#232 The Carbon Capture Startup Google Bet Big On—And Why It’s a Cheaper | Anca Timofte (Holocene)

In This Episode
In today’s episode of CleanTechies, we’re joined by Anca Timofte, the CEO and Founder of Holocene, a direct air capture (DAC) company revolutionizing carbon removal through a continuous-loop liquid system. With over a decade of experience in carbon capture—including being one of the first employees at Climeworks—Anca offers unparalleled insight into the challenges and opportunities of building climate solutions.

Anca walks us through:

**How Holocene's low-temp carbon capture slashes energy costs with novel organic chemistry.

**Solid vs. liquid DAC: Why Holocene’s approach is a game-changer for scaling carbon removal.

**Holocene's milestones: Securing Google as a customer and advancing major projects.

**Startup lessons: Co-founder alignment, mission-driven hiring, and thriving in Knoxville.

**Why DAC matters: Tackling legacy and ongoing emissions in a decarbonized world.

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Topics:
(time stamps are accurate for the full episode and approximate for the free preview)
**00:00 Intro
**02:51 Understanding Direct Air Capture
**05:54 Business Model and Customer Segments
**08:54 Partnerships and Market Dynamics
**11:48 Scaling and Project Deployment
**15:06 Founding Story and Entrepreneurial Journey
**24:52 Navigating Co-Founder Dynamics
**25:48 Adapting to Political Changes
**27:09 Embracing Uncertainty in Entrepreneurship
**28:30 Bipartisan Support for Carbon Capture
—(Free Version ends here)—
**30:19 Public Perception of Carbon Capture
**32:15 Survival vs. Success in Carbon Capture
**34:01 Building a Team in Knoxville
**39:30 Engaging with the Local Community
**41:07 Hiring Lessons Learned
**43:20 Balancing Parenthood and Entrepreneurship
**45:13 Unexpected Challenges in the Startup Journey
**46:31 Valuing Team Dynamics
**47:26 Resources for Climate Tech Founders
**48:36 Encouragement for Carbon Capture Startups

Links:
**Anca Timofte | Holocene
**Read the DOE report on direct air capture technologies here.
**Participate in the CleanTechies Listener Survey: Take Survey.
**Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn
**Recommended Book: Horizon by Barry Lopez – A lyrical exploration of travel, nature, and climate.

This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:51 Understanding Direct Air Capture
• 5:54 Business Model and Customer Segments
• 8:54 Partnerships and Market Dynamics
• 11:48 Scaling and Project Deployment
• 15:06 Founding Story and Entrepreneurial Journey
• 24:52 Navigating Co-Founder Dynamics
• 25:48 Adapting to Political Changes
• 27:09 Embracing Uncertainty in Entrepreneurship
• 28:30 Bipartisan Support for Carbon Capture

Transcript

CleanTechies (00:00)
unique about us and what's different than solid absorbance. We use a liquid so it's not a cartridge like system, it's a continuous system in which we load the CO2 in this liquid and the liquid gets further processed. We're studying the environmental benefit of having removed the CO2. That's where we have most of our sales to date. So we've also done some advanced sales. The biggest contract there that we have is with Google.

Even if CO2 emissions stop tomorrow, we still need to remove legacy emissions. So I just thought it's so impactful and it's also such a hard problem. And that's why you have so many startups and approaches. It is a really hard problem. If you're hearing this now, it's because you are a paid subscriber to Clean Techies. Thank you so much for supporting our mission. Enjoy this ad free listening experience. Welcome back to Clean Techies, the number one podcast for climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. I'm Silas Maynard and today I will be your host.

Today we are joined by Anka Timofate, the CEO and founder of Holocene, a direct air capture company that uses a continuous loop process, meaning they don't have to unload and reload any cartridges or take the CO2 out. It basically operates similar to a continuous production chemical plant where the carbon is captured and removed in the entire process. So it's just constantly going as a lot of benefits to it in general.

Anca is really a great guest for a number of reasons, but I'd say first of all, she was actually one of the first 10 employees at ClimbWorks. She was actually there for almost seven years before eventually going to Stanford to do her MBA. And during her time at ClimbWorks, she actually learned a lot about what works and what doesn't in carbon capture. know, keep in mind, this was well before there was actually an ecosystem of buyers for carbon credits. And the second reason she's such a great guest is they have created something really, really special.

This is evidenced by the fact that they were actually the first direct air capture company that Google bought carbon credits from outside of their involvement with the Frontier Fund. On top of this, Anka is just an incredible individual who is very inspiring, especially to somebody like me, who is also a parent working in climate, albeit not on as hard of a problem as she is. I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Anka Timofty. and one last thing. Please take just five minutes to fill out the listener's survey in the show notes.

really really helps us to understand more of what you're looking for in the coming year. Okay, now to our discussion with Onco.

Welcome to the show, Anka. How are doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing? I am fine as frog hair, as my dad usually would say. I'm doing well, just trying to survive the cold weather up here in the middle of winter in Wisconsin. think yesterday it was like minus 17 Fahrenheit or something like that. yeah. It's cold everywhere, including Florida. Yeah, saw they just got a bunch of snow. That's crazy. Like usually people lose their mind if they get snow down there. It's not something they're used to. We'll get a foot of it we'll still be all right. But I guess that's climate change for you.

