E184: How Casper Hit $100M in Year One: The Untold Startup Playbook

Philip Krim is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Casper, one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups in history. Under his leadership, Casper hit $100M in revenue in its first year, went public in early 2020, and was later taken private. Today, Philip is building again—this time through Montauk Climate, a platform innovating in what he calls the “electron economy.” We talked about lessons from hypergrowth, managing through crisis, organizational design, and the future of climate investing.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Walk me through the origin story for Casper.
What gap did you see in the market, and how didyou go about attacking that gap?
So I'm one of five cofounders with Casper, andwe started working on the idea in 02/2013.
And back in 2013, direct to consumer as abusiness model was really starting to emerge.
And we started to see what was happening insome other industries like eyeglasses and what

(00:21):
Warby Parker was doing, clothing and whatBonobos was doing, Harry's and razors.
And we thought to ourselves that the mattressindustry was one that was ripe for this type of
innovation.
And we started to go deep around what a directto consumer business model would look like for
the mattress space.
And we became convinced that it was a good ideaand something we wanted to work on.

(00:43):
So Five O's got together, we started working onthe idea mid twenty thirteen.
And we launched the idea 04/22/2014.
And we're off to the races from that day goingforward.
Explain on a first principles basis the directto consumer model.
Is it just circumventing the the middleman oris there something more powerful about the

(01:05):
model?
No, I think much more powerful.
I think at its core, it's really about creatinga brand that connects directly with consumers.
So you develop a voice that connects withconsumers, you have a relationship with
consumers, so you're getting direct feedbackfrom your customers.
And knowing what your customers want and howthey want to shop and what they want within

(01:26):
their products is a very valuable input.
So from us, we were saying that you couldcircumvent traditional retail in the mattress
industry, which we felt was very broken,antiquated and frankly, something that didn't
provide a good customer experience at all.
And we were able to circumvent that traditionalretail experience with a digital first

(01:47):
experience, where they could connect directlywith us who were making products that we were
selling, making the brand, and really havingthat direct one to one relationship with
consumers at scale, I think is the core of aDTC business model and something that can be
very valuable if done correctly and harnessedat scale.
You guys grew to a $100,000,000 in revenue inyear one, one of the fastest growing startups

(02:11):
of all time.
How did that come about?
We got lucky that we hit product market fitright out of the gate.
We were surprised.
We we did not expect demand would be as strongas it was out of the box for us or out of the
gate, I should say.
And we were lucky, people love the product andpeople love posting about unboxing the product

(02:32):
and people love talking about it.
And if you would have asked us or our investorspre launch, would anyone go to social media to
brag about their mattress purchase?
People thought we were crazy to think that.
And yet that's exactly what happened.
People were proud to talk about their mattressexperience.
They were proud to post it.
They were proud to show the unboxing experiencewhere the mattress explodes out of the box.

(02:55):
All of that led to us growing very virally,very organically, us having really strong
referrals from our customer and all of that ledto sales.
And so we were very lucky that we had to sprintto keep up with the business from day one.
We were able to follow-up with additionalproduct launches and expand into different ways
to connect with consumers.

(03:15):
And all of that allowed us to grow our businessvery quickly.
I think one of the biggest constraints to hypergrowth is not necessarily sales, it's not
necessarily supply, it's actually the team.
How did you scale your team so quickly in sucha short period of time?
It was about the culture and about building ateam that was really focused on the mission.

(03:36):
People really understand that sleep is acritical part of health and and that the sleep
industry wanted and needed to be reinvented.
And that attracted some great talent early on.
It attracted talent throughout my tenure ofrunning the company and scaling the business.
And, you know, it all has to do with team thatdrives execution so that you can manage demand
and supply and everything else that goes todelivering physical products at the end of the

(03:59):
day.
You mentioned mission, which is not somethingyou would associate with a mattress company.
How did you get people aligned with the missionof building a mattress company?
The founders, you know, myself included, wetalked very early days about just the
importance of sleep, of of the importance ofcreating a brand that really leveled up what
people were doing.
You know, buying a mattress can be verytransactional, and yet you spend a third of

(04:23):
your life with this product, and it makes adifference to the other two thirds of your life
in in a super meaningful way.
And so we always wanted to create a brand anddevelop products that connected with consumers
in a deeper way than just a transactional way.
And that has to do with talking about sleep atthe core of what we wanted to build.
And that's why we ultimately talked aboutcreating the the first brand around sleep, the

(04:46):
Nike of sleep.
How how do we level up everything we're doingto a deeper kind of emotional personal
connection?
Because I think that's what great brands areable to do.
Great brands are able to let you know that wecare about you, your experience, and and
ultimately the benefits that you get from ourproduct.
And so we we thought very deeply about how tobuild those connections with our consumers and

(05:06):
tried to bring that through with how wemarketed to them, how we built the brand, how
we built connectivity beyond just thetransaction itself.
How are you able to go beyond just the brandand just the transactional nature of the
relationship with the client?
It comes down to being thoughtful about everypotential touch point that you have with a
consumer.
You know, a mattress purchase is certainly aninfrequent purchase, but it is a very

(05:31):
considered purchase.
And so it's one that you are thinking deeplyabout.
You are shopping for over usually a longerperiod of time than some less, expensive
purchases.
And so that meant that we wanted to bethoughtful and and have that creativity show up
with every single touch point.
That could be seeing our ad when you're ridingto work on a subway station, hearing our ad

(05:51):
when you're listening to a great podcast likethis one, unboxing the experience and and
really understanding that the instructions weredesigned with thoughtfulness and that the
unboxing experience was done withthoughtfulness and taking people through.
How did we design the mattress?
Why did we design it this way?
What are the features and benefits of everylayer that we put into the mattress?
And just that really thoughtful curation ofevery touch point we had with our customer led

(06:15):
to consumers having a deeper relationship withCasper than any mattress brand that came before
us.
And you guys went public, I believe it was acouple months before COVID-nineteen.
Tell me about that process.
What was it like going from a private to publiccompany?
Yeah, unfortunately, a couple of weeks beforeCOVID-nineteen.

(06:36):
So we completed our IPO at the end of Q1 oftwenty twenty.
It was a very tough period for us as a company.
For me personally, I had never run a publiccompany.
We had just completed a long roadshow oftelling investors about our offline expansion.
We had a great partnership with Target.

