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0:15 Okay. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm really excited to have Robin Goswami in

0:23 Sandeeproi here with me, who are the co-founders of Plankton Data. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us here Jason and Nada. So let's get started with you telling us a little bit about

0:35 what is it that you do with Plankton Data and what problem are you solving? Sure. So Plankton focuses on sustainability broadly. And what we do is we focus on sustainability in the natural

0:48 resources industry. That's our background. That's where we come from. Our background is really a combination of technology, data and sustainability in natural resources So that's what we focus on,

0:59 specifically what. What we do in the sustainability space is really product carbon footprint and life cycle analysis and to understand that and to understand that in layman's terms, the idea is

1:12 understanding what is the carbon footprint of each and every product that you use but across the supply chain and the full life cycle analysis beyond the carbon footprint getting into water, waste,

1:23 material, all of those areas. We believe that's something that is going to be increasingly important, look at it the way as whenever you buy a food item, you look at the calorie label out there,

1:34 you should be looking at a sustainability label for every product that you see and have a perspective on should you be consuming that or buying that or not. So, that's really what we focus on. From

1:45 the technology perspective, we really do focus on the data part of it because we believe data and AI is going to be very critical to solve this problem but that's really the back in the few minutes

1:56 of the solution that we provide.

1:60 If you just go back and think about how a food label is created, Robin gave the example of using a food label. And it has kind of become natural for us, right? Whenever we are looking at to buy or

2:13 compare this packet of chips versus that packet of chips,

2:18 it seems very natural, but there is a lot of work that goes behind that. A lot of information, a lot of work in labs that creates the food label And so think about us as the lab that does the work

2:34 that finally generates that label for the products that you are, but just with a sustainability focus on it.

2:41 So if you could give us an example of what kind of products are you going, this is going to be the most needed in and where are you starting off with this? So

2:53 we are primarily focused on the natural resources area that is where our background is we have a lot of background in energy, oil and gas. That's where we come from. But where it specifically

3:07 applies, or at least where we are focused on right now, is around chemicals. And there is a reason for that. If you look at, there are two things that are driving the sustainability industry

3:21 right now - regulations and consumer pressure

3:25 The consumer focus is coming specifically in the chemicals. People are demanding better packaging material. They are demanding for lower carbon footprint product inputs into packaging. And that

3:40 trickles up to the plastic makers that then trickles up to the feedstock providers for the plastics, which is the oil and gas industry. So you see there is an entire supply chain or value chain that

3:53 is now getting pressured upwards from the specific -

4:00 from the consumer. So that's where we see the application to be. And so when you say chemicals, like in my mind, I sometimes think about like simple things, like ammonia or I guess that becomes

4:12 fertilizer, but like how broad are chemicals even that you're thinking about is these kind of simple things are like very complicated plastics. No, to take a specific example, one of our clients

4:28 that we engaged with where we've deployed our solution, it's a chemical company that supplies to also shampoo manufacturers and the shampoo manufacturers have come back to them and said, we want to

4:35 put out a sustainability label on our product and we want to differentiate against our competition on the basis of the lower carbon footprint that our product has and we want you to help us in that.

4:45 For them to be able to do that, all the components, the various chemicals that they supply to that shampoo manufacturer, they need to understand at a granular level each of those chemicals, what

4:55 is a carbon footprint, What is the overall environmental impact? them. They themselves don't produce all the chemicals. They themselves source the chemicals, which are manufactured in different

5:08 chemical plants. So it's literally they have to go all the way back to the source, get the information from everybody, compile it for what it is for them, and then send it to the shampoo

5:18 manufacturer, which has to put their own environmental impact and carbon footprint before they can produce this label. So it is an exercise that goes across the entire value chain. We are focusing

5:31 on the chemical part where it's the retail industry and the end consumers that are eventually driving this across the entire value chain. Yeah. So one of the things I'm picking up on is you use the

5:41 analogy to the food label, but the food label is kind of easy in a way because it's like a snapshot in time of that food article when it's presented. When you buy your piece of chicken, I guess,

5:53 you don't necessarily look at like how the chicken is made to create those calories. Yeah, yep. And so on the one hand, I'm thinking that nutrition label is a good precedent for how an industry

6:04 kind of disclose what's in the product, but maybe that is an precedent for like the supply chain analysis. Is there another industry or another place where this has had to have happened before? I

6:14 think the key part that you're highlighting, Jason, is important that the food label is a snapshot. So it doesn't matter whether, you know, for example, the chips are produced. Ultimately

6:24 they'll have the same calorific value and you can test that out, if you may. The difference in the product carbon footprint is you've got to go all the way back and the same product, depending on

6:35 how it was manufactured, can have a very different carbon footprint. So that does make it more complicated. The life cycle analysis is even more complicated because it goes beyond, it goes into

6:44 recycling, it goes into how is the product used and it's a lot more complicated to do. But the closest way, the label, I think that's the right analogy, But other than that, this is really a.

