Measure What Matters: The Value of Open Data in Energy, with McGee Young of WattCarbon

The transcription of the video is below. 

Technology’s Role in Tackling Climate Change

Nico: McGee, as we jump in one of the pleasantries that I have been offering up at the beginning of these interviews is something that I call inspiring quote. Uh, actually many people do. I just have this wall of quotes and I like to pull from them because I’m a quote hoarder. And so I wanted to share something with you, and I’d love for you to share with us one of your favorite or inspirational quotes.

Uh, and this is one that I very recently came across. In fact, uh, that is often on, uh, miss, uh, wrongly attributed to JW Marriott. Uh, and the quote is good timber does not go with these. The stronger, the wind, the stronger, the trees actually comes from a much longer poem that Douglas Malick wrote called good timber that I would really encourage people.

To listen or to read for themselves. I’ll link to that in the show notes as a, as an entrepreneur. How does that quote strike you?

McGee: Yeah, I love it. It’s, it’s kind of like, um, nothing good really comes if it’s, if it’s too easy. That’s right. Yeah, definitely, definitely resonates. Um, there’s, there’s 1 that’s been kind of rattling around my head lately.

I’m a big NBA basketball fan and. And, you know, Denver Nuggets just won the championship and their, their star player, Nicole, which was reflecting on the journey to get to that point to me. And he, he said something that has kind of stuck with me. He said. You know, at first we were bad and, and then we were good, uh, but then we had to fail so that we could become great.

And I thought that, you know, kind of hit at a lot of the same kind of themes that it’s really, you know, your ability to withstand the windstorm or overcome the adversity, uh, that defines your staying power, uh, in a lot of ways. And, uh, for sure, you know, Trying to start a company encounter a lot of windstorms and the strong survivor, I suppose.

Nico: Yeah, well, I appreciate that, that cap, that, um, corollary, you know, you do have to really endure a lot to be great. I think his point is well taken that there are precedents, um, or antecedents that come like thing. There are steps you have to take. And one of those steps to really be great is you have to know what it tastes like to fail.

I’ve never met. Anyone except maybe Mark Zuckerberg, who I haven’t met, that didn’t fail in some like massive, massively life instructive way. Right. Um, who really succeeded, um, wildly. Most of the good entrepreneurs I know have that skeleton in the closet or, or,

McGee: or many. Yeah. There’s a, there’s a musician, uh, Jeff Tweedy, who’s the front man for a band called Wilco.

And he has a line from one of his songs. He says, you have to learn how to die. Uh, if you want to be alive. I love that.

Nico: I have not, uh, heard anyone quote that one. That’s really good. Digging way back in the archives for Wilco. Well, is there, uh, McGee a quote that you feel is particularly pertinent to the work that you do or something that kind of fits with your personality or your bus or your

McGee: work style?

Uh, well, I would, I would say that, um, you know, my. Personal career has been kind of this mix between trying to understand the world and trying to save the world. And, uh, there’s a, there’s a quote by Karl Marx where he says that the job of philosophers has always been to interpret the world. And the point, however, is to change it.

And I, you know, I find myself Where I’m, where I’m, you know, most excited, uh, is that part about changing it, um, but where it’s most comfortable is that point about interpreting it because it’s, it’s easy to kind of put yourself out there and to say smart things about the world and say, hey, this is how things work.

And you can put that on Twitter or LinkedIn and lots of people give it likes when you go out and you try to change things, um, you open yourself up to a lot more criticism, a lot more. You know, people saying, yeah, that’s not a good idea or that’s, you know, that’s not the right thing or something. And so that’s the, that’s really actually the hard part is to kind of be vulnerable enough to say, like, I might be wrong about this, but I’m going to try to do the thing that I think is right.

I mean, so for me, that’s sort of an inner tension that I, that I wrestle with. Takes courage

Nico: With that in mind. I’d love to hear you enunciate. As though we were just meeting one another at a Christmas party, you and I don’t know each other, but we’ve gone to our respective partners, uh, sort of random business Christmas party.

Right. Um, as we’re engaged in dialogue and, um, and I, and I ask you, what is the general problem that you see in the world that needs solving? What, what, what would your answer be at a really high level?

McGee: I think at a high level, um, You know, I, I grew up in a, in a household where we kind of cared a lot about the environment about, um, issues like pollution and public health.

And I saw so many people that would come in and out of our lives who are also also cared about those things very passionate about the work that they did and completely. Outgunned by those who they’re up against, you know, whether it was, you know, some, some big industry group or some oil companies. So what I’m trying to do is harness technology to help people change the world and, um, help people like, you know, my, my parents, their friends, the descendants of, of those folks, you know, today who, um, see things that the same things that I see, we see climate change happening.

We see. You know, the implications of that spreading, you know, throughout the world and and we understand what kind of things need to be done. But we, we just don’t as individuals have the capacity to change things at a macro structural level. Uh, but technology gives us a path. To even to even that playing field a little bit and to overcome collective action problems that have historically made it difficult and made it exceptional for an environmental organization to have a real impact, for example.

Um, so, you know, the particular problem that we’re trying to solve. You know, immediately decarbonizing the built environment is part of a broader set of issues, um, that we, that I think that technology can help us, um, leverage, we can leverage technology to help us create a future that we feel positive about.

Nico: Well, McGee decarbonizing the built environment is indeed a very large task built environment being 1 of the major contributors to. Uh, climate change and greenhouse gases introduce us then here in the outset to what carbon the business that you’ve built and why. It is designed to help solve the problem that you’ve just enunciated.

Addressing Decarbonization Challenges and Creating a Sustainable Future

McGee: Yeah, it’s a, it is, it is pretty big, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t need to be as, it’s not as complicated. I think as, as people make it out sometimes, we’ve got, we understand the implications, right? It’s 40 percent of emissions come from buildings, you know, either operationally or from the materials that are used to construct them and we more or less know what to do.

To decarbonize, we’ve we’ve got to get 100 percent clean energy on all of our grids. We have to phase out the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooking and that sort of thing. And we need to make our buildings grid interactive so that they can help compensate for. It’s the intermittency of renewables.

Now, part of the challenge is being able to quantify that to measure that right to say, like, if I, if I turn off my heat for a little bit, or my air conditioner for a little bit, and that helps to alleviate some of the stress on the grid. That’s an important and interactive part of the grid, but to be able to value that means that you have to measure that.

And that’s tricky. Uh, so, uh, the way that we kind of started out the company kind of floated from some of the work I had done previously, uh, to really kind of build more science around measurement verification to use, uh, data science software, uh, to be able to increase the fidelity and the quality of that ability to see what’s happening with buildings.

So that we can start valuing them for the work that they’re contributing to decarbonization. So, if I put solar panels on this building to measure that precisely, if I put a heat pump into this building to measure the carbon reductions precisely, if we do demand response in this building to measure that precisely, which then opens up.

A whole world of, of, of, of a decarbonization market, right? As we think about the energy transition right now, we think about it and kind of this, like, vague abstract, like, these are good things to do, but we really are still stuck with these legacy energy markets that we use to communicate value around.

And so, as we kind of thought what if we could just build a market that valued the decarbonization capacity of our buildings and then. Use that to leverage, you know, fresh injections of capital into projects that we’re going to have the biggest impact.

Nico: And clearly you’re an entrepreneur trying to build a solution, not identifying the market, the incumbents.

What exists where we want to go is a part of building the value proposition, raising capital and deploying a product. If I am a building owner who has not found what carbon, what solutions exist for me today, what are my options for trying to mitigate the, or turn off the tap absent your product?

McGee: It looks a lot like what I went through with, I kind of went out and I found a guy to put on my, some solar panels and I found another guy to, to, to string some, some, uh, a two 20 cable to my garage so I could plug in my, my EV and, and then I, I did a retrofit of my heater and put in a heat pump and all along the way, I was kind of figuring it out for myself, right?

And, and not really sure, even as. Deep as I am into this industry felt completely in over my head the whole time. Now there are good companies out there, uh, companies like block power, uh, quick carbon out here in the Bay area. Um, elephant energy and the Colorado area that are helping homeowners building owners navigate some of that decarbonization landscape, they’re finding the right types of solutions, but they’re still trying to figure out how to compete against the guy who rolls up.

With the natural gas furnace on the truck and says, Hey, I’ll do it for cheaper. I’ll do it faster. . You know, and you’re, and, and, and I, and, and you know, this is gonna work because this is what you already have. Right. And so, so for us it’s about kind of leveling that playing field a little bit. Giving the, the companies out there that are helping homeowners do the right thing, uh, find the resources they need to be able to do the, the projects that contribute to decarbonization and, and.

And frankly, the companies that are out there perpetuating the status quo to put them on the back foot, uh, to make it harder for them to compete with the same fossil fuel solutions that have gotten us here today.

Nico: Right. By providing those same fossil fuel solutions. So exactly. I recently had a conversation.

