Great to chat with Ory Zik, CEO at Qnergy, a company that uses a unique engine to convert normally vented methane to useful energy and reduce emissions! We discussed how a modern Stirling engine generator can decrease methane emissions, their use in oil and gas operation, how they are built to last extreme weather conditions, climate profitability and more!
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James
The unedited podcast transcript is below
James McWalter
Hello today we’re speaking with Ory Zik Ceo at Qnergy, welcome to Podcast Ory to start what is Qnergy.
Ory Zik
Thank you Thank you James and good morning. So Qnergy is a company that focuses on a unique problem on the problem of distributed methane emissions. It turns out that methane is. Second only to carbon dioxide in terms of it’s important to climate change. But it’s a much harder problem to tackle most of the methane sources are distributed you know organic waste sources industrial kitchens dairy farms. Ga operations but most of the current solutions are centralized so we address this problem by focusing on onsite mitigation of methane emission and we do this. Through a propriety technology that I think we’re the only company in the world that controlled in this way called the free piston sterling engine. So we use this free piston sterling engine to address the distributed methane issue and since the technology is useful to many other applications. Part of our model is to partner with companies that would like to pursue those applications.
James McWalter
That and so what’s the typical company type that might use your product. So.
Ory Zik
So I mentioned to recently we’ve announced the deal with the total energies Total energies has a gas operation all over the world. This deal is specific in the Us and our our systems.
Ory Zik
And have I would I would say as follows. Our systems has 2 unique advantages and perhaps a and perhaps a disadvantage The key advantage is that they are very reliable. We provide power generators that walk in all climates all situations from sandstorms to snowstorms. And reliably twenty four seven the other advantage is that they walk with methane in its raw form whether it comes out of the ground and and in a gasfield or and methane digested in a dairy font. So the deal with total energies. Was to help them abate methane emission throughout the gaz supply chain using our generator and the way it walks is we take the gas that they produce provide power and with this power run air compressors now why are air compressors important.
Ory Zik
Because typically in gas operations they used to use the pressure in the gas to activate mnemonic devices now. It sounds very technical and maintained but there are about a million of those devices in the us and it’s equivalent to more than 10000000 cars
Ory Zik
So we we announced the deal where we sold more than 100 systems to total and to mitigate this issue and so since then we’ve signed a large number of similar deals. So that’s number 1 the other typical customer would be let’s say a dairy farm. That would like to mitigate their methane emissions from and common calm manure and our system that can digest again that can take methane in its very and a row and polluting form and take it into and and convert it into useful energy and can do that so that’s. Ah, like 2 examples.
James McWalter
That’s that’s very interesting and I guess in terms of how the kind of company developed over the years I mean I understand that you joined a ceo later but I guess before you joined were those kind of early days was this the kind of primary problem that the original kind of founding team was looking to solve or did this problem kind of arise based on some. Kind of research on something else was there. You know basically was there any kind of early pivots along the way. So.
Ory Zik
So I probably answer it in an unconventional way because we developed a free miston stling engine. It’s it’s a very interesting story that happens across 3 continents and two centuries. So.
James McWalter
I amazing.
Ory Zik
Actually original invention was an invention by a scottish clergyman Robert Robert Sterling invented an engine that is an external combustion engine namely it takes unlike the internal combustion engine that you use in your car or most people do.
James McWalter
And.
