Albert Bielinko, GP at Titanium Ventures, discusses the fascinating intersection of venture capital and clean technology. With over $1 billion invested across 100 technology companies, Titanium Ventures has become a key player in funding the energy transition. This discussion reveals how smart capital is driving innovation in climate solutions and why certain technologies are attracting significant investment.
Narrator 00:00
Green Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America’s number one three-phase string inverter, with over six gigawatts shipped in the U.S. The CPS America product lineup includes three-phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 KW.
Their flagship inverter, the CPS 250-275, is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. The 250-275 pairs well with CPS America’s exceptional data communication, controls, and energy storage solutions.
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Albert Bielinko 00:38
One way that we are different as a venture capital firm is we have an extensive network of different channels, and we’ve actually generated over seven hundred million dollars of revenue for our portfolio company so far through those channel partnerships.
And so a lot of we also hear of a lot of interesting and exciting ideas and founders through those channels. And so, yeah, any any way we can. And then we will also reach out to founders, obviously, as well.
Tim Montague 01:05
Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar, batteries, and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization?
We do, too. We’re here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential, and utility solar, wind, and storage industries. So let’s get to it. Together, we can speed the energy transition.
Today on the Clean Power Hour, funding and scaling the clean energy transition. My guest today is Albert Bialinko. He is a general partner at a venture firm called Titanium Ventures. Welcome to the show, Albert.
Albert Bielinko 01:45
It’s really great to be here. Thank you.
Tim Montague 01:47
Check out all of our content at cleanpowerour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify and reach out to me on LinkedIn or at the website, cleanpowerour.com. So Albert, I would love to set the table a little bit for our listeners who are energy professionals working on solar batteries, wind and other clean energy technologies.
But how do you see the world and how did you come to clean tech?
Albert Bielinko 02:17
Yeah, it’s a really good question. So I mean, we see the world as trying to essentially scale the energy transition within within this space. So we we are a generalist venture capital firm just to give some context.
So we started 13 years ago, we’ve invested over a billion dollars in a hundred technology companies so far. And many of those are really businesses that are trying to make the world a much better place.
And so what led us to this juncture ultimately of focusing on clean energy and climate tech is that about six years ago, I started reading really deeply about the space and really becoming interested about what was happening.
And I was just shocked at the level of scientific consensus around around what was happening with with with the growth of greenhouse gases in the environment. And I was also shocked by the narrative and how little airtime it actually got.
And so we started building that as a separate category within our firm. So investing really actively in some of the companies that we thought would help to scale the energy transition. And, and that’s in addition to all the great work we’ve done before around investing in technology companies around enterprise software, cybersecurity, FinTech, etc.
So so we are we are a firm that loves to back what’s coming next now. So we love to back founders that have really big visions. And so we basically decided that the energy transition and climate tech is another really, really important area that warrants a lot of investment.
We basically think it’s another industrial revolution that’s occurring before our eyes. And we think we really want to invest in projects that help manage or mitigate the consequences of the climate crisis.
And we have we just have a house view that the transformation of all aspects of the physical world over the coming decades will be on par with the changes brought about by digital technologies. And they’ll actually be far more significant than most expect.
So we’re always going to focus on the largest areas of emissions and efficacy and reduction and scalability. And so we’re really actively pursuing investments in the space. We’ve done several that I can talk about as well.
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Visit www.attch.io and power up your efficiency today. Sure. Yeah, I’m curious in your bio, you mentioned 19 unicorns. And a unicorn is a startup that has achieved some level of financial success is, what is that success?
Tim Montague 05:21
And how do you, if you can, how do you identify technologies and teams and ultimately companies that you think have that potential? Because obviously it’s a risk reward equation, right? You’re taking venture risk on the less than guarantee that there’s some reward at the end of that.
Albert Bielinko 05:49
Absolutely. And just to set some context for your audience, so venture capital is an area. It’s actually quite a niche area of capital markets compared to private equity and infrastructure. And basically, it revolves around financing new companies that have a shot at creating some sort of innovative new business that could ultimately create a significant outcome.
So it’s investing in really small companies today that have a shot at being really big one day. And to your point, it’s a hits driven business. It’s really, you know, there are failures. Failure is part of the reality of venture capital and startups, but there also are really big winners.