I don’t think you and I talked about this with my father and he’s building a little, uh, effectively a second house in terms of square footage, but it’s a little building according to him out back of his house. That he’s going to, you know, put electricity in and it’s going to have a little, uh, prep kitchen in there and whatnot.

I asked him what he was going to do in terms of powering it and, and what the kitchen, you know, appliances are going to look like. And I was just sort of gauging where he’s at on the overall, like electrification of everything. And he said, Oh, I’ll probably put a gas stove, um, probably. And I was like, Oh, really?

I didn’t know you had gas out here. And he’s like, Oh yeah, I installed a, a propane tank a couple of years ago. That’s what. You know, X, Y, Z appliances, he pointed out run on and, um, he goes, it’s just easier and cheaper. Uh, I’ll just put another, you know, gas range out there and run the propane line out to it just like his grill.

And I thought, well, the, the father of someone who’s been in the solar industry for 18 years, who’s a staunch advocate for electrifying everything and reducing fossil fuels is his default reaction still is fossil fuel.

McGee: I think the mistakes that we make. Is that we try to shame your dad.

Nico: Yeah. We try to, I tried to shame him big time

McGee:It doesn’t work.

Nico: He got really, really like defensive.

McGee: Totally. We have these rebate programs that we set up. Well, Hey, and, and, and that’s just that you get people who are already going to do it, that sign up for those. And it’s like, oh, cool. For people like me, you know, who like I’ll take 4, 000 off of my, you know, and the answer comes from your dad calling somebody.

And he goes, hey, this is what I want to do. And they say, hey, I got a better solution for you. Yeah, you might not have thought about this already, but look what we could do instead. And it’s and and your dad might not know this, but, you know, in my perfect world, that person on the other end of the line. Is getting paid for the decarbonization value of the project.

He’s trying to convince your dad to do. And so now, whatever it takes, if he can’t convince your dad, then your dad does the propane thing. Then this guy doesn’t get any extra payment because there’s no car. Right? But if he convinces your dad to put on solar panels and do a mini split and all the things that we know would actually make more sense.

Yep. And then an induction range. Exactly. Then, uh, the, the contractor on the backside gets a decarbonization payment.

Navigating the Challenges of Market Validation

Nico: This is someone that would be partnered with white carbon on the platform. Okay. That’s fascinating for what it’s worth. If you’re listening and you want to. Electrify my dad’s home with your new products.

You should reach out to McGee and I, we should have this conversation. Not for nothing. We got thousands of listeners here. Um, I, I said to my dad, I was like, gosh, darn it. I’ll go find some way to put solar on your property. And then, then you’ll see, then you won’t think about propane. Uh, in the meantime, we have, uh, we have to build these platforms that do connect the dots and also that, that monetize.

These, um, the, the intangibles decarbonizing. It’s like a lot of folks say, well, how did, how does Lowe’s and home depot offer all these rebates on electric lights, right? On, on LEDs and, and CFLs before them. Lo and behold, it’s like a macro version of what you’re working on for consumers, right?

McGee: Maggie. It’s yeah, it’s what utilities call market transformation programs where they.

Those rebates are subsidized by utility programs who are now being required by their state regulators to get this is called an upstream or a midstream rebate program where you’re rebating at the point of purchase and the customer shows up and. They’re like, Oh, I heard about these leds. I heard they’re better.

And now they’re cheaper because I have this, this rebate. And so like, I don’t even have to do the math. It just totally makes sense for me. And, and making it, giving people that, that easy button is I think part of the, the, the key here. I agree.

Nico: And you look at that, if you look back at consumer adoption, we really didn’t crack the nut on.

I mean, look, companies like Cree made their entire wealth on cracking the, at the, not at the consumer level, at the utility level, figuring out how to incentivize, not cut the box top and mail it in, but upfront in the store rebate so that they, but it’s still, this is the thing that blows my mind. And many listeners probably already understand, but like that utility is still guessing they’re working off of a very vague smoke and mirrors heuristics.

They’re saying, okay. 5 million, uh, led light bulbs went into this marketplace. We know that those, you, those consumers on average use the 60 watt and now they’re using a 14 watt and we do the Delta on that. And the average hours that we know across our entire user base is X. So we assume the reduction in load is now why, and we’re going to claim all those credits, right?

I mean, this is, this is the industry working. So McGee, you, you have a tremendous background in trying to build products Uh, that addressed this need in the marketplace, but I want to kind of take a step back for a second thinking about as an entrepreneur building this business, what needed to be true for this business to work now, right?

Timing is everything for businesses. Like, if you started this business 5, 10, 15 years ago, why would you have failed?

McGee: I did try to start this business 10 years ago. It’s totally fail. I mean, you know, when I did meter hero, uh, you know, yeah, it was 10 years ago. Uh, we didn’t really have well, 1st things 1st, I didn’t know how to do measurement verification.

So that was, you know, we were just kind of guessing as the best way to try to. Calculate savings, um, it wouldn’t have been very impressive to anybody the way we were doing it back then, but also we didn’t really have access to smart meter data. We didn’t have companies like utility API, who had plugged into all of these utilities, making it easy.

I mean, it was Daniel in his basement at that point in time. So so we were in early days there. And, uh, from a market standpoint, uh, there was a, you know, a sort of a blip of what we would call corporate social responsibility back then. Um, but not really the sort of same level of engagement around, you know, climate oriented solutions that you have today.

And and so I think the things that have to be true right now is that we realize that, you know, the, the preeminent challenge of our time is figuring out how to build towards a clean energy future. Now, we have the tools that we need to be able to do that. Uh, we can. We can run the measurement verification in a way that gives people confidence that the savings are materializing the way they expect.

And, uh, we have market mechanisms that we can open up now to, to scale the injection of capital, um, into these projects. So, I think all of those things now make this the right time, uh, to try to build a company like this.

Nico: We’re going to unpack a bit, the technology, how you go about it, how you think about it, as well as, uh, even step back into kind of some of the, sort of the inception ideas and some of the work that you did before, before we do that, I’d love to pique folks interest with some of the accomplishments and milestones.

You have raised capital, you announced in January four and a half million that you raised into the business. That was a, um, seed round, as I recall with led by true ventures. Um, and you, uh, also finally kind of came out of stealth about a year ago, like last summer, just sort of talking about how you are providing hourly carbon emissions for every building in the U S that you have the capacity to that.

One of the things that sticks out in that post is that in partnership with Utility API, which you just mentioned, um, thank you, Devin, for connecting us, by the way, it was from that episode that I met McGee. And I didn’t realize this until recently, Singularity Energy, Wenbo Xie, who’s also an alumnus of the Suncast family.

Can you talk about those, uh, those milestones and perhaps one or two more that for you represent sort of the, um, the market validation? Of what you’ve been trying to build for the last several years.

McGee: Yeah. To be honest, I think some of those milestones reflect market invalidation. Okay. Which is an important part of the process, you know, because when you start a company and you you’re in this world, like when we, the company’s about two years old now, when we started, you know, watershed and Persephone were barely getting off the ground and then they went and raised a hundred million dollar rounds within, you know, six months of launching or whatever.

You know, the ecosystem changed, you know, in ways that were almost like unfathomable in the 1st year that we that we existed. Um, and so we didn’t really know where the point of traction would be right. And we also didn’t know what we were capable of building are capable of doing. So I had this idea that what if we could build something that looked like measurement and verification based on emissions reductions and could we build a market around a lot of this stuff was kind of very.

Thanks. And frankly, like pretty intimidating, you know, and, and, and as an entrepreneur, you’re, you’re kind of like, well, if there’s an easier thing that we can do, you know, like, that’s like, you know, just as, you know, impactful, like do the easy thing before you can, before you do maybe the, the harder, the impossible thing.

Yeah. But it was, it was pretty obvious to me pretty quickly that a lot of the, again, it’s sort of like that, that duality that I, that I referenced earlier between the sort of like. Interpreting, you know, the world and changing the world, like committing yourself to trying to change the world as a really, really big step.

And, and it’s also a little bit, you know, daunting to try to, you know, go talk to investors about, Hey, like, you know, like quote Marx and go change the world. It’s not exactly like bringing the investor dollars. It’s like, I’m going to build a, you know, Solid SAS business, and here’s my recurring revenue and blah, blah, blah.

So I think we were trying to feel out like what the right match was between, we were, we were trying to find what, what people call message market fit. Uh, what is the story that you’re telling and is it resonating, you know, with a large enough group, including potential investors, but as we got into things more and I started to work with window, um, And that was really useful because he was a little bit ahead of us in terms of being able to pull in all of the grid data.

So we can start to play around with, like, was this even possible? Like, we didn’t know, you know, at the time, like, if we could even start to measure hourly. Carbon emissions intensity, you know, at the at the building level and match it up with the balancing authority that it was that it belonged to pulling in and not, you know, not working with utilities was a big, you know, kind of decision.

And so that meant utility API was going to be our pathway to be able to get the actual data in front from buildings. So we built this kind of core capacity to be able to do this and and. And. And then it was like this realization that that actually the market most most folks for him. This would be valuable information about their own buildings about their own emissions.

