Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) Podcast: Transcripts
#205:
James Larsen, CEO of e-Zinc — $100M for Metal Battery. $4T Long Duration Energy Storage Market by 2040. Resilience as a Service. FOAK Financing. Meditation Techniques. Magic Morning Drink.
Podcast Introduction
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is James Larsen, CEO of e-Zinc. e-Zinc produces zinc based long duration energy storage technology with discharge durations between 10 and 100 hours. They've raised over $100 million in funding and are currently building their first three commercial pilots. In addition to his role at e-Zinc, James is a board director of the Long Duration Energy Storage Council and the Energy Storage Canada association as well. He's also the former manager at Bain and at Mars. In this episode you will learn four important takeaways. Number one, how the long duration energy storage sector is poised to become a $4 trillion market by 2040. Yes, that's with a T. Number two, why he's going to market with a resilience as a service business model. Number three, why it's essential to convert sustainability technology from being a cost center into a revenue center for customers.
And number four, what Vipassana meditation is and why he starts his morning with it. We got links to, of course, James's profile, the company of e-Zinc, two books he recommended, the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the Hard thing about hard things Building a business when there are no easy answers. Please give James and e-Zinc a shout out on Linkedin, Slack or X by sharing this podcast with your people.
All right, before we hop in, I've got a challenge and I guess an invitation for you all. First, the background. My goal is to empower 250,000 entrepreneurs, investors and university students to tackle climate change through startups, finance and personal growth. Is that enough? I don't know. It's a lot. Maybe it'll grow. Anyway, the podcast is one way to do that. To that end, the sector needs more inspiration, tools and tips from CEOs and investors in this space. Conveniently, as you may guess, these folks are precisely my guest on this podcast. So here is the challenge.
If you and five of your friends rate, review and follow this podcast on Apple and Spotify and share your efforts with me on LinkedIn or in response to my newsletter on Substack, I'll hop on Zoom and brainstorm a climate tech business or investment challenge or opportunity with you. Now, is that a reward? Is that punishment?
I don't know.
There it is. This is the best way for new folks to learn from the CEOs and investors on this podcast. If the process is unclear, as it was to me, in the show notes, you will find a link explaining how to do this. I read every single review. So please tell me and all of us which guest insights you like the most. Thanks so much. Hope you enjoy it.
Podcast Interview
Chris Wedding:
James Larsen, CEO of e-Zinc, welcome to the podcast.
James Larsen:
Thank you so much, Chris.
Chris Wedding:
Well, maybe first, just a quick shout out to Richard Zimmerman from We Family Office and Foundation House for connecting us back when. I like to start off the podcast with something that kind of really catches people's attention and before press and record, you gave me a stat which is so tantalizing I can't even believe it. So let's go there. So you're on the, was it the council for a long duration?
James Larsen:
Yeah. I'm a director on the board of Long Duration Energy Storage Council.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect.
James Larsen:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
What does some of this research tell us about the size of this market that few of us understand well enough, James?
James Larsen:
So we issued a report that examined the long duration energy storage market potential, and by 2040 this is going to be a US $4 trillion market that represents about 8 terawatts of energy storage. So you know, a lot of people talk about megawatt projects and gigafactories. This is a terawatt problem.
Chris Wedding:
Okay. So I think when folks hear about, you know, size of a market, I think they don't really know what it means. Exactly. Tell us what 4 trillion means in 2040. Like what are we measuring here?
James Larsen:
Yeah, so it corresponds back to the 8 terawatts of energy storage deployment. I mean to put things into perspective, the COP 29 goals that just came out, that was aiming for 1500 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030. So 1500 gigawatts getting to 8 terawatts. Now interestingly, the 1500 gigawatts by 2030, that's a sixfold increase from where we are today. So you're looking on multiples upon multiples. So the growth is truly a geometric growth pattern.
Chris Wedding:
And this is, we're talking about what, you know, revenue per year from long duration energy storage projects, accounting kind of, well, just wrap the boundary there a little more if you would.
James Larsen:
Yeah, so we're talking about like overall with energy storage. So energy storage has a broader value chain. So a lot of people may think, okay, that just means batteries. What that really means is a wide variety of mixes of technology. This could be pumped hydro projects, compressed air, could be electrochemical technologies like e-Zinc, and could be thermal technologies. So it will be a mosaic of energy storage technologies. But, but it also does speak to the other elements of deploying energy storage. So you need EPC work, you know, pouring concrete pads and doing system installation. You need ongoing O and M work, you need software solutions incorporate in that. So the number corresponds to the production of that entire value chain.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect, perfect. So you started giving examples of other long duration energy storage solutions. So great, maybe give us some, also some thresholds or benchmarks around, I don't know, duration, let's say, that constitute long duration versus not. Days, weeks, what are you talking about here?
