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CleanTechies
#179 Industrial Decarb, ROI-Oriented Sales, GHG Accounting, Marketplaces x Recommender Systems, & More w/ Saleh ElHattab (Gravity)
There are a few key things Climate Entrepreneurs should know. This guest brought up a bunch of them.
It is incredible to see how successful they are in a crowded space. Today, he shared with us many of the things that helped them succeed.
- How to align all stakeholders in the sales process
- Building a product so simple the user can be up-skilled without specialized training
- Building a culture of pragmatism
- Speaking Return-on-Investment
Enjoy today's episode, and let us know your favorite moment in the comments (anywhere).
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Topics:
**2:27 Intro and Background
**3:05 The Problem They Solve
**5:39 Global Emissions from Industry
**11:44 Ideation and Idea Validation
**13:37 Company Status and Growth
**14:56 Challenges and Milestones
**16:38 How / When to Pivot
**18:16 Standing out in a Crowd
**22:53 Market Positioning and Challenges
**25:38 Pragmatism-First Culture
**30:38 Principles and Habits for Success
**32:38 Future Plans and Opportunities
**37:00 Climate Startup Ideas
**37:48 Closing Remarks and Call to Action
**38:41 Takeaways
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Links:
**Saleh ElHattab | Gravity
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn
**@Silas & @Somil_Agg on X
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Saleh ElHattab (00:00:00):
this increasing arm twist carbon intensive entities were feeling razor thin margins
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:05):
and increasingly what we saw was carbon reductive solutions were increasingly
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:10):
actually more economical and gravity was born out of that believe you me if i had
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:15):
continued my college physics education and i could get into fusion research the
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:20):
amount of intrigue that i have in those types of technologies is immense the impact
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:24):
is marginal similar to product market fit i would say
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:27):
Founder problem fit, and I didn't have founder problem fit.
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:30):
We built this for entities with complex physical operations.
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:34):
They are up leveling internal talent, right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:36):
This is not somebody who knows the GHG protocol.
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:40):
I think the pragmatism one is massive.
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:42):
Every dollar we take from somebody cannot be to give them a sticker.
Saleh ElHattab (00:00:46):
It needs to come back as $5 in energy savings.
Silas Mähner (00:00:52):
Welcome back to Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs.
Silas Mähner (00:00:56):
If industrial decarbonization is something you are passionate about,
Silas Mähner (00:00:59):
something keeps you up at night,
Silas Mähner (00:01:00):
we have got the company for you.
Silas Mähner (00:01:02):
Today, our guest is Salah El-Hattab, CEO and founder of Gravity, a GHG accounting platform.
Silas Mähner (00:01:08):
Yes,
Silas Mähner (00:01:08):
I know it's another GHG accounting platform,
Silas Mähner (00:01:10):
but wait,
Silas Mähner (00:01:11):
it is not just any old GHG accounting platform.
Silas Mähner (00:01:14):
And let me tell you, we have had dozens reach out to us, so we know when we see this.
Silas Mähner (00:01:19):
They have a superpower that helps them close deals.
Silas Mähner (00:01:23):
They have built an entire marketplace of electrification and decarbonization
Silas Mähner (00:01:27):
partners that their clients get access to.
Silas Mähner (00:01:29):
And not only that, they've negotiated better prices and special deals for all of them.
Silas Mähner (00:01:34):
So just an incredible value add on top of their platform.
Silas Mähner (00:01:37):
In addition to this,
Silas Mähner (00:01:38):
they've built the platform to be highly user-friendly so that you do not have to be
Silas Mähner (00:01:41):
any kind of climate scientist to understand it.
Silas Mähner (00:01:44):
This allows their product to fly off the shelves because they are selling with all
Silas Mähner (00:01:48):
parties' interests in mind.
Silas Mähner (00:01:50):
CEOs and CFOs love the ROI mentality that they get out of using the product,
Silas Mähner (00:01:55):
they save procurement teams a ton of time and money,
Silas Mähner (00:01:59):
and they allow sustainability teams to get the reporting done in a very efficient manner.
Silas Mähner (00:02:04):
It's genuinely an incredible example of ensuring alignment to make sure your sales process is smooth.
Silas Mähner (00:02:11):
And before we get started, if you're not already, go to Substack and click subscribe.
Silas Mähner (00:02:15):
Maybe you're feeling particularly generous today.
Silas Mähner (00:02:18):
Drop in the old credit card details so you can support our mission financially and
Silas Mähner (00:02:22):
comment with any guests you'd like to see come on the show.
Silas Mähner (00:02:25):
All right, enjoy the episode.
Silas Mähner (00:02:27):
All right, welcome to the show.
Silas Mähner (00:02:28):
How's it going, man?
Silas Mähner (00:02:29):
It's going pretty well.
Silas Mähner (00:02:30):
Thanks for having me, Silas.
Silas Mähner (00:02:31):
Yeah, super glad to finally do this.
Silas Mähner (00:02:34):
I have to admit my sins initially before we started.
Silas Mähner (00:02:37):
We had to reschedule this several times.
Silas Mähner (00:02:40):
Always my fault.
Silas Mähner (00:02:41):
So glad we're making it happen.
Silas Mähner (00:02:43):
But I guess give us a quick intro to yourself.
Silas Mähner (00:02:45):
Who are you and what do you do?
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:47):
Yeah, my name is Salah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:48):
I'm the CEO of a company called Gravity.
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:50):
It's in the space of industrial decarbonization, which is
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:54):
Highly buzzwordy, so I'm looking forward to dissecting that with you.
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:57):
I'm based out of New York,
Saleh ElHattab (00:02:59):
and I spent a lot of time between New York and San Francisco since the company's
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:02):
based out of there.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:02):
But that's me in a nutshell.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:04):
I'm excited to tell you more.
Silas Mähner (00:03:05):
So what is exactly the problem that you're solving?
Silas Mähner (00:03:08):
Tell us more about that specifically.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:09):
Yeah, absolutely.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:11):
Well, first, I think it's worth calling out that
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:14):
The term decarbonization has attracted 1001 companies at this point.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:19):
So the specific corner of that space that we're focused on is really kind of carbon
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:24):
and energy management.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:25):
And increasingly, we focus on the latter, which is energy management.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:28):
Reason being that we saw a market that had an increasing narrative around
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:34):
compliance and disclosure,
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:35):
which I think is fantastic as it elucidates a lot of the surface area that people
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:39):
need to actually measure in order to manage.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:42):
But we actually didn't see as much on the side of supporting tools for those who
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:46):
are most carbon intensive.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:47):
So that's one thing that we like to focus on.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:49):
And separately on speaking their language,
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:51):
which is traditional business priorities,
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:53):
cost savings,
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:55):
and risk management.
