Awarepreneurs Interview - Phillip Krim

Welcome to AwarePreneurs, the world's longest running social entrepreneur podcast. I'm Paul Zelizer, your host. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests help more social entrepreneurs. Thank you so much. Today I'm thrilled to introduce our guests Philip Crim and Evan Karan and our topic today is Building Companies of Consequence within the Electron Economy. And let me tell you about Philip and Evan. Philip is the co founder and CEO of Montauk Climate. Previously he founded early stage investment firm Montauk Ventures.

He also co, founded, led and served as Chairman of Casper Sleep, you may have heard of it, scaling it up to over $500 million in revenue, taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange, and overseeing its eventual sale. Mr. Crim is the Director of the Travis Mannion foundation and on the Leadership Council of the Robin Hood Foundation. He holds a BBA in Marketing foundation from the Redcomb School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. And Evan is a CO founder and CIO of Montauk Climate with over 20 years in energy, electricity, risk and commodified management, and commodity management. He previously led venture at Riverstone Holdings, a 40 billion energy investment firm, and co founded Cleartrace, an ESG data platform for emissions tracking. Evan is also co founder of Daylight Energy, a community energy software network. He serves on the board of rpower, a distributed energy platform backed by I Squared, and previously served on MP2 Energy's board before its acquisition by Shell.

Early in his career, Evan held senior roles at Deutsche Bank, Mercuria and Trailstone. Evan and Philip, welcome to AwarePreneurs.

Thanks for having us Paul. We're excited to be here.

Let's talk a little bit about the origin story of Montauk Climate. I know a little bit because you all have been showing up in New Mexico. We're super grateful about that. But for somebody who's not familiar with Montauk, what is it and why did you start it?

Sure. Well, the story of how we got started actually predates the beginning of Montauk Climate to a company called Haven Energy. Haven Energy is a company that I helped co found and that's where I met Evan. Evan and I were connected through some mutual Texas buddies. I was born and raised in Texas. Evan spent a lot of time living there as well and they connected us because Haven Energy was focused on helping homeowners add battery storage to their houses. And they told me that Evan was interested in that area and could be very helpful and lo and behold, he was super helpful to the business. And I learned a lot from Evan and we started to talk more and more about other things that we could do in what we now call the electron economy.

But after working together on Haven Energy and getting that business to a great spot, Evan and I then ultimately co founded a business together called Electron X Electronics is a trading exchange for electricity derivatives. We're really excited about that business. Evan and I got together and put together a founding team there, raised some initial capital for the idea and built of the initial road map for the business. And after we worked together on that and ran that business together for a little bit, we said there's actually a bunch of ideas within this area that we think are interesting. And we both wanted to invest in and kind of go all into building a platform that really helped accelerate outcomes within company building for the electron economy. And that was when we started to focus on building Montauk Climate, which we started to do summer of 2023.

2023 launched. And what were some of your early hurdles? You had built some things before, but this was pretty unique, this focus on the electron economy. Like, what were some of the things that you had to overcome to get Montauk off the ground?

Well, even today, Montauk is not kind of a standard company in some regards, we do some things that companies do, like building products and thinking about technology and building teams. In some regards, we're more of an investment shop where we think about allocating capital and bringing together other investors, etc. And so even today, that unique position within the marketplace where we're sometimes founders and we're sometimes investors, is something that we have to explain to people and help them understand what our vision is for this platform long term and how to bring it together. And so I think we were lucky enough to convince a few early believers to come join us, both as partners as well as investors. And it's something where, as we get deeper into the potential of Montauk, we get to talk about the future vision. But we've always wanted to build something unique and something that didn't exist in the ecosystem yet.

Very cool. And how much, like if you were going to say the recipe, how often does Montauk serve as a company builder and how often do you serve as investors? Is it 50, 50? Is it skew one way more than the other?

To date, we've been more heavily leaning on the company building side of life. So We've launched about 10 companies from our studio and that's where we act as co Founders. We are deep in the trenches of building these companies. We're rolling up our sleeves to bring together other co founders, bring together initial outside capital, bring together customers, et cetera. And increasingly we're spending more and more time on the investing side. But I would say that's been the minority of the time spent to date.