Well, guess, Anka, tell us what you're building. Yeah. So I'm the CEO and co-founder of Holocene. We are a director capture company. I know you had a recent guest in the same industry on your podcast. So yeah, we, we build technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We do that with novel organic chemistry. So we'll probably get into that in more detail, but we use new materials to...

capturing carbon dioxide from the air, concentrated and with the purpose of either storing it or turning it into other products. maybe what's different about us, I know there's so many different director of capture technologies out there. What's different about how we're doing it is that we start with the liquid. So it's an aqueous system, a liquid-based system, as well as a low temperature system. So when we say low temperature,

You know, there's different ways to define that, but for us, temperature specifically means as low as 70 degrees Celsius, so below boiling water temperatures. And that's unique because it just allows us to use different types of energy for that process. So to get the CO2 back out from these materials and allows us to do.

to tap into engineering systems and equipment that already exists. So you should think of us as kind of novel organic chemistry, weird chemistry and more traditional chemical engineering equipment. Okay. Got it. So I guess then maybe break down the technology a little bit for people who are unfamiliar and also help us reference like what are the other typical kind of routes that people pursue when it comes to carbon capture? Yeah. So we always, you know, there's the DOE by the way, published recently a report where they define direct capture and the different types.

And they do an inventory of all the approaches and the, companies in the, in the U S especially with a focus on the U S. So there's so many different types. We used to have this matrix, you know, for maybe, and I can present that verbally with maybe the most typical approaches, but there's just another, there's many others. would say there's maybe electrochemicals or electrochemistry. Those involve only electricity to drive the process. And then there's thermochemical. These are maybe the one, one first group separation.

We are in the thermochemical space and thermochemical means it's in the name. Thermal means there's some heat involved and chemicals, there's chemistry. So in that thermochemical space, there's high temperature and low temperature. For high temperature, you should think usually there we see something like heirloom. So calcium, magnesium, carbonate, it's usually inorganic materials. Once the CO2 is in, it's really hard to get them out. need to put temperature, you know, you need to raise the temperature to...

kiln like temperature, so 900 degrees Celsius to get the CO2 back out. those are high temperature. And then the low temperature approaches are usually something like a solid absorbent that's functionalized or essentially made special with amines. And that group of approaches is what you should think in there is like a Climworks or a lot of other companies in there. And for those approaches, usually you have this low temperature feature.

So a hundred degrees or less. And we're kind of a bit a combination. So we're in the low temperature space, but what's unique about us and what's different than solid adsorbents, which is maybe the closest analogy here is that we use a liquid. it's not, it's not a cartridge like system. It's a continuous system in which we load the CO2 in this liquid and the liquid gets further processed. But we continuously loop that like liquid and put it in touch with or in contact with air. So we can continuously add CO2 to that liquid and.

converted into concentrated CO2 further down the line. And we did that with those low temperatures that I mentioned. hopefully that was clear. Electrochemical, thermochemical, and then within that space, several variations. Got it. OK, yeah, I think it makes sense. I get the idea. So just to maybe visualize, you said that in your case, what you've got is it sounds like water or maybe some other kind of liquid solution, but that's kind of circulating. And that has a method of capturing the carbon.

And then you're extracting it again and kind of either putting it into another format so you can store it, like you said at the beginning, or upcycle it into other materials. Is that right? Yeah. I think that summarizes it. And yes, it is water-based. And I would say like another, maybe once you go into the taxonomy and the differences between all the different DAC approaches is the organic chemistry piece is interesting. So organic chemistry just means carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen.

These are materials that you can personalize. So we have our own materials. We have generations of these materials and the type of organic chemistry that we're doing, it's a wide space right now. No one else is in that space. interesting. So the organic chemistry piece is that you're just taking kind of the basic materials. You're not synthesizing them or changing them any way before you use them. Is that correct? So it means we can make our own materials. So we essentially start with, we use amino acids, which I know many people have heard of.

Amino acids, amines, very similar. So there's some groups in there that interact especially well with carbon dioxide. there's some of the chemistry or the basic chemistry is maybe the same with what others have seen, but the type of amino acid that we use and then the way we process it further with other materials, that's where it's novel. And we can learn from a first-generation chemistry in a piece of equipment and essentially tweak that chemistry, continuously tweak. And actually our materials are

materials as we go further down the line or further through generational developments of our technology. Okay, got it. And then I guess one thing I'm curious about is, are you at a stage where you already have relatively well defined the business model of who you sell to and what's the product or are you still in that phase where it's like, hey, we're getting the technology down and there's multiple ways we could commercialize?

Yeah. So I think, you know, I think a lot of direct recapture companies are, think in terms of customers or, you know, who we can sell to, I think we're all maybe looking at similar segments and the way we think about our customers, right? So it's those two lines that I mentioned. The first line is we concentrate CO2. We can store it underground and there we would partner with others to store that CO2 and sell carbon dioxide removal credits or.

They're called in different ways. You can also call them negative emissions. I think we need to all align on the same terminology at some point, but for a while, think the idea of you're studying the environmental benefit of having removed the CO2. I think there, that's where we have most of our sales to date. So we've also done some advanced sales and the biggest contract there that we have is with Google. The other branch is using that concentrated CO2 from our machines to...

To sell to partners who want to convert the CO2 and turn it into synthetic fuels. So could be, it could be methane. could be, it could be chemicals. It could be ethylene. So, and others, it will all depend on it. Essentially it's reversing almost combustion. You take a CO2 molecule, you take hydrogen and you actually put, you have to put some energy into that and, turn it into a longer hydrocarbon chain. So both of those options are both of those customer segments are available to us. And we're pursuing both. And so guess tell.

