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CleanTechies
#229 How to Make Money on Pilot Projects w/ Martin Schichtel (KRAFTBLOCK)
On today’s episode, we’re speaking with Martin Schichtel, the CEO and Founder of Kraftblock, a thermal energy storage solution for industrial clients that use high heat.
Today, they’re delivering their 5th project. All of which have been paid for by their customers — yep, you read that right. They have not used equity to pay for these pilot and demonstration projects.
Their tech takes excess heat or electricity and turns it into heat, stores it in these engineered rocks. When demand is needed, they deliver the power. Reliable and affordable energy storage is the key to the energy transition.
Get the full episode today to hear….
**How they managed to get their customers to pay for their pilots and demonstration projects
**The role consumer demand for cleanly produced products is having on the world
**The importance of validating the idea WITH CUSTOMERS before you build your pilot
**The energy storage landscape globally
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📺 Watch on YouTube
Topics
(time stamps are accurate for the full episode and approximate for the free preview)
**00:00 Market Education and Heat Storage Innovations
**03:08 The Journey of Kraft Block and Its Technology
**05:51 Transitioning from Technical to Commercial
**09:12 Understanding the Customer Base and Revenue Models
**11:56 Global Demand for Clean Products
**15:11 The Evolution of Thermal Energy Storage
**18:07 Prototyping and Development Challenges
**20:57 The Current State of Energy Storage Industry
**24:08 Market Conditions Driving Change
**26:52 Sustainability and Waste Management in Technology
**28:44 Innovative Material Development for Energy Storage
**31:59 Validation Principles for Hardware Startups
**35:07 Funding Strategies for Hardware Projects
—(Free Version ends here)—
**39:41 Building Trust in Hardware Industries
**42:30 Navigating Speed to Market in Hardware
**45:22 Climate Tech Trends and Political Influences
**49:58 Future of Energy Storage and Startup Opportunities
**53:52 Underrated Climate Founders and Resources
Links
**Martin Schichtel | KRAFTBLOCK
**Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn
**William Kamkwamba (the CleanTech OG that Martin would love to have dinner with)
This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.
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Silas Mähner (00:00)
Alright, welcome to the show, Martin. How you doing today?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (00:03)
I am wonderful today. Thanks a lot.
Silas Mähner (00:06)
Yeah, really excited to have you on. Where are you calling in from today exactly?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (00:09)
I'm calling it from Germany, so exactly southwest of Germany, close to the border of France and Luxembourg.
Silas Mähner (00:15)
Very nice. hear that's a pretty area, Yeah. Very good. That's good. Yeah. I've never traveled to Germany yet. I've actually planned to go there a couple of times, but my plans always got thwarted. someday I will go there.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (00:18)
yeah, it's wonderful. Also for doing business, right? Excellent work.
yeah. So
if you love hiking and biking, perfect in bio-media.
Silas Mähner (00:34)
Sounds good. good. awesome. Well, I guess to start us off, like the first question we like to ask is who is one kind of clean techie or clean tech OG that you would love to, to have dinner with.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (00:46)
Yeah, tough question at the beginning. So there are different ones. I'm thinking about Bill Gates or Pilar Cruz from Cargill, which are pretty, pretty great in that sector. But I think tonight I would go for William Kavanmarva, probably better known than Malavi Windmill Guy. Pretty old story, but actually I was inspired listening to that story, building a windmill from waste parts in order to leverage an SSD in the communities and the upliftment of the communities in Malavi itself.
I think a wonderful guy to talk to tonight.
Silas Mähner (01:18)
Interesting. That is definitely a name I've not heard before. I'll have to look into it. Tell us, guess, a little bit about your background and your journey into climate in general then as well.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (01:29)
Yeah, I love to do so. So my background is studied chemistry a long while ago, took PhD in nanotechnology and more left all of my life I was involved somehow in thermal processes. So spending my time in companies, developing thermal coatings improve furnace efficiencies or anti-stick coatings for slags and flue gas streams. So I always have seen a lot of temperature, a lot of heat, a lot of waste heat to be very honest, but never thought about
making use of it, right? It was not my job at that point in time, but it took me from being a chemist to a sales guy to what's more and more in thermodynamics and thinking about heat. That's how it came up.
Silas Mähner (02:10)
Interesting. So I guess you have a PhD in chemistry, as you mentioned, and also nanotechnology, I think. so just broadly a very, very technical background, but you now find yourself as the founder and CEO of a company, a fast growing climate tech startup. I'm kind of curious, what's your advice to highly technical people who do want to follow in that footsteps of eventually going towards more of the commercial side? Like what influenced you to feel comfortable doing this at some point?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (02:33)
Yeah, actually, I also had a basic education in economics. So I've taken my PhD. I was also doing my bachelor in economics because I knew if I want to do a career in the industry anyway, I have to understand the economics, have to understand money and what it means to deal with it. So I already had a good basic knowledge. But actually, think entrepreneurship means always you have to get a clue upon how to earn money, how to drive the company to the next level because you
need money again to take the next steps as well. So somehow, even if you build a tech company, you are well associated with money. And either you did at university or ideally also by a kind of training, whatever it is. mean, there are enough trainings that are offered from various universities in front of house.
Silas Mähner (03:21)
Yeah. So there's basically get some kind of exposure to the money side of things and how things work. And that should probably take you in the right direction. Yeah. Sounds about right. I think it's very difficult sometimes when you're early in your career, you already had a hard enough time picking what technical degree to focus on it. Then you're like, okay, what's next? Right. But yeah, what is on this topic of career pieces? Like what is one piece of advice that you got early on in your career that really stuck with you and you think that kind of formed you as you were developed?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (03:26)
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, actually, that would be a quote from a good friend of mine who is in the insolvency business. taught me at a very early time in German, it's like, translating a little bit like thinking about wealth hinders the ability to think. And I think that's pretty clear. If you just think about the money, you never think about intellectual creative thoughts. So you cannot develop anything.