We’re like, no, thanks. They’re like, we’re good. We have an annual number that we report that is. Safe and nobody questions. Yeah. And you’re asking us to to kind of go into this hourly stuff. All that’s going to do is raise questions around like, what have we been reporting to date? And then, you know, there’s some ambiguity around the missions factors that you might use for for hourly.

If you’re going to use this marginal emissions number that that what time. You know, still promotes or, or go in the direction that window is going and use, um, what would be called like an average emissions value. And so the, the thing that kept coming back to me was like, why am I doing this? Like, why am I starting a company and going through all this?

And, and at the end of the day, it was like this kind of moral commitment to go out and, and try to make a positive change in the world. And, and so that kind of just drew me, like, I didn’t really have any other guiding lights other than like. The people who, you know, I thought might want this information.

We’re sort of like ho hum on it. And so I was like, well, you know, who wants this, you know, in the world is is me. Like, I feel like the world needs to have the capacity to democratize, you know, energy decarbonization and. I’m going to just go build that and if I fail or nobody wants it, like I will have at least gone and done the thing that I wanted to do in the world.

And that’s kind of how we ended up where we are today.

The evolution of the business idea and securing funding

Nico: I will point folks to the, um, what we’ve been building article, because I think it really, it does a balanced and fair explanation of the sort of the ecosystem within which you decided to make, uh. Decisions for and against business progress, right?

Like what we are building and what we’re not building, who we say we are and who we say we’re not as an entrepreneur, I would encourage you if you’re listening to really go think through, uh, like using this, what we’ve been building article that I’ll link to as a framework, think through the message that you are sending to the market.

And specifically, this message market fit is a really important concept of whether or not you are working on the more complex thing or the more easily deployable thing right now and, um, and what, you know, how that is going to impact your ability to stay alive, raise a round of funding, find customers.

Versus just solving your own, like your own intellectual curiosity that I can do this. I can solve this problem and you’re going to hear some of the anecdotes from McGee of having done the former and now doing the latter. And I could quote all day because I think that you are a really smart writer and I think that this document was really written well.

Like our goal is to provide data infrastructure that joins what is actually happening on the grid to what is actually happening in the built environment. What did the lead investor for your seed round invest in? Like what, if I were to sit with them, what are they seeing and what carbon that they. That they want to place a bet with you and, and choose this horse in the race.

McGee: Priscilla Tyler’s the, the point person at True Ventures. And I, I asked her about this, you know, after we closed it out and I was like, um, you’re insane, right? You realize, you know, like you just put up your four and a half million dollars into this, you know, crazy company. And she’s like, yep. Um, but what was interesting about the process was that we.

Um, we started to think about raising a seed. We had raised 1. 5M in a pre seed, um, back in, uh, a year and a half ago. And so, as we were thinking about the seed round, um, I was initially kind of trying to pitch it as, you know, sort of like this data infrastructure, you know, for the built environment and sort of talking about, you know, where we thought that business would go.

And, and it was, you know, there was a level at which I was trying to sell it, but a level at which I didn’t really believe it. And, and I think that, you know, one of the lessons that, and I had, you know, we had some differing, one of my co founders like was pushing hard on, on that story. And I was, you know, we were sort of not aligned internally as a, as a team.

Um, and, uh, we eventually, you know, I said, you know what? Like, that’s just not doing it for me. Like, I’m not selling it very well. I don’t really believe in it. And. Yeah. The answer that I have is like, kind of crazy. It’s like, Hey, actually, I want to go see if we can build a market around this. And like, I think there’s a path here to, you know, creating not just like the data infrastructure, but the next layer on top of it.

And. So I, uh, one of my early, uh, early investors was, uh, is a guy named Tommy Leap, uh, who called

Nico: Jetstream. Yeah. We interviewed Tommy on climate. Go listen to that episode.

McGee: Uh, Tommy’s amazing, um, for many reasons, but one is, was, uh, his willingness to sit with me over the course of the summer and help me refine my pitch and we went through the slide deck and, and, um, tore it apart, put it back together over and over again until it started to.

Resonates with me personally a little bit more and he forced me to say like no mcgee like what is the story that you Want to tell, and I was terrified to actually tell it because it was it seems crazy. It seems like, you know, it’s like the thing it’s like, you’re the most vulnerable, you know, like, when you’re saying the idea that, you know, is really the 1 that you have inside of you.

Because if that’s wrong, then, you know, then it then, like, you know, then you’re exposed for the fraud that you probably think that you are, you know, most of the time. And so, uh. But he pulled it out of me. And so when I, when I started, you know, talking with folks about that, some of them were, you know, immediately like that, not for us, but, uh, but the folks at true ventures were like, oh, that’s interesting.

That’s different. That’s something that we haven’t heard anybody say before. Tell us more about that. And. And tell us more about how you might want to build, you know, sort of a new type of company in this space and be, you know, kind of genuinely, you know, an authentic, you know, alternative to what exists today.

And, and they didn’t invest necessarily in that idea as it had cohered at that point, right. It was still fairly like amorphous, but they said, we like this. We want to invest in an entrepreneur who. Is trying to think big and think creatively. And so we trust you to go out and spend the next couple of years of your life.

Working as hard as you possibly can to bring that to life and we want to be there for you as that becomes successful. And I think that was the. You know, the thing I said, I said, um, you know, that, that I’m going to probably do things a little differently than other companies that, you know, might be around and they’re like, we hope so.

Now I want to meet

Nico: Priscilla.

McGee: Yeah. She’s, she’s amazing. The whole team there has, has been, um, remarkable. So we feel really fortunate to be working with them.

Nico: How did you know it was time to raise that? That first precede one and a half million. How’d you come up with that number? I

McGee: had been doing some, some, uh, so after I had left recurve, um, I did some consulting work and I had done that for a couple, about three months.

And realize that, um, I just hated it and, and I just wanted to, I like felt like I needed to go out and try to do my own company again. And I felt like I had some, some things that I could work on it, but we needed to, you know, I don’t have like a war chest of, of a former exit or something that I can put, that I have like money laying around that I don’t have to work.

Right. And so, um, but I learned from when I had done my previous company where I, I split time for a while. With my academic job and trying to start a company at the same time that when you’re doing 2 things at the same time like that, it rarely ever works. Uh, so, um, I said, we’re going to just go into this and go raise some money, pay ourselves, you know, from the get go and that’s our burn is like our ability to pay us, you know, to keep the lights on in our own houses as like the pressure.

And we were, we met. Yeah. Adam who runs a early stage fund called looking glass capital, and he wrote the first check into our precede and kind of took the two things off. And he introduced us to Tommy and then Tommy introduced us to and Dwayne at village global. Um, and that was those three checks, you know, kind of were most of the money that came into our, our precede round.

That’s amazing. We were just, we didn’t have a, like a firm target of one and a half. It just, it kind of, that’s what it came out at. That felt like the right amount.

McGee’s personal background, early life experiences, and the influence of  his mentors and role models.

Nico: I’ll circle back in a minute to how you found true ventures. Cause I think that’s a piece of the story. So before that, you know, one of the things that you said stood out to me, uh, I think this is, this is one of the reasons why Devin wanted us to meet for sure.

And that is that they were investing in you. They want an entrepreneur who thinks this way, and they trust that you will find a path. And so something I say to folks all the time, it’s a misnomer to think that people invest in business plans. They don’t. They invest in the people pitching the business plan.

Investors would much rather invest in a startup founder who’s failed a couple of times, but who has met their commitments than a new startup that seems to have a fantastic pitch deck and a greatly, you know, well groomed. Uh, team of Harvard MBAs with no experience actually raising money and deploying it.

Where’d you

McGee: grow up? I was born in, in, uh, Carmel, California. No way. I didn’t know that. My parents were hippies. Uh, we lived in the mountains, um, living in Carmel Valley or up in the hills there. Yeah.

Nico: Did you know, we didn’t talk about this. I lived in, uh, I went to the Monterey Institute and, uh, lived in Seaside for a long time.

McGee: We will, we lived there till I was six, um, relocated to Southern Oregon. Outside of Medford,

Nico: a central point. Wasn’t hippie enough for you.

McGee: We live, we live between Central Point and Grants Pass. It’s also kind of nowhere. Until I was 12 and then I moved to Pensacola, Florida. I went to high school. My mom had grown up there and her mom had gotten sick. She worked. For Monsanto, all of her life and got cancer and, and, uh, yeah, so we moved back to help take care of her.

Nico: Was it a close knit family growing up?

McGee: It was, you know, I have two younger sisters. Um, I would say that our family struggled. Uh, we were, um, you know, desperately poor for many years. Um, my dad, uh, who passed away a couple of years ago was. An alcoholic and, um, you know, like, the Oregon years were, were tough for us.

They were, you know, he was more or less employed at the gas station and, and, and worked as it was also the mid 80s. So, as the economic, you know, everybody was unemployed at the time we were, you know, on on food stamps and. And all the rest. Uh, so I think in some ways, you know, that like tour, you know, my parents, you know, really struggled with that.

