Climate CEOs (formerly Entrepreneurs for Impact): Scaling Climate Tech Startups Grid Management Tech: $30M Raised + 30 Countries Served
SparkMeter uses AI-powered solutions to help utilities worldwide manage grids efficiently, serve millions of customers, and advance climate-focused energy systems.
SparkMeter offers grid-management solutions that enable utilities worldwide to run profitable, efficient, and reliable systems. Their investors include mutual friends at Clean Energy Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Elemental Impact.
Dan’s prior experience includes work at DNV GL and a PhD in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon.
In this episode, you’ll learn these four important takeaways.
- How an 8th-grade science project and a trip to Haiti laid the foundation for this company
- Why they chose to build solutions involving hardware, software, and communications instead of just one or two of those pieces
- How their structured customer discovery channeled 75 utility executive interviews into the formation of their new product offering
- Why we shouldn’t wait for a crisis to start building health relationships with mindfulness and therapy tools like IFS
🔗 PODCAST SHOW LINKS:
SparkMeter -https://www.sparkmeter.io
Dan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-schnitzer-600934bb/
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist (book) - https://shorturl.at/EYrJp
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead (book) - https://shorturl.at/hlgO9
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win (book) - https://shorturl.at/2ZVRZ
High Output Management (book) - https://shorturl.at/wvZjo
📈 JOIN EFI’S CLIMATE CEO PEER GROUP:
Become an EFI Climate CEO Fellow — Join North America’s top private peer group community for growth-stage CEOs in climate tech and sustainability. We’re a community of 100 CEO Fellows, Alumni Allies, and Mentors (investors and post-exit CEOs) representing over $40B of market value or financial assets for climate solutions. Apply here: https://www.entrepreneursforimpact.com
📣 READ EFI’S NEWSLETTER:
I share lessons learned from working with 300 climate tech CEOs and investors, meditating for 25 years, teaching 90,000 students, and reading 50 books per year. https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com
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🤔 PODCAST HOST:
Dr. Chris Wedding is the CEO of EFI (climate CEO peer groups), cofounder of Terraset (carbon removal), Senior Advisor at Javelin Capital (investment banking), Board member at World Tree (regenerative forestry), Board Advisor at DG Matrix (next-gen power electronics), Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, occasional monk, father of three, 2x ax-throwing champ (huh?), Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2006 (Google it), and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio).