Great to chat with Edward Chiang, Co-Founder & CEO at Moment Energy! Moment Energy provides clean, affordable, and reliable energy storage by repurposing retired electric vehicle batteries! We discussed the founding team, customer discovery, electric vehicle waste, battery health and more!
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James
The unedited podcast transcript is below
James McWalter
Hello today we’re speaking with Edward Chiang co-founder and Ceo at Moment Energy, welcome to the podcast Edward. To start could you tell us a little bit about moment energy?
Eddy Chiang
Hey, thanks chance.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, absolutely um so moment energy what we do is we repurpose electric vehicle batteries into stationary energy storage. So once a consumer is done driving their vehicle for 101215 years ah currently if you wanted to let’s say scrap it get rid of your vehicle just like a combustion vehicle it costs consumers thousands of dollars to do so and the main part is due to the electric vehicle battery currently electric vehicle battery recycling is extremely improfitable and unfortunately that’s causing only. Approximately 5% of all ev batteries to be responsibly recycled majority of them are not being responsibly disposed of so they’re either ending up on shelves or in other countries. Especially um, ending up being thrown away. So at moment we essentially make sure that these batteries are. Repurposed into stationary storage applications. So for example in off-grid settings we can reduce diesel consumption by installing our batteries with their diesel generator. Um, you can think of it like a hybrid car. We can reduce their diesel consumption by turning ah on and off that diesel generator. While in on-grid settings we can help them with renewables and with their peak demand where we’re constantly being told that the utility grid can’t sustain the amount of power draw because of all the evs that are hitting the road today and charging off the grid and the grid is getting really old. So our batteries can help.
Eddy Chiang
Discharge during these peak times and and help the grid out as well as save commercial industrial buildings hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the utility bills. Um a little bit of background on the company is yeah absolutely. So um, co-founded this company with 3 of my best friends.
James McWalter
Yeah, please. Yeah, so yeah, what? what? what drove that kind of initial decision to start moment. So.
Eddy Chiang
All 4 of us we are we have a me electronic systems engineering degree background out of Simon Fraser University we essentially fell in love with electric vehicles. Um through having started form the electric race team together so built and designed electric race cars from scratch and competed all the way to starting. Another startup actually a mental health startup because we were extremely passionate about helping um with stress anxiety helping people out of depression all the way to now something completely different now that we really knew and had worked together for 6 years and been best friends for 6 years into repurposing ev batteries and how we really got into this was with our experience having started that form electric race teams called team phantom um, all the way to having worked at Tesla I’ve had experience also working for the k canadian government in nuclear energy research and. Really having the passion to ensure that all humans across the world have access to clean and a reliable and affordable energy. Um, we started this company with that environmental aspect in mind as well as our electric vehicle experience. Um as a background. Um, yeah.
James McWalter
Um, yeah, and I guess you know you you have this kind of amazing easy relationship with the people who became your co-founders. What was the kind of that first couple of conversations like when you’re kind of considering this to be an actual startup that you work on together. You know you meeting on some sort of regular cadence was.
Eddy Chiang
Um, this.
James McWalter
1 of you reach out to the other and then just oh, we should loop in the rest like how how did the specifics of the kind of founding occur.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good question so actually in our engineering degrees. We had a core group of approximately 7 really close friends essentially um and in our engineering degrees. Essentially you have to have an eight month project and engineering project at at the end of it to. Ah, showcase and some people will you know, develop and totally research something completely new or they can research something that’s already been done but it’s just super cool like we had people who had developed rockets in their garage and whatnot and um, really cool projects like that and for us we knew that ah for our founding team. Um, we needed to be not only be passionate about what we’re all working on but also be able to work together really? Well so we all 7 of us actually all sat in a room and we started writing world problems in terms of what are some problems that are happening in the world and um and what are we passionate about um, solving. So. Essentially no problem was silly or no idea was too silly. We wrote them all on the board and sooner or later we had hundreds of problems seemingly hundreds of problems on the board and we essentially would vote for the top 3 um, and once we started voting we we really start started forming each of us.