So a huge percentage of the Fortune 500 companies that you see today, many years ago, probably, they received some sort of venture capital funding. And it’s not just the money, it’s also the advice, the support with fundraising, the introductions to customers.
So they really worked with venture capital firms, you know, in their heyday at the start, decades ago. And always, it’s because they have some sort of problem that they were solving, that they were 10X better than the status quo.
And with the work of venture capitalists like myself, they were able to really scale what they do. And so I guess to answer the question of what do we look for, that’s a question I get asked very, very frequently.
And I mean, we are basically looking for magic in a bottle that is waiting to come out. And that’s a very, very elusive statement. It maybe doesn’t mean much to many people. But essentially, we are looking for founders that have an idea that is really compelling about how the future world should be radically different than it is today, because there are specific problems or failures that are occurring today that are really important problems,
and that a lot of people or a lot of companies have those problems. And so with a change, a new technology, or a new business model, that could unlock something really significant for those people. And so that means firstly, having vision and clarity of thought, that’s very, very important to us.
And then also having the execution chops, so an ability to actually deliver the change. So sometimes our founders have a long track record. They’re very seasoned enterprise technology executives. And they’ve been vice presidents at really big technology businesses before.
And then other times, like Evan at Snapchat, which is one of our earlier portfolio companies that we’ve exited now, they are young people with a brilliant idea that others hadn’t really thought of or embraced earlier.
So that’s something that we look for. We look for an ability to hire a great team around the founder. So very, very rarely can one person build a business of significant consequence. You really need to hire a team.
And being able to bring in, surround people with whoever the ability to support, I think, is really, really important. So we look for that. And then some initial traction. So some signs that the customers really love the product.
And the product really is innovative and solves a huge problem for them. It’s not nice to have. It’s more of a painkiller, not a vitamin. And so that’s a really important assessment. And it has been challenging to make that assessment.
So in 2021, when the world was flush with cheap capital, lots of things looked like they were painkillers, but actually ended up being vitamins. And so that’s a really important part about what we do to actually figure out the hair on fire problems that companies can solve and figuring out the right teams and products to solve those problems.
Tim Montague 09:36
One of your portfolio companies that is pretty much a household name in the solar industry is Open Solar. So I’d love to hear a little bit about that story and how that team, that opportunity, fit into your rubric, so to speak.
And I guess I’d love to hear some other stories about other companies, but tell us about Open Solar.
Albert Bielinko 09:59
Yeah, so OpenSolar is a really phenomenal software business out of Australia, but a very, very global business that provides an all-in-one solution for solar installers to support their business, basically, to help them very, very easily design an efficient solar installation.
So using AI, they can very, very quickly figure out all the permutations to optimise the right solar installation for a rooftop. They also have a very integrated platform with financing, so a pro can issue a proposal to a household to install solar with the financing package as well integrated, so a consumer can choose whether to pay cash or whether to use a finance offer.
And then they also have lots of other integrated services, so hardware ordering, so in one click, an installer can choose to buy the gear from their wholesaler, which is the first time really that that process, that manual process has been digitised, and you can get all your special deals that you have with your wholesaler within the platform.
And so it’s really a software solution to reduce the soft costs of the energy transition. So, I mean, we are really big believers in electrification. We’re really big believers in solar. We think solar is the technology that is scaling tremendously as part of the energy transition.
It’s the workhorse of the energy transition. I mean, I read recently that solar panels are now 10 cents a watt, which is incredible. I mean, really incredible how much they’ve dropped in the last 20 years.
And so we think solar will be more than well over 10x annually in the coming decade. It’s going to be absolutely massive, as it already is today. And so basically creating an all-in-one vertical software solution to help installers do more with less is very valuable.
And when I did due diligence, when I did study the industry before I made the investment, I spoke to installers who were able to almost double the amount of jobs, proposals they could issue in a month just because of the efficiency you gave them.
So not only is it creating the proposal that’s all kind of software created really instantly, it also lets them manage the relationships of the full CRM and everything else they need to run their business.
So we think that’s very valuable. And then they’re also moving through to full home electrification, so heat pumps, EVs, et cetera. And so we think, you know, we think with the fullness of time, they’re building the home electrification software suite.
They’ve also got commercial customers using their product as well. So we think there’s really a tremendous part of the energy transition. So really for us, the key learning, I mean, I was very fortunate to back Burchie and Adam.