James Larsen:
Yeah, this is a really important delineation, right. So the majority of what people are talking about in today's language about energy storage is really sub four hour duration, you know, two to four hour duration deployments. And that's because that's predominantly where the market need is. It's serving applications like grid services, it's helping firm up renewables, it's doing some small amounts of load shifting. And for sure that is a very important part of the market. e-Zinc is categorized as a long duration technology, which serves an entirely different purpose. So really our technology, we're focused on 10 hours plus. We have a technology that is dynamic in nature and we can customize the duration based on the application.
So interestingly, we can actually perform a lot of the short duration applications, for example frequency regulation or voltage support that are part of career applications, but also, you know, serve that long duration need. And, and that really comes in a variety of different flavors. We think of this largely as horizons. And the reason we talk about it as horizons is because we see sort of a cascading set of up market opportunities opening up. So the first horizon where long duration is really important is what we call resilience. So that means effectively behind the meter backup power for customers who have grid vulnerability or power quality challenges. So think of hospitals, data centers. So it could be by customer type, but it also could be by geography, right?
So markets like California or the Carolinas or Texas that have specific issues locally with respect to their geography. So in California as an example, because of the wildfires, there are events called public safety power shutoffs. So effectively that's where the utilities are shutting down pockets of the grid for safety reasons. Now the median time of those PSPS events, as they're called, last year was 19 hours. So just think about that, right? The only solution out there right now is diesel or fossil fuel based backup power because batteries are just not long enough duration. So you know, e-Zinc, we have a technology that has the ability to provide that long duration backup power in the event of an outage.
But we can also behave like a battery and do short term revenue generating opportunities like lowering that customer's energy bill through demand, charge management, time of use, arbitrage, et cetera. So resilience is a really important market because the market really exists today, like that is a challenge for many customers today. The second big market in long duration is really around remotes as we called. So think of this as off grid customers like mining operations or telecom towers, military bases, things of that ilk. And in this case you would be using long duration energy storage combined with renewables as a means of displacing or replacing a fossil fuel based generation.
So right now if you look at mining operations for example, a lot of these companies are starting to deploy renewables and they're adding batteries and that's great, that's helping them lower their cost of energy and also their ecological footprint. But they have a glass ceiling because, you know, what do you do if you have several days of bad weather? Well, the renewables are not generating and the batteries died in the first few hours. So it really necessitates a long duration storage technology, to enable it to be a true 24, 7 sustainable form of power. And then the third horizon, the ultimate direction the world is headed is that as we continue to proliferate renewable energy on the grid, it will cause more and more congestion, it will cause more and more imbalances between supply and demand, and that needs to be corrected.
And so long duration is going to, it holds huge potential at the grid scale in order to solve that. But that market really doesn't exist in a meaningful way today yet, there aren't utilities out there issuing RFPs for, you know, days of storage. But it's coming like a tidal wave. And so strategically from e-Zinc's perspective, we think of these markets as horizons and will intend to serve these markets as they emerge.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, super helpful. Just going back for a second to this category and then we're going to go specifically to e-Zinc in lots more detail. Between the four hour duration, discharge duration for you know, lithium ion batteries and the 10 hours you referenced, between 4 and 10 is there some, you know, kind of industry defined number where you say okay now we're, now we're long duration versus not is it 10, is it 8, some other number in there?
James Larsen:
Yeah, that's such a good question. So I have admittedly I have my own framework to think about this versus some of the more industry standards. So the DOE has come out and said that 10 is the delineation from long duration storage. I think about this a little differently, a little bit more nuanced. So I think about short duration which is really four hours and lower and really serving those applications that I mentioned, think about mid scale duration which I would say is sort of four to 10 hours. And the applications in there, Chris, are really around load shifting. So if you look at challenges like California's duck curve, right. You know, a solid eight hour solution is a great opportunity to assuage that challenge on the grid. So that's the mid duration kinda way.