If you put it in the background and just focus on the work that you are doing, on the skills that you have to take it to the next level, money will come anyway. So do stop thinking about money, think about the tech you want to develop and money will follow.
Silas Mähner (04:30)
I love that. My, my Godfather is actually German. So I've heard some of these things and I'm always, I'm a very big fan of the English translation of these, these, German things. They're always quite, quite funny to me. so I guess tell us, let's get into the technology, right? So tell us a little bit about what your technology is and just kind of a very simple terms and how it works.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (04:37)
It's how.
Yeah. So simply speaking, our technology is the thermal energy storage system that was developed to decarbonize various industries and increase energy efficiency. At the end, it's nothing else but a hot stone, extremely smart, extremely well developed to store thermal energy, release thermal energy. And we connect this stone with different types of charging and discharging options. So you can use waste heat, can use renewable electricity or concentrated solar power to charge it.
And on the discharging side, just question what type of energy does the customer need? Is it back to heat or back to electrification? So it's a fully modularized set up to have maximum flexibility.
Silas Mähner (05:26)
Interesting. you can discharge it as either heat or electricity. I guess, is the project, are these all project-based or modular-based type of products?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (05:37)
To be very honest, both at the moment. At the moment it's more project based because it's a quite young industry at the moment. It's not fully mature, so you have to develop a first project. What we at least do is based on this first project, we standardize it and from that point in time on it's just a modular concept that we can deploy with many customers.
Silas Mähner (05:55)
Yeah, because obviously you need to get to the point where you can scale, right? And just kind of drop them off and plug it in. mean, obviously it's not just that easy, but you need to make it as easy as possible for mass adoption, right? At the point where you're at now, I guess, what is the risk, right? Is it mostly engineering risk at this point to scale up to the large scale or is it science risk? It sounds like you've already sorted most of that out.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (05:59)
second.
Yeah, so it is.
No.
Actually, risk, is no science risk anymore. So that's what we did in the past last 10 years. But engineering risk, there's always an engineering risk, especially if you want to build and scale a modular system. are interface challenges you do have either on customer side or from the charging side towards the utilities.
But basically, it's state of the art. So we do not invent a power to heat system. It's already existing, right? But we do need to know how do we combine it with our storage solution to deploy the energy to our customers. And the same for the project base. It's project business. So we have the typical EPC risks, right? So that's the issue. It's not the science.
Silas Mähner (06:53)
Mm-hmm.
Got it. Yeah. It's always good to get to that point because then it's a little bit easier for investors to jump in, Not as behind the sky ideas, right? And then can you just talk about who are your customers? It sounds like you've got a wide variety, but who are your customers and what's the revenue model?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (07:03)
Absolutely, yeah, it is.
Yeah, so basically customers across different industries. do have customers in the ceramics industry where we deployed our first storages and they already ordered another storage for the same factory. So something went right. So we did it. We did the right developments, but also in the steel industry, in the food industry from next year on, also chemical industry, pretty pro setup. And that's basically due to our storage platform, know, storage and combine it with different charging and discharging options to serve the customer needs.
So we can deploy one storage in multiple options, multiple sites as well. And revenue model till 31st of December 2024, it's just customer owned systems. So selling the technology to the customer, selling the storage to the customer. From January next year on, we are also offering leasing models, rent models, heat as a service models to make it a little bit easier for the customer to deploy the systems.
Silas Mähner (08:10)
Yeah, because I can imagine there's just some customers who may be interested, but they just can't finance it upfront, right?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (08:16)
Yeah, the upfront financing is some topics, some issues, of course. You'd have the operational risk. You do have maintenance. You do have services. And if we offer this in a bundle to the customer, it should be easier for them to install those systems.
Silas Mähner (08:31)
Yeah, got it. And then what are guess the customers doing now to solve the problem? Is there something they're trying to employ at the moment to solve this issue?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (08:41)
They think about various technologies on the market today, So thermal energy storage is one of them. You do have heat pumps for other applications. You have hydrogen. You do have direct electrification. So meanwhile, they are popping up a lot of technologies a customer might be able to use. But basically, most of our customers still use the fossil fuel, so gas or even oil. Worst case, it's coal. And they need to rethink.
those systems independently from their ESG goals or climate goals. There is also, let's say, the push from the market. The final customer wants to have more sustainable products, so they cannot stick at the old work. They have to convert, and our solution is one of them.
Silas Mähner (09:25)
Interesting so you're saying from regulatory perspective but also the end user perspective they just want to buy things that are produced with renewables for example. Okay is that is that something you're you guys have clients throughout the world or primarily in Europe.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (09:32)
Yes, exactly. That's strong hands.
No, no, for example, we are executing one project which is in the commissioning phase in India at the moment Europe of course with PepsiCo, Enico in the Netherlands but also approaching projects in Australia and South America as well. across the world
Silas Mähner (09:55)
So are you seeing that same, let's call it customer side demand to have the clean products everywhere in the world or is that just a European thing?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (10:03)
No, it's not just a European thing. think that's a business worldwide, a business that is growing worldwide. Especially if you think about South America, for example, Chile, Brazil, they are strongly increasing their renewables deployment. There is cheap electricity in the market. So you can use the electricity to electrify your process heat demand as well and get rid of importing gas or coke from other countries as well.
Silas Mähner (10:26)
Mm-hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (10:29)
which is also beneficial for the commonwealth of the country itself. So there are some triggers how companies but also countries approach the green business.
Silas Mähner (10:41)
Yeah, I'm kind of curious to see how as countries develop and these new technologies are more like proven and available if they can just skip the whole, you know, dirty fuels first and go straight to clean things.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (10:53)
Yeah, if you're going back, if we just would split, which is not true anymore, into developed countries and not developed countries so far, those emerging countries, they have the chance actually to jump over the fossil decade, right? Because new solutions are available at the moment, and they immediately could install PV, they could install wind, they could install the renewable generation for all their processes. They will build in future.
And I think this will be one of the, let's say large milestones also in the fight against climate change. If they step up and take already the next step before they take into account the gas or fossil fuels, the world itself.