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:56):
And so we're very focused through a software approach,
Saleh ElHattab (00:03:59):
helping with the front half of that,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:00):
which is regulatory or customer market pressures to disclose.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:04):
We help them automate that process.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:07):
But we get really excited to have a marketplace that actually satiates
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:11):
their needs to cut energy spend, to react to geopolitical impacts on natural gas, et cetera, et cetera.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:17):
Um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:17):
and so we work with them to actually execute projects that make them more resilient
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:20):
while reducing their energy consumption and emissions.
Silas Mähner (00:04:24):
Interesting.
Silas Mähner (00:04:24):
So is this something that's somewhat new for the industrial sector that they need to be focused on these?
Silas Mähner (00:04:31):
I'm assuming compliance is not a new thing, but.
Silas Mähner (00:04:33):
Um, can you tell us more about that?
Silas Mähner (00:04:34):
Like,
Silas Mähner (00:04:35):
is it something that the other,
Silas Mähner (00:04:36):
the other companies in,
Silas Mähner (00:04:37):
I guess you could say carbon accounting or energy management aren't,
Silas Mähner (00:04:40):
or haven't been solving for recently or in that you're kind of feeling like.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:43):
Yeah,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:44):
I would say that given the absolute multitude of companies in the space,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:48):
there are some that are still focused on industrials as well.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:50):
So we are not completely alone in the space of working with carbon intensive entities.
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:55):
Uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:55):
and it's worth calling out that not only do we go directly to them,
Saleh ElHattab (00:04:58):
but we also go to the companies that they depend on that depend on them or invest
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:01):
in them.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:02):
So if you're.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:03):
a large corporate supply chain that's heavily physical and industrial.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:07):
We also work with you to help manage your supply chain.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:10):
And we work with private equity firms and similar who have portfolios of
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:14):
infrastructure and industrial companies.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:16):
I flag that because that's actually very crowded,
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:19):
the space of China and the Fortune 500s,
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:21):
as well as the space of landing the private equities.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:24):
But to have built a purpose-built solution for the industrial,
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:28):
the actual emissions generator,
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:30):
is a much smaller subset of the market.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:33):
And for that market, I would say we are increasingly an industry leader.
Silas Mähner (00:05:38):
And can you share any data points around what, what emissions industry is actually responsible for?
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:45):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:45):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:45):
I think the.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:47):
Different kind of back of napkin and very intensive consultative research shows
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:51):
anywhere between 30 to 70% of emissions are related to industry,
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:56):
depending on your definition of it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:05:57):
We use the number 40%.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:00):
That is not even accounting for like the built environment or like concrete and things like that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:04):
This is purely like year over year,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:07):
the operations of these organizations,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:09):
which fall into industry,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:11):
think manufacturing and similar,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:13):
compose about 40% of the world's emissions.
Silas Mähner (00:06:16):
Okay, got it.
Silas Mähner (00:06:16):
Thanks for that.
Silas Mähner (00:06:17):
Yeah,
Silas Mähner (00:06:17):
I think we'll get into that in a bit with the market positioning and how you guys
Silas Mähner (00:06:22):
determined that specific segment and things of that nature.
Silas Mähner (00:06:25):
But something I did want to ask,
Silas Mähner (00:06:26):
from your upbringing,
Silas Mähner (00:06:27):
were there any particular influences that eventually led you to wanting to build a company?
Silas Mähner (00:06:32):
I'm always kind of curious about this personally.
Silas Mähner (00:06:35):
What made somebody decide to chew glass, as a lot of people say, as entrepreneurship is?
Silas Mähner (00:06:41):
So tell us more about that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:42):
Yeah, first, I'm dealing with that beautifully vivid image of chewing glass.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:46):
But aside from that,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:48):
on the notion of starting a company deciding to do it,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:50):
there are some people who are like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:52):
I want to be an entrepreneur.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:53):
And regardless of whatever problem they find, they want to spearhead it and be the leader.
Saleh ElHattab (00:06:58):
And then there are some that are like extremely passionate about a problem.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:02):
And that's kind of what draws them to build the company for it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:05):
And if they weren't passionate about it, they didn't necessarily have the itch to be the entrepreneur.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:09):
I'm somewhere in the middle.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:10):
I always had a niche,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:11):
but I wanted to make sure that there was something that really kind of bothered me
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:14):
in my free time that I wanted to solve for.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:17):
And climate very much fell into that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:19):
In terms of upbringing, I was born into a middle class family of immigrants in Indiana.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:25):
Both my parents made their way over here from Egypt before I was born.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:29):
And a lot of my friends ended up working in the kind of economy that was common to that region.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:36):
Uh, my siblings worked in warehouses.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:38):
A lot of my friends became linemen for utilities.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:40):
Uh, and I liked computers, uh, if I'm being honest with you and video games.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:44):
So,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:45):
uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:45):
I won't lie and say that I had as much dirt under my nails at that time,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:49):
but I was definitely familiar and adjacent to it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:51):
Um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:51):
going back to Egypt,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:53):
my father's side of the family is a little bit more rural,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:55):
uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:55):
my mother's side of the family,
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:56):
a little bit more city folks.
Saleh ElHattab (00:07:57):
So it's always kind of been a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:00):
Uh, and so for me.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:02):
I really fell in love with the marriage of atoms and bits, I say, so software and the physical world.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:09):
Before coming to Gravity, I was at a company called Samsara.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:12):
And Samsara built hardware for industrial systems,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:16):
telematic systems for trucks,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:17):
dash cameras for safety,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:19):
machine health monitors,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:20):
everything in between.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:22):
And that made me just continue to fall in love with something that had been really
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:26):
close to me growing up.
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:27):
And I knew that the next thing I did was going to be for that same audience,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:29):
those kind of salt of the earth,
Saleh ElHattab (00:08:32):
economic backbone that we all depend on, but sometimes it's out of sight.
Silas Mähner (00:08:36):
Hey guys, sorry for the interruption.
Silas Mähner (00:08:38):
I just need a few seconds because Soma and I have two quick favors to ask.
Silas Mähner (00:08:41):
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Silas Mähner (00:08:45):
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Silas Mähner (00:08:49):
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Silas Mähner (00:09:09):
Now back to the show.
Silas Mähner (00:09:11):
Interesting.
Silas Mähner (00:09:12):
So it sounds as though it was pretty clear towards the end of your time as you were
Silas Mähner (00:09:16):
wrapping up things with Samsara that you wanted to do something like this.
Silas Mähner (00:09:19):
Was it just, okay, what exactly will I do in the space, but I know it's going to be here?
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:23):
Yeah,
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:24):
so I actually left them and went to an industrial venture capital firm to do a
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:28):
little bit of that thinking.
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:30):
And when I joined that firm,
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:32):
I took on the charter of helping them tackle within their venture equity arm.
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:35):
Basically, they co-invest not only with capital, but with their time.