Cool. And when you were launching Montauk, talk to us a little bit about. One of the biggest questions I get on this podcast is how do people get their startup capital? You need to finance something if you're going to build something. How did you all get your initial funding for Montauk?

Well, Evan and I are lucky in that we've been founders and investors in the ecosystem for a long time. We had a handful of people that knew us well and had worked with us over the decade prior. And so we went to a few of our friends that were in this ecosystem that are allocating capital and started to talk to them about the ideas that we have, the potential there in the ecosystem and really why we're so excited to kind of personally dedicate the next chapter of our life to, to this area. And we were lucky that a few of them saw our excitement and our passion for this idea and decided to back us.

Great. What are some of the companies that you've gotten the most traction with in the Montauk climate ecosystem?

Yeah, maybe I'll turn it over to Evan to talk about some of the companies that we've worked on today.

Yes. So over the last 18, almost 24 months, we've incubated and raised capital for five of our 14 companies. And so we, we've been very busy. The first platform that we launched here was a platform called Adaptive Adaptive, which is an insurance platform that is underwriting new climate perils and really helping small medium sized businesses as well as eventually consumers mitigate that, that risk of, of, of weather and climate based dis. Disruption. And so our big theme around, around Adaptive was around climate adaptation, right? What happens when it gets drier and more drought for longer? What happens when you have wildfire risk? What happens when you have more floods? What happens when you have more hail? That is not a carbon story. That is just a adaptation story. Right? And we're seeing it, we're seeing it in the Southwest, we're seeing it in Arizona and Phoenix, we're seeing it in the Pacific Northwest, we're seeing it in the Northeast.

And so Adaptive is really a data business that's underwriting data and in weather and climate and disruptions in business, whether that's supply chain, whether that's transportation, whether that's electricity deliver deliverability and, or power quality and basically creates insurance products and risk management products to help mitigate the, the economic losses associated with those events. And that team is, has gotten great traction. They've raised a seed round, they're Austin based, they are in market now, they've got a great reinsurance partner and they are scaling up their solutions. The first solution that they went to market with was a power outage platform. So if your power goes out for a period of time, they write you a check, right. And if it goes out for, you know, grid scarcity event or goes out for a, for a transmission outage event, they basically take care of that for you. Which is really nice. Really does help small businesses mitigate some of those losses associated with operating expenses.

So that was a great platform. That was early. The next platform that we launched was a platform called Clear Current. That platform is run by the former head of revenue at Bloom Energy which is now the stock is now a multi billion, you know, $20 billion valuation. They've really kind of taken off over the last couple weeks. That that platform came from the idea that data centers were going to be the country's next energy companies, similar to how we saw the post industrial petrochemical companies start building out energy trading desks. We were moving away from just power being a cost center and now power being a competitive advantage. And Clear Current builds technology and AI to, to help large load customers manage their power utilization, power bills, tariffs and their local utility rates in a more efficient and optimized way.

So think ERP for large loads, right? So managing all of the things associated with how large loads manage their business, especially when it comes for, for commodity procurement, if you will. So those are a flavor of two. We've got a lot more in the queue, a lot more that is in stealth. At any point we're working on between five and 10 companies and from a process perspective we spent a lot of time doing deep research and exploration. We call it thematic sprints or deep exploration. Those deep explorations result in very detailed white papers and very detailed research analytics and report not just about the technology but about the business, about the addressable market, about the ability to scale quickly, about the ability to pull forward opportunity, competitive landscape, where the world will be in a year and where the world we think will be in 10 years. And so what we do is a very comprehensive program around each individual theme, each individual sub theme and each individual business model and business line. And then from there we spend a lot of time talking to founders and CEOs and executives to basically both recruit the founding team alongside our.

Our business as well as great partners to help those businesses scale faster than they would have otherwise if it was just like a solo entrepreneur or out of an ideal lab.

Absolutely. So this idea of a studio, even a hybrid studio model in other sectors, it's still not super common, but more common than in the climate space, is that fair to say? It's not common yet in the electron economy, to use your language.

I think that's right, yeah. I think certainly not in the flavor that we're doing.

Yeah. So how did you, like, start to tell that story so that clean tech and climate tech companies says, ooh, we know what this is, and we understand the value here, and we want to be a part of what Montauk is building. If I'm a founder, what's the value proposition for me?