Silas Mähner (11:25)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think it's always going to be a matter of talent, right? Can you get the right people who know how to do these things who are willing to go to those places and do it? Because there's a plethora of, you know, oil and gas talent out there. That's probably, you know, part of the reason why it's easier for them to, find those people to develop those technologies.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (11:45)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Brings me back to the guy I want to have for dinner tonight, William, because he educated himself and built his windmill made from scrap, literally from scrap over there. But it's like you said, right? So if you think about the future, if you think about education, that's the way to go. Yeah.
Silas Mähner (11:55)
Mm-hmm.
And then what scale are you guys at today in terms of how many deliveries you're doing, how many projects you've built?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (12:11)
Yeah, we deliver now the fifth product or the fifth project to customers, which means finally we are on the scale of like 22 megawatt charging, 150 megawatt of storage capacity. Roughly like this, the deployments that we start next in the engineering phase will already four times larger than what we deployed today. But I think that's a typical approach in.
Silas Mähner (12:30)
Mm-hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (12:35)
basically plant engineering and constructions, right? Because you have to prove it in small scale. You are allowed to take the next step to go to the next scale and so on. That's what I find a little bit pity in that business, right? Instead of going full scale immediately, now we have to prove several steps before you are allowed to do it, yes.
Silas Mähner (12:53)
Prove it, yeah.
Yeah, but obviously once other people see your technology working elsewhere, I think they'll be much less concerned about that. So I just want to make sure I recap this and back up. So broadly speaking, you have a thermal technology, meaning you, with your own kind of invention of storage, maybe you could explain that slightly more. You've got different synthetic materials that can store energy really, really well. Maybe before I continue, you want to maybe dive into that just slightly more, like how you ended up coming up with that specific.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (13:02)
Yeah, absolutely.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It is. Definitely is. And there's also a longer story behind. It's a little bit of the funding story of CraftBlock. I told that I was in the heat business anyway, but with other applications, not the heat applications directly. So it was always in the under-conscious. There is waste heat. How can we use it?
Silas Mähner (13:24)
kind of mixture of technologies. I'm assuming it's a mixture of materials.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (13:48)
And in 2008, pretty long while ago, I saw a TV report about a storage made, heat storage made of concrete. And so I said, well, cool idea, cheap material. You can cast in any shape. It's available worldwide. But why do they just pretend that it's a 500 degrees C? So 500 degrees C in the world I have been living was warm up temperature. It was not high temperature. So I just called the developers and asked them
Why are you limited with the temperature profile in concrete? We discussed. And if I translate it to the modern times now, would say at that point in time, I didn't watch Netflix series, but took a typical scientific approach. What is the problem? How did people try to solve it? What can be done differently? And that's how it went till I came up with a materials composition that was not known before in that sense, which was
at least on paper, more effective, even cheaper than concrete. so basically KraftBox started. It was just scientific curiosity.
Silas Mähner (14:51)
Got Okay, so we'll get into that in a little bit more here, but just to kind of recap my point here. So what you guys do is you kind of mix these different materials, you turn it into effectively a large heat sink for different industrial customers and they currently pay you upfront to install these systems and then they can use that as an energy storage system so they can charge it in various ways, using cheap electricity or whatnot, and then discharge it for their own processes, whether that is electricity or heat.
at the time of use and you currently do it on a project basis, but you will be going to a modular kind of scaled up production at some point as you guys continue to refine the technology. And as you mentioned, also starting next year, the way you make money is also through leasing or heat as a service. Is that correct?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (15:34)
Yeah, perfect. Perfect summary.
Silas Mähner (15:35)
Cool.
Cool. So back to that origin story, because that is really interesting. guess, tell us, how did you, once you started kind of picking out this idea, what did it look like to come up with a prototype? Were you just working on this in your garage? What did it look like?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (15:50)
I would love to have developed things in the garage, but unfortunately we do have lot of regulations in Germany, so garage would not have been the right point. Now, I really got a very good offer from a start-up center at the University in Saarbrücken, which means we just had to pay for the office space and little bit our own lab, but we're able to use the equipment of the university as well.
Silas Mähner (15:54)
Yeah.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (16:14)
So not necessarily buying our own electronic microscope or measurement systems for viscosity or what else it is. We could use equipment as it was there and that definitely helps to further develop the storage material, or evaluate the materials data, do a lot of testing of the material before we released it. Basically, if you're in material science, you already can, let's call it pre-calculate the
the characteristics of a material. I already could calculate what is the potential storage capacity, what is the potential conductivity of the storage material, what would be the surface area of pellets of honeycomb system, whatever it is. So basically using all the natural-based science I learned before, I could integrate in this process. That's why I said before starting the company, the material was fully developed on paper. So we just had to turn it into reality, into a real product.
And that's what we did during the first four to five years of our company's life. So building the material, optimizing the material, designing the whole storage system, testing the full storage system at lab scale. But whilst doing this, we had a lot of customer conversations at that point. to develop our storage to the needs of the customer and not to the vision that we had about the product, because the vision is completely different.
Silas Mähner (17:18)
Mm-hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (17:41)
probably will deliver the product that I had in mind 10 years ago in 10 years and not now. But finally, you have to sell it, you have to generate cash flow, so you need to stick to the needs of your customer. And that's what we did in the first five years, to have a tailored product for the market.
Silas Mähner (18:01)
So were you still working for somebody else at the time or did you have to fully commit to this for that long period of development?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (18:09)
No, basically after this pre-development on paper, I fully committed to the development of CraftBlock or building CraftBlock directly.
Silas Mähner (18:17)
So the development on paper was prior to getting into the university to do some testing. okay. Okay. Got it. Understood. So interesting. I really liked that. think it's, it's to me always challenging for people to understand how it looks to start a hardware company. You can't just, you know, it's, it's, it's easier with, software. can just go talk to customers, right? And you can do that on your weekends and spare time and make sure, okay, we've got it. Now let's go build the software, right? It's not.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (18:21)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
It is.
