We had the pleasure of sitting down with Josh Wong, the Founder and CEO of ThinkLabs AI (ThinkLabs). Uniquely positioned with his rich experience at the intersection of power systems engineering, AI, and cloud computing, Josh is leading ThinkLabs’ grand vision to fundamentally revolutionize the energy sector through AI-driven solutions.

ThinkLabs’ Origin Story

Growing up in Canada and frequently traveling to the United States, Josh was always fascinated with energy.  He remembers being puzzled by the scarcity of solar panels in North America, which sparked his curiosity and led him to pursue a power engineering degree. He started his career as a Smart Grid Engineering Lead at Toronto Hydro, where he worked on first-of-a-kind smart grid-community battery storage solutions, microgrids, sensors, smart metering, and data analytics. In 2011, Josh founded Opus One Solutions, a company that quickly became a leader in grid Distributed Energy Resources Management Systems (DERMS). Opus One was later acquired by GE, where Josh became part of the energy team and helped the company define the grid of the future. ThinkLabs was incubated within GE Vernova (a spinout of GE; now a public company providing electrical power systems) ) and subsequently spun ThinkLabs out of GE Vernova, with a mission to bring greater autonomy to the power grid using AI.

ThinkLabs’ Solution

ThinkLabs addresses a critical issue in the energy sector: the need for reliable, clean, and affordable energy with speed and scale. The electric grid, an analog and complex 130-year-old interconnected system of physical infrastructure, requires significant modernization to support the electrification necessary for decarbonization and to meet our near-term energy demands.

ThinkLabs envisions an AI-driven approach to grid management, akin to the autopilot systems used in autonomous driving and aviation. By leveraging what Josh calls “physics- or engineering-informed AI”, ThinkLabs makes processes like dynamic planning and grid orchestration more automated, accurate, and instantaneous. “We can leverage the trustworthiness of engineering, but the speed, scale, and pre-trained readiness of AI. That’s the dream: can we basically cruise control our way through the energy transition?”

Image Credits: Jason Hawke via Unsplash

Why Now?

The urgency for grid modernization cannot be overstated. “The next 10 years will write the history books on how the grid evolves over the next half century,” asserts Josh. Utilities, traditionally slow to innovate, are now facing immense pressure to adapt given a proliferation of extreme weather events, workforce shortages, and increasing demand for electricity amidst nationwide decarbonization targets and federal regulation. Utilities are also increasingly seeing the value in transitioning from legacy systems to more advanced, data-driven approaches. The ability to integrate vast amounts of data and utilize AI for real-time and predictive analytics and optimization is unlocking capabilities previously not available. “Right now, there is a lot of industry education required when engaging with utilities. But once they see it, they understand it,” Josh says. 

Image Credits: US Energy Information Administration

Image Credits: BloombergNEF

How ThinkLabs Leverages AI

ThinkLabs leverages physics- or engineering-informed AI, a concept that integrates traditional power systems engineering with AI applications. “Our focus is engineering-based systems, and when we think about those mission-critical systems, we all go back to the textbooks we studied back in school. So how do we bring the textbooks from the traditional world of mathematics, physics, and engineering to AI? The best way is to teach AI how to do physics,” explains Josh.

This approach involves training AI models with large amounts of data to become a surrogate model for real-world physics. Another key benefit of using AI to do engineering is that feedback loops exist, whereby processes like model validation and optimization become increasingly accurate the more data the AI ingests.

ThinkLabs’ technology enables utilities to make the grid more efficient, reliable, and resilient: “In the world of engineering, we also do scenario analysis – assume three scenarios, crunch your numbers, pick the one in the middle. But AI allows us to run thousands and millions of scenarios, so when the time comes, the model is pre-trained: if you have too much solar, it knows exactly what to do. If there are too many electric vehicles charging at once, it knows exactly what to do. It’s instantaneous.”

Image Credits: Shraga Kopstein via Unsplash

Josh’s Advice for Aspiring AI Entrepreneurs

When asked for advice for those looking to start an AI company, Josh offers a thoughtful perspective: “I would say focus on use cases. I think too many people jump into this space because of the AI bandwagon, but really at the end of the day, what matters is what type of business value you drive and how you can do things 10x better.”

Josh emphasizes the importance of a deep understanding of the fundamentals, whether on the engineering or AI side. He advises, “So not just – ‘here’s the data set, apply AI and see what you get’. Dig one level deeper and apply first principles – that can really help differentiate yourself from others.”

To sign up for updates on ThinkLabs’ progress, open roles, and for more information on their mission, visit https://www.thinklabs.ai/.

In an era where automation and AI are transforming industries, Saman Farid, Founder and CEO of Formic Technologies, stands out as a visionary driving manufacturing productivity. With his background in engineering and venture capital, Saman brings a unique perspective to the challenges and opportunities in this sector.

Formic’s Origin Story

Saman’s career began as an engineer, building manufacturing facilities across China and the US. After launching, scaling, and exiting a software company, he spent over ten years as a venture capitalist at Baidu Ventures investing at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and the physical world. From this vantage point, he identified a clear market gap: “There was a tremendous opportunity to improve the adoption of robotics and AI in the physical world,” Saman notes. “The tools were thriving in Silicon Valley but had very, very limited adoption in the real world. I realized that if I didn’t start this company now, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” In 2020, Saman left to found Formic.

Formic’s Solution

Formic is automating processes to address the critical labor shortage in the manufacturing industry. With the number of unfilled US manufacturing jobs projected to hit 2.1 million by 2030, factories often sit idle, unable to meet production demands. Formic’s robotics solutions help fill these labor gaps, while enhancing factory productivity and production quality.

Image Credits: Stanley Yuan via X

Saman highlights why fewer than 10 percent of American manufacturers utilize industrial robotics: high complexity, lack of expertise, and prohibitive upfront costs. “Factories that are not familiar with this technology have a hard time making an investment in something they believe is such a huge risk”, he explains, “What Formic does to resolve those concerns is provide the full service offering. Factories pay us an hourly rate for the robots to do a job and we do everything, from the system design, to deployment, to maintenance. This end-to-end solution takes the pain and headache away and makes their lives easier.”

Formic’s Customers and How Formic Delivers Value

Formic’s manufacturer customer base includes food and beverage, aerospace and defense, and healthcare products. Today, Formic’s robots operate in nearly 100 manufacturing facilities, each customized for specific production tasks such as packing or stacking.

The company has achieved a 98% contract renewal rate, a testament to the value and reliability of Formic’s solutions. “It speaks to the fact that we solve a critical need in our customers’ production processes,” Saman notes. “We provide service and uptime guarantees, perform all necessary maintenance, and use our software to remotely manage and diagnose issues. As a result, the customer has peace of mind that their production process won’t be stopped because of us.”

The Role of Software in Formic’s Solutions

Beyond robotics hardware, Formic has built automation software that enhances robotic efficiency, reliability, and adaptability.

A key application of this software is creating digital twins of customers’ factories, which helps Formic determine each facility’s idiosyncratic requirements. The software selects and designs the optimal robots and processes, which before Formic, required significant engineering resources.

Formic Core is the company’s proprietary operating system, which feeds data at the robot level back to Formic’s central command center. “It allows us to automatically generate the programs that run on the robot,” Saman explains. “Today the robot may be working on one product and tomorrow they may be working on another. The robot needs to be adaptive to all those different requirements, so Formic Core allows our customers to quickly switch between different tasks, instantly generate the robot program, and validate it to that task.”

Formic’s Future Vision

Saman highlights the significance of building a company in manufacturing automation at a time of unprecedented growth. “All of our capabilities in the physical world are downstream of manufacturing power,” he explains. “At the end of the day, our ability to have a resilient food supply chain, a strong military, good infrastructure, roads and schools – all comes from our ability to actually make these things.”

With Formic’s recent $27.4M Series A fundraise, the company is building on commercial success by expanding to new geographies and use cases. Formic is also investing in advanced AI-enabled software to continue accelerating their growth. In the long term, Saman envisions a future where American manufacturing is revitalized and globally competitive, driven by advanced automation.