6:58 ultimately going to lead into recycling. How do you use and how do you recycle these products? So you are not just focusing on the carbon footprint but focusing on all other aspects that ultimately

7:09 create an environmental impact. And

7:13 a lot of these labels today, like for example in the cosmetics industry, like have these like compliance labels, right? Like we're cruelty free or like all these others. What exists today in the

7:26 market for like

7:30 compliance when it comes to sustainability and how is that helping you get your product out? So that landscape is still not very formalized. So for example, there is a very food labels are defined

7:49 by FDA, for example, right? So, and that's a regulatory requirement there are various specific needs, how you, how you comply to them. It is not very formalized in the product carbon footprint

8:04 or LCA. There are different methods and that is also a part of the problem. That there is no very clear template or data model to follow. It is getting better. So there are two things. So there

8:19 are global frameworks. So ISO and others, they have come out with frameworks to define product-carbon footprints or lifecycle analysis requirements. And there are industry-specific what are called

8:31 product category rules, PCRs. Industries are now focusing and again, driven by consumer demand. They are defining what product category rules are. So chemicals have a product category rule, for

8:44 example, called together for sustainability, TFS.

8:49 And so when we are building our solution, we take into account the global future. frameworks are like ISO, GHG protocol and others. And then we also need to take into account what the product

9:01 category rules are. It makes the solution complex because you have to think about now in multiple layers. And that is something that we do very well, given our background and how we have created a

9:17 modular solution around it so that we can extend it as we go into other industries And so for example, if tomorrow you would have seen

9:27 these aircraft emission labels that they put when you buy an air ticket, they put like this flight is 100 kilos of carbon. There are

9:39 specific airlines, specific standards that they're using to do that.

9:50 So each industry is doing its own. I really wish that at some point we come to a common standard so that it is applicable the cost industries, but till then this is how it is. Yeah, in some ways

9:55 you just kind of need to standard, so at least you know how to measure yourself. And it's, I'm sure it's like an 8020 kind of thing. Like as long as you get the majority of the drivers, that's

10:04 better than nothing. Yeah, right. And that's what makes this very complicated because there is this multiple bodies, industry bodies that are doing the standards. And then there are countries and

10:15 regions that are coming out with regulations. And in the US, it is not just the country, it is the state level also that there are regulations which are different, it's surprising, but the same

10:26 product can have a different carbon footprint in one country versus the other because of the standards being different, not hugely different, but slightly different. That is where technology and

10:36 what we have becomes very, very important because when it comes to compliance, you obviously have to be a lot more accurate. But as Sandeep mentioned, we hope that it'll come down to a standard,

10:46 for example, how finance is today It's fairly well understood across the world. There are regulations that govern it. Yes, there is variance between countries, but by and large, it's fairly

10:58 standardized. That wouldn't take a little bit of time in the broader sustainability space. Yeah, and that made me also think like when you're saying in different countries, they would have a

11:08 different carbon footprint, not maybe perhaps the way it's been displayed. But also in terms of like if I buy a shampoo here versus I buy it somewhere in Europe, depending on where it came from,

11:21 it will have a different carbon footprint because there's a transport and all of those things involved, right? But the challenges,

11:29 the same product with everything the same, the carbon footprint can be different because what you do with carbon footprint is you convert it to carbon dioxide equivalent and you take all the

11:39 components of it and you convert it and those things can change by country. So methane,

11:45 is converted to a particular carbon dioxide equivalent in one country, which could be very different in another country based on what they have. So the formulas are different. The formulas are

11:54 different. The constants that you use might be different. And that is why having traceability of the data, having a clear understanding of how was this calculated is very important. And that is

12:06 another thing that we do as a part of our solution is really provide the transparency to the end consumer that this, we are saying this is the carbon footprint of a product or this is the

12:16 sustainability label of a product. This is how it was calculated. So having that calculation is also very important rather than just having the number. The context behind is important. Yeah. And

12:28 then when you're talking about transparency, I know a few years ago, when blockchain was like the hype and everyone wanted to use that technology for any kind of transparency when it comes to supply

12:39 chain, where are you on that journey? and I don't think your solution uses blockchain, right? Like what have you concluded based on that? Yeah. Yeah. So we actually, we early on we did

12:54 consider blockchain, blockchain is on our roadmap,

12:59 and someday we definitely want to get there. We did a very extensive research work on utilizing blockchain in supply chain for sustainability with UT. So

13:10 we collaborate pretty extensively with UT and their capabilities.