(06:56):
We had stores that we were opening up that wereperforming super well.
And a big part of our growth story was aroundthat offline expansion.
And that's what we educated the street around.
And shortly after completing the IPO processahead of our first earnings call, COVID hit and
we all had to work from home, work remotely,had to do my first earnings call locked in my

(07:18):
office at home by myself.
It was all very scary and a first time for medealing with any of that kind of public company
management side of things.
But the team did great that the team helpedsupport me.
We got the company through a really rockyperiod.
A lot of COVID, there was really strong demandfor anyone selling digitally.
And we saw that with our business.

(07:40):
But it was just like everyone, a very scarytime for running a business, for being a
leader, for being something, doing somethingfor the first time.
And of course you went public and then a coupleof weeks later COVID hit and it was a very
difficult market.
Was that what ultimately led to the sale ofCasper or was there something fundamentally

(08:00):
wrong with the business?
Nothing fundamentally wrong with the business.
We were bought because of the fundamentalupside that our buyers saw with us.
So we ran the business for about eighteenmonths as a public company.
We ended up getting taken private and bought bya private equity firm in November of 'twenty
one.

(08:21):
So it was a tough run-in the public marketsduring COVID ups and downs.
Certainly made some mistakes while running thebusiness and didn't appreciate how strong
demand would be for our products and ourcategory during parts of that.
And I think our buyers saw that there was realupside in the business and the category and the
mattress category continues to be a big onethat's had some challenges lately in the in the

(08:44):
macro environment, but overall can be a greatcategory, is very profitable, is a a very
established legacy, kinda industry, and and onethat I still think has tons of room for
disruption and innovation.
You grew to a 100,000,000 revenue year one.
You went public.
You certainly had a lot of success.
You also had some difficult times.
What are the main lessons that you learned fromthat experience?

(09:05):
For me, that that was the first time that Iever saw hyper growth that I ever dealt with
the challenges.
Like you asked about scaling the team, hiringquickly, growing fast.
Growth has its own set of challenges and andopportunities, of course.
So for me, it was personally, you know, thefirst time I ever managed a team so large and

(09:28):
dealt with the challenges of the business.
We had our issues with supply chain, withproducts.
There are just a million things that go wrongevery day in a business that's dealing with
scaling both a digital product and a physicalproduct.
And it was just really making sure that we weretaking things one day at a time and trying to
stay focused on execution, but continuing topush ourselves in a way to move quickly and and

(09:54):
execute as fast as we can so that we can moveon to the next opportunity or or solve the next
problem that we're dealing with.
So give me some how tos on how to build ahyperscale organization.
There's no shortcut to it.
I was lucky that I had four other cofounders,and so all of us could spend meaningful time in
the early days around hiring.
We all met every hire for as long as we couldand really wanted to make sure that we were

(10:18):
instilling a sense of culture that we haddefined with each of the hires and then making
sure they were set up for success after theyjoined us.
And it it was that time commitment of no matterwhat's going on in the business, no matter what
other things we wanna do, we know we need tobuild this team quickly.
And so we need to spend a real amount of time,a third, a half of our time just on

(10:39):
interviewing, just on making sure that we'reout there meeting and getting the best and
brightest.
And we were lucky that good talent attractsgood talent, and a players wanna play with
other a players.
And we had a great team from the beginning.
And I think that continued to attract greattalent.
We were a well known brand in business withinNew York City.
And we were able to use that as a real catalystto getting great talent to join us.

(11:02):
And we were just lucky to continue to havebusiness success, which meant that other people
wanted to continue to support the culture ofwinning and culture of productivity and speed.
You were one of the first D2C brands thatreally took off you and Warby Parker.
And presumably you had to create entire newpositions or ways to look at growing a

(11:23):
business.
How did you figure out who to hire forpreviously unknown types of skills and
functions?
I was lucky to work with a great executivecoach who helped me learn a lot of the
traditional ways of of building teams andbuilding collaboration and building good
communication systems.
Communication is is core to building andscaling a business and making sure that you're

(11:46):
communicating everything throughout theorganization as frequently as possible is is
really critical.
And it was just understanding those lessons aswe were going.
We had great investors.
Tony Florence at NEA is exceptional.
He was always a great coach and mentor.
Ben Lear at Lear Hippo Ventures, exceptional,always a great coach and mentor.
And so we we were lucky that I was surroundedby great partners.

(12:07):
My cofounders all cared deeply about scalingthe business, hiring great people, training
great people, making sure that they were set upfor success.
And so it was a concerted effort at every levelof the organization.
Brian Chesky, founder and CEO of Airbnb,popularized this entire concept of before you
interview somebody, talk to 10 world classpeople or maybe twenty, thirty in that category

(12:31):
in order to understand what greatness lookslike.
How much of that was part of your hiringprocess and how much did your hiring process
evolve as you started interviewing?
We always talked about understanding what doesgreat look like.
I always encourage the leaders of the companyto constantly be meeting with their peers at
other companies.

(12:51):
The nice thing about the direct to consumerindustry is that we don't directly compete with
the Warby Parkers or Harry's of the world.
So I wanted my head of marketing to meet withtheir heads of marketing, and I wanted our head
of people to meet with their head of people.
That way, you had a understanding of what othercompanies were dealing with, how they were
thinking about talent and scaling and growthand acquisition and everything else running

(13:11):
their companies.
And so understanding what great looks like iscertainly a, I think, a a critical table stakes
input to a process.
And then just getting out there and being inthe mix and knowing that you're building a good
brand for your employees and how your employeestalk about their experience is gonna matter a
lot, especially within an ecosystem like NewYork City Tech and other ecosystems that folks

(13:35):
are active members of communities.
And so we just always wanted to be meticulouswith making sure we were optimizing everyone's
experience and we were building a good brandand good reputation both with our consumers and
with employees or potential employees.
And then going into those conversations with aprepared mind around what great looks like,
what we needed with the org and being verytransparent.

(13:57):
Here's what we know we need today.
Here's what we might need in the future.
Is this a fit for where you've spent yourcareer, where you want to spend your time and
not being overly prescriptive with we need thisexact person to go do it.
And knowing that oftentimes a good, smart,talented person can go take on a bunch of new
challenges that maybe they haven't done intheir career, but that they would be excited to

(14:19):
do.
And so build a team that has that flexibilityand and that diversity of talent.
Couple things to unpack there is obviously allABB, always be branding.
So you're always branding, always buildingcommunity.
The other thing is you weren't insecure.
You weren't trying to hide your weaknesses oryour challenges.
You were out there, you weaponized thosechallenges into the market and had all these

(14:42):
conversations that help you evolve the solutionto your own problem.
So by not being insecure, you allowed otherpeople to help in the market to help solve your
problem.
I would maybe frame it as we were maybe likedeeply insecure, but we didn't have an ego
about it.
Meaning we didn't feel like we had to pretendthat we knew the answers to things that we

(15:03):
didn't know.
And a lot of what we were doing, we were doingfor the first time as a company or as an
industry.
And so let's not have an ego about it.
Let's have humility around what we're doing.
And it's okay to ask people for help or how areyou thinking about things or let's try this
knowing that there might be failure here andmaking sure there wasn't a fear of failure

(15:25):
culture was definitely something that we had tofocus on because we had a lot of early success
and we wanted people to still be taking risksand trying new things.
And the only way that you could kind ofencourage that is making sure there wasn't that
fear of failure and that you were insecureenough where you always were pushing to get
more inputs, to get smarter on something, totry to understand something better.

