Jeffery: Welcome to the supporters fund ask an investor, I’m your host jeffrey pavin and let’s please welcome brian duarte from black tech capital as our investor today welcome brian it is a real pleasure to have you join us today.

Bryan: Thank you very much for having me here.

Jeffery: Well brian we’re really excited today to get the opportunity to dive into kind of the area that you focus in on and not just because another great investor but i think that the area you’re kind of diving into if we could say it it’s gonna probably save the world in the next 20 30 40 years so we probably want to focus on this area as much as we possibly can and talk about it as much as we can and i think from what where what we’re seeing and the way you’ve been kind of interacting in this space i have a feeling you believe to say that there is a real strong need for clean tech and the world of change that it can make so maybe before we dive into all of that great stuff about what you’re doing and how you kind of got there i think the best way to start for us is if maybe you could share a little bit about your background from your u of t days to enbridge and all the great companies that you’ve started and worked on if you can dive into that and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Bryan: Okay um yeah so going back i mean for me that clean tech sustainable um view on energy does go back to when i was in the university of toronto there i was involved with the high mileage vehicle team so we were creating vehicles that were getting 1300 1400 miles per gallon right so some some phenomenal stuff so there was always an interest and then because i was part of that team it was part of a group that in our fourth year we were in a competition to take a pickup truck and convert it to run on natural gas so we were competing against three other canadian universities and 20 other us universities in this particular area so there was always that spark in me to look at what alternative energy sources are out there right knowing hearing all around us there’s a limitation on how long oil and gas is gonna remain and be available so what other options are out there and that started me a down a path now being part of that and back then it was consumers gas now enbridge being a big sponsor they came in and and snapped me up to to work for them uh being one of the captains of the team so that career you know was my first career into that corporate world really taught me about a lot of the disciplines you need inside of a company right about how proper process procedures things that you know when i translate now into the startup world so when, I’m working with startups i can really see some of the things they need just from that background you know and i spent a good part of my career there but always in developing new things and the last bit at enbridge created a new division where they went into electricity so they branched off from natural gas and created a whole new electricity division and created a competitive sector that we built from nothing in the smart meter and the smart metering market really did not exist in canada in in the high-rise buildings before us and really helped create and develop that market and then that business was sold off to enter care later on so it was my first foray of building a company you know within yes the safety of a big um enterprise but you know we have to compete you have to compete for customers you have to um develop the business go out there um create something from nothing create something from scratch and and that got the bug going with me again i say again because my first business was actually at nine years old selling golf balls and i can tell you to this day a jack nicholas golden bear golf ball was worth a dollar that was my top seller so i always had that entrepreneurial spirit entrepreneurial sparking me and so after leaving enbridge uh started working with a number of companies my first company that i created i sold half of it 10 months into creating it you know a bunch of investors they had invested in one of my partner companies i was working with just loved what i was doing and came in and that was specifically focused in the smart metering world but offering services that didn’t exist out there um from there i went on to create three different other businesses some in the construction sector others again more focus in that energy sector and you know sold sold another one of those off to one of the utility companies so so had a a great feel for it but then it was like there needs to be more there needs to be something else and that’s where this sustainability journey really needed to take off more because i had customers that were you know using smart metering doing energy management but what else can we do and that’s where i started helping these customers with sustainability solutions and find them sustainability solutions and working with organizations like the center for social innovation their climate ventures group and working with a lot of startups and seeing all the great innovations that were out there that i said you know what i want to look at creating a venture fund right i want to be able to help these great startups in the clean tech space space grow and scale and knowing specifically in the cleantech space they need that long-term vision it’s not a quick thing you know you’re looking 20 30-year horizons for a lot of things so that’s where my background in enbridge where we would build pipeline systems for 30 40 50 years into the future that really comes to play here a lot and then on top of that knowing my journey as a black entrepreneur yes i sold my businesses to some private investors into a um a division utility but i didn’t know the investor space the same way didn’t know the venture world and what the options were and what possibilities were out there and knowing as a black founder how difficult was to get founding i mean when i was on to my second company millions of dollars of revenue i was running i think 14 15 staff at the time the banks wouldn’t come and you know couldn’t get anything from the traditional bank so i know as a black founder it’s harder so that’s the other big part of black tech capital’s mission is to support black and other underrepresented founders in this clean tech space because it is a big problem and we’ve got to make sure that all solutions from everyone is heard to give us a chance to to be successful is i mean i want to be able to maintain you know uh this beautiful island background because already this i heard within the last year in indonesia has lost about 22 000 islands from climate change um so it’s a big problem to be solved and a big thing to tackle and to ask what is one thing people don’t know about me um you know always being somewhat of a risk taker even personal life you know i’ve done skydiving i’ve done gliding and uh back in 2018 i did a 600 nautical mile sailing race four days straight on the open ocean so you know that’s it you know you know that’s something everyone would know right and that’s something everyone has done but it was it was a cool adventure.

Jeffery: Well thank you for giving us the deep dive and before we do unpack all of this i do want to ask you about the sailing side so when you went on this uh sailing adventure i, I’m assuming it wasn’t solo so if it was built around a team are you an avid sailor or was this just something you signed up for and said i’ll learn as i go how did you get into this and and how did that work.

