The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
$85M for Green Iron with No Premium – Sandeep Nijhawan, CEO of Electra
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Sandeep Nijhawan, the Co-founder and CEO of Electra. Electra, formerly known as Electrasteel, is decarbonizing iron making for green steel production using intermittent renewable energy and low-grade iron ores, also importantly, producing higher quality iron and steel at the same time. Backed by $85 million of VC and corporate VC capital, they will do all this at zero cost premium to existing steel manufacturing in the years ahead.
In addition, Sandeep is the former President of AquaHydrex, which was focused on developing a novel electrolyzer for the hydrogen economy. An Operating Partner for True North Venture Partners, and President of Staq Energy, a distributed energy storage solutions developer.
02:34
In this episode, we talked about their new partnership with Nucor, the largest steel manufacturer in the US. How he transitioned from a PhD in mechanical engineering to leading several energy tech startups. Why his quote unquote, “midlife crisis” led to the clarity to build novel energy solutions among small teams of, again, quote unquote, “bona fide geeks.” God bless us. The importance of producing green steel at 60 degrees Celsius instead of 1,600 degrees Celsius. Of course, in the how is their secret sauce.
How they have balanced strategic and financial investors ignoring conventional wisdom in the process. The ways in which steel plants can get access to the solution provided by Electra as an OpEx, instead of just as a CapEx. The prioritization of self, then family, then team, not the reverse order, and how this is actually anti-selfish. Perspectives on really knowing the why in order to allow the how to be much easier. Anyway, lots more here we covered. Hope you enjoy it and please give Sandeep and Electra a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
All right, Sandeep Nijhawan, a Co-founder and CEO of Electra, welcome to the show.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Thanks, Chris. Glad to be here.
Chris Wedding:
All right, so doing a little research here, your Team page on the website talks about a no-nonsense culture. A team of bonafide geeks, love that, that have raised $85 million to grow this business from what I would say are often household names in the financial VC or corporate VC space. And recently, a big press release partnering with Nucor, the US's largest steel manufacturer. So, of those four data points, Sandeep, where do you want to start?
04:41
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Well, let's start the audience with a brief description of what we do and why we exist, which is, we're building a green iron company, Chris. What we are attempting to do is to refine or process iron ore, which is the dirt we dig out of the ground, into clean, pure iron with zero embedded carbon. We're doing that to decarbonize steelmaking. You may ask, “What's the connection? Why steel and what's the connection of iron and steel, per se?” The short answer is steel accounts for roughly 10% of direct and indirect emissions we emit globally.
If this was a country, we would have ranked iron and steel as a country third after China and US in terms of its emissions. It is one of the hardest to build sectors and the reason for that is 98% of steel actually is iron, and 90% of its emission comes from make that metallic iron from iron ore. What we are doing is we're building a company to achieve that at cost parity with the incumbent process, which is a very tall order of ours under the ore industry, actually more than under the ore industry that's very well established, has done this thing for centuries. As we think about this climate transition, looking to make this in a very different way.
So, in all fronts, this is a disruptive innovation and while the vision is big and we think big, it can only be done through a disruptive team. So, that's where you are seeing our emphasis around team because at the end of the day it comes to people. And asking the right question, balancing the status quo and not having our personal biases influencing our decisions and seeking that solution in its purest sense, what we are trying to do with these attributes. So, that's what you're seeing.
While team is central to collaboration, that's where all the expense also externally for us and that's what you also have seen recently. Just last week, we announced a big partnership with number one steelmaker, where it's our core belief we cannot do this alone. So, we need like-minded folks on the team with the right background to investors with patient capital, to strategic partners to make this happen. That's what we have been up to, raising 85 million to date to make that happen.