They’re really great giants in the industry. Your listeners may be familiar that they were the original founders of Sungevity, which grew to become the number three installer in the US market back in the day.
And so they were their customers previously. They lived in those shoes before, so they had a really clear, huge clarity of thought into what they wanted to build and which pain points they wanted to serve and in what order.
And so that was extremely appealing. And we think ultimately reducing the soft costs of solar, especially in the US market, whether it’s still very, very high, sadly, is a huge opportunity. And so we’re really excited by the global adoption they’ve been having.
I think they have 23,000 installers in 160 countries using them. They’ve got users using them in countries they’ve never even stepped foot in. So they’ve had lots of bottom up adoption and they’ve spent a very, very long time, seven years perfecting the product and they’re constantly iterating.
So we think they have a lot to offer and that’s the type of business we’re really excited to back.
Tim Montague 14:05
I love that you identified soft costs. That is a major stumbling block in the solar industry here in the United States. Our soft costs are too high compared to Australia or Germany, who are similar developed countries with a very similar standard of living, but somehow it’s almost twice as much to install a solar array here in the US as it is in Germany or Australia, and that’s ridiculous.
So we need to be very focused on reducing the soft costs. But I also wanted to jump, if we could, to another company in your portfolio that is not a household name, and that is BuildOps, because BuildOps is on my radar because one of my EPC clients is kicking the tires on that platform.
So tell us that story. And if you’re not aware of BuildOps, I encourage you to check it out. But what’s the story with BuildOps?
Albert Bielinko 15:02
Yeah, so BuildOps is another great vertical software business. Really, like OpenSolar, they’re both very, very strong performers in our portfolio. And BuildOps provides software for commercial contractors in the US market, especially.
And basically, it’s turnkey software to let them run their business a lot more efficiently. A lot of parallels with OpenSolar, but really targeting electricians, HVAC, plumbing, et cetera. And they’re seeing tremendous uptake.
It’s consistently ranked as one of the top products in their space, if not the top. They have a really high customer satisfaction rate and very, very strong net revenue retention. They’re also one of these businesses, like OpenSolar actually, where pleasingly as an investor, they just keep beating their own plans.
So you stress much less at night than maybe some others. I can assure you that’s not typical. And so really, they identified an area where a lot of contractors, commercial contractors, weren’t well-served by the existing solutions, which tended to focus more on the residential.
And we think that is a large market. And it’s extremely important for the speed of electrification of large commercial buildings. So yeah, we’re really excited to be an investor in build-ups as well.
And we see customers having a lot of success with their software.
Tim Montague 16:27
And so does BuildOps fall in the category of ERP or what type of a platform is BuildOps?
Albert Bielinko 16:33
Yes, it’s an ERP software, so that means a longer time to kind of get live, but it is definitely mission critical software and very critical to manage everything they do. It’s several different modules in their product, and I’d encourage everyone to check out their website to learn more, but it is a deep product.
They’ve launched payments recently, and it’s a big, big product area for commercial contractors.
Tim Montague 17:03
Gotcha, gotcha. So there’s a couple other companies that we should touch base on Samsara perhaps or Rethought and maybe some I’m not aware of, but tell us what other investments have you made that our listeners interested in decarbonization would like to follow.
Albert Bielinko 17:24
Yeah, thank you. So we’ve been really focusing on some of the biggest catalysts, some of the biggest areas within the climate change response. And one of those is definitely the plastic crisis that we have.
Humanity has over 9 billion tonnes of plastic on planet Earth. It’s kind of a startling figure. And it just keeps going up. So it’s about 400 million tonnes per annum of additional plastic, of which almost all of them just remains forever in the environment.
And at the moment, there really isn’t a textile-to-textile recycling industry. So you may not be aware of this, but when you throw away a piece of clothing, most of it either stays in landfill or gets incinerated, which is different to, for example, bottles which are mechanically recycled.
And so Samsara is a company that’s really trying to create a step change in that. And they are the first company in the world to recycle a plastic called Nylon 66, which is used in clothing. So they’ve been able to break that plastic down into its original monomers so that then it can be repolymerised again within the existing supply chain and therefore create a circular loop.
And so that is a breakthrough. It’s the first time you have textiles being able to be reformulated and recycled as a new piece of textile. And they did that in partnership with Lululemon. Lululemon actually made some of these pieces of clothing, some jackets available for sale.