Then there's long duration and I would categorize that in sort of the 10 to 100 hour type of range. So this is, you know, several days, you know, half day to several days of energy storage. And a lot of the applications that I just talked through and we'll talk more depth about. That's really what that's for. And then I, I have a fourth category which is really ultra long duration energy storage. So 100 hours plus, where you're even starting to think about seasonal energy storage to shift energy very few times over the course of a year, but in bulk.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. Yeah, thanks for that. All right, let's go deep dive. e-Zinc, you've given us pieces so far. What's the short version? The elevator pitch, if you will, on e-Zinc.
James Larsen:
So e-Zinc is a technology, it's a zinc based energy storage technology that is focused on 10 to 100 plus hours. We say 10 to 100 plus because the technology does have the ability to do longer than 100, but our sweet spot is really sort of the 10 to 100 hours. The unique aspect of this technology is that we use electrochemistry, but we truly decouple powerful energy. So why is that an important concept? Well, traditional batteries have a fixed power to energy ratio, right? So for a particular power node, there is a particular energy node and that therefore determines the duration. So let's say a, a lithium ion battery might be, you know, one megawatt and it would be two megawatt hours. So it's fixed at sort of two hours.
Well, the thing about that is that if you have a long duration application, you can serve that by just stacking up many batteries together. But that's a relatively uneconomic way to do it because while you're building up that energy to serve the duration, you're also building up the power and you're paying for both of those things. And so it's not the most economic or efficient approach to doing long duration. So really what one wants to do is decouple power from energy. You want a technology that has the ability to scale energy without scaling the power dimension. So the most classic way to think about this is as a pump titer system, right? A pump titer system. The power of a project is determined by the size of the turbine and the energy is determined by the size of the water reservoir.
So you have that fixed turbine, you can increase the size of the reservoir and increase the duration of that project. So that is akin to our technology. While it's electrochemical, we've devised a method of storing energy in physically free zinc metal, so it's not adhered to electrodes. And the power of our systems corresponds to the size of our electrodes. And the energy of the system corresponds to the size of our cells. And so we can size a system to be exactly what a customer needs in terms of power and energy. The energy is the size of cell and the power is actually the number of cells that we stack together to build that power node. And therefore it's a far more right sized and therefore cost effective way of serving that load.
Chris Wedding:
And who are the main customers today?
James Larsen:
So right now we're in pilot project phase. So we're not fully commercial yet. We, we need to have a fully certified and bankable product to say that we're truly commercial. And we're just commencing that process. Right now, we have one project that we deployed at a compressed natural gas facility just outside of Toronto and we're in the process of building our second project with the California Energy Commission which is going to a site in San Diego. And then right on the heels of that we have another project with Toyota Susho, one of our partners, and we're deploying a system at their manufacturing facility in Cambridge in Ontario.
Chris Wedding:
And describe maybe what makes those ideal, let's say use cases. So for example, you talked about the various horizons earlier. Maybe you're in the kind of first horizon, maybe it's the second, I don't know. But what are those ideal customers in the near term?
James Larsen:
Yeah, great question. So all three of those projects are focused on that first horizon which is the resilience market segment. So these are all behind the meter deployments and really they are first of a kind projects. So all of them are 24 hours in duration. The project at the compressed natural gas facility was, you know, an initial field demo. The project with the California Energy Commission is a truly works like, looks like product, and will be a FOAK project for 24 hour duration storage. And it's not just the fact that it's a FOAK and behind the meter. It's going to be in the geography where there's going to be a tremendous amount of impact our technology can have. So I mentioned earlier California's issue with public safety, power shutoffs and the, the fact that they are truly long duration issues.
You know the median time was 19 hours, but it can be longer than that. So these are big pain points for customers and it varies depending on the opportunity cost of that customer losing energy and losing power, right. If you're a, if you're a data center, that's a very bad thing. If you're a hospital, that's something you just cannot, you cannot go without energy. And so these public safety power shutoffs are really significant events. They happen several times a year and for those durations. And so we have a, a solution that we'll be demonstrating with our project partner, Indian Energy, which will demonstrate the ability of our technology to be able to charge and discharge energy over a period of one entire day.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. And you mentioned first of a kind or FOAK financing. I think listeners will also have heard at this point that you'll have raised, as a company, have raised something around $100 million. How are you funding your first projects? Is it kind of on the balance sheet using this capital? Is there any kind of third party project finance? Is it all kind of, you know, typical, you know, mainstream equity debt? Are there any other kind of non-.
Chris Wedding:
dilutive sources out there?