Chris Wedding:
Excellent. I want to mention two numbers because the second number also relates to what I'm drinking right now. The business-as-usual process of making steel as I learned on your website requires temperatures of 1,600 degrees Celsius and you-all’s process only requires 60, that's six, zero, which is about the same temperature as my cup of coffee before I brought it in this cold room and now it's colder. Anyway, that's an amazing differential and clearly directly related to the green aspects of what you're doing. How did you get there, Sandeep? This is a pretty shocking decrease.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
It is. In some sense it's a paradigm shift in terms of thinking the way the world is today, 70% of the steel being made through what I call [inaudible – 00:08:23]. You go into 1,600 degrees Celsius, you take the iron ore and you melt it first, and that energy that is used to melt it is through fossil fuel, predominantly coal. Cole also at those temperature acts as a reductant to grab the oxygen, which is an iron oxide, which is ore and mix the CO2. So, in that process make about two tons of CO2 per a ton of steels.
08:55
Now, to come back to your question of how do we get there, one of my thesis for many, many years, even before Electra is that the cleanest form of energy resource that is here to stay, that we can all bet on and is around intermittent renewables like solar and wind. And while that is the cheapest, greenest form of the resource, which if you were to use this can come to cost parity versus coal as energy source, the challenge there is that intermittency is not available 24/7 a day. But if you want to use that energy 24/7, you're talking about base load, which is obviously more expensive and not there today, even on a zero-carbon basis.
So, what that meant for us is that we drew a box around, the solution set we were seeking is that we have to have compatibility with intermittent renewable, which simply means you cannot have a process that operates at 1,600 degrees Celsius because you can't start and stop that easily. And you have to shift that to a lower temperature to be able to follow renewable.
So, that was a thesis going in that while we didn't know how to make that happen, the problem we were solving was obviously in front of us very clear, the CO2 emissions, but certain attributes we were looking for and one of them was low temperature crossing. The second one was around ores as well, but we were seeking a solution set from a holistic point of view for that. So, that was the gist of why we went there with this approach.
Chris Wedding:
Let's go back to the $86 million, you mentioned patient capital. Maybe tell us about your balance of financial investors, if you will, pure VC versus corporate VC, maybe how you balance those two and then how you think about the word patient capital in this sense.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
So, we have raised $85 million to date, which is from a mix of financial as well as strategic investors. In the bucket of financial investors, we have six investors and we're very careful to select those that are not seeking to have returns, very short-term returns over the next few years who understand that something as disruptive, something as first of the kind will take time. So, they're not looking to turn around on their capital in three-to-five-year time allowances, they have longer time allowances to make this thing happen.
So, these includes, the financial investors are led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is Bill Gates founded venture capital to Temasek, which is really a gateway to capital in Asia. It's a Singapore sovereign wealth fund with 300 assets under management to S2G Ventures, [inaudible – 00:12:23], Lowercarbon Capital. These are very big. Each one of them, at least is a billion dollar of capital outlays available to them, or if not more, to deploy into our environment transition and then seeking disruptive solutions like ours to make that happen.
Then on the strategic side, we have very carefully brought in folks that can help accelerate a time to market. I don't come from steel industry. I don't have that background per se, but that's okay. We're coming from outside, looking at things in a very different way, but we do need to have folks that understand this industry inside out. So, very early on, we brought in, even at the time I was starting the company, BHP so that we can access to commercial and ores that they provide to steelmakers, which we also needed to have. We now have a partnership with largest US steel company, Nucor. Then we also have Amazon, which if you look at them collectively as a company, they have a huge footprint on steel for their operations to anything they do to move their logistics around from vans to trucks to ships to move the goods globally.
13:49
So, we have very carefully brought in strategics to really gain knowledge across the value chain. That's how I think about this thing. And timing that correctly, bringing in an off-taker on day number one doesn't help you and so you have to go across the value chain in a systematic way when the time is right. When you're ready for that collaboration discussion, you very systematically, stepwise, build that capital stack from fundraising perspective.