Slightly curious how you landed those, like how you landed the deal with Google. Is there a lot of appetite for these types of future purchases to fund these projects? Was it a really challenging kind of fight or is there lots of different kinds of investment going on right now? Yeah. I think there's, right, we know that especially tech companies are, you know, the ones that are energy intensive or are looking at, you know, developing in different ways and also are more sophisticated, I think, in terms of their like environmental like footprint thinking and.

what, you know, how they want to make things whole. Like their net zero plans are clear and they also have some maybe extra cash on the balance sheet to spend on projects like these. So we know that the tech software, yeah, tech or software sectors are, especially really good customers and supporters of our space. I would say, you know, for us, we're a relatively young company still. This deal was in a way opportunistic, but I feel like we just found a really good partner in Google. We had similar views, similar missions. They really liked.

our ambition to reduce the cost of directory capture. So we sold it a really good price point of a hundred dollars a ton, which is kind of a magical number in our space. And yeah, there were just a lot of mission alignment and obviously this is a really long part partnership. We still have to go through stages of development to deliver on on the, on the promise we made to Google, but you know, they've seen enough and what we've built so far and our data and our team to, to believe that we can do it and we can achieve that mission.

So on this topic, kind of maybe going slightly backwards to your breakdown of the different types of carbon capture, is there a particular, I guess, advantage to your technology over the other types of systems? And does that play into why Google may have chosen your tech? Yeah, I think they're, you know, obviously, think being part of, we're almost part of this new wave of direct capture companies. So to exist in your space, you need to have a better technology or you need to have more potential than the incumbents. And I think

For us, the reason this specific chemistry and approach was really attractive is that continuity piece that I mentioned, so you can continuously load the CO2 into our system. The other approaches, solid absorbance, they're more like cartridges. So when a cartridge is full, you need to empty it, you need to refill it. So there is that interruption. In chemical engineering, people distinguish between continuous system and batch system. So the cartridge analogy is more like

batch system. and there is just, our approach is more like how a chemical plant would function. You can tap into those traditional chemical engineering principles and just continuity is good, right? Like having things run the same way. think it just intuitively has that approach. And then the low temperature is really good, like up to 70 Celsius. That's, that's really promising because that means we can use a lot of different types of waste heat. It could be from industrial sources, but it could also be from manufacturing, from data centers. So.

That enables, we know price of electricity and energy in general is really important for direct capture. And if you can play on that, turn that knob down in terms of cost of energy, a type of energy and level of heat that you need, it makes a really big difference in the economics of the process. would say those are the two big ones. of course. if you can, mean, energy is usually the biggest cost in this, right? So if you can reduce the amount of energy because you don't have to heat it as much, it makes the overall cost lower.

So I guess where are you guys today in terms of projects deployed? I mean, you obviously have this deal with Google. I'm assuming they intend to buy more, assuming things go well, right? So just walk us through where you are today with your deployment. Yeah. So we got started in earnest, maybe two and a half years ago. And I say in earnest because there's a long founding story here, but we have five customers today. We've tested the chemistry and different variations of it.

different generations of it on a bench level, well as on a pilot level. So we have an industrial pilot that we launched in May of last year. We've commissioned it for a couple months and now we've been running it more or less continuously. We got a very exciting data recently because we had freezing conditions in Tennessee where we have the pilot and where our company is located. So we got, you for us was really important to run the system with real air in different weather conditions, see how the system performs. So this is what we've been doing. And meanwhile.

We're engineering our next facility, which is our demonstration facility. It's 200 to 500 times bigger than what we've built to date, but it's the next normal stage for us in terms of how you would scale a normal chemical process. So we're kind of at a pilot stage, know, TRL level five, you use those technology readiness levels mindset. And we're going towards the demonstration facility and the demonstration is that intersection of like.

You're approving all of the engineering, you should remove engineering risk, but it's also the first commercially relevant facility. So we've sold a carbon removal credits from the demonstration facility. So we're approaching that kind of, you know, de-risk engineering and hopefully more commercial traction. So with the first pilot, you were then able to get enough data and prove that you were able to sell the next facility that you're going to build, that you're in the process of engineering, you're able to pre-sell some of the production capacity from that. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. So we have five customers today, Frontier, you know, which is a big customer aggregator and supporter of DAQ is on our list as well as MilkyWire, Klarna. So I think in a way the usual suspects and then Google, this was their first deal outside of Frontier that they've done with a DAQ company. So we're in discussions with more customers, but so far, we have those five customers and looking to sell.

both from this demonstration facility as well as from the next one, which is a commercial scale facility. So we actually are selling capacity as late as like 2030s, so mid of 2030s. Yeah, I think it's interesting the unique, I guess, capacity to be able to sell some of this ahead of time. is not something that I think a lot of the other climate technology companies are doing, but I believe that there's probably a possibility to test some of this out in the future.

know, with presale of future items. think, I mean, even Tesla did this, right? They kind of pre-sold the Roadster initially to try to get some orders there. I guess this is really interesting. we understand the kind of the what now. So I'd be really curious to go into, guess, why did you start this in the first place? What led you to want to found Holocene? Yeah. So, you know, there's, think the story can be very long. I'll try to keep it brief.

I'm a chemical engineer by training and my, I think my path, my usual path would have been working more in traditional chemical engineering spaces like oil and gas or, or chemicals, know, consumer products that involve chemicals. And I was lucky enough to have been inspired by one of my professors at university was doing environmental chemistry and really became passionate about this topic right out of school ended up in Switzerland to.

what I thought would be an academic career was doing research and doing my masters. And it came across Climeworks, which is one of the earliest companies. They might be the first, I don't know, there's carbon engineering and Climeworks. They both got started in 2009. don't know, know, mess of history here, which is very important, but they both, know, this, this whole industry got started and director capture got started in 2009. It was following this first IPCC report.

saying that we need to remove carbon dioxide from the air and it needs like, it won't be enough to plant trees, et cetera. So, out of that, you know, Climax was very early days. I got to meet them on, there were only five people. So I essentially joined a startup in a new industry, which is a super exciting time. I was there for about eight years and I really loved, I love the startup world and I love the director capture. I thought it's such an impactful potential technology and it's kind of in a way it could be a backstop maybe to.