Ory Zik
This external combustion engine takes heat external to the engine. So the engine is sealed and and and can generate motion that can generate electricity which was found later on so about two centuries ago the engine was invented and since then nobody built in. 2 centuries nobody built a commercial generator based on the stling engine until cuneg and until cuanji managed to do it and now it’s ah 3 centuries because it was invented in in in in the old England and we develop it in the us. And and there is and and we developed it with a team that combinened innovation from Israel and from the us we’re based in Utah so we have a factory in Utah that has engineers from Utah and from Israel now the reason we need this combination is because one of the. Biggest problems with the sterling engine and I’m talking about the variation that is called the free piston sterling engine and it’s really it’s relevant because it’s a very very low maintenance. It can walk for tens of years without any maintenance and the reason we needed this. Ah. Cross-pollination and across innovation is because these engines are very difficult to control the walk in a fixed frequency and then you need to control the amplitude and it’s it’s a complex electronic exercise that we’ve solved. Now I was in terms of myself. So I’m in terms of my background I’m a physicist I have pgd in physics and I managed a few companies in the energy space that I’ve started and a few years ago four five years ago I was asked by Keyne Energy’s investors. To visit the company and and we had a good conversation and initially I was very cynical because I knew that nobody walked nobody solved a sting engine problem for two centuries. So why why in Utah
Ory Zik
So I remember reading the presentation in the plane and and thinking about a you know ceiling for Helium and the electronic controls that I’ve mentioned and these sort of things and said well it’s probably probably be a short visit because I don’t think that it walks and then I came in and everything is walking.
Ory Zik
Product is actually phenomenal in its performance and so so that’s what brought me to cu and four years ago and I stayed and I mentioned that we have 2 advantages and a disadvantage so one advantage is the reliability and the other is that we work with all. Sorts of methane in the most polluting forms but the disadvantages that our engine is currently pretty expensive. We can go to home depot and buy a a five Kilowatt generator at less than 3 $ 3000 our generators are orders of magnitude more expensive because of the performance.
Ory Zik
And our vision is to increase quantity increase volume and by that reduce cost reduce price and then we’ll have a ubiquitous high performance engine that people can use.
James McWalter
Yeah,, that’s really fascinating and I guess like over those kind of two centuries. You know there’s a lot of different areas that we’ve made advances in you know, materials technology. You know, software programming to manage things you know in a lesser way things like mechanical engineering a lot of those early advances happened. You know. A while ago. Um, what kind of combination of those different advances like resulted in this successful use of the starting engine.
Ory Zik
I think and I would say 3 1 is soft and the and the 2 others are hard. They are start with the hard so precision manufacturing became much lower cost much cheaper and since we win our our engine contains helium. And so we need to seal for helium for about you know more than 10 years and there is a joke in the company that every pressure vessel is either empty or leaking. So you know everything leaks at the end, especially if especially if it’s helium so precision manufacturing laser welding allows us to do this in.
James McWalter
I price.
Ory Zik
In a more effective and lower cost way. That’s number 1 the number 2 is the advances in electronics specifically power electronics as I mentioned that allows us to control the engine and so these are the 2 hard ones. The soft one is perhaps our persistence. Our engineers have been working on this. Problem for some of them for nearly three decades. You know they’ve been persistently solving problem after problem as some of them walked with Nasa on a on a variation that could be deployed in space. So Nasa has a press release saying that this engine design is the most reliable heat engine ever invested. Ever invented in the history of humanity. So persistence is a big deal. You just need to stay on the problem and solve knock out 1 engineering problem after the other.
James McWalter
And understood. Okay, interesting and then you know once you you kind of went out to the factory. You see. It’s like okay, what you read on the plane was actually correct. You’re you’re seeing it in action kind of very exciting. Um, what were the kind of different applications that were considered right because if I think about a typical internal combustion. Engine. You know is there tens of thousands of different applications that it’s been used for over the years and you know from passing your cars to all these other you know to lawnmower and everything in between how do you think about? you know where what was the consideration around these different kind of use cases and then how did you kind of in the end focus on this kind of methane piece.
Ory Zik
Um, where I.