Chris Wedding:
And sometimes, maybe I've seen or we hear, I mean, strategic investors are great, but maybe not in the earliest rounds. Maybe too much control over which direction you take and/or having strategics with competing interests can be difficult to manage for someone in your seat. Can you just say how you navigated those two challenges among the many benefits of having a corporate investor?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
What you're talking about absolutely is the conventionalism, I would say. Even when I was trying to make that decision, I was advised by many not to bring in a strategic investor in that area. They have agenda, they have certain things they're trying to achieve and navigating that can be painful, can be tricky. I think the discussion was quite upfront.
So, one thing is that from what allocation you give them to the capitalization table, actually, it's to your best interest, not just strategic, but any investor, that they don't have a controlling voice, meaning that one person or one entity just dominates everything. So, if they have a concern or they want to change the direction of the company, you have to change the direction of the company and now it becomes a huge problem at it. So, the idea was to basically bring entities to the table that can help you, but in some sense, there was a strategy also to not have any one entity have such a controlling voice so that you have equal weightage from everybody around the table. That was one.
The second part was having an open and honest discussion with the strategic investor, which is, what is our intent? What is your intent here? And while we would like to have you seat at the table, we are not ready to give you any specific commercial deal or exclusivity that becomes an encumbrance for the company in the long run. The idea was that if that's not acceptable, you walk away, but if you construct the deal in a way that is a win-win for both party and you're very clear, what is your objective, what's your objective and can we have a meeting of the minds here, then there's a path forward. If not, you have to be very clear to be able to walk away, and that's what we did. We laid out what we were looking for in that relationship and then constructed a deal that
was a win-win for everybody.
It has been, I would say, like even with BHP and any of our strategic investors, it has been a dialogue of a lot of openness and collaboration. I come with an attitude that while the vision is there, I don't have solutions to everything and that's why you are on the table. So, help me. I mean, the question always comes down to let's align first on how you can help us and if there is a path that you can help us, then we talk about investment. It's not the other way around. A lot of time the discussion is around here is what we want to invest in you. Well, that sounds very good, but let's first talk about why.
17:45
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, that makes sense. The green steel that you all can produce, is it at cost parity with conventional iron or steel, or is it on track to be at cost parity? Where are we in that trajectory, if you will?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
The way we think about that is at scale, without any carbon subsidy, we will be at a cost parity or even lower cost than the incumbent process, which is using fossil fuels to make the steel. Then that really comes down to economics, and it comes down to a goal we set out to do which is that we have to develop a solution set that does not increase or does not put a premium for being green at the end of the day.
We can have other premiums, I have no issue of having more price in the market. It's a supply and demand economics question, but to accelerate the transition, we need to make. If you have more and more premium because you just happen to be green and like electron steel is not a medium color, because it's the same steel that needs to do what it needs to do, we are better off to have a no premium, green premium on commodity bar like steel. So, that's what we set to do and we have a path to get there when we scale.
Chris Wedding:
Not that you need to promise a number to thousands of folks listening right now, but is there a range, is there a target you're communicating publicly on that scale, no extra first cost period?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah, so we're not publicly saying what the number is. People in the industry know what the zip code of that number is. So, I think for a general audience, it is fair to assume that it's going to be equal to or cheaper than the way steel is made today.
Chris Wedding:
We can leave it right there, no problem. I think folks just need to come get a job with you so they know the inside scoop, right?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Totally, and we are growing quite rapidly. For me, it's almost like a call to action to folks out there that irrespective of whether you come work for Electra on this technology or something else, I mean, we have a planetary problem and we are lacking. I would say one constraint we have is not capital. What we all lack is ability to make some of the solutions we're working on to reality. So, we are constrained by talent, per se.
There's no better time to think about a transition if you've been thinking of a career transition, to think about it now and irrespective of whether you have a technical background in electrochemistry to chemistry to mechanical engineering, electric engineering, policy side, business side, project finance. Any spectrum of staff has experience in adjacent fields and markets, and not necessarily even steel, we need lots of people, not just for us, but for generally what we're trying to achieve across the board for this transition.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect, and for folks to apply, is there like a Jobs tab on your website or something? How do they get involved?