Bryan: About eight years ago or so a client took me out in their sailboat in lake ontario and i really got the appreciate the engineering aspects of trying to figure out where the wind was and i said i could get into this and then another colleague had he um was racing out of frenchman’s bay in pickering here in ontario and he said we’re always looking for crew so i jump right in into racing right that’s where we go out a couple times a week and learn to race boats so i had for a few years you know been racing honing my skills racing bought my own boat um started racing my own boat and so was getting better at it you know but, I’m not an avid sailor from a young child like a lot of people were but then there was about 14 of us from the yacht club some had done this royal caribbean 600 race before and so they convinced me to do this race because they said like i knew he hit some bad weather but he said you know you spend most of it sitting on the rails enjoying the beautiful caribbean scenery not this race 30 knot wins 84 boats in the race 42 didn’t finish the race because they broke stuff ripped apart sales capsized right and uh so i i had not done open ocean sailing sailing on lake ontario is nothing compared lake ontario yeah you may get a you know four or five foot wave not 30 foot waves constant that you’re dealing with not 30 knot winds constant for most of the four days so you know it was quite the experience right and and you’re doing it round the clock most of my races before were two three four hours this was three hour shifts on and off you know for for the full four days that we were doing it so intense but uh loved the experience.

Jeffery: That’s incredible it reminds me of uh when i was a kid um i guess i would say i was lucky uh some friends of the family they had a a small boat and it was, I’m gonna say it was a 22 25 foot uh boat and i got the opportunity to learn how to sail on this boat just as um a couple times a week to go out and um it’s funny but you don’t remember all of the things that you went through and the things that you learned in the sailing until you got put into a position where you had massive waves and a lot of things coming at you yeah and then all of a sudden you remember the entire experience so just as you were explaining that, I’m having flashbacks and i probably have never told this story because i never remembered it because it was just part of something you did like playing hockey as a kid right oh i played on a pond but you remember playing on a pond when you fell through the pond so in this case i remember being uh in a regatta uh in a race and you’re right a lot of boats didn’t make it through but i just remember these um white caps 10 foot 12 foot up to 15 foot white caps hitting us and, I’m like, I’m 10 years old what am i doing out here but you don’t even pay attention while you’re in this heat of it right even if you have a little bit of experience your mind is on moving this winching that putting the sail up moving this down you almost forget that that’s actually around you until you get to the point where you’re finishing and then all of a sudden you take back and think wow i can’t believe i was part of that how exciting so i can just imagine a four-day event of going through this at you know three four times the height of waves and caps and being able to remember that at the end and being able to tell that story is pretty exciting because that to me is what adventure is all about so yeah kudos is for you for being able to jump into that and take that uh extra risk so that’s very exciting.

Bryan: Yeah that’s that’s that’s where you’re you know you live and you grow and and really know get to know yourself right know where your limits are and how you can push yourself beyond what you’re typically used to and that’s the entrepreneur’s journey right because for an entrepreneur it’s unknown territory right where’s this business going how are we going to do this right i was just coaching one this morning another entrepreneur and she’s going like you’re going like how am i going to get through this and you do right and and so it’s the same thing how do you overcome those challenges and keep taking it to you till you get to that success.

Jeffery: Well a lot of those things that are coming at you you know they’re not intentional to try and break you down or to ruin your business but what they are is uh they’re just bumps in the road and you have to navigate through them and as you get more experienced you you probably tend to have less of those bumps to navigate through and if we we take this back to when you first started working on the automotive sector when you were in university what i find fascinating about the story that you were talking to is that you can tell just from that in the, I’m going to make a guess sometime in the late 80s and 90s you’re whipping through and building out this tech on uh 13 100 1400 mile um kilometers on a car right which is technically can be done but it’s not very common today it’s usually around a thousand to maybe 1100 on a tank of diesel in a car.

Bryan: You were doing it on one gallon

Jeffery: Which is incredible

Bryan: Yeah

Jeffery: But taking that kind of experience and saying you know what the markets have been challenging areas since day one since the 60s the 50s the 80s and they’ve been looking at ways to reinvent the way products are being made and i think a lot of the times when you get into climate tech and clean tech and the things that are kind of moving the world today when you go back to that experience that you had in the university days when you were challenging status quo which again very exciting very few people have probably had this opportunity as engineers even today’s on today’s standards when you guys were going through this process maybe can you share a few of the learnings because it is on the university level and a lot of really amazing tech has started at this stage what were some of the things that you went through back then that near to what’s going on today in the environment.