Ory Zik
Yeah, so it’s great. Question. So for us. We wanted to you know it’s I would say it’s the innovator’s dilemma. You don’t want to go to a market which is ah too large for you to tackle and you want you and you want a ah a market that and. People will be willing to pay premium for the performance of the product until you reduce the price and go to larger markets. It’s almost like you know, think about the staircase every every time you reduce the cost you have larger markets but initially out of the gate we were at the level of hundreds now. We’re you know. We’re increasing our production rate. We’ve been growing a hundred percent year over year in the last four years but we started so we started so the way we thought about it is the canonical applications for reliable generators of this size would be combined hit and power namely. You know, residential and genatorors that provide heat as well. So we we knew that we can solve this problem but we didn’t want to start with the residential obit two c market out of the gate because it’s complicated. You need to deal with installers and these kind of things. Other market to consider is a solar. You can put the stling engine on the focal point of a dished trucks the sun and generate power and we and but this was a head-tohead competition with photovoltake and the prices of cofoablel taike were and. Less than a dollar per wat so that that wasn’t interesting. What remained extremely interesting is a problem that nobody could address which is methane abatement initially in gas fields and then in all the distributed methane and that I’ve mentioned so that’s why we focused our generator. The first market would be the oil and gas operation mainly natural gas because those companies have the financial capacity to pay a premium for the performance and they have the urge. It’s if their own need. And also your monities need to reduce methane pollution in those sites. So so that was a perfect match for us. We started focusing on this market now we have we started by the way as an anonymous company. Nobody knew about us so we started with a try and byproduct a program. Namely we let people to try it and if they don’t like it. They can send the product back and we had a hundred percent hundred percent conversion from try to buy which was great for us and something to be proud of in terms of the field first mentality that we’ve implemented.
Ory Zik
And now we have about eighty eight zero customers many of the oil majors. We raised capital from the ogci the oil and gas climate initiative recently and as I mentioned total energies and a few others are now buying our systems in the hundreds.
James McWalter
And and in terms of like the status quo where let’s say an oil and gas major is not using your system. Um the methode that is being kind of produced during natural gas collection like how is that being collected is that being flared is that you know what’s the kind of typical kind of use case.
Ory Zik
Now So the typical use case. This is a problem that will sound very technical but it’s actually acute so in a Ga operation that doesn’t have grid connection The entire gas site is controlled.
James McWalter
Today or the variety of choices that people are making today versus when they’re using your system. So.
Ory Zik
By the pressure of the gas that comes out of the ground the through nomadic valves now the status quo is that anytime you open anytime a a controller a valve changes a sit a position a little bit of methane is emitted. Natural gas is 80 to 90% methane and and this is emitted. It’s too small to flare. So there’s no solution you just emit straight methane into the atmosphere and now it’s considered 84 times more and a potent higher green global warming potential than c o two so there are about a million valves. Million dollars in the us that constantly emit methane to control gas operation 15 to 20% of the industry’s emissions are just these these disolved and the solution is known is straightforward and is very easy to implement all you need is to connect. Our generatoror to a little bit of gas that powers it and then you replace all methane emission with instrument air with clean air which is also safer because instead of having methane on site you have air and and and that’s that’s that’s very easy to implement and now what makes it interesting. The Epa has. Proposed regulation and that to forbid natural gas operators from emitting and methaneroonomatic devices I would say that this is probably 1 of the disadministrations and. Legacy to be regulations on methane.
James McWalter
And so once it it gets into the device is it producing electricity or energy that can then be utilizing other use cases or is it more. This is an elimination of the conversion of the gas into a format that just is not released into the atmosphere. So.
Ory Zik
Yeah, it’s yeah think about it as a conventional power generator but it can walk just a conventional power generator. It can walk with methane from from a gas site as fuel. And produces electricity and some heat. The heat is useful, especially in Canada and in some northern regions when you need access heats in those sites. But essentially it’s a generator takes natural gases fuel and produces electricity now in those sites. The electricity is used to run air compressors. And you have access excess electricity for whatever they need whether it’s a surveillance surveillance dataquisition and data communication. These type of things.
James McWalter
Very interesting I actually had a bit of a deep dive on methane producing coal mines back in the summer I was looking around at different problems within the kind of climate space as potentially something that I might want to work on on and I found this kind of interesting tension between different types of regulations and so.
Ory Zik
Are you.