Yeah, well, one of the areas that we saw for opportunity with Montauk early days was the idea of bringing people into the climate space. And one of the things that we said was that the climate category is really just a more nascent category compared to other venture categories. So you have areas like consumer tech and fintech and healthcare tech that have just had more investment, they've had more big outcomes, they've had more founders in the ecosystem that have spawned off other founders to start companies. And those founders have seen what great looks like, and you really didn't have that in climate or in our area of focus, really on energy. And so one of the core opportunities we said was let's bring more people into the energy landscape and really teach them about why this is such an exciting area to be building in. And so one of the things that we talk about is we are able to pair great company builders with the subject matter expertise that you need to successfully operate in the climate or energy ecosystem. And I think that's been one way that we've got new talent to come into the space. But even with folks that are experts within the climate or energy landscape, they also see the value of having commercial connections, of having connections to other experts in the space.

And that's one of the areas that Montauk really focuses on. It's just, how do we bring connectivity to our ecosystem? How do we leverage our network? As you rightfully said, Paul, connecting great people is truly a reward and something that we enjoy. And so we're just constantly trying to bring different groups together and create value from that. And good founders realize that if you can do that successfully. It's a giant pull forward on the business and it simply helps accelerate the outcomes that we all hope to see in this world.

Beautiful. So give us a sense like who are some of the key players, some of the in house talent that you have in Montauk, that when a founder comes in to your circle, they get to access and they get to leverage their talents.

So we are lucky to count a number of advisors to Montauk Climate that we have pulled into specific companies, you know, post their advisory role. So two folks that I would highlight there. One is a gentleman named Ralph Alexander. We originally met Ralph because he was working with Riverstone and through Evan and Gusty, who's one of our partners. We had met Ralph, he'd learned what we did, he was very interested in that. So he offered to be an advisor. Ralph was on the executive committee of British Petroleum. He ran their global chemicals business, he ran their global exploration business.

He went on to then be the chairman and CEO of Talon Energy. So a very large business, very large power producer, nuclear operator, etc. And we got to know Ralph and he got to know us and he got very excited what we were doing and eventually we brought him into a business that's called Grid Free AI. That's all about building a more sustainable, more efficient approach to digital infrastructure. And today Ralph runs that business. And so that was a great way for him to see what we were doing, really see an idea that he liked and saw the potential of and raised his hand to help us build and scale that business. Another gentleman that I would highlight is a gentleman named Admiral Wyman Howard. Admiral Howard is an amazing gentleman.

He was 25 years in the Navy. He ran SEAL Team 6. He ran the Navy Seals program. He was a part of centcom. He's just had an amazing career. We met him again through the Riverstone network and we got to know him. He offered to be an advisor to Montauk Overall and we started talking to him about different ideas that we were excited about. Space is an area that is of a lot of interest to us and we set out with an idea to go build the first energy grid in space and use that for space to space power opportunities.

So we got Admiral Howard to join us as the chairman of that business and really help accelerate what we're doing there. And that's actually the business called Mantis Space, that'll be based in Albuquerque, New Mexico in part.

Very cool, very cool. So what's the team like overall? If you count the in house, Montauk team and then the founders. You're working with 14 different companies, some of them in stealth. Like, how many humans are we talking about in Montauk ecosystem right now?

Yeah, I haven't done an exact count recently, but I would say we're about a dozen people that are full time at Montauk. We're probably about two dozen people on the advisory side that are available to chat whenever we want to catch up on different specific areas. And then we have about 10 companies that we've started, and each of those companies has between three and four people. So I'd say probably about three dozen people on the company side that we've helped create. So it's probably, you know, a few dozen people across those different buckets.

Awesome. Awesome. And so this is only, keep in mind listeners, we're talking like two years in. So y' all have been working hard. Good work. And in addition to the companies that you're launching and the traction that they're getting, one of the reasons people listen to awarepreneurs is because they're looking for both the profit side of things, how do I build a profitable company, but they're also looking for the impact side of things. And I know you all, Philip, we've connected a couple times in New Mexico. On your visits here, you're tangible people, right? So how are you counting the positive impact on the environmental side or in other ways that the companies that you're helping to grow are having?