Bryan: Um I mean some of the things we went through that were mirror a lot of how we did it would be like a typical business so we had the technical engineering side of it the challenges to do and then we had the financial side so we had one guy in our team just dedicated to managing and raising the funds because we had now this was back in 91 and we had to raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to to be able to 150 000 in direct funding and probably another 300 000 of in-kind work you know to get it done so you you still have you have to find the money to be able to do the things that you wanted to do right so that’s you know that’s one of the things on the research level that is is very similar the beauty about being in the university you had access to certain resources and depth of expertise and then you’ll find today a lot of clean tech is coming out of that research environment right being developed and taken through but the other thing that was needed is that leadership right uh when you have a team of people you’re needing that leader or leaders that are going to set that direction and take you through the challenges because we had days when things obviously didn’t work things broke um you know you’re pushing you’re taking a vehicle and an engine that was not this was designed to run on a liquid and now making it run on a gas right because it’s a compressed natural gas versus liquid gasoline so you it’s a it’s a huge learning curve you didn’t have injectors big enough to for the fuel so we solved the problem by putting in a carburetor that did 90 of it so going back old school and then using fuel injectors to fine-tune that last 10 percent to get the right mixtures that we needed so you know coming up with new and ingenious ways because you’re saying that so that is what’s happening in the cleantech world today is what’s been done right now how can you take what’s done in the past and modify that or come up with something completely brand new and build off of it so very very similar types of learnings and experiences and doing things that people just yeah no one else around you is doing right where are you going to get the natural the compressed natural gas from you know there was one station in the gta that we could go and and and get that filled up and get our tanks filled up and um you know creating a test chamber to test it out that’s very similar very similar journey today you’re creating a pilot for usually and then how do you build it up to commercial scale i mean this was in partnership with uh general motors so they were looking to see how can you take the technology even further so part of it was saying you know making sure that the pickup truck could still be used as a pickup truck because you could fill the bed full of natural gas tanks but now it’s no longer usable so how do you make something that meets it and is usable so lots of different challenges to face you know and and and fun to you know to come up with new solutions and then test it in the field in the real world head-to-head competition against other universities and road tests and pulling tests and performance and emissions testing so you know go from okay everything that you did in the lab does it really work in the real world it is you know can it hold up and then at the end of the competition uh for our sponsors we drove the truck back up from it was down in oklahoma we drove it back up to canada so we trucked it down just to make sure nothing happened but we drove it back to show this was doable and you could fill up along the way and so on so a lot of great learnings you know and taking that pilot and put it into the real world.

Jeffery: And that’s incredible and i think there’s a couple things that you mentioned there from leadership and experience and that the leadership side was that even though you were building this out and you were testing different theories there was always a strong mandate of leadership that was supporting what you were doing and you can say that oh wait a second you guys were young you were know-it-alls because that’s what happens at that age so you guys didn’t need any guidance or help but as you alluded to you were working with some pretty sophisticated uh products and tools from injectors to having to work in an isolation chamber, I’m sure when you’re working with the different forms of gases and you’re not just testing hey i have one theory you’re probably bouncing a lot of these ideas around what’s actually functional and doable to what has been tried before or what could be tried in the future and that leadership is going to be able to help you put together a clean easy way of testing this versus a dangerous uh non-returnable way at the end of the testing so it sounds very interesting that even today this is very uh known process in order to build up you have to take each stage and go through this so even back then you were doing that but i think the piece that really intrigued me the most about this conversation is that the experience level is that there wasn’t a lot of experience in what was going on but you had access to people that did and on the other side you were actually doing testing and a lot of it finding different ways to change tech and i think and i’d love to get your thoughts on this is that something that’s lacking today that everybody’s in a rush to get somewhere and we’re not taking the time to actually build centers even if it is repetitive so taking what you did 30 40 years ago and replicating that today for the youth because it’s not that far-fetched that it’s so terrible low-tech we can’t do this that actually should be replicated because it’s actually helping engineers really better understand how to challenge tasks even if the tech has moved forward a lot quicker but it could still change just by having the right people in that room together uh diving in on a project.

Bryan: Oh i mean there there’s a lot in there in that i mean you’ve got entrepreneurs that ignore resources that are out there because you know the assumption that, I’m building something new so no one’s done this before we were building something new that no one’s done but there’s still that expertise to go to so it’s exactly what you’re saying making sure that you seek out that advice that professor that was leaving it for us i maintained a relationship with him all these years and he’s now he just retired last year because no one wants to work on combustion energy anymore because it’s not sexy but even though there’s still lots to do but that tie-in has me now tied in strongly into university of toronto and their engineering department for for black tech capital so if i need advice evaluating a company i’ve got a level of experts to go out there and get and a level of experts to pass on to my company so it’s right there are experts they haven’t done exactly that but there’s that process and then having that process for going through things what i find can happen today is people just go out there and haven’t built anything and tested it or they spent forever trying to perfect it and if we did that we would have never got the truck off the ground right you have to do something go out there and try it let it break right and do it again i mean it reminds me of when i look today of why spacex is successful versus other companies when you know you listen to what elon musk is and the challenges they they went through they tested their rockets and stuff broke and you know finally on the fourth one i think is when it was when they got it to work but you versus some of the other more established companies that are out there they test and test and test and test in terms sorry they’re test in a closed environment they don’t go out in the real world and test and you’ve got to do both and you’ve got to be able to iterate and it’s a good learning for engineers right there’s stuff you do in the lab but you’ve got to get out there in the real world and see how it responds and then bring it back to the lab and refine and keep going through that iterative process and in the tech world that’s what’s got to work you know and and sometimes waiting too long is bad and not waiting long enough is is is also an issue so making sure you go to those mentors that are out there that i may have done in a slightly different field you suggest but the principles are all the same.

Jeffery: Totally agree with that and i and i love that in that experimental side you’re pushing the envelope you’re saying you got to get out there and test let it break figure it out again because in those moments or when you’re going to create something exceptional you may pull away you may walk away from it and it might not be something that’s doable but at the same time if you’re really focused on that product and the engineering side of it and you’ve got the right expertise you can find a solution there is a solution to everything if you put the time and effort into trying to figure out how to move the envelope.

Bryan: Correct yeah no exactly.