Um, the kids in a way, it’s someone brings you together somewhat, you know, brings trauma. Yeah. Um, and so I think we learned a lot about how to, you know, overcome adversity and, and, you know, like, and just sort of like figure out how to get by, um, and, uh. At a time in which, um, that was a real skill. Um, and, and so as I get, you know, further along in my life.

I look back at those times and, you know, get kind of a sense of, of resilience. Like nothing really phases me anymore, uh, from, from having gone through a lot of that as, as a little kid, I think that there’s, you know, I read Jerry Kelowna’s book a few years ago, um, uh, what’s it called? I had to look it up.

Um, uh, but it resonated with me where a lot of the kind of anxieties that you have as an adult, um, are born out of the traumatic experiences you have as a kid. And so I think, you know, in a lot of ways, it’s just kind of makes me who I am today.

Nico: Yeah. I mean, talk about, uh, tying it back to the beginning of the interview and, uh, and good trees, right?

Like actually stress is a necessary part of, um, of resilience building that good timber that we talked about. Um, you’ve clearly had some strong winds in your life. Uh, tell me about the influence that. Sickness in particular induced by, you know, working at Monsanto. Lots of folks have, um, particular opinions about Monsanto and how that ultimately planted the seeds of early sort of. Advocacy for you, uh, to put it mildly.

McGee: I think it, it, it had a, a pretty profound impact on my mom, who, um, was the more, um, sort of environmental activists, um, of my parents and she started a, a, a newspaper, um, the first ever, you know, probably. Only statewide environmental newspaper in Florida, uh, called the pro birth times and it was, uh, you know, me and my sisters would help.

Uh, I was the, you know, when I got my license, I would deliver it to all the little coffee shops and grocery stores, you know, the, the, uh, natural food stores and the university bookstore, whoever, whoever else would take, you know, copies of it. And, uh, we’d have, you know, meetings and, you know, go sit in on county commissioner meetings and, and, um, and I’d see them just.

Struggle, right? So, like, there’s this pain that’s at the root of a lot of, um, activism that, you know, somebody’s, um, kids have gotten sick or somebody’s parents have gotten sick or somebody has gotten sick. There’s a personal illness to it. And, um, and yet. Yes, they’re so under under, um, armed for the world in which you have to go out and participate in this stuff.

You think about like somebody like Aaron Brockovich, right? You know, kind of famous for that. But, um, but all of the ways in which the system is kind of arrayed to prevent. People from going out and having an impact and so they did just like this sort of like, banging your head against the wall and that I think I wanted to understand that better.

So, when I went to college, I studied, you know, environmental politics and went and got a PhD and interest group mobilization and. And wrote a book on the foundings of the Sierra Club and NRDC, and I looked at other types of organizations that were differently successful and different policy areas and really tried to understand, like, there’s a few that break through.

There’s a few that become successful and they do something special. They do something different. And that has a huge impact on the way policy gets. Made and so I wanted to understand that and and then to be able to act upon that and to take the knowledge from from those earlier generations of things that had gone, right?

The things that they had done well. And see if we could again, bridge that gap with technology to empower the next generation to come along and have a bit more of an impact than. You know, I saw when I was growing up,

Nico: I think it’s rare in our industry. It’s increasingly rare now, um, with folks seeing how, how much opportunity there is, you and I jumped in, uh, to this industry long before there was the, uh, the opportunity that we currently enjoy.

It’s, it’s getting becoming more rare to see people that actually have, like, all their lives had a mission and a clear understanding of the environmental impact and. And the levers that move that move the needle really that that changed the narrative as well. I’m sure that you probably count your mother in this group, but are there any personal heroes growing up that you look to that particularly influenced the path that you feel like you’ve taken?

McGee: I have a, I have a college advisor who. Help me understand this, this sort of duality a little bit where I, I had, um, and, and sort of like understanding the world or changing the world. And I had almost failed out of college. I went to a new college in Florida, which didn’t have grades, um, a bunch of kind of free thinkers.

And Rhonda Sanchez is trying to shut it down right now, um, because, you know, free thinking, uh, um, But, uh, but, uh, he, you know, he called me into his office after I, like, failed all my classes once in my sophomore year, because I was out protesting, you know, I’d organized the environmental club on campus and we were, like, organizing protests and everything.

I was not doing any of my work. And he said, look, there’s, there’s 2 sides of you. There’s the academic side and the, and the state of the world side, and you can’t do both at the same time. Very well. So you got to figure out, like, which 1 is it going to be? And, uh, you’re going to be better off getting out of here with a good academic, you know, back, you know, degree.

Um, and then you’ll be able to go do, you know, whatever you want. Um, but if you choose, you know, the sort of save the world path right now is probably going to short circuit a lot of things that you might do in the future. And, uh, and he was, and he was right. And that had a pretty big impact on me kind of veering off into the academic side of things for a while.

But. Always with that idea that there’s a freedom there to kind of circle back, uh, when the time felt right and to, to jump into that other, other side.

McGee’s Transition into Energy Ventures

Nico: So you ended up in New York, California turned Florida kid, barely graduated, uh, school, um, or struggled through the first two years. Uh, what took you. To Syracuse and ultimately a PhD in political science.

One way that I usually phrase this is what career path did you not go down, but always thought you would?

McGee: That one was definitely not on anybody’s, you know, like bingo card list for, for McGee. I mean, it was, it was, you know, 1996, um, we were You know, I was, I didn’t know how to get out of Florida, um, any other way than to go to grad school. I didn’t really, law school didn’t appeal to me and I didn’t, I was fascinated by what was happening in California at the time.

We got the NCSA Mosaic browser, you know, the Internet’s Netscape. You know, I was in college and, um, but that was too far for me to jump. Like I didn’t know how to, how to like get into that world. And, um, and I had, you know, a pathway through academia that was, you know, kind of a way out of, of, um, Florida and kind of working towards whatever my future might be.

And Syracuse, um, that’s where my dad had grown up and we had some family there. So I applied to, to their grad program. I applied to Syracuse and Cornell, and then two schools in California, UCLA and UC San Diego, and Syracuse let me in. I was, I think I was the last person that they let in that year. They didn’t give me any funding or any, you know, they just sort of said, well, show up.

If you do okay, you might, you know, we might let you stay. And so, you know, I somehow convinced them to not, you know, kick me out for long enough until, you know, I finished and got the PhD.

Nico: Now, if I’m doing math right, um, having graduated myself in 97 and, uh, being a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, that would put you at Syracuse the same time as Donald McNab.

McGee: Some of my favorite memories were, uh, I played basketball recreationally. No way. Thank you. Uh, he would come down to the gym for pickup basketball games, and we’re both six foot three, and I would end up guarding him.

Nico: What? Wait, you guarded Donovan McNabb in pickup games? No way.

McGee: And, uh, and… Well, I was, you know, of course, a grad student, and he was the, like, the thing about him that I remember was he had halves, like, his calves were like the size of, like, my shoulders.

And, and then he would just jump, like, straight up over me. Like, and he was so strong. I was like, helpless before this, like, beast of a man. And, uh, and I think he was like, I wasn’t even there, you know, for, uh, for the most part. Um, but yeah, that was, uh, that was a fun time to be able to, you know, to, to be at Syracuse and, and to have some of those types of encounters, um, and that was probably the most famous person.

Well, When I was growing up in Florida, I played pickup basketball games with the boxer, Roy Jones, Jr. Yeah, would come down and play pickup basketball games with us down there. So those are my two claims to fame on that front. Yeah.

Nico: Amazing. So most folks go to academia, not to pursue a business venture, but to be professors.

I mean, I, Wimbo and I had a great. Laugh about his family all being in the power sector, and he said, I’ll never be in the power sector and ended up getting a PhD, uh, in, in, in energy and, and focusing on that. I don’t see a straight line from political science to energy. Could you walk me through that, including what ultimately was, uh, more than a decade of academia.

McGee: Yeah, the, the energy side was, um, you know, I had when I was kind of starting to work on some of this stuff, it was really the, the, um, the water side that, you know, kind of was my entree point into entrepreneurship and Milwaukee was building out. It’s it’s a kind of water technology cluster. The Milwaukee water council was had been formed.

And as I had been starting to do social entrepreneurship activities in my classes at Marquette. Yeah. I had helped start a social entrepreneurship program at Marquette and was incorporating some of that into my classes. So we were like basically using the class time to start companies and learn stuff.

And so, um, one of those, so they would be kind of all over the place, you know, but one of them was a company that like we figured out how to do. That that water utility records, because their municipal agencies would be public record. So you can do a freedom of information act request for anybody’s water utility records, like, how much water they’re using.

And so water utilities are infamous for providing really bad bills, like bad. Like, um, information, so you get built in like hundreds of cubic feet, which nobody understands. Right. And so like conservation is like, you’re like, I don’t even know what’s what. And so we built. So 1 of my projects was called H2O score and we built software that essentially would take the raw data from a utility and turn it into like a really slick customer interface.