(15:47):
But you didn't have the ego where if it didn'twork, you couldn't represent that, you know,
that one didn't work, but let's go trysomething else.
And I think creating that right balance and mixacross those kind of different personalities is
important.
You weren't looking for people that wanted tojoin an organization that was already had no
issues and they just wanted to be on the boat.
You were solving for people that wanted to haveagency around what they're doing and around

(16:10):
building their own kind of competency withinthe organization.
That's very well said.
I would say that that can lead to problemswhere we, if anything suffered from always
chasing a new shiny object and going after newopportunities in new areas.
So I think there is a balance to all of thisand lessons learned around that.

(16:31):
But you're exactly right.
Like high agency was very much something weoptimized for folks that wanted to take
responsibility for things, pick up challenges,not just be told, here's what you need to go
work on, and embrace that across the org atevery level, was something that we talked a lot
about in kind of defining the culture that wewanted.
You mentioned organizational design.

(16:53):
I know this is a term that MBAs and businessschool professors love to talk about, but
unpack a little bit what you mean byorganizational design and how should startups
be organized for lack of a better term?
It's a great question.
And it's a great question because there is nosingle answer for it.
There's no single way to think about design.

(17:14):
And I would more encourage founders to thinkabout what it is that their strengths and
weaknesses are as a team, what they need toaccomplish as a company, and what stage they
are in and and solving for when it comes tospeed and outputs and things like that.
And all of that drives then what the rightorganizational design is.
From my experience with Casper, we had a veryunique structure because we had five

(17:38):
cofounders.
And sometimes co founders can be great forcertain aspects of running a business and not
great at other aspects.
We all have our own individual strengths andweaknesses.
And designing a management team around that andaround a co founder dynamic and around a
scaling dynamic is all things that we thought alot about and that would change over time as

(17:59):
teams grew, as the business grew, as thecomplexity grew.
These were all things that drove different waysthat we thought about design.
And so, again, I don't think there's a singleright or wrong way, but it's understanding what
is the CEO's strengths and weaknesses?
How do you balance that?
How do you make sure that, especially in theearly days of company building, the CEO is is

(18:21):
optimizing their time around what are thehighest priorities and then has a great team
that they can rely on and surround themselveswith that can take on other things that are
necessary for you to continue to achieve greatmilestones and outcomes.
Is organizational design something that youreally shouldn't think about until you're at 25
employees, you just need to execute, and thenit'll kind of emerge based on where you are a

(18:43):
couple of years in?
Or are there some kind of non revolving doordecisions that you have to make from day one to
make sure that you don't have the wrongorganizational design?
A 100% the latter and not the former, meaningyou need to be thinking about organizational
design day one.
And organizational design, you know, maybe it'sit's a fancy word for just how do we work

(19:04):
together.
And even if it's just you and a cofoundertalking about how we wanna work together, who's
responsible for what, where are the lines ofaccountability, and just constantly over
communicating.
Again, whether you're a team of two or 20 or2,000, communication is so critical.
Avoiding confusion is so critical.
And it's all about constantly defining the waythat we work together, where are their roles

(19:29):
and responsibilities, who has accountabilityfor this, and how do we show up day in and day
out in a way that makes us as productive aspossible.
And I I think you can't visit that topic oftenenough, and you can't think about it early
enough.
Sort of like this this very fancy term for youhave people and you have tasks.
And how do you structure those people intodoing those tasks at scale?

(19:52):
I I think that's part of it.
I as I mentioned, I worked with a greatexecutive coach, a guy named Jeff Hunter, and
Jeff runs a program called Talentism.
As I work closely with Jeff, he emphasized howit's all about avoidance of confusion.
And confusion is what erodes productivity.
Confusion is what erodes happiness with yourjob.

(20:14):
Confusion is kind of the root of everythingthat slows down companies and slows down you
achieving what your outcomes are.
And one of the core ways to avoid confusion iscommunication.
And so that's communication to your pointaround what are the tasks that we need to do,
but also how do we do that?
Who is going to do the things that we need todo to accomplish those tasks?

(20:35):
And back to what we were talking about earlier,what does great look like?
Do I need to be accomplishing these things in aweek, a month, a quarter?
How are we going to talk about it?
How are we going to track it?
And just making sure that this operating systemof how we're going to go build this company is
as well defined and as thoughtful as possible,I think is really critical ingredient to
overall success with a company.

(20:56):
One thing that's tricky for me as a leader andjust seeing startup CEOs is when you have a new
category, you're one of the first big playersin the DTC brand and you're hyperscaling, you
must be changing your mind on core things,including strategies quite often.
How do you change your mind on these things andstill maintain the credibility organizationally

(21:18):
and with your employees?
That's a great question observation.
And I think it is very important for you tomaintain the flexibility to change your mind
when you have new inputs or reach a newconclusion.
But at the same time, you don't wanna whipsawthe organization.
And And so so you you you don't don't wannawanna be in a constant state of chaos and where

(21:38):
people don't understand what the north star is.
And I I think it comes back to communication.
If you can explain the why behind things, thenI think you get a lot more permission from the
organization to change your mind and for themto accept new direction, for you to cancel
something that was a priority or whatever thethe resulting decision is.

(21:59):
If if people really understand the why and howyou got to that decision and what the inputs
were for you personally to reach thatconclusion, then I think you get a ton more
permission from the organization to buy intothose changes on a more frequent basis.
And ideally, wanna have some data or have runsmall tests around this new thesis before kind

(22:19):
of making the organizational pivot?
Potentially.
We were a data driven organization, but we alsotalked about how we wanted to avoid analysis
paralysis and how sometimes you just have to gowith your gut, especially when you're in a
business that you were building from day one,you know your customers well, you know your
supply chain well.