I actually bought one. I wish I was wearing it now. And it’s a jacket, a really beautiful jacket that was previously a pair of black leggings. So it’s a pretty incredible technology. It works not just for Nylon 66, but across a whole library of different plastics.
And how they do it is enzymatically. So they actually use AI to create synthetic enzymes that have never existed in the world before. Your listeners may be aware that there are natural enzymes that exist, but they have serious limitations.
So some of them are very slow reacting. Some of them just don’t survive very long, out in the wild. And so basically, Samsung has been able to create AI, use AI to create particular enzymes across the billions of different permutations that can react particularly well and break down the right piece of plastics.
And it’s really targeted. So it works on multi-plastic clothing as well. It works on mix and dirty clothing as well. So we are very excited by that business. We think textiles is a really, really important area for decarbonization that really doesn’t have a solution today.
So when you think of a lot of retailers, most of them have really big goals around decarbonization, but they don’t have a practical way of getting there if their clothing is created using hydrocarbons and then kind of left in the environment forever.
But with this, this is a really big step change for the industry. So yeah, we’re very excited about Samsara. And then another one I thought I’d highlight that might be interesting to your audience is Pexapark.
And so Pexapark is a European data business that is the global leader in providing data around green PPAs and green fuels in general. And so they’re a business that basically is a price reporting agency.
They have a ton of data and they report on the prices of different transactions and green commodities. And they are really an authority in the space. They’ve built that up in the last six years. They have over 200 subscribers to their data.
So that includes both developers, independent power producers, banks, investment banks. I mean, really the whole everyone involved in the energy transition that cares about the pricing of various green transactions, green PPAs or power purchase agreements.
And so we invested in Pexapark because we noticed that a lot of PPAs just took a very long time to get prosecuted. It was often a 12 month, nine month or 12 month process, really obscure with no one really having much data.
You had kind of a hundred different parties with customized NDAs in a data room and no one really knowing much about pricing. And so we just thought there was a lot of inefficiency in that market. And we did a global search for companies trying to improve the PPA process and really Pexapark came out to the front.
They’re also actually a really established advisor on PPA transactions. So they will help companies or utilities that want to engage in PPAs. They will advise on those transactions. And then they do a lot of other really interesting things basically to provide accurate pricing.
Their algorithms can also power a particular customer’s assumptions to kind of custom make a price using that customer’s assumptions, which is a feature that we don’t believe anyone else in the market has.
So again, it’s kind of a flavor of some of the investments we’re making around the energy transition, around the climate crisis, companies that we think have important products that are needed by different people in the industry.
And we also really strongly believe that adaptation is one of the big under invested problems. I’m very happy to chat a bit more about what we’ve done in that space, if it’s interesting.
Narrator 22:59
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America’s number one three-phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three-phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 KW.
Their flagship inverter, the CPS 250-275, is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. The 250-275 pairs well with CPS America’s exceptional data communication, controls, and energy storage solutions.
Go to chimpowersystems.com to find out more. Sure, let’s talk a little more about PEXA Park and PPA’s power purchase agreements. Can you paint a little more detail onto the scale of projects or portfolios that they’re assisting and involved with?
Tim Montague 23:51
I know that they offer a variety of services, but let’s just say if you’re an IPP, is it strictly utility scale or is this also, you know, DGE community scale or even distributed generation like rooftop solar related?
Albert Bielinko 24:11
Yeah, they wouldn’t work on rooftop solar because the scale is probably not big enough. I mean, there is some data that’s out there. I don’t have it on my fingertips, but they have advised on gigawatts of transactions.
They have really tremendous data. We can put that in the show notes after this if it’s useful. But essentially, they’re an advisor on the larger transactions, less on residential rooftop solar, for example, but kind of scale transactions where two parties need to agree for a large project they advise on, they provide data on.
They also have software that infrastructure investors can adopt, and it really lets them understand the risk they face in a world where tariffs, government subsidies are changing over time. So we think that’s a kind of hidden problem in the energy transition where a lot of investors have portfolios of assets, some of which are on PPAs that lock the price for kind of 20 years, but then there’s a very long tail of that asset, decades of power generation where you’re in merchant territory, you have a lot of volatility on the potential revenue you might achieve. And so Pexapark also provides information to investors, to anyone that is an owner of such an asset, to let them model different scenarios, which is something that might break Excel, but they have a purpose-built kind of module for that, which we think is pretty important as well.