13:17 We have considered that and we have put it on the roadmap, but right now getting

13:22 the basic number itself is a challenge. But yeah, again, one of those things that we really look forward to having as. I mean, and these are the, because it is so complex, there's a reason why

13:33 we don't have this already, right? Because there is definitely a demand for it. Like I would like to know if I have to choose between this product and this. if I could choose the one that has less

13:42 carbon impact, I would, but it's not so easy. It's what I'm hearing. I'm just gonna play Dell's advocate a little bit, and I'm like, when I'm looking at potato chips, do I really look at the

13:53 one that has lower calories? But potato chips taste matters. It's like I get it. It does, it's what I'm reading at. With food, it's different. But I guess, I mean, that's part of the

14:02 challenge. It's like, industry cares a lot about carbon impact and carbon footprint, and there's a part of me that looks at my flight miles, and which one has the lower carbon weighting, and

14:17 I go, man, if I still need a home, I'm still gonna fly, right? And I'm curious if the measurement is licensed to operate or if, you know, I guess when you have a brand that really is putting

14:28 that forward, that's worth the most valuable, is finding that customer or that brand alignment matters. Yeah, and I don't think I have the answer to that, but I'll give you an example, in my

14:38 personal example, the last 15 years. Yeah. We try to buy renewable electricity. It used to be a premium before, so renewable electricity used to be more expensive. So I remember 15 years ago

14:49 when I would choose renewable electricity versus non-renewable content, it would be I'm paying a premium. And there was an approximately 15, 20. I'll pay that much more. And there was a year when

15:01 I remember still distinctly not going with renewable electricity because it was much more expensive. I don't know what that percentage is, but today what I'm finding with electricity is I'm always

15:13 able to find indexes, renewable electricity, which is cheaper than other electricity. So it is not a choice that I have to worry about and think about the premium. I don't know what that consumer

15:26 pressure is going to be and what is that percentage difference? Is it 10 more expensive? It's like organic food. You'd all try to buy organic food. You are willing to pay a little bit of a premium,

15:37 but not too much. It's going to be something like that. So, there will be a pressure because of regulation which companies will not have a choice, but they will be pressure because of consumers

15:45 are going to say, like us, we want renewable electricity or we want a lower carbon footprint or a more sustainable product, and I'm willing to pay maybe 10 percent or 20 percent more. I think we

15:57 are seeing again, it is

16:00 very product specific and to your point about brand identity, a lot

16:06 of the companies actually see sustainability labels as a way to improve their brand positioning in consumers, so take Patagonia for example, Patagonia is probably the sales of the most expensive

16:22 gear in the world,

16:24 but there is a reasoning behind that which is based in sustainability. In chemicals, we have specifically seen in cosmetics There is a shift in cosmetics, in fact, one of our European clients is a

16:37 supplier to a cosmetics provider and They work in this like really sophisticated niche chemicals. They buy in like not even tons They're in few hundred kilograms or something like that, right? And

16:51 they and the and those products are very difficult to find their product footprint for because they are super specialized chemicals but the end Cosmetics maker they want to use that as a way to

17:04 differentiate themselves in the market. So that shift is also happening So it's not just consumer, but companies themselves using sustainability as a differentiator And obviously there's like a

17:15 carbon tax and that's in Europe. That's coming online. Like would your data feed kind of that that import tax Absolutely. So not just carbon tax, but CSR DC BAM lots of regulations that are coming

17:28 primarily in Europe Which we help with compliance and that's some deep mentioned one of two pressures There is a regulatory pressure and there is a consumer pressure both of which drives this and the

17:38 data as long as it is there helps comply with the regulations and it helps comply with giving the information that consumers want. And I guess that transparency helps them optimize, right? 'Cause

17:47 then they can go back and say, If I change this part of the supply chain, I can pay less taxes ultimately. Absolutely. And I think it's not just that what has happened in the last four years with

17:58 COVID coming into the picture, most companies would only optimize the supply chain for cost. They never worried about anything else. Now they are starting to think about not just cost, but

18:08 resiliency. What happens if a COVID-like event happens? How is my supply chain more resilient? And how do I also make it a lot more sustainable? Specifically, chemical companies, they went

18:19 through this phase where there was a huge demand for their product, some of the companies, and they just couldn't satisfy the demand. And they realized that their supply chains were not resilient

18:28 at all. So they are starting to rework their supply chain and think about not just cost, but resiliency and sustainability are going regulations The to come in calculations, these of all and

18:37 the carbon tax is going to come in. at some point of time, then how do we then compare all of these factors and come out with the best possible supply solution for ourselves?

18:49 Can you guys talk a little bit about your backgrounds and what you were working on before that led you to this problem and that, you know, this is something that you guys need to build now? Sure,

19:02 so I started my career as a developer, as an engineer and a startup a long time ago, into business school and joined a system integrator called Infusys and for the last 20 years have been in the

19:13 natural resources industry. I left about two and a half years ago and at that point I was leading oil and gas mining, chemicals, some of these sectors for Infusys and we had taken a focus and a bet

19:26 on sustainability as what can be done in the space. Very early on we realized that this is a very new area, lots of changes, lots of evolution to be done. not really the right thing for a large

19:40 company to focus on. Large companies do not innovate very well. They do not change very well. It's complicated if you might put it that way. When I joined Infosys, we were very small. At that

19:52 time, there were 2, 000 people. Now it's 300, 000 people. It's a very different organization, which has been some deep and I decided that it makes more sense to do it outside. And as I said

20:03 earlier, we had this combination of the background and technology in natural resources, reasonably good understanding of sustainability because we had tried that out and then the belief that this is

20:13 the right market to try out as a startup. Sandeep has a more interesting background than mine.

