The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
#113
Small Modular Nuclear Power Project Developers with VC Backing – Bret Kugelmass, CEO of Last Energy
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Bret Kugelmass, Founder and CEO of Last Energy. In addition, Bret is the podcast host at Titans of Nuclear with hundreds of podcasts interviewing experts in the nuclear power industry. Managing Director at The Energy Impact Center. Former CEO of Airphrame, a drone company that he sold to a Fortune 500 buyer, and a graduate of the Stanford School of Engineering.
02:19
Last Energy is a full-service developer of small modular nuclear power projects with a goal of transforming the nuclear power industry by dramatically reducing the time and cost of construction. Their mission is to decarbonize global energy production and increase access to clean affordable power. They're targeting 2025 as the year for their first units being deployed, which require around $200 million to build. They're also investigating 800 other potential sites to deploy their units across Europe.
In this episode, we talked about the three most common misperceptions around nuclear energy. What he learned from 800 interviews with nuclear energy experts, what's working, what's not working. How many mistakes he's seen among dozens of next generation nuclear startups with tons of promise, but also some challenges to get to market sooner rather than later. The outsized role that construction finance plays in the overall cost of nuclear power, which frankly blew my mind.
Their initial contracts to build small modular nuclear reactors in the UK, Poland and Romania. Notice I did not say the US, at least not initially in their pipeline. What he means by the following quote, “We're innovative in the way that we are not trying to be overly innovative. We don't reinvent the reactor core, the physics, the chemistry, or the materials.” We also talked about how to avoid multiplying risks. The role of business model versus tech innovation to get clean energy to market. The distinction between corporate and project finance for their go-to-market strategy, and a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy it, and please give Bret and Last Energy a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
All right, Bret Kugelmass, Founder and CEO of Last Energy, Bret, great to have you on the podcast. I think as we discussed before hitting record, I didn't know what you're up to and suddenly it's like, holy shit, this is what you're up to in advanced nuclear.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, it's a little bit of coming out of stealth after five years of working in the sector in one way or another, but yeah, it's amazing. We're happy to be here and tell our story on your platform.
04:58
Chris Wedding:
So, big picture, you're a project developer of advanced nuclear. Is it specifically small modular reactors, SMRs?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, so we are the designer, engineering, procurement, financier, developer, all wrapped into one to offer energy as a service for a small, standardized PWR, pressurized water reactor.
Chris Wedding:
Okay. So, now that folks have the sound bite of what you do, I'm going to go to my other screen here and read a couple of quotes that I'd love for you to respond to. One is, you’ve said before, “We're innovative in the way that we are not trying to be overly innovative. We don't reinvent the reactor core, the physics, the chemistry or the materials.” It's delightfully kind of Japanese, Zen koan like, but say more about why that sentence, that strategy matters so much, Bret.
Bret Kugelmass:
Well, maybe I'll take us a little bit back to the origin story of our organization first to show you how we got to our conclusions.
Chris Wedding:
Yes.
Bret Kugelmass:
When I first moved out to DC and I had launched The Energy Impact Center, it was a research institute focused on, how can we accelerate our decarbonization goals and provide clean energy for the world? Very quickly it led us to nuclear as just being totally misunderstood and totally underleveraged, but something was wrong, obviously, because the industry had been stagnated for almost four or five decades. We set out to figure out what was going on. I mean, obviously you understand the value of being able to use a podcast as a tool to explore space and really get to know people and understand, go really in depth with someone. So, that's what we did.
We launched the Titans of Nuclear podcast. I personally conducted over 800 interviews in the first year. We published like 500 so far, but it was many of those interviews across industry, policy, technology, economics, history, I mean, even literally going to museum curators and trying to understand, what is the history of nuclear? Visiting power plants, visiting research reactors, visiting heads of state to talk about their new nuclear plants that led to this informed perspective of, how do we break through this stagnation?
What we realized, while there are many new nuclear efforts out there, something like 50 next gen nuclear startups, I encourage all of them and I think it's amazing what they're trying to do, after doing all this research, we saw them, unfortunately, repeating many of the same mistakes that hadn't worked in the past over the last few decades.
You're thinking, “Oh, if only we reinvent the reactor, all of our other problems will magically go away,” and often you’ll find ways to rationalize that or justify that. You have a reactor that produces less waste, all of a sudden, waste is the only problem holding back the industry. You have a reactor that's, quote unquote, safer, all of a sudden, safety -- Okay. All right. And so, it goes on and on, but we took a very sober look at why we don't build more nuclear in the places that people love nuclear, and in the places where there's a great waste management solution, where all of those other excuses don't apply. What we found was that it was simply too expensive and took too long to build.
08:21
And as we were just talking about before, it’s a little hard to intuit, especially for an engineer, but it turned out that the high price of electricity that comes from nuclear, the majority of it is simply the interest accrued during the construction period, okay? So, construction risk multiplied by time, you get like 60% of your cost of electricity is literally just as financing charges. And so, looking at this whole situation, we said, “Okay, anytime that you make a change to the materials, to the chemistry, to the physics, you're actually introducing a tremendous amount of uncertainty.”
Listen, I'm not saying these reactors won't work. I think they'll all work. I'm sure that their math is great and their physics modeling is great, but what it doesn't do is incorporate the realities of deviating from a standard supply chain and the risk that introduces into cost increases.
And so, we, in our approach, just became totally obsessive about reducing risk and actually tackling the biggest cost components and cost drivers of nuclear, which was this uncertainty around construction. So, our entire effort is a construction innovation effort, not a nuclear innovation effort.
Chris Wedding:
There's so much there I want to really stress.
Bret Kugelmass:
Sorry, I know I ran out [inaudible – 00:09:37].
Chris Wedding:
No, it's perfect. I think it's perfect. Just going back to earlier in what you just delivered, 800 interviews, 500 published in the podcast. I think for folks listening, that will be called going beast mode or the insane mode on your Tesla, whatever the case may be. That's a shit ton of diligence, which is great because look, as we launch new companies, we're going to spend so much effort, time, cost, opportunity cost and so you better be damn sure that what you're about to commit to makes sense. That’s a good takeaway for listeners is that depth of market or consumer interviews basically to make sure you're on the right path, right?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up and obviously I think the reason you focused in because you're an entrepreneur yourself and so you get it. For people who aren't entrepreneurs and maybe have this fantasy notion of what entrepreneurship is like, it is the hardest thing you'll ever do. It is total grind, it is brutal. You don't get a personal life. You don't get free time. It’s everything. And so, yeah, if you're going to commit that much of yourself to it, you better be damn sure you're investing in the right thing.
Yeah, I went through this extreme level of diligence for years.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, it's amazing. The other thing, which of course you said, I just want to stress the fact that 60% of, I guess the levelized cost of energy for big nuclear comes in the finance costs, especially the higher interest construction costs, which multiplied by years and often they take longer to build and plan. So, it even bursts your pro forma, I think that's pretty mind blowing. And me being even in this space for decades, I had no idea that that percentage of the LCOE came from construction interest. That alone gets you to, well, how do we shorten the construction period, therefore the construction interest to lower the LCOE of nuclear, right?
11:43
Bret Kugelmass:
Exactly. Once again, I think there's a lot of technology push instead of need pull, not just in the nuclear industry, but everywhere. And so, oftentimes I hear, “Well, we go to these high temperature reactors because the efficiency of the reactor is better and therefore, you're able to deliver at a cheaper cost. But it's like, okay, let's just look at this mathematically for a second. Which would you rather do, move to nonstandard materials to get a better efficiency or find some other way to bring the cost down, such as during your construction period by just following the best practices that so many other industries have adopted?
So, this modularization is obviously a big part of what our core competency is and what we do and our strategy to reduce this construction time. Pioneered by the oil and gas industry 20 years ago, now adopted by data centers, the pharmaceutical industry, and we're bringing it to the nuclear industry.