Eddy Chiang
Forming groups in terms of like oh yeah, you know like all 4 of us we we want to really solve Xyz problem some of these problems were went from mental health all the way to especially here in British Columbia we’ve been having a lot of forest spires due to climate change. How do we help solve with that all the way to hydration for. Ah, wrestlers and or for ah women women who are carrying children as well who are pregnant. So um, lots of cool ideas and in the end we all landed on again at first and cofo our co-founding team was on mental health at first. Um, so we really wanted to. Um, to really solve that issue. Um, so we had commercialized and been working on some Neuros technology with our professors at um, our university and then in the end after our entire year of working on that and having that been our engineering project and then another four months of full startup mode and selling to customers. We essentially realized that maybe we weren’t the team to do it although we were able to build the technology in the end none of us had medical medical degrees or ah psychology degrees. So we decided to take a step back and say okay.
Eddy Chiang
What is actually something that our skill sets are really meant for and um, it was really the problem that we really wanted to solve was right in front of our eyes because while we were working on that mental health startup. We actually realized we were still helping out with our our school’s form electric race team and we’re still super proportionate passionate about evs and. Um, rather than than ni spanning as a co-founding team. We actually realized you know we’ve worked together for 6 years now we’re best friends and um, the number one cause for startups to fail is is when founders argue and they don’t disagree. Ah sorry they disagree on a fundamental topic and then they just the span the the company for us. We. We found that. Um, that would just never happen. Um, so we sat down together and said you know, let’s take that risk. We could all easily get jobs at you know Apple Tesla um really why not take the plunge down in terms of just working on a startup. Um again. So we sat down and started listing out things that our skill sets matched better with. Um, and in the end we landed on repurposing electric vehicle batteries. Yeah I looked this.
James McWalter
Yeah I Love this for a lot of reasons you know one being that it’s very hard to see from the outside when a pivot might make sense. It’s particularly something as hard a pivot as going from you know mental health to electric vehicle battery recycling. Yeah,, that’s just about as hard a pivot as I could Imagine. Um, but but I think what was really kind of core to why this pivot works so well is because you were so looking for you know founder problem fit right? And as you can solve that and then your you know.
James McWalter
The kind of power of saying oh actually we’re already wafered or ahead with this problem set than the previous 1 right? because you already um are are doing it in the day today and so from that kind of that pivot moment where you’re just all right. We’re moving in this other direction. Um, and you already had that kind of existing framework and existing set of problems coming out of the experience with phantom.
James McWalter
How do else did you start to kind of validate or see how big a problem is this and you know where’s the market for this today and.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good question. Um, it’s definitely customer discovery customer discovery not just to who’s buying your product but also on the supply end to where are we getting these batteries. So at first we started here locally in Vancouver we started talking to just consumers hey what happens. Um, your nissan lee or your Chevy bolt is reaching end of life. What are you going to do now and then that’s when they started telling us a couple years ago hey I tried to recycle my Chevy bolt here locally in British Columbia and the recycler said. Yeah we’ll take these off your hands for $4000 per ev and that just dumbfounded us. Like ah most people don’t realize that and everybody’s transitioning evs but most Ev consumers don’t realize that they have that huge bill waiting for them right now. Um, so we really saw that okay consumers can’t afford that why aren’t automakers taking responsibility so we started asking the automakers. And we realized well automakers don’t want to pay $4000 per ev because that cuts into their margins and then we started digging a little bit deeper there. We started looking at um, what are other countries doing so in Norway half of all of the vehicles on the road are electric already. And so you can really see them as where is North America going to be in another 2030 years um and what they saw is hey yeah, consumers are trading in their evs and getting rid of them every 5 to 8 ight years even sooner because you know that’s what consumer ah combustion vehicles have trained consumer trends um to be over the past.
Eddy Chiang
Couple decades. So now that essentially means that there’s more and more electric vehicle waste that’s reaching end of life and still only five percent of all uv virus are being recycled because of that high cost and and when we started digging in deeper into other countries like in China in half of all you countries. In a lot of these places. It’s already mandated by law that the automaker has to take responsibility and in all those countries automakers have essentially figured out hey you know we don’t want to recycle. We are responsible. So let’s find an innovative way to to give a second life to these batteries and all those countries second life. Um, ev batteries make a lot more sense. Um in the sense that they’ve already started doing it. Um and now for us in North America um we’re we’re really fortunate to to be 1 of the first ones to actually go for this problem and solve this problem. So now that North American automakers are soon going to be legislated to take responsibility. This is when we’re already having lots of talks where we can be their um only partners in second life as well.