21:18
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah, there is a job site on our website. There are things that are posted on LinkedIn. We have a job applicant platform on Greenhouse that is also integrated with our website and things like that. So, there is ways to reach us or directly message us on LinkedIn.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so let's go back to you-all achieving cost parity at scale. Are there any other reasons why conventional buyers, bulk buyers for decades of steel would say no? You removed the cost question. What does this do to get over? Or what are the hurdles to get over to bring this into the mainstream?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
I mean, look, first of all, what we are trying to do is displace how iron has been made, which today is a blast furnace, and there are like more than 500 steel plants in the world. We make two billion tons of steel today. 70%, whatever the number is, 1.3 to 1.4 billion tons is made in a technology that is the reason why we have the submissions. So, switching that to something different is not straightforward.
It is a capital-intensive play and the transition likely will depend on when some of these assets are towards the end of the life or going through a major end investment cycles. And so, that's one big part of what that currently could be. Policy around that to help us with the transition is absolutely needed as well. But at the end of the day, what we produce as a product is actually far superior than any form of iron that is made today. Because that iron, even though it has embedded carbon emission, also has embedded gangue with it.
So, the impurities that are coming with the ore, we remove much of that, but not all of it. So, there is still some gangue in that, which we then feed forward into a steelmaking process where it again has to be refined. What we are using is absolutely clean on it. No gangue, no embedded carbon. So, it's a big plus to our customer in the value chain to use that to create better products, essentially, of the steelmaking. So, that's a market pull, essentially, that helps us for sure.
Economics helps us, it’s a massive market pool as well in making this transition. You think about a technology like photovoltaic that was developed back in the 70s, but by 90s, you can see it being available that has pilot scales and while the wheels may not be there, efficiencies may not be there where they are today, but that art existed, but it has taken us still 20 plus years to create that transition.
A steel plant fundamentally is a coal-fired power plant because it has to produce that energy to melt something, but also have to use the coal to make the reaction happen. So, it's a more complex, in that sense, a coal-fired power plant. So that transition will take time, is all I'm saying and regional policy will have huge effects of how this plays out in the global market.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so on the higher purity of you-all’s steel product, that's super helpful to clarify that this is not just a green steel story, it's a better product story as well, which is probably why earlier on in the conversation, you mentioned you would like to not see a premium attributed to the “green quote,” quote unquote, but for a higher purity product, sure. I mean, obviously supply demand will lead to that premium possibly as well.
25:25
It reminds me a little bit of maybe electric vehicles today. Certainly, if someone's looking to spend $40,000 plus or something on a new vehicle, there's no extra upfront cost and they perform better, safer in lower OpEx and faster acceleration, more fun to drive, et cetera. So, there are extra green, non-green benefits to make the sale easier.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
That is absolutely true. So, that's why I hesitate to confuse the audience with what it might be and things like that because you have to think about what the value creation is as well. Why we don't want to rely on green subsidy as a means to price a product, we want it to stand on its own feet in terms of what value it brings to our customers. So, there are various elements of value creation, both from the input side, we can talk about the ores as well. And on the output side is absolutely pure, refined product that helps the steel industry actually be more efficient, essentially create better products at the end of the day.
Chris Wedding:
If you're talking to a steel plant, would you describe your sale, if you will, as more like a product or more like an engineering project? That is how customized versus it's 95% done when you ship it from the factory and then of course you got to anchor it, plug it in if you will, to the infrastructure at the plant.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
This is actually a very important question, good question actually. I view this as a product where you can fail and touch and ship and feed into as a raw material into the next. How we achieve that is through a project, of course, but it's a value chain that exists today. It's almost like going back to the example that you did, which is electric vehicle. Electric vehicle is not inventing an automobile. That exists. We have invented a different way to make a car work. So, it's not a new category suddenly we are making and so, it's in that sense a product per se that will have off-taken agreements with steel plants and hopefully with also customers of steel plants too.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, well, I think you just hinted at my next question's answer, but first of all, on this question, I was hoping you would say product because if you sell products versus highly engineered solutions, the former allows us to come down the cost curve much more quickly. The latter often, not as much.
