Latest / Climate Cowboys / #291 Building Physical Infrastructure at the Speed of Software | Cole Ashman | Pila |

Transcript

#291 Building Physical Infrastructure at the Speed of Software | Cole Ashman | Pila | · Climate Cowboys

0:00
SPEAKER_01: We're reinventing the home battery by spreading it out throughout the home
0:03
SPEAKER_01: and you set it up and all of these different nodes throughout the house,
0:07
SPEAKER_01: they automatically recognize each other, they communicate over this mesh network.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: The average retail electricity rate has gone up by
0:15
SPEAKER_01: A whole home battery today is gonna cost like $15,000.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: About half of that is soft costs, installation, design, permitting, like BS.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Software is becoming so easy to Podcast number two.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Podcast number two.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me back.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, thanks for having us in your space.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: It's really cool here, man.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: You've got an upgraded space.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Probably not going to fit here too much longer either.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're already growing out of it,
1:06
SPEAKER_01: but the south-facing windows,
1:08
SPEAKER_01: wood floors, exposed brick, you know, it fits the vibe
1:11
SPEAKER_00: very well.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: It fits the vibe for now, yeah.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: So last episode was 253, and that came out July 2025.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: So a lot has happened since July.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: It's coming up in a year, so a lot has happened since then.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Tell us the highlights.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: What are the core things that have happened since then?
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And feel free to give us a reintroduction to PILA if you'd like.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay, tall order to start here, but a lot has happened.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: For folks that don't know about PILA and our story,
1:41
SPEAKER_01: we're reinventing the home battery by spreading it out throughout the home
1:45
SPEAKER_01: and turning something that historically has been reserved for Homeowners with
1:51
SPEAKER_01: a five-figure budget and a lot of time on their hands to do major rewiring
1:56
SPEAKER_01: to their home to install solar panels and batteries,
2:00
SPEAKER_01: get protection from outages and take the edge off their power bills.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring everyone into that.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: It's a great way to live.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring everyone under that roof.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: And in order to do that,
2:12
SPEAKER_01: we've built a battery system that plugs in and can be installed across your home.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Slim, sleek,
2:19
SPEAKER_01: you can go on top of the refrigerator,
2:21
SPEAKER_01: in your home office,
2:22
SPEAKER_01: next to your sump pump,
2:24
SPEAKER_01: next to your air handler,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
2:26
SPEAKER_01: but most importantly,
2:27
SPEAKER_01: you set it up,
2:28
SPEAKER_01: and all of these different nodes throughout the house,
2:31
SPEAKER_01: they automatically recognize each other,
2:33
SPEAKER_01: they communicate over this mesh network that we've built,
2:36
SPEAKER_01: and they do the job of a big battery system that's spread out.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, we sometimes...
2:41
SPEAKER_01: More concisely call it the Sonos of batteries.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: But you can think about it, you know, like mesh Wi-Fi and the rest.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: We're really excited to be kind of creating this product category.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: We've found so much love for,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: what we're doing across the consumer side,
2:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:59
SPEAKER_01: renters who couldn't get into this before,
3:01
SPEAKER_01: but also on the commercial side and thinking about the right partners
3:05
SPEAKER_01: to like really scale this technology.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but...
3:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm Cole, I'm the founder and the CEO.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: I've been building products like this for a decade at Tesla and Span,
3:16
SPEAKER_01: and the team come from that same heritage,
3:20
SPEAKER_01: so we're just excited to be pushing at the forefront.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: You guys have a lot of good folks coming from those areas,
3:25
SPEAKER_00: so you've been good at bringing them over to the new mission.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I think the mission does 95% of the work,
3:33
SPEAKER_01: and the product does the remaining 5%, and I just sign the checks.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So what are the core things that have happened then since July?
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Because you guys raised a round.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple big milestones you guys have hit.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: What are those?
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's see.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: Last time we spoke,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: we were pre-seed stage,
3:47
SPEAKER_01: so we raised another round, which has brought this product into reality.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: We're starting to ship to our earliest customers.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: We've built a backlog across 50 states.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: We're U.S. focused for now.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
3:59
SPEAKER_01: biggest things are making the product real and continuing to grow an amazing team.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's amazing.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about,
4:07
SPEAKER_00: why don't we first, let's first talk about the fundraising, if you don't mind.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: You guys did a lot of media hits and podcasts and all sorts of, you did a lot of things.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: That helped bring in a lot of interest for the product and get it pre-signups,
4:23
SPEAKER_00: and then you're able to use that to turn into a fundraising round.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Can you just tell us a little bit more about that experience for you and any things
4:29
SPEAKER_00: that you would probably do differently if you had to rerun it?
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and as someone who doesn't really angle to try and get in front of the camera,
4:38
SPEAKER_01: it's definitely been a learning experience for me,
4:40
SPEAKER_01: but I love these products and I love what they can do for people,
4:45
SPEAKER_01: so I let that lead.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, look, we were really fortunate.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: And I think the zeitgeist was there of people feeling
5:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
5:09
SPEAKER_01: the pressure of rising bills,
5:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:11
SPEAKER_01: like in California over the last five years,
5:14
SPEAKER_01: just to give one data point, the average retail electricity rate has gone up by 33%.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's very real.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: People are feeling this.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And at the same I mean,
5:23
SPEAKER_01: at the same time,
5:24
SPEAKER_01: they feel like they're paying for this service or electrical utility
5:27
SPEAKER_01: that isn't always serving them.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, power outages are happening more and more frequently, driven by major storms.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: So there's definitely interest in the category that was helpful there.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: We tried to be really intentional about how we told the story as well,
5:43
SPEAKER_01: which for me, you know, I grew up in New Orleans.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: I lived through Katrina.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: You know,
5:47
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of us speak from experience when we're talking about these problems,
5:54
SPEAKER_01: and that goes a long way.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: It seems interesting that you might have kind of tapped into,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: to some extent,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: this idea for people really want energy independence, not just as a country, right?
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Everybody talks about energy independence for America, but individually, too.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's something that happened to you years ago
6:14
SPEAKER_00: or something you're experiencing on a regular basis in California,
6:16
SPEAKER_00: for example, I think that people seem to really want that.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Would you say that that resonates with the customer discussions you're having?
6:21
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, this is true going back to Powerwall days and the rest.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: You know,
6:27
SPEAKER_01: as individuals and as maybe as Americans,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: I think we have this value for self-sufficiency.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, like we can take care of ourselves, we can take care of our loved ones.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And there's a real sense of powerlessness when,
6:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:39
SPEAKER_01: power cuts out,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: your phone's dying,
6:41
SPEAKER_01: you can't call your loved ones,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: you've got things in the fridge that are slowly spoiling, like a terrible feeling.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And I think for...
