What The Funk?

0:00 All right. It is a beautiful Friday here in the Rocky Mountains. I have one of my neighbors, kind of neighbors here. Neighbor now, when I think when we met, you were in Houston DNN and you

0:13 migrated up north to Denver, right? I did about two years ago. Love it. Love it. So, yes, we are technically neighbors now. And this is one of those podcasts I swear we've been trying to get

0:26 you on for a couple of years. And then finally, it worked out first, you moved and then I think I had some sort of challenging conflict. You had a challenging conflict. We're both busy. Finally

0:38 made it happen today. So, I'm super excited about that. We're going to get into all things in the world of DNN, all things in the world of energy tech, investment, Yale, life, career, Houston,

0:52 Denver. It's going to be a blast. But of course, I've got to hit you with the question. I ask everybody to start the podcast is who are you? who is Deanna Zang? I am many things.

1:06 But first and foremost, I guess, on the what I do aspect, which by the way, it changes a lot when you move from Houston to Colorado. We were, I was just talking with a friend about this the

1:19 other day, but when you're in Houston, what do you do is obviously your job. And then when you're in Colorado, what do you do is like, what do you ski, hike, you know, that sort of thing. But

1:35 yeah, no, for me, so in terms of what I do for work,

1:42 I right now, and since really the last year and a half, I have been consulting around first of a kind. So I help companies in energy tech and climate tech raise money around their first of a kind

1:57 projects. And that can be anything from pilot to demonstration, to second demonstration, to first commercial, which is probably what most people think of when they think of first kind. But the

2:13 gap, the missing middle that we always talk about in climate tech and energy transition is across all of those things. And so that's why I work across all of those areas.

2:26 What I do outside of work So we in part moved to Colorado because we just love the skiing, the mountain

2:36 stuff, the weather, just everything to do around this area.

2:45 And we also have a little corgi that I take out. Nice. Every day. And she's a hiker and a mountain dog too You are truly a Coloradan. And I met you, it was doing, you know, being an analyst,

3:03 looking at climate tech, energy tech companies. Now you just want to talk about where you go skiing. Like I've joked about this before in Houston. What do you do? Well, you sit in a car and in

3:14 Colorado, you sit on chair lifts, right? So that's always a positive. I want to go back though. I want to talk about like, where'd you grow up? Where are you from? You went to Yale. So you

3:25 went to school in Northeast Like, you know, my home as well, originally from New Hampshire and college in Boston. But talk a little bit about your upbringing, what you studied in college and how

3:35 you got on this path that led you into oil and gas, climate tech, energy tech. Yeah. So I grew up in Houston. I am a Houstonian and I would modify that last statement a little bit. I would say

3:48 that in Houston, we sit in restaurants and we eat I

3:54 grew up

3:57 just spoiled rotten by all the food that Houston had to offer the best. But I grew up in, I grew up in Southwest Houston around Chinatown, actually. We, I lived with my parents and my grandpa,

4:14 who spoke no English and, and got around just fine in that area, which was amazing. And my parents eventually moved to

4:25 Bel Air. I went to school at St. John's went to high school at St. John's, and then went to Yale for college. And that was my, my great escape from Houston, which was shared by most of my

4:41 classmates at the time, which is, you know, if you, you know, to get out of Houston and to explore the world and everything. And so I wanted to pick a school that was, was obviously part of my,

4:54 my top list, but also very far away from me. from Houston just to see what the, what another type of life was like and got it. And then decided after college that I really liked Houston and came

5:09 back,

5:11 so. That's interesting. So yeah, are you Chinese? Is that your? I am, yeah. Okay, that's your descent. I hear this with some Chinese American families where it's like the family lives

5:24 together, right? You mentioned grandparent and parents It's kind of cool, you know? I think we, I've heard this before and you know, that familial aspect, especially, I find that interesting

5:36 that your parents didn't speak any English. Were they first generation in the US? Yeah, my parents were first generation and they spoke English. So they came here for school and work, but my

5:51 grandpa never learned English. Like, he spoke with us. And then he would go out, he would venture out on his own,

6:03 probably against my dad's wishes. He'd venture out on his own in the middle of the day, cross like the busy Belair Boulevard that was there in Chinatown and go shopping by himself. And he, because

6:15 the community there is just, it's enough, he could go to the library there, he could spend his whole day there and not speak a word in English and be fine Was education like really instilled in you?

6:29 I mean, first of all, you have no accent whatsoever. No hint of a Chinese accent. Certainly no hint of a Houston accent. So I'm guessing you grew up bilingual, right? Was it like a priority for

6:43 your family to have you like really master the English language, kind of immerse yourself in the American culture? Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah So, um,

6:56 Since I was born here, I think I benefited from being surrounded by English from a very early age. And my parents also, since they, you know, had to work in English, their English was pretty

7:12 good, good enough to where if I spoke to them in English, they would understand. So I kind of grew up

7:21 not speaking Chinese too well, but understanding it fine because my parents spoke it, but then responding to my parents in English. So we would have this weird, you know, like dynamic where they

7:35 would speak to me in Chinese and I would speak back in English. And that's just how it was for most of my life. And as a result, my Chinese is actually pretty horrible.