So you could just type in your address and figure out how much water you’re using, how it compared to your neighbors, kind of like, Oh, power. Yeah, but for water for water, and we just had freedom. So I was teaching my students how to do freedom of information act requests. And so we just submit these requests to water.

There’s 50, 000 water utilities in the U. S. and we just were cranking out. F4 requests to utility after utility. And, um, and so eventually we got shut down, uh, by, uh, we got a, you know, cease and desist from the attorney general of Texas and the state of Wisconsin changed his law around public records for water data.

And there was this whole like, but that was like the entry point. And then. And so from then it became you were sort of like figuring out how to how to do data and energy was sort of a natural, you know, like corollary to that. And so the measurement and verification, you know, kind of came along later when it was really about the sort of figuring out how to, like, empower people to make smarter choices, um, using data that was otherwise like, kind of not available, uh, to them, uh, it sort of underlines, you know, like what we’re doing with what carbon and taking the grid Those Carbon emissions data that is out there that anybody can get access to and window gets like, we get it directly from now and it’s a, but it’s complicated.

Right. And it’s inaccessible to people for the most part. And so, like, just being able to sort of, like, take the public record as it were. And turn it into a tool for, you know, like activists, uh, you know, however broadly you want to kind of describe that, uh, became kind of part and parcel of the way that I thought about entrepreneurship.

Nico: So let’s take a, um, let’s take a slightly detour here. Cause anytime I meet a subject matter expert and I, and I can learn from them, I try to implement that as quickly as possible. Could you do two things? 1. Identify where people are underutilizing FOIA requests in the energy sector right now. Solar, let’s apply to solar.

And 2. Give me like the 3 to 5 minute version of how to submit a FOIA request to solve that problem or to get that information.

McGee: Well, I think Utility API has sort of like figured out. The energy data side for the most part, which is, you know, kind of using customer logging credentials to, you know, to give them access to data that they should already get.

I think, in fact, 1 of the things that’s really interesting about this kind of rise of AI is that there’s already there’s so much data out there. You don’t need a request for it. It’s just out there, but it’s almost impossible to, like, sort through. You have all of these records from county commission meetings, city council meetings, reports that there that are published in PDF form, right?

That contain massive amounts of information in them, but it’s just too much for. People to sift through and to like, make sense of, and so I think, you know, what I’m excited about, like, we don’t really do any of this in my company, but if I was going to do another company, you know, I would go out and I would like organize the world’s information, decarbonization information.

Like, it’s all there’s so much out there and you could get so much out of being able to just process through the troves and troves of information that’s published mostly at a local level by, you know, city. Sometimes state governments, and I think that that would unlock a whole world of opportunity because you kind of start to see where some of these patterns are and that sort of thing.

So it’s not necessarily about the FOIA part as much as like, how do you, how do you go out and access this information that’s that’s available to you?

Nico: I mean, that’s where, that’s how most businesses are being built right now. Where are the data gaps and how can I solve the access to information and then leverage that new information to make decisions, smarter decisions, faster decisions.

McGee: I think it was Paul Graham who said at one point, like your goal as a, as a, if you’re starting a company is to try to find a non obvious problem. And if the people who can find those are going to be the ones that really, um, do something special, uh, because they’re going to get, they’ll have some, some, some secrets that other people aren’t going to have that are really going to open up opportunities.

Nico: There’s a book called non obvious. Um, yeah, that was the obvious book to write. Um, so I’m, uh, I’m gonna, I’m going to guess here cause you and I haven’t discussed it directly, but that the idea that you referred to earlier, you said, I started meter hero 10 years too early back when I asked you kind of what was, what, what is available now sort of.

Extrapolate putting 222 and 2 together here meter hero was meant to pay people to save water and energy. Um, the data was verified through utility accounts. Um, there were fund, um, rebates to offset, um, basically to pay savers of energy and water when they reduce their usage. Did you leave Marquette to start MeterHero?

Is that how that worked?

McGee’s Journey: From Early Open Source Advocacy to Leadership at Open Energy Efficiency

McGee: I started it while I was at Marquette and then left, um, while I was running it. Um, yeah. Why Oakland? We didn’t want to be in Milwaukee anymore, and, uh, we, you know, this is the, this is the epicenter of where, you know, people go who want to do things. And, um, we have had family out here too.

So both my wife and I had my sis, my sisters are both out here and her family’s out here. Yeah. And so we thought, you know, let’s go, let’s go for it. We sold our house in Milwaukee, got a little tiny apartment here and, you know, made it work. Yeah.

Nico: Well, fortuitous because probably from Milwaukee, you wouldn’t have found Uh, open energy and what now most people kind of know you for, which is having been the chief technology officer for recurve two things I’d like to learn.

One, how did you find, and then sort of work your way from head of product to CTO at, um, open energy efficiency, which became, uh, recurve. And then the follow up question to that, which you may want to weave into the overarching overarching story is talk to me about open source and. Your philosophy around open access and data,

McGee: so I joined, um, open energy efficiency, um, as their 1st employee.

Um, and I’ve gotten to know Matt golden a little bit. Um, while I was doing here, and he was sort of. I was doing him and be wrong and he was right doing what was measurement verification. Um, yeah, and so after I had, I had shut down meter hero, I, you know, I called him up and I said, Hey, let’s, let’s chat about that some more.

And, and, you know, so eventually, uh, I joined and he had had a co founder, a guy named Matt Gee, Matt Gee, Matt Gee, and McGee was a good opener. Um,

Nico: works and I walked into a bar

McGee: was the rest of this. And, and so. Uh, man, he had been the founding CTO and brilliant guy, and he taught me, um, basically about the world of measurement and verification.

And, um, he was, uh, he was running a, uh, methods development group, uh, called Caltrack. And after he left the company, we needed somebody to step in and take his place running running Caltrack and kind of looked better to have, you know, somebody named CTO running it, then somebody called head of products running it.

And I was probably the worst qualified CTO. You know, but, uh, but the work that we were doing was, you know, it was, it was really interesting because it was a lot of, you know, the kind of same data science that we did as social scientists, you know, we were running regression equations. I wasn’t, you know, a super.

Sophisticated with, um, you know, with data science in terms of my academic work, but I had had some coursework on it. So I kind of knew what it was and it’s not all that complicated. And so the, a lot of it also, it’s just sort of the politics of building consensus around a way in which we might agree to do this measurement.

And so I just, you know, kind of stepped into that role and I had been leading in my own engineering teams, you know, my first companies. And so I had some experience with that. Um, and my. Okay. Philosophy on that is hire good people and get the heck out of their way. So, you know, there’s, there’s not too much technical expertise that’s required to do that.

And it became a really good fit for me to be able to kind of lead that technical work around defining, creating new methods. We eventually. Developed hourly methodologies for calculating savings and, um, beyond that, um, being able to control for effects like covid, you know, on, you know, energy use patterns and and how to solve for some of those, you know, trickier structural issues.

And and that, of course, led me into open source, right, which I had. My, um, original project, the H2O score, uh, we had, uh, my co founder with that, um, was a big open source aficionado or contributor actually. Um, Drupal was the open source project. That’s sort of a, a long, long way back, but it might still be around today.

And so I had kind of known about it, right. From, from that experience. But when we were, when we did open source. It was really, you know, a lot of ways about the methodology as much as it was the code. And so we wanted a system of what we call a system of weights and measures that. Everybody agreed upon.

There wasn’t like a black box where you get, you know, some sort of measurement and you say, here’s, here’s how much you saved, but we can’t tell you how we got that number because it’s a secret. Right? And, and that to me, no black box is sort of exactly, um, is one of the most like important characteristics of like our industry.

There’s basically 2 types of companies. There are those who say we have a black box and we’re not going to tell you the answer. And those who say, hey, this is available for everybody to use and to leverage. And, um, you know, kind of a consensus built around how you do something is way better than trying to create your, the irony.

Of that other approaches that it tries to recreate the very same utilities, you know, business, you know, monopoly business model that got us here in the first place. Yeah. Oh, man. So, so I, I eventually, um, became pretty, uh, connected with LF energy, which is the Linux foundations energy project. And then when I started walk carbon, I started a new project within LF energy called the carbon data specification consortium.

That was going to try to we’re still working on trying to create similar kind of consensus methods around how to do carbon accounting, using hourly grid data, the work that window, you know, would contribute to. So that’s when you say, hey, what were your emissions? Or, you know, what? How much emissions did you say?

If it wasn’t like. Well, it depends on who you asked. Yeah, that’s the worst possible answer.

Nico: Depends on how you calculate it. No, it doesn’t. There’s a standard for that. Exactly. Got it. Exactly. Man, I mean, I would argue that the work you’ve done for the last 15 years perfectly positions you to be, uh, obviously building Y Carbon and to be the CEO of such a company.