6:48
SPEAKER_01: So you have the backup dimension of when power goes out,
6:50
SPEAKER_01: but then you've also got this notion of being able to manage your utility bill.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, 24-7, hey,
7:06
SPEAKER_01: this thing that's in my home,
7:07
SPEAKER_01: it's not just collecting dust in the garage, waiting for a power cut.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: It's also saving me money, making me money, optimizing my energy usage.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, that might be charging from solar.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: It might be charging from cheap grid electricity.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Your power rate varies.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's another form of self-sufficiency, in my opinion.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
7:26
SPEAKER_01: all of this together,
7:27
SPEAKER_01: going back to your other question,
7:29
SPEAKER_01: like media and the rest,
7:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:32
SPEAKER_01: if you can tell that story in a way that resonates with people,
7:35
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of mileage on that.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: And we're benefiting by having a product that's really nice to look at and user friendly.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: But all of these things are very intentional.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: We could have built a boring box that sits in a closet.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: But I think tapping into the centers in the brain that actually care
7:53
SPEAKER_01: about these things and make decision makings,
7:55
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't have to be I care about my bill or I care about my home looking nice.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Again, borrowing from kind of the Tesla sentiment.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: If you can do both of those things together,
8:05
SPEAKER_01: you can really generate interest and action and bring people into a mode
8:12
SPEAKER_01: where they're actually excited about this
8:14
SPEAKER_01: and it's not something they feel like they should do or they have to do.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: But it's a no-brainer.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: I do think that the media component is important.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: It's obviously part of the reason why I'm doing this.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I think that there needs to be I don't know if the word is literacy,
8:29
SPEAKER_00: but founders need to,
8:30
SPEAKER_00: I think,
8:31
SPEAKER_00: really understand how to use media to their advantage,
8:35
SPEAKER_00: whether they're building a consumer product or not.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: I think that understanding how to position to multiple people or
8:42
SPEAKER_00: to multiple use cases is important in cleantech because there are many benefits
8:46
SPEAKER_00: to every product.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: This product has so many benefits, just one of these things.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Just imagine how that applies to all the other types out there.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, two things I'll add to that to underscore it.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: It's storytelling,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: and like when you're founding a company,
9:00
SPEAKER_01: starting a company at the early stage is like,
9:01
SPEAKER_01: it's kind of like you are the product,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: you know, your vision, your story is the product.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: And you need to get people to rally behind you.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: And that's a very difficult thing.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: Those people might be funding you, they might be employees.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: But if you're not super crisp on like what that story is,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: and you're not Continuously tweaking it and improving it and trying to make yourself
9:21
SPEAKER_01: a better storyteller and using all the tools at your disposal,
9:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:25
SPEAKER_01: blogging,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: media, videos, showcasing, whatever, then you're leaving stuff on the table.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, point one is storytelling and, you know, point two is I think just being...
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Really focus on what is the actual problem?
9:42
SPEAKER_01: We're all inundated with ads and things that we're told that we should buy.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: But if you can focus in on solving one core problem for someone,
9:52
SPEAKER_01: focus I guess is the key word there,
9:54
SPEAKER_01: then you can cut through a lot of the noise by having a clear story.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: And that can be hard because you said it, you're selling to multiple different people.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: The investor story is very different.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: How does this become a billion dollar company in 10 years is very different
10:09
SPEAKER_01: than You know, you would really like to have this in your home.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: And that was a challenge for us in the early raise where,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: our website is very focused on that immediate benefit of resilience and backup power
10:23
SPEAKER_01: because, like, that's why people care about this.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: People aren't buying Powerwalls because they think virtual power plants are cool.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Very few, you know, are doing that.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: But I guarantee you they also care about the day zero benefit
10:35
SPEAKER_01: of modernizing their home, protecting their family.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: So we focus really heavily on landing that message to the point where we don't get
10:42
SPEAKER_01: into the story of how products like this at scale on our website,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: we don't get into the story of how the virtual network of batteries can support
10:51
SPEAKER_01: the grid and how that's actually a really incredible business to build.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Because for the people that we're communicating to with our website,
10:58
SPEAKER_01: who are buying this, it's like, Most of them don't care.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's okay.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's interesting because it's,
11:05
SPEAKER_00: despite you focusing on a really relatively particular market
11:08
SPEAKER_00: where it's like they do have the lived experience or the felt experience,
11:12
SPEAKER_00: or they can like relate to somebody who might need that backup battery,
11:17
SPEAKER_00: even though that is like a smaller market than everyone,
11:20
SPEAKER_00: it is a pretty emotional market.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like you can really tap into the genuine need.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: And obviously you can scale beyond that in the future too.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's the fun of working in, you know, residential as opposed to commercial.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: It's like you can actually,
11:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: appeal to people's,
11:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:38
SPEAKER_01: interests and their, like,
11:40
SPEAKER_01: put it this way,
11:41
SPEAKER_01: if you look at the data on how people spend around their home,
11:44
SPEAKER_01: very few people are spending money for insulation and double-paned windows.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: It's like kitchen upgrades and landscaping,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: and there's no judgment in what I'm saying there,
11:53
SPEAKER_01: but I think as someone who wants to, like,
11:55
SPEAKER_01: reach people and get them excited about things,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: you kind of have to be honest about, like,
12:00
SPEAKER_01: I think people do care about the savings piece,
12:03
SPEAKER_01: but if you can wrap that in with a home modernization story,
12:07
SPEAKER_01: safety, comfort, convenience, savings, you're going to do a lot better.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like there's an analogy there too in the funding and company building thing.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: This all has to make sense on paper,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: but if you can find what that X factor is and lean into that and not just be selling
12:23
SPEAKER_01: a spreadsheet or an IRR calculation,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: I think if we look at the companies that have been the most successful in
12:33
SPEAKER_01: the last 20 years, they've all come with vision, not just a great go-to-market plan.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Has it changed already in terms of the media and telling the story?
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Because you mentioned earlier,
12:48
SPEAKER_00: it's first focused on your story as a founder and how does it matter to me
12:55
SPEAKER_00: and why am I the person to do it?
12:57
SPEAKER_00: That's obviously partially to get people to resonate with you,
12:59
SPEAKER_00: but it's also to get investors to back you.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Has it already changed how you tell that story or will it continue to change in
13:07
SPEAKER_00: the near future?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: It's totally changed and that's a really good thing.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be selling myself here.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: We want to be selling real solutions for people.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: We've been working incredibly hard to And you're always evolving that.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: And now, today, where we're at is, you know,
13:31
SPEAKER_01: And take the backseat and highlight actual customers using the product
13:36
SPEAKER_01: and how it's benefiting them and let that third party credibility kind
13:41
SPEAKER_01: of lead versus trying to drive it all back to us.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: That's by necessity at the outset.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: But I think if you're doing it right,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: you're figuring out how to bring in the third party credibility and make it more
13:54
SPEAKER_01: about the problem that you're solving.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: And kind of drive everything back to that.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And the why, I guess, right?
14:01
SPEAKER_01: What are you doing and why?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: How do you do with a product like this where it is direct to consumer and the data
14:11
SPEAKER_00: on,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: or let's say the metrics on helping one person or one house,
14:15
SPEAKER_00: you can tell good stories around that on an individual basis.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, you know, during this, this outage, we were able to keep everything on, it was great.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: That's a good story to tell.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of the big data story,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: how do you tell a story of an individual impact Yeah,
14:31
SPEAKER_00: I guess I want to say it's both.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So we focus on the narrative value because I think even
14:34
SPEAKER_00: if you didn't specifically live through the winter storm in Texas in 2022,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: you know, again, most of us have experienced
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Something similar,
14:54
SPEAKER_01: whether it's hurricanes across the Gulf South,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: windstorms in the Northeast, fires and power shutoffs here on the West Coast.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think like that's part of the storyteller's job is to make it broadly interesting.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, specificity goes a long way in making people like understand and see.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: But then on the other side, you know, like you mentioned D to C.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: So we get this question a lot, like, you know, how do you scale a D to C company?
15:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'll take a minute to kind of explain our strategy here,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: which is, you know, direct is a very fast way to get into market.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: And we think brand building is important no matter what your go-to-market strategy is.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: So it's speed.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: It allows us to be close to our customers.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, part of our value prop is you can buy this and plug it in yourself.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to pay somebody.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: You know,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: and that was something that is something that I think the whole solar EV charging
15:48
SPEAKER_01: and home battery industry struggles with today is there's too many steps between
15:53
SPEAKER_01: the sale and ultimately the person getting a lot of friction.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in this case, too, it's also renters can access.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by layman's terms.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: In cleantech, it's not enough to build something important.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: You have to explain it clearly when it matters in front of investors, on stage and on TV.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: But you
16:37
SPEAKER_01: We're not D2C exclusive though.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: We've been really fortunate to find forward thinking partners across utilities,
16:45
SPEAKER_01: large solar installers,
16:48
SPEAKER_01: property management groups that are facilitating people adopting the technology
16:53
SPEAKER_01: by lowering the cost.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: A whole home battery today is going to cost like $15,000.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: About half of that is soft costs, installation, design, permitting, like BS.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: So we solve costs in way one is by cutting out all of that kind of complex.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: How does this get connected into your home?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: We solve for costs,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: you know, in a second way by modularizing it so you can start with what you need.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's just your refrigerator.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: And your Wi-Fi, but allowing you to expand over time.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: You know,
17:26
SPEAKER_01: you've got a kid,
17:27
SPEAKER_01: now the kid room needs protection or,
17:29
SPEAKER_01: you know, you've got other things in your home.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: These things can grow.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: And then the third way is by bringing in partners that can,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:37
SPEAKER_01: lower some of that upfront cost because this platform of flexibility
17:44
SPEAKER_01: and energy control is broadly useful.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: To the power grid,
17:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:49
SPEAKER_01: beyond just your individual household,
17:51
SPEAKER_01: utilities,
17:53
SPEAKER_01: folks who operate these virtual power plants,
17:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:56
SPEAKER_01: are actively today using these assets,
18:01
SPEAKER_01: smart thermostats and batteries and EV charging across homes and businesses
18:05
SPEAKER_01: and using those in the moments where our grid is stressed,
18:08
SPEAKER_01: they get paid, they pass on that revenue in most cases to the end household.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: I just had to get that point in on D2C is really important for brand building
18:18
SPEAKER_01: and speed,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: but a lot of what we're doing is actually aimed at a much bigger kind
18:25
SPEAKER_01: of partner-led strategy.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: so do you see a world where you sell an entire building worth like
18:32
SPEAKER_00: a multifamily rental unit?
18:34
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that as being a case?
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And if so, why would they buy, do you think?
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Why would they pay for it versus the individual renters?
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes is the answer.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: We're already having some of those conversations.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: And it can be both.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: If an individual renter wants to adopt this, the benefit is there too.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: But obviously doing everything at once has some advantages.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: For a building owner who might have a hundred unit property in a city where actually
18:59
SPEAKER_01: the grid is the most constrained,
19:02
SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of value in having flexibility on the grid.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: They can turn that building into a new revenue stream.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: So new revenue stream is one answer.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: Savings for master metered buildings.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: You can actually use all of these batteries to help manage and shift loads so
19:32
SPEAKER_01: that you can save on your bills.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And then it adds these interesting data layers,
19:37
SPEAKER_01: like insights into appliance failure for predictive maintenance.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: And it ends up being kind of a value stack.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: Stack on...
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Retention of occupants who are happier because their building is resilient and not,
19:53
SPEAKER_01: you know, not subject to the same power outages as the next building over.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that is a really interesting go to market play.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: I'd say we're actually actively figuring it out right now.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: But what I just listed,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: it kind of broadly paints a picture of what we're finding is resonating
20:09
SPEAKER_01: with those folks.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't thought about the, I mean,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: I thought about,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: I was wondering if there was like a tenant benefit type of play,
20:16
SPEAKER_00: but that does make a lot of sense.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: It's like the building owner can actually be the one to get the access.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's exciting because like,
20:24
SPEAKER_01: we're always talking about the split incentive And we're like,
20:28
SPEAKER_01: let's just give,
20:29
SPEAKER_01: let's make the incentive broadly understandable and a no-brainer to both sides.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: The incentive can still be split,
20:37
SPEAKER_01: but we want the split to be benefit on both sides, not one way or the other.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it also sells, then you can sell more units at once.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Obviously selling to buildings is not the easiest thing to do in the world,
20:49
SPEAKER_00: but I think that if you have the right,
20:51
SPEAKER_00: if you can understand the,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: show the data properly,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: they're all Yeah, I
20:55
SPEAKER_01: mean, look,
20:55
SPEAKER_01: every building,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: whether it's small commercial,
20:58
SPEAKER_01: residential,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: rental or,
21:00
SPEAKER_01: you know, a big house in Texas, the condo in New York City, they all have outlets.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: They're all wired to serve electrical power.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: We've built a product that connects to these standard connectors in every building,
21:14
SPEAKER_01: whether they're a small business or a household, like we can serve both of them.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: We see this as kind of a new platform to help rapidly upgrade all of
21:24
SPEAKER_01: the electrical Infrastructure in all buildings so
21:26
SPEAKER_01: that we're not talking about, well,
21:27
SPEAKER_01: what happens when we turn over our building stock or how do we retrofit and,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: build up electrician knowledge, you know, to be able to affect really fast change.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, you and me are going to do it.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: We're going to do it because we're excited about putting these things into our homes.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: We're going to get a ton of benefit on day one,
21:45
SPEAKER_01: and that benefit's also going to accrue throughout the year in the form of savings
21:50
SPEAKER_01: and, you know, actually understanding how energy is being used in your home.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the understanding energy component,
21:56
SPEAKER_00: do you foresee some sort of data play with,
21:59
SPEAKER_00: you mentioned the appliance failure thing.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: I can see that being helpful if you're a landlord because you need to keep
22:04
SPEAKER_00: the appliances up to date.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: But are there other ways where it's like, hey,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: we noticed that because we have certain data on the fridge,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: we can get that information back to the original manufacturer.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Are there other data plays that you would see there?
22:16
SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I can't go into too much detail,
22:19
SPEAKER_01: but you have definitely started to touch on some of those things that we're starting
22:22
SPEAKER_01: to explore.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is like an Apple Watch for your most expensive appliances.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not something you're pulling out and running an extension cord.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: It's always there.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: It's learning how your specific,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: say fridge is operating because we're in the kitchen and looking specifically at
22:40
SPEAKER_01: that appliance,
22:40
SPEAKER_01: not in the garage with a very vague picture of how energy is being used.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: And because we can leverage other data through sensors,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: we have these temperature sensors that can go inside the fridge,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: you truly can paint this complete picture of appliance health.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: And we're finding that is very interesting.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: It's very new.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: And monetizing it is something that we're thinking a lot about.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
23:04
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
23:04
SPEAKER_01: we're starting more from the angle of, like,
23:06
SPEAKER_01: how can we benefit the household and alert people to things they care about,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: like food spoilage risk?
23:14
SPEAKER_01: More so than like, how can we sell this data, you know, broadly and make money.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: But the interest is there.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: Quick break from the show.
23:21
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24:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this also makes me think a little bit,
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I guess I haven't really put this together before,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: but there seems to be a very big overlap with, just in general, more healthy living.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: You could mention,
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's got to be some benefits, like, hey,
24:23
SPEAKER_00: maybe you don't realize that your fridge is having these issues,
24:26
SPEAKER_00: maybe your food is not as good for you, or whatever.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: There's all sorts of things,
24:29
SPEAKER_00: like healthy living with less gas in your house, all these things, right?
24:34
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if there's,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: just generally speaking,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: for Clean Tech Founders, like some sort of way to pair these things.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Because nobody doesn't want to live healthier, right?