My next question was going to be around, are you selling a product? Are you selling CapEx or are you selling a solution where you finance it on either your balance sheet or a third-party project financing and you sell an OpEx? I heard you say off take, which makes me think it's option B, but how will the customer procure your benefits if you own?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah, what we are designing, what we're doing is we're basically building the key core equipment and the entire plant that will produce, given the inputs, output being also green iron in certain form factor. And that will be project finance, whether that is coming from our balance sheet where this third party, I think is a question of BBD and I think it's a question of maturity and the bankability, all of the good stuff that over time will shape out. But at the end of the day, that factory has to be economical. It has to make money. So, it has to have offtake, off taking that product at certain price points in the market, feeding into the steel, making infrastructure value chain at the end of the day. So, we firmly believe in product and just to come back on engineered solutions.
29:57
In some sense, I think of like a battery storage as an engineered solution. It's very difficult to say that's a product which seems the same every time. It is a very customized solution for some electrical node here or electrical node there or something like that. I mean, those are very different type of an opportunity almost like a market creation, you're trying to create a market through an engineered solution and try to solve a problem. Whereas, the electric vehicle, we're not trying to grow the automobile market, but we’re trying to shift a vehicle that has been made. So, it's the same product, very different attribute, same thing for us. Product design, it is sold in the market today. It's a commodity. We know what the price points are. We know what the global supply and demand is. We know what the value and uses to our customers are and we are thinking in that framework.
Chris Wedding:
Yep, and what you're doing is novel. So, your process of creating the moat, is it IP based, intellectual property patents and such? Is it more trade secret? What's your approach to digging and maintaining the moat?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
A few. So, one, of course, an intellectual property, we are what we're proposing, having the work to propose this type of an [inaudible – 00:31:19] upload and page processing, using lower grade ores and things like that. And so, we have been very aggressive in filing the intellectual property.
The other big piece of it is that at the end of the day, this is enabled through a very proprietary electrochemical, [inaudible – 00:31:40] process stack. So, what that electrochemical stack is, think of it being an electrolyzer. So, the engine that makes this happen inside the plant, that is our own engineered design and while on paper this looks like a no brainer, almost like, gee, why didn't I think about this thing? But it's not heavily in the detail of, how do you make that happen? So, both from that, from a secret perspective, what is embedded in the equipment that we'll be needing to make that happen, which we are designing ourselves and keep that in-house while the factory can be owned by a co-party, for example. That will allow us to read that moat as long as possible.
Chris Wedding:
All right. So, around this point in the podcast, we shift from the business, so Electra, formerly known as Electrasteel, to Sandeep. So, the place I was going to start is, tell us about maybe the catalyst or realization you had to take you from PhD in Minnesota in engineering to let's launch a bunch of companies and maybe sell one or two along the way, et cetera, et cetera. It's not the normal path.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's a very good question and can only be said in the hindsight. It's not that I knew when I was young that that's the path I'm going to take. It comes down to, very early on in my career, I was fortunate to go through an MBA program that is quite unique in itself. By the way, anybody who does an MBA generally in midlife is in the midlife crisis of like, geez, my career is on somewhere completely bad and an MBA is a solution to that. I was part of that, but what that juncture in my life was, it allowed me to do some soul searching, which is what drives me. There have been certain patterns in my life that in a little bag it’s like, oh, I was doing my PhD in aerospace engineering and then I shifted to mechanical engineering.