So they’re working very much with some of the biggest players in the ecosystem. They’ve also got S&P as a small co-investor in the business, and also have various BD relationships and partnerships to distribute their data around the world.
Tim Montague 26:06
Gotcha, gotcha. And you mentioned adaptation and, you know, we need to do a reality check whenever we talk about decarbonization because here we are on the energy transition path. Let’s just say we’re successful and we make the energy transition by 2050.
By that time, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are very likely to be 450 ppm. Today we’re at 420. They’re ticking up about one ppm per year. And nettering the economy brings that to a flat line, right? We’re not increasing the PPMs, but we’re also not decreasing the PPMs.
So we are all going to have to adapt in one way or another to climate change. That is just the harsh reality. So how do you see that world and what are the opportunities? Because there certainly is a huge opportunity, especially in, I think, the built environment, but you tell me.
Albert Bielinko 27:05
Yeah, I think that’s a really important point. So it’s not just reducing our missions, the 50 to 60 gigatons per annum. It’s also this massive, massive backlog, which I think is 20 times that amount at the moment.
But obviously it’s increasing with every passing day that we’re not not getting to net zero. And so it’s a huge, huge problem. I mean, I don’t think people realize what a huge problem it really is. And so, yeah, the sad reality is adaptation will become more and more important.
And I’ve personally been quite surprised how little capital has gone into that space as a professional investor. I mean, there are some spaces where you just see mountains of capital flowing into and often they’re deserved.
I mean, I think generally these spaces are really dramatically undercapitalized versus how they should be given the scale and urgency of the problem. But to me, it really adaptation is the space where that shines most fully, where you just have this really big dichotomy between what gets funded, how much flows into resilience measures and versus what should based on the current path we’re on.
So one, we want to do a lot more in this space. We would love to hear from founders who are innovating around this space. We think there’s a lot that can be done. One investment we’ve made is we led the Series A or first institutional investment for a business called Rethought Insurance.
And so Rethought uses climate change data to price flood risk in the US. So they have created models to basically model the climate risk for every property in the US. So hundreds of millions of properties around the US market.
And basically, they’re using that as with the thesis that that is quite an important input in addition to lots of other things, but quite an important input into the long term flood risk in these markets.
And so what’s really pleasing about Rethought is they’ve had very, very low loss ratios. And so with that business, that is less a business of kind of it’s definitely not a grow at all cost business.
There are some of these that sadly venture capitalist fund that it’s really about getting to scale. Whereas we think with this market, it’s about growing in a showing that what your thesis actually works, you can identify the right risks to take.
You can issue that extra policy where you were seeing a lot of insurers completely back out of markets. We’re seeing that in the fire space in California, where a lot of insurers have completely backed out of that market.
And similarly with flood. And we think that’s a completely inefficient outcome. Like within the state, there are lots of properties that should have insurance. But they’re not currently getting that because it’s not a data driven approach using all the data that’s now available.
And so we think Rethought is the right type of model that can succeed. And we’d love to make more investments around that. We think data and software will be really key to the energy transition. I mean, obviously, you’re going to need a lot of hardware as well, dramatic amounts of hardware.
But we think software and intelligence will really power a lot of decisions that basically get to a much better outcome much sooner. And there’s also been other other data points on that. So for example, you know, Google DeepMind, I think, has shown that they can reduce the power consumption of data centers by 40 percent, which is pretty staggering.
So that’s kind of software having a significant impact, reducing the demand for electricity. And we think things like that are really promising. And you need the combination of those software innovations and the software intelligence with all the physical hardware that needs to be installed for the climate transition to occur effectively.
Tim Montague 31:04
So let me understand rethought. Today, decisions are getting made by insurers and reinsurers. And, you know, some insurers are choosing to pull out of markets. Florida has been in the news, right? It’s getting increasingly difficult to get flood insurance in Florida.
How does rethought change the game and who is it changing the game for?
Albert Bielinko 31:30
Yeah, so I’d say they changed the game because they have access to, they accumulate a lot of data, some of which is their own and a lot of which is very public at the moment. There’s lots of public information like satellite data is obviously improving in leaps and bounds at the moment.