But like we know we want to decarbonize so many sectors, but in the end, like anything that we cannot decarbonize fast enough has to be removed. know, at this point we've already emitted so much CO2 that even if, you know, CO2 emissions stop tomorrow, we still need to remove legacy emissions. So I just thought it's so impactful and it's also such a hard problem. And that's why you have so many startups and approaches. It is a really hard problem. You're looking, you people always say you're looking for a needle in a haystack. There's very little.

CO2 in a way in the atmosphere from a chemical engineer perspective. So the concentration is so low and it's, it's a super hard technical problem. I think that attracted me to the space as well as the impact of the technology. So I've been in DAC for more than 12 years. I'm afraid to count. I started Holocene after going to business school. So I had left Climarks. I went to business school to essentially try to look beyond engineering. I wanted to see what else, you know, could impact a climate company and, and really.

start the climate revolution. new financing could be really important as well as policy. So I wanted to learn about these things and came across the nugget of the chemistry in a scientific paper and the rest of history from there. I was so intrigued by the process and the chemistry and the potential and the fact that it was very different than anything else out there and it still is. I had to attempt it on my own and do it my own way. go at my own pace. So that's how I ended up starting policy.

Yeah. I mean, was going to ask you because if you, if you worked with Climbworks and you decided to start your own, you obviously have a strong belief that you can do it a little bit better, right? Or maybe at least differently. It's the unassumed, yeah. think it's, uh, people assume that I know, I think because I've seen it done at Climbworks, I know how hard it is. think seeing year after year and Climbworks, I have a lot of respect. They've, when they started, right, there was none of the...

Department of Energy grants, tax credits that we see today, incentives. There were no customers. There was nothing. was almost unbelievable that the field got started at all. So they had to build their own market. had to educate everyone about the space. they had a very tough journey and I'm very proud of what I achieved while I was there. yeah, you know, then the new chemistry comes about. I have now my own way of wanting to do things. I think it's a very normal startup story or founding story. have a founder who worked at a startup who wants

you know, to do his or her own thing. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's underrated. lot of people, especially in climate, we'll see how things change now a little bit, but I think a lot of people want to build companies in climate, but I think a lot of people don't have that much experience. And yes, you know, it's, it's very fine and handy to want to do that, but having the experience is really valuable because you, mean, you probably avoided so many mistakes that you may have made if you were just going for, going through this on the first time on your own, right? Rather than having seen what

what not to do with ClientWorks, right? And we won't get into that. We won't ask you to share any secrets. But yeah, I find it very fascinating. One thing I'd love to understand is, did you always want to become an entrepreneur at some point or was this just something that kind of got instilled into you through seeing what's going on at ClientWorks and being part of a startup there? I think it's a yes and no. You my dad was an entrepreneur. I come from Romania. I grew up in post-Communist Romania and my dad had a startup before, you know, probably...

Private property was allowed or legal or cool. So he's a true entrepreneur at heart. know, the one of these people who has project after project and all these ideas. He has business ideas now as well in retirement. So I did grow up with that around me. don't know that I had the courage until I had seen Adana Clamorant. I think I've learned a lot of very positive things there. And yes, business school, you especially at Stanford and Silicon Valley, there's nothing to give you that.

courage that you need or also resources that you need, to be honest. So I think, yeah, it's hard to say, kind of yes and no. Yeah. I mean, if you went through Stanford, you've basically got the stamp of success just written all over you, right? know. I don't you know this, but Stanford has a very, very high rate of successful founders coming out of there. They're also not afraid of failure. So that's one thing they teach you. There's a lot of failed startups as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you've talked to us a little bit about, I guess, how you started Holocene, but...

Maybe walk us through some of the early days of like, once you decide you were going to go onto this, what did some of the realistic things look like? was it, I don't know. I think a lot of people are afraid of what do I have to do financially to set aside to achieve this? Like how's it going to affect my family life? Things like that. Yeah. So I started the company while I was still in business school. I think.

There are different stages of commitment. This is something I think I didn't understand maybe from the outside coming into entrepreneurship. thought, you know, from the beginning, I think we always see these really great stories that are obviously simplified, but I think it's very normal. And I have a lot of friends from Stanford and otherwise it's like, there's different levels of commitment, right? Like there's decisions. So for me, the decision, the first decision was, well, I had, you know, during the MBA program, have to do an internship during that first year and second year. And it kind of like sets your trajectory for after business school.

I was interviewing for VC internships and I had to say no to something to do the startup. like, the decision that was, you you could say that's not a big loss in a way. Like it's worth the risk for one summer. It's not a big sacrifice, but I think this is how entrepreneurship is. It's like decisions or other opportunities come to you and you have to say no to them to commit to the startup.

And it was, it was phased. think, right. Like approaching at some point, like you're, you're one person, have a small group of people at some point in the moment comes like, okay, are we really doing this? Are we not taking other jobs? Are we not applying for other things and really committing? And I think, yeah, I had also, you know, in terms of finding my co-founders, I found one of my co-founders was a really good friend. had to convince him to move from Switzerland, but that took a little bit of time. And then I found my other co-founder like almost two years later. So.