34:06
When I finished in mechanical engineering, I had a job offer to do mechanical design of an equipment. I said, “No, I'm going to go learn chemistry and material science.” So, I started as a process technician, almost learning things in the trenches in the inductor industry. So, having few transitions in my life where I have really enjoyed what I've enjoyed -- By that time, I had a corporate career going quite rapidly in one of the largest semiconductor capital equipment companies in the world, building our teams and things like that.
One of the common threads in everything that I've done in the past, my realization is that, I really enjoy working in small teams and challenging the status quo and having a lot of overlooking thinking. That realization that that's who I am came through me in the one year of that soul searching. And since then, my career has been in entrepreneurship. I mean, I basically took that to heart and I have been basically from there on, either on the startup side or being on the investment side, either way, but have been in the crossroads of small teams, startups, types of an environment.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. Thank goodness for the climate. You had a midlife crisis and went back to get an MBA.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah, I mean, my career started in semiconductor industry, so I've done various related work from transistors to devices that are memory devices with Intel's of the world, TSMC's of the world where we fabricate these things. What the transition has been is slowly and slowly, stepwise way has been using that as a foundation of our tech that I was doing and shifting toward what has become non-climate now when you look back around that.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, hindsight 2020 as they say.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Let's switch to this. Tell us some advice you might have given your younger self or maybe give the younger folks that you mentor from time to time in order for them to be more effective or maybe happier even along this journey.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
I will say two things. One is that for disruptive innovation, my rule especially for hard tech, I don't do software by the way, for hard tech has been that you got to think big, you got to pay fast, you got to try small, and then you got to scale big to it. So, it's almost like without that big thinking vision of something, picking up a big problem, that's where I start from.
Just like in this case when I started, I didn't know this could be done, but that's okay. You look for a solution set and if there's no solution set to be had, you got to move on, which is a vast fail methodology of what will break or make this entity. You have to do that day number one rather than basically waiting five years to see whether it's going to happen or not going to happen and grinding for five years to get there. So, not being afraid of failure is very key, is what I'm saying.
37:48
You have to be true to yourself. You know where the skeletons are buried, likely and if you don't, that's a separate problem, by the way. So, hopefully you know where the skeletons are buried and your job is really to make sure that can you have a solution path around that, or can you fix that and do that upfront? So, that's number one.
The second thing I would say is that, it's a team to succeed. My younger self had this attitude to do it all, and today, I really focus on three things only. One is a vision and a strategy. Second is that I'm raising the capital and bringing the right partners to the table and third is building the team. If you were to ask me today, among those three, what's the highest priority you would put weight on? Actually, it's the third one, which is building the team.
The reason is simple, because if you have the right team, they can actually help you with the vision and strategy if they are wrong. If you have the right team, they can help you raise capital as well, but if you don't have the right team, you are just spinning the wheels and you're not going to go anywhere. So, I spend a lot of time talking to people, understanding and helping them as well in terms of either mentorship or encouraging them to think about different opportunities and recruiting and what we need in this company to be successful.
Chris Wedding:
Well, that's a good one-two-three summary of a CEO's job for sure. You can't do it all. On number three, the people piece, I'm guessing that your PhD in engineering did not cover talent and human resources.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
[inaudible – 00:39:38].
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, how are you getting better at finding and recruiting, getting to a yes with key talent for your team?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
That’s a very good question. So, over the years, especially for the early-stage disruptions, which is the stage we are in, we have the same philosophy in this company, we look for in the company with a certain mindset to be able to break certain problems down, create hypothesis. Then based on that hypothesis, create a set of actions that could be experiments, could be validation in the market. You very quickly run those scenarios down rather than boiling the oceans. It requires a mindset of how to approach the problem.
At the fundamental level, that's equates as critical thinking. The higher you are in the organization, I call it integrative thinking, which is now you are being able to present it with a lot of competing sets of information, and you can create a mental model of, okay, how are you going to bring this thing together into hence, this has to be done, hence, a decision has to be made of where we are going to go forward.