7:47 That's boring. But I can get around just fine I can understand and, you know, I can, uh, I know enough words. where I can get my meaning across and I can use hand gestures and all this stuff to

8:01 get around. But yeah, growing up was very easy from that aspect. I didn't have any language issues. Unlike I know other kids that came from overseas and had to assimilate from when they were 12

8:17 years old and only speaking Chinese on the till that point. I have friends that have done that, that have had to make that drastic transition when they were in middle school, which is a hard time

8:28 enough as it is. Totally. And end up just fine by the time they were 18.

8:36 Yeah, that's cool. I appreciate hearing that perspective because for me, you know, grew up speaking English and any languages that I picked up along the way were through school.

8:47 So Yale, obviously one of the best schools in the country, maybe you feel like it's the best school in the country. What was it like going to an Ivy League school? I mean, obviously you had to

8:57 get a winter coat, which you certainly don't ever need in Houston. So that was a little bit different. But did you like Yale? What did you study there? And did you in general, like, did you get

9:06 chances to go to Boston and New York and kind of see that whole like Northeast Corridor as well? Yeah, yeah, I loved it. And it was definitely very different for a lot of reasons. College is very

9:21 different from growing up But Yale, especially, it was in the Northeast. Like all the buildings are just so different from those in Houston. And the people are the same. Like I think every, but

9:32 there's nice people everywhere. And there were nice people

9:39 in college. There's also assholes in college too, everywhere. Oh yeah, yeah, no doubt.

9:45 But I found a core group at Yale that I still keep in touch with to this day We actually just had a reunion at a friend's room. wedding and I think like one thing that I noticed across like generally

10:01 Ivy Leagues

10:04 and in particular Yale is that there's

10:08 you know kids are smart but kids you can find smart kids everywhere right I think when it comes to these like kind of elitist colleges there's sort of an expectation that you not only like you know

10:21 make a good life out of yourself but also that you go out and change the world of some sort like you go out and try to do something bigger and and so kids come in kind of with these like lofty ideals

10:37 for better or worse and I have a I have a ton of friends that are that are like this that I love them for that but it also kind of creates a separation between them and and and you know the the folks

10:51 that are you know, making good lives out of themselves by doing, by doing everyday jobs. And so there was, there's always like, you know, some sort of like moral aspect of like, is what you're

11:07 doing impactful, is what you're doing like good for the world, is what you're doing like,

11:18 you know, making the best out of the life that you've been given And, you know, all these like philosophical questions, like entered into everyday conversation way more than I did with some of my

11:31 other friends back home. So that was kind of an interesting thing to note. And it probably is part of the reason why, you know, there's like a big, and maybe this is true across all college

11:45 campuses, but there's like a, There's there's a lot of debate about, you know, social justice, around environmental justice, around clean energy versus dirty energy versus like, what are, you

11:59 know, what our world should look like? And, and got me thinking earlier on about those questions. That's, I love that insight. And I see that a little bit too with my wife, she went to Duke.

12:10 You know, I went to Brandeis. And I think there's some of that, but it's a little bit, it's a little bit different. I think that the ethos of Brandeis was like, you're going to go here and then

12:10 you're going to go to some form of secondary education and probably end up in a big city and figure out what you're going to do.

12:27 I think with Duke, at least, and probably to the same extent, Yale, when you're in that like top seven, top 10, top three, whatever school, there is that thought of like, okay, how can I not

12:40 only uphold the brand, but like really see how I can impact and change the world, right? So that that ideal of thinking big is awesome. And and I think that it's good for our country as. as a

12:51 whole, what did you major in in college? Statistics. Statistics, okay, so were you always gonna math? Do you love numbers? Yeah, I've always been good at math 'cause I think math for me is

13:05 also it's less about you immediately know math, it's logic, right? Like you can figure it out if you just spend enough time with it, and so I've always been good at math just 'cause I've always

13:20 worked hard. I've always just worked at it. But statistics was interesting. Okay, so full disclosure, I in part chose statistics because it was like nine credits, and so it was one of the

13:36 lighter majors and I could take other interesting classes to fill my schedule other than like, you know, major requirements,

13:45 but also because it was all, it was widely applicable, like, you could, you could. turn statistics into really any subject 'cause statistics applies to everything. So I really liked that aspect.