James McWalter
And what’s really interesting about that is it sounds like when you’re initially kind of exploring the problem you’re like oh this might be a consumer direct-to-consumer type relationship right? We have to kind of build this relationship with millions of consumers who might be recycling their vehicle but it sounds like it’s moved more into this kind of b two b world where you might have to just.
James McWalter
Not just but it’s ah it’s a fewer. It’s the go-tomarket is somewhat simpler because it’s like okay you might have organizations you know automotive ah companies and so on which will be mandated either soon or a lot of times companies want to get ahead of that start building the processes early.
Eddy Chiang
Um, was it.
James McWalter
Um, you know in case, there’s like imminent fines and all this kind of thing down the road. Um, but it just could dramatically kind of changes like a perspective on go to market. Um, and so yeah, so as you were kind of discovering that um was that kind of ah like an aha moment in terms of like this is something that we can really kind of move fast on.
Eddy Chiang
Brett.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah I mean that’s exactly it. Um, so for example, we’re the only canadian company working with Nissan we’ve been working with them for over ah pretty much over two and a half years now. Um, and it’s been great. Um, and we essentially have found that us compared to any other second life company. It’s why automakers have slowly chose us over others is because of that relationship and keeping in mind hey what are automakers really caring about and what we found is that automakers care that there’s an actual path to commercialization here and that we’re not just taking in their batteries. Sitting in a lab for 10 years and then going to give them back the data they actually want to see a commercial case for this so over the past three years since the company had started. We had actually been really um, one of the only ones in North America that have been deploying on commercial sites and actually selling products. Um, deploy. So we’ve deployed projects all across Canada at this point in off-grid homes off-grid remote communities and and customers have actually paid for our product and utilized them every day to help them reduce their diesel consumption and then once that started happening that’s when automakers like Mercedes were their only north american partner. Um, and all these other we actually have many other partners that aren’t public Disclos yet but they reached out to us and it’s because again we have actually found a way to commercialize their batteries. So we’re constantly thinking on on our on our own end. What are the automakers thinking about what matters to them. Um.
Eddy Chiang
And once we took that philosophy Now we’re we’re in an extremely fortunate position where they prefer us over any other second life company. Yeah.
James McWalter
Super interesting and in Essence again kind of from the outside looking in I would have imagined that basically this supply side right? The batteries themselves might be the more difficult part. Um, but it sounds like you know people come to you and that’s that’s amazing. It’s always amazing when the sp supply side of any sort of transaction comes to you.
Eddy Chiang
Are that.
Eddy Chiang
Okay.
James McWalter
But then you have the demand side and so when you’re trying to go to work with the deployment of these batteries in this kind of diesel generator use case and sandalone storage use case. Um, what’s what’s that kind of go to market like in terms of generating the interest in demand side discovering where that interest lies across Canada and North America so
Eddy Chiang
In it.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good. Good question. Um for for us definitely in early days you go to direct a customer. So even if it’s a one off-grid home all the way to now we’re deploying a remote communities which has you know 8 10 15 homes. Um. And is direct to customer mainly because for us we want like even our engineers want to work directly with the end user to know what features matter and which ones don’t matter to the end customer and and really provided the best customer service that even knew lithium or new batteries are providing. Um. And luckily the cost luckily for us. But unfortunately for the customer most other even new lithium battery companies. Um, they have pretty bad customer service so that there’s a pretty low bar there. But but luckily we for us we go above and beyond terms of that that aspect. But we’ve already then um. Once that is established and we essentially build at scale. We’ve already started developing those relationships through child partners. So for us. Our child partners are renewable integrators people who install solar install batteries into these commercial industrial buildings. Um, so that our end customer really. The main customer really helps us install our product for us and we can just focus on manufacturing another end for the on-grid segment especially is peak demand aggregators. So these are people where currently in on-grid settings when a manufacturing building ev charging station when they draw too much power from the grid.
Eddy Chiang
Utility will find them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Um, the main reason is because they’re putting too much stress on that grid. Um, and now there are softwares out there that will predict hey a peak demand charge is coming manufacturing building turn off your facility now these softwares essentially have found out that they’re they’re not extremely useful because. Um, without the hard asset because they can’t just tell a manufacturing building to turn off their power for 4 hours because in that use case the manufacturing building just walked because they need to operate for 4 hours or just imagine if you’re apartment building just said hey we’re going to turn off your power for 4 hours that’s just not going to happen so that’s really when again, these.
Eddy Chiang
Child partners will already introduce us to all the end use cases because their software systems are already in these commercial industrial buildings and all we have to do is just drop our batteries off at the site and they will also handle the installation for us as well.
James McWalter
That super bridge is saying and look to get into the kind of manufacturing part. How difficult is it to convert the recycled battery into yeah a wave that we’re maximizing the use in these other use cases and how much is it I guess.
Eddy Chiang
Um, is out of present.
James McWalter
You know changes mostly on the hardware side or do you also need to have some sort of software component because of you know, battery cycling issues and and things like that right.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, great question. So definitely not trivial because these batteries are meant for electric vehicle use cases. But for us we’ve developed both on the hardware and electrical side. Um flexibility. Essentially so us compared to ah other automaker us or other second life companies is that we’re actually able to use batteries from any automaker which has been super exciting. Um, and we were we essentially both on the hardware. We have ip that essentially allows us to slip in but battery modules from from anybody which is pretty awesome. And then also on the electrical side too and the hardware side what we’re seeing in terms of difficulty is um, each automaker has slightly differing um battery modules and and form factors. But for us that’s fine because we’ve already developed that technology where we can just slip in modules from any automaker but then also another thing that we have to. Ti and count is that on the electrical end each battery chemistry is slightly different. Um, even if they’re Nmc or lfp if you compare 2 lfp batteries or 2 nmc batteries from different chemisties that the same but then they’re from different automakers that’s 2 and nmc batteries won’t. Necessarily had the same ratio of nickel or cobalt in each of them. So um, you essentially need intelligent battery management systems to manage that and for us that’s exactly what we have as well. We have our own second life specific battery management system that manages batteries from any automaker.
Eddy Chiang
But as well as manages batteries that are differing state of health which is extremely important because you can imagine if you drive a Nissan leaf um in Arizona for 8 to 10 years versus a Nissan leaf in Alaska for 8 to 10 years the batteries will degrade very differently with temperature alone. Let alone all these other variables such as how aggressive the? um. The consumer drives the vehicle. How often do they supertures the vehicles. The battery is will will degrade very differently so what will happen is if you take ah um, ah, ah, battery from Arizona maybe that battery has degraded to 90% um now and a battery from Alaska which that battery could have degraded to 80 what happens is if you take a 80% battery and a 90% state of health battery and put them into the same shipping container system. Let’s call it and you put a dumb new lithium battery management system. The whole system will act like the lowest common denominator. So even if you put 190% batteries and one eighty percent battery in there the whole shipping container will still act like the 80% so that’s not ideal because you tra have trapped usable capacity in there lifespan is now now subject to lowest common denominator as well. But for our own battery management system. We aren’t. Subject to batch. We are able to swap out batteries. We’re able to um Matt essentially push our state of health of the entire system to as close as the upper bound of the 90% state of health batteries. For example, as possible.
James McWalter
What I really love about this kind of motor building is around. You’re basically making the individual batteries themselves like a commodity which is very difficult as you’re saying all these different manufacturers have differing you know, just physical modules differing chemistry all these kind of things. And being able to kind of take all those and streamline and make them in essence commodity inputs into your own process is something that you know sounds like a long-term kind of defensibility from a point of view. But 1 thing as you’re kind of talking to that eighty ninety percent variance that came to mind was.
Eddy Chiang
Go ahead.
James McWalter
Because of that variance. Do you have to then vary the price you charge the demand side. Um, based on the you know the existing longevity of those batteries and so does it actually increase some complexity on the pricing side or how you you know, communicate the offering on that side.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good question so it depends on the model. Um that that we’re selling to but the answer is typically for the customer. They won’t see a difference. Um, it’s more of a moment problem I guess um, so if it’s a 1 ne-time sales model for example, what we’ll do is we’ll highly derate our systems. Um. We tell so currently. For example, we tell our customers they’re at Forty Eight Kilowatt hours usable in reality. There’s significantly more usable capacity and significantly more lifetime than than what’s on our data sheetets. We just especially as a startup we we don’t like to take the methodology that other companies are we rather? um. Ah, ah, under promised over delivery. Um.
James McWalter
Over Promise over deliverver. That’s what I say to my own startup. It’s like who we we we over promise and they’re like a customer like oh my God is that gonna happen and then I’m like we’re still going to do it two days early. You know? Yeah yeah.
Eddy Chiang
Ah, that’s even better. That’s great. But yeah, we we just rather yeah like you know we don’t want to make huge promises but then accidentally make make ah ah, um, because it’s reputation building especially as a startup for us. So um. So. That’s why we like to give the customer much more than what we were telling them and then yeah, we just wow them. Um, on the other end though. Um, so that’s just a 1 ne-time sales model but on especially what we can implement is energy storage as a service so especially in the on-grid site. So I kind of mentioned getting to the nitty-grittys a little bit.
James McWalter
Yeah.
Eddy Chiang
Um, that each commercial industrial building in North America they experience an average $600000 a year in utility Bill fines because of those peak demand charges. So what we what can happen is that we can actually still own the asset of the batteries. But we say hey customer where you’re going to? Um, we we implement energy storage as a service essentially. So we own the asset. But um, every year when we save them $600000 a year. Let’s say on their utility bills. We can cut them a check for $300000 and we retain the other $300000 and what that essentially happened means is that the longevity and the performance of the system. Um, only really matters to moment. Because the longer our systems last and the but more peaks and the more money we can save them the more of the cut we get while for them. There’s actually no cost and they didn’t have to pay for the capital cost of the systems. They really just let us install our batteries onto their site is really the only ask on our end and then really. Moment is incentivized to make our systems last as long as possible which is why that boundary match system really matters to moment. It doesn’t actually matter to the customer as much.
James McWalter
Outside of these kind of demand response and and kind of retail tariff programs. Are you also considering going all the way up into Wholesale um energy markets and seeing how the yeah the running of your batteries and other.
Eddy Chiang
Sorry else.
James McWalter
Kind of potentially more lucrative areas might might benefit you.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, absolutely so we’re definitely already working with a couple utilities. Um for for the wholesale market and it’s especially larger scale too like if we’re talking talking about utility scale like tens of megawatt hours currently each of our systems are about between a hundred Kilowatt hours to but below one Megawatt hour ah because of that c and I use case for demand response. But for for more wholesale markets and and and just what what we’re seeing effective is you have to install much larger batteries as well. Um, we’re already developing those systems in tandem with a bunch of us and canadian utilities as well. Um. What we’re seeing though for now is um, the larger systems that we go um the more it’s a fight to the bottom um the more that it’s really just batteries become a full commodity which is great in the sense that well we’re always going to be cheaper. We’re taking you can think of 1.
Eddy Chiang
1 industry’s waste and making it into a product but on the other end we don’t really want to start a company where you know just because we’re 50% cheaper or 80% cheaper where um that that’s why we win we want to really address the market where because of the high demand us are high power. Discharge of of our batteries is really why we win which is why we’re really just starting in this market. Um, in commercial industrial peak demand response and and whatnot. Um, but because we see that our customers need a battery that has a small footprint and that can discharge an immense amount of power in a short amount of time.
James McWalter
And 1 of the kind of large themes that have kind of mered in this space and related spaces over the last two two and half years is the kind of supply chain aheadwins right? You know there’s nearly unlimited capital to be deployed to get sandone battery storage across across the world.
Eddy Chiang
Um, yeah.
James McWalter
Um, it’s just been very difficult to to actually get those batteries especially when you’re competing with you know automotive ah like megacompanies and so on um, you are kind of sitting in this kind of somewhat unique position right? because you have you can source a supply that nearly nobody else can get at.
James McWalter
How do you think about how that supply chain headwind for the rest of the industry is more of a cotawind in your case.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, um, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing too like these these huge companies that are installing you know Gigawatt hours of energy storage new lithium energy storage have essentially already started talking to us and said hey can you be our supplier mainly because. You know they ran out of new lithium to install and and they’re also seeing in their projections that this is only going to get worse because the the fact is um, ev automakers are willing to pay much more for the lithium material than stationary storage manufacturers essentially because. The evs they require a much higher power batteryteries so they need higher higher quality and they’re willing to pay um for that extra engineering and qualities for high power cells and high power cells just overall um, um, are costs much more than just ah lithium batteries for stationary storage. So. Um, and that’s really what you know the lgchem’scattles are seeing. They’re seeing that. Um it’s extremely difficult to find a use case. Um an economic case to sell to stationary storage which is really where we’re seeing now too where we’re seeing new lithium players. Okay. Neolithium supply is drying up but you know there’s going to be 200 to three hundred Gigawatt hours per year of end-of-life ev batteries. Um, mckinsey has projected by 2030 so that’s another 7 years from now. Um, so you know the honest answer is we wish moment is able to.