(22:40):
Sometimes you could ask for all the data in theworld, but there's going to be no data that
really articulates the picture of why youformed a decision in your gut.
And I think the best leaders and the bestorganizations embrace a combination of very
data driven insights, but also going with whereyou think the right answer is for the org, even
if it's impossible to validate that throughdata.

(23:02):
If you were to go back to 2014 when you foundedthe company, what skills do you wish you had in
2014 that would have helped you get an evenbigger outcome with Casper, from going public
to the acquisition?
Well, certainly all of the management skillsthat we've been talking about, you know,

(23:22):
communication, organizational design, etcetera,I learned on the job.
Had I had that knowledge earlier, we alwaystalked about how we were building the plane
while flying it.
You know, that's scary and has its challenges.
And that was all input I wish I had.
You know, the other thing I wish I had was justthe perspective that comes with experience.

(23:42):
And perspective is something that to me isinvaluable and that you often can't make up,
you know, just time of being in a job and doinga job for a certain amount of duration.
But perspective around how investor sentimentcan change, capital markets can change, that,
you know, the sentiment around what the rightway to build a company can change.

(24:02):
We were certainly playing a a venture backedgame and what that means.
And, just the the maturity and perspective thatcomes with experience is something that would
have been valuable for us to have earlier in mycareer.
Do you think that's kind of the key having onefoot in first principles thinking and one foot
in basically venture orthodoxy or marketorthodoxy, understanding exactly what the

(24:27):
financial markets needs while also balancingthat with what is fundamentally a good
business?
I I don't think that venture backed businessbuilding is at odds with good company building.
I think you have to have the perspective ofwhat is the game that we're playing and know
that the game can change over time.
Meaning, you can be in hyper growth mode whereyou are allocating capital to drive growth even

(24:53):
though you don't have perhaps the uniteconomics that come for more of a scaling mode
or more of a profitability mode.
And just thinking about all of the differentinputs to business building and what you're
solving for and knowing that what you'resolving for can change over time, I think is
critically important today.

(25:13):
And again, when we were running Casper and whenwe started Casper, I never talked or thought
about things like capital allocation and thephilosophy behind how we were doing company
building.
For us, it was just about building a greatproduct, building a great brand and getting it
out there as widely as we could.
And I think that's kind of the core maybe toyour point around like first principles

(25:36):
thinking of company building.
But then there's the nuance of what is theright level of speed?
What is the right level of kind of investmentinto the business?
Where are you investing that's sustainableversus not?
And again, just coming back to, you know, ourparlance was like, what is the game that we're
playing today?
And knowing like public investors want you toplay a different game than venture investors
and private equity investors want you to play adifferent game and credit investors think about

(25:59):
things differently than equity investors.
A company oftentimes needs to think about allof these different constituents and balance all
of those inputs with a plan that, allows you tocontinue to attract capital, continue to gain
value and deliver on the ultimate valuecreating side of things, which is a great
customer experience.
Tell me about the difference between ventureinvestors and public investors.

(26:23):
Venture investors are long term oriented tobegin with.
They are thinking about things in five, tenplus year kind of time increments.
Public investors most often are very short termand thinking quarter to quarter with company
building.
Sentiment within public investing changes, Ithink more frequently than venture investing,
meaning sometimes public investors will be veryoriented on growth and other times they will be

(26:48):
very oriented around profitability and cashflow.
You also deal with a huge dispersion of publicinvestors.
You can be dealing with value people, growthpeople, hedge funds that are very short term
nature, long only funds that are much longer inkind of their thought process.
So you just have a lot of differentconstituents within the public equity investing

(27:10):
universe.
Venture, I think, is generally oriented togrowth.
They're generally oriented to long term valuecreation.
And they're oriented towards investing in abusiness to build sustainable first principles,
business value creation.
So building moats, building technology,building great teams, and and knowing that

(27:31):
that's not done in a linear fashion and andbeing more attuned to kind of the sausage
making than perhaps public investors who aremore geared towards being analysts and living
in spreadsheets.
A lot of private companies.
You have SpaceX out of $300,000,000,000valuation and these kind of crazy private
valuations, obviously, OpenAI.
Is it then rational for them to stay privatefor as long as possible?

(27:53):
And what's the takeaway from the CEO seat of aprivate company?
To me, they're a very small handful ofcompanies and you mentioned them.
There are others like Ramp or Stripe, etcetera.
But you're talking maybe a couple dozencompanies that can get all of the benefits of
being a public company while staying privateand avoid all of the downfalls of being a

(28:14):
public company.
And for those companies, I think it makes totalsense why a CEO would wanna stay as private for
as long as they can.
And that's because they can tap the capitalmarkets whenever they want.
They can give their employees and theirshareholders liquidity whenever they want.
They don't have to deal with public reporting,they can invest longer term with the business.

(28:35):
And so again, they get the best of both worlds,the best of being private and the best of being
public.
But you were talking about a very small handfulnumber of companies that have that kind of
privileged position.
For the vast majority of venture backedcompanies that are even able to potentially tap
the public markets, the public markets have alot of benefit.
They bring liquidity to your shareholders, theybring liquidity to your employees, They elevate

(28:59):
the level of discipline that you'll operate thebusiness around.
And so I think there's a lot of reasons to likegoing public.
And I think the venture industry as a whole hasa big problem around liquidity and returning
capital to shareholders.
And I think that's gonna require a retrainingof how both founders and venture investors
think about and coach their companies aroundgoing public and returning capital to

(29:22):
shareholders.
And so I think you have to kind of bifurcatewhat type of private companies you're talking
about relative to the world of of how and whenthey should go public.
Outside of just access to capital andliquidity, I've been in these meetings with New
York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, you know, alwaystout the value of going public, the branding,

(29:42):
all these kind of tertiary benefits.
Are any of those meaningful and tangiblebenefits to a company that went public, or is
it really about, you know, having liquidityand, you know, satisfying your private
investors?
You know, for certain companies, they theycertainly can have those benefits.
You know, with Casper, we were very lucky thatwe were a very well known brand.

(30:04):
We were a very well known business.
We had spent a lot of time with the investmentcommunity, we've spent a lot of time just
building a well known brand.
And so for us, it was less about the brandingopportunity.
And it was more around operating the businessat a level of sophistication, at a level of
maturity that we wanted to hold ourselvesaccountable for.

(30:25):
And that combined with access to capital andthe other things that we've talked about made
the public markets make sense for us.
But the public markets can be fickle, they canbe very brutal.
We certainly had a tough go in them.
And so you just have to go in eyes wide open.
And there's a lot of convexity in the publicmarkets, meaning that when things work, they
can work out really well, really quickly andmarket caps can grow really quickly.