It’s Yeoman’s work. It is the kind of thing and the kind of work that a entrepreneur minded academic. would get drawn into, right? It’s not a surprise having met you and Wimbo that you’re both working on very similar problems. It’s like, Um, you know, you’re both like, uh, what’s the word.

Well, there’s no doubt about that. No, I’m, I’m thinking of a separate, uh, thing altogether, like, um, uh, ministers in the, uh, like our equivalent of like the Baha’i faith. Like we’re all touching the same thing and saying it in different things in different ways. Right. And you guys are trying to be like standing in the middle of going guys.

Really? Like we’re talking about an elephant, you’re touching the toenail and he’s touching the tusk, they’re hard ones. Like you feel it in different ways, probably a weird and bad analogy, but it, I think that this there’s something in the, in the understanding of the motivation behind open source, that frankly, a lot of folks in the VC community, a lot of folks in the.

Uh, entrepreneurial community don’t, they’ve not tried to understand and they really see it. Like they look at Elon Musk, open sourcing it plans and code and say, and scratching their head and saying, why would he ever do that? Right. Do you, when you see that kind of activity from Elon, does it just like click with you?

Does it, we don’t, we don’t have to get into like your philosophy on Elon, but I’m just help me understand why, like what areas we could open source and should about the business. Right now, like I’m a nobl, no black box kind of guy. Like I say on Suncast in the intro, we pull back the veil. That’s the equivalent of like opening the black box, right?

The Dynamics of Economic Growth and Innovation

McGee: There’s a economist named Paul Rome who won a Nobel Prize a few years ago. He wrote an article in. Uh, roughly 1990 on, uh, roughly the concept of path dependency and increasing returns. So the idea is when we, when we, in our industry, we technically talk about network effects. So how, you know, if each additional user, your network becomes more valuable.

Because there’s more of them. Like we saw this with threads, you know, launching, we see a hundred million users in the first couple of days faster than chat GPT. Now, why is that network effect important? Um, it’s because there’s a public good that’s being created. It’s becoming more valuable for everybody, but in the creation of that public good, you’re also capturing some private value from it, right?

Like you’re like. Meta has, you know, threads is becoming, is more valuable, you know, because of all these people being, you know, joining it, even though each one of them also benefits. And so you have this, this kind of like spillover effect of a public good being created out of the pursuit of private interest.

And what Paul Romer wanted to know is, like, how common is that? Like, is that a thing? And he concludes that, in fact, that’s how we explain economic growth. Is that people pursuing their own private self interest, which is they create knowledge and they, they, they invent things and they do, you know, they, they start companies and they have this knowledge that gets built up as a result.

Of the work that they’ve done and then the rest of the world benefits from it, but because they themselves can, um, that is the learning by doing, uh, Kenneth, Kenneth arrow has this concept of like, by just the fact that you’re the one doing it, you have knowledge that nobody else has. That’s where the value creation happens and then everybody else using it just makes that value much more for you because you’ve now given this, given us to the world.

And so I think, you know, like. There’s two types of entrepreneurs. There’s the people who like create knowledge. You really do something, you know, and I think, you know, to the extent that Tesla has, you know, actually like built some really foundational technologies. Like they, nobody else can replicate that.

No, no company coming along, you know, trying to match them. Because because that only happens once and you now have that that DNA is as part of your company is like we know how to build this stuff and then and then you license it because you want everybody else to use the outcome of that knowledge, but but they’ll never have the thing that you have, which which is that, you know, original work that went into producing it.

So. When I look at the work that we do and the work that, you know, my, my team has done to sort of like figure out how to build all of the things that, you know, we’ve had to build to make this a reality, nobody can take away from us. That’s knowledge that we’ve built and solving these problems, right? The conversations we’ve had to have to say, well, what about this?

What about this? Even as we. We release all those secrets out into the world. Um, that’s fine because the world’s going to, yeah, they’re going to benefit from this, but that, but them knowing it, um, only makes what we’ve built more valuable.

Nico: I can’t wait for folks to hear this. I can’t wait for Karim to listen to it.

He’s going to smile from ear to ear. Um, so I’m going to bring some, bring some folks back down to ground here for a minute. Paul Romer, Nobel prize for what he termed endogenous growth. I’m going to link. Have you read this article from London school of economics, the Nobel, uh, for economics, 2018, a question of imbalance where he says.

Uh, where Dimitri Zizenglis, it claims why Paul Rummer’s theory of endogenous growth can be harnessed to direct and design a net carbon future, net zero carbon future. Have you read this? Uh huh. Dude, uh, my mind is blown. This was written in 2019. I’m like trying, I’m listening to you. I’m also like making sure I’m understanding what Paul Rummer’s theory is.

I found the JSTOR of increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics, found it again on Cambridge, like, I’m going down a deep rabbit hole here, but Paul Romer, uh, is an American economist, and he was awarded a 2018 Nobel Prize for Economics for Thank you. Understanding long term economic growth and its relation to technological innovation.

I’ll leave it at that. And I’ll leave you some links to nerd out because you guys are going to want to nerd out just like, uh, I just did. And like McGee clearly has done. Man, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve had on the show in a long time. Maybe, uh, maybe in the, maybe you’re up in the realm for sure of Wembo.

And I’m just geeking out myself listening to this. So you, uh, man, uh, this interview is gonna, is gonna go way longer than most folks are. Are willing to listen,

McGee: we’ve lost most of the audience at this point, Nico, it’s just you and me and the tour, our, our, our friends and family. Well, I’m

Nico: telling, I’m telling you, the, the, the hardcore folks are being rewarded the way, just truly, if you haven’t listened to listen to windows episode as well, the way they were rewarded in windows episode, when he really stopped to draw started to drop some value bombs.

Um, but tell me, how did you know that it was time to start white carbon, right? You need, you like. You’ve had all this experience 10 years ago, you failed. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result.

McGee: I didn’t know. Mm-Hmm. . You know, there’s nothing that tells you this is the time, or this is the thing that you should do.

In fact, it’s completely the irrational thing to do. It’s like it’s the farthest thing from, you know, like if you feel like you’re, you need to be. Rationally justifying entrepreneur, like if you feel like you can rationally justify starting a company and like going down this path, like you’ve like, you’re delusional.

Uh, so, um, in fact, everything was saying, just go get a job. There’s plenty of companies that will hire you. There’s plenty of like, good opportunities in a space, like the world does really doesn’t need another company. Maybe, you know, like I gave up tenure. You know, at a, at a university, uh, to go do this.

And I felt like I had unfinished business. It’s probably like hubris at some level to think, well, this time, you know, it’s, it’s going to be different or this time I’m going to like, I’ve learned a bunch of things along the way. And, and, um, but, uh, it’s the only thing in my life that I haven’t like gotten to the point where I feel satisfied with the outcome and.

Uh, and so I was like, I got to just do this or I will never be able to live with myself.

Nico: Yes, this is the thing that you would regret on your deathbed, right? You’d look back and say, I should have done that, right? Like me starting a podcast network, which I was definitely afraid of. I can tell you, I told somebody recently, like if I, if you had told me a years ago, how hard this is going to be, there’s no effing way I would have done what I’ve done. There’s no way.

McGee: I imagine if you knew how hard it like if you already knew how hard it was going to be and yet you still decided oh god

Nico: yeah um that’s right yeah so even more kudos for you because you knew how you’ve already failed this once with that in mind what assumptions do you feel like you had to challenge in the first year or two of starting the business

McGee: I tend to think that more more people are farther along in in their thinking on this stuff and is probably true like I I tend to sort of assume that if I’ve read something, or if I know something, like, somebody else probably already knows that, or has probably already read that, or probably already, like, and I’m, I sort of had this, like, inner fear of, like.

You know, I’m always feel like I’m playing catch up and then, and

Nico: then I realized no special knowledge.

McGee: And then I, and then I realized that like, Oh, wait a minute. Like not everybody’s thinking about this stuff yet. Right. And the same, the same way, or the same, like, like I’ll go down this deep rabbit hole and be like, Oh, okay.

So that’s how like the grid works. You know, like I just had no idea how like balancing authorities, you know, like, you know, window explained all that stuff to me. You know, when we first met, he was like, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And I’m like, all right, no, so good. Oh. And so the, but then you, you get ahead of people, right.

And you got to slow down and be like, okay, your quest to like, understand how all this stuff works does not itself translate to a business. Like, so what problem, so what is the problem that you’re really trying to solve? There’s a great book out now called fall in love with the problem, not the solution by the guy who founded ways.

And I think that’s the kind of like, you know, you, you get so like. Kind of focused on the thing that you find interesting that, uh, and like, oh, how would I solve, you know, for this, but you have to, like, really kind of think about, like, at the end of the day, like, what is the problem that I’m trying to solve here?

Because that’s where the business is going to sit. Um, and I think over the 1st, couple of years, like, really kind of checking. Um, that reality of like, what’s the thing that we can really turn into something that’s, you know, going to live as a, as a business for the longterm.

Nico: By the way, the bookie just recommended, we’ll link to it at the end.