“If we do our jobs well, we will be the largest workforce provider for American factories.”

To sign up for progress updates on Formic and for more information on open roles, visit https://formic.co/.

Video                                                                  Inv. announcement

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Chinmay Malaviya (left) and Charlie Depman (right) met in 2020 while working at two first-generation micro-mobility companies (Bird & Lime). Identifying a need within the industry for longer rider-vehicle relationships and greater vehicle optionality, Chinmay and Charlie founded Ridepanda, a one-stop shop for micro-mobility benefits that empowers employers to offer subsidized micro-mobility solutions to employees.

We sat down with Chinmay and Charlie to discuss the Ridepanda’s origin story, how the company is making micro-mobility more accessible and affordable, and the industry’s future from a regulatory and technological perspective (video  here). For more information on open roles at Ridepanda, visit their job board here. For more on Blackhorn’s investment in Ridepanda, see our investment announcement here  

Tell us about your entrepreneurial path, and the creation of Ridepanda.

(Chinmay) There have been many Panda adventures for me – my first internship was actually at the World Wildlife Fund, which Charlie reminds me was my first “Panda” experience.

In 2012, I joined the early founding team of Foodpanda, a company comparable to DoorDash operating in Southeast Asia. Foodpanda was where I truly learned and fell in love with the meaning of the word “entrepreneur.” To start, entrepreneurship means close proximity to impact. As an entrepreneur, you are not siloed; rather, you stand next to a company and industry’s challenges and opportunities, and are provided the space to attack both in a meaningful, intentional manner. Being an entrepreneur is also synonymous with wearing multiple hats. It was so intellectually stimulating to switch between analyzing an operational issue to a sales issue in the matter of a day – that freedom to continuously address core problems was something I appreciated most about my experience at Foodpanda. Foodpanda was one of the first Internet 1.0 companies offering online payments. While there were varying degrees of hesitation across the locations we served due to fear of fraud and other perceived operational challenges – from Singapore to Thailand to Malaysia – it was incredible to see how we were able to convert the region from cash payments to online payments. Around 2013, we transitioned from a desktop application to a mobile application; as the technology was evolving, I had an intimate viewpoint of the transition.

Most recently, I worked at Lime. Lime was an incredible experience that introduced me to (A) micro-mobility and the challenges surrounding the transportation of people and goods, and (B) the “Silicon Valley approach” to building businesses. On the latter point, my time at Lime illuminated how highly valued product, tech, and data is in Silicon Valley. On the former point, Lime bolstered me with credibility in the micro-mobility space, confidence in the US ecosystem, and the self-awareness that I’m better at building things from zero; I wanted to wear the entrepreneurial hat while working on a meaningful project with individuals I can learn from – individuals like Charlie.

(Charlie) My journey began in China, where I lived for 2.5 years cumulatively. Living in China offered me two major insights. First, I gained insight into the extent of environmental degradation occurring not just in China, but all over the world, and its impact on peoples’ health and happiness; that realization ultimately led me to stop teaching English and start a career at environmental nonprofits. The second major insight I had was around transportation. In large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, or Chongqing, cars are simply not the answer; instead, I saw that micro-mobility devices were convenient options that allow individuals to move in a low impact manner and cities to become more liveable. I can’t recall the number of times I would travel back to San Francisco or New York City, see these enormous SUVs with one person in them, and think to myself: “This cannot be the future if we want to have sustainable cities.”

In my most recent stint in China, I was working at NYU Shanghai as a teacher with dreams of being a sci-fi writer. There, I had an epiphany as I questioned how I could build things beyond dreaming and writing about them. The answer: coding. I audited a coding course at NYU Shanghai, fell in love with programming, and moved to San Francisco to further educate myself. Along the way, I discovered the company Scoot, who were the first to offer shared micro-mobility via smartphones.

I joined Scoot as one of their first engineers and stayed there for four years. During my time there, Scoot became a multimodal platform – offering e-bikes, scooters, vespa-style sit-down scooters – and I had the opportunity to go back to China and help work on several micro-mobility devices (such as Scoot’s first electric bike). When Scoot was acquired by Bird, this multimodal trend continued and I helped build technology to support multiple vehicle types on Bird’s platform. Bird started providing retail offerings as well. At the beginning of 2020, I met Chinmay, who had a similar experience at Lime (in terms of micro-mobility companies offering multimodal vehicle options and programs with longer-term vehicle relationships), and the Ridepanda platform was born soon thereafter.

What problems are you trying to solve within the transportation sector?

(Chinmay) Given our respective tenures at Bird and Lime, Charlie and I are both very familiar with the transportation sector. During our time at these companies, one fact became increasingly clear. Ultimately, climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity today; and in the United States, transportation is the #1 cause of emissions. If you break that down, passenger cars make up more than half of those trips. If you double click again, in the large majority of cities, 60% to 70% of passenger car trips are between 0 and 5 miles.

Companies in the space such as Bird and Lime tackled many of these issues and encouraged people to embrace micro-mobility, but we saw an opportunity to further accelerate the transition. E-bikes, scooters, and other form factors were becoming more familiar to commuters; technological evolution was occurring at a rapid pace in the space; and people were, and still are, hungry for alternatives that prioritize their health and wellness while promoting sustainability.

The first generation of micro-mobility companies, such as Lime and Bird, seem to have negative investor sentiment because of challenging unit economics. How do you differentiate yourself in a crowded micro-mobility space?

(Charlie) Relative to other scooter sharing companies, we differentiate ourselves in three categories. First, convenience. When you have a Ridepanda subscription, your vehicle is yours; whether you need to go to work, grocery shop, or visit a friend across town, your vehicle is always there for you. That differs from sharing companies, where oftentimes a user must hunt for a vehicle that is nearby, in-service, and charged. Second, reliability. We take good care of our vehicles and our customers take good care of our vehicles. We offer servicing for all of our vehicles through the lifespan of the lease; we also partner with high-quality vehicle manufacturers to provide high-quality vehicles in the first place. And beyond those factors, Ridepanda customers care about the condition of their vehicle because they are the next user. Third, choice. Most sharing companies have a standard model that, while it has had iterations, is built like a tank – the vehicle is built to withstand the various abuses it may run into on the streets. People have differing use cases for their micro-mobility vehicles and come in many shapes and sizes, which a standard model cannot account for. Ridepanda’s offerings can be tailored to a variety of use cases and body types, whether it involves commuting up hills or going long distances on rough terrain.

(Chinmay) There is more scrutiny around micro-mobility. However, that industry-wide scrutiny has pushed us to be better. Lime and other micro-mobility companies have created amazing demand and executed millions of trips, but they have not been able to see the same success when it comes to unit economics and profitability. At Ridepanda, since day one we have prioritized building a healthy and sustainable business while keeping long-term defensibility in mind.

Ridepanda bills itself as a “micro-mobility benefits platform for everyone.” What was the product development process for Ridepanda? How would you characterize the Ridepanda customer experience?

(Charlie) We have been listening to our customers from the beginning. Ridepanda’s first product iteration was our retail platform. At our previous companies, we found that people sought more ownership (in terms of a longer term relationship with their vehicle) and more choice. In the next iteration, we improved by thinking more locally, opening our local service centers called PandaHubs to provide ongoing support. We also saw an opportunity in leasing and subscription to foster a tighter relationship with our customers, which again allowed us to provide that high-touch servicing. With each iteration, we are trying to more deeply integrate these vehicles into our customers’ lives.

Another factor guiding our product roadmap was the issue of accessibility. Many micro-mobility vehicles can cost thousands of dollars. We saw the Ridepanda solution as an opportunity to reduce the cost of micro-mobility through subscriptions, making the price more palatable on a month-to-month basis. There was also an opportunity to make micro-mobility even more accessible with the help of employers, who sought to subsidize micro-mobility to reduce single occupancy car trips, number of parking lots and commuter shuttles used daily, as well as their carbon impact.

Ridepanda pivoted in terms of product focus in early 2022. What advice would you give to founders considering pivoting some aspect of their business? What should be taken into account when making the decision and what should founders keep in mind when executing the transition?