(30:49):
But the same is true on the downside too, youcould erode value very quickly.
So I think it's really just a question of wherethe business is.
Is it at a level of scale and maturity thatshould support kind of that level of scrutiny
and that type of reporting?
And if it can be, then it can be the rightanswer for a lot of companies for sure.
So after selling Casper, you went on to becomeinvestor through Montauk Climate.

(31:14):
Tell me about Montauk Climate.
While I was running Casper, was lucky that Istarted my investing side of life as well.
So for over a decade now, I've been investingin private companies.
I really like that side of life too.
I like partnering with founders early in theirexistence to help them think about their
business they're building and share the lessonsthat I've learned in building companies in the

(31:35):
past.
So I've always loved both the operating side oflife and the investing side of life.
And I think it was thinking about how tocombine those two things that led us to start
Montauk Climate.
So immediately selling Casper, I wanted to getback into company building.
I wanted to get back into that kind of zero toone phase of life.
And that led me to personally incubate somecompanies.

(31:56):
I didn't want to go run a single company.
I was lucky that I felt like I checked everybox as a CEO that I had personally.
But I love trying to figure out the rightstrategy, the right team, the right opportunity
out there and being part of that early phasesof really figuring out product market fit and
that zero to one sprint.
So that led me to incubate some ideas.

(32:17):
One of the companies I helped incubate is acompany called Haven Energy.
Haven is doing super well today.
They are a business designed to help homeownersand increasingly business owners add battery
storage to their properties.
And it was really that business that took medown the energy rabbit hole of learning about
the energy transition, learning about howtechnology was starting to come into the energy

(32:41):
space and trying to figure out the right piecesfor Haven Energy that led me to wanna start
Montauk Climate with Evan Karin, my co founder.
Double click on Montauk Climate.
So you have incubation, you have investing.
Tell me about the overall strategy for thefirm.
So part of our business is a venture studio.

(33:02):
The venture studio is where we are standing upnew ideas that we come up with.
We're constantly talking about and doing deepresearch around what's going on with the
convergence of energy and technology and wherewe don't see people actively building
companies.
And when we see that white space, we thendecide if we think there's a good business
opportunity to go put together a business plan,a business model, we go really deep on that

(33:27):
research, we talk to customers, we talk tooperators, etcetera, and ultimately come up
with a business that we're excited about.
With that business, we'll then go out and startto build a founding team and we'll partner with
that founding team as co founders to go launchand hopefully scale a business.
So that's our venture studio business.
We've been lucky that we've launched sevenbusinesses out of that.

(33:48):
Five of those businesses have already raisedoutside capital.
Several are growing very quickly and are livenow.
And we want to continue to build and launchcompanies within what we now call the electron
economy to scale.
So that's one part.
The other part is our investing business.
So funds to invest into the electron economywhere these are non incubated companies, but

(34:11):
where we get involved with the series A or Bround, where a company is post product market
fit, but has not yet achieved the level ofgrowth and scale that we believe is possible.
So in those instances, we want to invest, wewant to join the board, we want to roll up our
sleeves and really help those founders scaletheir business.
And then the third pillar to Montauk Climate isreally an incubated effort, but also investing

(34:34):
is around credit and creating credit investmentopportunities for our investors to invest into
companies focused on the electron economy andthe energy transition.
And so that business is called Turtle HillCapital that we help stand up as well.
Is there some special subsidy in the market forinvesting into credit?
Or is it just kind of synergistic with the restof the business?

(34:57):
It really started with what are the needs ofthese companies and what are the needs of
companies that aren't at massive scale when itcomes to solving the energy opportunity at
hand.
And so we talk a lot about the need for energyaddition.
There's just not enough energy on the gridstoday to power our AI ambitions even to deal

(35:18):
with the heat that's happening today.
I mean, we're sitting here indoors, but it'sgonna be 95, 98 degrees in New York City.
And there's a real chance that the utilities inthis area are gonna run out of power today.
And so how do we get more power on the grid?
How do we get more out of the power that wehave?
How does the electron economy that's that'sreshaping AI and intelligence and electrifying

(35:40):
every part of our economy going to look in thefuture?
And how do we bring technology to bear there?
And a lot of companies that are focused onthese problem areas need to grow quickly.
And that's where venture capital and equity isgreat.
And they also need to deploy hardware.
And that's where credit is often needed.
So that could be EV chargers, it could bebatteries, it could be geothermal heat pumps,

(36:02):
All of these types of businesses, they reachcertain levels of scale and growth, need to
think about what is the right capital stack fortheir business.
And it's very difficult to finance some ofthese businesses entirely with equity.
But when we went to look for credit, even forHaven Energy, we saw that the credit guys that
had the expertise around these energy assetswere really only interested in cutting very

(36:24):
large 9 figure checks.
Like, they just don't get out of bed for lessthan a $150,000,000 investment.
And when you were sub a $100,000,000, therewere very few firms that had the knowledge and
expertise to underwrite energy assets or energybusinesses with the ability to then deploy 25
or $50,000,000 worth of credit.
And so all three of these pillars exist withinMontau Climate because we saw a real need in

(36:47):
the market.
We saw a real need to create new companies thatwere going after these energy opportunities
because there's just not enough founders goingafter these problems.
And so we think there's a great opportunity tostart companies that scale quickly and create a
lot of value.
We think there needs to be more hands onoperators focused on how to take these
companies from product market fit to scale.

(37:07):
And that's where we have a lot of expertise andthat's our equity platform.
And then credit is needed to optimize thesecapital stacks so that companies can deploy
hardware and do so, while they're growingquickly with the right type of capital support.
Almost vertically integrating a solution to themarket's needs because one of these solutions

(37:28):
one of these solutions is not enough.
You need the other parts to actually help growthese companies as well.
That's right.
At the end of the day, company building is notrocket science.
You know, you you generally need a great team,you need a great product, and you need capital.
And when you can bring those three thingstogether, you generally have a recipe for big
success and big success for investors and bigsuccess for the operators.

(37:51):
And so we're focused on holistic solutions.
And we think that the climate space and theenergy space has been too myopic for too long.
And and we are able to bring a diversified setof experiences across our team to bear to help
these companies think about how to scale, howto bring in capital at the right phase of time
for these businesses, and how to drive bigoutcomes.

(38:12):
How do you define the electron economy?
And tell me about these seven companies thatyou've incubated.
What areas are you going after?
So the electron economy, we define as the partsof our world that are being redefined due to
the electron and that the electron is becomingthe basis for how we reshape huge areas of our
lives.

