My guest today is Sandeep Nijhawan, the Cofounder and CEO of Electra.

Electra is decarbonizing ironmaking for green steel production using intermittent renewable energy and low-grade iron ores, and producing higher-quality steel at the same time. Backed by $85M of VC and corporate VC capital, they will do all this at zero cost premium to existing steel manufacturing.

In addition, Sandeep is the former:

• President of AquaHydrex, which was focused on developing a novel electrolyzer for the hydrogen economy
• Operating Partner for True North Venture Partners
• President of Staq Energy, a distributed energy storage solutions developer

In this episode, we talked about:

• Their new partnership with Nucor, the largest steel manufacturer in the U.S.
• How he transitioned from a PhD in mechanical engineering to leading energy tech startups
• Why his “midlife crisis” led to the clarity to build novel energy solutions among small teams of bonafide geeks
• The importance of producing green steel at 60 degrees Celsius instead of 1,600 degrees
• How they balanced strategic and financial investors, ignoring conventional wisdom in the process
• The ways in which steel plants can get access to their solution as an OpEx, instead of just as a CapEx
• The prioritization of self, family, and team – not the reverse order – and this is anti-selfish
• Perspectives on really knowing the “why” in order to allow the “how” to be easier
• And lots more

Hope you enjoy.

And give Sandeep and Electra a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people.

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