20:20 I started my career in chemicals in a company called Hurst in Germany and one of my early brushes with sustainability was the Rhine River flows through the plant. It's a chemical plant and the way

20:36 they looked at. sustainability, even this was like 25 years ago. The Rhine River actually enters the plant dirtier than it leaves the plant. They make sure that it is. So they were very focused

20:50 on that. But again, that was not my first where I started getting involved. After that, I moved to McKinsey and then I joined Infosys same as Robin.

21:02 And my first brush with real environmental work was during the BP oil spill. I was a part of the response team in the field for nearly six months, even after this, when this spill was stopped. And

21:22 I saw firsthand two things. One, yes, we are dependent on natural resources and extraction. And we are in Houston. We understand the importance of the energy industry. And the scale at which it

21:38 operates, if you, I don't know if you have, I've used to fly to the rig, actually where the spill was. It takes more than an hour and a half to two hours to make that trip on a helicopter. And

21:59 it is the scale when you look at it, it's insane

22:06 But also, it is the same industry that really has the capability to address if the environmental impacts of the industry. I really believe that they have the scale, the capability and the

22:21 willingness to do good And,

22:27 having seen that first hand,

22:31 that was a very transformational point in my career and

22:35 care for that. Yes, this is, and if it has to happen, if we have to really make an energy transition and if we have to become a more sustainable economy or sustainable world, it has to work hand

22:48 in hand between the industry and the sustainability drivers. So, that was my motivation to do this, of course, then having worked. And where was my expertise? My expertise was in technology. So,

23:01 putting these two together, that is what led us here.

23:06 I think I was reading in some of the materials that you have an AI component to what you do. How does AI enable this, solving this challenge? Let me go first and learn some deep can I add to the

23:19 point that you made about the food level being point in time, whereas the product carbon footprint being across the supply chain, it is impossible to get all the data. It is impossible to say, I

23:30 want to know exactly what has happened everywhere, and that is how I'm going build it up build it up. AI becomes very, very critical in filling those data gaps. It's also a huge amount of data in

23:40 different formats, in different ways and different time periods. Some supplier will send you information in a particular way, somebody else will send it in a particular way because the standards

23:50 are not there. Sifting through all of that AI becomes extremely, extremely important. And the last part where we have seen, once you have all of the data, what inferences do you drive out of it?

24:01 How do you understand what can be done, the opportunity, that's also where we find the AI and the analytics components become very important. At a very high level, I think that's what we found

24:12 dealing with the data challenges, trying to understand the inferences, trying to get our arms around a very, very big problem. AI has been super helpful, but - It'd be good if you can give a

24:21 specific example, something to do. Yeah, a couple of - Inside it, can you get a little closer to the light? Yeah, I'll pull it to you. Yeah, yeah, go for it I think a couple of Examples where

24:34 we have seen real need is around AI-driven research. It's really important that the chemical example I was giving where cosmetic manufacturer tries to really buy obscure chemicals for which product

24:55 carbon footprints are not possible. They actually depend on working with a lot of various specific research work that can help them do the calculations themselves. But pouring over a lot of

25:06 industrial research or even academic research and combining them

25:13 to get to an end answer for our end calculation, it requires a lot of human effort, right? AI is fundamentally changing how we do research in this space, right? And that's one use case that we

25:28 have really seen take off. Also, once you have the information,

25:35 what do you do with it? I know my product carbon footprint is this much, but so what? So I think one of the things that we are also doing with AI is exploring decarbonization pathways. How

25:54 do you decarbonize, again, sifting through a lot of primary research to suggest this is what your company can do to get it better Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy

26:03 Technexes is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy in carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and start building your Thunderlisset. What are the

26:16 things they can do? Because when you're thinking about chemicals, I imagine a lot of times the drivers are, the feedstock, the energy, and then your factory, right? And so when you're looking

26:27 at this, what are the big levers that they can. control in the near-term and then the long-term when they think about it. Yeah. So you mentioned most of the feedstock is a big one. We are own

26:37 factory in terms of what they can do. But the largest part of the footprint of a chemical is logistics. Chemicals are made with a lot of intermediate products, right? So to some extent, to

26:53 depending on the chemical, 40 to 70 of a product's footprint can just be logistics So it's a big part and AI again plays a role in optimization, right? I mean, if you look at today most, and this

27:09 is not your generative AI, right? This is classical AI, machine learning, those kind of things. So I think we also need to, where we see a lot of application is core AI engineering, right?