Chris Wedding:
I'm glad you mentioned that. I pulled another quote that I want to read off here. “We,” Last Energy, “are applying the best practices that we see across three industries. The normal nuclear technology from the nuclear industry, number one.” Number two, you just mentioned it, “The modularity from the oil and gas industry,” and I think maybe by analogy, let's build Legos. “Then the financing that we've learned through the power purchase agreement structure from the renewables industry.” That's almost the opposite of what you said earlier in a good way, that is to say, let's reduce risk, let's not multiply risk. If you have new physics, new supply chain, new chemistry, et cetera, you multiply the risks versus combining what's already worked in decades old industries, yeah?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, I wouldn't say that was the opposite. There's a logical expression, there's like a counter positive or something, but yeah, basically another way of saying the same thing, exactly.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Okay, so you didn't just decide, “Oh, I'm in the States, I'm in DC, let's go build these first,” I think the 20 megawatts. Is that right, 20 megawatt units?
Bret Kugelmass:
20 megawatt units, yeah. We follow the old Ford expression, it's like you can have any color you want as long as it's black. We do not customize anything. It doesn't matter if you have 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 megawatts of demand, you can buy three or four of the identical units, but it's just the same 20-megawatt unit over and over again.
Chris Wedding:
Well, and great. So, the direction I want to take us is where your first project agreements are, but that other part is important too and it speaks to the modularity. It speaks to cost management, where it's like, well, we want to come down the cost curve as we've seen from things like solar or wind or batteries, et cetera. But to do that, you got to have something being produced in mass, not a constant one-off bespoke, highly engineered, customized project. So, again, you're stressing, no, it's a product. It's not a project. Clearly, it's a project, but it's a widget of sorts, a bad ass widget, but it allows for that coming down the cost curve, you know?
14:56
Bret Kugelmass:
Exactly right.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, back to the other question of geography. So, you didn't say, “I know a ton about nuclear in the States,” but instead you're going somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else and why there, Bret?
Bret Kugelmass:
Early on, The Energy Impact Center, it started with this broad market mapping, which we shared to the whole world and we're trying to get everyone to do what we ended up doing based on our learnings, where we did an analysis of all the countries. We first started with about 30 countries that had all the appropriate nuclear treaties with the US, so US citizens could do nuclear business with them. Then we narrowed it down by several criteria, including energy markets, geopolitics, trade relationships, industrial expertise, having an established nuclear regulator. All of these various components ranked, graded the countries, and then ended up with these three as our early target markets.
The US didn't qualify for a bunch of reasons, so we still build our plants here. We build them in Texas, in fact, but then we ship them in these Lego-like pieces, as you said, over to Europe, to the United Kingdom, to Poland, and Romania as our first three target markets where we have the government approvals and the commercial relationships already established.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. Okay. I think some listeners will be thinking, “Oh, well, neat. I've seen lots of headlines where a small modular reactor, OEM, original equipment manufacturer or developer says, “Cool, we plan, we hope,” fill in your verb there, “to build X megawatts in X country by X year.” So, tell us why what you just said is similar or different than these headlines folks may have seen about SMRs.
Bret Kugelmass:
There’s a lot of things that separate us, but as you were saying, you were surprised that we were even doing this, that's because we didn't talk about anything until the ink was dry. We just thought that was important from a credibility perspective. I mean, last year was just an absolute whirlwind for us and that's what kicked us into actually becoming more public with our story.
In the beginning of the year, the prime minister of Romania backed our projects and carved off some land in his country for us to specifically develop on. Then came the president to Poland, and then Secretary of State of the United Kingdom. And so, we've gotten these government approvals, which are the first level to both enter into your nuclear licensing, and then to zone your land to establish a nuclear facility on it. Then also obviously creates the confidence for private customers who buy our electricity in the country that we're actually going to be able to deliver for them.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, and will you all be in front of the meter or behind the meter if you were selling the grid or selling to--?
17:44
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, we don't sell to the grid. I mean, we can, but that's not what our business model is and not where our first customers are. These are behind the meter applications. The way that it logistically works is, Company A will have a factory. It could be a pulp and paper company, cement, glass, these are some of our early customers, automotive manufacturing is another one of our early customers. Then we will find land near their property. We will buy that land, we'll rezone it as energy infrastructure, specifically nuclear permitted land and then we will run a private cable to their facility and then we own that private cable. Then we essentially become their utility and help them reduce their energy bills. It's like mounting solar to your rooftop essentially.