Eddy Chiang
Ah, take and repurpose all 200 to three hundred Gigawatt hours of underlife ed batteries. But the honest answer is we probably won’t be able to um, we are definitely going to need a village. Um, where there’ going to be lots of recyclers out there. There’s can be lots of other second life companies out there and we we want to be allies with all of them to make sure that all these batteries actually have a good home.
Eddy Chiang
So they’re they’re not just thrown away. Um, and and they’re responsibly repurposed first and then recycled so um, which is have been making our sales pretty easy honestly, where new lithium players are asking us for so um, for us to sell to them again.
Eddy Chiang
The the end use customers. The people who are installing these batteries um into these commercial industrial sites as well. Um, have been um, putting in Tens of Megawatt hours in in terms of orders for our systems. So for us what we’re focused on is manufacturing just trying to manufacture fast enough to fulfill our our sales funnel.
James McWalter
That’s a brilliant problem to have just but being able to yeah meet the demand and so yeah I guess that with that in mind then what are the kind of plans over the next you know 12 to twenty four months so
Eddy Chiang
Yeah.
Eddy Chiang
Good question I mean we’re hiring a lot more so over the past three years we we grew from just the 4 cofounders working out of half a garage. You know we have the classic stories of.
Eddy Chiang
Ah, take buying ah a Nissan leaf pack disassembling it ourselves reassembling it driving it. 24 hours across Canada to install it with barely any sleep, um, all the way to now we’re a team of 30 which we feel very fortunate of and now we just moved into a fifteen Thousand Square foot manufacturing facility really having accidentally built one of the. Best test sites and most advanced battery test sites in Canada and as one of the top battery test sites in in North America which has but been really fortunate and and we counter blessings every day and and now with that space and now that we can actually our limiting factor has been enough space to take in all these batteries. Um. Um, as inventory and and building them out into systems now we actually have the space where we can produce megawatt hours hours per month in terms of output. Um, is so over the next twelve months it’s really just ramping up our our our output to at first 1 megawatt a month all the way to. For eight twelve megawatt hours a month essentially um and once we’ve really perfected our our manufacturing processes here in vancouver first then that’s when we’re expanding into a fifty to a hundred thousand square foot manufacturing facility in the us um, but in the near term we’re hiring tons of technicians engineers as well. And really just kind of continuously expanding the team and we’re also deploying lots of projects. Um, so we we have projects with the us department of national defense projects with utilities canadian and us utilities and then also off um, off-grid remote communities.
Eddy Chiang
To help them with their diesel reduction which has been amazing in terms of impact and social and environmental impact. Um, final aspect is ah, we’re on track to be the first and only um, that achieve ul certification for second life batteries. So essentially what that means is once we achieve that ul certification. Um, on both our product but also our facility um automakers that we’re already working with not just Nissan and and mercedes they they come to us and they send us their r and d batteries and we help them with the repurposing strategy as well and then once they have enough supply in 3 4 5 years That’s totally fine. We already have our systems built out and um, they just send us their end-of-life batteries so that they can be deployed in an actual commercial sense because the main thing is without ul certification you’re legally not allowed to actually deploy your batteries on grid. Um, yeah.
James McWalter
Right? I’m sure even those automotive manufacturers would potentially need sendinal batteries and you know you start to create this kind of circular motion right around you know the needs because your supply also potentially need the demand side as well could be the demand side as well. That’s I say one of the things I think a lot of starts struggle with is this kind of 15 to 20 or 15 to 25 person kind of mode where all of a sudden everybody you know can sit around a couple pizzas in the classic. Um Bezos statement. But now you have to actually start to have these kind of new ways of communicating and so on.
Eddy Chiang
Um, for the.
Eddy Chiang
Um, yeah.
31
James McWalter
Um, and sounds like you’ve just kind of gotten through that phase. How did you find it? um at a moment.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good question and we’re always constantly trying to figure it out too. Um, because ah we so for us, we definitely have started to pot off a little bit more but before everybody was in in. Um. Many of the meetings and we found that extremely inefficient at some point when you have 30 people all in a meeting at the there’s a certain point where it kind of just wastes some people’s times because they don’t even really touch for example, marketing individuals. Um, might not need to be in a full engineering certification meeting because they have 0 clue and we’ll never work with the certification board for example and vice versa. Um, so we we’ve definitely been able to now pod off a little bit more um, where for us every week we have a companywide meeting essentially.