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:39):
Eclipse Venture Capital is this VC.
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:42):
I basically helped them develop a couple ideas around climate.
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:46):
And there were two
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:47):
problem spaces that we got really attracted to we're attracted to a lot in this
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:51):
space but for an opportunity that we were well positioned to tackle one was around
Saleh ElHattab (00:09:56):
insurance an incredible vacuum of insurance around hazardous areas in the world so
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:01):
being able to help with regions that typical and classical insurers could no longer
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:06):
manage
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:06):
the risk because of wildfires or because of flooding or other climate hazards.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:11):
And we thought about that a lot and there's still a massive opportunity there,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:14):
but it wasn't the one that we ended up marrying.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:16):
The other side was this increasing arm twist that carbon intensive entities were
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:22):
feeling where all of us were going to them and saying,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:25):
you're carbon emitting.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:26):
You need to tell me about your emissions.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:27):
You need to lower your emissions.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:29):
And often it was kind of in a limb basting or kind of culpability framed way.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:35):
When at the end of the day,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:36):
all of these entities are the ones that we depend on to get from A to B.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:40):
We want our packages to arrive next day.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:42):
And so they've also optimized razor thin margins for us.
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:45):
And all these things just are emissions expensive and cost them a lot of margin so
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:51):
that even if they wanted to,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:53):
they don't always have the capacity to say,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:55):
well,
Saleh ElHattab (00:10:56):
we're willing to spend some extra dollars that aren't going to be returned to us in
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:01):
the name of lowering our emissions.
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:02):
they're already kind of optimized to nothing, right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:06):
And so seeing that pressure without having a carrot,
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:10):
rather they were kind of running away from a stick,
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:12):
we thought,
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:13):
are the solutions,
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:14):
the actions that they would take truly bad for business?
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:17):
And increasingly what we saw was carbon reductive solutions were increasingly
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:22):
actually more economical than business as usual and reaching industrial scale.
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:27):
And so there was something missing where people were twisting their arm when they
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:31):
could actually be incentivizing them.
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:33):
And gravity was born out of that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:34):
So a long way of saying I was thinking about doing something in the climate space
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:38):
and industry,
Saleh ElHattab (00:11:39):
and it was incubated while I was at Eclipse.
Silas Mähner (00:11:42):
Okay, very nice.
Silas Mähner (00:11:43):
So you kind of mentioned it already, some of the ideas you turned down.
Silas Mähner (00:11:48):
I am always curious about this because usually there's plenty of things that you
Silas Mähner (00:11:52):
toss away as you go through the idea process.
Silas Mähner (00:11:54):
It's not like, I guess you could say baby entrepreneurs think, oh, I've got a great idea.
Silas Mähner (00:11:58):
It's really, it's not about the idea per se as much as it is about the product market fit.
Silas Mähner (00:12:02):
So can you talk about some of the ideas that you tossed out?
Silas Mähner (00:12:04):
They say, ah, this is really interesting for this reason, but here's why I said no to it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:08):
Well,
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:09):
I already mentioned insurance and a big reason why that one didn't end up making it
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:14):
was you can think about like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:17):
climate tech in two very overly trivialized buckets,
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:21):
but one is adaptation and the other one is mitigation.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:24):
And to me, insurance was very much adaptation.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:26):
Just accept that we're in this world that's increasingly impacted by climate risk.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:31):
So how do we adapt to it?
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:32):
And then mitigation was how do we actually try to reverse it and make this place
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:36):
more sustainable for the long haul?
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:39):
I found myself much more attracted to the latter bucket and gravity is aligned to that, right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:43):
Like, how do we actually not just adapt to the bleeding, but stop the bleeding?
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:48):
And so that was a big reason why insurance was tossed out.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:52):
There are other projects that I would say I'm just not the right person for that I
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:56):
still was very passionate about.
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:57):
Believe you me,
Saleh ElHattab (00:12:58):
if I had continued my college physics education and I could get into fusion research,
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:03):
like the amount of
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:06):
Kind of intrigue that I have in those types of technologies is immense,
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:10):
but the amount of impact that I could have is marginal.
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:13):
And so there was also kind of a similar to product market fit, I would say founder problem fit.
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:19):
And I didn't have founder problem fit with all those others.
Silas Mähner (00:13:21):
Yeah, I like that.
Silas Mähner (00:13:22):
I think it's good and humble to acknowledge that.
Silas Mähner (00:13:25):
I think it's not...
Silas Mähner (00:13:27):
It's not easy,
Silas Mähner (00:13:28):
right,
Silas Mähner (00:13:28):
to be like,
Silas Mähner (00:13:29):
I really want to solve this problem,
Silas Mähner (00:13:30):
but I'm just not the right person to do it,
Silas Mähner (00:13:31):
to maybe support somebody else or leave that problem for somebody else to solve.
Silas Mähner (00:13:35):
So I appreciate that.
Silas Mähner (00:13:37):
Tell us more about the company today.
Silas Mähner (00:13:38):
What's the status of the company?
Silas Mähner (00:13:40):
How have you gone from kind of the idea to where you are today?
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:44):
We're about two years into it, just a little longer than that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:47):
And we have kind of around 100 customers at this point across both the industrial
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:53):
operators that we like to work with and the companies that depend on them or invest
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:56):
in them,
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:56):
like I said.
Saleh ElHattab (00:13:58):
We have hit milestones that I would say are aligned to later stages of funding than where we are.
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:03):
That's one thing that we've been really lucky to be able to achieve is we're still
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:07):
fairly lean and still running on our first valued round of serious seed funding.
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:12):
And right now,
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:12):
I would say in terms of like evolution of the product,
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:15):
evolution of our offering,
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:16):
while during the first year and change,
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:18):
we were
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:19):
really aggressively focusing on making a truly automation-first platform,
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:24):
especially considering we saw a lot of our peers who came before us heavily invest
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:28):
in customer acquisition at the cost of building automation.
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:31):
We now are being able to extend our engineering resources to start focusing on
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:36):
the second chapter where we've been doing paper and pencil kind of project
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:39):
execution from kind of like quoting all the way to showing up with steel-toed
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:43):
boosts and high-vis vests on customers facilities and we're now starting to do the
Saleh ElHattab (00:14:47):
digitization of our marketplace as well so a lot of kind of exciting uh ongoings
Silas Mähner (00:14:52):
internally what has been the biggest challenge so far to get to this perspective to
Silas Mähner (00:14:57):
get to this point yeah uh
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:00):
I saw a graph the other day,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:02):
it kind of showed the path to a million dollars in revenue or,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:05):
you know,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:06):
the path to the series a,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:08):
uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:08):
versus the path thereafter.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:09):
And,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:10):
um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:10):
it showed that like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:11):
if it was a really smooth line to the series a,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:15):
uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:15):
you'd have a lot of suffering thereafter.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:17):
Um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:17):
and if it's really choppy upfront,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:20):
um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:20):
you've probably done a lot of the learning that's going to help you have a smoother
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:22):
kind of post series a.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:23):
And so I would say,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:24):
um,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:26):
We already paid the piper to an extent.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:28):
I'm sure there's still a lot that's going to happen at the next inflection,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:31):
but we've had a lot of kind of common growing pains where a lot of the team doesn't
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:36):
like when I say this on the tail end of our puberty era as a company,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:41):
some things grew faster than other areas.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:43):
And so we had challenges where we onboarded a ton of customers to a product that
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:47):
was probably still not ready for it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:49):
And that was a moment to celebrate sales,
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:50):
but acknowledge that we're going to have a crunch on the product side or
Saleh ElHattab (00:15:55):
Sometimes we developed a sales motion around a audience that wasn't ready to buy.