13:58 And I, you know,

14:00 the sort of like academic mind that I had at the time was thinking, you know, if I understand statistics, I understand nuance. And if I understand nuance, like I understand how to explain a lot

14:12 of unknown, like a lot of the unknown, a lot of the gray areas across different subjects Maybe I can be a better thinker as a result.

14:24 But yeah, I would say it also, from a tactical perspective I learned because how to me benefited, code as part of learning

14:33 statistics. Wow. And not like, I'm not creating websites or anything like that, but we used R a lot in statistics and it gave me a good flavor for, you know, just how you put together some sort

14:47 of algorithm to do something of use. And that's been helpful later on in life. Yeah, that's neat. I mean, now I'm, because we're talking about college, now I'm going down my own personal rabbit

14:58 hole in my mind a little bit, I was a history major. And it actually doubled the major in history in American studies, which was an accident. I was an American studies major. And apparently to be

15:09 a history major, you only needed eight history classes. And so many classes were like marked as both American studies and history. So I sort of found out like halfway through my seventh semester,

15:19 first semester senior year, I just sort of like started counting. I'm like, I think I'm a history major also, you know? And I like spoke to the head of the history department. He's like, yeah,

15:31 I mean, you've taken nine classes. You only needed eight. So congrats, you double majored. But like thinking about why I liked history, I think I was never a great student. I was a good student,

15:42 I worked hard. I don't think things came quite as easy for me as they did for others at my university. But I have a good memory and a good memory for like times, places, people, and things. And

15:56 I think that's why history was interesting to me and things like economics and statistics, not quite as much, right? Because it, yes, it's more practical and applicable to the real world. But

16:07 maybe it just didn't give me like that same feeling that something like history did. Did you have any other classes that you love? You mentioned like you did statistics because in some ways it was a

16:16 lighter major. Did you have some other types of classes that really stood out? I see you that you loved?

16:23 You know, I actually was the opposite. I wasn't too big of a fan of history per se because I just I have a horrible memory and like if I don't find it immediately applicable to what I'm doing right

16:40 now, I find it hard to stay interested. So like my husband loves war movies and everything to do with. historical wars, I just can't find myself interested in that unless it has something to do

16:57 with my life right now.

17:01 But yeah, in college, I spend a lot of time in the science labs to go out of biology, chemistry. And it was part of this, I really wanted to just be able to explain things

17:19 Statistics was part of that, but I wanted to explain how we think, how our

17:24 body was worked, and why does this happen, when this happens, and science helped with that.

17:34 I also took some classes that were more artsy in nature. This was one history class that I took, which was on the art movement, futurism, I know it's one of those classes where the professor is

17:49 just so passionate about their subject that, you know, we had crazy classes like one like potluck that he did, where we were to make futurist dishes, using a futurist cookbook and bring them to

18:05 class. That's one of the most memorable classes that I've had. But I also really enjoyed art for those reasons. Like, I think

18:16 art has a way of explaining your life, explaining why things happen, and jumping forward ahead of science

18:27 that science doesn't get to do because everything has to be precise and accurate and stepwise.

18:35 So I also enjoyed those classes. No, that's cool. No, good insight, learning more about you. So you finish up at Yale, right, you graduate. You move back to Houston. Did you know what you

18:45 wanted to do? Like, what was your first job? It's a bit of a homecoming for you. You got this great education. You kind of want to go out and change the world a little bit. You've learned a lot

18:54 of different things. What was the plan? And what did you do for like your first job out of college? Yeah, so I joined GPH at a college. And I

19:06 had an interest in banking from, starting from like probably sophomore year, which is when everybody starts to think about recruiting, which now is like the middle of recruiting for banking, which

19:20 is really crazy. That's really, so you got kids who are like 19 years old ready to like get ready for their career. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, these days, these days it's crazy. Like these days

19:30 you pretty much have to be like at the end of your freshman year, knowing that you have to go, do you want to go into banking? Oh my God, I had no clue what I wanted to do with that. But back

19:41 then, I had joined this personal finance of

19:48 called Smart Women's Securities. It was also targeting women. And it was a great network of women, many of whom have grown up to be friends of mine and that

19:59 I still keep in touch with today. But yeah, so I joined that club to learn more about just stock investing and what is this thing that people don't, 'cause that was something I never, my dad kind

20:14 of dabbled, but

20:18 I didn't really learn any of that. So I really wanted to learn that going into college and then found that there's this whole set of career paths that I didn't really even know existed that came out

20:31 of the space. And so I recruited for banking after I learned a little bit more about you were in the middle of big deals and you're out changing the world, one deal at a time and things like that.

20:47 the whole idealist mentality around banking that you can have as a college student.

20:54 And then landed an internship with Barclays in New York in the chemicals group. And then that kind of was my foray into the world of energy and chemicals and big industrials. And the chemicals group

21:12 at Barclays was a subset of the natural resources group. And it was pretty well known at the time the chemicals group worked on a pretty niche space on a few big players in the chemicals industry.