Jeffery: So now you kind of take this well, I’m going to say a massive amount of experience you gained just in the university side before you even got into the real world of of engineering and you dive into some pretty big companies working at the enbridge side now taking that same entrepreneurial background you’re able to build a business within a business and this is also becoming quite common where there are accelerators now that are working with founders bringing them in to solve bigger problems inside of big business they become a client of theirs then they get all of that exposure knowledge uh experience everything you can possibly imagine and helps them grow that company and then they expand it outside of the big core so taking that experience and again unpacking that what were some of the things that you felt allowed for you to actually integrate into the company because i think a lot of the times you figure out how to take the tech and get it out of the big business but inside of the business which is who you’re selling into how did you get them to accept what you were building and that this was a solution as a tech that they could sell and make money off of.

Bryan: Um good question um there’s when you’re developing something especially inside of a large corporation the the first thing you can get is a lot of resistance because that’s not how we’ve done it right we this is the way it is it’s it’s been this way for a long time and so just the process of being able to pull it outside the organization is key so trying to build something new inside of an organization is very very difficult right and this is being proven back into the 60s you know one of the most amazing planes out there the sr-71 was out of lockheed martin but they created a separate skunk works division to go and do that that’s what we did in enbridge we created a separate group so we pulled some of the best and brightest out of the company put them into this separate organization have the blessing from on high and then you go and try it and try different things and then you find ways to slowly introduce it back in you can’t you know you can’t just slam it in as you know here do this now right but where does that add into the company where does that add into the company’s revenues how does that fit into the footprint so in looking at it again it goes back to that leadership knowing you know we’re going to build a business that was new in the smart metering realm but we’re building it like a utility because they were there other so we know the utility world we know what that was in the distribution business and even though that part of the business isn’t unregulated we’re building it with the mind of maybe one day it could be regulated so having that again it’s back to our previous conversation that going to those experts in the corporate knowledge and making sure that’s included as part along the way and including those people helps to get the buy-in to go back so and and yeah it’s a it is it is a tricky process but some i also think doing it that way and you’re you’re solving a problem that is known versus solving a problem and hoping somebody wants to use it you know where entrepreneurs come up with new things uh and sometimes yeah there’s a market for it and sometimes there isn’t but when you’re solving that problem that somebody already knows i think there’s a and a level of value to that that can accelerate it faster.

Jeffery: So when you are getting this buy-in and i think this is super important because when a startup is building and solving a problem they have to go out and do this they have to find buy-in by so many organizations to say hey i’ve got this problem that you have that, I’m fixing and i want to solve it for you and this is what i’ve done and you’re a mining company and this really is going to solve this problem of underground networks and this is what i’ve built um how do you get them to look at you as a solution provider and working with them and how did you get them to buy in versus the way the attitude is is that i know how to do this don’t worry i got this i know we already have a solution we don’t need yours even though they don’t have a solution and this is unique and they are solving the problem how did you sell in how did you get the business to get on board and support you instead of playing against you.

Bryan: It’s a um in some ways you have to mimic parts of what they’re doing right so in looking at these are the processes that you have today what pieces even though we’ve developed something new what pieces can we leverage right so that in us in a way parts of it looks and feels the same way so the in our case um how we modeled the distribution system how do we model the smart metering network looked at very much like how we did it on the natural gas side so there were parts of it when you bring it back into the larger business oh i get that i understand that right so you have to take you know the more out there the tech is the more you have to have that person or persons that can bring it back into a language that’s interpretable for those that are there already and and and and ease them into it i mean i go back to even when i was in embrace the number of software projects we introduced and the ones that failed are the ones that threw everything in the kitchen sink all at once and people just they’re oh this is too much i can’t do it the ones that were successful introduce a little bit introduce a little bit and you get that buy-in piece by piece and then people all of a sudden forgot they used to do it a different way right so that’s um it’s it’s salesmanship right it’s salesmanship it’s it’s it’s knowing and being conscious of you know you’re dealing with another human being right some too many times us engineers can forget you know get caught up in the technology and the coolness of it forget you got to deal with another human being at the end of the day and make sure that you know how to relate to them so making sure you have people on your team that can relate to people really well and and cross pop not gonna say cross pollinate but interpret right that interpreter you know is that someone that can be that rosetta stone between the two divisions right and and slowly like you know not force-feed it but slowly introduce it is is a key i see.

Jeffery: I love it i love the uh the analogy of the the rosetta stone like being able to translate the languages in between the two and and i think that you really nailed that by saying the mimicking the process and i think a lot of startups forget this whole analogy is that you’ve been in the space for 30 years and now i come into you with this cool tech and, I’m telling you hey you need my cool tech because you guys have been doing this wrong and you’re 30 years and you’re an old dog and you don’t know what you’re talking about take my tech and we think that that’s a way to sell in and from everything you kind of shared it seems like in order to streamline this you need to be speaking the same language use the rosetta side to break down the barriers break down the language which is buy into them by mimicking portions of what they’re already doing so that there’s an ease of use and integration so they can see that okay you followed some of our standards you followed some of our process and now you’re tying in this new tech and that’s solving that one problem and maybe it cut down reporting from 12 hours a day to 30 minutes and wow that seems like such a great idea and such a good solution we’re willing to play with this and then you can start to introduce slowly like you said little bits of solution providing versus here’s the swiss army knife it’s going to take care of all your problems and then that person feels offended feels like they wasted 30 years their egos are in the way and they don’t want anything to do with you and they will literally block you out because they don’t they see the value maybe but they have no interest to work with you because you’re totally crushing everything that they’ve done for 30 years.

Bryan: Yep yeah completely right you you’ve nailed it and summarized it really really well yeah

Jeffery: Well i think that in taking that is really a great way for startups to better understand how they approach big business and i think maybe there is a misnomer that if i build that they will come i i think that that’s probably maybe great when you’re an apple or you’re a lot bigger and people understand what you do but in that early precede stage you really need to work really closely with a few of your customers and help them unpack what you’re doing working with you reduce the ego side and allow them to work in the product and work within it and maybe there’s some solutions that you could offer that you guys did to get them really entangled into what you did if it was offering free services or free support um i tend to guess that free seems to be a good way to get people lured in um or you up open the door up to allow them to coach and mentor and play that style of game is there a couple of other angles that you would suggest um that you’ve been able to to utilize that have worked to get that product into a business and get them testing early so that you can build traction but also build that um experience within that company.

Bryan: I mean one of the keys is finding that champion within the company right so there is always that one individual called the early adopter inside the business that’s that’s willing to champion it and they’re now your best friend right that you you you’re looking for that you’re looking one of the key things that a a startup can do is looking for that or looking for making sure that as part of your advisors you have someone that’s got some experience in that industry right so whether it comes from your advisor or whether you look to if you’re a venture back business just not looking for dollars but looking for someone that’s got expertise that that can come in so for for myself the companies that, I’m working with right now they want me there because of that expertise and in the industry that i know right no i know the industry no, I’m not going to know your specific tech no, I’m not going to know your specific solution but, I’m going to help ease you in there so that’s what companies need to do there is always that individual what they said either that champion inside the company or someone outside that company that’s in that industry you you you without that you know you’re you’re going in blind right you’re you need someone that can navigate some of that make that introductions at the end of the day yes you yourself have to sell the product and sell what its capabilities and deliver on it most importantly but finding that champion to help take you in there is critical.

Jeffery: i love it i love it now to kind of keep moving that ball forward you then left enbridge so you packaged out your your business side you went in and you created uh enlighten and a few other i guess businesses along the way parted some of those out maybe just can you share a couple of points of what you felt were the biggest learning points that you had by creating that next company raising those funds or selling what was some of the things that you would reference because you’re coming in as an engineer that’s always going to be tough running a company regardless because when you’re uh in the thick of things and, I’m going to call it a gear head just as uh as a coder i just want to do that the hardest thing for me is all the other jobs right so you you’ve kind of stepped through all of those so what are some of the things that you learned that help you shape better um ensuring that you had some success on these next companies what are one or two things that really stood out in that experience that you can share.

Bryan: Um to me one of the things that stood out especially when you come from the corporate world you that corporate name brings in a lot of customers right i call it you’re you’re more you have to do more you know you know farming and gathering versus when you step up as an entrepreneur you’re now a hunter right you you only gonna eat what you kill right and that can be a shock to people when you first go out to to know that those are the things you have to do as a gear head as you call it right um when you’re recognizing where your strengths are and where your strengths aren’t right um as i said i had even prior to enbridge i had created businesses young i had businesses from the age of nine all the way through university i ran dj businesses i ran all sorts of different things so i did have that business experience personally but if i didn’t have that i’d be looking to go partner with someone that have that has that sort of business or experience i should say because i’ve seen companies where the engineers have created some really good tech and they are not business-minded or they’re not the type to take the company to the next level and as much as you may have developed something into your baby you have to recognize where maybe you need to step out and then go seek help i saw very early on in my career an executive coach because i said to take my businesses to the next level i’ve got to be something different than i am today so i had recognizing my own limitations and my technical skills i made it purposeful to go out and seek help to grow those skills to running people um you know so some working with businesses biggest challenge working with friends right and the only learning from the school of hard knocks it’s a conversation you need to have at the beginning of that relationship with your friends because you think oh i’ve known this guy forever this is great everything’s gonna work what happens when it doesn’t right and i don’t mean you know yes put contracts in place uh breaking up a startup and breaking up you know ownership shares and stuff we some of the things so yes get some legal advice but as to me more importantly because i’d say contracts when they come out when all things have fallen apart have those conversations up front right what happens if this what happens if we you know because realize that some one of the friends i work with he wasn’t the same level of risk taker that i was right so he was comfortable he was good at what he did but he wasn’t comfortable with the level of risks we were taking and be in the business and out there so he kept pulling back and pulling back and the business would suffer and then it became tricky to deal with so to me that was one of the big learnings um now the big learning was uh where do you take your money from right my first business i told you i sold very quickly half of it but then they asked me to merge with another company you know we did that merger now i only had a small stake in it and we didn’t have those conversations about what happens with and they you know i ran into challenges where i said this part of the business that you just had me merge with it’s failing right and i end up walking away from the rest of my shares right and that business collapsed right because they and and they wouldn’t listen so you know it’s looking and being aware of what you’re going into like everything everything seems fun and games and exciting when you’re dating right and it takes work when you’re getting married right and and going through and it’s constant work at it so you know i can’t stress enough those constant conversations and talking about things and and dealing with things early um i was just coaching another founder today um where she’s run into some challenges with a co-founder and to me you’ve got to deal with it early you there’s at some point you recognize things are off dealing with things early is one of the big big learnings out there don’t let things sit don’t make sure assume it’s going to get better right and seek out advice of others that have gone through it because the entrepreneurship journey in itself is not new there’s nothing new what you’re developing may be new so but seek out advice talk to others and listen to it right and you know take the parts to feel right and other stuff won’t but make sure you get some of that and then decide quickly don’t sit on anything forever you know being an entrepreneur is about making quick decisions do this oh did that work great didn’t work switch but sitting there forever trying to make a decision it’ll kill you.