James McWalter
1 side you had regulations around. Ah you know human beings and like the osho ah kind of regulations around keeping people safe and with those regulations there’s like a very very strong bias towards not keeping any sort of gases very dilute because the last thing you want is somebody down in a mine or in a gas. Well. You know, checking pipes who you know they’re usually wearing all this apparatus anyways. But you know if if anything goes wrong, they’ll suffocate and die and so there’s like this strong tension to have things very very delute on the other side. Um the more concentrated you can make the gas the more valuable it is as a resource either as you mentioned you could potentially flare it. Um, which you know is better for the for the environment if not very useful or you can capture it and kind of generate electricity or energy from it and then actually make a completely I guess useless byproduct into something directly useful and that kind of latter piece is as you mentioned is kind of governed by the epa how do you think about these different you know. Um, kind of rules and policies and how they kind of can produce better outcomes than they currently are.
Ory Zik
Think you touched the very important point which is the premise of what we do most methane sources are distributed and dilute but the current solutions just address the centralized and massive or large sources. So All we’re trying to do is use this sting engine to put to make it as small as possible if you will so we can. We can take the dilute otherwise unused or unuseful sources of methane and turn them into useful electricity and the reason is because collection. Very very expensive make it uneconomical and people are not doing it. But that’s a that’s large large portion of the methane that is ah emitted and and and for us anytime we use a delute source of methane and take it into and turn it into. Electricity. We also support safety and and and allow people to meet safety Compliance comply with safety regulations more easily.
James McWalter
So Absolutely and then how how do you think about? let’s say where the industry is going in general. You know there’s a lot of I guess pressure on things like natural gas production from a kind of total kind of missions point of View. You know there are. The Divestian letter that blackrock wrote around the coal industry. You know, starting to be pressure on the kind of shareholder and proxy vote side of things around any sort of kind of oil gas producing companies. Um, which you know if those companies shut down right? You know those have a you know pretty direct impact on your business. Um, how do you think about navigating I Guess the next kind of Decade. Where there’s going to be increasing pressure to in essence a lot of times shut down these kind of minds versus solutions like yours which are actually trying to make the process you know green in some way.
Ory Zik
Yeah I think the way we think about it is the form traditionally you would think about only the ah roi of your product today. We’re thinking about the climate return on investment or the carbon abatement cost or the carbon intensity of what we provide. Because more and more customers and are thinking about you know they they they invest in carbon mitigation because it’s important for their esg reporting their internal or external or regulation compliance but they invest money that they wouldn’t invest otherwise. Just to clean up their methaneum. The methane emissions and greenhouse gas pollution. So the key driver I think the most important thing to understand is that the key driver keyeconomical driver in the industry is shifting from conventional ah roi. To and a couple between conventional roi and climate ah roi so people will look. We look at the total cost of ownership of something that needs to mitigate a certain amount of and of greenhouse gas. For example, they deal with the total energies that I’ve mentioned and this deal was signed after we’ve. Demonstrated that you can abate methane at the cost of less than a dollar per ton of co 2 equivalent and that that that became very compelling so the number one I think the most important message is that this same climate return on investment or. Or carbon intensity metrics carbon abatement met metrix and that’s that’s that’s number 1 the number 2 thing that I think that we should think about is and the logistics and cost and that is involved with distributed methane. I’ll give you an example, you’re in New York in New York the tipping fee for organicnic waste is can be a few hundred dollars per ton now. So if you can treat waste on site all of a sudden and the economic equations become economic equation become compelling so traditionally. Even if if even if traditionally you wouldn’t pay attention to biogas to energy at low concentrations because of carbon pricing and tipping fees now it becomes very canonical to pay attention to those solutions.
