finance terms is what I realize.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't get out of the language to describe the language.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, but it's like like middle market uh companies.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So companies that are uh maybe just past them.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in pop shop, maybe they have uh 200, 300 employees, maybe sometimes as small as 100 employees, but they're doing steady revenues.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's sometimes, and especially if a private equity firm can come and you know, buy, acquire a whole bunch of companies that are in the same industry.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they do that and then figure out a way of you know consolidating all of the best practices, the learnings, the employees, any sort of assets, land or otherwise, into like a single vehicle.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then they figure out a way of kind of like allowing their one company to set the kind of best practices franchise model sort of wise for a whole bunch of companies.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: But private equity more broadly, uh, yeah, is is buying up sometimes bigger companies, and then most times it's like middle market companies, is what I've seen.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: They can also be really, really valuable.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'll kind of get back to kind of the geosciences space here.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: They can be incredibly valuable to support uh like a little bit later stage deep tech companies or asset heavy companies.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I worked with a private equity company when um working on a uh a wind company, an onshore wind company.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they were kind of one of the only capital providers to uh a little bit more of like a growth stage company that still needed additional financing.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't want to go public, they didn't want to go on the stock, the New York stock exchange or what have you.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they had steady revenue, but they needed a really large bucket of capital that maybe their bank could provide.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't want to do debt, but you know, there that's kind of the the void that a lot of times they fill is providing a boatload of money, typically for a for a boatload of ownership.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of times they do take management positions.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll maybe over time slowly phase out the existing management team or what have you, but ensure that the company stays afloat.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, gotcha.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's more.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, what is venture capital then from your view and the role that it serves?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so VC typically goes earlier stage.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely the kind of pre-seed stage is one of the earliest to be added to the kind of VC stack of like where in and what way people invest.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: So initially I feel like I heard more about seed stage investments, uh series A, series B, and then you know the letters continue as long as people are able to raise.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: The main thing is that venture capital um gives you money and um asks for a percentage of your company kind of as a transaction sort of service.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: There are lead and co-lead investors, and then there's follow-on investors.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the main thing I feel like to state here is that uh venture capital is a start of typically a relationship.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're not necessarily they're typically not trying to take over your company, which private equity typically is trying to take over your company.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And venture capital also uh should be an accelerant for your existing growth.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the only times when maybe it's um not saying like pour fuel on the fire and I want to see you blitz scale is at the pre-seed stage, which is like, okay, maybe you only have an idea, you have some early forms of traction.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you money to explore that idea.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: But at the seed stage, we'll have certain milestones that we hopefully hit, and then we can scale at a certain okay, interesting.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, I I have a couple maybe quick hitter questions here on this space.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what does decision making look like in the venture?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you're sitting there when you you spent adventure capital, when you're evaluating companies, what's the decision making process look like?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, we'll leave it at that.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's a good decision look like or a good uh a signal that says, yes, go, we're gonna invest in in this company?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh I was thinking about that.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely, I know that this is like the most annoying answer, but it depends.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the on the on the fund, on the fund size, on the geography.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: Most times if it's a it's a if it's an efficient flow, then it goes from an investor on the team, maybe you're an associate, or maybe the you you your first conversation is with a partner at a M VC firm, a general partner um or a managing partner or both.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you talk to that internal um investor at an institutional firm, also is something to just be clear about.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times at more quote, traditional firms, they have an internal committee or what's called an IC.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll go from you know, that first conversation, probably you'll you'll showcase uh as a founder, you'll show a deck at that initial conversation.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe there's two or three additional conversations with other members of the team.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: If the first person you meet is not that, is not the internal expert, uh, your field or industry, then they'll bring in that internal expert from the team.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so just kind of do a series of conversations.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to be over simplistic, I'll say that typically what we're trying to understand is why now is this an incredibly important problem that you're solving?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you the most important person to solve this problem?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what does scale look like?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: So presenting uh a product roadmap, uh team kind of certifications and an understanding of like your your long-term vision is really important to be able to say like, yes, I'm starting a company, but also this company will be big, you know.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: You typically don't read venture capital and you're like, I want this to be a two million dollar company.