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:00):
Early on,
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:01):
we really wanted to go to the really kind of SMB and lower mid-market industrials
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:06):
that no one was talking to and make a tool for them.
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:08):
The fact of the matter is the cascading pressure of participating in this climate
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:14):
economy hasn't reached them yet.
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:15):
And that was a couple quarters of time that we don't get back, right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:19):
Learnings, but expensive ones.
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:21):
And so I would say
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:23):
Nothing that stands out as like the most significant,
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:26):
but we've done a lot of kind of iterating and guessing and feeling different parts
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:31):
of the company go faster than others,
Saleh ElHattab (00:16:32):
as well as regrettably spending a lot of time on efforts that we should have left sooner.
Silas Mähner (00:16:38):
In terms of understanding those things and the timeline,
Silas Mähner (00:16:43):
in your mind,
Silas Mähner (00:16:44):
you have a lot of experience doing product management in the past as well.
Silas Mähner (00:16:46):
What do you view as a proper time to test something to understand if it's working?
Silas Mähner (00:16:52):
Assuming you're following and doing things right, is it a quarter?
Silas Mähner (00:16:55):
Is it two quarters?
Silas Mähner (00:16:55):
Say, okay, we really need to pivot from what we're doing.
Silas Mähner (00:16:58):
What is that timeline in your mind?
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:00):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:01):
If it's a formula, there's some sort of coefficient that
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:06):
is around the size of the buyer, if that makes sense.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:10):
Um, so like the SMB motion, we could have probably found out within a month and a half, right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:15):
These buyers are very abundant,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:18):
first of all,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:18):
and you can talk to the right people,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:20):
figure out fairly quickly whether or not there's an appetite.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:23):
Um, and that's more in terms of like selling vision.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:25):
That's not how much time it would actually take to build the product and everything else,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:28):
but before kind of really breaking ground on,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:31):
on development.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:32):
Um, it's better to kind of test the thesis, test the slide deck.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:35):
We have an internal slogan that is like the inverse of if we build it,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:39):
they will come it's if they come,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:40):
we'll build it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:41):
Uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:41):
and so I'm a big believer in like spend time validating the thesis,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:45):
uh,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:45):
and selling it before you actually break ground on building it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:48):
Um, yeah, it's a large enterprise company, uh, that you're trying to sell to.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:52):
If it's a motion that depends on fortune 500 buyers,
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:55):
that might take three quarters to really tell you whether or not it's going to be fruitful.
Saleh ElHattab (00:17:58):
It might even take a year plus.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:00):
Right.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:00):
Uh, and so.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:01):
It really kind of depends on the buying cycle or the typical speed of decisions
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:07):
made by your buying audience to be able to quickly bet whether or not that idea is
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:12):
one that's going to be able to survive the test of time.
Silas Mähner (00:18:15):
Yeah.
Silas Mähner (00:18:15):
And earlier you mentioned,
Silas Mähner (00:18:17):
I mean,
Silas Mähner (00:18:17):
this is pretty obvious to people who are in the space,
Silas Mähner (00:18:18):
that is a very competitive space.
Silas Mähner (00:18:21):
There's a lot of people trying to get these dollars and trying to help these different companies.
Silas Mähner (00:18:26):
So what are the big things that set you apart from the competitors?
Silas Mähner (00:18:28):
I know you mentioned a marketplace, but we didn't talk too much about that.
Silas Mähner (00:18:32):
What is the real differentiator that your clients say,
Silas Mähner (00:18:34):
hey,
Silas Mähner (00:18:35):
we really like to work with you versus the other 35 people who are reaching out to
Silas Mähner (00:18:39):
us on a regular basis?
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:41):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:42):
I'd say...
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:44):
To keep it simple,
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:44):
probably three or four main differentiators of which I have to be very cognizant of
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:51):
the fact that some competitors were surely claimed these as well.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:54):
The first is the true belief in like automation over.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:58):
services.
Saleh ElHattab (00:18:59):
It doesn't mean that we don't have an incredible white glove services team in our climate strategy.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:04):
The way that we've been able to scale to a hundred customers while only having a
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:07):
couple of people as part of that organization was building a platform that could do
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:11):
things like extract data from stacks of PDFs to API integrations into core systems.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:17):
And so we really pride ourselves on not just kind of claiming that we have,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:21):
but actually wowing organizations with a true automated experience when they get on
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:25):
the platform.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:26):
The second is that we built this for entities with complex physical operations,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:31):
people with boilers,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:32):
peoples with manufacturing lines,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:35):
and being able to not only speak their language,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:37):
but have a product that holds their hand,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:39):
because oftentimes,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:41):
they are up leveling internal talent,
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:43):
right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:43):
This is not somebody who knows the GHC protocol.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:45):
And so we often say that it is a
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:48):
product that's built for your suppliers.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:50):
It's a product that's built for your portfolio companies, not for you.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:53):
You're going to get an incredible value out of it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:19:55):
But this is really built around that industrial operator.
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:00):
The third one is very much the way that we enable distribution.
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:05):
A lot of people have built supply chain engagement tools or portfolio engagement tools and
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:09):
the end of the day they unfortunately come down to kind of surveys that still put
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:14):
the onus on the recipient to do all the legwork and we've built a toolkit that you
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:19):
distribute to your suppliers and your report codes but the last one is the one that
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:23):
i truly don't think anybody has joined with carbon management which is that we have
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:28):
this services marketplace it's not just building a plan it's not just kind of
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:32):
making recommendations it's us
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:35):
increasingly actually facilitating contracting with the vendors who are actually
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:39):
going to execute on this and going kind of end to end on the project.
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:43):
We bake in a lot of value added features into that marketplace,
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:46):
so it's attractive even if you don't care about carbon.
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:50):
We just make it better for you if you're looking to upgrade your HVAC system or
Saleh ElHattab (00:20:53):
electrify your fleet to do it with a one stop shop.
Silas Mähner (00:20:56):
Okay, nice.