(Chinmay) In terms of what has worked for us, we’ve found it critical to choose a meaningful mission – to focus on something you are passionate about and have expertise in. For Charlie and I, we wanted to accelerate the transition from cars to micro-mobility.

How we have chosen to accomplish that mission, however, has evolved over the lifespan of the company. What pivoting and change comes down to is maintaining a sense of humility and honesty around what is and isn’t working; it comes down to being data driven and selecting clear, relevant KPIs; it comes down to being open to questioning things that may be working today, but may not be the best tomorrow; it comes down to embracing critique. It is a painful process because you put so much time and effort into product development. However, as a leader, you must have the capacity to acknowledge that things may not be at their best, and you have to progress with the mission as your north star.

For early-stage founders, the key pursuit is product-market fit – finding a solution with predictable sources of revenue, a strong path for growth, and an ability to make a strong moat. At the end of the day, we are happy to embrace that our baby is ugly in some aspects, and our goal is to make it better. It all comes down to having a growth mindset.

What do you view as the ultimate value of Ridepanda and to whom?

(Charlie) We see our major value delivered to three main parties. Those are our employers, their employees, and the planet.

On the employer side, we are helping them to reduce their carbon footprint and their scope 3 emissions. We are helping companies to accelerate their return to office, as well as reduce overhead cost (in terms of the parking lot and commuter shuttles). We help promote employee health and wellness – these devices allow people to get exercise before and after work, which studies show benefit employee productivity and retention. For the employees, we give them the opportunity to leave their car at home, commute flexibly on their schedule, and even have some community with other micromobility commuters at work. These devices are also fun – people love them for recreation outside of commuting.

For the planet, we are helping shift behavior for thousands of people – our full-service model with choices for everyone makes it easier for people to choose eco-friendly micromobility devices over polluting cars not only for their commutes but any other short to medium trips around town. Reducing our carbon footprint has never been so important (especially considering all the destructive climate-related events this summer) and we want to make it as frictionless as possible.

In addition, we are giving vehicle vendors – such as Giant and Specialized – a platform to introduce their product to a whole new segment of the market. A lot of our customers are first-time riders or individuals who haven’t been on a bike since they were kids.

Can you speak more about Ridepanda’s adjacent market opportunities? How do you envision the future for Ridepanda?

(Chinmay) In terms of future initiatives for employers, we are working closer with employers to amplify the benefits of partnering with Ridepanda – specifically, amplifying the benefits of increased sustainability, accelerated return to office, as well as the agency provided to employees, and the health and wellness increase of riding). We are building tools around those benefits, from measuring CO2 and Scope 3 emissions reductions to reducing integration frictions due to reimbursement in payroll. We are really doubling down with employers on why they are working with us.

We will continue working with third-party small and medium-sized bike shops; we hope to leverage these shops as we provide vehicle servicing, vehicle fulfillment, and test rides. We are also thinking about how we can help people outside of the employee network through D2C subscriptions or by leasing previously used vehicles.

Finally, employee education is an integral part of our vision for Ridepanda. Our goal is not to simply sign a lot of companies and employees; the goal is to change long-term transportation behavior. There is a lot we will have to do around education, but our ultimate vision is to create a network effect, where greater usage of micro-mobility will increase government infrastructure for micro-mobility, which in turn will increase micro-mobility usage.

There is a lot of legislation both supporting and limiting the micro-mobility industry, from the Bicycle Commuter Act to Paris’ ban of rental e-scooters. What do you see as the future of micro-mobility in terms of legislation? Which cities are getting it right? What steps should governments take to aid the growth of the industry?

(Chinmay) Government has a key role to play in the journey to popularize this novel, innovative transportation mode. I remember when Charlie and I were ideating Ridepanda, San Francisco had recently banned cars on Market Street on certain days of the week. That made it obvious to us that governments were starting to take micro-mobility more seriously; in many counties and cities, conversations are being held about micro-mobility and infrastructure is being built. One tangible example is the county of San Mateo, who is one of our clients. Not only is the county discussing micro-mobility, they are actively subsidizing it.

That being said, change is always scary. New York recently had issues with e-bike battery fires, which opened some critiques around the practicality of the industry. We see it all as growing pains – it is inevitable that, as industries grow and change, there will be questions raised around methodology. There are many low quality products on the market and governments are trying to reduce that through regulation – micro-mobility manufacturing does not have the thorough processing that car manufacturing does, which means that the margin of error is higher and the repairability score is lower. We want these vehicles to be long lasting and for that to occur, it is vital that there are regulations around quality.

Do you see micro-mobility moving in the same direction as other forms of transportation (ie. automation technology) or in another, unique direction?

(Charlie) We are continuing to see improvements in the materials and battery chemistry of the physical devices, which enables lighter, longer-lasting, safer, and ultimately cheaper vehicles. We’ve seen the price of batteries decrease by nearly 90% in the last ten years, and that price trend will surely continue.

We will continue to see vehicles like bikes and scooters become more modular, especially to promote repairability and customization. In the industry, we are trying to solve two major issues: safety and security. On the latter point, it is significantly easier to steal one of these vehicles than a car – potential growth on that front is huge. In terms of safety, there are obviously factors external to the vehicle such as infrastructure that will aid in progress; in terms of the vehicle, more technology is being developed to find safer routes on existing infrastructure. For example, Apple recently announced AppleVision. Though it is not fully released yet, I can imagine a future with a Ridepanda mobile application that provides heads-up turn-by-turn directions, accident alerts, and other safety recommendations.

You have a lot of female first-time riders. How should we be thinking about the equity and accessibility opportunities enabled by Ridepanda?

Through financial engineering, we are making micro-mobility cheaper for people who work at large companies or government agencies. We are also making riding more approachable through our brand. Our logo was designed to embody approachability: we are experts in the field, and have the knowledge that will allow you to feel comfortable and safe on your vehicle.

We offer a high-touch experience from beginning to end. When you enter a PandaHub, it’s designed to feel welcoming. There are countless people who have felt intimidated or out of place at traditional bike shops; our goal is to make people – women, first-time riders, inexperienced riders – feel accepted. We provide onboarding at our PandaHubs including test rides. We will show you all the bells and whistles of your bike; we will ensure you feel comfortable riding your bike; we will provide you with a helmet, a lock, and a pump to ensure the rest of your relationship with the vehicle is enjoyable.

Whether it’s the PandaHub’s design or the people we hire, we promote friendliness and provide services for people across the riding experience spectrum. We want the Ridepanda experience to be accessible to people of all walks of life, allowing riders to determine which vehicle fits their body, experience level, and lifestyle.

If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would that be?

(Chinmay) I would have dinner with Mahatma Gandhi, given that I grew up in India. When I think about Gandhi, I think about an individual who was able to start a worldwide movement – before the age of social media and TikTok, he was able to create community and further the fight for dignity and freedom using noble values. His life was a lesson in sustained progress; the success of Gandhi’s movement did not happen overnight. I would love to learn what was driving him, the anxieties and struggles he faced, and the mechanisms that allowed him to persevere through the challenges. I would also love to hear his take on today’s pressing social issues, especially climate change – what would Gandhi do to create a global community and fight for a better future?

(Charlie) The Buddha. I’d love to get the Buddha’s advice on our world today, in terms of how we are treating the planet and how we are treating ourselves. I admire how his teachings and Buddhism have spread throughout the world in a gentle way, and have helped countless people gain healthy awareness and perspective. I like how the Buddha’s teachings encourage introspection and insight – which for me is important as we examine the way we live and care for the people and planet around us.

Blackhorn portfolio company Optera is a carbon management software system providing companies with the tools and services to track, manage, and achieve their emissions goals.  From pioneering pay-as-you-go solar in Africa to working with the World Economic Forum on climate change, Tim Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Optera, has long been at the forefront of decarbonization.

We talked with Tim about why Scope 3 emissions are a different animal, how companies of all sizes can build out their emissions accounting and ESG programs, and his hopes for the future of the supply chain. For more information on open roles at Optera, visit their job board here.

Tell us about yourself. What experiences led you to start Optera? 