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I venture.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, that I like that, especially the the why now piece, I think is maybe often missed or or misunderstood.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that's great.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: What is uh what is what are some red flags or that are like, oh absolutely not, we're not touching this type of thing.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I know this is very fund dependent, and you know, uh every fund has different uh a different focus, right?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, so or typically.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: So what is a what are a couple red flags that you've seen?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not naming names, but like examples that you've seen that are like, oh yeah, that was a clear signal that we're not pursuing this further.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it's a red flag when you are unable to clearly state what your company does in the first five minutes of a conversation.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because hopefully I'm not wasting your time, you're not wasting my time, whether I'm the investor hat or the founder hat, what have you.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard other investors say within the first 30 seconds of a conversation, too.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: So just having a a very succinct way, not necessarily everyone talks about the elevator pitch.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think everyone needs the elevator pitch, but you need to be very clear exactly about like what it is you're building.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you go 30 minutes in a call and you're like, okay, so I think it's this and I think it does this, and that shouldn't typically happen.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I sometimes find that that's a reflection of the founders not having a very clear state of exactly what they're building.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh another maybe red flag is if you don't have an understanding of your numbers, like an understanding of like what traction looks like inside your company, what what you have today, what you're hoping for in the future, an understanding of kind of like what team you need to build that traction, you know, because if you're saying we're gonna get to X million dollars by X time period, but you have no plan that you've built to be able to get there, then it's kind of like that's fun.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a great story.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds great, yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is quite this is interesting.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: So so there's that.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe the last thing I'll say um is uh you meet so many kooky characters as founders, you know, because I I do think it's just such a crazy thing to be a founder, to take so much risk for uh what we don't know could be true in the future, and and also, you know, being okay and aware of the fact that you know this whole thing may fail and you still tried your best, you know, you really put yourself out there.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the last thing I'll say about like maybe a red flag is I've seen quite a few people and we could talk about this in so much lunch, but I've seen quite a few people say, Hey, we're gonna raise X amount of money, and it'll be like 15 million dollars.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh recently you you talked about like climate investing going up, but another thing that's like a trend of the current space is that you're seeing there's a lot of money going out, but it's in a consolidated number of companies.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: So way fewer companies are investing way more money.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hundreds uh change bit in the last couple of years.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's so many people that are seeing those numbers and saying, okay, five years ago I could raise 1.5 million at my seed.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to raise 7 million.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, a lot of people are getting, you know, it works for them and like more power to you because you have money that will keep you afloat for a longer, you know, burn rate.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that if you can't justify what you're using that money for and you can't justify why you need that money, then it kind of just seems a little bit of like a a red flag because you haven't put in the time to understand why do you need this cash?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like what are you what are you trying to understand?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sure is the thing that I feel like is really important.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's really okay, that's great.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh a good point.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, increase dollar amounts.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: So uh okay, I will wrap it up here with a last couple questions.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, Danielle.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what I'm curious about the uh personally, what what do you ever see yourself going back to the venture side um and and to the funding side as opposed to the builder side?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'm I'm obsessed with helping people live out dreams.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that is kind of what I was slightly put on this earth to do in some capacity.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, I would never say never.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: My friend and I started like an angel syndicate a a few years ago, and it kind of runs in the background by itself.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there's ways that I can continue to invest.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, you know, if it makes sense, I'll I angel invest.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: But um I do think that we're in a different time in venture, you know, from the consolidation of capital to also just kind of like what we're interested in investing in.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is a different space than the five years, six years ago or so when I, you know, started Inventure.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's still a really exciting space if you care about entrepreneurship and you care about trying to drive this world towards having better options for ourselves from a tech perspective, yeah, but also just an infrastructure perspective.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, geoscience is a great example of that, where it's like, yes, we we want an understanding of groundwater, we want an understanding of uh geothermal capacity, we want an understanding of uh our uh mineral um capacity or quantity below the surface.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we also need to like figure out tools to be able to support those people as they understand those things.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's so many spaces I think that deserve light and deserve capital and support to be able to support their research, especially if they want to turn those things into companies.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's just not always that commitment to slow capital, which I think sometimes is really necessary to do.