So I feel like also the founding stories are also not as clean as we see in the movies where it's like, like everyone meets in like one cafe and everything's great. It's not like that, or it wasn't like that for me. So I think that, yeah, hopefully I answered the question, but this journey is a little bit more, there's more decision points than you would think. And I feel like there's time and time where you can kind of give up or continue. I think, like, obviously I'm here, so I continued and I found a lot of meaning and joy in doing this so far.

Yeah. And I think the learning how to say no to things is something I'm, I read the terrible ad, but any successful entrepreneur has, has figured out, right? So maybe I got to keep working on that, but it looks like you have. So how did you know that it was a fit with your co-founders? Because, you know, I don't know the exact stats around this, but a lot of companies who fail fail because there's just a mismatch with co-founders. Yeah, it is. think people, you know, there's always these cliches and I think my theory on cliches in general about everything is like, there's a reason why there are, you know, there are cliches like that. think.

With founders, people say it's like a marriage. It is a very personal relationship, right? Like you, at some point you've put a lot of energy and time and you've said no to all these other great opportunities. And, and it's like, it means a lot to you. It's more than a job, right? Like the, a founder, I know a lot of people care a lot about their jobs. I did when I was, you know, I was an employee before, but, but it's like, when you're a founder, you're really, your whole life is, is wrapped up on your identity is wrapped up in the company. It's, it's tough. And then you're alongside these other people and.

And they maybe have different wishes or visions or anything. I think like, yeah, I think you'll hear that a lot. not being able to have a fight with your co-founder and, and find a resolution and like do it in a way in which is like productive for the company and bring the company forward. think this is, this is something. So for me, it was always like, testing to see are these people I'm comfortable with, you know, can they handle a challenge? How much do they care about the space? I think it's the normal questions. There's no like magic.

secret question or a bullet that I've seen. But I think having the same values and imagining at some point, they're really hard decisions you need to make and like what it feels like, you know, with those people too, to have those super tough conversations. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. okay, shifting the conversation quite drastically here with Trump 2.0 now in office as we're recording on this recording on January 22nd. How do you feel about your business? Like headwinds, tailwinds, like...

I haven't talked to anybody in detail about the capture space regarding like what it looks like under Trump. So I'm just kind of curious how you view the future right now. Yeah, I think we are, as a lot of other industries or sub industries, we're waiting to understand exactly what, you know, what the new administration, like how they see the space and in which ways support that we were counting on before, or, you know, was available to us before is or isn't there. think for now, I think for now is like we all need to.

to kind of wait and see a little bit, it's really hard because as founders, you want to take control and get ahead of situations and plan. I think there's, have that instinct too, but at the same time, we know there are changes coming and like change usually takes time, especially at the level of the federal government. So I know we won't have a lot of clarity for a lot of time. And for me, it's just like trying to focus on the things that I can do and can impact. And, know, for us that's technology and other sources of funding and.

you know, working with the team on the strategy for 2025 outside of brands, as well as, you know, potential brands that might come. So I think it's trying to not, I think this is one of these situations like entrepreneurship is navigating uncertainty a lot. I think there's this moment of uncertainty, significant. So trying our best to not, you know, obsess about the things we don't know and can control and focus on the things that we can.

I will say that, you know, for carbon capture, I think maybe we're in the lucky category, you could say, or right. We're not obvious. We're not like so, so directly on the chopping block. it is considered a bipartisan effort. There's support for it in different ways. so I think there's a lot of potential optimism at the same time, right. There's a big change coming and it will affect us. I'm sure as well. And just don't know yet how. and I'll say there's something to be said about having been in the space for so long.

And knowing what the space looked like before there was any grant support, feel like you just need to zoom out a bit. This is a historical problem we're trying to solve of CO2. yeah, I think zooming out a little bit and trying to find the best ways to proceed for the next couple of weeks, months as uncertainty is there. Then live with the certainty there is there and persevere through all of these moments.

Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm half giving myself up that dog and anyone else is. Yeah. I mean, the reason I ask is because I, it's uncertain to me what people, like how the average conservative person would view carbon capture because my, my understanding is that it's probably not something they think about too much or talk about much. And I was wondering or speculating that perhaps because there has been a lot of oil and gas companies who are funding these companies, these carbon capture technologies to try to capture on source. So they can kind of just.

Their objective would be, you know, let's keep doing our thing, keep drilling and making oil, but we'll just capture the carbon, right? Hypothetically. And I was just curious if that, if you had seen any kind of rumblings that, that falls into this, let's say, you know, energy abundance kind of American dynamism kind of vibe. Yeah, I think. Yes. It's, know, it's like the retrocapture is kind of adjacent to this like point source capture industry that is really connected to natural gas.

you know, and, and, and other fossil fuel burning that require like the emits CO2 that can be captured, cetera. So, so we're kind of in the proximity of that industry. think, yeah, and maybe that's what makes it bipartisan. Sometimes people, think people that we encounter and we're in Tennessee where, you know, it's, think the, the, the, the space of directory capture is relatively new. I people are trying to understand, you know, what are the benefits? What are the jobs? What's the workforce development that is required? And is this something of the future? I think it's a little bit, it's very pragmatic.

questions that people have at least on a state level or the folks we're encountering. So yeah, we wait and see. I think, it's very tempting to speculate about things, but at the same time, I think, yeah, we, you know, we'll have some clarity hopefully soon. And at the same time, again, focus on the things that we can control, which there's a lot of the technology development. think there are still a lot of customers that are very excited to support startups and other sources of funding. So I think that's.