I’ve always been a mission-driven individual. When I was an undergraduate student at Colorado College, I intentionally focused my degree around issues I found meaningful; I had the privilege of an incredible and loving upbringing, and wanted to use the foundations laid for me by my parents to their best purpose. The environmental field was a perfect blend of my head and my heart – creating a sustainable planet was an issue I fundamentally cared about, and as a quantitative individual, I saw that there was ample opportunity to leverage data within the industry.

In 2015, I met my co-founders Jason and Ty. For years, they had been supporting Fortune 500 companies and many leading NGOs as consultants, analyzing how corporations were measuring and managing their carbon emissions. When I first met Jason and Ty, they were grappling with how they could work with businesses in a more scalable way – how to develop technologies and other solutions that would enable them to address the climate crisis at scale. Together, we completed market research. I was responsible for crafting the first set of interview questions we took to Fortune 500 sustainability officers. It was in these early days of science-based targets, on the tails of the Paris Agreement when an increasing number of companies were trying to align their initiatives with the latest in climate science, that we realized there wasn’t a viable solution available for companies to manage their sustainability practices – it was all spreadsheets and consultants. So, we began bootstrapping Optera.

What problems are you trying to solve at Optera? Why is this relevant now and why you?

We are in the midst of a transition to the low-carbon economy, and no company knows how they’re going to do it. Every industry will look fundamentally different in the next 5 to 10 years if we bend the curve and progress on the 1.5 or 2-degree pathway.

Optera is making this transition manageable for companies. Right now, true sustainability is not achievable for many companies because they don’t know what their emissions are or where they are coming from – companies are relying on high-level assumptions that are not actionable. At Optera, we help companies peel away layers of their emissions assumptions, unearthing data that they can make business decisions against. We ask the relevant questions: what suppliers are at the greatest risk when transitioning to the low-carbon economy? What commodities? What products can you no longer sell because they are predicated on a fossil fuel economy?

We provide the data foundation for businesses. I believe what is driving this market is a general understanding among investors, regulators, customers, and employees that we need to determine which companies will thrive in this green future, and which will not. Smart companies and executives know the primary unknown variable is the speed of the transition, and are proactively trying to answer the question. Ultimately, we serve businesses that want to measure their incremental sustainability improvements and build maturity in their organization to better achieve their environmental goals.

What is your vision for the future of Optera? What industry sectors are you looking to expand into? How do you go from the customer logos you’re serving today to where you see opportunities over the horizon?

A lot of our customer concentration is in the electronics and retail industries, as well as the financial sector.There are several reasons why we have chosen to focus on these areas. First, we can cater to their common set of pain points around scope 3 emissions with one product. Second, those industries are moving faster than all others. The brands we work with – Dell, Cisco, HPE – and the big-box retailers they cater to are under tremendous scrutiny from consumers, regulators, and the market at large.

As this unfolds, other industries will need to follow suit and catch up. Our approach has been to help the leaders lead; we anticipate, however, that other industries will be in the market, seeking a solution in the coming years as other industries mature.

We are currently focusing on companies that have big decarbonization problems; we are focusing on companies that have many components to transition; we are focusing on companies that have to be really thoughtful in their execution, from transitioning their supply chain to their product mix to their manufacturing practices. We have chosen to place emphasis on the industries and companies that have the greatest impact on the world, and will continue to do so. My hope is that this industry ultimately touches every company in the world – but, that dream is dependent on whether regulators will force big companies to manage their Scope 3 emissions and require private companies of every shape and size to share their data publicly.

When tracking emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3), what are the factors that you take into consideration?  What often gets overlooked in carbon accounting?

Scope 1 and 2 emissions are operational emissions – emissions that stem from things you operate. The ultimate source of information – the fundamental data source – to quantify your emissions is a bill; it is the closest proxy to financial accounting we have in our industry. I say that because it’s difficult, but not crazy difficult. People would be able to track their Scope 1 and 2 emissions without sophisticated software providers.

Scope 3 is a different animal. It’s where the existential challenges lie for organizations as they transition to the low-carbon economy. What are your product and operating inputs, and do those inputs have to change? What do you sell, and how is it used in the world? If you are an automaker, you are actively transitioning your entire product mix from internal combustion engines to EVs – that’s a massive transition.

Understanding your Scope 3 emissions is where organizations understand their transition risk and opportunity – that’s why we focus on those emissions within our product. Scope 1 and 2 are not where differentiation lies in our market. That’s why at Optera, we’ve productized a way to measure this massively complex problem without reliance on convoluted Excel spreadsheets or brilliant consultants. Ultimately, we are pairing our customers’ data – how much and what they are spending and buying – with real supplier data so they can quantify their emissions using actionable insights. Then, the work becomes determining which suppliers we can engage with and in what ways.

Downstream, we are serving retailers with massive, diverse product portfolios. The challenge of transitioning these retailers’ entire portfolios is one that will take decades, and we have to provide a consistent, reliable data source over that entire period of time. What that means is, again, moving away from assumptions, and gathering actionable and accurate data on the products retailers sell and the exact suppliers retailers transact with; or, for investors, gathering direct data on their portfolio companies and other assets. It means not relying on industry averages or broad-based assumptions, and instead putting in the work to collect direct data.

Is it ever “too early” to start considering ESG? What metrics should smaller companies look at when they are building out their sustainability strategy?

It is never too early to start caring about ESG. 

On the social and governance front, it’s a broad mix of issues that have implications across your organization. What are your hiring practices? What methods do you have in place to monitor the health and safety of workers? What are the diversity, equity, and inclusion standards you operate by? Governance focuses on the checks and balances that exist across an organization: how an organization maintains fairness and justice.

In terms of environmental data, the best place to start is carbon emissions, specifically Scope 1 and 2 – understanding your operational footprint. The foundation for a sustainability program is increasingly becoming climate because it is the only environmental issue you can translate into a single number and have a semblance of your impact on the world. All other environmental data points are more local and context-specific in nature. For example, when you are considering biodiversity, it’s about the environmental ecosystems you are impacting. With climate, however, it does not matter where the CO2 is emitted – it all goes into the atmosphere and has the same greenhouse gas effect.

I’m definitely biased here, but folks should really start building out their ESG programs by considering their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Scope 2 emissions are the easiest to build sophistication around managing. There are easy versions of Scope 3 tracking that organizations can start with: business travel, employee commuting, and waste. However, organizations ultimately have to understand their total exposure to transition risks associated with their net-zero journey; and that only comes when you do a full account across Scope 1, 2, and 3.

What are the markers of a successful ESG/sustainability program? Can you give an example of a particularly successful relationship you’re part of? How do you quantify success in your work?

At a high level, the marker of success in a sustainability program is making claims you can stand behind and continue to stand behind as the years progress. A successful sustainability program has a roadmap that is rooted in accurate data and can affect impact.

There is no standard for any organization to meaningfully claim net zero. It does not exist unless you have fully delineated all of your combustion fuels across everything you operate, including your value chain – this really does not exist yet. While there are many companies that make net zero claims, they have to do so with an asterisk, and that asterisk is really important. I am still very proud of the organizations we work with that have accomplished all they can reasonably accomplish and have made net zero claims.

What I am most proud of is the work our partner companies have taken to actively manage and decarbonize their supply chains; this work has had incredible ripple effects orders of magnitude larger than even our partners’ Scope 3 emissions. If you are a company completing emissions accounting, you know that you are a fraction of a supplier’s total business; if you can get your supplier to make improvements from an emissions standpoint, you are benefiting all companies working with the supplier. The effect on the planet is so much larger. What we have seen is that our product – our ability to support organizations – has an outsized impact on how industries are maturing and decarbonizing.

There is a time value of carbon that is overlooked by many people, where a ton of carbon saved today is far more beneficial than a ton of carbon saved in 10 years. All of the work we are seeing in mitigating and reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions is tremendous; the outsized positive effects of Scope 3 emissions reductions we’ve seen across our clients is something we are encouraged by. 

What do you see in the future for corporate sustainability from a legislation/policy/regulation perspective?