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: People who are willing to give you some money and wait 20 years to see what see the city.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a bit of patient capital.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, patient capital.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's a good one.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: All right, one more question, then we'll get then I'll then I'll end with our our our traditional closing question.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: But what do your parents think of you now back in the groundwater space?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are they more like, oh, finally she's come home?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like we can talk to her about what she's doing now, or what do they think?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think my dad is still a little um perturbed, okay, to be honest.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, wow, you know, like I just sold my company, like you really could have been a part of it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like you could have taken it over.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like you had like, you know, a long you had 30, no, 27 years to do that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, sorry.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's funny.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then my mom, yeah, my mom's just happy that I'm happy.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: She's the best.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, she's really excited by this work.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, do you uh you mentioned siblings?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Are your siblings do they have the entrepreneurial bug as well?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh my sister does.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she works in music and she has she's an entrepreneur in her own right.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my other two brothers are uh like traders and developers, so uh more on the finance side.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: But everybody's in the space.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I love how that often happens.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: My wife's family is kind of similar.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: All the women, all the women are pursuing a career much along the same lines as their mom, and the the boys are doing kind of what dad did a little bit.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in some capacity, you know, it's like what we know, right?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a teacher in many ways, following my teacher parents.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we all end up being our parents in some way, shape, or form.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we rebel, yeah, we rebel for like however long, and then we're like, this is nice.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then we come back home.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's great.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, our traditional closing question here is uh, what has been your best day in your, we usually say in geology or geoscience, but in your field, what's been your best day?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or what does your ideal day look like as well, if you want to take it that direction?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: To your point about like meeting so many amazing geoscientists and um geologists in this like year and a half or so, um, I've been able to go to a few conferences where I've been able to kind of you know demo a little bit about what we're building and just trying to get insights.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like my best day has been when I'm able to, you know, meet people early on and just understand, like do as much user research as possible.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just understand, like, okay, like what are the challenges that you have today, not kind of push anything on them or kind of be like, hey, like this is what we're doing.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of just like, I just want to understand.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it does feel like a lot of people are just really excited to be like listened to in some capacity.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then from there, like demo something.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I had like a like a long conference day.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm probably in the minority where I'm like, I love conferences, but yeah, I like I like meeting people in person, understanding exactly what we're building, and then trying to help or validate, you know, internally that we're building something of value to a lot of different types of people, especially the ones that are like, I would argue are somewhat underserved in comparison to other demographics and industries.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a okay, that's a great answer.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like you, I love conferences.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some of the academic conferences are a bit tedious for right now because it's all uh it's a very sort of selfish endeavor.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: But I've been going to a couple more industry conferences and they're so fun.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: You're just meeting people, everybody actually wants to network, you know, they're wanting to learn.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a learning exercise.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: You just get to learn from from people and figure out you know what sucks in their life or or in their job.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's super interesting.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I agree with that.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you, Danielle.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: This has been a really fun.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, man, I wish we had more time.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: We could talk about so many other things.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll continue to get your perspectives offline and continue speaking your brain about stuff.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I really appreciate the time.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for uh being willing to.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm really excited to continue the conversation whatever way.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: I also feel like probably we should talk with the students about like different types of capital financing for early stage projects.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, happy to do anything.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: On that note, if uh for listeners of podcasts that are not in the class, um they can reach out to you on LinkedIn uh or any other uh any other avenues you want to ever point to, point people to if you get the best.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can even just do um research at deep talk tech.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, perfect.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: All right, cool.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Daniel.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nice to see you, Jesse.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right, fine.