It's certainly, it's certainly kind of a weird time, you know, if I was in, I mean, again, it's not my, not my, not my place, but if I was in your shoes, I'd probably be pitching, Hey, nobody, nobody says no to clean air, right? Like we'll, clean the air for you, right? Regardless of your Democrat or Republican, right? So there's been a lot of, I think there's a lot of ways that you, that it could be positioned to be like, you can have your cake and eat it too with carbon capture, despite it, you know, maybe not being.

what we ultimately would like to see, right? With mitigation. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to think, you know, there's a lot of strategy here, like the shorter term, the longer term, you know, there's been for a longest time, I'll have to name it because it's a bit related to everything you're saying is, you know, a lot of the main concern with direct capture, think, from the climate or environmental groups have been that the main concerns have been that direct capture can be used and post capture can be used to essentially like not decarbonize and not change status quo. And I think.

My position there is it's really hard to rely on technologies like ours that require energy and footprint and any, actually any technology to, say, know, we business as usual, we emit as much as we can and then we clean it up later. I, yeah, I think that's, it's a challenging position because simply it's just because of engineering limits. Like there's just not enough materials and steel and energy. Like it just takes so many plants to remove billions of tons additional to the ones we have to remove. Just to keep the bath.

to keep the balance in the decarbonized world. I think it's just like, there's implications about how the technology is used and seen, yeah, a lot to discuss. was going to be my next question is really like, can carbon capture companies survive when the public opinion is not that, know, climate change is extremely dangerous. if climate change being existential threat is a minority opinion amongst the public, do you still believe that there's a world where, you know, carbon capture startups or

you know, project developers can still succeed. I think when your question started with can they survive, I think they can definitely survive. Can they succeed at the scale that we envision? I think that's a much harder question. And I think there, I may not as I'm Eastern European, so I'm not, I'm not necessarily optimistic about everything I have. I have a little bit. I'm not afraid to name things that I see that are negative, but yeah, I think if people didn't believe in climate change or didn't think the climate problem was a big issue, I think our field would not.

thrive the way we're envisioning it right now. And, know, to our detriment, I would say, but I think to survive, you know, there are business cases to be made about carbon dioxide itself. Like in a way, one of our products is the benefit of removing CO2. As I described, another product is pure CO2 in a bottle. People use that today. They need it for drinks, for cosmetic treatments. There's so many applications for refrigerants. You can use it for.

for turning it, for example, for drinks in the areas where you don't have a lot of other industry, because usually CO2 is a byproduct of other industries. if you're, know on islands, you need carbon dioxide for drinks, Coca-Cola needs it, and they don't have like maybe a supply. So there's so many different small applications, small scale applications, so the industry can survive, the technologies have a role, and maybe in that CO2 utilization.

path, if you can make a case for the economics to work out, of course, like the economics have to always make sense. I think to thrive, like our industry's mission, our company's mission, I should say, is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to a level where you would see a difference in the atmosphere that the CO2 has gone. So we would be removing parts per million, it sounds small, but we are removing significant billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. To have that kind of

achievement or mission or achieved. think you need, you need support and the thesis that, or I shouldn't call it a thesis because it sounds unproven, but you need to believe that CO2 has to be removed from the atmosphere at this global scale. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's, that's, appreciate the perspective. So you guys are based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee is my favorite state by the way, just as a shout out, but.

Why are you in Knoxville? Because I don't come across climatic startups in Knoxville in particular. So tell us the story there. Yeah. So I think there's a reason why we moved here and there's maybe other reasons why we stayed. But the reason we moved here originally is I'm part of a program called Innovation Crossroads at Oak Ridge National Lab. I think all national labs or most of them have kind of a lab embedded entrepreneurship program. That means you get to work with scientists at the lab.

you get funding from outside and it's kind of a two year fellowship or stint in which you get to start your company. So I came here for that program and also work with inventors at Oak Ridge National Lab. the chemistry, that negative chemistry that I described was invented here. So that was another reason, a big reason to be here locally. I will admit we thought we would be here temporarily. I thought I would be here temporarily, but

At some point we just got, you know, we had attraction with prices and awards and funding and grants and we started hiring a team. And then the ecosystem has been so welcoming and just, we've gotten so many benefits. And honestly, when you're building a company out of grants and on that little funding, you're often very scrappy and frugal. guess you're always scrappy and frugal as an entrepreneur, but yeah, we could stretch the money that we had better here.

super cheap lab space at the University of Tennessee, which I'm very grateful for. And yeah, there are just benefits to be here. And we got a lot of support from the local ecosystem in many ways, and which is hard to describe. Everything from relocating employees and them helping us with their spouses and finding jobs for them in the area to, you know, people coming to our pilot launch. got the mayor and the University of Tennessee president and local folks supporting our efforts. So.

Yeah, there's been a lot of reasons why we stayed, but we came because of those connections that I described. Yeah. No, I love it. We're planning a trip to Tennessee soon. We'll have to stop by Knoxville. haven't been there yet. So, would love to, that'd be great. That'd be great content for the pod. So let's talk a little bit about this. You talked about relocating people and building team. Tell us more about, I guess, just building the team in general. Like how did you find, especially the early talent, aside from the co-founders who you knew?