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you can take the burden off of their, you know, behavior change.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Like if you can remove the behavior change completely and they can be healthier
24:50
SPEAKER_00: in their house, like who's going to say no to that?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there is a lesson to be learned.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: I think it was learned by a lot of companies over the last five or seven years
24:59
SPEAKER_01: that have been in this space that beating people over the head with climate is not
25:04
SPEAKER_01: the most effective way to get people to care about things.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: I think we've learned that actually outside of the startup domain.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And what I can tell you in my experience from the Tesla span
25:13
SPEAKER_01: and Pila world is you actually have to meet people where they're at.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: People don't care about that.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: The average person does not.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: It's not that they don't care about it,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: but they have 25 things that they care more about ahead of that.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's definitely lower.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: And those things that stack, rank higher are safety, comfort, convenience, health, savings.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the lesson.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: The reality is most of these products are just better,
25:42
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the heat pump,
25:43
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the battery system,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: whether it's producing your own electricity at home via solar.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: I think trying to sell it via the you should care about kilowatt hours lens or
25:54
SPEAKER_01: the broad, hard to wrap your head around and hard to value climate story.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Is leaving a lot on the table that would drive action,
26:07
SPEAKER_01: and it does drive action,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: when you can just be saying, have you lived through a power outage?
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Here's a way to avoid that.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: By the way, there are a lot of benefits beyond this.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
26:18
SPEAKER_01: some of those benefits you can even get paid for if you opt into,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: let's say, supporting the power grid that you use every day.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: So I think the formula then is effectively just like speak to the number one problem
26:29
SPEAKER_00: and then mention all the other benefits as sales tactics effectively.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Like just help really stack up the values.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, this solves my problem.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and by the way, bing, bang, boom.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Like all these other things that I get from it.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I feel like,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: you know, we're not even like You're not even inventing anything interesting here.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: I think the EV market has learned this.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: It's faster,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: there's less maintenance,
26:48
SPEAKER_01: it's easier to own versus your emissions profile shifts or something like that.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: And this is the issue with the space.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: I think that on one hand,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I understand the drive,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: but we talked about this earlier today with another show is that Focusing too much
27:06
SPEAKER_00: on carbon and being overly obsessed on the carbon profile and carbon reduction,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: it just doesn't get people excited, really.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: It might get investors excited,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: it might get certain activists excited,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: it might get governments excited,
27:17
SPEAKER_00: but it's not going to get the individual user excited,
27:19
SPEAKER_00: because they're not thinking necessarily about that
27:21
SPEAKER_00: unless they have some really real exposure to those issues.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think it comes off as very...
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Like misaligned with where people are at.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: It's like you're telling me I need to care about this when I think
27:34
SPEAKER_01: the stat is like one in three Americans right now are struggling to pay their bills.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like, OK, well, that's great.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, sure.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: I care about the melting ice caps to some degree.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: But what is this going to do to reduce the burden that my family is feeling today?
27:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, and the things that are immediately in front of me.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is like the real challenge is like,
28:00
SPEAKER_01: can we build products that can solve multiple problems at once?
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And can we actually communicate about the benefits of these products in a way
28:09
SPEAKER_01: that is not politicized because it doesn't need to be?
28:13
SPEAKER_01: You know,
28:14
SPEAKER_01: staying powered through a power outage and saving on your utility bills is like
28:17
SPEAKER_01: the least, you know, partisan issue that I can think of.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Yet, you know,
28:22
SPEAKER_01: over the last decade and maybe some of this was driven by,
28:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:25
SPEAKER_01: just the zeitgeist at the time with certain,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, policies in the previous administration.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: But just meet people where they're at, you know.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think policy is a it can be.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say it could be a double-edged sword,
28:40
SPEAKER_00: but I think that depending on how the policy is promoted and shared,
28:46
SPEAKER_00: it changes things from being like,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: we're doing this because of the climate,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: and then you kind of like ostracize the people who Even though the policy is going
28:54
SPEAKER_00: to help them save money, you didn't talk about savings.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: So they are not thinking about that.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds so silly,
29:00
SPEAKER_00: but you have to really make it obvious in their face, like,
29:03
SPEAKER_00: hey, by doing these things, we're going to reduce your electricity bill, right?
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of opportunities for this at all times,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: especially right now with AI and the data center build out.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: We could talk about that in a bit if we want.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Making it so that it's focused on the average person's challenge is, I think, really important.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I think something a lot of people on the coasts generally didn't think about
29:23
SPEAKER_00: because they weren't problems that they were dealing with, right?
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SPEAKER_00: All right, back to the show.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's definitely truth in that.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: I won't weigh too heavily in on...
30:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a policy person,
30:29
SPEAKER_01: and I don't work in government,
30:31
SPEAKER_01: and I'm not going to armchair quarterback or pretend
30:33
SPEAKER_01: that there aren't real challenges there,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: but from where I sit as someone that's spent a career building product For people
30:42
SPEAKER_01: for their homes to help them live better that also broadly happen to have,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: system-wide benefits,
30:49
SPEAKER_01: whether that system is the grid or, you know, the climate system in some cases.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: What I can say is meet people where they're at,
30:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:58
SPEAKER_01: if you can wrap real solutions in aspiration,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: and like,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: this stuff is exciting,
31:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:05
SPEAKER_01: like this isn't, We were talking about abundance before we started recording.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: This doesn't have to be a story of do less.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: We need to turn your air condition off because the grid is strained.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, make the grid better.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: The benefit
31:19
SPEAKER_01: of things like batteries is it doesn't become this reductionist proposition
31:24
SPEAKER_01: to people.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: It's, hey, you can opt in to do this.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a much easier proposition for folks.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what we need to be coming with.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: This is a really exciting moment.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: Sure, the power grid's never been more expensive to operate.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Those costs are getting passed on to people.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: The weather-driven outages that are happening are very real.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: We never had more tools in our arsenal to go do something about this problem.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And we built the very first power grid in the US 100 plus years ago.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: We invented the utility business model.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: And it just so happens that the times have changed and the time for iteration on that is now.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: But America is very strong on software, very strong on solving complicated problems.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's apply this technology to make outages a thing of the past.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's apply this technology to broadly reduce everyone's power bills
32:28
SPEAKER_01: and actually allow people to get the modern Amenities and appliances
32:34
SPEAKER_01: that make their life more comfortable, safer, more convenient, lower cost.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: That's the story that we really want to push forward to get people excited
32:43
SPEAKER_01: about taking the first step in that direction.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: I think that's for me part of the first reason I got interested
32:49
SPEAKER_00: in any clean technologies in the first place was I instantly viewed it
32:53
SPEAKER_00: as Everything around us,
32:55
SPEAKER_00: like every physical thing we have,
32:57
SPEAKER_00: to me it was the physical that mostly that I thought about,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: it will all be reinvented in how it's produced in a way that is like waste less,
33:04
SPEAKER_00: which is going to cost less, which is going to be just better.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like if you want utopia, you got to be working towards those things.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're ever going to get to utopia,
33:12
SPEAKER_00: but the general idea is like, why not make the future the future, right?
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Can you speak a little bit more on this idea?
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that cleantech Do you think energy-related companies specifically have
33:25
SPEAKER_00: a role to play in reigniting that American exceptionalism,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: that American spirit of building things?
33:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Is this industry the only industry?
33:34
SPEAKER_01: No.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Anyone doing anything interesting has that responsibility.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Anyone building a company should be thinking through that lens.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: How do we drive prosperity in our communities?