James McWalter
Yeah that’s really interesting I actually there’s a kind of phrase I’m going to try out on you which called climate profitability we’re trying to capture like this kind of tension between what is the profitability of the asset today and then what is its kind of future climate risk. Um, it’s future climate effect and like try to bake those into the overall discount rate of the asset itself and kind of combine those 2 concepts right? because you know I think we’re we’re moving into a space where you know we initially have these kind of various esg net metrics that are just trying to get a handle on what’s happening. But I think as you said like we’re trying to move into a place where. Any sort of asset in the world that is affecting the climate in some positive negative or neutral way. Um, those effects are starting to have a price associated with them through you know to per ton of co 2 equivalents um per you know tipping fees or fines or you know even tax credits. And so trying to bake all of those different things into the asset to try to really actually get to a sense of what the actual ah roi of that asset is um, has you know I think is ah becoming this ever more complex calculation. But I think is ever more important so that people actually make decisions that are not just best for the climate but also actually have ah like ah you know are probably the most profitable decision for the business. Of so.
Ory Zik
Yeah, and so I I land for this, you know it I’ll take you a little bit back to your own Philos Philosophicalphic philosophical days. You know is a stilling book philosophy and we’ll we’ll go to this to this to this way of thinking.
James McWalter
Sure sure why not.
Ory Zik
So tradition. That’s how I think about it traditionally you would think about investment in 2 dimension and gain versus risk and both are measured in dollas right? You have like a 2 wo-dimension space what’s the gain was the risk 2 dimensions I make my calculation now we have a third dimension which is the climate impact.
James McWalter
So.
Ory Zik
The the carbon intensity or the carbon impact or the g greenhouse gas impact of a project now when we think about climate profitability we’re trying to collapse this third axis to climate access on the plane of profit profit and risk. Financial profit and risk but they might be inherently decoupled and we not. We might need to think to to learn to think in in this extra dimension. Not everything can be calculated in dollars because we don’t have a good way to capture the you know negative externalities. So so it’s an open question whether we can say.
James McWalter
And.
Ory Zik
Whether whether we can say okay, this is let’s let’s let’s collapse everything to doolas or can we think in keep thinking in 2 dimensions.
James McWalter
Yeah, and and I think kind of jumping on that like I think this is where I think like the value of storytelling becomes very important. You know there’s a lot of companies who are trying to. Build business models around that exact equation that you’re outlining you know, trying to build things and yeah, a lot of those companies are the people we talked about this podcast and often it’s just because you can’t assign a very easy dollar incentive to the climate element. You know the way we fill in that gap often is a story about the future and saying this is where things are. This is where the kind of media feature looks like it’s going and then the kind of longer term or far-off feature. You know, might look like this and I think that can help I guess start pointing people. You know the customers like your you know your your own customers and and similar kind of stakeholders to start to kind of think in these kind of terms. Um. Because I guess like 1 one area where it does affect the dollars and cents is in the share price of the company itself. You know we’re we’re starting to see like that discount happening at quite a large amount and you know if you’re going to lose several billion dollars of value um because you’re not actually thinking about these things even if you are technically today very very profitable
Ory Zik
Exactly.
James McWalter
Um, the cfo all of a sudden cares. You know.
Ory Zik
Yeah, no I totally I totally agree I think that look if the theory of change of how to impact corporate is through shareholders and we know that it’s happening and we’ve seen what’s happening and what’s happening in Exxon then it’s then the process. The transition is happening now. The question is what metrics people will. Using because you know shareholders still shareholders still say to the Ceo look we need and a profitable company. We want the dividends and we want it to be climate friendly and once the tension arises you need to quantify both and I think that it’s there’s no robust way to. Clearly quantify environmental impact in general and definitely climate impact in a way that shareholders understand so we see and the mscii index and all kinds of esg indexes. But there’s no strong correlation between what you what you report and those are reported. Indices or even externally audited indices and the actual climate impact. So that’s I think the jury are still out and we we focus on methane because we you know this is clearly the largest the largest beast in this carbon zoo and. And and and for us distributed methane is a hugely unattained market.