21:28 But the natural resources group was like really where a bunch of like really exciting big deals happened. And so I started to think more about like the energy industry as a whole and maybe

21:39 specializing in energy off of that And I took a few classes at Yale too. just ended up recruiting for

21:49 TPH because I had heard great things from a couple of folks that I knew that had interned there.

22:01 And yeah, and then ended up getting the job and moving back to Houston after college, which my parents were thrilled.

22:12 Yeah, and they actually, they convinced me to live for a year with them right at a school, which, you know, I saved a lot of money doing that, but I'm not sure if I would recommend that to

22:26 anybody. If you have the financial wherewithal to live separately from your parents, I would probably recommend that. Just because like, yeah, I only really needed a bed to sleep in during that

22:40 first year in banking, like you're working hard, you You don't really get to enjoy the niceties of. in a separate apartment really in that first year or for a few years after that. But I felt like

22:54 I put a lot of stress on my parents because they were seeing me come home at like two or three in the morning. And they really were questioning what I was doing with my life. And my dad would stay

23:06 up for that long 'cause I wasn't good for his health either to have me in the house. That's funny. So how long were you at Tudor Pickering and Holt? I was there until end of 28,

23:23 21, so seven years. So what was it like during COVID to work for a company like that? Because obviously, I feel like this is just sort of one of those moments in time, oil goes negative. And

23:37 everything's shut in and nobody's drilling. And here you are thinking, oh man, I'm gonna change the world. deals, right? And then all of a sudden that just doesn't happen. Those disappear and

23:47 the patches and disarray. What was that like?

23:52 I mean, I think it was like, um, so I think that there were a lot of like interesting things that happened during that time with deals. Um, you had, um, you had more of a focus on, you know,

24:06 just distressed assets, distressed deals, um, bankruptcy situations, which doesn't come, um, you know, frequently with the oil and gas industry. So it was kind of a learning experience for the

24:19 entire firm on how to better position the firm on those deals. Um, and so it was interesting from that perspective. There was sort of an existential crisis, um, across, you know, I think the

24:36 entire industry just like we want to be an oil and gas if oil is going to be30 a barrel for forever.

24:47 Yeah. And it did slow down deals a little bit, which honestly, as a junior analyst, you're kind of thankful for, 'cause it gives you some more time to go to bed. And have a life.

25:04 But yeah, for me, I think it made me think more about

25:10 like, you know, energy longer term.

25:16 And it kind of brought the initial questions around alternative energy and

25:24 other energy sources for me. But at the time, I think it was just, it was kind of like a once in a generation type of thing that happened in the energy industry, was happening right now. So I

25:41 kind of felt like I was in this cool period of the energy industry where I could see a lot of things that were happening that hadn't happened in a really long time. So it was just interesting

25:56 for the most part. I mean, that's one way to look at it. I think at the time it was, I mean, I'm in sales, right? So nobody was buying software, like oil and gas software. They're like, look,

26:07 man, I don't even know if we're gonna have my job. We're trying to survive I can't get the group consensus for anything because we're used to being in the office all the time. Now we're not. We

26:17 don't even know how to use a Zoom meeting. Like there was some like real philosophical shifts going on. And I think what started to happen coming out of that, and you saw this as closely as anyone

26:28 is, okay, if something like this happens again or the next downturn happens again and we have to lay off 30 of our staff, we're not gonna be able to just backfill those people We have to figure out.

26:40 how to hyperscale using technology. And I think that's really carried through and part of why my business continues to see a lot of different innovators come to us, whether it be on the AI tech side,

26:52 the production optimization, better insights into data, real-time data, as well as like holistic, longer-term data. But I think when you first hit my radar, you were actually doing like tech

27:06 investments for TPH. Is that right? Is that was some of your focus there? Yeah, yeah. So the downturn, like you said, incentivized a lot of folks to think about what's the future of energy?

27:22 How do we generate energy better? And in part, that

27:28 spurred a movement to think about

27:33 how do we optimize current energy assets? How do we put technology to work?

27:39 meaning like mostly software, mostly digital technology that's easier to deploy, a lot of times cheaper and faster to build. How do we build these solutions and deploy these solutions to quickly

27:57 like make energy sustainable at this lower price point? Sure. And so that

28:05 led to TPH starting this energy technology energy technology practice back in I would say 2017. Iish and at the time I had actually moved to research. So I wasn't part of that initial effort and

28:21 banking, but they wanted somebody to write about energy tech. So I started writing little blurbs in the morning newsletter about

28:32 digital oil field and energy technology and all the different aspects around it.