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And for us,
33:49
SPEAKER_01: the story looks like modernizing the power grid and reducing the impacts of outages
33:54
SPEAKER_01: and high bills.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: But whether you're doing like the heat pump thing or whatever your climate story is,
34:03
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee there is a way to tie it back to something local and something
34:11
SPEAKER_01: that resonates directly with people.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think if you're not doing that, you're probably leaving something on the table.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because even if you are somewhat effective without that component,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: you are missing out on the story because there's other people that could be helped,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: right?
34:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of curious.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: We can talk about this now.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Climate Week just happened not too long ago here in SF.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't able to make it,
34:35
SPEAKER_00: but I'm kind of curious if there were any themes or trends that you're seeing.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Are people starting to pick up on this?
34:41
SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot of clean tech companies that are...
34:44
SPEAKER_00: Crushing it and succeeding.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: I see it all the time.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: When I tell people I work in cleantech, they're like, oh man, that must suck right now.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: I was like, not really.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of hiring going on.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: It's all very positive from my perspective.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of curious, how are people doing?
34:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: I'll narrow it in a little bit because cleantech is super broad,
35:00
SPEAKER_01: but the world that we occupy is infrastructure.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And this is an incredibly exciting time to be building physical things in energy
35:10
SPEAKER_01: and cleantech for two reasons.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: One,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: Software is becoming so easy to replicate in the world of like LLM generated code
35:19
SPEAKER_01: and AI and cloud code and everything that we actually see having a physical place in
35:26
SPEAKER_01: the world and a platform that's generating new useful data as being
35:32
SPEAKER_01: so much more interesting and from a company building perspective.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: We're seeing tons of interest from
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Investors and folks that might not have been thinking as critically
35:56
SPEAKER_01: about how important infrastructure was in the world, and they are now.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: So from the infrastructure lens and thinking the conversations that came up
36:06
SPEAKER_01: in Climate Week, we saw a lot of that.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: We saw a lot of folks maybe kind of coming in to the conversation that weren't there previously.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Like who?
36:17
SPEAKER_01: I won't name specific names,
36:18
SPEAKER_01: but the number of investors that were in town looked a lot different than
36:24
SPEAKER_01: in previous years at Climate Week that we were speaking with
36:27
SPEAKER_01: and showing off what we were doing.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think also building owners and multi-tenant, again,
36:35
SPEAKER_01: insurance,
36:35
SPEAKER_01: these other legacy industries that maybe haven't been thinking about How important
36:41
SPEAKER_01: a role they play in this innovation cycle now kind of realizing it
36:47
SPEAKER_01: and getting involved, which is super exciting.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: So from the infrastructure standpoint, it's a very exciting moment.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: We saw a lot of that at Climate Week.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: we just try and get out and get in front of as many customers as possible
37:02
SPEAKER_01: at all times.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: So it was a fun time for our team.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: We built like a battery-powered kegerator on wheels,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: you know, that we brought to our events to, you know, just talk to people.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: And I think the story of the average Pila customer continues to resonate.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: I had this outage and, you know, I take care of my mother-in-law.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: She's on a CPAP,
37:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:20
SPEAKER_01: and just like those are actually the conversations that probably drive more.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: Vigor and excitement and,
37:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:26
SPEAKER_01: light the fire underneath what we're doing than the notion of like,
37:30
SPEAKER_01: oh, the grid is fracturing into a billion intelligent nodes.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like that's cool on, you know, when we think about the 10-year vision.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: What excites me and the team and gets us out of bed are the conversation
37:43
SPEAKER_01: with individuals and the underscoring of just how valuable and necessary this type
37:49
SPEAKER_01: of product is today.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because it resonates with people.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Every company is not some faceless entity.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: It is made up of people who,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: if they can be really connected to the impact that they're making,
38:00
SPEAKER_00: they're going to be more motivated.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: This is just a principle of It just is, right?
38:07
SPEAKER_00: You will be more excited if you every day wake up and you check the Slack channel
38:10
SPEAKER_00: and the people are like, oh, I had this benefit or I had this great story, right?
38:15
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: I've been circling around this question way too much lately,
38:22
SPEAKER_00: but I still just don't feel like there's true answers.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it makes sense to just scrap entirely the word,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: the usage of the word climate or clean tech in this space?
38:33
SPEAKER_00: Because all of this is really just amazing technology that has climate benefits.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: In my opinion, I think that would be a wise move.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: There's no one-size-fits-all solution,
38:47
SPEAKER_01: but I think we're at the point where this isn't really a niche thing.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: And we think about this as infrastructure.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: And we think about this as modernizing homes and modernizing the power grid.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: And those, to me, are much better.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Bigger goals,
39:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:03
SPEAKER_01: or much more immediate goals than the kind of like traditional climate framing.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Actually, at no part of our history have we been positioning Pila as a climate company.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: We certainly like see the value in doing good for the grid.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there are a lot of knock on effects that can reduce emissions and all of this.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: But for all the reasons we talked about,
39:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:28
SPEAKER_01: I think If your first principles approach is build a narrative that excites people,
39:36
SPEAKER_01: do that by meeting them where they're at and solving problems that are real
39:42
SPEAKER_01: for them today,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: and you follow that kind of progression,
39:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's going to be many companies,
39:49
SPEAKER_01: I won't say there won't be any,
39:50
SPEAKER_01: but I don't think there'll be many companies that realize that the headline
39:54
SPEAKER_01: on their website needs to be climate positioning.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there's very,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: it's again,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: even as the climate issues continue to get worse,
40:04
SPEAKER_00: I just don't,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: In some cases, maybe,
40:07
SPEAKER_00: but I don't see there going to be many,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: many cases or in most cases where it will make sense
40:11
SPEAKER_00: because you're not necessarily speaking to a benefit that is personal.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: You're speaking to a problem, I should say a problem that's personal.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: You're speaking to a problem that is like societal, but it's so ambiguous.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, who really knows what that means?
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows what it means.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and again,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: like what's happened at the same time we've like gone through all this,
40:31
SPEAKER_01: like cost of living increases.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Like there's so many...
40:34
SPEAKER_01: I know I keep going back to this,
40:35
SPEAKER_01: but there's so many very real material issues that it feels like talking about that,
40:41
SPEAKER_01: it's further away from most people's reality than it was even five years ago.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I think people don't have the capacity to care.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Because they have other things that are way more common.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: And again, that's okay because this isn't either or.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not like care about the things that are right in front of you like high bills
40:58
SPEAKER_01: or care about,
40:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: It's just about
41:06
SPEAKER_01: making people aware that they can adopt solutions
41:11
SPEAKER_01: that are broadly good for them.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: And then if they want to dive into the grid benefits,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: the climate benefits, and the rest, we make that really easy.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of data you can discover through our system,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: for example,
41:22
SPEAKER_01: around how it's using energy and what the grid mix is and things like this.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: But I think...
41:28
SPEAKER_01: We think of that more as like part of the living with this and discovering it
41:33
SPEAKER_01: and kind of engaging with it in whatever way makes sense to you.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: Not like we need to sell you on this,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: make you feel bad, put you in a defensive stance and then try and ask you for money.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: But I realize that our story might look a little bit different than the company
41:51
SPEAKER_01: that is,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:52
SPEAKER_01: focused on agriculture or,
41:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: focused on,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: environmental remediation or something where there is like a very direct kind
42:02
SPEAKER_01: of climate story.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: So I'll say that, like,
42:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:05
SPEAKER_01: everything I'm saying is very much from the lens of products that I've built,
42:09
SPEAKER_01: which are home electrification, home resiliency products.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it makes sense.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just hard for me because I can view everything through this lens
42:19
SPEAKER_00: and I just love the technology.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: I think it's super fascinating.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: I think it's way more interesting than AI in general.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: All of the innovation going on and let's call it technology.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Technology that makes the world greener or less polluting.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Anything that's like that.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: To me, those innovations are the coolest things I've ever heard of.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: I am constantly looking out for cool technology.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: Aside from space travel, it's the coolest stuff out there.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard for me to separate them, but at the same time, I understand it.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about your guys' manufacturing.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: We haven't gotten into this.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: In your past roles, before you started this company, you've scaled up a lot of production.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: How is that going for you guys so far?