We have been operating in a voluntary world for so long in the sustainability industry. The good news is that there is significant precedent and standardization enabling regulation to be enacted (all things considered). EU’s new regulation, CSRD, is mandating the reporting and verification of Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by publicly traded companies and companies conducting significant business in the EU. All of this will have positive ripple effects on the economy as organizations require their suppliers to step up.

I see regulation using the precedent set by the voluntary market effectively, and I see regulation setting the rules of the road in a way that provides certainty. Right now, certain companies are way ahead and certain companies are not even at the starting line. Regulation is going to require all companies to align around a common understanding of what the standards are. It is going to bring about good scrutiny.

In the United States, I am hopeful that we are going to approach parity with the EU. Undoubtedly, this is a politicized issue within the United States. It will be fought over; there will be backlash; there is no question. The common thread here is that it makes sense. What I often say is, if you are a pension fund manager crafting a target date fund out to 2040, you’re not doing your job if you’re not thinking about the transition away from fossil fuels; if you are an insurance company and you are considering your exposure over the next 20 years, you’re not doing your job if you’re not considering the impact of climate. Political pressure aside, that is still going to be true. None of the driving forces behind this market are going to change. The timing of when regulation takes effect or how long it’s fought over will be slightly up in the air. However, I am quite hopeful because, despite how many wrong turns we make as a human species, we keep going in the right direction.

As a former music teacher, who are some of your favorite musical artists or what are some of your favorite songs?

My bias is toward anything with soul. My wife and I met playing in a funk band – a 14-piece with a full horn section. I’m also a jazz musician at heart and love improvisational music. I’d say the artist that comes to mind is Julian Lage, an American guitarist and composer. Hiatus Kaiyote is another band I always go back to – they are one of the most original groups around.

Quincy Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Electric Era, started his professional career as a mechanical engineer at SpaceX. Applying the skills he learned for spacecraft to the climate challenge here on Earth, Quincy is on a mission to make electric vehicle fast charging ubiquitous and affordable. At Electric Era, Quincy and his team have built a modular electric vehicle battery and smart charging system that enables the easy implementation of charging stations at gas stations and convenience stores.

We had the chance to talk with Quincy about what he learned from his time at SpaceX, the process of creating and deploying Electric Era’s PowerNode product, and the future of AI and EV fast charging.

For more on Blackhorn’s investment in Electric Era, see our investment announcement here. For information on open roles at Electric Era, visit their job board here.

Tell us a little about yourself. What life experiences brought you here today?

I spent seven years working at SpaceX as a mechanical engineer and was professionally trained in building commercial technology products. At SpaceX, I worked predominantly on the Starlink satellite constellation and ultimately owned the team that built out the full gateway ground station antenna program. We built a bunch of antennas all over the world that communicate with Starlink satellites and provide connectivity from terrestrial internet up to the Starlink satellite internet.

Source: SpaceX

My original perspective towards business was that of a typical engineer, where one thinks about technology and not necessarily commercial use cases – I definitely grew into thinking about product and the customer value proposition over time. The Starlink experience provided me with a great framework to think about entities solving the climate problem, which is extremely useful when trying to contemplate decarbonizing the global economy.

In 2018, I started to become passionate about decarbonization during, ironically, a rocket launch. I was watching the rocket launch through a rear-facing camera and saw the globe getting smaller and smaller in the distance. I remember thinking about how I was spending all of my time and talent sending things away from Earth when there were so many challenges and opportunities on this planet.

So, I started thinking about ways that I could contribute to the climate tech effort and, ultimately, identified the urgent need to fix electric vehicle (EV) fast charging, which at the time was the main impediment to new EV adoption, which is still one of the major impediments to adoption, primarily because drivers don’t feel comfortable purchasing a vehicle they can’t charge.

All of those factors contributed to us building Electric Era and launching the PowerNode product, which is a battery-backed and software-optimized EV fast charging station that we can build effectively anywhere on the grid. Using first principles, physics, and design, we have engineered a product that solves the fundamental issues and challenges of EV fast charging: grid access, reliability, and cost.

What were some of the largest lessons learned from your time at SpaceX?

SpaceX provided a lot of lessons. Thinking about things from a first principles perspective and understanding basic technology, engineering, and science behind the energy economy is an absolute necessity to do decarbonization.  It’s something I developed throughout my time at SpaceX. If you want to create viable climate solutions, you have to understand at a very deep level first principles and then design solutions using those first principles.

First principles thinking – I know it’s a kitschy statement – means understanding at a very deep level what makes up the universe around us. Once you have this basic mental model, you can use it to creatively design systems, machinery, and business models that will produce substantial change. Every day, we apply first principles thinking across all of our teams. Whether it’s sales, product, software, or implementation, we employ that deep perspective in all of our work to make the most rapid and efficient progress possible. We use it to build products that have substantial advantages over all other approaches in the market.

The second lesson learned is more cultural in nature. Spending time in such an intense environment teaches you how to be an effective operator of teams. We have amalgamated our SpaceX experience into 11 principles that guide hiring at Electric Era. We maintain an incredibly high bar for people joining our company and screen heavily based on how hiring will impact culture, prioritizing qualities such as motivation, accountability, and pedagogical nature. All of these characteristics materialize every day in the journey to build ubiquitous, affordable, and reliable EV fast charging. So, we have made a concentrated effort to hire individuals who meet all those criteria – in our opinion, you need the full complement to make a startup gel together.

In addition to those cultural attributes, we of course hire smart people that have high intellectual fluidity and a high deal of competency in their jobs. As a result, I believe we have put together by far the best team in climate. We’ve been able to do a lot with a little and are moving at an incredibly fast pace. I think it all comes down to a detailed focus on what actually makes the best people and the best team, and hiring accordingly.

What problem are you trying to solve at Electric Era? Why now and why you?

Over the next century humanity must reorganize the entire global energy supply chain. That means everything from generation to transmission to distribution to consumption of all energy types across all energy use cases. That is obviously an extremely difficult task.

Narrowing in, transportation decarbonization requires a huge amount of work. We have to onboard large amounts of renewable energy sources that are sustainability sourced. We have to onboard huge amounts of energy buffering technologies – long duration and short duration energy storage technologies – that can absorb the variability of those renewable resources. Then, we have to get them to the right locations, 99% of which are in metropolitan areas of demand. We have to engineer and build transmission-level grid systems distribute power all the way down to where energy is used locally.

That last level – the distribution grid level – is where Electric Era is focused. At the distribution grid level, we have a problem with EV fast charging: the mismatch between the power that an EV fast charging station uses and the power that a distribution grid can provide. Why does that matter? It matters because it’s extremely expensive and time intensive to rebuild distribution grid infrastructure. It’s time we don’t have. It’s money we don’t have. It’s work that, in many cases, simply cannot be done. We need a better way to make sure that the grid can distribute power at desirable retail locations in a reliable and affordable manner to EVs that are trying to fast charge.

Solving that fundamental mismatch is what we set out to accomplish at Electric Era. And we solved it with PowerNode, which is our battery packs and software-optimized EV fast charging station that drastically levels out the load required from the distribution grid to fast charge EVs in a premium, rapid manner coupled with a high number of sessions per day, every day. How do we do that? We accomplish it with a couple of key components. First, we have chargers at our fast charging stations. Second, we have a battery buffer, which is sized properly for high-power applications and for multiple cycles per day. The final ingredient is our real-time, autonomous software system and our proprietary algorithms that allow us to have a generalized power controller that can source power above the local grid limit from the grid and the on-site battery storage system to electric vehicles. All of those components come together to provide above-the-grid capable charging systems and premium fast charging to drivers, up to 150 times per day.

We have proven the technology and now are scaling it across 19 high-value retail locations across the United States, such as gas stations and convenience stores, where drivers want to be while they fill up. We have had great success selling the product and now are in the growth and implementation phase of the business.

You were recently granted a patent for above-the-grid limit charging – why is this important?

Above-the-grid limit capable charging systems matter because you need to be able to serve power to vehicles that exceed the local grid limits on the distribution grid. If you don’t accomplish that, then you have to build a whole new grid connection or buy an extremely large battery in order to provide an EV fast charging station, neither of which makes sense economically.