Jeffery: Well those are some great points and and i’ll uh reiterate a couple of those but i i do think that the biggest one that and you just finished with it of course is don’t sit on things and and react quickly and move quickly and this takes a lot of learning and time to figure this out in your career because a lot of the times you think it may self-correct but it just fasters and gets worse so i i think that you really need to focus on that i love the aspect of if you’re going to work with friends put the groundwork together right away because friends can be valuable and can be very supportive of what you’re doing but if you don’t put down that those rules and regulations you may find yourself tripping up and then burying the problem again and not solving things very quickly and i love the fact that you’re looking for expertise and looking for people that can support you uh but at the same time you always need a naysayer you need somebody that um puts you back down to earth and punches you down a little bit because you need to make sure that you’re grounded throughout this process because sometimes you might get wound up and go the wrong way and not realize you’re doing it so um all great advice and and it sounds like all of it comes down to is building some fantastic relationships and it sounds like entrepreneurship really comes down to being very good at building relationships if it’s inside your business if it’s selling if it’s building the market it always comes down to how good you can build relationships.

Bryan: That is that is the key to what’s going to be successful you can have the best tech in the world right and you know we see lots of examples about that you know um but those relationships is what’s going to make the difference.

Jeffery: i love it i love it well we’re going to now transition to well actually no before we transition into the the next phase one last question because this is really important through all of this journey and all these great learnings it sounds like you’ve really put together one great career but also allowed you to line up to what you’re doing today which is in your capital investment side you’ve kind of dived into two areas that you’re really focused on one being that you’re looking for underserved founders which i think is amazing and then the other side is that you’re going into the cleantech space so maybe to kind of summarize all of this is that you could share a little bit about um what that looks like from a clean tech standpoint maybe define what it is and how you’re attacking this market i guess that differentiator on the capital side and then bring that all up and and summarize it with the under uh uh privileged if you will founders that you’re going after and how that all comes together in this nice great story of um how you guys are building out uh your next stage of investment.

Bryan: Sure so you know starting off on the cleantech side one of the things that people don’t recognize is canada is a really a leader in the cleantech space and and cleantech is broad i mean the companies we’re looking at go anything from carbon capture to sustainable fish farming to new types of battery technologies and ways of deploying that so you know i say i look is it having a positive impact on what we want to solve with the climate crisis that’s one thing the other thing on the clean tech side as i said for canada there’s a cleantech 100 index that gets published every year canada’s number two on the list you know yes we’re behind the u.s but we’re ahead of germany we’re head of france we’re ahead of the uk so punching well above our weight in terms of what we’re doing as an investor the thing to look at is on from from cleantech perspective canada the canadian government the federal government is putting a lot of capital dollars into this space so companies that, I’m working with and the same thing south of the border companies that, I’m working with they’re eligible for significant grant funding that’s up to like a three to one match of what they get in private investment so it’s a space where as an investor you can put your money in and see it accelerate quickly right so you know from a pure business sense that’s one of the reasons why i like it you know it’s it’s recognized now you know with companies being forced to do proper esg reporting and i say that because we know all the the scandal going on around there but there’s a demand for it and it’s clean tech was sort of seen oh something nice sustainable it’s great because we need it for the planet but it’s a money maker too right um you can be green and sustainable and make money it’s not an either or right and so that for me makes the space exciting as well that’s why i want to get in from a venture if it was just about being sustainable and doing those i’d try and do maybe as a non-profit or or some sort of foundation but venture backing it is because there’s great business opportunities there and that’s been proven out our first investment has already qualified for millions of dollars in grant funding um right off the bat afterwards so it’s a great space and then when i the other side with the underrepresented founders to me you never know where that next solution is going to come from right and if we’re only going to the same group or same groups of people for the solutions we’re going to miss solutions out there so you know on top of my own personal bias and my own challenges i mean that that’s obvious as a black founder that that plays in here but from a business sense though there are solutions out there that we don’t want to miss and when we’re dealing something like the climate crisis you can’t miss those great solutions so that’s one of the reasons i go in there right now while you have those underrepresented funders getting significantly less funding what, I’m seeing is as a business opportunity those are better developed right they’ve had to do more bootstrapping they’ve had to do more proving it out and they’ve got something to prove right so it’s it’s you know i said from a pure business perspective it makes sense right not so it’s not just oh i want to help this group because they’re they’re being overlooked it’s yes and they’re developing some great technologies right women founders out there developing some great technologies and yet passed over black founders you know indigenous founders it it’s in all those areas and it’s all those people you know going to all those groups that we’re going to find the solutions that are going to make a difference so.