Silas Mähner (18:41)
the same thing when there's science risk involved. I really appreciate you telling the story. hope people will be encouraged to find ways to do that themselves as well. So let's talk a little bit about the energy landscape, energy storage landscape in general. So we kind of alluded to it, but just as a primer for listeners, most people will be familiar. The whole problem that we have right now with using renewables is a lot of it's intermittent. So the sun is always shining or the wind is always blowing and people need to store the energy so they can use it at the other times when it's not.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (18:49)
Me too.
Silas Mähner (19:09)
And there's a lot of different people trying to build energy storage from a heat perspective, maybe from a weight perspective or lithium ion batteries. I guess getting that cost of storage down low is what's going to allow people to have renewables at all times. So I guess with that, tell us what is the kind of current state of this storage industry globally? And what are some of the solutions people are trying and the summary of those pros and cons of each?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (19:33)
Yeah, basically, if I would give my summary over last 10 years, what was really growing and getting really good is the market education. When we started the company, I was talking to customers about high temperature energy storages. They said, cool, great, another 120 degrees C hot water storage. I said, no, I'm thinking more about 800, 1,000, 1,200 degrees C system. How would you do this?
But today, even if we get inbound requests at GraphBlock, they are already pre-qualified. We know exactly what process it is, what type of energy they're using today, how they want to evolve to the next stage. So the market education grew pretty much. Basically, think heat storage is still underrated.
worldwide. Heat generally is underrated worldwide. Everybody thinking about electricity, battery storages, be lithium batteries, might be redox flow, whatever type is the next stage is hydrogen or ammonia to store any type of energy. And the last on priority two is three, it's heat storage. What we see also is that especially heat storage are getting more more popular.
When we started the company, there was a handful of competitors worldwide. If I take a look to the landscape now, it's 30, 40 competitors. Even universities, institutes are focusing on developing thermal storage materials to decarbonize the whole heat generation, but also heat storage in the future. So there is a strong, strong development in the market. And you said it rightly, but we are heading more and more for renewables, more intermittent energies, more fluctuating energies.
And it doesn't make any sense to triple the quantity of windmills because they are still generating electricity if the wind blows, right? So we need to buffer the excesses to deliver during the demand times. And that's both electrical storage but also heat source perfectly suited for.
Silas Mähner (21:39)
So is there reason why heat storage is becoming more popular? Is there just a kind of an understanding that they can likely make it cheaper than electric storage?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (21:47)
Yes, I think there is, because a couple of years ago also corporates understood that usually more than 50 % of their energy demand is heat demand. one of their scope one emissions is the consumption and burning fossil fuels. And if they have to bring it down, they have to think about alternatives. And that's where heat stories are coming into play.
Heat storages in general also have a big advantage over lithium batteries. A. They are much cheaper. They deliver exactly the energy the customer needs, means heat. And which is not unimportant, usually those customers know heat. They know heat better than they know electricity. So it's just a psychological element in this equation.
which makes it a little bit easier for customers to introduce heat storage rather than battery storages. Last but not least, heat storages do have a service life of 30, 40, 50 years. And if you compare it to battery storage, well, maybe 10 years, maybe 15 years, if you then have to double your capex because you have to invest in a new battery storage, well, business case is gone. And these are just some of those points.
world but also the corporates and companies started thinking about and that's why they are developing much deeper into thermal storage now.
Silas Mähner (23:13)
I mean, it makes sense that you wouldn't want to store your energy in electricity just to turn it back into heat later because that's a lack of efficiency. But I'm curious, are there any permitting benefits typically to thermal storage versus battery storage?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (23:29)
I think there are lower hurdles for thermal storages compared to battery storages because in the regulations, I would say in most of the use cases, thermal storages are still an equivalent for heat exchangers. Technically, there are nothing else but heat exchangers. You convert heat from air to some solid material, so they are heat exchanger. That's why there are not that much permits.
or permits to be fulfilled if you deploy a thermal search. Of course, you have to fulfill safety requirements, insurance requirements, and couple of other things. But that's state of the art. That's nothing new to admit.
Silas Mähner (24:00)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, it
just seems it would be easier because I remember working in the energy, the battery storage space in the recruitment a while back. There was a lot of requirements for like where is it sited and is it protected from water coming in and chemical leaks or whatever. So it would make sense that it'd be a little bit easier, which could be a nice benefit to it. That's the big problem right now around the world is getting things deployed, right? We have some technology, but deployment takes a while because of permitting. I can't imagine how it is in Germany.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (24:23)
Yeah.
It's
Yeah, absolutely. And it's also about the footprint of the system. So if you have a very well populated industrial area, there's not that much space to deploy megawatt hours of battery storage. Just one comparison we did recently. So in the deployment in the Netherlands, one of our storage units was roughly 35 megawatt hour on thermal energy. And the footprint of that unit is
nearly 34 square meters. So pretty small footprint. Not far away from that site, RWE installs a lithium battery storage, also with roughly 40 megawatt hour of storage capacity. So comparable, if you would compare a converted to heat. And this footprint is 2,500 square meters. So it's really exploding, the footprint. And
If you want to deploy those systems into existing industry sites, I mean, most of the installations are prone field applications, you have to somehow also fit this small footprint that is available, right? And there's also a big advantage for thermal storage.
Silas Mähner (25:38)
Mm-hmm.
I didn't.
Yeah, because not everywhere is Houston where there's too much land everywhere. So that makes a lot of sense. We talked a little bit about this earlier with the consumers kind of demanding, let's call it clean products or cleanly produced products. But are there any other specific market conditions within like Germany or Europe broadly with energy prices shooting up or regulations changing that are also driving people to really consider technologies like yours?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (25:54)
So it is.
Yes, definitely there are. We see in more and more countries that the electricity generation by renewables is already competitive to the gas price. Not necessarily one to one, but if we then take into account regulatory like ETS schemes or carbon dioxide taxes or fees on top of the gas or fossil fuels, electricity is already pretty competitive to gas. And then shifting to the new world,
and also supported by regulatory that helps the customer to drive towards the renewable world and using thermal storage instead of their gas combusted systems they used in the past. I think that's one that is of major importance definitely.