And so they’re able to aggregate lots of that data and apply their own proprietary algorithms to really predict how kind of flooding or natural disasters will kind of progress in the coming decades. And so to answer your question of who do they change the game for?
So they changed the game for both the people who are buying a policy. So if you’re, for example, a property, a commercial business who wants to get flood insurance and you couldn’t get insurance before because a lot of the insurers have made a snap reaction to not back a particular market without really the data.
And that has a massive effect on how you can scale your own business without insurance. There’s a lot of products like home loans, for example, that may actually not be possible. And so it really changes the game for them.
And then obviously it changes the game for the underwriters, the reinsurers. If groups like Rethought can make better decisions and just be a lot more intelligent about risks they take, then the whole financial system is a lot more resilient.
You have a lot less money being burned, a lot less inefficiency where policies are being written in places where they shouldn’t. And then also you have a lot more efficiency where profitable business can be written in places where it should exist, but it’s currently not.
So it’s like an insidious market failing that’s occurring. And it’s really solving that behind the scenes. But the flow on effect is quite large because you have actual people running businesses that can’t do so if everyone just stops and gives up on a market because of the catastrophe risk that exists.
Tim Montague 33:33
Gotcha. And are there adjacent markets besides flood? They’re very focused on flood today. Are there other phenomena that they’ll be growing into? You mentioned fire, for example.
Albert Bielinko 33:47
Yeah. In time, there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a lot of opportunity and similar principles apply in other markets. We’ll see what they end up deciding to do. The flood market is such a big problem.
You would totally understand if they choose to really focus on that market as well. We think that fire, every sort of natural disaster, we’re seeing real inefficiency and requirement for a lot more data to help solve these problems.
We think, I’m hearing of companies that physically try to reduce the risk of wildfire spreading. Clearly, there’s a need for a lot more physical hardening of properties. Whether that’s with back burning technologies or technologies that reduce the severity of flooding.
There’s a lot of physical things that can be done to harden the world as we accept the reality that we’re going to be ravaged. The reality is a lot of the impact of climate change is sadly occurring in developing countries as well.
I think there’s a lot of opportunity in those markets, not only to distribute solar, for example, much more quickly and really move faster than what was possible in Western markets because already the economics are good, but then also to do a lot more to help the developing countries who are facing real issues.
There’s fintech opportunities that I think are really exciting. The lucky thing being an investor is I don’t have to come up with the ideas. The fantastic founders building businesses are the ones who are really passionate about new ideas.
There’s no shortage of great founders out there. That’s actually one of the things that gives me the most reason to be optimistic despite all the gloomy news we consistently hear on climate change that some of the smartest people in the world are full time working on climate change now.
These are people that have options on what to do. They can go and make a lot of money in generative AI and get valued at a billion dollars before they have any product, but instead they’re seeing the severity of the problem and the need for intelligence and good solutions.
They’re really focusing on that. That gives me a lot of hope that human ingenuity will really shine through.
Tim Montague 36:17
Speaking of founders, in our last few minutes together, I’d love to hear about how titanium identifies founders and vice versa. Tell us a little bit about that matchmaking process, what is your experience, and what should founders be thinking about in this journey that they’re on to fund their ventures?
Albert Bielinko 36:42
Yeah, it’s a good question. So we we will find founders basically in any way we can. I mean, if a carrier pigeon flies at my front door and drops me a note with a great startup idea, you know, we’ll take that referral.
Like we’re really open minded as investors. So we get, you know, like everyone, we get a lot of inbound, we get a lot of referral from other founders from other executives we’ve worked with. We, you know, it’s very broad, we have a, I mean, one way that we are different as a venture capital firm is we have an extensive network of different channels.
And we’ve actually generated over $700 million of revenue for our portfolio company so far through those channel partnerships. And so a lot of we also hear of a lot of interesting and exciting ideas and founders through those channels.
And so yeah, any any way we can, and then we will also reach out to founders, obviously, as well. So if we’re working, you know, excited about a sector, and we, you know, we start researching, and we find, you know, we realize that a company is doing interesting things in that space.
So open solar, for example, I mean, I reached out to Bertie, I could see, I could see how open solar was really changing the game. I mean, they’re now at over 50% market share in, in the Australian market, and we think they’re kind of over a quarter in the US market as well.