Chris Wedding:
What's that, what's that look like, James?
James Larsen:
Yeah, great question. So because these are pre-commercial projects, they are funded either by the customer grants or a mix of both. We're not in the stage of project financing for these systems because they're not intended to be in the field for you know, 10, 15 years. And so the first project is entirely funded by the California Energy Commission and then the next project is a mix of funding from Toyota Susho as well as another government grant. And so this is how we're doing that initial deployment at this stage. However, you mentioned something very important which is, you know, that what is the longer term business model. In this particular application, the resilience market, there's a really interesting opportunity which we call resilience as a service.
So for all the things that diesel generators aren't, you know, they're polluting and noisy, etc, they're actually really cheap. And so a company like us coming up with a nice clean alternative to diesel, but where we are slightly more expensive on a capex basis, the advantage of us is that can monetize the system, right? So our technology can be in the field. We can do demand charge reduction, time of use arbitrage, and lower that customer's energy bills. And so while it's a little bit more capex up front, you have this ongoing financial benefit going forward. Whereas diesel generators are entirely cost, it's a capex cost and an ongoing OPEX cost. And so really, you know, the key sort of takeaway and headline here is that we're trying to convert a cost center into a profit center.
Now when you look to do that though, because there's additional capex, this lends itself to that resilience as a service model because ultimately you want to reduce the barrier to adoption for the customer. And so by coming to the market with an as a service model where e-Zinc can own and operate a system and charge the customer a fee for using that system, like analogous to a power purchase agreement. But in this case it would be more than that because it's not just power actually also providing resilience, the avoidance of an outage. So there's a fee levied for that. The customer is happy because that fee is paying for not only the resilience but also the reduced energy bills. And e-Zinc has a nice ongoing revenue stream and we've assuaged that issue of having to pay more upfront for the system.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, got it. So your FOAK someone else is financing this, which makes it easy for the customers to say yes, totally get that. How do you balance the kind of use of the battery for demand charge reduction, et cetera, while making sure that you have the capacity you need when there's whatever a wildfire induced outage, let's say. To what degree could those be at odds, if you will?
James Larsen:
Yeah, it's such a good question. So, so if we look at the California PSPS events, again just focusing on that, so a 24 hour duration system, let's just use that as the example. Let's say we first of all we would study the customer's particular situation, we whether they, you know, we would examine what the PSPS events looked like for that particular customer over time because the, those PSPS events vary by region. But let's assume that this customer represents the median, right, which is 19 hours. And let's say that happened a few times a year. The way our system would work is that as a 24 hour duration system we would use about 5 hours, 4 to 6 hours day in and day out to do time of use, arbitrage, demand charge reduction and perhaps grid services and monetize the system.
And this is exactly why people are deploying lithium ion batteries behind the meter, because they do just that, right. What lithium ion batteries can't do though is promise the duration to support that the customer in that backup outage event. So we're using sort of four to six hours, call it day to day. And then every now and again when there's that PSP event, we still have, you know, 18 to 20 hours of duration to be able to cover that outage. And so that is the that's the way that use case really works.
Chris Wedding:
I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. You mentioned that what you're offering is not just, you know, power, as a power purchase agreement would have been structured, you know, today or in years past. It's also true, I think, that the resilience of the service is a newer service. How do you/how should customers understand, I don't know, apples to apples, transparency, predictability and pricing, an RaaS, you know, contract, if you will, right. It isn't like with power purchasing, well, what do I pay my local power utility and so forth. That's somewhat easy math to do. How easy is the math to arrive at this RaaS pricing?
James Larsen:
Yeah. So in this model, and by the way, this is unique to us, this is a bit of e-Zinc IP, business model IP. How we're thinking about this and why this is so attractive as the initial market is that it actually really depends on the opportunity cost of outages for that customer. So you can really think about this as a spectrum, right. You have customers one end. I'll just take the most extreme, like a hospital or a data center. Right. Hospitals have life safety support requirements. Data centers have SLAs or service level agreements with their customers. They've got to maintain uptime. And then you've got customers on the other end that you perhaps, you know, a mom and pop business that if there's an outage they just don't run their operation that day and they don't have inventory spoiling or anything of that nature.