Eddy Chiang
To give general updates so everybody knows exactly what every single department is doing um and also can offer help. We have a lot of engineers that are also passionate about marketing and a lot of business development specialists that are really passionate about the engineering side and and talking about what the customer’s needs are so. Have weekly meetings there um all the way to each cofounder. So we’re co-founding team of 4 um, all 4 of us will lead 1 leads product 1 leaves sales 1 leads ah supply chain and operations and then of course I lead the finance end as as well on top of the overall ah uching strategy for the company and. And as cofounders that’s really when each of the cofounders will will make sure everything’s on track. Um, and then we all all of us will come together. Ah weekly as well to talk about and make sure that all the cofounders can help each other in in terms of what the needs are um I think finally is especially. Difficulty has been transitioning from full remote into hybrid now I think we’re going to forever be hybrid. Um, at this point other than unless you’re building and manufacturing you definitely need to be there in perfect. Um, the the thing that we’ve actually really just struggled the most with is integrating friendships and culture. For us culture means a lot culture means even more than just being super smart. Um and being really good at your job. We believe that if you have the right culture and the right passions for clean tech for evs that you will figure out. Um, any problem and and help and really work on a good solution. Um, if any problems pop up. So so for us.
Eddy Chiang
Um, we’ve really started finding okay well the engineers go in 80 % 90% of the time they’re like all best friends and they all hang out every day after work as well. But it’s really difficult for let’s say our business development team to to develop those relationships because they are at home. Um, they’re working remote and it’s sometimes difficult to just. Ah, hop on a call and and just work together and and banter about what they’re doing on the weekend or or how their families are doing so um for us, we’ve been. That’s the thing that has been the most difficult part about building going from that 15 to 30 turrp transition and we’re definitely still learning. But. Um, they’re definitely better ways for us. Um to have everybody integrate better such as monthly socials that we have we we all work out together. Essentially 3 times a week um either through pretty much through Zoom. So no matter if you’re at home or if you’re in the office.
Eddy Chiang
We all do yoga yoga together hit exercises together and then we all have a ton of socials as well to make sure that the entire team is integrated um during work time for example literally today we were all volunteering tearing at the food stash to help with our community and making sure that everybody in Vancouver is fed.
Eddy Chiang
Or not everybody but many of the families out there that that need the help are fed which has been really great in terms of building the culture and and just have making sure that everybody works together and have honest, um and open conversations about personal life but also about work as well.
James McWalter
Yeah, it’s such a tough kind of set of transitions around you remote fully remote hybrid fully onsite um people who’ve listened to about gotten past know I was remote for about 6 years but with the current startup we’re making sure that we’re hybrid from the beginning. Um, and in essence we have. Thursday everybody’s in the office we can all at least have a lunch together. Um to try to you know as you’re as you’re saying like build some of those motions build some those relationships and so on now we’re a very small team. We’re we’re just 4 or 5 people at the moment. Um, but as we grow you know.
Eddy Chiang
That is.
James McWalter
Michael over and I we we already start to think a little bit about how to make sure that we’re maintaining that because it’s great to give people’s you know flexibility. It’s it’s super important. People have learned to expect certain types of flexibility and I think that’s a net positive for the team. You’re building and and team culture. But it really um, a lot of companies I think.
Eddy Chiang
Um, that was.
James McWalter
Unless they’re incredibly incredibly thoughtful about their kind of remote forward culture will struggle I think to to adapt and to move fast enough because if you kind of end up at too early a stage in these kind of constant back andfors trying to make any small decision. Um, you just get slow and the all really startups have at the early stages of speed.
Eddy Chiang
Exactly.
James McWalter
Um, so I love the fact that you guys are are kind of iterating on those I think there’s a lot of like cool tips in there. Um, but 1 thing you you did mention a couple times is your building in Vancouver and actually first big failed startup by Hadch was a space in Vancouver and.
Eddy Chiang
That.
James McWalter
Actually ah was my brother and I and another friend we were working on a 2 wo-sided fitness marketplace back in 16 and we also tried to raise capital in Vancouver and found it. Um incredibly difficult unless you literally had a gold mine or an oil. Ah.