If you can pull above-the-grid limit technology together, you can install EV fast charging stations anywhere on the grid for less cost and less time. With increasingly inexpensive and implementable charging stations, you can rapidly deploy EV fast charging stations and the necessary infrastructure the nation needs to rapidly convert to an electric form of transportation.

We have the sole authority from the USPTO to use our approach and its technology stack to facilitate charging in this manner, an approach which, from our perspective and market analysis, will increasingly be a common way to provide fast charging.

Electric Era is currently scaling PowerNode across the United States. What have you learned throughout the process, from forming your GTM strategy to implementing the product?

I knew when founding Electric Era that engineering and technology development was going to be the easy part. The largest learning in retrospect has been around sales and commercialization – turning technology into a product that customers both want to purchase and find valuable.

The first step was packaging the technical solution into a full product that was highly attractive to our end-user, and finding a customer segment that had an existential need for a solution. Once we had a handle on the commercial product, the end user, and the end market, it was a matter of scaling up a sales organization. Later, when we had the right people and a better understanding of the market, it was a fast process; however, it was challenging and time-intensive to begin. The big lesson with sales is that you have to sell value and have a high degree of operational efficiency. You have to be consistently selling, prospecting, and communicating with customers.

At this point in the journey, sales is starting to click.  A large portion of my focus is ensuring our implementation team can rapidly build charging stations and we have an effective process for deployment. Today we have eight customers across nine states with 19 deployments at various stages of implementation, and are rapidly adding more customers to the queue.

What do you view as the largest technological differentiator for Electric Era’s PowerNode?

We use an off-the-shelf battery chemistry that can both service high-power current flows and service them repeatedly. We have battery supply partners who are leaders in long cycle-life since this is a very cycle-heavy application – that’s not necessarily proprietary and we don’t build our own chemistry or even our own battery packs.

Instead of building proprietary battery packs, which are very capital-intensive and under leveraged in terms of the technical outcome and value creation for the customer, we focus on building leverage from our software stack. We have spent significant time building our proprietary PowerNode OS software system, which comes with a suite of functionality including the power controller algorithms that enable above-the-grid charging, full network capabilities, charging station management software, and retail-focused products that generate additional revenue, as well as some exciting new products that have not been announced yet. We built a fully extensible operating system from the ground up and in-house to support the retail-associated EV fast charging use case with PowerNode.

We’ve seen Ford, GM, and Rivian coalesce around Tesla’s charging standard. What does that mean for Electric Era?

People should think about the Tesla charger as a new hardware substrate for the industry. The functional change is that there is a different connector at the end of the charger. That’s it. It’s similar to how Apple changes its charger plugs from time to time. From our perspective, little has changed. In fact, we’ve been pushing our EV charging manufacturer towards the Tesla hardware for nearly a year. In our mind, that’s the right charger to use.

Tesla recently opened up a charging network, which is more interesting to us. However, we also see that in a positive light because our primary customer base is the only charging location that is suitable to compete with Tesla across the broader requirements of a compelling EV refill experience (ie. convenient locations that are safe and well-lit, have excellent amenities, and have in-store product opportunities that can be sold to lower the price of EV fast charging).

We’re very bullish about retail adjacent fast charging for those reasons. In the aggregate, we are road mapping to provide better EV fast charging and refill experience than Tesla can in the long run. We definitely respect what Tesla is doing, but we ultimately believe that Electric Era can and will surpass the quality of a Tesla Supercharger Station.

You were a competitive all-American swimmer in college. What lessons did you take from your time in the pool to the co-founder role at Electric Era?

Sports teach a few really valuable lessons. First, they show that you can mold your reality to your liking – that is something everyone in the world should know, but very few do. People have agency over their existence. I think a lot of people follow the path that life presents to them, as opposed to structuring their days to create opportunities that offer them access to what they want. As an athlete, you are put in situations where you have to employ an agency-driven mindset to accomplish your goals. So, one of the biggest things I got out of swimming was the idea that I can structure my life to my liking.

Second, swimming taught me how to work hard. You are not going to change the world, solve the climate crisis, or be a successful founder unless you work your tail off. Sometimes, people forget how much hard work goes into success. I am very grateful that I developed a strong work ethic from swimming at a young age.

The last thing sports taught me is accountability. You are accountable for your own success and, similarly, you are accountable for your own failures. When things don’t go right, you have to point your failures back toward yourself and reflect on why things didn’t go to plan. The same is true when founding a business or being a successful member of a team. It is ultimately up to you to achieve your goals. Being accountable to yourself, to your teammates, to your investors – that is how you get the best out of everyone.

For more on electric era’s journey in Quincy’s own words, click here

Mark Fosdike, the CEO and cofounder of Datch, spent the majority of his early career as an engineer in aircraft and submarines. After experiencing first-hand how low tech frontline processes were limiting manufacturing output, Mark went on to cofound Datch with Aric Thorn and Ben Purcell, who had been experiencing the same frustrations within the utilities generation and transmission sectors . The trio built an interactive natural language engine that harnesses verbal, conversational dialogue in order to enable frontline workers to capture knowledge as it’s generated, creating a rich informational data set for their organizations. We sat down with Mark to learn more about his entrepreneurial journey, his keys for effective leadership, and the future of Datch’s frontline AI technology.

Tell us a little bit about your background.

My background is in real-world engineering. I studied and worked in aerospace, but also spent some of my early years working in submarines and shipbuilding.As an aerospace engineer, I was lucky enough to work on a number of groundbreaking projects: The first was designing and building the world’s first plasma-actuated roll control aircraft. I was also heavily involved in creating the world’s first carbon nanotube electrothermal ice protection system.

I was involved across different parts of the manufacturing process, which included design, testing, blowing things up, qualification, manufacturing, and flying around the world to meet with customers deploying our systems on their aircraft. I was incredibly lucky to spend time across the full spectrum of aerospace manufacturing, all the way from pre-design criteria through to seeing the transformation of raw metal into flying objects.

It was around this time that I met my cofounders, who were having very similar experiences in the energy and utilities sectors. Interestingly, we had all come to a similar conclusion: we were designing, building, and maintaining incredibly advanced real-world systems, but the software used at the frontline that enables the design, operations, and maintenance of these systems was stuck in the past.

For several years, Aric Thorn (one of my cofounders at Datch) and I were neighbors, and we would come home and build together: e.g. autonomous flying drones, self-built IOT home devices. But we had bigger ambitions. Since we liked building things together, and we were seeing common problems across the industry, let’s solve something real. And that was what kicked everything off.

We had some ideas for what we wanted to solve, but first jumped in a car and drove around the country, talking to manufacturers about their biggest problems. We learned a lot, but the most interesting insight was that managers were saying, “My frontline teams spend far too much time writing information into our systems of record. The quality of the data sucks, and we still lose 1-2 hours per technician! Can you help us with that?”

All these conversations led to a lightbulb moment for us, in the form of two words: ‘input problem’. We realized that the way we capture information hasn’t changed in 30 years at best, hundreds of years at worst. We saw this as a clear problem for us to solve, and that emerging technologies across the AI landscape were well suited to help us solve these.

How do the skills you picked up during your engineering career translate to your career as an entrepreneur?

It’s systems all the way down! If you’re an engineer, you’re a master problem solver. And you’re framing goals as a set of problems that you need to solve in order to reach a specific outcome. As an engineer I’ve also pursued a deep, generalist skill set throughout my career and it has helped me to tackle problems in novel ways.

I see entrepreneurship as no different than that. If you’re a good engineer, and know how to talk to people, you can be an excellent entrepreneur.

What was your journey like into familiarizing yourself with the world of AI, then eventually building a product with it?

Neither myself nor my two cofounders were AI experts before we started Datch, coming from the founder/market side, rather than the software side. We knew how to code, and had experience in machine learning, but questioned whether we could deliver on these lofty ambitions. I remember Aric saying, “Building the tech will be hard, just like building the business. But we’ll learn quickly as we alway do, and bring in the best people to help us accelerate.” He was 100% right with this blueprint.