Silas Mähner (00:20:57):
So how difficult was it to build a marketplace to ensure,
Silas Mähner (00:21:01):
okay,
Silas Mähner (00:21:01):
we've got the right people on it and also they're open to us doing this?
Silas Mähner (00:21:05):
Because I can assume,
Silas Mähner (00:21:07):
I guess my assumption would be that there's some skepticism for the partners to say,
Silas Mähner (00:21:12):
hey,
Silas Mähner (00:21:12):
I guess we'll go through you to sell our services.
Silas Mähner (00:21:14):
We might want to sell it ourselves because we're better at it.
Silas Mähner (00:21:17):
But what is that like?
Silas Mähner (00:21:19):
What was that like?
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:19):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:21):
was hard, it is hard, it'll continue to be hard.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:24):
So I want to acknowledge that we are not deluding ourselves into thinking it'll be a piece of cake.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:28):
That's part of what attracts us to it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:30):
It's going to be hard to replicate if we nail it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:33):
Your question,
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:34):
though,
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:35):
on the partners,
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:36):
the vendors that effectively deliver these solutions and their appetite to work
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:39):
with us versus selling direct is a common one that we even internally get from the team.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:45):
The reality is that a lot of these OEMs
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:49):
of these original equipment and manufacturers of solutions are used to selling through channels.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:55):
The lion's share of their sales is often not direct sales.
Saleh ElHattab (00:21:58):
Or even if it is that they have a direct sales motion, they still also have a channel sales motion.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:03):
So we're not necessarily going into them and saying,
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:05):
you need to change the way you operate so that you work with us versus doing it yourself.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:10):
We're saying you use channels.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:12):
We're going to be the best one you've ever had.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:14):
I know that you have resellers.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:16):
And they probably are less software enabled.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:18):
They probably have less of a distribution mechanism than a carbon management audience.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:22):
They probably don't marry financial incentives like
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:26):
government subsidies and federal grants that are increasingly becoming available.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:30):
We are going to be a consolidator of all that and treat us just like one of your resellers.
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:34):
But I think that you're going to increasingly want to allocate more resources to us
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:37):
because every dollar you spend with us or every product you give to us,
Saleh ElHattab (00:22:40):
we're going to be able to move faster and with more success.
Silas Mähner (00:22:42):
Yeah, okay.
Silas Mähner (00:22:43):
Got it.
Silas Mähner (00:22:44):
That is interesting.
Silas Mähner (00:22:44):
I think it is,
Silas Mähner (00:22:46):
when we first spoke,
Silas Mähner (00:22:48):
that is the idea specifically that the marketplace that made me think,
Silas Mähner (00:22:51):
okay,
Silas Mähner (00:22:51):
this is definitely different.
Silas Mähner (00:22:53):
what we talked a little bit about identifying when product market fit is there but
Silas Mähner (00:22:58):
can you just talk slightly more in detail around okay this is when we knew we were
Silas Mähner (00:23:04):
we hit xyz and that's when we knew okay this is the right client type because with
Silas Mähner (00:23:08):
these things you have to kind of change things and adjust it so that you have okay
Silas Mähner (00:23:12):
this is how we're going to go focus on our branding our our go-to market who we're
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:16):
going to talk to how we're going to talk to them etc yeah uh kind of a doozy of a
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:21):
question uh and
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:23):
One that I don't know that people will love my answer to.
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:25):
I think I first want to acknowledge that there's a school of thought that product
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:30):
market fit is a checkered flag that you're going to cross and that there's a very
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:36):
systematic way to get there.
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:37):
I think I saw Superhuman had the article about like building a engine to find
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:43):
product market fit and it's very formulaic and it's really impressive.
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:46):
And I acknowledge that that works for many.
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:49):
For me,
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:50):
I think product market fit is more of a metric that continuously highlights how
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:58):
easy it is to sell.
Saleh ElHattab (00:23:59):
And you always want to make things easier to sell.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:02):
And so product market fit is just a measure of how easy it is.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:05):
We are constantly pursuing it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:07):
And when it's really hard to sell,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:09):
we would say we have a very bad product market fit index at this point.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:13):
But even when we got to now a couple of repetitive motions with customers, I would say,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:18):
There's no kind of PMF is in the rear view now.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:21):
It's more like, OK, great.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:22):
How do we make this even easier?
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:24):
What else is missing?
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:25):
And so for us,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:27):
it's kind of going from being in a pure metal detection phase where you're walking
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:32):
around on the beach and trying to hear where it's starting to dig where you found.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:37):
Right.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:37):
And then starting to figure out how to dig faster once you found something while
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:40):
still having other people going around and being like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:42):
what other markets are ready for you?
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:44):
And so for us, I mentioned the SMB push and
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:48):
that was hard to sell.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:49):
Like we got a couple customers,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:50):
but the kind of cost per acquisition,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:53):
the lifetime value,
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:54):
like formulaically just didn't make sense for us to keep doing that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:24:58):
And so when we found traction with industrially focused private equity firms with
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:04):
upper mid market to enterprise manufacturers,
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:07):
and we decided to dig in to make that a more attractive process to them,
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:13):
we didn't think
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:14):
Mission accomplished.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:15):
We were like, OK, great.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:16):
Like, how do we do 10x that with 2x the team?
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:20):
Right.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:20):
How do we do 100x that and enable self-serve purchases, things like that?
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:25):
And so for us, it's increasingly honing in on how to make that easier, but never calling it done.
Silas Mähner (00:25:32):
Got it.
Silas Mähner (00:25:33):
I like that a lot.
Silas Mähner (00:25:33):
I think that's a really interesting way to look at it.
Silas Mähner (00:25:36):
That's helpful.
Silas Mähner (00:25:37):
I want to talk a little bit about talent.
Silas Mähner (00:25:39):
Obviously, my love of everything is around talent.
Silas Mähner (00:25:43):
So I guess you're around 20-ish people now.
Silas Mähner (00:25:46):
How do you think about culture building, especially early on and picking the right people?
Silas Mähner (00:25:50):
I mean,
Silas Mähner (00:25:51):
I happen to know you have a number of people you worked with in the past,
Silas Mähner (00:25:53):
but really curious on how you think about that as you bring in those early people.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:58):
Yeah, yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:59):
Absolutely.
Saleh ElHattab (00:25:59):
Well,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:00):
Twenty is kind of one of those sweet spots where everyone still knows everybody.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:04):
And I don't mean like they've seen them on Slack.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:06):
They know them.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:07):
They've talked to each other and they're buddy buddy.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:09):
And what that means as a blessing is that culture is something that you can fairly
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:15):
quickly assess during the interview process because you're meeting such a
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:18):
significant part of the team.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:19):
And so as an applicant, you're like, oh, I like these people.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:23):
This is actually a really safe space and really cool environment.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:26):
And once they come on to the team,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:28):
it's really easy for everybody to kind of hold the bar on culture.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:32):
And so we have cultural building blocks that we all kind of repeat internally,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:36):
of course,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:37):
things like pragmatism,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:39):
things like pragmatism over activism or humility and all these different kind of
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:45):
shared notions.