Silas Mähner (27:03)
Okay. So let's shift to a little bit about waste. So we talked about waste heat, obviously, and I think if I understand correctly, the way you guys build your products is also from some of those kind of scraps of other industries. I don't know that's correct, but can you talk a little bit about that kind of overall space and what's being done with the waste right now, specifically the waste materials that you're using to create craft blocks?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (27:16)
That's it.
Yes.
Yeah, happy to do so. So one of our basic hypothesis was also to have a very sustainable product. So life cycle assessment was on the agenda from the very first draft of the whole storage system itself. Meanwhile, we can recycle more than 99 % of the whole storage device again, either to other products, new products, or even take it back to circular economy. And so we also needed to develop a new type of storage material. And in our idea,
it was taking bad materials into the circular economy, which are usually getting disposed somewhere. So we're using things like slags from the steel industry or waste of the boxed production, waste of the copper production. Because A, those materials already have seen high temperatures. So they do not change if you heat it up to 1,000 degrees C or even higher, which is a positive effect. They do have high capacities.
There is a huge availability, no issue with the supply chain because those materials gets produced since 40, 50, 60 years. If there wouldn't be any new steel slacks, we literally could mine it, right? Because there is enough slack available worldwide and the same for the other materials. So we developed a process to upcycle those materials to our storage material, which basically resulted also in a kind of modular materials concept.
because we can use the steel slag from the US, from India, from Australia. There are small deviations in the quality, but we know how to balance them out. So literally we can use all the materials that are available in the world. It means we designed a new materials basis. We also could replace steel slag against something different. That doesn't matter. We know how to do it. And so we created a, we call it the future proof material.
because you can replace it against other materials. You can develop much more, let's call it efficient materials for a special temperature range. At the moment, we have one which is pretty good between 300 and 1,300 degrees C. But there might be a need to have a specialized material for 600 to 800 degrees C for some reasons, right? And we easily can tailor our materials to this, mainly using disposed or recycled materials.
Silas Mähner (29:47)
Interesting. Are those companies with the waste products, do they pay to get rid of that right now so that you can just take it off their hands for free? Like how does that work that it maybe like reduces your input costs?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (29:54)
Yes.
Unfortunately, not in Germany. No, we have to pay for it because we also get it already in a refined crane size. It's usually steels like, for example, are fist-like particles, fist-like pellets. We need small powders. So they grind it down, they mill it down to powders that we need. And for this process and delivery to us, of course, they get a bit of money. But it's not that much.
Silas Mähner (30:21)
Mm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (30:29)
Especially, we didn't talk about this, but at the end we have a ceramic material or ceramic light material. Let's call it this way. But we do not need any heat to produce it. We fully process it at room temperature to have ceramics at the end. So we also reduce the footprint from that side, which makes material even more attractive in terms of prices or costs.
Silas Mähner (30:43)
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah. So if you're also reducing your production costs, then it doesn't really matter if you do have to spend some money on the inputs. Obviously, everybody spends money on the inputs. I'm just kind of curious because I think this waste industry, like taking waste and upcycling it is really fascinating. It's an interesting challenge you mentioned. I've never thought about this, but making sure that you have the same type of inputs or quality, depending on where you go in the world. So you have to adjust for that. That might be something for other people who are in the circular economy to consider who are listening. That's helpful. I like that.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (30:57)
us.
Silas Mähner (31:21)
In terms of the idea of validation, you talked a little bit about this, but can you just give some of the core principles that you learned or that you would tell another founder who's validating a hardware idea?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (31:33)
Yeah. So for hardware, mean, market research, it's pretty obvious, of course. Without any market research, probably should not develop a product. Problem definition needs to be defined very clearly what you want to develop. And then what we have seen, which is very favorable, modularization of the whole system. So if it's a complex hardware, focus on the core part first.
use state-of-the-art, out-of-the-shelf technology for the interfaces, but focus on the core part, which helps to evolve very, very fast and gives your early stage customer, like pilot customers, confidence because two-thirds of the system, for example, are out-of-the-shelf materials. There's just one part of it which is new. So it's easier for them to apply it in their premises. And rapid prototyping.
I think that's from major importance. What does rapid prototyping means for me? If our team has an idea for a component, not talking about the storage, but just the component at the moment, because then it's easier to describe an idea for that component, usually before somebody is doing a CAD drawing and taking FEM, CFD calculations to simulate the whole system,
team is going to our workshop and they actually either print or they build a very simple prototype for this component, test it, and if the results are showing into the right direction, then the team is going back to the drawing board, doing the 3D drawings, doing the simulation in order to optimize the whole thing. But first a real live trial because that can be done within one day to see if there are positive effects or not.
And if there are no positive effects, OK, it was a nice idea, but we will not follow that up. And that helped us actually to develop our system much faster. So we started commercialization two years earlier than planned.
Silas Mähner (33:42)
wow. So you had planned for a seven-year development phase?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (33:47)
Yeah, 10 years at the end. The full development phase 10 years.
Silas Mähner (33:49)
OK, got it.
Interesting. So just to make sure I got that right, so that the key things are in your mind, use as much off-the-shelf technology initially as possible, because it reduces the anxiety of the customer, because they know some of it already works. And then make sure you have fast iteration cycles to ensure that you're getting through the development process, rather than one project every year, ideally do something every week or something like that. Is that correct? Cool.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (34:13)
Something like that. Yes, correct.
Silas Mähner (34:15)
Awesome. I think that'll be helpful for a lot of people. Let's talk about funding your first project. think this is a great story. Not a of people can talk about their products like this. So walk us through your fundraising journey, kind of both financing the company and the first projects.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (34:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, happy to do so. So financing the company and financing first projects are different stories, basically. Starting with financing the projects, all the pilots that we did in the past were fully paid by our customers. This is not the typical approach, but there's usually a customer who, well, there's the space to play with. Put your system over there and show how it works, or if it works, or if not.