(38:33):
And we talk about the AIification ofeverything, right?
AI is becoming embedded with everything.
And AI is essentially a function of accessingelectricity and using that electricity to
generate intelligence.
We all know about the theme of electrifyingeverything.
Our cars are being electrified, our homes arebeing electrified, the buildings we work in are
being electrified.
All of that means that how those electrons arebeing used, how we get more out of those

(38:57):
electrons, how the electrons flow are criticalfor how our physical economy operates.
And the digitization of everything is a themethat we talk a lot about.
We are generating more and more data than we'veever generated by orders of magnitude.
And we are actually able to harness the powerof that data because we have AI that is able to

(39:17):
crunch that data and generate useful outputfrom it.
And so all of this means that we need torethink how we're approaching the electricity
system and grid within our country, how we'rechanging the way we use software and hardware
to get more out of electrons and how we'reharnessing the AI and the digitalization and

(39:38):
the electrification of our economy.
And so for us, that means we're thinking aboutstarting companies where AI helps you manage
your utility bills and your electricityfootprint.
We're thinking about digital infrastructuredeeply.
Data centers are a huge area of focus and howthey operate, how they're built, how they're
scaled, how the GPUs are provisioned.

(39:59):
That's that's been a big area that that we'vegone deep on.
How do we generate data?
So how do we create earth observation platformsthat can help companies scale and manage the
infrastructure that they have?
And so we kind of dissect those themes and arelooking deeply into each of those verticals
understand where we wanna both build companiesand invest in companies.

(40:22):
Yeah, a very interesting vantage point in thatyou've focused yourself on this electron
economy, which is essentially energy and newforms of energy.
Handicap for me in the next ten, twenty years,what's gonna solve our energy needs over the
next ten to twenty years?
Ten to twenty years is a long enough timehorizon where I think you will see new forms of

(40:43):
energy really scale up, forms of energy that Ishouldn't say new forms, but nuclear as an
example is something that does take a longtime, but has the ability to scale up and newer
technologies like SMRs, etcetera.
So I certainly think you'll see nuclear as abigger part of the mix over that timeframe.
I think our concern around nuclear is whenyou're thinking about a sub five year time

(41:06):
horizon and just building nuclear technology isgoing to take time to scale.
You're already seeing solar be a massive inputto the grid and a massive input to our
electricity footprint.
I think you're going to continue to see solarand battery costs decline dramatically.
And that's going to mean that we're going tocontinue to proliferate solar and battery

(41:27):
storage on our grid, even if we see tax credittreatment at the federal level decline with
some of the changes that are coming out ofCongress.
So I think you still want to see renewablescome on the grid.
I think you want to see battery storage as partof the renewable mix come on the grid in a
bigger way.
And so utility scale batteries are veryinteresting.

(41:47):
And then I think you're gonna see newer areasof energy generation like nuclear come online
over a ten or twenty year period to reallyscale up the amount of electricity that the
this this country has.
You mentioned nuclear, and one of the, I guess,things that people repeat is that we're it
would take ten years even if we started today.

(42:08):
And the first question on that is, well, whydoes that matter?
Why shouldn't we start today?
Are we not gonna have a world in ten years?
Two is part of that ten years, ironically, isthree to five years of regulatory and red tape.
So if we have the right regulatory framework,you could actually accelerate that to, let's
say, five to ten years, maybe five at the mostoptimistic and, you know, within ten years

(42:32):
almost for sure, if you had some of thatregulatory tape.
But
So, it depends what hat you're wearing when youthink about kind of the first part of your
question around the duration, which, you know,for ten years, the government should absolutely
be thinking about how do we encourage nucleardevelopment?
How do we encourage nuclear power generationand create a investable backdrop where nuclear

(42:57):
makes sense?
If you're an early stage venture investor, thenten plus years as a duration and projects that
are gonna require hundreds of millions,billions of dollars of capital can be a very
tough place to invest.
So it really just depends what hat you'rewearing when you think about these.
But from a American dynamism standpoint, froma, you know, USA being successful, from a world

(43:21):
being successful, we absolutely need moreenergy.
We need it at scale, and we need to be doingeverything we can to bring energy online as
fast as we possibly can.
The question is just how to do it, how tocreate a backdrop that's going to incentivize
capital to allow more generation to happen.
And right now, it's a very difficultenvironment for increasing energy generation

(43:42):
because you have the price of oil and naturalgas too low and the cost of turbines and power
generation too high to make sense to build morethermal generation.
And you're having an administration that'sgoing to be discouraging solar with some of the
tax credit changes that they're making on thenear term.
And you have nuclear, which yes, regulatory isa part of the duration, but you also do need to

(44:07):
be very careful with nuclear power generationand you need some level of regulation, you need
some level of making sure that we are doingthat in a smart way.
And part of the problem is just talent.
We don't have enough nuclear engineers.
We don't have enough electrical engineers inthis country to deal with the areas of
development and to deal with the bringingonline these new sources of power generation at

(44:31):
scale.
And so part of the opportunity is how do we getmore people to focus on these areas?
How do we get more people trained to be smartaround this?
Nuclear generation is not an area where peoplehave been thought to go to school and to build
careers in the last thirty years around.
And so how do we encourage all of that tohappen at more scale?
And a lot of that has to do with the cost ofpower, the cost of generation, the cost of

(44:55):
putting power back to the grid.
And so there's a big economic backdrop that'sgonna drive a lot of this as well.
We'll get right back to interview.
But first, we're looking for the next greatguest.
If you or someone you know is a capitalallocator and would make for a great guest,
please reach out to me directly [e-mail].
Let's take to the side the lack of nuclearscientists and some of these other constraints.

(45:18):
From a pure political will, talk to me aboutthe different political factions that are pro
and anti nuclear because it never was quiteclear to me why it's a political issue.
It is a political issue mainly because ofNIMBYism.
And so it's less about left versus right,republican versus democrat, and it's more that

(45:40):
no one wants a nuclear power generation site intheir backyard.
And so politicians get involved when there's aproposed nuclear site because their
constituents don't want a nuclear site in theirbackyards.
And so that's why it's very hard to getapprovals done.
It's why a lot of the administration's currentfocus is around what type of federal sites and

(46:01):
and already existing nuclear sites can weconvert to drive new nuclear technologies and
new testing facilities.
And the NIMBY issue is not gonna go away,around this.
And and that's why it's a political lightningrod no matter what side of the aisle you sit
on.
Tell me about the breakdown of where you'veinvested into the last couple of years via

(46:21):
Montauk Climate.
Sure.
So, you know, I think probably the the mostobvious area of excitement that we share is
around AI.
And we all know the massive amounts of dollarsgoing into digital infrastructure to allow for
AI to continue to scale.
But you're seeing new applications of that AIevery single day that have the potential to

(46:44):
transform the way we work, the way we live.
And I think that is the most exciting area.
I think it is the most investable area.
And I think we're still in the early, earlydays of seeing how that AI transforms every
aspect of our economy.
And as Sam Altman has talked about in front ofCongress, as Jensen Huang has talked about, AI

(47:07):
at its core is all around electricity.
It's around accessing electricity andconverting electrons into intelligence through
the GPU chips.
And so for us, we spend a lot of time in thiskind of digital infrastructure AI theme.
That's how to build AI solutions and apply themto areas that have to do with energy.
That's how you build digital infrastructurefaster.