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:47):
But more important than any kind of codification of it right now is the fact that
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:51):
we're small enough that we can actually assess like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:54):
does every person here fit the culture or is anybody potentially letting the
Saleh ElHattab (00:26:58):
culture run unsupervised in a direction that we don't want and we can correct for
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:01):
it quickly.
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:03):
I'll say the next phase of our growth,
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:05):
we're going to have to be a lot more systematic about both evangelizing what that
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:08):
culture is and being able to detect internally when somebody is detrimental to the
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:14):
overall kind of ethos of the team.
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:17):
So I expect us to have more of that kind of constitutional what makes us tick
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:22):
in the next chapter.
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:23):
But so far,
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:24):
it's been one of those things where the culture is the team,
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:28):
the team is the culture,
Saleh ElHattab (00:27:29):
and we can kind of handpick the people to make sure that we continue that.
Silas Mähner (00:27:32):
Yeah.
Silas Mähner (00:27:34):
Are there any specific principles that you tend to guide what you do by,
Silas Mähner (00:27:39):
especially as you continue to grow into the next phase?
Silas Mähner (00:27:41):
Like,
Silas Mähner (00:27:42):
I think this is something that is not necessarily easy per se,
Silas Mähner (00:27:47):
but when the company is earlier or smaller,
Silas Mähner (00:27:49):
it's not as difficult because you can kind of get by without necessarily having principles.
Silas Mähner (00:27:53):
But as you grow, I mean, you've been part of a larger team, right?
Silas Mähner (00:27:56):
So I'd be curious if you have any particular principles that you look at for growth
Silas Mähner (00:28:00):
of the team and managing culture as you go to the next phase from your past experience.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:06):
I think the pragmatism one is massive, and it's such a weighted word.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:09):
I think everybody on the team is sick of me saying it,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:12):
but a lot of it's rooted in,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:14):
like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:14):
honestly,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:15):
a crowded space where sometimes pragmatism goes at the wayside because it's a very
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:19):
attractive and very,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:20):
for many,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:21):
like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:21):
emotionally driven participation,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:23):
right?
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:24):
The place is...
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:26):
But we share this earth is getting hotter and it's causing a lot of bad things to happen.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:29):
Right.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:30):
And so a lot of for profit entities right now exist,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:36):
albeit being less centric on like value and a return on investment.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:42):
And so for us,
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:43):
pragmatism is so critical because we need people to come in here and have a very
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:47):
value obsessed mindset to how they work.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:50):
Every dollar we take from somebody cannot be to give them a sticker that says that
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:55):
they are carbon neutral and that's it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:28:57):
Every dollar that we take from them cannot be just for marketing sake.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:00):
It needs to come back as $5 in energy savings.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:03):
It needs to come back as a labor arbitrage where they're no longer spending as much
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:08):
time measuring their carbon.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:10):
And so pragmatism as it pertains to both making sure that you're prioritizing value
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:16):
When you're talking to organizations,
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:17):
making sure that you're cognizant of why they may or may not be participating in
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:21):
something is one of our kind of core entities.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:24):
The other one of this one's cheesy is kindness.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:27):
And a lot of times people interpret kindness as a commentary on being sweet and bubbly with folks.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:33):
And believe you me, I'm very welcoming of that attribute on the team.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:38):
But we actually use the example with kindness of it's unkind not to tell somebody
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:43):
if there's something in their teeth.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:45):
The point here is that kindness is constructive criticism.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:50):
It's letting somebody know when they're not doing something right.
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:53):
It's highlighting where they are doing something right and building a culture
Saleh ElHattab (00:29:57):
around being the first internally to call out our shortcomings rather than letting
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:01):
somebody else do it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:03):
And so it's probably a rebrand of the term,
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:06):
but it's very much how we think,
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:08):
which is like if we build a culture of being okay to receive that feedback and give it,
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:12):
we're going to be a lot better for it.
Silas Mähner (00:30:15):
Yeah, I liked it a lot.
Silas Mähner (00:30:16):
I think it's super important because you can't self-correct any issues if you don't
Silas Mähner (00:30:21):
have that willingness.
Silas Mähner (00:30:22):
And even one person being unwilling to do that in a team can be really,
Silas Mähner (00:30:25):
really difficult for the entire team because you kind of just put this random
Silas Mähner (00:30:29):
pillar in the middle of everywhere and everybody's going to keep walking around it eventually.
Silas Mähner (00:30:33):
And before they know it, it really starts to collect dust and cause an issue.
Silas Mähner (00:30:37):
Out of curiosity,
Silas Mähner (00:30:38):
for you more personally,
Silas Mähner (00:30:40):
what are some of the habits that you have developed over the years that help you
Silas Mähner (00:30:44):
stay focused or that you would attribute to being core to some of your success?
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:49):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:30:50):
I would say I'm definitely not an exemplary demonstration of work-life balance, but I am very much...
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:01):
believer of time to unwind so exercise is really important to me and whether
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:06):
exercise is running marathons for you or meditating or some sort of reprieve i
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:12):
highly recommend something that is more focused on the body than just the mind
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:15):
because of that symbiosis but i also unwind with watching a show at the end of the
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:20):
day reading and transparently frequenting
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:25):
comedy clubs in New York City probably too much as an attendee, not as a performer.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:29):
And for me, that's really critical.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:32):
I think being able to turn off is actually a big part of being able to show up 100% the rest of the time.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:39):
And so things that really take me away from it help my brain go somewhere completely different.
Silas Mähner (00:31:43):
Any particular books that you would say have been really influential in your life,
Silas Mähner (00:31:46):
regardless if it's recent or in the past?
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:49):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:50):
I'm a big Andy Grove fan, I think.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:53):
A lot of his books come to mind.
Saleh ElHattab (00:31:55):
I think High Output Management is a big one, and that's a really cheesy business book.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:02):
Maybe to go in another direction, though, I really liked Ender's Game, a sci-fi novel from a while back.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:08):
Orson Scott Card wrote it,
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:10):
and that one was really empowering for me because it was this young teenager who
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:14):
got tasked with
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:16):
saving the world and it didn't come off as like some cheesy superhero novel,
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:19):
but rather like the true psychological toll and the heaviness of that.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:23):
So.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:25):
Somewhere in between those two books, I would say there's something to glean.
Silas Mähner (00:32:28):
Nice.
Silas Mähner (00:32:29):
I have to start reading more sci-fi.
Silas Mähner (00:32:31):
I realize that a lot of founders read this stuff,
Silas Mähner (00:32:33):
and I put that all behind me after I graduated,
Silas Mähner (00:32:36):
and I started reading mostly practical stuff.