But we were that convinced with our approach and our technology that we wanted to have the financial commitment from the market as well. Because what I learned is if you give it for free, it has no worth. If the customer has to pay for it, even if it's a small pilot, they have to have the full commitment. usually also the management is involved.
the whole company is involved and you get much better traction and
I think you can take it to the next level much better and easier than if there's just tested. And if it doesn't work in 2D as well, let's scrap it again.
Silas Mähner (35:42)
Is that because
they take it more seriously, you think? Okay.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (35:46)
Yes, yes.
I think that that's one of the reasons and they are much more engaged in the integration of the system to their side because if they invest money, they want that the system is working and it's operating and showing some effects to their system as well. So actually they help you to improve the system for the next integration for the next customer. And that's really highly beneficial.
Silas Mähner (36:11)
Got it. Okay. So the incentives are aligned, right? They're not just saying, hey, you know, go check on it. And then they come back in two years and ask how it went. Whereas if they are paying for it, they're saying, okay, we put some skin in the game. Let's make sure this thing is going properly and maybe, pull a little more effort into the integration pieces. So I guess if I were, if you were to boil it down, then why were you able to get people to pay for it? Because you just had kind of such confidence in the early technology, you were able to convince them on a small phase, like, or was it a particular need on their side where they said, you know what, even if this is slightly risky, we are still willing to pay for it.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (36:42)
It was a combination of both. Basically, I think we have been pretty convincing about the concept about showing the simulation, how it would work out, the benefits for their industry is. The first pilots were, in my opinion, small scale pilots or just a 10 foot container with not that strong invest. And basically both customers, our pilot customers, they were looking for solutions.
already for years, but they didn't have any clue what the solution could be. And we offered them an obvious solution saying, well, you do have waste heat. Why don't you recover it, take it back to your process, especially as you are operating with batch-driven processes. So storage is the perfect tool to do it, because storage decouples energy generation from energy demand. Exactly what you need at that point. And these are probably the reasons why they stepped into those projects.
Silas Mähner (37:38)
How much credit would you give to the fact that you had some kind of exposure to the market prior to building in this space? Because it sounds like you had some pre-existing relationships with that space because of your past career. Is that correct?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (37:49)
Yes, definitely. So having the customer relations from the very early steps is extremely important, I guess, because otherwise you are thinking about something either the market does not know or would not accept because you do not know the structures, the processes of the customers, their needs, maybe also
a bit of the regulations. You don't have to think about all of it, but even for pilots, you might be regulated by building permits or environmental permits and so on. And if you have not been in this type of industry before, you have no clue about that. And in the interaction with the customers, you really learn it. also, and that I think for hardware companies, it's very important to build the trust with the customer, right? So if you talk to them for two years and then you thought, well,
Silas Mähner (38:30)
Mm-hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (38:43)
Now we are ready to go. Here's the first system. Would you like to install it? Would you like to deploy and test it? It's a different approach than having a cold, cold increases and say, we are a craft block. We do have a new system and it's the best in the world. You need it. So building this trust in the ability of the startup and of the team, definitely, which will deploy the solution. That's a very strong argument.
Silas Mähner (38:59)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I would just point out for people, think if you're building something in hardware, a lot of the hardware focused industries tend to be very, very highly trust-based industries. So if you don't know them at all, you just show up off the street. not going to be like, you know, walking in somebody's office in Silicon Valley who's open to new ideas and open to technology as much, right? They're going to want to have some prior relationship or some introduction and a level of trust built there. And for people who don't have that prior industry experience building the space, I would encourage you to find an advisor.
who does have that experience. If you don't want to find a co-founder, at least find an advisor because it'll help you a lot. Okay, then let's shift over to the finance of the company. So I guess how did you attract funding partners and who are some of your investors and how have you worked?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (39:36)
Yeah
Absolutely. Yeah.
to be very honest, we were very lucky with KraftBlock especially in the early days. because our first investors was just, or the first investor was kind of business angel, a friend of mine. so me and my co-founder, we, wrote the business plan and the financial plan and all this stuff. before I approach any investors, I will ask some people to have a read through.
and give me the feedback because if you are very involved in a topic, you probably forget some steps or early learnings for third parties out there. And actually, I didn't want to deliver a business plan to any of the investors with missing some major steps in it. And this friend, Reddit, came back and we were discussing for half a day about a couple of
questions he had in mind and after they say, that sounds very interesting. Can I invest in your company? So it really was luck and he also gave very good valuation at that point in time and that's how it started, right? And if you have the first investor to take the second on board, it's not that hard. Might be different in Germany because Germany is very conservative. So even venture capitalists 10 years ago were more like
being a bank with the type of venture capitalists. So the second one also was hard, but second one was a, it's called venture capital, but actually there were 10 or 15 local banks investing in this fund. So it was bank like thinking. That's why they want to have a co-investor.
Silas Mähner (41:35)
Hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (41:39)
And the co-investor was one of our early customers because they said, no, that's the technology the ceramics industry probably needs. That's why we love to invest. And so we won our first two investors. The next stages were different, but actually easier because you already had investors. We could show traction in the market, show the first prototypes, the first pilots, data, aviation of the data. And so
We built our investor's network very strongly over the past in order to have the next level ready to go.
Silas Mähner (42:18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it sounds like you did have some corporate partners as well who had an interest in the technology for their own kind of tech stack, if you will.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (42:25)
Yeah, it was an SME in Germany, a like corporate partner, but especially for the next level, which was our A round, it definitely helped because there was also commitment from the market in the type of technology which helped them to decide for KraftBlock.
Silas Mähner (42:41)
Yeah, I think it's pretty common for hardware companies to have corporate venture capital partners to come in because they have an even stronger incentive than just a pure VC and they understand the market too as well. Cool. Let's talk a little bit about speed to market. So, you know, I think when building a hardware company, a lot of people are rushing to try to keep up with the pace of growth of a software company. And it's just not quite possible. So can you give us your take on speed of growth when it comes to building hardware and how to
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (42:54)
That's the thing.