So I could see them really gaining traction. And so I reached out as well. So so lots of different ways to find founders. And then in terms of the other way around, I mean, it really is a marriage, like it’s harder to get rid of a VC on your board than then, sadly, a partner, someone you’re married to.
So I think it’s a really important, really important to kind of make the right decision, I get to know your VCs, you know, I’m surprised how few questions I sometimes get from founders on how we operate.
So I think it’s really great to just ask lots of questions, figure out how they work, speak to lots of portfolio companies that they’ve backed both those that work out. But I think it’s actually more interesting to speak to those where it hasn’t been all rosy, where a company has gone through ups and downs, or a company has even failed.
And you learn a lot about how investors behave in that way. And so I think it’s just really important to find a an investor that’s passionate about the topic, you’re interested in, they have a skill set that’s useful for you, they have they have capital, I mean, we’re also in a challenging fundraising environment, if we’re all honest, it’s very, very hard to actually raise funding right now.
So, you know, having institutional LPs or limited partners that support that venture capital firm is increasingly important as well. So lots to think about. And I’d say overall, just ensuring it’s someone you can work with constructively to build a business for a decade, if you’ve got a really grand vision and you that that’s how often we we find that it takes to build something really meaningful.
It’s an important call and you know, worth a lot of thinking.
Tim Montague 39:45
Obviously, clean tech is a very big umbrella, but what are two or three areas where you are really shining a light right now and trying to grow your portfolio?
Albert Bielinko 39:59
It’s a good question. One area I’m interested in is geothermal. We haven’t made an investment in that space, but I have noticed that there have been a couple of companies that have signed deals with some of the hyperscaler technology companies for really deep geothermal.
The idea there is to drill down, say, 7,000-8,000 feet where it gets much, much hotter, and then use that steam that’s generated together with some advances in oil and gas techniques, for example, in applying oil and gas techniques, and use that to actually generate electricity that can then be used to power the grid.
I think that is a really interesting area. These are mega projects potentially that require a lot of capital. I think generally geothermal plays a big role. It can also play a huge role in heating and cooling, and there’s some really interesting companies in that space, like Bedrock Energies is one of them, as well as others.
I think there’s some really interesting areas in that space that I’d love to explore more. As I mentioned, there’s also a lot of opportunity in adaptation. I think that’s a space we’ll definitely find more of.
Finally, I’d say just more on the data and intelligence around this overall space. There’s a lot happening. There’s a lot of technologies that are scaling well. The need for data, the need for insights is higher than it’s ever been.
I think that we’ll see more companies like Pexapark that provides all the decision makers within the capital markets, all the information they need to really be able to flow capital to where it needs to go.
Ultimately, that is what will really work. Once a technology itself like solar is cheap enough, getting the capital markets to work efficiently at scale and the capital to go where it needs to to make it really, really big is really what will drive huge changes to the really alarming figures that you mentioned earlier.
Tim Montague 42:07
Yeah, if you’re interested in geothermal, check out episode 213 with Sebastian Heitman of Extantia. He’s the other venture capitalist we had on the show recently and very actively investing in deep geothermal.
It’s essentially an infinite source of clean power once you get into the really hot part of the earth. And so it’s available anywhere on earth if you have the right cost-effective drilling technology, which is one of the barriers right now.
We’re doing geothermal mainly in areas where that heat is closer to the surface and easier to get to through soft rock drilling. Now we’re unlocking hard rock drilling at depth. So it’s very exciting times, I would say, for geothermal.
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Albert Bielinko 43:35
Yeah, follow me on Twitter or send me an email at [email protected]. I’m really happy to chat to any of your listeners. And yeah, I love the passion in this space. I think there’s a lot of opportunities.
So yeah, please reach out and love to build some good connections.
Tim Montague 43:55
and check out the website ti.vc, a very easy URL ti.vc. You can find all of our content at cleanpowerour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Tell a friend about the show and reach out to me on LinkedIn.
I love hearing from my listeners, especially on LinkedIn or on the website. With that, I want to thank Albert Biilinko, General Partner at Titanium Ventures, for coming on the show. I’m Tim Onigy. Let’s grow solar and storage.
Albert Bielinko 44:24
Sounds great, thanks so much Tim. Thank you.
Narrator 44:28
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