It's a great question. And we don't take a one size fits all approach to the portfolio companies that we're building or to the companies that we'll be investing in in. And we really tried to take a first principles approach to what is this company doing, what would be the impact relative to what the company is doing, and how should we measure that impact in a way that we can hold ourselves and the company accountable to success over time? We also recognize these are young companies. They're going to go through changes. And so we also can't be too rigid in our initial thinking or initial kind of key metrics. And we have to constantly think about are we choosing the right metrics or qualitative or quantitative standards to hold founders and companies accountable to. So all of that is to say is that these, these standards are fungible. They are kind of changing over time.

It's definitely a part of the conversation from the very beginning, but we do it in a very fluid way so that it doesn't hamper growth, it doesn't hamper outcomes. We talk about how unless these companies get real scale, it's not going to matter because they're not going to have a level of impact that matters. And so let's make sure we're prioritizing the right sets of standards and priorities for these companies at their right stages of life cycle. And so that's a little bit about the philosophy and how we approach it.

Cool. Well, in a minute I want to ask you about when is a company a good fit to be in a studio model and when is it not? Let's save everybody the pain, right? And you all have probably had a few moments where you know, okay, that was a learning experience and let's learn from that and not replicate it. Let's learn from the moments where things have been a little challenging and also when has it been just a perfect fit to work in this kind of a model? I also want to talk about you've done a tremendous amount in two years and where is Montauk going? And I have some other questions for you. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. If you're an impact driven founder working to raise capital or grow your clean tech or social enterprise and you're feeling the strain of doing it all yourself, I want you to know there's another way. Over the past 18 years, I've helped purpose driven founders build traction faster through fractional business development and capital raising support. I've also interviewed more than 300 of the world's most accomplished social entrepreneurs and climate tech innovators on the AwarePreneurs podcast, giving me a front row seat to what truly works when it comes to impact and scale. When we work together, you don't just get a consultant, you get an experienced professional on your team who's helped build hundreds of impact ventures and gain access to a robust global network of investors and partners who can accelerate your progress.

So if you're tired of starting from zero and trying to figure it out alone, let's talk. You can move faster with integrity and clarity by bringing on an experienced professional without the cost of a full time hire. If you'd like to learn more about my fractional business development and capital raising support, please reach out to me at www. Paulzelzer.com. so welcome back everybody. We are here talking with Philip Griman, Evan Karen about building companies of consequence within the electron economy and they are the co founders of Montauk Climate. And I was just saying right before the break, Philip, this model of a studio model where you're Getting to leverage the assets and the relationships of a group like Montauk, that can be an incredibly accelerating force, a force multiplier for a company that's pretty early on to access the talent and the relationships and the capital that you make available to your companies. But it can also be not a good fit in certain situations.

When is this model of being part of a suite of companies in a studio a good fit for a founder? And when is it not?

Yeah, great question, Paul. A few things come to mind. One is that it really has to be a big idea for it to be a fit here. And the reason why I say that is we've talked about the team and resources at Montauk Climate Big, and there's just a lot of mouths to feed. You're going to have founders who have equity, you're going to have Montauk Climate that has equity, and you're going to have various partners, various investors. And so it really only makes sense to work on an idea if we think there's a high potential for a very big outcome. And so I would say that's one of our first filters is can this really be something that is big and scalable and allows everyone to benefit by putting in the time and energy that is required to build and scale these businesses? The other is ultimately, we're picking a CEO to partner with, and that CEO is going to run the business, and it's their business to run and their strategy to decide on and execute on. And some CEOs like to be heads down and focused and introspective and don't want to deal with other constituents, and that's totally fine, and that's how some people excel.

But we're in a community where if you're not wanting to collaborate with us, collaborate with our partners, with the network, then you're not going to get the value out of the ecosystem that we've been building and the community that we're trying to pull together. And so one of the things that we ask founders before they commit to us is this really something that you want to do that is a way that you like to work, that brings you energy and joy. And so I definitely think there's that kind of individual perspective on the types of founders that want to work here. And the last would be we only pick areas where we think we can have high impact. So if there are company ideas or founders that want to work on things where we don't have great connectivity or we don't have deep knowledge set around the type of business that's required. Then we'll tell people we're not going to earn our keep and it's not going to be something that's worth it for us. And so we are always thinking about how do we prioritize our resources, our focus, our capital and make sure that we get the highest and best use out of that. So those are some of the factors that go into the decision making when we decide to green light a project or not.