Mm-hmm.
Silas Mähner (43:11)
how to kind of take a measured approach to that.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (43:15)
Yeah, actually, I'm in favor of hardware. Pretty simple reason, right? Investors always expect hockey sticks. And with hockey stick craft, software industry definitely can make their point. But I think that's possible for hardware industries too, but for just for a later point in time. Because A, you have to develop the hardware. You have to ever prototype it, pilot it. Take the first project, which just takes its time. And now it's depending.
Even if you take to the lithium battery industry, it's also more than 10 years in the market before you had the first large scale deployment. So usually if you develop new type of hardware, it's an immature market. So you have to take the first steps, which takes its time. But on the opposite side, it's also a rule of thumb in the hardware business that your first product can be deployed for 10, 15, even 20 years before you have to innovate it. Because when it's accepted by the market,
We have to deliver exactly what you delivered previously. And the big plus for the investors, usually there is not that much competition in the markets, though there is a huge market and just a few competitors. So if you do not do anything completely wrong, your technology performs, you will have your market shares and can take your gross even in account of hockey stick growth. So my hunch is for complex hardware,
deep technology, not just a component for something like a sensor, but a completely energy system, you probably need to take four to 10 years before you can start scaling, or really scaling.
Silas Mähner (44:59)
Yeah. I think that's a really good point about the lack of competition, right? If you are early into it and if you do get through the process, the competition is, you might be one of very, very few people who have had that insight early on. But also if people do want to follow you, it's not exactly like they can just turn around and spin something up, right? A competitor, because it does, you have that lead time. So you have a little bit more chance to take the market. I do appreciate that. think it's challenging because we have a lot of, we had, I would say it's shifting now, but we had a lot of...
VCs investing in the space who were mostly familiar with software and they just didn't quite, know, they understood that hardware is hard, but they didn't really have a true concept of how to be patient with the portfolio companies. Cause you'd rather have them be patient and succeed than just go out of business too early. Cause they couldn't raise their next round. So let's talk a little bit about, I don't know how many thoughts you have on this, but in America, we're kind of with the election of Trump, we're seeing a bit of like a shift in the narrative of climate tech.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (45:48)
Finish it.
Silas Mähner (45:58)
entrepreneurs to kind of focus on, let's call it the abundance agenda for the time being, just to kind of get things built, right? Like reduce regulations, get things to market. A lot of times it's kind of, climate tech is being lumped in with, with defense technology. you know, do you have any thoughts on this development and do you see anything similar to this happening in Europe at the moment?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (46:02)
Mm.
No, think generally Europe was focusing on the tech development, tech deployment, because we still believe that there will be an era of the clean tech, might it be today or in five years or in 10 years, the world is moving towards renewable. So building the technologies, technologies can create a lot of value in the market, new industries, new sites.
a strong business, also a strong value for the countries driving this business. So basically the question was more, can we deploy, can we scale, or do we have to invest in terms of subsidies, incentives to get the technologies grown? With Trump now, well, quite curious how it works out, whether we'll completely shut down the IRA or just minimize the efforts over there if the
his drill baby drill will come to life in which sense it might come to life. So that's the politics, right? But on the opposite side, you do have the corporates that already agreed on their green agenda on their ESG goals. And yes, some of them will draw back a bit, but I'm very convinced that especially those who directly deal with the final customers will have to stick.
on their agenda. And still, even if there is a stronger drawback to the fossil world, there are a of countries in the world generating electricity with PV and wind for competitive prices. And that will be where the game is going to. So I'm curious about the developments in the US. We do not see a similar approach at the moment in Europe. And I think Europe will still stick on the path
they selected before. We had the election of the European Parliament or European Commission a couple of months ago. And they are already building the next Clean Tech Act. are preparing it and definitely will also deploy it. So we're in good hopes.
Silas Mähner (48:33)
Yeah, the thing I'm always
curious about is I, you know, again, I don't have too much exposure to it, but I know that there's a lot of people who are entrepreneurs in Europe who complain about the, you know, the just over-regulation of things. And, you know, if you could try to focus on this clean agenda while finding a way to get things built faster, you could actually, I feel like Europe could have substantially destroyed the U.S. in terms of like how fast they went to market with these things, because they have so much more interest in the clean tech side of things, right?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (49:01)
Yeah, but also from the past, U.S. was always better in selling and marketing. building IP, building business in Europe, yes, maybe new ideas and engineering. But the sales, the salesy type of guys in the U.S., that's incredible and huge strengths. And meanwhile, there's also the, let's say the technological perspective and competence there. So it would be a strong market, but yeah.
Silas Mähner (49:30)
Yeah. Well, one thing I do want to go back to, I forgot to ask is on the terms of the topic of financing, you mentioned earlier that you're going to start leasing models, a leasing kind of business model in the new year. Were there any particular things that had to come together to be able to do that? Because I'm assuming you have like a debt facility to achieve that, correct?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (49:31)
Probably true.
Yes, so we built our network first in the background, means infrastructure investors, operators, structures for PPAs, utilities, wind and solar developers, but also some, let's say more unknown things like insurance policies, you need to operate such an SPV to be on the safe side of the story, right?
You do not want to create a blackout for your customer who then files a low code for a couple of millions each day because of revenue losses. So we have been on the secure side, building the whole structure in the background, being able to deploy it from next year on. And so we will be possible to deploy those heat as a service models worldwide as well in just one single step.
Silas Mähner (50:45)
Got it. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. think it's important for people to keep this in mind because it's not that you don't just snap your fingers and suddenly have a debt facility to allow that business model. Right. I like how you guys win about it by having finding customers who are willing to pay upfront. And then once you validate it, you can go from there. I think it's generally the model to follow. Right. If you're going to go, that route. You know, so we've got a little bit of time left. I want to ask you, are there any other broader industry trends within energy storage or just industrial heat sector broadly that you're noticing by being in the space?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (50:51)
No.