28:38 And that's how I got into kind of the VC world too. And I remember one of the very first interactions I had

28:50 was with chefron technology ventures. And I remember sending a list of questions to Kamal about

29:01 like, so

29:05 how do you guys invest like, what is like, you know, what is like a series, I don't know, some basic questions about PC. And he just like wrote back, he was very nice. He wrote back a list of

29:18 answers, but he was also like, it seems like you're very green in this space. Oh man, hey. Yeah. Welcome to oil and gas.

29:28 But yeah, but you know, that's how I kind of learned about it was just starting to write about it and getting to know folks in that space. and learning as I go. Yeah, and you were, you were new

29:43 to it, but at the same time, like I could see you building your presence on LinkedIn, right? You had a level of expertise, you weren't afraid to write. So I think you kind of carved yourself out

29:54 a niche as a bit of a thought leader in the energy tech, oil and gas tech space. And then ultimately you decided like, I wanna do this on my own, right? And I think that coincided with your move

30:05 to Denver So like talk me through that a little bit. What's it been like? What's your company? What do you do? What's it like being an entrepreneur? And how did this all coincide with like, okay,

30:15 I'm leaving the full-time world. I know what I wanna do. I wanna move to Denver. I wanna start my own company. Give me all of that. Yeah, well, it also coincided with the fact that there are

30:26 more engagements coming in that are more climate tech. Yeah. And new energy and alternative energy then like energy optimization, digital oil field, and energy test. Um, so I started to think

30:40 more about those spaces, um, they scared me at first. Like I didn't was, I had no idea what to think about hydrogen. Um, and luckily we had, um, Gary Morris and John Gibson and our team who

30:53 both, um, great mentors who just, uh, you know, we're, we're very intellectually diverse Uh, if you can say and, and we're able to, um, to, to, to give me a good primer on some of these,

31:11 but, um, yeah, I, I left at the end of 2021, uh, because I'd been in banking for seven years. Um, uh, well, at the firm for seven years and, and, and banking for a little less than that,

31:25 but I wanted to figure out if there was something that I could build in the Serena I had observed that there was, um, a lot of inquiries that came in that we just like couldn't handle. from a

31:37 volume perspective because a lot of times we're making introductions, we're handling work in a

31:48 very manual way and not very tech enabled. And so I was wondering if there was something I could build that would be like kind of the crux of that that could connect investors with startups in the

31:60 energy technology space and create a whole platform around it And so I kind of left to do some soul searching, kind of left to just try my hand because there was really no better time in my life too.

32:14 There really is no better time in my life than right now

32:19 to pursue kind of this dream of being like on my own and independent and some form of entrepreneurship and to try out this idea And the idea quickly became not, you know,

32:37 kind of fizzled out. And that was because it became clear that there was like, it was more of a tool than anything else.

32:46 And there really wasn't a business that you could build around it. Oh, I remember this, right? We got, it must've, it's gotta be at least two. So stages, no. Yeah, two and a half year. I

32:55 mean, yeah, you were talking about the platform that you were building. So I guess you decided to ultimately scrap that, right? Yeah, yeah Yeah, so I tabled that, I'm still really interested

33:06 in it. And maybe, you know, in the GPT world, it's much easier to build, but I tabled it at the time 'cause I just got lukewarm responses from

33:19 investors mostly that I had in my hypothesis pictured as being the buyers of this technology. And so I decided that it wasn't worth pursuing So I started writing about climate tech. So that was part

33:35 of my soul searching too, was just to learn more about time and tech be smarter in that area, meet more people outside of Houston too, which like in the energy tech bubble at the time, at least

33:46 now it's different. By the time like you could, you really get,

33:51 you know, just fill your time up with meeting people inside Houston talking about energy tech and not really venturing outside the bubble. Totally, you could just go to digital wildcatters office

34:01 and sit in the couch all day and meet like seven or eight different energy tech companies. Just be ready. Exactly. Yeah, which is great, but I also wanted to see what else was out there. So

34:13 leaving the firm also helped me kind of do that because I think I separated myself out from an entity that was based in Houston. That was, you know, energy and mostly oil and gas focus, et cetera,

34:28 et cetera Moved to Colorado, started writing about all this random stuff,

34:34 started meeting a whole bunch of people. And in that process, I started, I wrote about First of a Kind. So this risk of like standing up for facilities and for assets. And that got a lot of

34:48 feedback. It was, it actually kind of blew up and got me a lot of unsolicited connections and actually unsolicited projects. So that's how I started consulting around this was that a project came

35:02 in off of the article and I took it on and then that led to another one, another one. And so over the last one and a half years, I've been

35:15 consulting around this first of a time, actually close to two years now. Now I think about it. I've been consulting around this first of a kind, but actually formalized all of these efforts at the

35:27 beginning of this year with the creation of the one climate solutions. Nice. Okay, so that the name now makes more sense to me. Do you have a team? Is it just you? Like how's your company

35:39 structured? It's just me. It's just me for now.