Chris Wedding:
Yep. All right. Again, I think some listeners who are involved with newer technologies, they're thinking, “Look, it's cool to have a new tech, but then to get it from say a venture funded, at least tech stage,” which is not what you all are, “to project finance, where the cost of capital on equity and debt are much lower, boy, what a big chasm to jump.” Talk to us about how you will get providers of a more mainstream, larger amounts of capital to build these 20-megawatt projects.
Bret Kugelmass:
Oh, my God, this is where the podcasts come back in again. Actually, we have two podcasts, Titans of Nuclear, which is all just focused on nuclear and then another podcast that we launched was called The Energy Impact Podcast. That’s where we spoke to energy financiers more broadly, people who didn't think of themselves as nuclear experts, but we were able to understand, how does this work?
And so, before we even designed our system, we knew that in order for this industry to thrive, it had to be privately financed. And so, we learned, and I encourage people to go to listen to those episodes where you can hear us talking to project finance experts and they were laying out their criteria for what made it project finance, both equity and debt investable.
One of the things they said is, “No new technology.” So that's where one of our criteria came from no new technology so we could access, which I think is something like $400 billion worth of dry powder in the energy infrastructure and investing space. I mean, it's incredible. So, we are not paying for the CapEx of our facility off of our balance sheet from top go, from venture dollars. Rather, we're setting up an SPV, which our financial sponsors, the private equity infrastructure funds have ownership or majority ownership over, but they put up the money to actually build the facilities.
Chris Wedding:
Right. So, for listeners, SPV, special purpose vehicle, in the US think a limited liability company, an LLC, perhaps other similar structures to cordon off a set of risks and cash flows for one project versus other projects for countries. Yeah?
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. Thanks for laying that out. I try to be very diligent with the acronyms, but even it slips by me sometimes, so thank you for bringing it up.
Chris Wedding:
Oh, it's an insanity how many acronyms there are. In fact, just this week, I started two of my new classes at Duke and one is climate tech startups and investors and the other is energy finance. Just as we talk normally, there's like five acronyms in the first paragraph of opening this class, let's stop and define all those so we don't isolate folks. How about on the corporate finance side? So, you've just differentiated between corporate finance, balance sheet funding, your, well, working capital, let's say, your team versus project finance. You talked about project finance a little bit, so off balance sheet stuff. How about the corporate, what's that look like? How have you funded your gross over the last X months, years to get to this point where you have these contracts?
21:38
Bret Kugelmass:
So, we have raised venture capital for that. We've raised 24 million in total. We raised 4 million initially from first round capital, our partner over there is Bill Trenchard, amazing, amazing investor. I mean, one of the best I've ever worked with. He did our seed round and then Luke Knosek and Steve Oskoui from Gigafund, former Founders Fund partners that branched off to creating a more ambitious fund than Founders Fund, Gigafund. They came in for a round, also amazing to work with. All of our investors are former entrepreneur operators themselves first.
We brought in 24 million to date in the company that's funded mostly operating expenses, headcount, growth, legal fees. There's a lot of legal stuff in the energy business and it's gotten us through to product development, product market fit, commercialization, some licensing expenses and the project finance, which comes from a different pool of capital will go towards the fiscal asset itself.
Chris Wedding:
Yep. I want to highlight for the listeners what you did just there. You didn't just list the name of the fund or the firm rather, you listed the person. I think for listeners who are thinking, “Oh, well, I would like to raise capital to support my climate tech startup,” or whatnot, look, the reputation, the theme, the focus, the limitations of the firm matters a lot, but the person also matters a whole hell of a lot.
What's their background? You just mentioned it. They've been operators and entrepreneurs before, so not just investors. They've been in your shoes, so that's certainly one filter. The other is, well, what is the nature of working with that person at that firm for other founders? And look, founders talk. How collaborative, how domineering, how helpful, what they say versus what they do, so I think that's a helpful point you just illustrated there, Bret.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, and maybe I'm more comfortable talking about it publicly because I've had such a positive experience with that. Yes, founders do talk.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I think it may also be easy for listeners to think, “How in the world did this guy go from 800 interviews and running this nonprofit, this research center, to raising 24 million bucks on a pretty wild idea on the surface?” But a key part of the story that we haven't talked about is, this is not your first rodeo. So, tell us about your prior venture in tech, which sounds like a healthy outcome.