Silas Mähner (00:32:38):
But what's next for the company?
Silas Mähner (00:32:41):
What are you looking forward to?
Silas Mähner (00:32:42):
What are the big challenges that lie ahead of you in the next,
Silas Mähner (00:32:44):
let's say,
Silas Mähner (00:32:44):
six to 12 months,
Silas Mähner (00:32:45):
the things that you're really getting ready to overcome?
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:48):
Yeah.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:50):
Well, we grew about 400% last year from a revenue perspective, and this year we're trying to do it again.
Saleh ElHattab (00:32:55):
So the next 12 months are going to be an incredible sprinted marathon.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:01):
I'm spending a lot of time actually scaling that sales team right now or
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:05):
accordingly preparing the rest of the organization for that influx of customers.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:09):
And so I anticipate the next 12 months are going to be very formative as we go from
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:14):
the 1 to 10 of our lifecycle.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:15):
Really, really get excited about hardening the marketplace and migrating from the first
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:22):
handful of massive wins we've had with customers to something that anybody and
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:26):
everybody can start to evangelize as part of working with us.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:30):
And so making that marketplace increasingly a software streamlined experience is
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:36):
something that I'm really excited for.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:37):
And then lastly,
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:39):
like there's just a different air at the company than there was two years ago,
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:44):
where I won't say we're out of the garage,
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:46):
but there's just a lot more.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:50):
There's
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:50):
more product, there's more customer, there's more real to it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:54):
And so I'm excited to retain the customers that have trusted us in this first chapter.
Saleh ElHattab (00:33:59):
We've been really lucky from a net revenue retention and kind of overall churn perspective.
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:04):
Our customers are really happy, but we're onboarding bigger ones.
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:07):
We're onboarding more of them.
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:08):
It was really easy to make five customers happy with 20 people.
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:12):
Can we make a hundred customers happy with 20?
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:14):
And so the last thing is like,
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:16):
really making sure that we don't only focus on the next one,
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:19):
but figuring out how to keep the ones that we have with maybe the asterisk of the
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:24):
ones that we want to maintain after learning more about who's the right customer
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:28):
for us.
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:29):
And so this next 12 months is going to be juggling seven balls of growing the company,
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:33):
maintaining the happiness with customers,
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:35):
launching the new product line,
Saleh ElHattab (00:34:37):
and doing it while still getting to watch some comedy in New York.
Silas Mähner (00:34:42):
yes uh that's good i guess just last final thing if you if you have any ideas uh
Silas Mähner (00:34:47):
broadly speaking you know there's still a lot to be done there's still a lot of
Silas Mähner (00:34:51):
things that can be solved are there any particular uh startup ideas that you have
Silas Mähner (00:34:55):
or things you'd say if i was forced to quit today and go do something else you know
Silas Mähner (00:34:59):
these are the things that are really interesting to me and why yeah uh within the
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:02):
climate sector yeah within climate okay because i was going to say we
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:07):
I have a media literacy issue that we need to work on as well, but I'll save that for another podcast.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:13):
On the climate side, there's so much.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:16):
First,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:18):
I shouldn't say it because I don't want more competitors necessarily within the
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:23):
carbon management space,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:24):
but there aren't any clear winners here.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:26):
There are a lot of folks increasingly getting closer to being one of the many
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:32):
winners that are going to happen in this space,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:33):
but carbon management is still nascent.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:35):
The fact of the matter is the lion's share of the companies that came out of the
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:38):
carbon management push were born in the last three years.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:40):
So that's still a big opportunity.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:43):
Capital will be harder, but nonetheless, it's a big one.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:45):
Outside of that,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:46):
though,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:46):
there are so many parts of the decarbonization journeys for these companies that
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:52):
still need the cost curve to come down,
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:54):
that still need like raw innovation.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:56):
that I wish that I could be more capable of.
Saleh ElHattab (00:35:59):
I wish I'd studied chemical engineering or fusion and everything else.
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:02):
I've kind of mentioned it.
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:03):
But look at the hard tech companies.
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:05):
And even if you don't have a hard tech background, only a handful of people at those companies need to.
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:10):
There's going to be the other traditional roles of strategy, of software, of product that are available.
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:17):
And so whether you want to go join one of those firms or start one,
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:20):
they are still very hungry and there's a lot of capital and a lot of opportunity
Saleh ElHattab (00:36:25):
still there.
Silas Mähner (00:36:25):
Yeah, I like that.
Silas Mähner (00:36:26):
I'm always curious to ask people this question because it's difficult.
Silas Mähner (00:36:29):
You have to focus on the problem that you're solving.
Silas Mähner (00:36:31):
If you see a problem that's not solved for your customers,
Silas Mähner (00:36:34):
you have to debate whether or not it's inside of your bucket to even bother trying
Silas Mähner (00:36:38):
to solve.
Silas Mähner (00:36:39):
And if it's not, you've got to say, hey, can somebody else go solve this?
Silas Mähner (00:36:42):
There's a huge opportunity here and it's causing pain for other people.
Silas Mähner (00:36:45):
I wonder if someday there'll be,
Silas Mähner (00:36:47):
I mean,
Silas Mähner (00:36:48):
maybe not because people are very precious about the ideas and opportunities,
Silas Mähner (00:36:51):
but I wonder if there'll be a mechanism because climate is not just about making
Silas Mähner (00:36:57):
startups and making money out of it.
Silas Mähner (00:36:58):
It's obviously we have to solve this problem.
Silas Mähner (00:37:00):
So I wonder if there'll be a mechanism to identify problems to help say,
Silas Mähner (00:37:03):
okay,
Silas Mähner (00:37:04):
this is like very clearly people are trying to solve this and they're willing to
Silas Mähner (00:37:07):
pay for it,
Silas Mähner (00:37:08):
but it's super inefficient.
Silas Mähner (00:37:09):
Here's this big list of problems entrepreneurs go have at it, right?
Silas Mähner (00:37:13):
what we'll make happen yeah um but maybe maybe this is my utopian view of
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:17):
entrepreneurship yeah yeah i mean it does happen uh it isn't the norm but it does
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:22):
happen i mean we've seen and the name is fraught in different audiences now but
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:27):
hyperloop was a white paper that was put out by elon musk i'm not building it
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:31):
here's the papers right and uh increasingly i think people recognize that it's
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:37):
better to build than to
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:39):
Gatekeep.
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:40):
So more open source, more public kind of discussion.
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:44):
All these things are going to be fun.
Silas Mähner (00:37:45):
Absolutely.
Silas Mähner (00:37:46):
Hopefully we're doing a good job with that on the pod here.