43:02
SPEAKER_00: Can you talk a little bit more about this broadly, and then we can get into some specifics.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: Broadly, it's going great.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm just incredibly proud of this team for being able to stand up
43:12
SPEAKER_01: an incredibly complex product in a little over a year,
43:17
SPEAKER_01: but not much more than that,
43:19
SPEAKER_01: going from design concept prototyping through passing some of
43:23
SPEAKER_01: the most rigorous safety standards that you can apply to this type of battery.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: Through all of that,
43:31
SPEAKER_01: just having an incredibly diligent,
43:34
SPEAKER_01: safety-minded,
43:35
SPEAKER_01: quality-minded mindset,
43:37
SPEAKER_01: even though we're moving at the speed of light here from
43:39
SPEAKER_01: a hardware development perspective.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: I have to start with giving the kudos to the team for making this happen
43:47
SPEAKER_01: because none of this happens without incredible people
43:49
SPEAKER_01: who bring incredible experience.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: It's going well.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: Our story,
43:56
SPEAKER_01: Draws a lot on lessons that we've learned at Tesla,
44:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:00
SPEAKER_01: and everyone thinks of Tesla as this like vertically integrated,
44:03
SPEAKER_01: you know, optimized machine, which they are now, but to some extent.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: More than most.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: No, but they weren't always that way.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they weren't always that way.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think especially on the Tesla energy team,
44:14
SPEAKER_01: which made Powerwall and Solar Roof and these types of products.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: When I joined in 2017,
44:20
SPEAKER_01: the wheels were already in motion and I was very lucky to be able to participate in
44:24
SPEAKER_01: a bunch of product development there.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: But starting with the very first home battery product that Tesla built,
44:32
SPEAKER_01: which was like a Model S pack in a really ugly square metal box connected
44:38
SPEAKER_01: to somebody else's inverter.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: And through many iterations,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: the team just brought in additional key technology pieces to kind of making
44:47
SPEAKER_01: that stack happen.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: But in doing that, they were very fast out of the gate.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: It was, what do we need to focus on?
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the high-capacity lithium-ion battery,
44:58
SPEAKER_01: because no one's doing that,
44:59
SPEAKER_01: it's all lead-acid,
45:00
SPEAKER_01: and kind of the control brain telemetry piece were the two key pieces.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: The rest was filled in with what was available in the market,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: with the goal being get this out to market and start learning.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: And then,
45:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:11
SPEAKER_01: in very fast cycles,
45:13
SPEAKER_01: like a year or less,
45:15
SPEAKER_01: The power of Tesla was like bringing different pieces in that would lower cost,
45:20
SPEAKER_01: would add additional functionality,
45:23
SPEAKER_01: open up new parts of the market and make the product more broadly available
45:27
SPEAKER_01: to people.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't a one leap all at once.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: Our story has mirrored that.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: We're not a battery cell manufacturer.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: We didn't raise to go build a battery cell manufacturing plant so that we could do this.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: We're very much focused on finding the best partners that we can work with on many
45:49
SPEAKER_01: of the components here while focusing on What are the key components
45:53
SPEAKER_01: that no one else is doing that we need to own out of the gate and what
45:57
SPEAKER_01: that looks like?
45:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously industrial design,
46:00
SPEAKER_01: kind of key onboard compute and control system,
46:04
SPEAKER_01: a lot of the safety and battery management pieces.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: But within all of these subsystems,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: we've brought vendors to the table and help integrate everything together.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: And that's allowed us to go really fast.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: Can you explain, did you guys decide to manufacture with a partner in the U.S. or overseas?
46:25
SPEAKER_01: It's a mix.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: Our supply chain spans U.S., Europe, and Asia.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: A lot of compute innovations happening in Europe right now.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: We have partners based over there.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: For some of the parts that we've designed,
46:42
SPEAKER_01: they're actually originating here in North America
46:44
SPEAKER_01: and our final assembly is happening in Asia.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: Right now,
46:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:48
SPEAKER_01: we can talk battery supply chain,
46:49
SPEAKER_01: but that is one of the most important things I think that anyone
46:54
SPEAKER_01: in this industry can focus on is How do we shore up battery supply in the US?
47:00
SPEAKER_01: But LFP,
47:01
SPEAKER_01: lithium iron phosphate batteries,
47:03
SPEAKER_01: which go into power tools and increasingly into EVs,
47:07
SPEAKER_01: home battery systems,
47:08
SPEAKER_01: which have a very high safety profile versus the other high power chemistries
47:15
SPEAKER_01: that have become favored through codes and standards because of that safety profile.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: That LFP chemistry is Predominantly Asia-based today,
47:25
SPEAKER_01: with the few exceptions of folks starting to build in the U.S.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: who are, you know, excited to see them doing that.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: But because of that, you know, we're assembling the full system overseas right now.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: And are there any particular, like,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: key lessons that you,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: because you guys are about to get your first products, if I'm not mistaken, right?
47:46
SPEAKER_00: You're going to get the first, like, shipments in?
47:48
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, already receiving, you know, early batches, and we're in the manufacturing ramp-up phase.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's working, obviously, right?
47:56
SPEAKER_00: But for the people who haven't gone through this,
47:58
SPEAKER_00: are there any, like,
48:00
SPEAKER_00: key things to know about when you are going to work with a third party
48:04
SPEAKER_00: to produce things?
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are the core things that people typically get stuck on?
48:07
SPEAKER_00: Because you've been through this a number of times.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's the litmus test?
48:11
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the unique things that we were coming with was a lot of perspective
48:15
SPEAKER_01: on this already about who to work with and existing,
48:18
SPEAKER_01: you know, Rolodex of partnerships.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: So as far as advice, that's a tough one.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, Work with really great partners,
48:25
SPEAKER_01: but maybe the lesson is invest in great partners because you never know,
48:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, if you'll want to work with them in a different capacity elsewhere.
48:31
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
48:32
SPEAKER_01: partnership or people that we've worked with, Tesla, Span,
48:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:37
SPEAKER_01: and some of the team comes from,
48:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:38
SPEAKER_01: Apple, Google, really leaning on those relationships to kind of get things going.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like we were fortunate because Some of these partners don't work
48:47
SPEAKER_01: with startups, typically.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: We were really able to skip what felt like the scrappy stage,
48:54
SPEAKER_01: which we just didn't want to do for a product like this that just needs
48:58
SPEAKER_01: to be incredibly safe, incredibly relaxed.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Last for 10 years in your home kind of thing.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: But you have to treat this as one of the most important decisions that you make.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: So whatever that means for your company,
49:12
SPEAKER_01: do everything that you can to test that relationship and continually test it.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: Whether that's flying to spend a week with that manufacturer
49:22
SPEAKER_01: on understanding their processes and the rest.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Understanding how you work with them.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: Understanding like what they've done that's similar before.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Going and getting, you know, it's like any hiring.
49:33
SPEAKER_01: Getting references and talking to companies that they've worked with before.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: What worked, what didn't.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, going upstream in the supply chain.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: Hey, compute vendor, what chipset are you using?
49:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me go talk to that manufacturer of the chipset.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, where else is this being used?
49:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, where do you see this going?