Bret Kugelmass:
I did my masters at Stanford in robotics, that's where I caught the entrepreneurial bug, but also developed some more serious domain expertise. At this time, this was before everyone had these little drone quadcopters, before DJI came onto the scene, which an amazing company. Definitely made me rethink everything I thought about Chinese innovation also, by the way. We were early pioneers in the autonomous vehicle space. So, started that company, also raised venture capital. Got my feet wet in understanding what entrepreneurship was like, ran that company for five years. It was acquired by one of our customers. Good outcome, not amazing outcome, but good outcome and gave me the position to reinvest in the next chapter of my life to work on whatever I thought was the most impactful, most meaningful, which at times climate and energy. Obviously, I feel even more convicted about that than ever. Yeah, a lot of lessons learned.
25:10
I mean, I think a lot of things that I drive so hard on, especially when I critique the rest of our industry on, I mean, I'm doing this to try to be helpful. We give a lot away. I mean, we actually open source the schematics for entire power plan before we launched the company. That was the OPEN100 project. Yeah. So, we give a lot away. I chop out all the conferences. I try to mentor and coach up other nuclear entrepreneurs who maybe haven't had experience on how to raise capital because definitely a rising tide floats all boats.
But one thing that I'm extremely critical on because of my previous experience is that, when you're in the hardware space, change as little as possible, change absolutely as little as possible. Every change, to the chemistry, to the material science, to the physics, you're talking decades long before it's commercially ready. Not because you did anything wrong, not because of your calculations, it's just because things on paper are idealistic and things in reality, in the physical world are messy.
You model something thinking steel is steel. Okay, well not all steel is steel. There's different alloys and the amount of welders that are available for different alloys is different. And so, your cost structure isn't what you think it's going to be. There's just so much. They say hardware is hard for a reason and so I took those lessons from my first startup very seriously to heart and it has informed many of the driving decisions of this company.
Chris Wedding:
One thing I want to highlight there is that, what was it, the idea or the domain expertise from your master's work, which led to Airphrame?
Bret Kugelmass:
Well, that was the other problem. Because I had domain expertise, instead of doing what I knew I should have done at the time because they actually taught us this class at school was to be need first, it's just so hard like to resist like, “Oh, I've got a cool idea. Let me try to find a market for it.” So, even at that company, it was very much technology first.
We thought drones were cool and we're going to be the future and we're like, “We'll develop some cool drone technology and figure out the customer later.” Even though I knew I shouldn't have done that, I did that. But this time, after investing five years with that approach and understanding how hard it is to find product market fit, I decided to start with a product market fit first.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. It's well said. My first startup also was, “Oh, what a cool idea I have. Now, let's go find the right use case.” No, no, wrong direction.
Bret Kugelmass:
Wrong direction, correct.
27:35
Chris Wedding:
Also, to stress and maybe to stress again, when launching a new company, when we say climate tech, often we think it is a tech driven company, tech innovation, science, math, et cetera. But really it could be, or sometimes should be a business model innovation.
Bret Kugelmass:
Sure, like SunPower or any other solar companies that figured out how to finance the panels so maybe the owners don't own them. They're a tech company, but they don't invent solar panels. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Wedding:
Yep. What else around SMRs do you think is a big risk?
Bret Kugelmass:
Small modular reactors, I'm going to make you spell out the acronym now.
Chris Wedding:
Thank you. Again, what are some other misconceptions that you would like to burst right now about that space?
Bret Kugelmass:
I think the one thing that everyone has totally wrong is the safety, waste, and perception. Those three things, everyone just says totally wrong.
Chris Wedding:
Break them down.
Bret Kugelmass:
The nuclear isn't getting built because the perception is just totally bogus. Yes, in some places you've got extreme NIMBYism or you have people who don't like nuclear, but there are so many other places that have a deep love for nuclear, just like you might think in your community you have a deep love for solar. And many countries around the world have just such a rich tradition of sustained social and political support for nuclear. There are so many newcomer countries that see it as the opportunity to bring themselves out of poverty just like South Korea did. I mean, it's incredible. Okay, so that's the perception one.