Jeffery: I love it i love it well shared uh one thing that i would i would add into this mix and i and i i don’t see it very um happening so much in anywhere in the world and i think it would make a really big difference and it would support what you’re going after and where you’re making your investments and and maybe this becomes part of the global mandate or at least in the canadian mandate of what you guys are doing is that it’s going into uh grade schools it’s going into high schools and it’s actually use casing the fact that anybody and everybody can be an entrepreneur i think that in today’s society that a lot of immigrants immigration that’s come into canada tend to be the people that are building companies because they’ve had families they’ve been part of it and they understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur i think a lot of the other groups have never had that experience have never been able my parents they worked for uh like ontario hydro my mother was a stay-at-home mom and then she went and worked put herself in school and became the same so they they all had this corporate mentality because that’s what we grew up on how do you get people to think about entrepreneurship and i think it has to go to that early stage and we really have to start to change the story that entrepreneurship isn’t just about cool and money that it actually can solve problems and that there are a lot of them out there and there are a lot of people in high school and grade school that are very smart but just need the guidance to get them to take that risk and i think that’s going to open up a whole plethora of people that have never even crossed this chasm of how to get into entrepreneurship and i think with the group of what you’re doing man you’re going to be standing there the front door just signing people up and and booking in the in all the smart people and i think that’s what makes this exciting in this uh whole journey of entrepreneurship so uh kudos to yourself for jumping in and being able to take this challenge on and increase that one percent to a hundred thousand percent and uh that’s what it’s going to take to change the world so uh great to hear we’re now going to transition real quick because i know we’re getting up on time but right um i wanted to uh to get one use case from you and you’ve talked a little bit about different founders that you’re working with today and the opportunities what does it take to be an entrepreneur and do you have a story that you can share uh that she or he went through and you were just blown away and this is what it takes so that the audience can kind of learn on what you feel that entrepreneurship is and it might even be your own story

Bryan: I mean i’ll take one and i’ll do said the the company we invested into is called mars materials and i love this story because it captures everything that we were talking about so this was a he wasn’t a first-time founder right he he developed other companies in the past but nothing of any great success right but he went out there with thinking i want to find a solution that’s going to remove a gigaton of co2 out of the atmosphere so together with a co-founder they went out on a year-long search so this is talking going back into industry going out and seeing what was out there that could solve that problem and they end up finding through nrel national research engineering labs i believe is the name in in the us a process for capturing waste co2 combine it with ethanol to make acrylic nitrile and that acrylic nitrile is a base product for carbon fiber and so they found something that somebody else had developed out there but nrl it’s like you know when we’re talking back about the universities there’s a development process that goes on but how do you bring it into the real world so they’ve gone out there as a startup because nrl is used to corporations coming in there and buying the technology licensing it so they went in as a startup and negotiated and it was a it’s been a tough negotiation so i was we you know and because no we won’t give you this no this is what we need and he’s negotiated and got the exclusive license for this uh acrylic nitrile and now it’s taken it uh it went through the pilot stage and now it’s now all the steps to bring it to commercialization and and and doing the same things having to partner with industry came to me i was meant to be mentoring him for the better part of a year now and even though we weren’t fully ready yet with the fun he says brian i need you on my cat table right so back to that bringing that expertise because he knows my connections in industry and business and i’ve made those connections so for me as an investor it’s not just about the money i want to show you as a startup what i can do for you and there to make sure there’s value or maybe i can’t and then you need to be looking at somebody else but as i said i just love where he’s gone out and recognized where the expertise is where you know he’s got the vision he’s got the goal but he’s not a techie his background wasn’t even is not in the tech side but he brought in a co-founder that’s an engineer to deal with that tech side and and make sure have the right pieces so to me it’s he’s doing all the things like we were just talking about getting the expertise getting the things going after industry finding solution now going back to industry and finding ways to ease in and partner and find those champions in the industry to now be able to so as he commercializes this he has customers for what he’s doing so it’s love and i love the story i mean and this first round was over subscribed and now they’re going to um a big announcement of additional funding they’re going to be getting so you know it’s it’s it’s a real good news story all around and how we’ve developed that.

Jeffery: I love it great story great story great share um i i’d love to unpack that more but we’re going to move quickly into our rapid fire questions.

Bryan: Sure

Jeffery: So the way these work is you’re coming in as an investor and you’re choosing what option works best for you pick a or b cool.

Bryan: Okay

Jeffery: all right let’s do this founder or co-founder

Bryan: Founder
Jeffery: Unicorn or four-year 10x exit

Bryan: Four-year 10x

Jeffery: Tech or cpg

Bryan: Tech

Jeffery: Nft or web 3.0

Bryan: Nft

Jeffery: Ai or blockchain

Bryan: Ai

Jeffery: First time founder or second third time founder

Bryan: Doesn’t matter

Jeffery: Okay first money in or series a

Bryan: First money in

Jeffery: Angel or vc

Bryan: Vc

Jeffery: Board seat or observer

Bryan: Board Seat

Jeffery: Safe for convertible note

Bryan: safe

Jeffery: Lead or follow

Bryan: Lead

Jeffery: Equity or interest payments

Bryan: Equity

Jeffery: Favorite part of investing

Bryan: Work with founders

Jeffery: number of companies invested per year

Bryan: right now two

Jeffery: Preferred terms

Bryan: Negotiable

Jeffery: Okay you mentioned this but vertical is a focus

Bryan: Clean tech is the primary focus health deck is a secondary actually

Jeffery: Okay two qualities a startup needs in order to stand out to you

Bryan: Coachable coachable founder coachable cultural coachable and and vision like a strong why