35:45 I am looking to expand it eventually. It's kind of nice looking by yourself though. Oh my God. I know how you don't feel. I know you have a team, but you kind of also work on a lot of things solo

36:00 And it's kind of nice to when you're building something up to just have that flexibility and not have to worry about, you know, meaning payroll and all these things. Make sure the reminder, by the

36:11 way.

36:13 But yeah, right now it's just me and then if I need more people on projects, I'll pull in different collaborators. Which gives me flexibility to take on more than I can handle, but also means that

36:27 I don't have to worry too much about payroll? Yeah, it's just you, right? And, and I don't think you have any kids yet, right? So you're able to manage things. So you're able to manage things

36:38 a little bit more differently, probably take on some risk. I'm with you, yes. I think the hardest part about running a business is what you just outlined. It's the people management, keeping

36:50 them motivated, ensuring that they're not staying stagnant in their career. Everybody has their personal issues and challenges, and I'm very aware of that. Making payroll, having a conversation

37:02 that's very strategic with your clients one day, and then later that day being like, Hey, dude, can you pay your two month overdue invoice? By the way. Yeah. So it provides a different set of

37:12 challenges than if I was doing it on my own. I think I like it because it allows me to get exposed to more things, but it also takes me out of my comfort zone, and I was an employee at W2 for 17

37:24 years or something, 15 years, and then all of a sudden, you're running your own thing. There's just a different set of challenges. Paycheck doesn't just come in twice a month, right? And you

37:36 have to deal with personalities, both in terms of your clients and oil and gas operators and your own internal people, your time starts to slip away a little bit more. It was probably the most fun

37:46 when it was just me, but it was also, I think, the most tenuous. Like, it's a little bit more predictable now. And I have people like you saying, Hey, here's an innovator. Jeremy, you should

37:56 talk to them. I think you can help them. And you've brought me some awesome clients So forever grateful for that. In terms of the climate tech stuff, is your focus, you mentioned like sort of

38:08 that V1, that first project, is this truly for geothermal, hydrogen, methane monitoring projects? Or is this also dealing with the software piece of this and helping them get their first foothold

38:24 in a market? Yeah, it's hardware and it's

38:30 the hard tech assets. because the premise or the thesis

38:37 is that there really isn't capital, smart capital that's devoted to heart tech and particularly in this stage of the missing middle of bridging this gap between RD technology development and full

38:53 commercialization, like infrastructure deployment

38:58 And there are

39:01 some companies that have software aspects but it's really around the equipment, the hard stuff that there is this gap in capital. So that's what I'm focused on. Nice, nice. How do you get your

39:17 business? Yeah, mostly word of mouth right now. I also, people have started to know me in this space because I have been consulting around it for about two years. And at the beginning, starting

39:35 at the beginning of this year, when I formalized V1, I started to do a bunch of events around First of a Kind. So actually trying to build out the community in the space. And that's led to not

39:48 only more people knowing about V1, but also some leads on projects. So I'm pretty excited about that I'm still looking to, I mean, I don't know

40:06 the business will ever, it will stabilize. But I guess I don't know at what point that will be because there's so much evolution that's happening First of Kind right now. It's hard to stabilize and

40:20 figure out what your product is gonna be to the space when there's just so much that's changing in the space So I'm figuring out what exactly is my product. that I wanna sell forever.

40:36 And there's no clear answer to that right now. I basically offer kind of a mix of like financial and strategic consulting, depending on what the project is that comes in.

40:48 But there's no like definitive service that I would say is like a niche or a product. It's case by case basis, right? With the project work that you're doing. And I wanna talk specifically about

41:00 some of the projects that I'm seeing and see if these have hit your radar. Like I think one of the things that's really fascinating and interesting to me is, so utilities companies are now trying to

41:11 put a mandate out there to say like we wanna power our utilities with a greener mix of energies, right? So that could mean more geothermal, it could mean hydrogen, it could be a natural gas focus

41:24 and getting more away from coal. But seeing these companies then kind of collaborate with some operators and say, okay. Like, we want more geothermal. So now you have an operator like Chevron or

41:39 ExxonMobil or something saying, okay, we want again to geothermal too. So now we need to quickly figure out like, where do we drill for this and then get this to the utility, right? And it means

41:48 that gets us an extended contract and makes us look more favorable in the eyes of both the investors as well as the utility company. So seeing some like really cool stuff with that and the same thing

41:58 for data centers, right? We're seeing data centers being built all over the place, all the time right now, especially with compute and AI coming into the fold. And those, you know, wanting to

42:09 power the data centers with a different mix of energy production. So curious if you're seeing some of those things, like are those some areas that you would dabble in as well or am I off base? Yeah,

42:22 those are definitely areas. So I would say like

42:27 my focus area on my niche right now First of the kind, but especially in industrial decar. So like big assets, big plants and in this industrial space that can be anything from carbon capture,

42:43 geothermal, hydrogen, green steel, green cement, like all of these industrial areas.