Silas Mähner (00:37:47):
But anyways,
Silas Mähner (00:37:48):
man,
Silas Mähner (00:37:48):
any last things you want to mention,
Silas Mähner (00:37:50):
calls to action,
Silas Mähner (00:37:51):
where people can reach you before we wrap up?
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:53):
Yeah, there's so many audiences that I hope are listening here that are relevant for us to speak to.
Saleh ElHattab (00:37:59):
So one, if you're looking for a job in climate, we're hiring people.
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:03):
and we are somewhere at the sweet spot of a software platform that is going to move
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:07):
quickly but gets to actually put on those steel-toed boots and get physical world
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:12):
stuff done as well.
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:13):
Separately,
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:14):
if you are a large corporate or you're a private equity firm or you're the industrial,
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:19):
we can help you with your or your supply chains or portfolios emissions.
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:22):
Please reach out.
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:24):
And otherwise,
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:24):
if you're in New York and you're looking for comedy recommendations,
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:27):
you know where to find me.
Silas Mähner (00:38:28):
Very nice, man.
Silas Mähner (00:38:30):
I'll be coming back for a visit pretty soon.
Silas Mähner (00:38:31):
We'll have to grab a coffee when I'm back.
Silas Mähner (00:38:33):
But awesome, man.
Silas Mähner (00:38:34):
This has been a pleasure to have you on and looking forward to putting this out in the world.
Saleh ElHattab (00:38:38):
Thanks so much, Silas.
Silas Mähner (00:38:41):
All right, everybody, thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode.
Silas Mähner (00:38:44):
Welcome to the takeaway section.
Silas Mähner (00:38:46):
There's three,
Silas Mähner (00:38:47):
again,
Silas Mähner (00:38:47):
as usual,
Silas Mähner (00:38:47):
three main things that were really worth bringing up for me in this section from
Silas Mähner (00:38:52):
today's podcast with Salah.
Silas Mähner (00:38:55):
The first one is,
Silas Mähner (00:38:56):
despite there being a lot of people in this space,
Silas Mähner (00:38:59):
in this kind of carbon tracking and reporting space,
Silas Mähner (00:39:02):
he's very bullish on the need to build a good product that will genuinely serve the customers.
Silas Mähner (00:39:07):
And some could say this is maybe kind of just delusion,
Silas Mähner (00:39:11):
but I think that what to me it stands out is that it's really,
Silas Mähner (00:39:14):
really deep self-belief in one's ability to do something better than other people
Silas Mähner (00:39:20):
and really,
Silas Mähner (00:39:21):
really pursuing that with a lot of effort and intentionality.
Silas Mähner (00:39:26):
Obviously, it's very difficult as you build a team to make sure that everybody has that self-belief.
Silas Mähner (00:39:30):
But his kind of focus on recognizing,
Silas Mähner (00:39:32):
okay,
Silas Mähner (00:39:33):
yes,
Silas Mähner (00:39:33):
there's people who are early winners,
Silas Mähner (00:39:35):
but nobody has really,
Silas Mähner (00:39:36):
really solved this problem for these particular people.
Silas Mähner (00:39:41):
And I just really appreciated that because it's very difficult to be in these spaces.
Silas Mähner (00:39:46):
And it came across that he was really, like, genuinely confident in what they're doing.
Silas Mähner (00:39:50):
So I like that a lot.
Silas Mähner (00:39:51):
Secondly, with confidence as well.
Silas Mähner (00:39:55):
Sala also has a lot of humility in acknowledging that he wasn't the right fit.
Silas Mähner (00:39:59):
He wasn't the right founder for a particular problem that had to be solved,
Silas Mähner (00:40:03):
especially when he was debating,
Silas Mähner (00:40:04):
you know,
Silas Mähner (00:40:04):
what can I do in industrial decarbonization to actually help with climate change?
Silas Mähner (00:40:08):
There were some things he said no to because it wasn't really in his wheelhouse.
Silas Mähner (00:40:12):
And I think along the same line,
Silas Mähner (00:40:13):
there's a lot of these technical founders who,
Silas Mähner (00:40:15):
unlike Sala,
Silas Mähner (00:40:16):
do go into this space.
Silas Mähner (00:40:17):
Like they have the technical chops to do it.
Silas Mähner (00:40:20):
But what happens is as they grow,
Silas Mähner (00:40:22):
they really fail to recognize the missing gaps in what they can't do to bring in
Silas Mähner (00:40:28):
partners or other team members who can help them solve those problems and i think
Silas Mähner (00:40:32):
just having this level of humility as a founder is extremely important because we
Silas Mähner (00:40:36):
cannot be precious about our feelings or all these deep details when we're trying
Silas Mähner (00:40:40):
to solve the climate crisis we need to work very hard and get the right people in
Silas Mähner (00:40:43):
place to make it happen it's not it's not about our egos or it definitely shouldn't
Silas Mähner (00:40:47):
be if it is you know you're probably not in it for the right reason so
Silas Mähner (00:40:51):
That would be just a takeaway I had, if you will, to other founders.
Silas Mähner (00:40:55):
Just really acknowledge where you have gaps and be willing to go and bring other
Silas Mähner (00:41:00):
people in to help you solve those.
Silas Mähner (00:41:01):
And then thirdly,
Silas Mähner (00:41:02):
his focus on ensuring that the team,
Silas Mähner (00:41:05):
that everybody who joins the team has this pragmatism and kindness.
Silas Mähner (00:41:09):
I would reword how he said kindness.
Silas Mähner (00:41:11):
I mean,
Silas Mähner (00:41:11):
that's his choice of words,
Silas Mähner (00:41:12):
but the way I would kind of reconstruct it would be willingness to give
Silas Mähner (00:41:17):
constructive feedback.
Silas Mähner (00:41:19):
This is important because the team needs to constantly improve and grow.
Silas Mähner (00:41:23):
And you can't do that if people aren't willing to speak up and say,
Silas Mähner (00:41:26):
hey,
Silas Mähner (00:41:26):
listen,
Silas Mähner (00:41:26):
like,
Silas Mähner (00:41:27):
I really don't think that's right.
Silas Mähner (00:41:28):
Here's why.
Silas Mähner (00:41:29):
And do it in a good way, in a kind way, to use his words, right?
Silas Mähner (00:41:33):
So those are three things I really liked.
Silas Mähner (00:41:36):
A kind of bullishness on the space.
Silas Mähner (00:41:38):
The...
Silas Mähner (00:41:39):
humility of the founder or the recognition of the gaps for the founder.
Silas Mähner (00:41:43):
And then the focus on team and constructive feedback and making sure that we're
Silas Mähner (00:41:48):
really being quite frank with ourselves about what's going on and what we got to do.
Silas Mähner (00:41:51):
So that's all for today.
Silas Mähner (00:41:53):
Thanks so much.
Silas Mähner (00:41:54):
And we'll see you next time on the Clean Techies podcast.