Years later, we’re now experts in the field, advising the biggest enterprises in the world on their AI strategy, and delivering an AI solution that makes a true impact on frontline operations.

What would you say are the most important tenets of your team culture?

We value collaboration, camaraderie, and balance. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The team works incredibly hard, but we also recognize that some of the smartest and hardest-working people also have families and other commitments. We have a culture of flexibility, so if someone needs to pick up their children from school, go to an appointment, or take a week to work somewhere else, they have the space to do that.

There’s this idea of balance, but also this idea of working hard towards a common goal. We’re mission driven, and continue to drive towards a core focus, which is to help industry thrive by more effectively connecting the frontline. This helps us hone in on our product, positioning, and product vision, and having a North Star that everyone gathers around is essential for delivering at pace.

You mentioned balance and how important balance is, how do you make sure to keep a balance in your daily life? Can you tell us a little bit about your daily routine?

I’m based in New York, but I also work closely with our engineering and product teams in New Zealand, so I tend to work late into the night. As a counterbalance, I take off Wednesday nights from 7pm, so I can go out for dinner with my wife, or go see a show. I also try to hit the gym first thing in the morning and carve out some time on the weekends for friends. It’s true that if you’re not recharging, you’re not at your most productive.

I think something unique about our culture of balance is that it’s a good mix of kiwi and US culture. If you think about kiwis, one of the first things that comes to mind is a prioritization of work-life balance. This is blended with the American culture of hard work, where even time-off, meals, and conversations are often treated as inputs that help drive productivity. This combination merges well, because we get a unique balance of this incredible American work ethic alongside the equally important kiwi emphasis on work-life balance. And from a business perspective it pays off with high output plus strong retention.

Can you speak to what’s next for Datch?

We’re 2 weeks away from launching a turnkey solution on our platform called Datch for Asset Management. This is a mobile solution that plugs directly into systems like SAP PM or IBM Maximo, and allows operations and maintenance teams to manage their assets effectively from the frontline, while using AI to increase productivity, enrich data coming in from the field, and make better decisions based on intelligent insights.

Moving forward, we’ll be consolidating the platform, further building out our integration network, and delivering more solutions to our enterprise clients around the world. This platform is not only the key to helping us scale, but also the key to helping our customers scale as well.

We see the future of frontline work as one in which the software layer is almost invisible, but enables natural human interactions while providing the high quality data needed in the age of Industry 4.0. If you think far enough into the future, it’s inevitable: if you’re using your hands, working on real-world equipment, the best form of interaction is going to be that which is natural and amplifies the worker’s skill set and experience. We’re charging down this path toward that future. We’re also bringing in a broader set of tools that use Datch’s interface layer to enable deep analytics and insights for our customer base.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

We’re hiring! Check out our jobs board here. We’re always looking for smart, driven people who are inspired by our mission.

As the CEO and co-founder of Buzz Solutions, Kaitlyn Albertoli aspires to safeguard the world’s energy infrastructure. Throughout her career, she has been driven to solve big, challenging problems, and to have a substantial positive impact. Today, she and her team at Buzz have created an AI-powered platform that provides data management and analytics for grid inspections. We caught up with Kaitlyn to learn about her work at Buzz, their differentiated ‘AI-first approach’, and the impact of the bipartisan infrastructure bill on their path forward.

What life experiences brought you here? When did you decide you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

I’ve always been really entrepreneurially-focused. I actually had a jewelry business in high school that was all locally-sourced materials, and it started as a passion project. Then I became really interested in the whole business side of things–the pricing model, the go-to-market strategy, how you can more accurately build margins. That was my first interest on the entrepreneurial side, but later, I became involved in the world of sustainability.

After the jewelry business, I ran a sustainable food non-profit and it sparked an interest in doing something more impactful. That’s what ultimately led me to take the LaunchPad course at Stanford which was focused on entrepreneurship in the world of sustainability and energy. At Stanford I met my co-founder, Vik (n.b. prior to launching Buzz, Vik led machine learning and AI teams at Cisco Systems).We shared mutual interests in the energy space and sustainability, but with very different backgrounds, which were pretty complementary. And so it seemed like we had the makings of a really good team there and that’s ultimately where Buzz started.

Can you describe the problem you’re solving?

In order to talk about the problem we’re solving, it’s important to talk about the problem that was presented to us at the beginning. In 2017, the drone market was really starting to take off and mandates for more frequent powerline inspections were becoming the norm. This was before a lot of the wildfires that put climate change in the national and international spotlight and inspections of utility lines front and  center. At that time, drone data collection use cases started to rise as utilities began collecting and analyzing millions of images.

Source

Our focus was on the millions of annual images related to our transmission distribution infrastructure. In the current state, our entire process of managing that data, sharing it across teams, and then analyzing that data is still entirely manual. For example, one customer had 200  engineers, spending eight to nine hours a day just analyzing data all day, every day. That’s all they did– just to reduce the lag time from the moment that the image was captured to the time that it was processed. And when there’s that lag time, the data that’s being analyzed may no longer be accurate. In the 2018 timeframe, a major West Coast utility had 3700 unanswered maintenance requests. They were really having a hard time analyzing the data and then prioritizing their path to maintenance.

Source

So that’s how it became very clear that we needed something to help streamline that process. As grid infrastructure continues to age and as we’re trying to onboard all these renewables onto the grid, having a robust grid is so incredibly important, and it’s often overlooked. That’s where we really see ourselves plugging in and bringing the most value.

For people that are less familiar with the process of a customer rollout in this specific realm, what are the steps required to provide actual data to the utility?

It’s a little bit different depending on which utility. There’s not yet a standard process, but right now utilities are contracting helicopter service providers, drone service providers, fixed wing aircrafts, sensor data, ground based imagery, or they’re doing one or many of those pieces in-house. So it’s about a 50/50 split between utilities that contract out to service providers or you know, the teams that are doing this type of data collection in house. And so depending on who the utility is, they could be collecting just general RGB imagery or they’re also collecting LIDAR data or thermal data. There’s a lot of new sensors that are coming into the fold. Now, they’re typically mandated to inspect a certain portion of their lines every year. And then on top of that, they’ll do on demand inspections for hotspot areas, or areas that are known to have higher risk where there may have been a storm or they know there could be some sort of failure to their infrastructure. They collect all that data and store it in the cloud.

Buzz provides an AI-powered Software Platform and Predictive Analytics for detecting faults and anomalies on power line assets. How should energy customers be thinking about the costs associated with fault detection?

It’s a good question. It’s a bit tough to quantify it now because there’s such a huge increase in the amount of data that’s being collected. I mean, these are unprecedented numbers of images and sensor data  that’s being collected today. There’s also this compounding challenge of a big shortage of labor in this space right now. We have seen that our services save a minimum of 50% of direct costs compared to manual analysis. But that doesn’t take into account that there is also this huge shortage of labor and a massive surplus of data being collected.

What excites you most about your progress or traction to date?

The market is growing and expanding so quickly. We want to be on the cutting edge of analytics, AI and take the industry from being reactive to more predictive in its approach. (See: Buzz’s ​EPRI Incubatenergy Labs Case Study).

What is unique about your approach to machine vision and machine learning that your competitors haven’t yet figured out how to do?

We’re an AI first approach. We spent two years building out our commercially viable algorithms based on proprietary data sets we collected over that period of time. It’s very different from how a lot of the other competitors approached the market.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill is rolling out. How are you thinking about taking advantage of the federal dollars?Does that inform your work at all?

There’s so much information that’s constantly evolving and changing and moving quickly. But we’re fortunate to have partners who are long standing players in this space.  For example, Power Engineers are always looking for new R&D opportunities, looking for ways to capitalize on some of the dollars that are coming through.  We’re collaborating with them on how we can capitalize on some of those opportunities.

What is your grand vision if everything goes right?

Our goal is to safeguard the world’s energy infrastructure, not just power energy infrastructure. So we see our technology being applicable far beyond just the transmission and distribution inspection markets. We’ve already had new use cases with substations. We want to be that central brain for analyzing and then creating actionable insights from all of this data that’s being collected across various areas of infrastructure inspections, and so we’re really excited about how much growth there is across various areas of energy infrastructure.