27:24 Optimization algos, those kind of things. And that's where we see a lot of the benefit to be. And it helps the companies to also look at it as immediate term, long term. For example, logistics.

27:36 You can do something about it in the short term. Where you source your raw material, your feedstock, you can do something about it. How your plant operates, you can do something about it once in

27:47 five or 10 years, you can't do it every year. So you have to put in a plan that look, we will change the following things when we do the next

27:56 rework on our plant, if you may And the part about the sustainable supply chain, you might be sourcing something from totally different country because it's very cheap to send it by ship, but it

28:10 makes your supply chain less resilient and it makes your supply chain less sustainable. You might want to buy close by, rather than a little more expensive, but more resilient because it is much

28:21 closer. So a lot of those decisions companies can now do, when they look at all of these other factors and they look at all of this decision data, which is the key part out here, having the data

28:32 to start to take decisions.

28:36 Talk to us a little bit about your journey as entrepreneurs and starting your own company. When did you guys decided to jump ship? How long has it been? And what has been the biggest challenge?

28:52 We started about two and a half years ago and we started thinking about it about, I would say, six months before that,

29:00 it has been a fun journey. I really, I really enjoyed the journey. It's been a fun journey. We thought a lot about what we should do and ultimately dive into this space. The biggest challenge has

29:16 been lots of things you hear about, but you don't comprehend till you actually go through it. So everybody tells you startups are very hard and you nod your head, then you do a startup and you

29:29 understand why it is really hard.

29:33 There's a gentleman in Houston who successfully done a startup in the utility space and Sandeeva and I were talking to him a lot and he advised us that, you know, you'll get surprises and you can't

29:43 plan for those surprises. And we got those surprises. And when you get these, that's really where the challenges happen Large organizations have a lot of momentum and you spend probably 80 of the

29:57 time just getting the organization behind you and if you may, greasing how the organization moves and probably 20 of the time really thinking hard about what you should be doing. I found it's

30:10 exactly the opposite in a startup. You're 80 of the time thinking about how will I solve this problem? We have so much data coming in. How do we find an efficient way to handle all of this data?

30:21 how do we decide which markets we want to focus on? And then probably only 20 of the other part of the greasing part of it. So it's a huge flip

30:40 and that is a big change, especially when you come from a large organization. I have been in a startup before. I have done the seven days a week working all the time. You forget when you have been

30:45 out of that for a while. It's a very, very different journey It's a lot more fun. I genuinely believe it's a lot more fun, but everybody tells you about it. You don't really understand it until

30:57 you get in. I was watching this small snippet from Vinod Kostla the other day. And the point was somebody was asking him that, you know, we are investors and we would like to be board members on

31:10 your startups. And he was trying to tell them that you are, yeah, you are investors and all, but I will not let you be on a board of a startup unless you have done the journey yourself, Unless

31:20 you have done the. stress of what does it mean to really get those surprises? What does it mean to be working seven days a week? What does it mean to, should I pivot or not pivot? All of those

31:30 questions, if you have not been through that, you really don't understand it from the outside. And that has been the biggest learning, the biggest fun and the biggest challenge at least for me.

31:40 Yeah, I think the other one I would add is, especially in the area that we were in, we kind of underestimated the impact of regulations So when we started, we said that there will be consumer as a

31:54 driver, regulations as a driver, carbon price as a driver, and financial markets as a driver. At the end of the day, really what matters is regulations, at least in the US, that is what we see.

32:08 And

32:10 we had had similar experiences in our past jobs and

32:16 past adoptions of technology we have seen a lot of the time it is regulation that drives it. or efficiencies or this thing, but it was surprisingly too real in this situation. Though I must say,

32:30 we have started to see that change happen. From probably earlier this year, we have started to see the consumer pressure pushing a lot more, but we were expecting more than that. We were expecting

32:40 consumer pressure to be probably as important as regulations, but it is increasing, but not to what we had expected when we started. Yeah. That's the surprise that you get with me. Yeah. That's

32:55 the interesting part, right? Like the pivots you had to make or re-evaluate some of the hypotheses that you had set up earlier on. And often they say we overestimate what we would achieve in a year

33:07 and we kind of underestimate what we would achieve in 10 years, for example. How do you guys feel based on when you first started and what you thought you guys would be two years from now what

33:18 you've been able to achieve in two years. So, we've tried multiple things and one of the first things that we felt very strongly about was efficiency, we felt that genuinely efficiency and carbon

33:33 footprint are two sides of the same coin. You are more efficient, you will have a lower carbon footprint and we felt that that is the right way to attack the problem and say we will help companies

33:43 become more efficient, which will then drive the carbon footprint to be lower We didn't see any traction in that, we probably spent six months to a year on that and before we decided this is not

33:54 working and we need to pivot to other parts of sustainability. I would say that we did the pivots when it made sense. I wouldn't go back and say where did we expect to be and all because

34:08 fundamentally when you come from a large company, you make a plan and you make a business perspective based on a large company and fundamentally large companies operate in markets that are very well

34:21 defined. they don't operate the markets that are still being formed. So we had built this whole plan based on a large company mindset and that fundamentally assumes that you will have a structure to

34:35 the market. Whereas the market is still evolving.