Awesome. I really like that honesty that sometimes it's just not a fit. And let's be able to be grown ups and acknowledge that as opposed to finding that out a few years down the road and people feeling like, hey, you didn't earn your keep. That's always a painful moment. I do the same thing with my clients. Like, I'm really, really honored that you want to work with me and I don't think I can provide a lot of value for you. And let me introduce you to somebody who does. I think that is a really important skill to have in business and is a way to avoid a lot of pain.

So I really appreciate you acknowledging that and having that value.

Yeah, well said, Paul. Thank you.

So give us a sense. This whole space of the electron economy, it's in flux. Can we just say that here we are right September 2025. There's lots of big players who have strong opinions. We've seen, you know, electric vehicles grow really fast in some markets and be really stagnant in others. We've seen tons of capital come in and then people pull back like it's really a, not a linear path in this economy that you planted your flag. Is that a fair statement? Am I, am I being unreasonable in that assessment?

You are not being unreasonable. And nothing in company building is ever a linear path, for better or for worse. So definitely, yeah.

And this one's been particularly turbulent in my opinion. And this electronic economy that you're planted in is like, it's been a while, couple of years. And you've only been around a couple of years. So what has it been like to launch into a sort of changing environment? And as we're winding down 2025 with a lot of pullbacks, you know, I'll tell a personal story. I was supposed to be a mentor in a clean tech accelerator that got some federal funding and that funding got clawed back and that accelerator went away even though the funding originally was in the bank when they recruited me. Right. Like there's just things like that happening. Right.

So what has that turbulence been like compared to Other rides you've been in on. Philip, you scaled Casper to 500 million, right? I mean you've seen other rides, but this one's been a wild one. And how are you thinking about, you know, sustainability and profitability in the electron economy going forward where there has been so much change?

Well, Evan's been in this space for 20 plus years, so maybe I'll kick this one over to Evan to opine on.

Yeah, I think this is not the commodity market, specifically electricity markets go through their periods of extreme volatility and volatility to the upside and volatility to the downside. So this is nothing new. I would say. I've been doing this since 2003. Post Enron, you know, you had the markets go through market transition from zonal markets to nodal markets. So that was a big technical challenge and difference. We had a significant amount of new technology even in natural gas, right? I mean there's always a disruption. We had, you know, baseload coal and intermediate steamers.

We had, you know, expensive natural gas units, we had peakers. Then we had a disruption with combined cycle and low heat rate units in the early 2000s. That was a disruption that changed the market, that changed the economics of power, that changed the economics of nuclear, that changed where you build power plants, how you build power plants. Over the last 20 years we've had concessionary capital for wind to support new technologies. We saw proliferation of wind, but funny enough, it required almost a decade of near zero interest rate in order for wind to really scale. We had wind subsidies in early 2000s, but we haven't, we've, we installed more solar in the last year than, you know, almost combined across the country over the last 10. And so we've seen moments of disruption happen across energy, even natural gas. Right? I mean fracking like that.

None of this is new for us. And they, and we always go through periods of, of tax arbitrage and concessionary capital and political capital and federal funding and state funding and local funding. And the pendulum swings from environmentalist to anti environmentalist, from climate to anti climate. And still we still have to turn the lights on and the machine needs to keep going every single day. And I think for us, because the way that we operate is we're not looking at a six month horizon. We're looking at the next five, 10, 15 years of what the world's going to look like. Obviously disruption happens faster than people realize, right? You're, when you're in, when you're in it, you don't realize it's being disrupted. It's our job to identify and look around corners.

And you know, my background as a trader, I was not just trading the next hour, I was looking at the next 10, 15 years, what's coming around the corner, what's going to happen and be very proactive versus reactionary. Also as a venture studio we have the ability to and the ethos that, you know, time kills all deals. And if we don't move fast, things will change out from under us. The world is constantly shifting and so when we first started there was a lot of work talking about electrification of transportation, consumers going to go fully electric and the world has changed somewhat in that scenario. But if you think about all the autonomous vehicles, self driving vehicles, the medium duty fleets, the electric heavy duty fleets, the electrification of supply chain multimodal transport, thematically it's the same, right? It's just the scale and the business model. So we're not going to get into vehicle to grid charging because there's not enough consumer vehicles. But we will identify other opportunities that don't require the same level of market adoption or concessionary capital or philanthropic capital or state based capital. And so we spent a lot of time identifying businesses that are good businesses full stop and don't necessarily require other sources of capital that would need to subsidize those businesses in order to make them successful.