42:53 And yeah, there's definitely a trend towards, there's the aspect of the corporates sending up more projects by themselves, like internally, right? And there's the whole data center boom that's

43:09 leading to more renewables deployment and then also other technologies associated with

43:17 those mega centers. So finding base load power for those data centers, figuring out how you cool

43:27 those data centers,

43:30 Um, how, when, when you're connecting electricity assets to the data center, like what sorts of, what, what sorts of, um, uh, technology used to connect that electricity in, like do you

43:43 store it and transfer it? Do you use a superconducting cable? Like there's, I know there's a big effort around that right now. So this sort of theme has led to so many different technologies, um,

43:56 being deployed around these first-of-a-kind projects, which is cool. Yeah, it's, it's super cool. And it's nice to hear the things that were just cool sounding, now actually be applied in

44:07 practice, right? Because I think that that's been the biggest shift, at least over the last, I'd say four or five years is, oh, yeah. Yeah. That sounds cool. This green cement thing. All

44:16 right. Yeah. But now it's like, hey, we actually really need to do that, you know, and then, and then taking it a little bit more seriously and seeing companies like that get more funding.

44:25 I've said this on previous podcasts as well. But I think that at least in traditional oil and gas tech, but I would say in climate tech too, there's been a shift toward innovation more. So it's no

44:38 longer just like we have a better, cheaper mouse trap, which is nice. There's always going to be room for those players, but it's like true innovation. Like my call after this with paint chat, I

44:47 had Nick at the CEO on this podcast a few weeks ago, they have an AI painting robot. And yeah, of course that sounds super cool, but what else? Okay, well it saves money, it saves time, but

44:57 it's also less emmative than traditional paint because it's more precise in terms of how it does its strokes. So there's always like other elements where yeah, I need cool, but now we're seeing the

45:08 energy industry start to adopt things like that. And it's like, there's not a lot of competition for that yet, there probably will be over time, but for now there's not. So seeing some kind of

45:18 first of a kind things in our world too, which I love, 'cause it's just,

45:26 You think about at a happy hour, like when you try to describe what you do and what I do, it's hard, right? You can't really put it in a nutshell, people are like, I'm sorry, I totally don't

45:35 understand. But if you can make it something that's applicable to them and the real world, I think people are like, Oh, I understand that. Which I'm like, Yes. Not just like, Oh, I'm selling

45:45 you a better mouse trap for production optimization. I don't understand. What does that mean? Yeah. Right? So, really cool to see things evolve and I think you're really at the tip of the spear

45:55 with that. I'm going to have to have you on again to talk about the evolution of these sorts of things. I want to put you on the hot seat with some questions right now. Okay. Didn't prepare you

46:05 for these, but that's my favorite part. I think one is any advice you would give to your younger self, knowing what you know now to tell the 21-year-old version of Dan is saying, or advice to

46:22 somebody that's looking to get into. Boiling gas, energy tech, climate tech, right out of school. Yeah,

46:33 so I would say the most beneficial thing that I've done in my entire career is to write. Like, I always recommend anybody that I talk to. It's kind of thinking about like next steps, trying to get

46:47 into a new area to write, even if nobody reads it Nobody read my stuff for a really long time.

46:56 But eventually somebody will read it and it will do so much for you. And it's also kind of a record of what you've learned keeps you disciplined on

47:06 learning and putting your thoughts in sort of a good structure, good enough structure at least to write about.

47:15 I would also say advice to myself, get more organized I'm paying for it now in so many ways. But like, you know, every connection that come that came in earlier on, I just wish that I had a

47:32 beautiful working CRM right now, that I could search through and find conversations from like five years ago and be able to reconnect with that person, etc. And so for anybody that is starting

47:46 their career out in the space and starting to like really network, like I would encourage you to just get organized on that really early, because I'm having to do that retroactively now. And it's

47:56 it's such a pain. Yeah, especially if you're a big networker like you are, right? Like I think it's and there's no nobody forcing you to be accountable to put that into CRM when you work for

48:08 yourself. So it's kind of up to you. I will say I used to be really good at that. And now I'm terrible at it because it's just so many. And I think it's hard to with this this advent of these,

48:19 you know, video meetings where you're just going from one to the next. Like it didn't used to be be like that. I remember it back in the day, like occasionally I would do like a back-to-back lunch

48:29 or a lunch right to a coffee or a lunch coffee demo. And I have to like think about everything that I did and conversations that I had that day, but it was a little bit more rare when it was