James McWalter
Yeah, and actually it’s one way when I first started looking at methane as I mentioned last year One of the kind of big appeals about about methane and is tackling it early has outsized effects in the longer term because as methane is released today. Um, a lot of its impact is you know like happens over the curve. First year or 2 as it decays in the atmosphere and then it’s just very very hard to counteract that and so if you for me at least if you had a magic wand and you were like trying to kind of solve climate at scale you try to focus on methane very very early and some of these other ways that we’re producing carbon could come later now. Ah you know the way we’ll actually do it is just a little bit of it all. You know over time and you know try to tackle it in different ways. Um, you mentioned this other use case around the kind of dairy farm right? So we have ton of ton of cows. They’re being milked. They produce a ton of manure this produces methane. Um, and I’ve mentioned in this podcast in the past that I come from a farming background. And you know farmers are a very different type of ah you know type of user type of person to to kind of talk to relative to you know total or you know some of these very very large oil and gas type companies. How have you found? you know those kind of conversations those kind of early users and how those different and maybe how even the pitch might different relative to you know.
Ory Zik
Right? Yeah, no, it’s a great question. So I think many many of the farms are you know? small 20300 cows and that’s our ideal for the size of the generator of our generatorors now if farmers can gain a premium for their product because of their environmental performance.
James McWalter
The kind of oil and gas majors.
Ory Zik
Then then then it starts to be compelling and if they can have a system which is fully circular which is what we’re now deploying it becomes even more compelling now this the top of this food chain company like danon and Nestle and are driving farmers. To better environmental performance. So when we introduce a solution that can take the digested animal manure turn it into and useful power. The heat can be turned into it can be. You know, prevent freeze off of the food and. And and you know and those those farms consumers you know, a lot of hot water. So it’s nearly ninety percent even 95% efficiency. Even the little amount of c o two that our generatoro provides because it’s clean. CO 2 We have only trace amounts of Co O and ox can be used for local agriculture. If you can go if you go come to the farmer and say look you have higher premium for your product and we give you this solution which is very convenient and by the way it’s some kind of an immunity against back and blackouts because you know that farmers are not immune to the blackouts at everybody else.
James McWalter
Threat.
Ory Zik
Suffered but in their case, it’s even more painful then it’s a compelling argument. It’s a different type of sales than in oil and gas. But I think it’s a very large market and it’s a market that we are very serious about.
James McWalter
No, that’s absolutely fascinating and you know farmers are out in the middle nowhere reliability. It’s often. They’re out in middle of nowhere relatively speaking and so reliability and resilience for their facility is is incredibly important right? like often. They’re the last person that the.
Ory Zik
Um, yeah.
James McWalter
You know the electricity company will come to to fix the wires and so having that kind of extra source from resiliency point of view can be also quite powerful. For example.
Ory Zik
Yeah, and and and you’re absolutely right? that unlike and oil and gas operators. These are individual buyers but they’re driven by but their customers as well. So so as the customers but want to become.
James McWalter
And.
Ory Zik
More climate friendly. It drives the entire supply chain.
James McWalter
Absolutely and then I believe you had a couple of recent kind of know, pretty decent capital raises which I imagine are going to help kind of fuel your growth over the next couple years. What are your kind of plans for expansion and development over. Let’s say a 2 year time horizon.
Ory Zik
Yeah, so we are currently hiring and and growing the the company and our business model is as follows we focus on the this distributed methane problem with the with our sterling generator. But then we acquire. Complementary Technologies in order to provide full solutions whether it’s whether it’s the compressors or digestors in order to provide full solutions but our generators have much broader applications as we’ve discussed backup power Microc Hp space. Whatever So We also have part of what we do is partnering with companies that would like to develop those applications and we and we sign them and those type of partnering agreements where we ah keep developing Gen the engine and the generator but other companies can bring it to market so that allows us to grow. And I call it in a responsible way because we need to understand the handful of markets while allowing others to utilize the technology to other Markets. We just raised the $16000000 from the oil and gas climate initiative and thank you and.
James McWalter
And congrats.