So, first of all, we're very selective in trying to find that kind of a talent. We provide a wrong kind of balance for the experience and capability, but if we have a bias toward it, it’s always about potential, that experience. Experience is something you've done in the past. It's not a predictor of future and that you need experience to make sure that you don't repeat the mistakes, what others have done, you don't reinvent the wheel, but it's not necessarily going to let you to complete new innovation solution either. So, it's a mix of the two that you have to very carefully balance.
41:47
So, having that philosophy is what we have built that into the DNA of the company in terms of recruiting. What kind of talent we are recruiting, what can we screen for this per se, and that's where terms like no nonsense comes from, which is simply, you're sitting across a table with 30 years of experience and you just come and tell us that, “Hey, this is how it has been done and this is the answer,” that doesn't go well with us.
What we're trying to do is challenge the status quo. So, if you cannot really articulate the why and why this was done this way, and what led to this answer so that we can understand in its depth, where is this coming from and from there, look for ways of if there's a different way to do it. So, you get challenged a lot in that sense irrespective of how much experience you have. The answer cannot be, “Hey, this is how it has been done.”
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, exactly. That's what you're fighting against, right?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
We're fighting against. So, it's basically building that team in that sense. This is how we operationalize that philosophy on the ground.
Chris Wedding:
Well, it also seems to tie to the other part of your team page talking about this focus on first principles, getting to the root of things. Let's go to the next one, which is, what are some habits or routines, Sandeep, whether these are daily, weekly, monthly, what have you, that keep you healthy, sane, and focused in this marathon that is running a climate tech startup?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Yeah, very good question. I wish I could be whatever I want to say I would preach to that, [inaudible – 00:43:32] I'm not doing enough. But one, I would start with the conversation on this point by saying that, look, for me personally, having the clarity of the vision of what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, it’s very, very critical because when you get to the practical level of it, there is so much stuff to be done. There's so much noise, there is so much decisions and stress, this is not working well, whatever that is and it comes and goes, of course.
What first of all, teach me saying is that as long as you know why you're doing this and while that may be a painful transition, because there is some stress in your life, as long as you know why are you doing this thing, at least you know where the North Star is and you can look to that versus look to the green part of you in this forest and say, “Oh, Jesus, I'm stuck here.” That's number one.
I think the second thing, what I would advise everybody is, and I wish I had followed this advice as a younger self is think of yourself first, then your family, and then your work in that hierarchy. It's almost like when you go on an airplane, they tell you to put your mask first, if you didn't put the mask. So, when I say that, think of yourself first, I'm talking about think of your health first and well-being first because if you are well, then you should be thinking about the family. Because if you're not well, family is thinking about you, so it's the other way around. So, think of yourself and your well-being, your family next, and your work in that hierarchy. And as long as you can keep to that, you will be happier, you will be more active.
45:19
Perhaps the other thing I would also say is that, having that mission and being mission driven, while that is very clear what that also means for me is you're chasing impact rather than chasing a specific goal. They’re two different things. You’re chasing impact is what I'm looking for. I'm trying to do certain things so that my children are having a better place to live in at the end of the day. I'm not doing this thing to become the steel king of whoever the next steel king is going to be [inaudible – 00:45:53], is that the horse that drives the carriage for me rather than a carriage trying to push the horse to go on a certain direction.
Chris Wedding:
I'm with you. Two thoughts come to mind as I know we're getting close to our finish here. One is you talked about knowing the why really clearly and there's a statement that says something like, if your why is clear enough, the how is findable, doable, easier, et cetera, which I think strengthens your point there. Your order there of take care of yourself first and family then team, probably the reverse is more often how things work for founders. I think it's easy to think that that's selfish if I take care of myself first, but the Buddhist talk about, if you don't fill up your cup, you don't have anything to offer to someone else, which that actually is not selfishness. It's being equipped to be the most helpful perhaps, yeah?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Totally. I think you said it quite well there and I can't add anything more to that. If you're not well, you are not equipped to take care of others basically and what you're going to achieve life. So, your well-being is very important and we should all spend more time in our daily lives and that's where I would say [inaudible – 00:47:26] for our own self-help rather than anything else.