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Were there ever points on that journey where you start to deviate from embracing risk or all the uncertainty that comes with entrepreneurship? 

Yeah, I actually was studying mostly finance at school. Stanford doesn’t have a finance degree for undergrad but I was doing a make your own major that was something economics finance related. I did an internship in finance at JPMorgan and had planned to return there full time after I graduated. But something was just calling me back to the world of entrepreneurship and to the work that we had started at Buzz. Even though I really did enjoy the time that I was in banking, I wanted to be involved in an impact-focused company where I could be boots-on-the-ground in a startup. And so I feel like that’s where my passion is really aligned.

And are there any ways in which that major informs how you’ve approached your work at buzz or approaches your leadership style?

Absolutely. I mean, I think that it’s really great to have a team or we all come from such diverse backgrounds because we’re all able to bring such unique perspectives to the table at our collaborative discussions. That’s been really instrumental for us as we’re looking to build in our current market or as we are trying to be continually flexible and moving reflect the customer’s needs are I think it’s been helpful that we all do have such different backgrounds because we’re each able to bring a different a different hat to the table. Which has been really valuable for us in our small, like company team dynamic.

Have you ever thought about how if you weren’t building what you would be doing, and if money and procedure were no object— what is Kaitlyn’s dream alternate path?

I have always just followed, you know, what I’ve been passionate about, which is really solving what the biggest problems are that I’m uncovering. At any point in time. I don’t know that it’s necessarily 100% energy focused, but I do think the impact is a key component of it, because I always want to wake up every day going into work, doing something that I know is going to have a positive impact. And I think that that’s just a mindset that I’d like to take wherever I go in my future endeavors, not necessarily in one particular industry, but that’s definitely a common thread.

Are there any risks or threats that are keeping you up at night?

Absolutely, Always. Always. We’re a startup with limited resources and so figuring out how to balance that at any given time is always our biggest challenge and, and how to continue to grow and evolve and scale our market that utilities are definitely a challenging one. We want to find ways to be innovative, streamline our resources, and be as efficient as possible.

And how are you currently measuring success? What are the metrics that you’re using?

Time savings, cost savings, and reduced risk to the utility as a part of their inspection process are some of the key ways which we measure our success. Ultimately, beyond delivering actionable insights, we aim to help track assets and enable utilities to predict areas most prone to faults and failures.

Are there technological hurdles that you still need to overcome that are tied to any of these risks?

Always. I mean, there’s always things that are coming up as we’re looking at new sensor data and new use cases. As we continue to build new offerings, there are always challenges and hurdles along the way.

Would you be able to share a bit more about your team and its culture?

Absolutely. Our team is incredibly collaborative. And everyone at any level is able to really bring such strong unique ideas and perspectives to the table. I mean, hiring a very diverse team and bringing that into a core part of our culture is incredibly important to us. I think all areas of diversity, you know, diverse backgrounds, diverse thoughts, diverse perspectives and also people that are coming from even different areas of their career path as well. We want everyone to feel included, like they can bring their own ideas and perspectives to the table, and that they can truly contribute to the team culture.We are very interested in having team members join us who want to chase after this vision and are passionate about really being a part of an impactful startup. And so everyone that joins our team, we also want them to share that value as well that impact is at the core of what we’re doing here.

Tell me a little about yourself. What life experiences brought you here today? When did you decide you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

I came from a family of entrepreneurs – my parents both owned their own businesses (mom owned a beauty salon, dad a recruiting agency) and my grandfather owned a candy business. I grew up as an only child with divorced parents, so I was very independent from a young age. Watching my family of entrepreneurs, I developed curiosity, drive, and a bias towards action.

My first venture into entrepreneurship was when I was 10 years old; I started a mailbox painting business in Danville. I made marketing flyers and bought supplies in bulk, offered opportunities to upsell customers (adding address numbers or a red flag for an additional fee).

I maintained my entrepreneurial spirit into my early adulthood, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with it. In college, I worked as a valet and one night I had a memorable conversation with an older gentleman. We were discussing life; his wife had recently passed away and he gave me some advice: “Life is not defined by what you have, but rather what you’ve done. Life is about experiences, not accumulating nice things.” That really stuck with me.

After undergrad, I channeled my competitiveness and understanding of numbers into a job in corporate finance. After 8 years of this, I realized that while I was impactful, ultimately I was just a number. This didn’t sit too well with me. I realized that I wanted to do more, and find an avenue to apply my entrepreneurial spirit. I didn’t want to have any regrets. So I took a risk and left the comfort of a job at a big bank and went into a space that was unfamiliar to me (tech) and started to learn. I handed in my Blackberry, picked up a laptop, and learned what ingredients went into building a software business. By doing this, I got comfortable with being uncomfortable. As an entrepreneur, you do not know what comes tomorrow. I was used to structure and learning new skills in a new industry was a challenge, but it was worth it. It’s been 9 years now since I left. I never looked back.

If you weren’t building this company, what else would you be doing? What if money and prestige were no object?

If I could do anything outside of building ISO, I would still be trying to find solutions to problems and helping people. I enjoy working with children and have been a long time active member of The Guardsmen – an organization founded in the 1940s to raise money for at-risk youth in the Bay Area. We provide children with mentorship, capital to fund scholarship programs, and send them to summer camp. This program helps thousands of youth every year.

There are so many kids that grow up without resources and or opportunities to see different perspectives of the world. I believe that allowing children to gain new perspectives outside of their home environment is really important for their success. Focusing on finding solutions to positively impact youth drives me, and I plan to spend even more time involved with The Guardsmen later in my career.

What problem is ISO trying to solve?

ISO was created to fill an unmet need for reliable, verified supply chain performance data. ISO streamlines data reconciliation between shippers and their transportation partners, allowing them to identify and attribute the root-cause and financial impacts of supply chain failures to the responsible parties. When shippers and carriers operate on a single source of truth to create clean, actionable, and portable data, conversations between parties become more productive.

Through ISO’s modernized Performance Management workflow, partners align on a standardized source of truth, while simultaneously normalizing and correcting their flawed data. This normalized data can drive efficiencies across the entire supply chain ecosystem – from optimized carrier performance monitoring to industry-wide benchmarking, to efficient retailer deduction management, next generation procurement tools, and more.

Tell us about your team and the culture you’re building.

We’re a team of logistics and technology professionals with decades of experience from Uber, Google, FourKites, Flexport, C.H. Robinson, Echo Global Logistics, LinkedIn, Deloitte and other leading technology companies. We believe that culture is driven by the entire team. To that end, we gathered the team together at an offsite last October and aligned on the following company values:

• We provide a safe space to take risks
• We’re open and honest
• We look for new ideas everywhere
• We bias toward action
• We do the right thing, even when it’s hard

What is your ‘grand vision’ if everything goes right? How do you aim to transform your industry?

Ultimately, our mission is to become the industry’s trusted source of actionable supply chain performance data. If everything goes right, the industry will align on a standardized way to measure transportation performance; this will ultimately allow for cross-network data collaboration to maximize the world’s resources and drive efficiency and sustainability. The goal is to create a significant reduction in carbon output and waste in the world, allowing supply chain operators to spend less time doing manual tasks, automate processes and leverage bright minds in the industry to tackle more important issues.

What excites you most about your progress/traction to date?

We have an incredible team, incredible customers, and incredible global investors & advisors that believe in the mission & vision.

The odds were stacked against us from the beginning; 3 weeks after our Seed raise, the world shut down. We built an enterprise grade product for Fortune 1000 customers remotely and during a pandemic. The conditions we can’t control created higher hurdles, but we have incredible global customers that took a risk on us and we delivered. We’ve signed multi-year contracts, are delivering real value, and we’re seeing a lot of traction with new customers that want to work with ISO.

Lastly, we’re very excited about the value we’re bringing to carriers. The majority of carriers in the US are small businesses that own fewer than 10 trucks. Our platform digitizes & streamlines a process that they have been doing manually (scorecarding), and provides a single pane of glass for them to collaborate with their shipper-partners to showcase their service and grow their business.