In the 48th episode, CEO of Charm and Ex-CEO at Segment, Peter Reinhardt sits down to talk about his path, dropping out of school to attend Y Combinator, selling to Twilio, and turning his focus to a new idea – Charm Industrial.(0:00) Introducing the Logan Bartlett Show (6:35) Welcome Peter Reinhardt (12:23) Getting to Y Combinator (19:27) Pivoting to the next idea (25:04) Posting on Hacker News (30:36) Pricing your product (39:32) Twilio Acquisition (45:58) Starting Charm Industrial (52:16) Figuring out the carbon offset problem (1:02:46) Where are we compared to where we need to be (1:14:49) Running Segment vs Charm Industrial  Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson  🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg  🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1  Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow  About the Show A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise. Executive Producer: Rashad AssirProducer: Leah ClapperMixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-logan-bartlett-show/id1606770839Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

In this episode, we tackle three carbon removal projects of varying scale, business models, and technical challenges.Biomass pyrolysis via Charm IndustrialAn electrochemical process via TravertineMineralization via 44.01We cover these companies through the lens of their founders – Peter Reinhardt (CEO of Charm Industrial), Laura Lammers (CEO of Travertine), and Karan Khimji (COO of 44.01) – who share the fascinating stories of how they stumbled into this industry, how their processes work, whether they can economically scale, and ultimately why each of them is dedicating their time and energy to this field.This episode also closes out our carbon removal mini series, where we’ve seen a unique convergence of attention, capital, policy, and creativity being applied. With that combination, it's rare that humans don't surprise one another in progress. Resources: Charm Industrial:Charm Industrial’s website: https://charmindustrial.com/Charm Industrial on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CharmIndustrialPeter on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/reinpkTravertine:Travertine’s website: https://www.travertinetech.com/Laura on Twitter: https://twitter.com/limestonedr44.01:44.01’s website: https://4401.earth/44.01 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/4401earthKaran on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdkhimji Stay Updated: Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithioPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. 

Today's guest is Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO of Charm Industrial. This conversation was recorded as a live session during Climate Career Week, a series of talks, local meetups, and office hours designed to help people make the transition into climate-oriented work. Climate Career Week was organized by Climate Draft, Terra.do, Work on Climate, and MCJ Collective. Given the nature of the audience, today's conversation focuses heavily on Peter's own journey into founding one of the most prominent companies in the climate tech space today. Peter also offers his thoughts on how certain key job functions may slightly differ in a climate tech company as opposed to a software tech company. And he would know. As Peter was working on Charm Industrial he was also the active co-founder and CEO of Segment, a software business in customer data management, which he eventually sold to Twilio in 2020 for $3.2 billion. In fact, Charm Industrial operated for multiple years while Peter was running Segment as his primary full-time role.In addition to the career path discussions, we cover what Charm Industrial is and does and why it matters. We also talk about how he imagines the business expanding in the coming years to take on adjacent problems in the emission space. And lastly, we at MCJ Collective are proud to be multiple-time investors in Charm Industrial via our venture capital funds. With that, we hope you enjoyed this conversation.In this episode, we cover: [2:12] Peter's background and path into tech[3:53] His motivations for dropping out of MIT and starting a software company [6:11] How Peter discovered the problem for Segment's software solution[7:35] Learnings from becoming a CEO  [9:55] Peter's motivations for working on the climate problem and how Charm Industrial came to be[18:01] An overview of Charm Industrial[22:01] An overview of pyrolysis and Charm's process [25:07] How Peter views the company's core innovation [28:58] Biggest risks and challenges with putting bio-oil underground [31:14] Customer side of carbon sequestration[34:24] How Peter sees Charm evolving [40:21] Key job function differences between a climate tech company vs a software tech company [45:10] Biggest lessons learned in transitioning from leading a software company to a carbon removal company [46:16] How Peter approaches permitting including exploring jurisdictions and finding consultants [47:31] Biggest choking point today and where MRV fits inGet connected: Cody Simms Twitter / LinkedInPeter Twitter / LinkedInMCJ Podcast / Collective*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.Episode recorded on January 27, 2023. Watch the video here. Stay Connected with MCJ:Cody Simms on LinkedIn | XVisit mcj.vcSubscribe to the MCJ NewsletterEnjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@mcj.vc.

Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial and previous CEO at Segment, discusses PMF, sales, recruiting, and more. They emphasize the importance of pricing based on value and talk about their journey in finding product-market fit. They also explore gasification, bio oil, and the importance of rigor in sales. Plus, they discuss incubating new ideas while running a company.

My guest today is Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO of Segment, the market-leading data customer data platform that was acquired by Twilio last year. In our conversation, we cover the fascinating journey of Segment from an education feedback tool to the business it is today, Peter’s sales philosophy on meeting the customer where they are and not where you think they should be, and why revenue operations, or RevOps, is underrated for any business. This was an incredibly honest conversation on company building that any builder can learn a lot from. Please enjoy my conversation with Peter Reinhardt. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.-----Founder's Field Guide is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Founder's Field Guide, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes[00:02:47] - [First question] - What Segment currently does for its customers[00:03:37] - How this industry looked before Segment came along[00:04:30] - Overview of a simple data flow and the utility of capturing user data[00:05:55] - Insights that lead to developing the structure for a central data pipeline[00:07:52] - Why other companies don’t just build their own data collection API[00:10:04] - Early days of building the company and finding success outside their initial idea[00:12:29] - Pivoting from classroom software to providing software the world needed[00:16:17] - What Technology Wants [00:17:06] - Sign that validated becoming a B to B software company[00:19:49] - Challenging moments trying to scale Segment after bootstrapping the startup[00:24:58] - Getting customers to articulate your value proposition helps grow your sales[00:26:42] - Deciding what would be sold and what would remain open source[00:28:05] - Structuring and developing an enterprise sales team and sales model[00:30:23] - Overview of a 2 million dollar per sales person contract and how it’s allocated[00:31:38] - How it feels to be participant in the SaaS industry[00:34:02] - Lessons learned about revenue operations and how underappreciated it is[00:36:39] - Backwards efficiency and companies who use products to bootstrap scale economics[00:38:51] - Focusing on customer acquisition cost to maximize scale efficiency[00:40:52] - Potential disruptors to economies of scale[00:42:21] - Lessons learned from achieving massive scale and being acquired by Twilio[00:45:40] - Behind the curtain view of current data use trends[00:48:49] - His perspectives on the data privacy landscape and their implications writ large[00:51:48] - Legitimate businesses that will be hurt by changes in data privacy standards[00:53:11] - How data privacy standards may affect everyday merchants[00:54:03] - The worst advice he’s heard given to new entrepreneurs[00:56:20] - Impactful advice received along the way when growing Segment[00:56:47] - What has him most excited about the future[00:57:13] - Lessons learned about leadership from Jeff Lawson and his own experience[00:58:51] - The hardest changes he’s had to make as a leader[01:00:20] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him