Let's say there is a kind, let's call it virtual trend, which is hydrogen. I love the hydrogen technology, but I think it's just too expensive to burn hydrogen in order to generate heat. There will be a few options because heat storage, heat pumps probably cannot deliver heat for large steel mills, for example. The quantity of heat needed is too high. So there might be a good market for hydrogen.
As most of the industries like chemical, food, pulp and paper, even mining industry can be supplied by heat pumps, by direct electrification, by thermal energy storages with their process heat. Heat pumps definitely are a great topic that is coming up, but at the moment they are still low-grade heat pumps. So talking degree C again, 180, 200 degree C for industrial heat pumps.
perfectly fine for lot of processes, but not for, for example, the steam demand in all the industries that are out there. They need a different solution. There could be a good combination between heat pumps and thermal storage to satisfy the process heat demand. But there's mainly those three technologies that we see raising at the moment.
Silas Mähner (52:31)
Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Yeah. I appreciate that. And what are some, if you have any startup ideas that you have in this space that maybe things that are kind of tangential to what you're doing, but obviously you can't pursue them because you're building another company. Any ideas for people out there?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (52:47)
Basically, all the ideas are hardware based, right? Because there is enough software development out there in the market.
But what still is missing in the market is a, now it's the question of the definition, a long duration energy storage for thermal heat at high temperatures. So if you talk about eldest in terms of electricity means to discharge electricity for more than six hours. Long duration energy storage in thermal storage usually is a seasonal storage like a hot water storage, but that's not available at high grade heat. So we do have processes which do not
charging and discharging each day, but every week or every second week or every third week and there is no option available at the moment in the market. I'm also very intrigued, but I'm not sure about potential products about the heat generation in nature. So we do have fusion in the sun, we do have fission in our core of the earth, so both is nuclear driven. How to
use this type of technology on Earth in a safe way, right? mean, nature did it, maybe just because of the distance or whatever it is. But I think there could be also a great future for clean tech companies because then you could deliver electricity and heat at the same time, which would be very helpful.
Silas Mähner (54:04)
hehe
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of people are shifting their focus to nuclear in the US with Trump coming because I come from a very conservative place in the country and I've never heard anybody around here be against nuclear, which I was actually somewhat surprised by it because I've asked many people, would you be open to having a nuclear facility, like power plant in your backyard? they're like, yeah, that's not too bad. I don't mind. I think Germany went away from this recently by shutting down a lot of their nuclear power plants, but maybe that's a wormhole we'll have to go into another time.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (54:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
it is somehow, but I think it's mainly driven because a lot of people do not know about the issues of the clean tech sector, right? So I do not want to say any bad words about windmills, but there is still no recycling procedure for the windmill plates, right? And it's special waste at the moment. And there are megatons of windmill blades.
Silas Mähner (55:11)
Yeah. Yeah, we definitely, we need
to find ways to solve that problem. That's for sure. Especially there's a lot of wind being developed off the coast of Europe. So, Last couple of things here is who is a climate founder that you feel is underrated?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (55:17)
Yes.
Maybe Ben Chaffries from A-TECH. So he developed an efficient biodigester for communities in small scale, right? More for, I think also in the Africa for the rural landscapes, but being so able to produce even or generate even clean electricities in very remote areas. And that I think
could also be technology for everybody else in the world, even for each of the private homes in the world, with a very huge impact also in waste disposal, clean electricity generation. But I think he's not that known. Not sure.
Silas Mähner (56:21)
I've never heard of him, so I'll have to look him up. I appreciate that. That's a nice one. I'm also very fascinated by anybody focusing on tech for Africa as well. So I'll take a peek at that. Are there any particular resources that you want to shout out, things that maybe were helpful for you throughout your development of this company?
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (56:24)
You
yeah.
no, Willie, you know too much readings in the past, reading actually a lot of books, listening to a lot of podcasts whenever it's talking of course to lot of founders on each conference to see what's happening in the market. But I think what was helpful to me, for example, was the book from Hans and Anna Rosling, Factfulness.
Not sure if you heard about it. Even Bill Gates said about this book that, I'm not sure about the quote, but this book offers a clear and actionable advice for somebody to overcome and initiate biases for himself, but also for his side on the world. Because this book really points out that, for example, mortality for children is not as bad as everybody expecting.
Or also environmental science is not that bad as everybody is expecting at the moment Mainly based on your teachers and my teachers. They already had been at universities 20 years ago and They more or less still educate with that knowledge. They had they learned 20 years ago, right? They are not on the spot. So means Requestion everything you read somewhere in the books in the newspapers listen to stories really try for to figure out is it the truth or it's already
Silas Mähner (57:50)
Mm-hmm.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (58:07)
further developed, evolved. And actually, that helped me also with the benchmarking of our technology with other industries. So if we're about competition, for example, we not only talk about thermal storage, we take a look to electrical storages, to gravity storages, to hydrogen. What could be the alternative to replace a thermal storage in that system? Sometimes it's the better alternative, and then actually we recommend it to our customers.
Sometimes it's not, but it helps to find the right balance.
Silas Mähner (58:38)
I liked it a lot. think this is something I run into a lot when I have cocktail disagreements with people here in Wisconsin about certain renewable technologies or clean technologies and they're referencing things that 20 years old data and I'm like, guys, it's different now. So I really appreciate that. I'll have to add that to my reading list. Awesome, Mar. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on. I'm very much a fan of how you've your company and what you're building.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (58:52)
Yep. That's it.
Silas Mähner (59:04)
I think it can be easy to get bored for a of people by the thermal energy storage space, but I think there's a lot of really fascinating pieces here. And it just kind of goes to show that if you use your brain properly, you can develop these technologies that are relatively simple and can have a huge impact on actually decarbonizing things. So I appreciate all the work you're doing and looking forward to seeing how you guys continue to grow.
Martin Schichtel / Kraftblock (59:28)
Thanks a lot, Silas, and thanks for having me. I had lot of fun. Cool.
Silas Mähner (59:29)
Absolutely. Pleasure is all
mine.