Uh, Uri Levine, co founder of Waze, um, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. That is. Such an amazing, um, answer, man. I’m, I really, uh, I could, I could do like two more hours of interview with you because I feel like I keep on, I keep, there are questions that come up in your answers that I want to dig deeper into.

One of those is how did you know this time was different? Like, at what point did you realize you like, Oh, we got to go raise this seed round, not the pre seed because we’re nearing what feels like. Product market fit, and we got to go test this, this machine in the, in the field.

How to navigate complexity in building a company while maintaining a balanced life.

McGee: We are nowhere close to product market fit.

So the seed round was really about giving us a shot at doing the big thing that I wanted to do. The precede round was, was, Hey, can we put together enough proof points where this feels like it can be an ongoing, you know, endeavor, right? Can we put, put a team together? Can we. You know, some of the basic stuff, like, can we do this carbon accounting stuff?

Like, we didn’t really know, like, when we first raised the money. So, but at that point, we had, like, checked a bunch of those boxes that were like the. We have to have this, this stuff has to work in order for the big thing to work. And so, so now let’s go, you know, spend six, seven months, you know, like building the big thing, which is, you know, like an hourly rec registry.

Like we rebuilt like Vera, but for the built environment. Uh, transactional, you know, registry, like all of the, like infrastructure on top of the carbon accounting that was made possible by the fact that we had the seed round, um, that we could now go, you know, bring all that to, you know, market. And then, you know, from that will be the series a, and then, you know, obviously beyond that.

Nico: How’d you decide who you’re going to start this business with? And who are they?

McGee: The first person that I called up was my college roommate. We met the 1st night of college and, um, I said, Hey, I’m thinking about doing a thing, you know, he’s a software engineer and, uh, and, you know, I said, would you be willing to do this with me? And this is Keith. Yes, Keith. Yeah, and, uh, he’s, he was like, uh.

Maybe, uh, but it didn’t take, he was like, look, man, um, if you believe in this strongly, like, you know, I’ll do it. Um, and so he came on and started working on, you know, some of the early stuff, uh, before we even really had a, a company, um, just trying to like, figure out what we could do, um, another, uh, friend of mine from, from college.

I had known since college. Um, I, you know, he had been working here in the city, uh, for a FinTech company and. Convinced him so too long time people and then I brought in, um, so I’d worked with it at recurve and. And so the 4 of us, you know, decided to start the company together. Um, I don’t, you know, I think in some ways the, there’s a, you know, 2 of them are now no longer with the company.

So, Keith and Hassan are no longer with the company. Um, not because of them. Not being good or not them, you know, like there’s an, there’s an evolution in the life cycle of a company where, you know, you like are really good at maybe the ideational stage or the early prototype stage. And there’s a, there’s a company stage fit there for, for founders.

And I think at some point, like, I’ll probably not be a good fit for this company anymore because it will have, I’ll be. Order something or annoying or, you know, like, like there’s a, you know, there’s, I, I think, you know, a sweet spot for everybody. And so we try to, um, you know, build the team around, you know, both that sort of core competency, but also the trajectory that they can be on and that we can be on as a company, as we try to become, you know, what we hope to be at some point, I

Nico: have a few other questions I want to ask you the interview.

1 of them is around terminology. I find that, like you said earlier, and we do. Um, Tend to operate in a world of acronyms and, um, we, as a CEO, you have to be the storyteller. You have to actually. Break down the lexicon in a way that people make that makes it approachable. Where have you intentionally strived to make the lexicon of your work more approachable?

Can you give examples of like ways that people talk about it that you’ve consciously decided to disintermediate and.

McGee: Yeah, I brought in somebody to our team, a woman named Sarah Emery, who’s our head of marketing earlier this year, uh, to kind of help us think critically about the story that we were telling and, you know, the narrative about the problem that we were trying to solve.

And a lot of folks, you know, in the industry, think about this in terms of like an energy problem. Right, where it’s like, we’re going to go build solar panels, or we’re going to, you know, like, electrify everything or and most people in the world, you know, like, don’t want to think about that. Don’t want to don’t care about are are confused by, you know, what do you what do you mean transmission is different than distribution?

Like, like, what, you know, and so what resonates with people is that. Uh, you make them more comfortable, you provide them with jobs, uh, you help them save money, uh, you help them, you know, create a better future for their kids and their kids kids. And I think that’s an important part of, like, as an industry, as we try to bring the energy transition more mainstream, that we don’t get lost in the sort of technicalities of what we do, but we get.

You know, comfortable talking in terms of the, the ways in which we make people’s lives better and the ways in which people can have agency over their own lives and, you know, the things that they want to do to be able to provide for their kids and their kids futures. So, I think we’ve, you know, we’ve kind of leaned a little bit more into, like, building decarbonization as the, which is still a little bit of a mouthful.

Yeah, when you think about, like, the idea of, like, wanting to decarbonize buildings versus, you know, like, transform our energy system or something, you know, like, it’s, it brings it into much more of a, like, a understandable, like, it’s comprehensible that way. Like, you’re like, oh, I understand buildings and then.

You know, then it’s sort of like, you can break down the component pieces and, and that all starts to then, like, become way less overwhelming than, hey, we need to over, you know, like, completely overhaul our energy system. And I’m like,

Nico: yeah, and, you know, like you’re talking about earlier, there are, um, you can look at it in the sum of the parts, um, but the whole is building decarbonization and introducing the topic in that way and allowing each person as they understand the underlying infrastructure or componentry of.

Yeah. How building creates carbon emissions that it’s like a choose your own adventure for them. Right. And your company, your team’s job is now to help guide that discussion with them rather than confuse them with, with jargon upfront. I try to say this all the time to people, and I’m glad that I noticed that Sarah is on your team.

And, you know, she leads with brand strategy and marketing as her sort of descriptors for herself on LinkedIn. I hope, I hope to some get home someday. Not only get to meet her, but to, I’m looking forward to seeing in the wild, kind of the work that you guys are doing together to reframe the way people talk about the actual activity of decarbonizing buildings.

McGee: Steve Jobs has a really nice way of thinking about this when he talks about innovation. He says that, you know, when most people encounter a problem, it seems really simple to them. Like building decarbonization, like, okay, like, how hard could that be? Like, you know, we just decarbonize our buildings, right?

And, um, he says, then you get into that problem, you realize how complicated it is, right? And it’s like, oh, but wait, you know, there’s like gas and then fuel switching and then the grid and then the, this and the bad. And he said, what most people do who are entrepreneurs is they come up with a solution that matches the complexity of the problem.

And they want to show everybody like kind of how smart they are and that they really understand the problem. So they end up with like this really complicated thing. It says, innovation comes from taking that complicated solution and making it as simple and elegant as you first understood the problem.

And so that when you present that solution to the world, it looks to people just like as that simple way in which they understand the problem and then they can engage the solution in a way that is much less intimidating for them. And, but that’s really hard to do is to get to that simple, streamlined, you know, less complicated Version the easy button as it were.

So that’s I think that’s kind of 1 of our. Guiding lights on this is like, we’ve got to find the easy button for this.

Nico: I couldn’t do any better. Um, uh, justice to this interview. Uh, if I tried by asking a ton more questions on your philosophy, I think that’s a great place to sort of turn towards the, the last few questions that I really want to ask around how you sort of organize your life.

So if you’ve made it this far, bear with us, you’re about 5 minutes from the end of the interview. Uh, thank you. Uh, I’m just, uh, I am so grateful not only for Devin having recommended you, but for you taking the extra time, um, to dig in and, and really, uh, allow for this probing, um, and to, and, and be, and be so thoughtful to share how it, Has helped you structure in an academic way and in a real sort of real world way, your entrepreneurial venture, when you’re not thinking about energy systems, what do you nerd out about?

McGee: I am a, uh, a huge, uh, cycling, uh, devotee. So I go, I go both ride my bike, uh, as well as I watch. Like races and, and participate in two fantasy cycling leagues. Yeah.

Nico: Oh my goodness. I didn’t even know that was a

McGee: thing. It’s mostly a bunch of Europeans and you know, they, they know way more about this stuff than I do, but I get a big kick out of that.

Nico: I was gonna say most folks connection to cycling that are not themselves cyclists is tour de France and they just like,

McGee: which is happening right now. Exactly. I’ve been watching every stage, uh, by the time this interview airs, we will know who, who won, uh, but we will, uh, yesterday’s stage saw an American, um, come really, really close to winning on top of a really, really big mountain and not quite make it there at the top, which is part of the, you know, the, the, the fun of cycling is the uncertainty of it.

Um, but yeah, I, I, I would say that, um, you know, I think it’s important for, for, for me, like. The act of going out in the afternoon and just getting an hour bike ride in, uh, helps me to kind of like find equilibrium and then, you know, oftentimes we’ll go back to work. I’ll go back to work at nighttime, but being able to carve out time for family, you know, for my wife, for my kids, super important, um, helps just kind of keep you grounded.