Ory Zik
And and we use this for to fuel growth since we are in sales and revenues is you know double digits millions of dollars we will raise additional capital to future to fuel and future growth. But so far we feel with. No pun intended but we feel that we have the fuel in our engines again.
James McWalter
It Very Good. Um, and I guess like thinking about the overall space right? You know distributed methane to problem that there was no kind of great solution for you know your your product goes kind of try to tackle that problem when you think about like other areas maybe directly or or you know they might be. Pretty close to what you’re working on or maybe they’re a little bit more distant where do you want to see more innovation where do you want to see you know more smart start smart people, starting companies or pivoting. You know, existing technologies to kind of work directly on problems that have you know similar impacts to what you’re trying to achieve at Q energy.
Ory Zik
Yeah, oh that’s a great Question. So I think look fundamentally we see even even with the interest Inlin tech and and and and global warming and and your podcast Obviously it plays a role. So Thank you for that. Even with this interest there is much more capital going into. Other sectors that in my humble opinion are less Important. You know what? what we call technology in this society is not a hardcore thermodynamics and electricity. It’s more a computer engineering and optimizing clicks and. And views and these sort of things that for me are less less compelling at least but much more capital is growing going into those spaces So first and foremost I would like to see more capital going into solving climate challenges now within those climate change challenges I think that the buttery cost. Ah, battery storage cost went significantly down So I want to see this trend continues and batteries that are more environmental friendly also in their afterlife because Lithium has its ah challenges. This will be really important in terms of Innovation. And and on the other side of this I think that the grid needs to be modified to be able to deal with all kinds of small contributions. So a virtual power plant.
James McWalter
And.
Ory Zik
Be much more effective if you can take and you know Kilowatt and two Kilowatt sources and not only tens of kilowatt sources and effectively I mean taking it and utilizing it. So these 2 areas I think require and significant development.
James McWalter
I yeah no I love kind of both with those kind of areas and yeah I appreciate the comment on some of the investment you know is going into I mean there the the old line that you know the the best minds of a generation are working on. You know, eking out. Little bit more revenue in fintech and then that became the the best minds of generation or working on ads. Um, and I think what has been very exciting for me I guess over the last two years since I kind of started looking at this space and indep is just the number of people who are yeah making a change you know I had this phrase at the great resignation.
Ory Zik
Um, yeah.
James McWalter
Where a lot of people started just shifting around their work a couple months ago and I you know anecdotally know just a ton of people who have decided you know I’ve been working for you know, a fine of yeah I’m a machine learning engineer at a fintech company. Um, where I’m just trying to figure out better ways to predict. Credit scores. Well maybe there’s some other thing that I could work on that might have you know more of ah aligned impact with their own kind of values and I think that’s just starting and I think the next kind of 5 to 10 years is going to be such a fight for that talent if you’re working on something that has a profound positive effect on the planet you are going to. Start to win more of those hiring battles.
Ory Zik
Yeah, but yeah and I would say that this battle actually starts early in University I would like to see more people studying you know physics and chemical engineering chemical engineering and those type of things because those are the the disciplines that will that can change the needle I mean it’s not that. Information will not change the little needle but I think more Ill but I think that there’s enough of this this an imbalance between the hardcore sciences which yeah at the end of the day will make the impact and as you said those those that are making more money but less impact.
James McWalter
Absolutely and looking at your kind of background. You know you’ve started run companies in both Israel and the us have you found any kind of differences I guess from you know, company culture company development point of view between those you know, just like I’m I’m from higher than originally and ah. Kind of company that I’m working on on the side is just not possible in my view to build in Ireland for a lot of different reasons. So yeah, how how do you find whereas while Israel has like this amazing kind of tech sector. How do you feel like that those kind of 2 kind of company cultures can are different or you know how are they I guess.
Ory Zik
Yeah, yeah, so I’ll start with qynaji I found that these 2 cultures are extremely complimentary and that’s why in kynaji we have 6 engineers that relocated from Israel to to Utah because we find that this a.
James McWalter
Interestingly the same.
Ory Zik
Synergy and and combination of cultures is extremely powerful I think the military background and maybe some of the kendo attitude in the israeli culture allows people to take higher risks which are always necessary but then when you want to build the most reliable generator you need to be really to follow processes and be diligent. How you do things and I think that at least the people that I’m proud to work with in Utah excellent in in those so we have innovators from Israel and and and and us that brings like these 2 and that that make it. Stronger by combining the 2 disciplines but I would say that the israelis are a little bit more and risk takers and and they need to be honested if all have a more at an and and tendency for processes. There’s also some when you think about Israel as a.
James McWalter
I’m fresh.
Ory Zik
Is a startup nation There’s some cultural thing that is happening in Israel this and maybe island is the same way I’m not sure but Israel has some social safety net that in the us and is doesn’t exist typically in Israel you you know after you. You go to the military you go to university but you don’t have these college debts and and those sort of things that impact your ability to take risks as an entrepreneur. That’s why you see per capita more startups in Israel because the risk is lower and in the us there’s a significant amount of and innovation. But I think many people are risk are adverse. Just need a job to pay the bills and I think I would hope that this and this will will change and the other thing which is very comforting to do business here in the us versus in Israel. It’s much easier to scale a business in the us than Israel in Israel because of the size of the map. Because it’s size of the market began because the the system is built for scalability and Israel is a niche. So actually the market for Israel is in the Us.
James McWalter
Yeah that’s that’s really interesting on that first point this kind of tension between well I guess this kind of social safety net and and the power of that at least in the irish case and I think it’s true of a lot of european western european countries the so social safety net is absolutely this way to encourage risk taking. But. At least in irish culture. It’s coupled with a cultural social pressure not to take risks. Um like I I’ll tell people who’ve never visited Ireland that the most hated people in Ireland are typically the wealthiest and most successful um and I’m definitely not a you know hardcore libertarian or anything but it is kind of peculiar that.
James McWalter
You know, bono and the collisons from stripe are not people that the average irish person would actually appreciate it all and so you know I love my country of course. But I think it is this kind of this interesting tension where you know you could actually take the time off, you could have your healthcare covered. You can go to university I mean that the state paid for me to go to my undergraduate completely. Plus like ah you know a few extra quid on top of that. Um, but the actual I guess you know peer group that you’re surrounded by um, doesn’t really value taking those risks and so you know for all that kind of technical and structural support. Those kind of software support levels are are missing now it is starting to change. We are starting to see some cool companies forum in Dublin and so on. But I guess how do you think about that relative to Israel us.
Ory Zik
Well I said it is you made me think about something really interesting I think that look there’s a risk and reward so if the reward is only for only financial and the culture doesn’t appreciate. You know those billionaires. It’s 1 thing. But if the reward is also impact. And you would say look these people are making a huge impact taking the risk taking the financial risk and this a scalability also has to do with the business but they have an impact then it might change the social appreciation towards those risk takers. And most social entrepreneurship I think is is is a direction is is a way to think about it I think Israel similar to the us is and I would say financial driven society I mean people appreciate those that made the significant amount of money and but I think this is you know. People make their own balance between the impact and life and and and how much money they need and how much money they want to make obviously in ah in a in a capitalist society There is a financial reward but financial road is not all of it I mean many people maybe including. Ah you know both of us on this call could make. More money if we choose something else but we choose to do what we do because we feel that this is where we want to spend our time and energy.
James McWalter
Absolutely and and very well said I can completely kind of agree with that or is my great conversation. Um, is there anything I should have asked you about but did not.
Ory Zik
Well, we are growing and the biggest challenge at this point is to find the right talent so you know people that want to give us a call and go on our website and just apply people that are talent. Talented in real engineering real hardcore chemical engineering electrical engineering mechanical engineering feel free to go on our website and send us a note. We’re growing and we need We need the brain power to help us grow.
James McWalter
So and we’ll include your careers page in the show notes all right? Thank you so much.
Ory Zik
Thank you.