48:39 face-to-face. It was like, okay, this is like my big face-to-face thing for today, or I have two big face-to-face things today. And now I have like seven or eight of those online every day. And

48:49 then I get to the end of the day, and my brain's starting to get fried from staring at a screen, and my kids need stuff for me, and I'm tired, and I'm like, Ah, get to that tomorrow. Well,

48:56 really, I should be following on this stuff today, and like writing notes down into my CRM or Google Sheet, like right now. So I think that's really salient advice, and it's a good reminder for

49:08 me, because, you know, and the annoying part now is like, I'm, of course, like holding my team accountable to do just that while I'm not doing it myself. And it's like, I need to look in the

49:18 mirror over that stuff. All right, transition a little bit to and personal stuff, where's your, are you a good skier and where's your favorite place to ski here in Colorado?

49:29 I would say I'm a pretty decent skier these days. I started out not really having much ski experience back in 2018. And so it's been, what, six years now. And so now I can hold my own on the

49:46 mountain and we're actually, we might be starting back country next year, which is kind of exciting. Oh, there you go But we usually ski in ski Cooper, actually. It's a small mountain near

49:58 Leadville, Colorado. And we love it 'cause there's no lines. And parking is so freaking easy. And if there's enough of a mountain to where, you can have a whole slope to yourself. And there's

50:14 everything that you could possibly want in terms of, well, there's not like shoots and cliffs and stuff, but there's mobiles, there's black runs, There's blue runs. like there's, there's

50:24 everything that you could possibly want out of a mountain there. That's funny because I've seen ski Cooper before. I've never been good. Our, our past is at copper. Sounds very, very similar,

50:36 but I've seen like ski Cooper come up. I'm like, what is this? Like I've never even heard of this. There's so many like small resorts like that, that even leveling. I've never been to leveling.

50:45 Some people swear by it, like especially locals, but I don't know. I think you sort of pick a mountain and roll with it, like, especially with having kids now, for them, it's like utmost

50:54 important for them to be comfortable. So they want to go places where they've been on runs before. So we've just kind of settled in on copper. Like that's, that's my resort, but I'll keep ski

51:03 Cooper in mind. It's probably cheaper as well than a 240 day pass or veil.

51:10 What's your favorite restaurant in Houston and your favorite restaurant in Denver? Okay, so we, we love sushi and good sushi. Um, so, uh, in Houston, that's M F sushi and it's down, um, in

51:30 Denver, that's

51:33 Tamaki then, um, dead, not sushi, dead, not sushi, then, which is also very good, right? It's like,

51:40 it's almost, it's a little bit of a spin off. I think they're, they're technically separate, but the one of the chefs from sushi den left and started tamaki den or something like that, and it's

51:50 in right now, and, and it's great. It's also got a much more of a casual feel versus M. F. Sushi and Houston. They're both very good.

52:02 Houston also has all sorts of Chinese food, so I have to mention that, but Mala Sichuan and Mama's Kitchen are probably the two of

52:14 our favorites in Houston Yeah, I mean Houston, it's like I go down there and it's just like a festival of food. basically every time I go, I love it. There's so many amazing restaurants. And the

52:26 diversity of restaurants, I think, is something I would miss if I moved to Denver from Houston. But there's obviously other things that I'll wait, especially the weather and the traffic and the

52:37 nature. The traffic in Houston is insane. And I feel like I'm struggling because I go down there a little bit less, in part because now I'm paying for it. When I was an employee, it was a little

52:48 bit different. I go to trip this week, I'll come back next week And now I'm like, I really have to be judicious about when I go on my trips and like pack in everything. So there's been some trips

52:58 where I'm like in the back of an Uber from Hobby to downtown. And then I have to go out to the Galleria from there. And then I'm over in the energy corridor. And then I'm in the woodlands. And

53:07 then the next day, I'm like in Sugarland, I'm like, oh my god. I'm spending four hours a day in an Uber when I'm here. With used traffic, it's just - it's not, right? And then I'm like, can

53:18 you please turn the air conditioner up little bit higher. Yeah. But the AC is amazing. Yeah, no, the best AC actually headed down to Houston a couple of times this month. And I'm looking forward

53:29 to it because it's not quite as hot anymore. It's a good year to go. Yeah, yeah, everywhere. So where can people find you? Like if people want to reach out to you on social media, go to your

53:39 website. Where are the best places to get ahold of you, Dehano? Yeah, so I'm I'm on LinkedIn LinkedincomDehanna-Zay. My website also has a contact form v1climatesolutionscom and I'm

54:02 around. Especially if you're in Houston, I probably come down once a month or once every two months, especially for all the major events. So come find me there

54:16 Love it. Deanna Zhang from B1 Climate Tech. You are a good one. I'm glad that you've chosen this industry and I hope you keep putting the content out there. But thank you so much for coming on

54:28 today.