And so it's not a big deal. And customers fit at any point on that spectrum. So when you think about the RaaS type of model, really the pricing of that corresponds to what is the value of avoiding that outage for the customer. So it depends where customers sit on that spectrum. So from a business perspective, from e-Zinc's perspective, we will work with the customer to try and understand what is the severity of those outages, you know, what is the value that we're really providing and find that optimal point for the customer where they're getting value. But e-Zinc is also getting a lot of value. So it will, the answer is, it will vary by customer type.
Chris Wedding:
Makes sense. All right, let's flash forward. I don't know, whatever, a year, two years, you're past these projects you're talking about now where the customer or grants, you know, fund these projects. So now you're likely using project finance to fund these systems. What does it look like for project number, I don't know, 10 or something.
James Larsen:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
How do you see that being financed?
James Larsen:
Yeah, exactly. And this is why I made that point about the importance of certification and bankability. Because ultimately for us to be able to sell commercially to enable this business model, we require clearing those hurdles because we will work then with reinsurance providers as well as project financing partners to support this model. So a third party, because e-Zinc will not finance these off of our own balance sheet, we will have strategic partnerships with project financiers to provide the financing off of their balance sheet for these projects. And the reinsurance providers will also be looking for that bankability in order to know that they can back the performance guarantees.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, got it. Okay. You mentioned reinsurance. Say more about either the role of insurance or reinsurance in getting project financers comfortable with a newer long duration energy storage technology.
James Larsen:
Yeah, this is an important point, right, because the energy storage industry, I mean, yes, there are some major players out there, but for all intents and purposes, it's kind of like the wild west. There's a lot of new companies here and they're not necessarily long established companies with huge balance sheets where, you know, they're going to be a going concern for the, the ongoing future. And so having these partnerships in place is critical because when a company like e-Zinc wants to work with a customer to deploy a system, that customer wants to know that the performance guarantees that are, let's say, guaranteed for 10 years, that the company is going to be around for 10 years. And if they're not, that there's a backstop to that.
So that becomes a really critical unlock for adoption which again points back to the certification of bankability and the importance of that and how all of this comes together.
Chris Wedding:
Let's go back in time a little bit. So I saw on LinkedIn that some 12 years ago this, the original technology is being kind of advanced in a, you know, 100 square feet, you know, room, if you will. Now you've got, you know, 42,000 plus square feet, you know, very efficient operations. Tell us, I don't know, two of the hardest things during that time period to get to where you are today.
James Larsen:
Well, I think the two hardest things probably happened at the same time, and that was the summer of 2021. So just a bit of context. So the company was founded by a gentleman named Dr. Gregory Zhang. He was the person that came up with the idea of metallizing energy, storing energy and physically freezing metal. So he started the company in 2012 and he was a one man show. He did all of the early prototyping, he developed the science and the electrochemistry himself. Really incredible effort. So he did that for the first few years and then he won some grant funding to build his first laboratory demonstration system which he did and completed in 2018. And in 2018 is when he was looking to hire a new CEO to lead the commercialization of the technology. That's when he hired me.
So at that stage, up until that point, the first six years, it was really around the early science and C stage funding from friends and family and angels. After that, we raised our first round of financing. It was a late seed round led by Energy Foundry. Three and a half million dollars to get going. And then we, shortly after that, raised a convertible note from BDC. So that got us going and things were, were really starting to work on the development of the tech in preparation for commercialization and our first pilot. And in the summer of 2021 were gearing up for our series A round. I was planning on really going to market that fall and I hadn't taken much vacation for the three years leading up to that point. And I said, you know, I, I really want to freshen myself up.
And so I took a, a two week holiday in the summer. And two things happened at that time. The first weekend of my holiday, I got a phone call from the chair of our board telling me that the founder of our company passed away, which hit me like a ton of bricks. Wow. And so I immediately had to call a meeting with the company. I was in a remote place. I had to drive quite a distance to be able to find a connection, internet connection, be able to have a meeting with the company and go through that. And I mean, just personally, that was a deep impact to me as well as the company.
But it didn't end there because a week later, on the last day of my holiday, I woke up and I checked the voicemails of my phone and got a voicemail from the police department, my cfo, the VP of engineering, the fire department, the landlord, telling me that our lab had burned down. And so I rushed back toronto and my first day back in Toronto, in the morning I went to my founder's funeral and in the afternoon I went and saw ground zero of our company. And that was supposed to be how we, the moment in time when were kicking off our series A race. So there was an incredible rallying cry we had to provide to the company to get the company back on strong footing so that we could secure the Series A.