Eddy Chiang
Go up.
James McWalter
Type something that was kind of extractive. That’s where all the kind of angels had gotten their money. So how how were you finding? Um, you building a tech company in Vancouver and the pros and cons of that. Yeah.
Eddy Chiang
Um, yeah.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, good question I think let’s we can go over the pros first I think the pros are um, one is you have incredible talents here and. And honestly the the startup culture is just building in Vancouver I think it’s come a long way even over the past three years that we’ve really built out a company of typically people would talk about toronto as the startup hub or Montreal. Um, so for us I think they’re an advantage of that of. Building company in in ah growing and budding startup location. It’s where essentially there are so many new grads senior um engineers as well that just so many people who are starved and and really want to have positive impact um on the environment. Ah, rather than you know like you were kind of saying working for an oil gas company or a mining company and they really want to help with the environment as well. Um, so for us, we’ve been able to hire extremely talented, extremely technical extremely just passionate about. Positive social and environmental impact individuals um into our team. We’re extremely proud of every single person on on our team about that. Especially um, what? what? and also it’s really great to live in an area. Um, which has great hikes. So for us. We go on.
Eddy Chiang
Literally four five day for night hikes or overnight hikes with the team as well and um and I can teach our team snowboarding and and gabe our cto ah teaches our our company how to ski as well and it really just helps with culture building and and building of a clean tech company and enjoying mother nature. And and really just keeping us focused on hey this is exactly what we’re trying to save and we’re trying to make sure that what we have now is and how beautiful it it is um that we can sustain that. Um so that really helps with the culture building but ah on the negative side is you’re absolutely right um. Um, in canadata in particular, um, but Vancouver has really exacerbated. This is. There’s currently ah I believe point 5% vacancy rate in industrial areas. So unfortunately every clean tech company. There’s typically a little bit of a hardware component there. Um, so you need space you need space to build and it has been extremely difficult to find not just space but even affordable space. Um, um to work in and that’s what makes it extremely difficult and of course compared to the Us. Um Canada has a lot or not well. Provinces in particular um, aren’t even legally allowed to give as much incentives for a business to come out. Ah so to to come out and and and set up shop here mainly because of just um and it makes sense. Um, ethical legislation where.
Eddy Chiang
Provinces aren’t actually allowed to just give out cash and incentives to companies to to set up shop here. But unfortunately for cat and the ecosystem here is that in the states they are um, like literally the the state of Tennessee would give you know ah tens of millions of dollars to to startups to set up manufacturing down there. Um, so that’s what we have to compete with and that’s the same with fundraising at the same time. Yeah, you’re totally right fundraising in and Vancouver it’s extremely difficult unless you’re in a particular industry. Um, and toronto is a little bit easier but it’s still pretty difficult compared to the us and the us. Um.
Eddy Chiang
Definitely they have that systems in place to make it a lot easier for startups to find a raise down there which we definitely are improving on and even I’m seeing governments including British Columbia is improving on in terms of investment wise and trying to incentiv vi. But. Incentivized investments and um, hopefully we continue down this track so that we can at least stay somewhat competitive to what’s going on down south.
James McWalter
Absolutely and I think yeah, even um, the last summer was up in in Vancouver last year you could see the the the energy and the growth was there and in a way that definitely hadn’t been there in the same way in 162 um
James McWalter
But Edward this has been brilliant really enjoyed learning about moment before you leave off is there anything I should have asked you about but did not.
Eddy Chiang
Yeah, yeah, ah good question. Um, yeah I mean for for us in terms of um I would actually say maybe like 1 of my greatest learnings I’d like to share in general. Um, about starting this whole process. Um, and also for anybody who’s listening and who’s thinking about starting their own clean tech company or their own business in general is is really focused on team. Um I think for us. Hopefully it’s come across where we really value culture and we really value the people we work with to make sure that everybody. Um, really cares about the mission and cares about each other as just humans we don’t want people to um so you know ah we we don’t really believe in that work yourself to death ah type mindset. We really believe in mental health I think it has to do with our first startup where we really care about mental health. Um. So for us I would say that you make sure that um you are able to find cofounders build a team that really fits within your culture and go with your gut when you’re building that out.
James McWalter
Of that. Um, thank you Edward.
Eddy Chiang
That Thank you so much.