(47:28):
It's how you operate digital infrastructuremore efficiently and sustainably.
And so that's informed several companies thatwe've started with.
So just to highlight a few, we launched acompany called GridFree AI.
GridFree AI announced a $5,000,000 seed roundrecently.
And GridFree AI is all around how do you accessenergy at scale to build data centers without

(47:50):
burning the grid?
So how do you develop a power and coolingsystem that you can generate gigawatts of power
without tapping into the grid?
Because accessing the grid is the biggestbottleneck for building data centers.
The interconnection queues are three to fiveyears and in some parts of our country, even
longer to build a new data center.

(48:11):
And so we came up with a technology thatcombines cooling and power production in one
unit that creates a much more sustainable,efficient data center footprint and allows you
to build data centers much more quickly thanyou could otherwise build them today.
And that was really combining a founding teamfrom oil and gas with Ralph Alexander, our CEO,

(48:32):
who ran big parts of British Petroleum, was CEOand Chairman of Talend Energy, through and
through great operator with Patrick Ants, whohad a fifteen plus year at Microsoft and has
spent his career in data centers and reallyunderstanding what are the operational needs
and requirements of a data center and how doyou plug the power and cooling systems into

(48:53):
that in a way that is scalable and modular,which the oil and gas industry has done for
years?
Think that's going to be a really big companythat transformed the way digital infrastructure
is built and operated in our country.
Another company that we started that flows fromthat is how GPUs are provisioned within the
data center environment.
And so today, a lot of GPUs are run veryinefficiently.

(49:17):
And even though they're spun up, they aresitting idle.
And that's because there are not intelligentways to drive the orchestration of workloads
within the data center environment.
And so one of our companies is focused aroundintelligent orchestration of AI workloads and
how to optimize those across cost of energy,latency, and other factors that might inform a

(49:40):
smarter way to break up workloads that have todo with large language models and training
models and inference, etcetera.
Another example of a company is a companycalled ClearCurrent AI, which is using AI
solutions to help large energy load customersbetter audit, understand, analyze, and
eventually procure their power.

(50:01):
And so that's a company where we announced over$4,000,000 seed round recently, and they are
building AI tools for data centers to bettermanage their energy footprint and their utility
bills and how they procure and use energyacross their entire ecosystem.
And as you can imagine, these guys are dealingwith bigger and bigger power bills every month.

(50:21):
Power density is becoming a real problem thatthey have to deal with.
And yet they're dealing with utilities thatconstantly have rate changes and tariff
changes, etcetera.
And the best way to ingest these large amountsof data that's around your energy footprint is
by a custom built AI solution.
So that's another example of applying AI to theenergy landscape within digital infrastructure.

(50:42):
How would a private allocator, let's say CIO ofa pension fund or the CIO of Endowment
Foundation, if they were bullish on theelectronic economy, how would they invest in
the space?
What are some ways that they could go long thistrade?
Yeah, it's a great question.

(51:04):
Of course, they could partner with us if theyare interested in the software side of the
digital infrastructure landscape.
Or let me rephrase this.
If they were an LP in Montauk Climate and youare now advising them how to expand their
trade, what would you advise them at thatpoint?
Great question.
So of course it depends on what their risktolerance is, what their duration is, but the

(51:26):
conversations that we have with a lot of CIOsis around how do we think about digital
infrastructure investing.
So infrastructure has been a huge theme for alot of the large allocators for many years, and
a lot of the infrastructure allocations havegone into digital infrastructure.
So you see folks like KKR and GIP BlackRockthat own CyrusOne and all of the large private

(51:50):
equity infrastructure players own very largedata center platforms.
I think QTS will be Blackstone's mostsuccessful investment.
And so I think if they are allocating a privateequity and infrastructure, that would be an
area that they could continue to lean into andreally make big capital commitments that will
generate really substantial yields.

(52:11):
I think credit is another huge area of focuswithin digital infrastructure and credit
continues to be a very active part of theecosystem and folks like BlueOwl and partnering
with Crusoe is a very exciting kind ofpartnership that you could play in as a CIO.
And then I think there are more of thederivative trades that come beyond just the

(52:33):
core digital infrastructure, which are what arethe companies that are going to be successful
because these data centers are scaling up.
And a lot of that is software related and moretraditional kind of venture related
opportunities.
And I think that's a very exciting, successfulpart of the ecosystem that, still has a lot of,
of time to play out.

(52:54):
You have the power grid, you have the electron,the hardware that's connecting to the power
grid.
And then you have the software layer on top ofthat, that has to now manage basically the
inputs and outputs of whatever capacity you'rebuilding.
We published a report that kind of makes thatbreakdown clear within the electron economy.

(53:16):
And we liken it back to other transitions.
And what we talk about is how you need theinfrastructure layer to exist for the other
sides of the equation to start to come online,which above the infrastructure layer, have the
orchestration layer and above the orchestrationlayer, you have the application layer.
And for us, we spend a lot of time thinkingabout the application layer because that's

(53:38):
where a lot of venture outcomes can happen.
And so to draw the parallels to othertransitions that have happened, you needed the
mobile phones to exist and the physical iPhonesand infrastructure to have the mobile wave
happen.
You then had the orchestration happen acrosshow mobile phones worked at scale and how they

(53:59):
integrated with five gs towers and etcetera.
And then you had the applications that came on,folks like Uber and Meta and others that were
able to build on the mobile transition withapplications that then scaled to be enormous
successful businesses.
And that's where venture investing inparticular did very well.
And so we thought a lot about within theelectron economy, what are the infrastructure

(54:20):
layers that exist that could be digitalinfrastructure, it could be batteries, it could
be solar, etcetera.
And then how do you build software solutions todrive orchestration or applications on top of
that?
And that in particular, the orchestrationapplication layers are where Montauk Climat's
focused.
So you've been also as an angel investor,extremely successful.