34:39 I think that exercise was very important as General Patton used to say plans are useless, but planning is very important. So I think that planning part helped us do the pivoting, but our plans went

34:50 out of the window very soon.

34:54 I was working with an entrepreneur last week, and we were putting together a financial model, and they were saying, Why are we doing a financial model? Because there's so much work in here, and

35:05 people were just care about how much money we would make. Why don't we just show them money you make? And I had to explain, No, the financial model is the planning. That's where you go in and say,

35:14 This is where I understand everything works so that, Ultimately, I don't run out of money when things change. And I think that's, that's very important and hard lesson in, in like the planning is,

35:26 is, is the, the valuable aspect. Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot of what you are doing, like at this early stage where the market is undefined is, is going out there and talking to customers. So

35:37 tell, tell us a little bit about that journey, what you've learned from being out there, learning from them, who, who is your customer, your ideal customer that you, you know, you said

35:46 chemical industry, but like, who within that, and how do you plan on scale? So

35:53 most of

35:59 the companies that we're talking to, they have a sustainability group and they have sustainability managers, they are the core, if you may, that take these decisions. But they're also product

36:10 managers, managers who are selling their products, who have to worry about how do I differentiate the products. So these are the two primary groups that we work with that we work with. We also

36:20 work with the technology teams because invariably the technology folks get involved in implementing this, but the two key groups are those two. When it comes to the smaller companies, it becomes a

36:30 little more fluid because while somebody might be having sustainability responsibility, they might not have a formal role that says that. So it becomes a little more challenging to find out who is

36:40 the person to really be talking to. But at least the industries that we focus on, those are the key buyers that we've been talking to And one thing that we have also realized is that when we go and

36:53 have these conversations with the buyers, there is a lot of education that needs to happen. I think that is another one of those things that we didn't anticipate. We assumed that the buyer is

37:07 well-educated. They know what they are, what they want to buy

37:12 It is,

37:14 we have had, I don't know, probably 100 different conversations in the last year 100 different companies, not just number of, like we may have talked, three, four hundred people.

37:26 It is amazing how many times we have had to educate our end buyer that this is what you should be looking at. And that is a nature of a undefined market, right? So there's a lot of effort that goes

37:40 into it, a lot of preparation before you can even have a conversation, you need to understand where you have to calibrate where your buyer is also. And that's an important skill that we have

37:53 learned over the period. Yeah. So I was talking to a chemical company five months ago, and you kind of assume the person who's running a sustainability group is just very intuitive, very

38:03 passionate about reducing waste and when the first three minutes of sitting down, he said, Jason, I got this job because I'm very good at figuring out things that other people don't understand.

38:15 I am brand new in this so I need to learn. I think that's true a lot with industry in Houston because everything is very financially disciplined. They want a business manager to come in who is going

38:29 to look balance the needs of the business

38:35 and take a rigorous approach. In some ways it is a sign that the buyer is shifting because now it's what we would call the mainstream. It's people who know that they have to implement change and

38:48 it's not someone who's kind of an evangelist. So we're kind of entering this phase where the world is different because the people of that title aren't nerds on the subject basically.

39:02 And it is a lot of information together. The regulations are changing, the standards are which country is doing things, which country is not doing things, and it goes beyond carbon footprint to

39:12 land use, to water, to waste, to materials. It is not, lots of folks become sustainability managers and then they realize there's so much that they have to put their arms around, which is where

39:25 I think our conversations have been very helpful for a lot of those folks, but it also makes a longer sales cycle because you've got to educate them on what they need to do before you can get into

39:35 discussions on how do we now actually make that happen. But yes, that's part of the fun of a startup. And where are you on that journey in terms of like, have you gotten some partners signed up

39:48 for doing pilots? You know, what stage are you with different customers? So we are revenue generating. We're not profitable as yet, but we are revenue generating. So I believe we have a product

39:58 market fit. We focus on three specific areas, product carbon footprint, life cycle analysis is one key area that we focus on and that. In the natural resources industry, we have a very deep

40:08 understanding of that space. We have a very deep understanding of data. It's challenging to explain that to folks who have not worked in technology as an information technology before. So we talk

40:21 about it once they have done the first project because once they've done the first project, they then understand the challenge of data and then we can help them in that data foundation part also,

40:31 which is the second area And the third area, which is the broader regulation compliance area, which we also help with, but we are really focusing on the product, carbon footprint, and lifecycle

40:40 analysis. I think the combination of our understanding of this industry, of technology, and what is really required with the consumer pressure that is what is driving that right now.