Then nuclear waste has never hurt a person, place, or thing in all of human history, not even a blade of grass. So, this idea that nuclear waste is inherently dangerous is just bonkers. The only radioisotope in nuclear waste that even could feasibly cause hazard to human health is iodine-131, because it's the only one that bioaccumulates and has a medium half-life. Things that have a long half-life aren't that radioactive. Things that have a short half-life aren't there for that long, and even item 131, only eight days. So, in three months, it's 99% gone. The only radioisotope you'd have to worry about.
So, this whole idea that nuclear waste lasts millions of years, yeah, that's true, but your atoms last forever like lead and arsenic and other toxic atoms, those are infinity long. Here you have something that disappears and you've got just the smallest amount ever left that isn't harmful in millions of years later, but yeah, it's still there technically. Okay, so the waste thing everyone has wrong also.
Then safety and I think this is the thing that most people in the nuclear industry have wrong. When push comes to shove, many of these new designs it’s all about being safer, safer, safer. Well, Fukushima, we had three core meltdowns and every single safety system failed, including the roof caused zero deaths, zero injuries. Okay, so there is no such thing as safer when the industry is non-hazardous, even in the case of a meltdown to begin with. But many of these reactor designs that they want to push, the technology push part is predicated on this idea of being meltdown proofs. So, they need to weave a story about how catastrophic a meltdown actually is. And so, most of the misconceptions about safety that the public fears, the reason that people fear nuclear comes from the nuclear industry itself.
30:57
Chris Wedding:
I'm sure some listeners were thinking about the C word.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah, so Chernobyl wasn't a meltdown. We should start off with that. It was a military type reactor used to produce plutonium for bombs that would have blown us up. So, we should recognize it was military facility that didn't melt down and it actually blew up. It went super critical. Water-based reactors can't go super critical because the water, your moderator, the thing that keeps the nuclear reaction going, if it gets too hot, it boils off, reaction dies.
Chernobyl blew up like a little mini bomb and even terribly so did cause hazard to human health, killed about 50 people, spread radiation across the environment, which led to some cancers, not too many, but some. But even so, not quite the catastrophe that even like a building collapsing in Florida was or chemical accidents. Yes, we shouldn't build designs like that, but not a reason to be discouraged about an entire industry.
Chris Wedding:
Where would you direct folks to go to learn more about these three misperceptions that you just went through?
Bret Kugelmass:
There are some great books out there. Andrew Daniels wrote a good book after Fukushima, What We Now Know, it's on Amazon. I love it. Michael Schellenberger has done great work in this space. He's like the godfather of the new nuclear advocacy. He’s super brave because he came out and researched. He's not even an engineer by background and was able to educate and inform a whole generation of people as to these misconceptions. So, I follow Michael Schellenberger's work as well. Andrew Daniels has written a book. Josh Goldstein wrote a book that's very good on this, A Bright World or Bright Future, I can't remember. Yeah, there's some great literature.
Chris Wedding:
Cool. One other way of interpreting what you just said is, if we were to look at say the energy storage industry, if we look back at versions of energy storage or electric vehicle companies that received, a billion plus in funding seven, eight, 10 years ago and failed, it doesn't mean we should write off the entire storage industry. It means we should not do what they did. Now obviously, the macro factors are different now.
Bret Kugelmass:
And even so, when you say that, sometimes it might come across as we need to do something new to not repeat the old mistakes, but no. We actually had like four or five different tracks of technology, even as early as the 50s and 60s. We just shouldn't do the one that was designed for military purpose. The RBMK graphite style reactor, that was the Chernobyl reactor. Ones that were invented at the same time actually even earlier, the water-based reactors are great, great technology. We don't need like a new nuclear technology to achieve everything that we wanted.
33:45
Chris Wedding:
Yep, I’m with you. Let's switch from you as Founder, CEO of Last Energy to just you, so this is the person part of the podcast. Bret, if you could hang out with your younger self, what advice might you share with him to be more effective, happier, more sane, et cetera?
Bret Kugelmass:
Oh man, philosophically, is this like a paradox? Because like if I went back and changed something, I wouldn't have the knowledge to change it, which then would prevent me from doing something.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, there you go. It's true.