49:49
SPEAKER_01: And kind of like building that just mental map.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: Of the supply chain and the understanding of strengths and weaknesses of
49:59
SPEAKER_01: who you're signing up to work with is one of the most important things for
50:02
SPEAKER_01: a hardware company.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything around the necessity to,
50:07
SPEAKER_00: especially if somebody's not gone through this before and they haven't worked with
50:09
SPEAKER_00: the partner,
50:10
SPEAKER_00: to engage them very early so that they can make different design decisions along
50:15
SPEAKER_00: the way?
50:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I feel like that's good advice you'll get
50:18
SPEAKER_01: from anyone building hardware is like bringing your manufacturing partner early
50:21
SPEAKER_01: to do DFM, Design for Manufacturing.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: If you've never done this before, it is a process.
50:26
SPEAKER_01: You don't just hand someone something like,
50:28
SPEAKER_01: hey, I 3D printed this and we need to build a thousand or a million of them.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be an iterative process and baking that into your timelines,
50:39
SPEAKER_01: baking that into your process, understanding what to expect.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: A lot of this is like learning it and then learning to ask the right questions.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: So it is kind of like a you learn to do by doing thing.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
50:52
SPEAKER_01: sometimes like I feel like this advice can,
50:56
SPEAKER_01: it's difficult to land if folks have never done this before because you do just have
51:00
SPEAKER_01: to kind of experience it.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: So I think if you've done it before, this is probably all resonating with you.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't done it before, it's just like get started.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: It's probably actually the better advice versus here's a playbook and a checklist
51:11
SPEAKER_01: of exactly what to ask a manufacturer.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: I think the more relevant advice is just do it.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: Get started.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Things are going to change.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: There are going to be things that you don't expect to come up.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: Surround yourself with...
51:26
SPEAKER_01: Folks that can advise you who have done this before,
51:29
SPEAKER_01: but bias towards action, bias towards learning.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: Take that early, you know, Tesla home battery approach.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: We're just going to slap this in a box.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be perfect, but that's going to allow us to learn.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Because if you get really good at Tightening your feedback cycles.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: You know,
51:45
SPEAKER_01: like one thing that we've always strived to do is develop hardware at the pace
51:51
SPEAKER_01: of software, you know, which is a crazy aspiration.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: But if you can think of that kind of like continuous iteration,
51:57
SPEAKER_01: continuous development mindset in hardware and not be too precious
52:01
SPEAKER_01: about every single decision,
52:03
SPEAKER_01: you'll move faster than your competitors,
52:08
SPEAKER_01: which ultimately is, you know, the important thing.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty fascinating.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, are there any specific AI tools?
52:18
SPEAKER_00: Everybody talks about AI helping you with coding,
52:20
SPEAKER_00: but are there AI tools that are being developed to really speed up
52:22
SPEAKER_00: the hardware design process, the hardware engineering process?
52:25
SPEAKER_01: None that we're using.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: I've talked to a lot of companies that are doing very interesting things.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: I can't say that there's like a specific tool set to go out and try,
52:36
SPEAKER_01: but the ones that have gotten me most excited and
52:39
SPEAKER_01: where I feel like those companies are really onto something is where they're trying
52:42
SPEAKER_01: to automate the very routine,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: boring work,
52:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:46
SPEAKER_01: like You think of like, oh,
52:48
SPEAKER_01: it's going to be some generative AI tool where you're like,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: I want to develop a battery.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: It spits out CAD and drawings.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: The things that I've seen that I think will actually move the needle are like,
52:58
SPEAKER_01: hey, I've got this bill of materials.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: I need to go pull this one thing off the data sheet for a compliance report
53:06
SPEAKER_01: because that's like the 90%
53:08
SPEAKER_01: of unsexy hardware engineering work is just like copy pasting,
53:12
SPEAKER_01: going through data sheets, things like that.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: So I think It's not going
53:16
SPEAKER_01: to be this tool will replace your entire hardware design team,
53:20
SPEAKER_01: but it's like this will turn your senior hardware designer into a team of five
53:25
SPEAKER_01: because you've just deleted or reduced to 5% all of the boring routine rote work
53:31
SPEAKER_01: that they're doing that takes up five working hours every day.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm also curious with, I mean,
53:39
SPEAKER_00: part of the reason I think that this is going so well,
53:42
SPEAKER_00: people want to spend less money on energy.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Like the energy bill component is a dilemma.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's largely driven by increased demand in a lot of ways from AI data centers.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that the AI people in some ways,
53:58
SPEAKER_00: have they started to see what you guys are doing differently than when you started
54:02
SPEAKER_00: because it is an energy problem and people are like,
54:05
SPEAKER_00: People who would have never talked about energy are talking about energy now.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is like a really interesting topic.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: This could be an entire podcast on its own.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: I'll try and stick to the highlights here.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: One thing I think is really important to understand is that like
54:19
SPEAKER_01: the data centers themselves aren't necessarily driving up power prices.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: It's actually like...
54:25
SPEAKER_01: The power gets cheaper when the utility can sell more of it,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: so like getting new load onto the grid is like broadly a good thing for pricing.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: But what is happening is we have this really old power grid that is requiring more
54:40
SPEAKER_01: and more maintenance and like structurally those costs are,
54:43
SPEAKER_01: and it's getting tested more and more by these big weather events and those costs
54:46
SPEAKER_01: and upgrades are getting passed on to all of us, onto our bills.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: It's rate based.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: So easy scapegoat, but I wish it was that simple.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: Still,
54:56
SPEAKER_01: I think the hyperscalers and the folks building the data centers do have a bit of
55:01
SPEAKER_01: a PR challenge where they are getting the finger pointed at them.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
55:05
SPEAKER_01: that's driven some interest towards what we're building as a way
55:10
SPEAKER_01: to meaningfully engage these communities that are seeing the data center go in,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: seeing their bills rise,
55:18
SPEAKER_01: meaningfully engage the communities,
55:19
SPEAKER_01: giving them solutions or subsidizing solutions that can help them at home,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: And these solutions can open up capacity or solve the utilization problem on
55:31
SPEAKER_01: the grid that we have.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's worth spending a second on that.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: The power grid that we have is built around the worst case.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: We've built a 10-lane superhighway, but on most days, the utilization is 40%.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: So four lanes are being used, six lanes are available, but on 4th of July, whatever it is,
55:53
SPEAKER_01: All the lanes are being used.
55:54
SPEAKER_01: So if you can balance capacity,
55:56
SPEAKER_01: and that's like these batteries on the grid kind of act as shock absorbers,
56:00
SPEAKER_01: they can soak things up,
56:01
SPEAKER_01: they can store it,
56:02
SPEAKER_01: they can shift it, they can kind of allow us to get to higher utilization.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: That is a really exciting thing.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: And we do see not only the hyperscalers,
56:13
SPEAKER_01: the data center folks,
56:13
SPEAKER_01: but also the regulatory folks who oversee how these markets operate starting
56:19
SPEAKER_01: to think really critically about how batteries,
56:23
SPEAKER_01: batteries at the edge,
56:24
SPEAKER_01: homes as flexible grid assets can get compensated for that flexibility value.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: And what this might look like in really simple terms is Rather
56:35
SPEAKER_01: than building 10 new gas power plants and running new wires,
56:41
SPEAKER_01: which obviously is going to take a long time,
56:42
SPEAKER_01: you can very quickly plug in devices or upgrade homes and businesses
56:49
SPEAKER_01: with this technology and then call on them when needed,
56:53
SPEAKER_01: aggregate all of those into one virtual power plant,
57:00
SPEAKER_01: and then boom, you've kind of solved for those peak moments.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Folks who are deep in this will realize that's a little bit of
57:07
SPEAKER_01: an oversimplification,
57:08
SPEAKER_01: but that's what we're talking about here,
57:09
SPEAKER_01: adding flexibility wherever we can to the grid to open up more capacity
57:14
SPEAKER_01: in those
57:15
SPEAKER_00: peak times.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: But you're saying to do it in a way where it doesn't require the hyperscalers to, let's say,
57:23
SPEAKER_00: Pay for the transmission lines,
57:24
SPEAKER_00: for example,
57:25
SPEAKER_00: but instead,
57:26
SPEAKER_00: if they're going to do some sort of subsidize in some way of the local rate payer so
57:31
SPEAKER_00: that they're not as upset, it could be used in things like getting a PILA battery.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not aware of any conversations where a hyperscaler is saying,
57:41
SPEAKER_01: we'll pay for the upgrade to the grid, the new transmission line.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: I think actually what we're seeing a lot of is On these data centers,
57:50
SPEAKER_01: they're adding local generation, which is not always solar.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: It might be gas plants or whatever, to backfill whatever is left.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, we need to interconnect.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: There's only this much capacity.