I do want to just make a quick comment here with respect to the fire. The forensic engineers determined it was not any fault of our technology. It was literally just bad luck. We had a faulty power bar catch fire and ignite the fire. So really unfortunate. One funny thing actually. Quick anecdote. The fire, the source of the fire happened to be right beside a lithium ion powered laptop and also beside a string of 12 of our cells. The lithium ion powered laptop exploded and ignited a plasma fire that scorched the ceiling and left a white mark on the ceiling amidst all the black and our cells, the cell that was close to the fire had a small bit of deformation, but the remaining cells, all of them continued to perform. And so it actually speaks to the safety of our technology, ironically.
Anyways, just getting back on track. So, you know, this was a big moment for the company where we had to bind together, lock arms to figure out how to move forward. We found a new space, within two months we moved everything out of the space. We ditched the stuff that was destroyed, we salvaged a bunch of stuff, we bought some new stuff and we set up and we're fully operational in our new facility by October of that year. And that's when the investors and the roadshow began. So we did it just in the nick of time. We did end up closing our $25 million Series A round. So I think that really speaks to the resilience of this company and our ability to sort of face these tough challenges.
Chris Wedding:
Well, I think the audience is very clear one takeaway from what you just said, which is you should never go on vacation. Let's be real. It's all your fault. Wow, that's a lot to happen in two weeks. Tragic in, in three ways. I mean, you know, neat to hear resilience show up a number of times in different meanings in your story so far.
James Larsen:
Right.
Chris Wedding:
Your business model, plus just what it takes to get to where you are right now.
James Larsen:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
James, let's switch as we do to the personal part of the podcast. What are a couple of pieces of advice you might give your younger self or, you know, think like emerging professionals, let's say.
James Larsen:
So the number one thing I, I would say, and I'm going to speak specifically to a startup, an emerging growth journey is really going in eyes wide open to how challenging it really is. I've recently read a a great book. I don't know why it took me so long to read this, but the Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. That gentleman does such an excellent job of characterizing the journey, and one of the really important messages he shares, he says, look, all of these journeys are totally unique. I'm not going to pretend to be able to have the panacea to your problem, but what I can do is share my story and hopefully you can glean some insights from it. And that's I think very sage advice for any young entrepreneur or person getting into a startup.
Emerging growth is going eyes wide open that there's going to be tons of challenges. You're going to take one step forward and three steps back and then four forward and then two steps back like you're. It's just a constant push pull sort of thing. So going eyes wide open, knowing that and also knowing that it's going to be unique to that journey. There are going to be some lessons but you're going to be learning on the fly and you've got to be super comfortable with being out of your comfort zone in order to succeed.
Chris Wedding:
The part of it eyes being wide open. I've once heard that it's a blessing in a way that most entrepreneurs, at least first time entrepreneurs, are naive about the process otherwise they'd never would have started. Was certainly true for me. I think about my first startup, hooray angel funding, blah blah. I can picture where my co founder and I were in some cafe plotting the timeline of our world domination and we just could not have been more wrong on so many fronts.
James Larsen:
Yeah, yeah. Actually the CEO, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, he actually says that. He says had he known what he knows now, he never would have got into it.
Chris Wedding:
Exactly, exactly. How about the second one here? Tell us two or three habits that keep you healthy, sane and focused building this company.
James Larsen:
It's all about my morning routine. I'm very prescriptive with it and I'm not shy about it. So I start every morning with a meditation. Specifically I practice vipassana meditation which is a very specific style of meditation which is all about the acknowledgement that thoughts will come and go. So it's not about suppressing thought, it's about the acknowledgement of it and the allowance of it to happen without identifying with it. And the reason I call this out so specifically is that day to day, the deluge of issues, questions, challenges and stuff that I face, and so the swirl of thought that takes place day in and day out, it sets me on the right footing for the day so that I don't get so identified with it and I can look at everything quite objectively and without wearing it so hard on my shoulders.
Following that, I always do an exercise routine. So I, my mix is calisthenics and tennis and running. So it's about a third. A third? A third. I find that variety for me really works because it keeps me interested and engaged and motivated. I feel like a lot of people fall off of any exercise wagons because they get, they get bored or, or whatnot, and so that dynamism keeps me very engaged. And then the hope, the last thing is, is a bit of a quirky thing, but I don't mind sharing it is my morning drink which is half of a lemon and half of an apple, but it's the lemon, including all of the rind. And the reason this is important is that the only food to contain a particular enzyme which breaks down visceral fat.