40:52 Do you guys have outside investors? Yes. So we started about 2 and 12 years ago. We raised an engine funding around We didn't go to VCs at that time, but we pleasantly surprised by the Houston -

41:05 seen on that we were able to raise in Houston. We will be doing another funding round next year. We will be talking to VCs at that time. So that is also supposed to be a very interesting journey,

41:15 but we have not. What strategy did you find work for kind of pulling this angel round together? I assume this was your first personal angel financing. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So what

41:25 was interesting about putting that together? So what was interesting about putting that together? Thankfully, we have got very good advisors who have done this journey before who guided us in the

41:35 process. And they were very clear that at this early stage, what you're really trying to showcase is your idea, the team that you have, and what your vision is. You don't have anything else to

41:48 show because at that point, we didn't even have built out our product and our platform at that time. But I think given our background and industry, given where we were coming from and the plans

41:59 that we were able to make, which of course I think we were able to convince folks that there is something in this and they should invest. And that was a very, I think a rewarding journey because we

42:10 were able to see that get feedback from people, they were some who absolutely came back and said, we don't believe anything is gonna happen in this space. This is a Houston, but by and large, we

42:20 got a very positive response to that. Good, good. Yeah, and it seems like you were positively surprised by the fundraising ecosystem here in our investors. We have been, one of the key things

42:35 that we talked about before we started was I have lived in five different cities in the US, I'm sure Sandeep has also moved around quite a bit. I believe he lived in definitely London, Dallas, and

42:46 Houston that I'm aware of. So we were very open to relocating if that needed to be, and we genuinely thought about relocating to San Francisco, saying it's the center of the startup universe Why

42:57 should we be based out here? We were pleasantly surprised that - Houston had a very good startup ecosystem. You all are here, energy tech, Nexus, green town labs, lots of incubators and lots of

43:11 individuals that we could talk to who understood how startups are done. Granted, it's not at the scale of San Francisco, but we were still very pleasantly surprised, not just by the fact that

43:21 there are investors out here, but by the fact that there are incubators out here, there are organizations like yours, there are other people that we can reach out and talk to and meet that are

43:31 right here in Houston. So that was overall a very pleasant surprise about Houston. I was talking to a founder this last week, and they're going through their first financing, and the founder was

43:44 expressing to me anxiety about, like how do we know we're not gonna lose this deal if we push back on terms or something like that?

43:53 And if you think back to like your fundraising journey, how did you know like there was gonna be a deal that was gonna like happen.

44:01 experience like. I actually didn't know.

44:07 But here is the interesting part. There was a session that one of the founders, one of the startups in Greentown Labs had conducted and it was completely focused around fundraising and three of the

44:21 CEOs, three different CEOs were talking about it and all of them said that if you have background in sales, which I do, you understand how a sale moves, you understand how all of that will play

44:32 out, that doesn't work in fundraising. If you try to apply that to fundraising, you will be very disappointed. Fundraising, they kept saying, is a numbers game. You have to talk to a lot of

44:42 people and that is how you're going to raise money. If you're going to try and do a math, which you do in sales that, you know, I'm going to talk to 100 people and I'm going to raise six

44:51 opportunities and the six opportunities going to convert to one project, yes, you can do that in sales. There is no such understanding that anybody has been able to put That was advice from them.

45:02 That is what we also experienced. So it was brutal. I remember there was a month or so where I just met a lot of people. All of them said, no, and I was, and this is not working. We need to

45:14 stop. And then we continued and it worked. So I don't believe there is a math to it. It does get brutal at some point, but ultimately it worked for us. Hopefully it will work the next round too

45:26 Yeah. Do you remember how many angels you had to pitch?

45:29 I would say we didn't do, we were told by those three that you have to do at least 100. We didn't get 200. I think we got to about 40, but we are mentally geared for 100 next year. All right. So

45:40 everyone's got to take note. You know, the secret sauce to only have to pitch 40. So that's getting a lot of phone calls after this. I think I had to pitch 220 for my first financing So I was not

45:53 very good at it. I'll be honest. For us also, we took a call. I think at one point, we said there is a we can we would just two of us and then we had a junior team to start with and we didn't

46:03 have senior people. So at one point Sandeep and I took a call that should I continue to be focused on fundraising and should he also spend significant bandwidth on that or should we now really start

46:14 focusing on product development? It's such a trade off. Yeah. And that's a trade off that we have to do, right? We would love to get that little bit more extra funding that gives us that little

46:23 bit more leeway, but do you, how many more people do you talk to? It is a trade off that you have to do, and there is no good answer to that. Yeah.

46:34 Just reflecting on kind of current events, I think there's been a pullback on climate investment or anticipated one, just because of the investors putting in LP money into

46:48 GPs as expected to go down. But everyone's talking about AI, and you're distinctly not generative AI, because you're doing more, I guess, neural nets and traditional AI systems, and then you're

46:59 doing the data Do

47:02 you think when you think about this next round, you're going out to with VCs.

47:07 Have you explored or gotten feedback on how they're thinking about this intersection of AI and climate? And I'm sure they all have its type that they want to invest in. So interestingly, VCs are

47:19 still figuring out this chain that has happened. We noticed since earlier this year a slowdown in the US and the slowdown was primarily driven by the fact that we don't know what's gonna happen at

47:30 the end of the year. And we want to wait to see. Meaning who's gonna be president? Yeah, and the change in administration. I think that's the reality that you have to be aware that they are gonna

47:42 be less focused on regulation. And we started to see that earlier in the year where a lot of companies said we're gonna pause, we're gonna hold and we're gonna see where this goes. So we put a lot

47:50 more focus on Europe and that's where we see the bulk of our opportunities right now The way we see it, clean tech investments will continue. where it financially makes sense. For example, we

48:03 talked about power. So solar power renewables is a lot cheaper to generate than natural gas or coal. That's the reality today. So I don't think that's going to change. But I don't believe we will

48:13 see a lot more new regulations coming in the US for the next four years. So we are expecting to see whatever is driven by consumer behavior is probably what we will focus on in the North America and

48:24 the US. But in Europe, it'll be a combination of both regulations and that. We continue to stay focused on sustainability and AI and we are at the intersection of that. Some of the tools that we

48:36 are building in AI, some of our IP can potentially be used beyond sustainability. We have not looked at that very hard. But one of our board advisors is a very senior AI researcher, AI at Google,

48:51 and it's something that we've asked them. Can we leverage some of the IP that we have created primarily focusing on sustainability into other industries and other use cases?

49:02 Startups don't have too much bandwidth, so we can't really set up a separate team and worry about that right now, so we continue to stay focused on sustainability and AI. I believe more of

49:12 it will be driven from consumer behavior down the road, but for now, it's more Europe for us and then down the road, I'm hopeful US. also. Also,

49:23 if you think about all big technology transformations that have happened, whether it was internet or mobility or cloud,

49:35 they all start as big infrastructure projects, right? So, building out the World Wide Web or building out the mobile infrastructure, they are all infrastructure

49:47 and we see AI also has that

49:50 infrastructure and currently there are the big players in that and a lot of funding, if you may, is going to go into that and a lot of the, lot of our current

50:02 VC funding if you think about it's going and building the railroads. But the value of all those railroads will be ultimately derived only once we are able to transform that into a specific domain

50:16 area. And sustainability, like, so what we are doing is basically building the coaches on top of that railroad, right? For sustainability specifically, every business has to build them on the

50:29 with that mindset. And if we are doing that, then then yes, we have an early start on that.

50:38 So to wrap up, I was wondering, looking ahead, what do you see is the vision for what you guys are doing with plankton data and how it will impact the energy landscape?

50:49 Yeah, so we will double down on AI and sustainability. That is what our focus area is. We want to get into, as we said, decarbonization analytics down the road, where we have all of this

50:59 information, where we can help companies really come out with paths on both short-term and long-term. How will the decarbonize and ideally natural resources or something related to that? We are

51:11 excited. I believe, I know there has been a little bit of a setback, if you may, on the regulation side in the US. But long-term, I don't see this pulling back beyond a point I have to quote Tom

51:25 Friedman out here when we started off, we read a very nice quote from him that, All countries have to balance energy security, climate security, and economic security. You cannot do it one way or

51:36 the other. And being in Houston, I think that's very clear for all of us. You cannot ignore energy security. Houston is very important for energy security, but you can't then ignore climate

51:45 security also. I think that balance will happen. You might have a period of time where it is an imbalance, but long term, there is a play for sustainability and there is a play for AI in helping

51:58 that. That's it. Yeah. And I really like the climate security because usually we don't hear people talk about that. We talk about, you know, energy security and economic security, but. And we

52:09 are all impacted by

52:18 it. I don't know if you've seen your home insurance rates recently. Oh, yes. Absolutely. We got a letter from Shorns The night that we were going to have a barrel, and we were getting ready and

52:21 prepping and saying, you know, we're no longer going to be able to ensure you. Oh, no. And I was like, you're sending this letter, a letter, like, or they say your rates are going to go up

52:31 unless you combine your car insurance with your home insurance or something like that. And we were just like, what bad timing? Yeah. We're like, we're not going to go with you for our next

52:38 insurance, but, you know, obviously everyone's rates are going up. I have a close friend who's a trader, and he said the markets are never wrong And before the election he was saying, the market

52:48 is pointing in a particular direction. IT doesn't matter what the polls are saying and the markets are pointing in a particular direction for climate security your insurance company walking out of

52:57 Houston is a market telling you focus on this area it's important Yeah and what thanks this is great thank you for having us this was Wonderful