And so we, we hope that venture capital is able to do that right at risk capital is able to do that because they're able to see multiples of their money back because they're able to take an early bet and if it works, it's worth 10, 20, 50, 100 times what they put in. And so this, you know, just, you know, a long answer to a short question, but where, where other people see hurdles and, or roadblocks, we see opportunity. And that's how we, that's how we operate our business.

Love that Evan. I really appreciate two things I'd pull out of that and highlight. One is a strong business model like that helps weather, you know, momentary turbulence in a market having really strong foundations of it as a business. And two is having a time horizon that goes beyond next week that you are aware of the turbulence, you're aware of the changing forces in the market or any particular market. And you're also looking out past next week or next month or even next year and you're looking at where the general trend's going so that if there is an up or a down, you're not missing a longer term cycle. And in general the Electrification of our energy grid is continuing to happen regardless of some of these turbulent forces. And the percentage of the new electrons that are going into our grid that are coming from renewables is really, really, really high. And you wouldn't necessarily know that unless you're paying attention to some of those longer term trends.

And it's not likely to change just because of the economic.

Yeah, I think, yeah. And the fundamentals are still there. Right, Exactly. So looking at people were talking about renewables and retiring assets. Now we're talking about data centers and large load customers and AI. And so like if it's, if, if you think about like technology is pulling forward, the need for rethinking a systems approach to supply, to sourcing energy, it's full stop. Right. And if you think about like, you know, if you think about the, the system of the electron and the, the higher uses of, of the electron, you have to go all the way upstream and you have to go all the way downstream.

The aging infrastructure that's not changing the, the business models around assets are still very much legacy and politically driven and quasi governmental controlled and somewhat monopolistic depending on what markets you're in. There's multi stakeholder public private resource management, geopolitical, national defense. Just add all of these things up and at the other end of the equal sign is where we play. And that's so none of them, one of them could, could is a, is a multigenerational opportunity. Now we have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It's the convergence of all of those things make this the, what we believe is the biggest opportunity to, that we've seen in the last hundred years for investment building businesses. Look at, I mean there, if you just look at the orders of magnitude of the numbers that people talk about when the Trump administration talks about infrastructure, they talk about hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure. Oracle talks about 300 billion Nvidia doing $100 billion investment into $100 billion investment into OpenAI.

OpenAI is going to then take that 100 billion and go build something with it. Physical infrastructure, power plants, roads, wastewater treatment facilities, data centers, jobs, tax revenue. It's going to fundamentally change landscapes in the Permian bases in Texas, in New Mexico, in areas that have abundant natural resources, land, people, human resources, water, fiber, infrastructure. The landscape of the United States is going to change because of this. And so, and when we're talking about, you know, when people talk about existential threats of, of not having enough of, of this supply, then think about all the business models that will fall out from that and just you can go back to historical, you know, historical parts of the United States like when we were, when it was the Cold War, the space race. Think about how many industries came out of that. We're in that moment now. That's, that's the big, that's the big aha moment that we, that we were, that we had when we started.

And it's just getting stronger as we're building.

Absolutely, Evan. I couldn't agree more. I was going to ask this a little later, but it seems appropriate now. We just recently. Most listeners know I live in New Mexico. We recently had a conference out here called Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem and we were talking about these exact issues that you just went through, Evan, the aging infrastructure. New Mexico's economy has historically been a huge focus, has been the energy economy. And seeing this as an opportunity for economic development if we act quickly, that is pretty used once in a hundred year kind of opportunity, Evan, with the resources that we have here, strong solar, strong wind, already up and running, some of the most robust oil and gas resources in the US and in the world, and also incredible assets for geothermal and fusion energy.

And I know Philip, you've talked a little bit about what you're seeing here in New Mexico, but as an innovator who's kind of seeing a place change from a legacy energy, a legacy electron economy to starting to ramp up quickly into this new electron economy. Anything you could say from an outsider looking at what's happening in New Mexico?