58:02
SPEAKER_01: We want to build a bigger data center.
58:05
SPEAKER_01: And our point is,
58:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
58:06
SPEAKER_01: and it's not unique to us,
58:08
SPEAKER_01: but the distributed energy resource industry is saying like,
58:11
SPEAKER_01: look, you know, a lot of this flexibility actually exists.
58:14
SPEAKER_01: It's just a matter of connecting it and orchestrating it and expanding to open up that capacity.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: With the orchestration piece,
58:24
SPEAKER_00: because it has to be orchestrated,
58:26
SPEAKER_00: is there odd competition for who's going to do that?
58:31
SPEAKER_00: You can't just have one person say, we're going to be the orchestration wizards.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: And you don't want that like multiple competing controls.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: And actually,
58:41
SPEAKER_01: that's like one of the emergent problems in this space is you've got kind of like
58:46
SPEAKER_01: a local control scheme.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: Stay charged for an outage.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: And you've got this like grid thing.
58:50
SPEAKER_01: So having kind of transparency and rule structures is a super interesting topic.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: We...
58:56
SPEAKER_01: I think we're doing something really cool there.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: I won't bore folks with the details.
59:01
SPEAKER_01: Typically what it looks like is you're going to opt into some program with your utility.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: They've already picked a vendor that does this distributed energy resource management, DERMS.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: This industry has so many acronyms, by the way.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: DERMS, VPP.
59:15
SPEAKER_01: They've already picked their aggregator platform.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: You enroll into that with your devices and it's kind of kept as like one channel in that way.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: Other markets have different mechanisms.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you can overlap these things,
59:29
SPEAKER_01: but where it really starts to break down is consumer experience.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: You just can't have multiple people trying to reach in and control things at different times.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it gets really messy.
59:41
SPEAKER_00: It's just such a fascinating thing because on one hand,
59:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm the kind of person who is very like, I want America to win.
59:47
SPEAKER_00: I want to see great things.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: But there's also this kind of like,
59:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
59:53
SPEAKER_00: it's like the dilemma of America in some ways is like we have a very high focus
59:58
SPEAKER_00: on democracy and no control in the center, right?
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: But you have China doing such a good job of doing orchestration.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: So they are able to do a lot of these things because they're just like,
1:00:09
SPEAKER_00: this is how we're going to do it.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: And they make quick adjustments on the fly.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: But we don't necessarily have that ability to do it here, right?
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways it's a good thing, right?
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: Because we're not beholden on a dictator.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_00: But it's like,
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: how can we find a way where it's like we can solve this in a way that, again,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: if people could just stop being political,
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: I just really despise the,
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get into it right now,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: but I despise the situation we're in in America.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: But anyways, I'm kind of going off on a tangent here.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: Let me pick up that tangent and I'll try and tie it to something
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: that I think is something to be hopeful about.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_01: And the thing to be helpful about is there is no one correct way to build
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: or utilize infrastructure.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think we can lean into ideals that broadly resonate with Americans across
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: the political spectrum,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: like self-sufficiency,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_01: control, you know, autonomy and wanting to, you know, be part of a community.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_01: We don't necessarily have to go rebuild the entire grid and bulldoze whatever farms
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: to build these lines.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: Would that be a really efficient way to do it and probably on paper the cheapest way
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: to get to the end state?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: Maybe in some cases.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: The point is, we don't have to do it that way.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: The solution through this doesn't just look like building the biggest master plan system.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: This whole point about grid utilization,
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: if we can think about it from different angles and get creative,
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good thing.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: Sure, AI,
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: like any technology,
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: has pros and cons,
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: but it is creating an opportunity to supercharge
1:02:23
SPEAKER_01: how we build
1:02:23
SPEAKER_01: and utilize these types of products.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: So the optimistic take is, yeah, we might not be master planning our grid, but...
1:02:33
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of smart folks who've operated this grid for 100 years.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of smart folks who are coming at it from a different angle.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_01: And if we're willing to try new things and lean into solutions that empower people
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: and then connect all of these distributed pieces together,
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: I think there's like a very wide path through this.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: But we do have to kind of cut some of the red tape down and accept that This is
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: an evolution,
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: and there may be some things that need to change about regulatory structures.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's like you can't get everything perfect on one shot, right?
1:03:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the thing that a lot of people don't want to accept is they're
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: so used to the comforts and everything that we have with how things do work
1:03:12
SPEAKER_00: that they want there to be, like,
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: all of this planning and all of this stuff is like, okay,
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: you could do all that and you could try to avoid the mistakes,
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: but you're still going to get something wrong.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: Something will still be wrong no matter what.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_00: So you might as well...
1:03:24
SPEAKER_00: Work on the muscle of building things and being intellectually honest and say,
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: oh, that didn't work.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_00: Let's change, let's do something else.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: And we have to be comfortable at riding that edge of,
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: you know, like this industry, the electric industry.
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: It's very important that we focus on safety.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: And it's a very highly regulated industry and slow moving for that.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_01: But we need to be comfortable riding the edge of being willing to try new things
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: and not just getting stuck in kind of what about type arguments
1:03:55
SPEAKER_01: that End up stalling out any progress.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the real risk.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: But if we're willing to accept that there is a,
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: the place that we're at now is not the place that we need to be,
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: and there are new ways that are worth trying.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: And to your point,
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: if we can experiment with them and figure out what works and double down on
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: the things that are working and keep moving quickly through it,
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: you know, like there's reason to be optimistic in my view.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: This is part of the reason why we rebranded.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_00: There has to be a willingness to go into the unknown,
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: into the frontiers and the edges of things because you can't just plan your way
1:04:31
SPEAKER_00: through everything.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: You have to step into the...
1:04:36
SPEAKER_00: Into the fray without knowing exactly how it's going to work out
1:04:38
SPEAKER_00: and just figure it out because that's how you get to new outcomes.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, innovate.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been a pleasure.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: Any last calls to action you guys hiring?
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: Anywhere people should reach out if they want to get a Pila battery?
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: All of the above.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: People can find us at pilaenergy.com.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_01: We're constantly hiring across technical and non-technical roles.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_01: If you're interested in getting Pila for your home,
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: you can place an order now and we're starting to fulfill...
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: Like I said,
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: across 50 states,
1:05:07
SPEAKER_01: demand has been incredible,
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: but we're working as hard as we can to ramp up capacity and turn every home
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: and every business into a resilient, smarter hub when it comes to energy.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the part, man.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.