Jeffery: Love it okay we’re gonna do some personal questions

Bryan: Okay

Jeffery: Most famous person that pops in your mind

Bryan: Elon musk

Jeffery: Book or movie

Bryan: Movie

Jeffery: Superman or batman

Bryan: Batman

Jeffery: restaurant or picnic

Bryan: Restaurant

Jeffery: Favorite brand that pops in your mind

Bryan: Don’t have one all right nike’s the only name to pop to mine because i saw this

Jeffery: Nike’s good there you go

Jeffery: Five minutes with bezos or oprah

Bryan: bezos

Jeffery: Mountain or beach

Bryan: Mountain

Jeffery: Favorite book

Bryan: Lord of rings ,

Jeffery: Oh yeah

Bryan: Good book 18 times

Jeffery: nice all right um favorite sports team

Bryan: right now ineos with tour de france

Jeffery: All right cool yeah

Jeffery: Mountain or beach

Bryan: Mountain

Jeffery: biker run

Bryan: Bike

Jeffery: Big mac or chicken mcnuggets

Bryan: big mac

Jeffery: trophy or money

Bryan: trophy

Jeffery: Beer or wine

Bryan: Wine

Jeffery: Camera or mobile

Bryan: I say run

Jeffery: Well rum guess there’s a good mix in there somewhere uh camera or mobile phone

Bryan: Mobile phone

Jeffery: uh king or rich

Bryan: king it’s good to be

Jeffery: All right concert or amusement park

Bryan: Concert

Jeffery: Favorite movie and what character would you play in the movie

Bryan: Star wars luke skywalker

Jeffery: I like it uh fortune cookie or birthday cake

Bryan: Birthday cake

Jeffery: Ted talker book reading

Bryan: Book reading

Jeffery: Tik tok or instagram

Bryan: Instagram

Jeffery: Facebook or linkedin

Bryan: Linkedin

Jeffery: All right what is the meaning of success to you

Bryan: The number of people you’ve positively impacted in your life.

Jeffery: Positive impact I love it

Bryan: that’s my billion dollar that’s my billion goal a billion people impacted by within the next six years

Jeffery: All right it’s a good goal to have favorite app you’re using today

Bryan: Um oh what’s my favorite app, I’m using today it’s a good question i don’t have one, I’m the one that plays around on everything all at once.

Jeffery: Yeah all right that’s cool all right last question what is your superpower

Bryan: Building great teams and knowing what people are great at so building great teams because i know what other people’s superpowers are

Jeffery: i like it that’s great well i think from there i want to thank you very much for joining us today brian i think that we’ve uh been able to learn a lot you shared a lot and i so much appreciate uh all the things that you’re doing in this ecosystem, I’m sure we all do and especially in the area of where you’re going after i think we’ll see a lot of great things uh build up in this space over the next 10 years and we want to thank you for sharing today with us and our community and we want to what we like to do on our site is we like to give you the last word so anything that you want to share to the investor or to the startups i turn it over to you but again thank you very much brian for all your time today.

Bryan: Well thank you very much jp for having me on i mean this this was fun you know i i love the different questions i love the rapid fire at the end made me think um you know the the thing i leave with is that you know i am reminded of that quote that says you know we don’t inherit the earth we borrow it from our children right we don’t inherit it from our ancestor so that’s where, I’m coming from you know it’s looking for towards the future our motto is good for people good for planet and for me as an investor uh you know making a difference that’s the area i want to focus on right is not to say that other areas aren’t great but that’s what’s important to me that’s what lights me up you know and and i follow my passion let’s talk about sailing and all those different things you know i follow what lights me up i follow what i enjoy and and, I’m loving doing this right, I’m loving going out and you know starting businesses is great but you know getting to help a whole bunch of other business and work in all these different businesses and help them and help them grow even more fun i love building so it’s it’s it’s great so i love what i do.

Jeffery: Well brian it shows and and i think just from uh your super power and being able to find the right teams in the right business i think you’re also great at working with others and helping them better understand who they are and where they’re going um and it’s glad, I’m glad to see that you’re enjoying what you do because that’s key to everything we do in life so keep up the great awesome work you’re doing and again thank you for all your time today.

Bryan: Thank you very much.

Jeffery: okay that was great so much material unpacked there and i love the angle of of where brian’s coming from i work in the clean tech space um and with the founder group that they’re going after and incredible very big support you know to reiterate a lot of things were on his side around coachability uh vision of founders and where they’re going build relationships man man so many times you talked about that relationship building all the way through his discussions and what he went through and what he talked about everything from sales to marketing product build relate to people talk to people figure out what they’re looking for what they want that’s going to help you build faster and quicker success and then being able to um certainly be able to react to things quicker you know don’t let things faster the longer they do the more trouble they cause and the more pain they’re going to cause you so act quickly get things done and that’s going to help your business move forward so a lot of great insights there that he shared thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel free to share with your friends or subscribe to our youtube channel follow us on spotify apple podcast and or stitcher your support and comments are truly appreciated you can check us out at supportersfun.com or for startup events visit openpeoplenetwork.com thank you and have a fantastic day.