Chris Wedding:
For sure. Well, we could keep going, Sandeep, but I'm thinking we both have calls in three minutes here. Let's end with passing the mic back to you. Is there a call to action? Is there a specific kind of person or a business that you want to hear from?
Sandeep Nijhawan:
I think what I would say is that given the audience you have, I would say that, look, if you are a young entrepreneur thinking about doing something related to climate change, this is the time. I would highly encourage you to make the leap. There's never been a better time. I've been doing this for 20 plus years. There's never been a better time and the world needs it. This is a planetary problem and so do that. I encourage you to do that.
If you are a listener wanting to do something about it, come talk to us, come talk to competitors of ours who are trying to build different solutions that's solving the same problem and [inaudible – 00:48:32]. We are collectively as an industry talent constraint. We need more instigators, we need more popular leaders, we need more innovators across the board to make this transition happen. And last but not the least, every one of us should actually recognize that we actually have a lot of power to help with this transition by making real changes as well, which is that while three years ago, I bought an electric car, not because it was any reason, but just to send a market signal that I shall buy an electric car, irrespective of its range it had. It was not an economic decision at all because AI conformed it, which is a lot of agreeance as I would say that, but more importantly to send a market signal.
49:22
You can write a letter to your senator. You can write a letter to your congressman. You can write a letter to your [inaudible – 00:49:27] company asking them, “What are you doing to decarbonize the [inaudible – 00:49:32]?” So, there's a lot of, I would say, individual action. You can take a bus to the mall rather drive to the mall. A lot of individual action, while they may not be seen that make a big dent in the bigger picture, these are absolutely individual market signals that if you collect them together it can have a very profound, I would say, impact to what we all are trying to achieve.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I like that and that sending a market signal is exactly what I tell my kids when we drive the EV. It’s saying the future's here. It's getting closer to being here. All right, Sandeep, we're out of time here. Hey, we're all rooting for the success of Electra. The world needs it.
Sandeep Nijhawan:
Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate the time and this opportunity to speak to you and to your listeners.
Chris Wedding:
Hear, hear. Talk soon.
Hey, there, it's Chris again. If you want more intel on climate tech startups and investors, please join the thousands of other founders, investors, and world changers who have subscribed to our Substack newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you took 90 seconds to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or give us a five-star rating on Spotify. This feedback is the number one way to draw more attention to the inspiring climate CEOs and investors I get to interview here. All right, until next time, keep on fighting the good fights.
ABOUT OUR PODCAST
We talk about #ClimateTech #Startups #VentureCapital #Productivity and #Leadership.
And we’ve become one of the top 3% most popular podcasts in the world.
Why do climate innovators love us?
Because of our inspiring guests — dozens of climate tech CEOs, founders, and investors that are raising or investing tens of millions of dollars and removing millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
Why should you listen?
To start, grow, and invest in businesses with impact, meaning, and profit.
Learn about our guests’ career paths, founder stories, business strategies, investment criteria, growth challenges, hard-earned wisdom, productivity habits, life hacks, favorite books, and lots more.
Who is the host?
Dr. Chris Wedding is a 4x founder, 4x Board member, climate CEO peer group leader and coach, Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, podcast host, newsletter author, occasional monk, Japanophile, ax throwing champ, father of three, and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio). 😃
Learn more here:
Climate CEO peer group community: www.entrepreneursforimpact.com
2-minute newsletter: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com
DIY course about startup capital raising (170 slides, 70-item library, 250-investor list): https://t.ly/QCcl5