And so combining that the apple cuts the bitterness of the rind of the lemon, I find that it's a very stimulating drink. And yeah, it's a, it's a great health kit.
Chris Wedding:
Nice. That's, that's the first time that's ever been recommended before on the podcast. 200 shows in. Excellent. The part on the vipassana, I heard someone say that it's like, look, we don't really control most of our thoughts. Right. It's like our heart beats, our lungs breathe and our brain thinks thoughts that we, if we're watching them, we're like, where did that come from? We, it's super obvious. It's work, it's family, it's friends, whatever. But other times, why am I combining those things together? I didn't choose that. You know, we are not our thoughts I hope, thankfully, we're not our thoughts. James, how about the last one? Give us a couple of maybe book recommendations, podcasts that entrepreneurs who are listening could find value in.
James Larsen:
So I mentioned already I have to strongly strongly recommend the Hard Thing About Hard Things, because while I think that Ben was really writing that for other CEOs, I really feel like anyone that's in embarking upon a startup or emerging growth type of journey, regardless of where you sit in the organization, will benefit from understanding his story and the various challenges that he faced in his companies. There's so many fantastic insights throughout that book. And so, and I think that I'm actually, I intend to recommend it to a lot of my employees because I feel like deepening that sense of empathy between different areas within the organization is, is always a good thing and I think this will be a good tool for it.
I'm going to recommend a second book which is, it's going to seem very off paced, but I'm going to do it anyways, which is the Bhagavad Gita. You know, as part of, you know, I already talked about meditation as part of sort of my more spiritual journey. I've become very interested in Eastern philosophies. And you know, the Bhagavad Gita is a quick plug on it. I mean, it's the form of the foundation of Gandhi's whole set of principles and his school of thought. And it is part of the Mahabharata, which is one of the world's most epic tales. And it's the eve of the battle of this epic fight that's between a family and it really speaks to sort of what is all this? What is the purpose of life? Because the one of the sons is about to go into battle.
He's reflecting like, I can't believe I'm about to go and have this battle with my family, and his charioteer is Krishna and it's the conversation between him and Krishna about sort of the meaning of life and what is all this. And there's just some fantastic insights for life that I think also apply to business, and so it all weaves together well.
Chris Wedding:
And if it's helped folks for thousands of years, including Gandhi, surely it offers folks some insights today still. Yeah. All right, James, we're at time here. Any closing thoughts, messages you want to leave others with, messages that weren't kind of encapsulated so far in our talk today?
James Larsen:
Yeah, thanks, Chris. So first of all, thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you. I guess the final thing I want to mention is just the importance of zinc. I didn't actually talk about the fundamental metal of our technology. And you know, in a world where energy transition is so important, you know, I really think that a diversity of materials is critical because we're heading down, we've been heading down a path where lithium ion is sort of the main technology. And you're talking about effectively a supply chain that one country who, by the way, doesn't play that nice on the global stage, predominantly controls mainly the processing element of it. And so, you know, zinc is, while it has amazing electrochemical properties, it also happens to be geopolitically benign.
It's very cheap and it also has a very high recycling capacity. So about 40% of the world's zinc consumption comes from the recycling markets. So, you know, interestingly, RIP has nothing to do with zinc. It has to do with metallizing energy. We could use whatever metal we want, but we use zinc for those reasons.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, very convincing. In fact, I was just giving a session to some U.S. Military leaders yesterday talking about why sustainable infrastructure makes sense for them. And this question of critical metals, minerals came up from a national security point of view. So I should have had this answer in my back pocket, James. Anyway, hey, look, great to connect. Great story, we're all.
rooting for your all's success.
James Larsen:
Thank you so much, Chris. This was a real pleasure.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, thanks for listening. And if you're not sick of hanging out with me just yet, then please join over 20,000 entrepreneurs, investors and innovators who get our 3 minute newsletter about changing the world through startups, finance, humor and wisdom. Or at least four attempts at the last two. You can subscribe on Substack or at our website EntrepreneursforImpact.com. You can also come check me out on LinkedIn where I share five or ten posts each week with commentary on climate tech startups, impact investing, better habits, and perhaps too many references to lessons from Buddhism that may apply to our work here tackling climate change. Okay, that's all y'all make it a great week because it's usually a choice. And P.S. If you're curious, that is not my kids favorite thing I say to them most mornings before going to school, but it's still true.
All right, take care.