Bret Kugelmass:
I mean, I think the key lesson that I would give to any young entrepreneur, let's say not literally myself, but like a new version of me coming up, would be need first. Find a customer problem you want to solve. Don't become invested in a solution or a technology approach. Try to take the most sober look at what's available to solve that problem and make as few modifications as you can. Even if you are a technology guy or girl, don't be afraid to make your core innovation the business model. There’s plenty of fun technical stuff you can do.
Listen, half of our team are still engineers. We have a lot of fun doing the systems engineering of an old technology in a new way, but the core innovation really is more the business model.
Chris Wedding:
Need first versus tech first. Yeah, that's good. Tell us some habits or routines, daily, weekly, yearly, that keep you healthy and focused, Bret.
Bret Kugelmass:
Throughout the day, obviously it's very busy. We have an extremely high energy, aggressive, awesome, ambitious team. Everyone wants to change the world here, it's awesome. So, during the day, things can get pretty hectic. But one of the things that I've enjoyed is that, when people stick around a little bit later, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 p.m. to be able to set aside a little time to get silly and get a little bit more brainstorming and even call it brainstorm time, I feel like that becomes like a good outlet. Both for creativity, but also to create a much more relaxed environment with your coworkers. Just things during the day are just so busy. That's something that over time has grown and I really enjoy.
Personally, I don't really have much of a work-life; I don’t know, people talk about work-life balance, work is my life. I love it. I love it so much it's my hobby and it’s just so fulfilling across so many -- I don't have very good advice for people who want to figure out how to strike work-life balance because it's just not my thing.
Chris Wedding:
Well, I think part of what you said I can relate to it's like, well, it's my job slash almost my hobby. I think it's really fun to start, launch, create new things. Cool. Well, I'll take that. How about some more recommendations on books, tools, quotes, podcasts, et cetera, that you found useful in your founder journey, Bret.
36:44
Bret Kugelmass:
I love podcasts, so obviously that's how I thought of a tool to do my own investigation was listening to podcasts a lot. Lex Fridman Podcast is very good from a tech perspective, but I also listen to a lot of other podcasts. Medical podcasts ever since COVID started and get some different perspectives and philosophy podcasts, economic podcasts. Russ Roberts does a good economic podcast and one of the reasons I call him out, there's some other good economics ones, but he's been doing it since like 2006. He's like one of the originals and you can just see some of the habits that people still practice, like him or Joe Rogan.
Man, there's still a lot to learn from people who've just done it so many times. How they structure questions, hold the conversation, come back to different parts of the conversation. So, I love consuming other people's content for, both trying to become better myself, but also because they even use different language or different paradigms that apply to one industry that maybe haven't been introduced to your industry yet. And so, it creates this cross-discipline overlap that I think makes people much more effective at communication and innovation too.
Chris Wedding:
Well, Bret, so we're out of time here. What's the final call to action you want to leave folks with or who do you want to hear from at Last Energy?
Bret Kugelmass:
Obviously, we're growing and always recruiting, so if you're talented and willing to work very hard, you're going to get to work with other just incredible people here. We'd love to have you reach out. Though I will warn people, we push people to their limits here, so don't come applying if you think it's going to be an easy job, I'll tell you that right now.
Then also, from a customer's perspective, obviously, I'll always be selling, if you are connected to any global company or specifically like European industrial company and any of the heavy industry, heavy industry power sectors or have a relationship there, call us because we're selling to glass, cement, pulp and paper, aluminum, steel, data centers, automotive manufacturing, electric vehicle battery manufacturing, I mean you name it. Always happy to get customer introductions.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect. Well, Bret, thank you for what you've done with hundreds of podcasts to educate or reeducate all of us around the nuclear industry, what's possible versus the misperceptions of what we should not do again. And again, one innovation is to not be super innovative in order to get to market sooner with stuff that's going to get permitted and that provides clean energy.
Bret Kugelmass:
Yeah. Thank you so much for helping me articulate my own thesis and thanks for everything you do. I really do appreciate all the body of work that you put out, so it's an honor to be here.
Chris Wedding:
Hear, hear. All right, man, rooting for your success. Cheers.
39:40
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