Well, I think we're very excited about the dedication of the state to bringing more technologies, more companies, more innovation to the state. We see that with the investments that they're making, the commitments that they've made, and we see it being successful, meaning we see great companies coming to New Mexico. We're an example of that building our company called Mantis Space in New Mexico. We're signing a lease for lab space that's going to be a world class lab focused on optics and lasers and very cool stuff that ultimately end up in outer space. It's a great way to attract and to retain talent. And I think one of the best assets that New Mexico has is the people of New Mexico. And so whether it's through the national labs or through some of the corporates that have been building great talented technical teams in New Mexico, we need more companies for the success of our country to tap into that talent and to continue to build. And so we think that the state is all in on it.

We think they have various investment programs to help accelerate that. And we would love to do our part to help deploy more capital and bring more innovation to the state.

So both of you have had some pretty big wins, right? Philip from Scale and Casper and Evan, some of your power market experience is pretty significant given what you've done in your careers and now really planting your flag in the climate space. What are some of the things that you've learned, some wisdom you'd want to pass on to clean tech founders about things that work in business in general that transfer well to the climate space? And what are some things that you think are very unique and that you have to be attentive to if you're going to succeed in the climate space that maybe wouldn't be asked if you were in fintech or medtech or some other space. I'd love to hear from both of you on that one.

Sure. On the parts that I think are universally true, at the end of the day, success, building and scaling companies is always about the people. And I know it's a bit cliche, but it's true that building a company is a team sport and you have to assemble the best team. And that's about finding people's compliments and finding people's deficits and building around that so that you can build a team that's well rounded, that's versatile, that can move fast, that can scale quick, and is hungry to constantly learn and challenge the way they operate and think. So at the end of the day, I think success, no matter what vertical you pick, relies on the people that you surround yourself with on challenges that are unique to this ecosystem. You know, a lot of verticals you mentioned have some aspects of this, but there is certainly a big regulatory component when it comes to energy. Energy is regulated at the local region, at the local level, at the regional level, at the state level, at the federal level, there's utilities, there's a mix of regulated utilities and deregulated utilities, etc. So there is a heavy regulatory component to doing anything that's energy related.

These are also areas that impact people's lives directly. So there's just a level of fidelity when it comes to impacting energy flows and how energy is used and the price of energy that matters. And this is something that people take very seriously, very personal, and they should. So you just have to have that much higher of a bar when it comes to doing things that could impact that side of life.

Great. Evan, lots of experience in the energy world. What has it taught you that you could pass on to founders and Maybe save a little pain.

Yeah, I think in general, and this is maybe more general to all startups at this stage is it's a real commitment of time. Right. It's not something that you're going to be able to, you know, say, you know, part time. It, I don't think, you know, especially in this category, it's, it's going to take, it takes a lot of work.

Right?

It's, it's not some, it's not a Monday through Friday, 9 9am to 5pm Type of role. Especially in this market. Clean tech has had two or three iterations of boom and bust cycles. And so knowing what came before you and understanding the technology that predates you and what didn't work in the past is something that you need to have, you know, some real, you know, some real insight and real, real education and research into. And you know, and in some other markets folks think that like they'll get to a point where their cost per customer acquisition will be negative or they'll be able to get to a scale where the price works. In this market, more times than not, that doesn't happen. Right. So it doesn't work like other technology adoption curves.

And that's the reason why we've seen a lot of companies come and go, especially in the hardware side where they never live up to those promises because they're too optimistic about the capabilities of scaling challenging business models, supply chain, commercial. And in many cases they don't realize the market that they're in is a commodity market. And so unless you're cheaper and better and faster and more efficient, someone else will deliver that unit of power, that unit of natural gas, that unit of oil, that unit of fuel. And so I think in this market, different than other markets, the fact that we have a commodity and you're in a commodity market changes the way that you need to operate and think about how you scale. And there's only been a handful of, of successful platforms that have transcended that commodity space. LNG being one of the, the, the last ones that required significant amounts of capital to get to a point where they were able to monetize that arbitrage. That makes sense. So again, think about, you got to think about it in those ways.

But to Philip's point, a lot of this stuff is very much universal. And that, that's, that's my, my comments.