(54:40):
As investor, you were in ramp, relativityspace, masterclass at the early stages.
What are your takeaways and what it takes to bea great early stage investor?
Yes.
Great question.
I think at the end of the day, this is I'm surecliche, but it's about underwriting the
founders and are you backing a founder that isgonna have the qualities to build a big

(55:04):
successful business?
And it's certainly not obvious.
And we know that early stage investing is a lowhit rate game where you're hoping for very big
outcomes and you have to have enough shots ongoal because it's impossible to predict these
with a very high percentage rate.
But the core to all of the companies that endedup being very successful within the companies

(55:28):
that I was fortunate enough to work with allhad to do with founders that had the grit, had
the intelligence, had the determination, hadthe vision to really drive execution, knowing
that every one of these businesses had theirups and downs and every one of these businesses
had their challenges, but the best founderspower through.
They're smart.
They know how to tap their community, theirnetwork, and they have a vision for building

(55:52):
something really big and exciting, and they'renot gonna let anything stop them.
And if you have that quality as a founder andand as a founding team, then odds are that
someone you should bet on.
I've been reflecting on this last couple weeks.
So I invested in Circle about eight years ago,and I've been thinking
about Congratulations.
Thank you.
Not yet liquid, so congratulate me upon lockup,but upon unlock.

(56:16):
But I've been thinking about this concept, canyou even know who's gonna be super successful?
And my sense is that you can't really knowwho's gonna hit, you know the traits that are
necessary, but not sufficient.
Sometimes you look in a couple years intoinvestment, you're like, man, I shouldn't have
made that.
And and most of the time, if you made a gooddecision, you don't yet know.

(56:38):
But there's so many other factors, there'sregular like with circles, there's regulatory,
there's legislative, there's elections, and allthese things are not only unknowable, but
they're not even based on the founder and thebusiness themselves.
I think that's one of the reasons why some ofthe greatest investors, they don't necessarily
know which one of them are hits and and whichones will break out.

(57:02):
It's not because they don't know all thefactors that takes to be a great founder that
leads to a deca billion dollar outcome.
I think it's just that there's far more factorsat play than just the founder in the business
in year one.
Sometimes it's not even known until a decadeout.
That's for sure all correct.
And there is it is impossible to have a veryhigh hit rate with predicting how successfully

(57:25):
company will be in its earliest days.
And you know that because the most successfulinvestors in our ecosystem still have a low hit
rate when it comes to early stage investing.
And it's because there are so many variables,some within founders controls, many without
many not within founder control that drivethese outcomes.
And Circle's a great example just in talking toother investors who invested with that company

(57:49):
early where they marked that investment down tozero several times because the company was
facing existential crises.
Again, some internally caused, some externallycaused and had no idea whether that business
was going to be a zero or a $50,000,000,000outcome as it is today.
And I think that that's just because there areexogenous factors that impact so much of this.

(58:13):
There are internal factors that that impact somuch of these outcomes.
And it's impossible to predict a company whenit's a very young baby of a company, what's
gonna end up happening to that.
But you do know there are very many factorsthat are required inputs like determination and
grit and resiliency and intelligence andvision.

(58:35):
And when you see all of that in a foundercombined with an area that you think is
interesting and can lead to a good big businessoutcome, then that's when you hopefully take a
risk adjusted bet that you want you know, takea ride with someone and see how it goes over a
long duration.
The Uber finance nerds, me included, will bethrilled to hear that the takeaway is basically

(58:58):
portfolio construction.
So because it is unknowable and because there'sso many variables, but yet the returns could be
a thousand x to 10,000 x, the number one thingyou could focus on as an early stage venture
investor, at least, is portfolio construction,making sure that you have enough, bats at the
plate, making sure that you early enough, thatyou're diversified enough across different

(59:20):
verticals, across different geographies.
So it is kind of a it's relearning the power ofportfolio construction in venture that
everybody talks about, but it's very hard toknow before you kind of see it in your own
portfolio.
That's right.
I think it's it's portfolio construction, andportfolio construction has to do with the
vintage that you're investing in, the sectorsthat you're investing in.

(59:45):
And like you said, having a diversified enoughset of bets where you have the chance for a
big, big outcome, knowing that it's impossibleto predict on any one company if you're
investing early enough.
And so I I do think that portfolio constructionis the right way to encapsulate kind of the
risk of early stage investing.
And, hopefully, if if you pick the rightsectors and you pick the right years to go

(01:00:07):
deploy in, you can have good taste in pickingfounders to back, and that's where this can be
a great business to be in.
It's this the portfolio construction and thevalue of being persistent investor in venture,
it's this meme that has been essentiallyaccepted by top LPs.
You will be rewarded by staying in the assetclass.
There's been enough market fluctuations nowthat the top investors understand you have to

(01:00:31):
play the long game.
There's no way to time venture, and people thathave time tried to time it over the last fifty,
sixty years have consistently failed to do so.
So it's it's one of these things that themarket slow slower than the public market
learning that venture is something that youreally need to steady hands.
You you see that time and time again thatdepending on the the crazy thing about venture

(01:00:51):
is just how long the duration is.
So if most of your bets are gonna take, call itten years to play out, you're betting that the
areas that you're investing in today are goingto be exciting and interesting and drive good
multiples ten years from now.
And a lot of that has to do with the priceyou're paying going in.
So what's going on within the economy andmarkets today?

(01:01:12):
And a lot of it has to do with the price andmultiples you're gonna get on the way out.
And so that's having to do with where the worldis ten years from now.
And that that's just very hard to predict, andthat's why you just need to be in the game year
in and year out and and hopefully pick areasthat are going to experience, secular growth
for decades.
Philip, this has been MasterClass.
What would you like our audience to know aboutyou, about Montauk Climate, about anything else

(01:01:35):
you'd like to share?
For us, I think we are really trying to get theword out around the electron economy.
And to me, the reason why I went from being ageneralist investor and and having focused in
working with founders across every sector ofventure to being all in and fully focusing my
time around the electron economy is because Ibelieve it is the greatest opportunity in front

(01:01:57):
of us over the next ten and twenty years.
And we love to go deep around why technology isgoing to transform the energy landscape and why
the electron economy is the smartest place toallocate capital and the most interesting area
to be playing in.
And so we would love folks to wanna go deeperinto that area and explore with us why we see
such a compelling, tapestry behind the electroneconomy.

(01:02:22):
I I think this is a very interesting space andI appreciate you jumping on the podcast.
Thank you very much for having me, David.
It was a great conversation.
Thank you for listening.
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