Yeah. So I think I was trying to remember for each single person, you know, we're still a relatively small team. we're 12 right now. We put, think we tried the traditional ways. We tried LinkedIn job posts, you know, talking to local network and some of those pathways have been fruitful. also worked with a recruiter actually early days. Um, that was helpful. think when an entrepreneur hiring and for me, this was the first time hiring in the U S like I had worked in Switzerland before and hired people there and led a team there, but there's so many different.

things that you need to know here, right? Like anything from the legal compliance aspects to how to interview people, you know, what people, what your potential candidates expect from you and like what interviews they expect. But so, so I think there was for us, there was a lot to learn early days. A lot of our, I think all of our hiring today is kind of founder led. So, so one of my co-founders like has a process in place. He's very good at getting leads and bring people to apply. And my, CTO is really good at setting up technical cases.

We often interview very thoroughly, as you know, small teams at the beginning, you want to, everyone has to be kind of perfect for the team and the culture you're trying to build. It's so important early days and you have to find kind of special, special people who are resilient, love to work for a startup. So it's like finding unicorns or like they have to be skilled. have to want to move to Tennessee. want to like be excited about startups, like to work with us, believe in director capture. There's a lot of like.

circles for that Venn diagram to intersect. But yeah, I think we were lucky too, that we were able to convince people to move. And I think so far everyone's had a really good time and they're happy to be here. did you have to convince everybody to move? Like I was curious if there was actually much like local talent pool within kind of the region. There is, and actually it went the other way around where we first had more people move. And I think now our recent, more recent hires are...

you know, someone we've had as an intern from the University of Tennessee, it was his first job out of school. well as, yeah, we did find someone in Tennessee, not in Knoxville. So I think now, as you know, at the beginning, I think we were looking for people with a lot of experience, a very specialized experience. And I think those are, you you could, look everywhere, like in the U S and abroad. So I think at the beginning you have these very specific roles to fill.

I think we need, now we need kind of more the spirit, the culture, right? The background skills. And we're also happy to train people and help them like learn about their actual capture, share with what we know, et cetera. So I think also the hiring needs have changed, but yeah, we've, we've always wanted to hire more from Tennessee. think now we've done a little bit of PR here locally, try and also get people to know that we exist and to apply. I think that some of those efforts are paying off finally.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that. So you mentioned like the mayor came out to your guys' demo plant and things like that. I'm just kind of curious if there's any nuggets that you've learned along the way of like, hey, you know, we're in this, let's, I don't want to be insulting, but let's say we're in a like slightly more obscure place compared to, you know, like New York or San Francisco. So how do we like be partners with the local community to get them interested in our tech? Cause you know, to me, when I think about carbon capture, I do not think like, Hey, Tennessee is the place to go, right? Like I do not imagine them being like all about carbon capture. So.

any nuggets you've learned about working with local communities in that nature? Yeah, I think it'd be hard to distill, but some experiences have been, you know, first of all, there were already a couple of entrepreneurs here who we've learned from and I think other learning from other founders were like, we arrived and we're like, okay, where are the other startups? And there are not many of them, but the people that we did find, they were extremely helpful. And they told us like, this is how you navigate University of Tennessee. These are the people you want to meet. This is how this town.

works in a way. And I think they were really helpful. They, share their struggles and, and all the positive, you know, good and bad, everything that they've learned. So I think that was super helpful. When you arrive to in a place like figure out, like learn from others, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

And yeah, I think then it's relying. I remember reaching out to University of Tennessee Career Center and saying, Hey, we're a startup. Like, we come to, you know, do you have students we can meet? Like, how can the students know that we're here? think like starting with internships and like connecting with local universities and Oak Ridge National Lab, obviously, right. have a massive talent pool. Like they have some of the world's best scientists from all over the world and the US.

So right, like engaging with them and seeing like how are they bringing people here or what kind of people are at Oak Ridge and would they be willing to take a chance on a startup? example, like we've tried everything. think mostly learning from others. I think the, again, there's no magic solution. It's just observing the observing and learning and interacting with the people here and learning from them. there been any like, guess, core specific learnings or lessons from the hiring process? Like, you know, I know you don't want to maybe share too much. Like if you ever got something wrong, like, like that was a mistake.

hired this person, it just wasn't right. Like what, any core lessons that you had? Yeah. I think, I think the biggest one for me has been to, know, we've always had this idea of wanting as many perspectives as possible. And that's still super important. don't want to say you don't, want people to think just like you, like that's not going to save you when a situation comes up or right, that you don't know. And then your co-founder who is similar to you doesn't know. And then the two employees you hired also don't know. Like you don't want that. think, but I think when you, where you have to have something like in common with people, think is.

values, and I know that's a very vague thing to test for, but what I noticed is like, sometimes you meet people and you like the way they think maybe, or that you like their technical expertise, but maybe value wise, I feel like you need to have that conversation. Like, you know, how did they talk about their former employer or colleagues or, know, and I feel like people often show you who they are and like, like take the flags, I would say. Like I think we had.

We had some bad hiring experiences and I think the looking back, was like, well, it was exactly right. Like if you look at job history, if you look at how the interview process went, it was the same, like this person was who they were and they continue to be the same who they were when working with us. And it just didn't work. So I felt like, yeah, listening a bit to how you feel, how, you know, like we, try to.