Great, thanks. So you've done a tremendous amount in 24 or 30 months or whatever total it has been less than three years. When you look ahead, let's say five years out from now, it's, we're coming up on 2031 and where is Montauk Climate? What kind of successes have you had? What's the number of companies, like, how much capital have you mobilized? What's been your impact on the energy sector? Give us a five year view.

It's, you know, very, very tough when, you know, thinking about five years out and just the, the potential over those five years. We don't spend a lot of time saying, you know, what's our five year plan, what's our five year vision? We probably should spend more time on that, candidly. But I think, you know, it starts with becoming kind of the top of mind platform when it comes to building companies of consequence within the electron economy. And I think you earn your right to be that top of mind platform if you have long track record of success. So I don't think for us it's a milestone of oh, we launched our 25th company or we deployed a billion dollars. I think it's more of are we day in and day out, known for doing really interesting things, making a difference with the people that we work with day in and day out? And are those people driving big outcomes that change the world around us? And so we always talk about, you know, you never get to wave the flag and say, you know, mission accomplished. With company building, it's, it's always about how do you build it for bigger success, more success, broader success, etc. And I would say that Montauk is a team of folks that work tirelessly towards doing those things, towards just doing right by our partners, pushing ourselves to, to think bigger, work harder.

And that means over a five year timeline, we hope that we earn the right to become kind of the top of mind partner that founders, investors, companies want to partner with when it comes time to thinking about how to take their business to the next level.

Beautiful. Evan, anything you'd.

Yeah, I think for me, maybe this is more about the electron economy and having Montauk, Montauk be at the epicenter of the electron economy. And I think success looks like in the next five years that the electron economy sits at the center that branches into four markets. Flow of electrons. So those are the highways moving electrons through grids, chips and networks, storage and banks of electrons. So storing electrons in batteries, fuels and molecules. Convergence, sorry, convergin conversion, conversion of electrons. And these are the electron factories transforming electrons into refineries, catalysts and electrolyzers basically. And then information.

And these are electron exchanges encoding and trading electrons in finance AI, crypto and quantum. If we can pull off those four pillars and build companies in all of those categories, I think we fundamentally changed how the market operates, how commerce operates, capital markets operate, infrastructure operates, transportation operates and humans and data operates. And so that would be my kind of five year plan is to build platforms across those four categories.

Very exciting. Well, I could hang out with you both all day and I know you're busy and our listeners are. As we start to wind down. Is there anything we haven't yet covered that you'd like to add or something you'd like to leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye?

We just appreciate the opportunity to tell folks about what we're building and how our story, you know, I think your audience is a very unique one and one that we're not often in front of and one that we're appreciative of the ability to tell what we're looking to do. And hopefully it resonates with folks who think about both the pragmatic and the mission side of building companies in this space.

Evan, anything you'd add?

Yeah, no. Again, I always appreciate talking. We can probably talk for hours and hours. We'd love to join you guys again at some point after we've launched the next 10 companies and, and hopefully our, our, our, our platform in New Mexico is one that, that adds a lot of jobs and a lot of resources and a lot of attention to the Albuquerque ecosystem. And we'd be excited to spend a lot more time out there. So hopefully we can spend some time together in person and, and bring them into the, into, into your ecosystem in the fold of the startup community in, in, in New Mexico.

I look forward to that. So how could people get ahold of you? If they want to learn more about.

About Montauk Climate, they can reach us@philip montaukcap.com or evan@montaukcap.com and we've got a.

Website and we've got our LinkedIn. We've got a substack. We'll be inviting entrepreneurs and folks interested in joining and getting closer to our community to our Discord Channel. We're going to be basically kind of in and everywhere. So weekly updates on LinkedIn. You can join our newsletter which is on the website montaukcap.com and then the emails that Philip mentioned earlier.

Awesome. Well, thank you both for being on the show today. I so appreciate it.

Thank you. Paul, thanks for having us. Thank you.

So Philip and Evan, thanks for joining us and to have the courage to test some traditional ways of doing things. I find that really exciting to our listeners. If this episode stirred something in you, please share it. I know you know somebody who could learn something and benefit from what Montauk is doing. Lastly, if you're ready to develop a bold strategy for your impact business, whether you're navigating uncertainty or stepping into something new, take a look at one of my strategy sessions@paul zelizer.com until next time, please keep working for positive impact and putting your values to work in your business.

Sam.