And then having friends, I think 1 of the secrets that I found over the years, it’s like part of like, I like doing cycling is that you end up with. Friends who are not in your industry. They don’t care that you’re the CEO. They don’t, there’s nothing about you that’s special. Other than impressed by you.

No, other than how fast you can ride your bike. Right. Or like whatever the thing is that you do. Right. And, and, uh, and to get. To be grounded in that way, uh, so that, and to be reminded of not to get too full of yourself, um, I think is a really important part of the balance that you maintain, um, in this, in this life and not to get too full of yourself in the sense of like, you think you’re awesome, but also a reminder of like, as things are hard, there’s a lot in this world that’s hard.

And a lot of people are going to go through ups and downs and you’re not special. Uh, so don’t like. Get too wrapped up in your own misery. Like go out for a bike ride, go have a beer and live to fight another day.

McGee’s Reading List, Online Presence, and Vision for the Future

Nico: Yeah, I love it. Um, I, uh, man, I’ll point people who think life is hard to just listen to David Goggins for 10 minutes.

Um, you know, I was on a run recently and, um, I had something, I don’t know, like some little pain, probably gas pain, you know, and I literally said. Fuck up, Johnson. Your feet aren’t broken. You know, like, keep running. Right? Fucker ran like a marathon on broken feet. Anyway, um, We’ve mentioned Reboot by Jerry Colonna.

We’ll link to Fall in Love with a Problem, uh, Yuri Levine. Is there any other, any other book that has had a meaningful impact that you would be remiss to have not mentioned? I

McGee: would say, uh, you know, it’s, it’s worth, it’s worth going back and reading something like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, um, Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, some of the old environment.

If you’re in, if you’re interested in, you know, A sand county almanac, although Leopold, these are the sort of older generation of books about the environment that catalyze, you know, our thinking around, you know, ecosystem quintessential, those are, you know, they’re not, you know, necessarily like, you know, top of the charts these days, but I think it’s, it’s good perspective to have on the longevity of, of, um, Um, Of the work that we’re doing and that there is a history, uh, to, to what we’ve done.

McGee: Have you read

Nico: Jeremy Leggett? Carbon War? No. Man. Yeah. I don’t know. You probably, you’re fine. It’s global warming. The end of the oil era. You’ve read plenty. I usually recommend this one to folks that are like, how far back should I go? I’m like, at least the nineties people, like, this is not new theory. Um, but Jeremy Leggett, um, uh, as a, he’s a legend in, uh, in the UK and, um, started really well known company over there.

So, um, that that’s super helpful. You actually answered, uh, some of the question around consistent habit. And, uh, I loved your advice to, um, to founders where if folks are so inclined, are you found where can people engage with you? I’m

McGee: on LinkedIn. Mm-Hmm. . So that’s a, I try to be active there. I’m like one of the, the people who has faith and, and LinkedIn as a, as a place I to engage and engage and, uh, have constructive dialogue.

Um, I’m less active on Twitter, but you can, I’m fierce McGee on Twitter, fierce

Nico: McGee on Twitter, mostly posting cycling names. Yeah.

McGee: And . I’ve tried to figure out threads. Uh, but so far I’m not. Are you fierce McGee there as well? I think on mcgee. yong on threads, because it was my

Nico: Instagram. I stopped short because it adopts your Instagram. I’m like, ah, I just want, I want a different one.

McGee: Exactly. So yeah.

Nico: Indeed. And I can attest that, um, Mickey responded on LinkedIn before Devin had an opportunity to actually formally introduce us. So I’m grateful. Um, nevertheless, for the recommendation from Devin, uh, I yield to, uh, anyone else who would like to make recommendations.

Uh, like McGee, not that there is another McGee, but, um, it really is important and helpful to help, uh, continue to expand our network and support one another. And I’m really grateful. So, in that, in that vein, is there anyone? Uh, I, I almost never asked this question, but I asked it of Devin. So I’ll ask it of you.

If you had a chance to sit in the captain’s chair and interview one person on, as a Suncast host, who would you

McGee: invite? Yeah, this, oh man, what a, what a great question. There’s, there are so many good people, uh, out there working on, you know, energy related, uh, projects, uh, climate. Don’t overthink

Nico: it. First person that came to your mind.

McGee: I’ve been, he’s not an entrepreneur per se, but Tom O’Keefe and New York City, uh, is organizing a group, uh, to, to try to get local law 97, uh, enforced and to organize the tech community to get, to get active. Um, and, uh, I know he’s a, he’s an investor and angel investor and, and, uh, some folks know him. So, um, you’d be good.

I’m a tech investor. I just found him. Yeah. Sweet. He looks young. Good, good, good on you, Tom O’Keefe. You’re probably not a listener yet, but you will be. Oh, he went to UNC Chapel Hill. Look at that, McGee. It’s a small world, right? Connecting dots. It is a small world indeed. Get ready, Tom O’Keefe. Let’s end today as we usually do, McGee, with a bold prediction.

Nico: As you think out into the vast reaches of the world that what carbon is going to impact five, ten years from now, what carbon is successful? What did we get right to unlock? The decarbonized building infrastructure and the platform that helped make it possible.

McGee: I think that the companies that are on the front lines, the block powers of the world, the elephant energies, you know, the quick carbons will be household names.

If what we’ve done is right, you know, you’ll know more about Dan Conant and solar holler. Then, you know, you know, about, you know, I don’t know anybody else, right. These are going to be the people on the front page of, of the business, you know, magazines and the entrepreneurs that matter, um, are going to be the ones that are actually decarbonizing.

And that’s, you know, like, frankly, like our mission is, you know, we’re only successful to the extent that we can help those who are out there who are getting their hands dirty, um, scale be more impactful, be more effective. And so if, if, if they’re winning. Um, that means that, that we’re doing a good job.

It’s the second

Nico: time that, uh, Dan and Solar Holler have mentioned I’ve really got to bring him on. Totally. But, uh, until then we have been regaled, informed, and highly, I would say, uh, entertained and educated by McGee Young, the founder and CEO of WattCarbon McGee. It was really a pleasure. I look forward to having you back in some capacity on the show, and I look forward to meeting you at some point, probably in Las Vegas, though, neither, neither you nor I, or anyone else listening really wants to go there.

McGee: We will make the best of it.

Nico: I’ll see you in Las Vegas, my friend. I’ll see you again, uh, in the interwebs. Thanks for joining us.

McGee: Thanks.

Nico: All right. Solar warriors. Well, that is a wrap on today’s episode. And man, thank you. You are, you’ve already put in the mileage, uh, you are at the end of more than an hour and a half long interview.

So I salute you. Thank you. You dug your heels in and said, this is worth the popcorn and the price of admission, but your time is not free. And I hope that. You have gleaned what you need from this episode. Ton of value bombs, a ton of really good quotables. I am going to go back and listen to this again. I encourage you to do the same because I really do believe in an episode this long.

There’s more than one thread to follow. Uh, you know, the value of open source and really removing the black box is one that truly resonates for me and the work that we’re doing, uh, at. You’re going to hear in a few weeks, some of the things that we’re doing, sort of stepping out of the shadows to talk a little bit more about other work that we’re working on to remove the veil and the black box and help everyone share their truth.

If you’re eager to keep learning, and I’m sure you are my fellow follow math, I’ve linked to all the random stuff that came up in this interview, uh, as well as all the really cogent and necessary. Points of, uh, information, including all the stuff around Paul Romer and some of the writings from McGee so you can get a sense of his, his style and also hopefully go follow him.

Uh, all of that, as well as his LinkedIn and his Twitter, uh, you will find on the blog at, uh, in a show notes. In my suncast. com, since hopefully you’re going to jump over to LinkedIn, please take a look at the posts that we’ve made for this episode and the others that episodes as well. And drop a like in there, drop a comment, let McGee know how important this interview was to you.

Please direct message him. He is super responsive. I’ve found him to be inspirational. I’ve found him to be supportive. Uh, and he is certainly forward thinking. I hope that you will show him. The love and reach directly out to him as well. Show us the love, help us know that this meant something to you.

What was it that resonated shared in the comments of our LinkedIn post, if you will. And I hope that you’ll come back next week because that’s where every Tuesday we have a deep dive with the subject matter expert to provide you with additional tools to support you on your journey and a long. Trek, just like this one on Thursdays, executive profiles with the leaders on the front lines, decarbonizing our energy grid and the rest of our infrastructure and helping you figure out where you fit in this puzzle.

I want to thank our sponsors who helped make this show possible. They show up in ways that you don’t have the funds to, so that you can get this content for free and, uh, in exchange, we agree to tell you all about them. Uh, Sungrow has been our annual premium sponsor for the last year and a half. We’re so grateful for them.

And, uh, there are other sponsors that you can check out at mysuncast. com forward slash sponsor. Of course, that’s how you learn. Ways that you could partner with us to reach thousands of solar warriors and climate champions twice a week, every week for the last eight years. Remember you are what you listen to.

Thanks again for showing up, solar warrior. It’s half the battle.