You know, make the interviews super fair, keep the same process, inspire people to come work with us. At the same time, we want them to, to, to see like, they share our vision? Are they excited? I feel like listening to how you feel when you like meet with someone and spend two hours with them on a technical case. Like, don't just think about the answers, but think about how those two hours, like, were they fun? Were you, you know, by the end, were you annoyed, upset, happy? I think those are the, maybe super basic, but I definitely ignored some of those.

those flags and, and, know, we didn't ask questions around values that much because it felt too touchy feely, but now I definitely do. And I think that's, it's really important. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I think that's the resonates with a lot of the mentors I've had who told me you need to make sure everybody in the early team really, really gets it. Well, shifting gears a little bit. So we bumped into each other at Climb a Week and you, during that time I was telling you, yeah, my wife and I are expecting, and you mentioned that your mother, and I'm just kind of curious. I've never actually asked this to anybody on the show. So.

you know, maybe it's now personal to me now that my wife just had a baby. But how has, like, what's been the biggest challenge about being a parent and being a founder of climate? has anything changed for you in that process? I think, you know, the biggest, the biggest challenges is sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is real. think there's a reason why I think a lot of parents don't want to tell other future parents how hard it is because we don't want to scare each other.

No, joking. Obviously, obviously fine. I survived. But yeah, those first couple of weeks and months are very intense as you might've experienced and your partner as well. yeah, I think the not sleeping and I mean, other, right? This is on one level of challenges. the other challenge for me is that time becomes a bit of a zero sum game, right? Like you're either, I'm either working or I'm with my baby and it's kind of, there's no more extra time than the hours that everyone has in a day. like,

Maybe it was true like that before, but it just feels a little different. I'm waiting for that massive efficiency kick that I hear that new moms get to still kick, like to kick in. But yeah, I, yeah, you're more thoughtful way, but like you're editing more, calendar and like what you want to do and don't do I think because of that. So, so I think it's a challenge in the sense that you still have the same time you had before, but now you have a baby who needs you. So yeah, not to be underestimated.

The calendar piece has been tough. I've been shooting down a lot of meetings myself since then. So I can imagine me being in your shoes. It's a very different game building a services business versus building a VC back startup. I do not exactly envy your circumstances, but I appreciate you sharing. So I guess we've got time for, I think, a couple more things. So one thing I am just curious, throughout this entire process of building Holocene, what has been the most unexpected thing or part of this journey?

Oh, that's, think, yeah. You know, I think in a way everything has been unexpected. It's interesting because again, right. Like I've been an early stage employee at a startup in a similar space, but the journey has been very different, I would say in many ways. So although I, thought I knew what's coming, right. Like in a way I understood the technology development stages and the challenges I could anticipate. The journey has been all unexpected in a good way, in a bad way. think, yeah.

the, maybe how resilient you have to be. And I think it connects maybe to some of the questions you're asking about administration and customers and technology. There is a lot, there's a lot to be done and having to persevere regardless of kind of what challenges come across and keeping right again, these are these businesses, like our industry won't get to billions of tons at that big mission for quite a while. Like when you start a company like

like Holocene, have to brace yourself for many years. So I think, yeah, the resilience required is, yeah. And I don't want to sound like I'm congratulating myself, but, but it is, it is pretty hard. It is also really fun. So I'll say that. Like I didn't expect it to be that fun and also that hard at the same time. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So, okay. Let's kind of start to wrap things up. I've got a little bit of a rapid fire around for you. So who is a climate founder that you would say is pretty underrated?

Yeah, this was, I know this was rapid fire, but I think the climate founder myth is a little, don't know if I fully agree with, with the concept behind it. think there's, behind every founders, there's a team and I have a lot of funders also with, with startups that didn't succeed. think there's starting a company or starting anything from scratch, anything that you do super hard. So yeah, it's hard to choose one person. I do have my little group of founder friends I call when I, when I have hard challenges, but I can't choose like one specific person.

Fair play. can't pick their favorite. I understand. And I do agree with that sentiment, right? It has to be the right team, but obviously somebody has to set the vision and somebody has to keep the team together. Are there any particular climate resources that you would shout out or things that were super valuable for you guys along your journey? Yeah, think, well, it used to be a lot of websites and things, but I think now I would say, ChadGPT or ChadGPT equivalent, like Claude, I specifically like.

having conversations with Claude on, different technology topics. And actually I think it's especially good for technical, super nerdy things, chemical plant design, anything that you can think of. can, you can find a lot of info. I'll name that as a resource if you are not using that. And then I think other founders, what I said before, like, I think a really good resource for climate tech founders is other climate tech founders.

Because mostly someone has been through the same situation he'd been through before, and there's a lot to learn from others. And along your career journey, it doesn't have to just be specifically related to climate. What is a book that has really, really influenced you? Well, I read a lot of fiction and travel writing. I really liked Horizon by Barry Lopez. It's kind of his memoir of his whole life. It's the last book he wrote before he died. So it's his whole life, as well as a lot of trips, Antarctica, Australia.

Travel writing, climate tech writing. There's a lot, there's a lot in there. Very lyrical and yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun escape as well from the everyday. Okay. Awesome. I appreciate that. have to that to the list. Okay. So last thing then would be, guess, what is your, what are your words of encouragement to specifically other carbon capture startups and founders in space? I keep building more. We want to see more, more pilot.

more demonstration facilities, more tests, more experimental data. think especially focusing on technology in these times of uncertainty, going back to the basics and yeah, excited to be part of a new industry with everyone. Awesome. Well, you're definitely an inspiration to a lot of people. think I find what you're doing really interesting. I love what you guys are doing. I love the tenacity and the success you guys have found already. And I think, you know, we'll have to have you on again in the future so you get more of those lessons as you kind of go through the next phase of growth.

Really excited to see what you guys achieve and hopefully I'll be able to stop by sometime this year and see you guys' demo plan. Yeah, please do stop by. And that extends to everyone who's listening to the podcast. If you're ever in Knoxville, Tennessee and you're a director capture enthusiast or carbon capture enthusiast, please come by. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure.