The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
#136:
EV "Trucks as a Service" gets $422M — Matt LeDucq, CEO of Forum Mobility
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Matt LeDucq:
We build charging depots and those depots can charge anywhere from 50 to 200 trucks at a time. Those depots can be full of trucks 24/7, they're staffed, they're in secure lots, they have technicians on site and we also offer trucks. And so, the service that we provide is both charging and truck as a service. What we give people is a truck at a fixed price per month with maintenance, security and fuel that is competitive for the price of diesel.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
Welcome to the Entrepreneurs for Impact podcast. My name is Chris Wedding. As a former environmental private equity investor, four times founder, climate tech CEO, coach and professor, I launched this podcast to share the entrepreneurial journey, practical tips and hard-earned wisdom from CEOs and investors tackling climate change. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. This is the number one way that listeners can learn more about the climate CEOs and investors that I interview. All right, let's get started.
My guest today is Matt LeDucq, Co-founder and CEO of Forum Mobility. Forum Mobility is tackling greenhouse gas emissions at California's largest ports, as well as local air pollution causing asthma and cancer in neighborhoods near these ports. They provide zero emission trucks and electric charging for one monthly price. They also recently signed a 400-million-dollar joint venture with CBRE Investment Management and have raised over $22 million in venture capital to date. In addition, Matt is the former executive director at NextEra Energy Resources, VP at Yingli Green Energy Holdings, and VP at Suntech.
In this episode, we talked about how communities near ports suffer twice the risk of cancer and asthma. The billions of dollars to be invested in electrifying transportation within ports, also known as drayage. How policy drivers such as California's advanced clean fleets is influencing a massive vehicle turnover within the next 12 years. How Forum’s trucks as a service model works like a solar PPA, aka Power Purchase Agreement. Lessons he's bringing from working at giant multi hundred-billion-dollar energy companies to his fast-growing startup. How they're convincing early adopters to sign up as customers by providing benefits outside of their core product offering. Why investors love their business model and the power of de-risking revenue streams. The thrill of disorder and insanity within startups. How we grow at the edges of our comfort zones and a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy it and please give Matt and Forum a shout out on LinkedIn, Slack or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks.
03:18
All right, Matt LeDucq, Co-founder and CEO of Forum Mobility, welcome to the podcast.
Matt LeDucq:
Thanks, Chris. Happy to be here.
Chris Wedding:
I think it may surprise listeners to know that a company focused on drayage, which many don't know what the hell that even means, a company focused on that has raised over $29 million at the corporate level and announced just a wonderfully giant JV of $400 million to finance this rollout in late January. So, tell us, what in the world is this big opportunity that investors are so eager to explore and many can't pronounce, Matt?
Matt LeDucq:
Drayage, if you look out at the harbor and you see those ships coming in, the drayage that we are focused on, it's the movement of goods from ports to distribution centers or warehouses, and a lot of that's done on containers. And just to put in perspective of it, moving containers in and out of the ports in California, those trucks go about a billion miles a year and they emit more than three billion pounds of carbon.
Drayage is one of those little tiny parts of the supply chain that nobody knows about, but it impacts every single one of our lives. It's also really unique in that you have here in the state of California, 33,000 trucks to go in and out of ports, which means you have 33,000 trucks to go right past the same neighborhoods every single day. And so, that's why California has ordered drayage to become zero emission over the next 12 years, because those neighborhoods have double the risk of cancer. They have double the risk of asthma and it's some of the worst air.
05:11
When you look at the air maps, you just look at a port and you look directly next to that port and you'll see the docks and the asthma rates, unfortunately, corresponding really negatively to that. You have this massive fragmented industry and drayage combined with these neighborhoods that need the transition and so here in California, it is a mandated conversion. Every drayage truck must be zero emission in the state, the state that has over 40% of our imports and all those goods that move in and out of ports are going to have to be zero emission over the next 12 years. It really starts in earnest next year with thousands of trucks turning over as well.
So, it's a little thing that I candidly Chris, I hadn't even known what the hell drayage meant three years ago and we started this company just over two years ago and now I'm well briefed on drayage these days.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. That's incredible. So many places to go with that. So, 12 years, that's for all new drayage vehicles or all vehicles to be electric?
Matt LeDucq:
So, California passed something called Advanced Clean Fleets and ACF is the acronym that it's known by here in California, but I think it's relevant for everybody, no matter what state you listen to. Over the next several years, there will be many more states that adopt ACF or something of the likes. And ACF has done something where it mandates a whole bunch of fleets, not just drayage, but trucking as a whole.
The box trucks, fleets over 50 trucks, and all of them have different compliance schedules. Drayage is one where if your truck starting next year is a 2009 model engine or older, it must be removed from the registry and trucks may only be replaced by a zero-emission truck. And so, what the drayage registry does in California is it manually attrits trucks off the registry by both their model engine year, as well as the mileage on the truck. So, additionally, if a truck has over 800,000 miles, it just must come off the registry at that point. And any new entries into the drayage registry has to be zero emissions starting in 2024. So, you'll have this mandatory turnover of the drayage fleet on a year-to-year basis.
Chris Wedding:
Right, so I think for listeners who understand what's going on here, the fun term would be a regulatory inflection point. That I'm sure you all were aware in some form was coming which maybe led you all to say, “Yeah, of all the options we could pick to start a new company that is for-profit and tackling climate change, this is the one,” yeah?
07:48
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah. I mean, I spent a long time at a company called NextEra and I think one of the things that NextEra is the largest owner of wind and solar in the world. One of the things that you learn in there when you're in the energy business is that you follow the policy and to your point, exactly, Chris, like this, it means a lot of things that are sustainable to me. And when I say sustainable, I mean, like economically sustainable as well as environmentally.
Now you have a mandate, like I said, a policy inflection point, this has to happen and it cannot happen without services like Forum Mobility and it cannot happen without massive pools of third-party capital. I'll put in perspective, like how much capital we're talking about in California. When you're talking about drayage in the 33,000 trucks, we’re talking roughly $10 billion of real estate are going to have to be taken up. About $10 billion worth of trucks are going to have to be purchased for just drayage. And somewhere north of $5 billion of charging infrastructure just for drayage and just in the state of California is going to need to be implemented over the next 12 years to meet this mandate.
I did a little fact finding to figure out what correlates to that and it just so happens that the Manhattan Project in today's adjusted dollars was about a 26-billion-dollar project when it was kicked off or when it was completed. So, in California, it's truly a generational opportunity from an infrastructure standpoint and it's a massive policy regulatory inflection point. It's just going to kick off in a generational amount of infrastructure, capital, new businesses like ours. It's going to be a pretty wild next decade or two.
Chris Wedding:
Well, super exciting and a fun back of the envelope analogy to the scale of the Manhattan Project as well. You referenced earlier that this is also a social equity, health equity issue. I think the numbers you referenced were two times the cancer rate in the neighborhoods where these vehicles go in and out every day. Is that what I heard? What is the major cause? What is the major maybe pollutant from these vehicles, if we know, leading to the increased cancer rate? Just maybe say more about the human side of this.
10:04
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, this is the place where drayage gets uniquely interesting and it gets uniquely complicated when you take environmental justice and economic justice. They're not perfectly aligned in this case around drayage. From an environmental justice standpoint, you're correct. Wilmington, California, the community adjacent to the port of Long Beach, has a 98% higher cancer rate than the broader LA basin. West Oakland has double the asthma rates as the greater Bay area. And so, from an environmental justice standpoint, I have no bones about saying that those communities are entitled in the year 2023 to a better quality of life than they have.
A flip side of this is when you look at those 33,000 trucks that I mentioned before in drayage, 33,000 trucks, 80% of the drayage fleet in the state of California. By the way, whether you're in Savannah, you're in Houston, you're in Jacksonville, you're in Seattle, Tacoma, it's pretty much like this everywhere. That somewhere between three out of four and four out of five drayage trucks are an independent operator or a very small fleet of two or three trucks.
Chris Wedding:
Wow.
Matt LeDucq:
And so, what has normally and typically happened over the decades is that the drayage truck drivers, those are typically second or third hand trucks. And so, what a lot of that drayage fleet looks like is men and women who saved up and they bought a used diesel truck and now they make a living moving containers out of the port of Oakland and run them to the Central Valley, or out of the port of Long Beach and move them to the Inland Empire or out of Seattle and move them to Kent. This is a good career. This is a good job. People build businesses, but think about now what's being asked of that community, that fragmented community.
These are not well-capitalized fleets and when you look at the drayage success stories, and there are some really good ones, you'll see some of the big names like NFI and TTSI, Schneider. If anybody googles those names and the word drayage, they'll see announcements of really large charging projects that are happening and those are great, but those are the minority. Those are the very small, large fleets of the drayage world.
Most of that drayage world is mom and pop shops moving our containers in and out of the ports. And that's where the economic justice and the environmental justice don't exactly line up because who do you think has the oldest and dirtiest trucks? It tends to be the smallest businesses and now the smallest businesses are looking down the barrel at a $400,000 truck and having to be forced to figure out how to get those incentives, figure out what a low carbon fuel standard current it is and how to monetize a derivative and how to attract a loan loss reserve from the state of California so they can get a lease.
12:55
It's a really hard process and so I think that third party services like Forum Mobility and other folks like ours are going to be a way that we can make equity happen, both environmentally and economically for the small fleet. So, the last couple of years have been just fascinating as I just peel back the layers of policy, equipment, land, communities, pollution, ports. It's a really complicated problem to fix, but it's something that's got to get fixed by mandate.
Chris Wedding:
I think the audience may be intuiting what your business model is based on the problems that you've identified, but let's lay it out. What is the product or service that Forum Mobility is offering to address these various problems that align here with drayage?
Matt LeDucq:
We build charging depots and those depots can charge anywhere from 50 to 200 trucks at a time. Those depots can be full of trucks 24/7. They're staffed. They're in secure lots. They have technicians on site and we also offer trucks. And so, the service that we provide is both charging and truck as a service, but at the end of the day, what we give people is a truck at a fixed price per month with maintenance, security and fuel that is competitive for the price of diesel.
There's going to need to be a lot of charging. There's going to need to be over two and a half gigawatts of charging, which again, a frame of reference is the largest nuclear power plant in California is about two gigawatts. And so, we're going to need a lot of depots to be built, many, many, many hundreds of depots in the state of California, but that's what we do at Forum Mobility.
Chris Wedding:
Now when you first launched or as you first conceived of the business, were you focused on one of those versus the other? And at some point, did you say, “Hey, look, to be successful, we've got to have both because I'm tired of it talking about chicken and egg in the EV space,”?
14:51
Matt LeDucq:
I'm actually proud to say that our business model has not changed one iota from the very moment we hatched the business. It was always to build large COs. It was always to finance trucks. It was always to provide a fixed price service to heavy duty trucking operators. The only thing we ultimately honed in on is drayage. It was always going to be something. It was going to be some sort of vehicle class that we wanted to deliver at a fixed price per month in a third-party facility using third party capital, but it was drayage that came last. But the business plan has been the business plan since we hatched the idea.
Chris Wedding:
Now you referenced earlier that you come from the renewable space, NextEra and otherwise. Maybe talk about your experience there and how it led you to this particular business model that eventually, of course, resulted in drayage.
Matt LeDucq:
I'll just say, I think we've all worked for companies where the more you peel back the onion, perhaps the more confused you get about the company and maybe you see things you don't like. NextEra is the opposite of that. The more you peel back the onion at NextEra, it is the best run company I've ever been around in my life. And the way NextEra goes about its business, it is not an accident that that company is successful.
Controlling real estate, understanding policy, optimizing capital resources, and being a phenomenal operator of just running good assets and being meticulous about building a good asset, commissioning a good asset, being a good asset manager, being a good developer. If you spend any time at NextEra, which I was fortunate to do, there isn't another way to do it besides do it well there.
Then prior to that, I come from a construction and engineering background where we’re building a renewable project and building large facilities in the 13 years or so before that. And so, for me, just building things and building them well is something I'd like Forum Mobility to be known as, as the company that does it right, does it well. We have the right service, we have a good service, we have good customer retention, and we run really good assets and we offer a really good value proposition.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, for sure. We can't just expect that because something has climate benefits, you can sacrifice on anything else a business has to have, things like operational excellence and all the rest. It also seems to me as well that in the early days of solar, the pitch was, “Hey, look, if you're a homeowner, spend 80,000 bucks today and guess what? Your power is mostly covered for the next 25 years.” But then as you know, that model evolved to, how about a PPA, a Power Purchase Agreement or a lease? Let's turn a CapEx into an OpEx, which in many ways just really unlocked residential and commercial industrial.
17:56
I mean, for that matter, the projects built by independent power producers selling power to utilities, but that seems extra relevant here where you're going to these mom and pops that don't have half a million dollars sitting around to purchase a new electric drayage vehicle. But to say to them, “Hey, look, don't be scared by the massive regulatory change. We got you covered.” Truck-as-a-Service, T-A-A-S and I think I heard you say that the, let's call it monthly cost, is at or below what it fully loaded costs to run a diesel vehicle. Is that right?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, and that's what we strive to on all of our facilities for sure and even more so than generation, Chris. I talk to staff here all the time and we talk about it and we bang the drum on this pretty hard is that, if your solar on the roof isn't working, it's a bummer. If your truck doesn't run, you're not making a living at that and that our need to have a phenomenally run operation is paramount for the company.
I also appreciate your PPA reference before because that is how I've explained our business numerous times to both investors, regulators, customers, is that, exactly your point. 15 years ago, a solar salesman showed up at your house and they said, “It's going to be $20,000 and this is how you're going to get your money back.” But then, the PPA came along, they said, “You're paying 15 cents, how does 12 sound?”
Chris Wedding:
Pretty damn good.
Matt LeDucq:
That's a much easier and digestible value proposition than the former. And so, yes, that's exactly what we're striving to deliver at Forum Mobility as well.
Chris Wedding:
So, you gave the example of a drayage truck driver and look, if the truck doesn't work, they're not making any money. Pretty important that it works. How do you talk to them about the level of tech maturity, tech risk, if you will, in these electric versions of something they've already known for decades, probably? How do they get comfortable with things, with the unknown I guess is the question?
20:11
Matt LeDucq:
Early adopters are admirable in every way. I think that everybody knows that the gen one of anything is going to be a fun ride and I think luckily, we're into gen twos and threes in these trucks now. We've seen the gen ones and we're on the gen twos. What we encourage them to do is go talk to our customers. I mean, we're running multiple OEMs on multiple chargers in and out of the port at Long Beach today. Those drivers are driving those trucks, that operations team in Long Beach, that's a company called Hight Logistics and they're an incredible company and they are that admirable early adopter. We encourage them to talk to them, not only talk to the management team at Hight, but talk to the drivers because I think those drivers, they were all really skeptical.
What I found within the trucking community is that, I don't think anybody is resistant to this. In some ways it's exciting, but it's your point exactly, that if this doesn't work, I'm really in a bad spot here. I think when they go talk to the folks at Hight they would get the full story that these trucks are truly delightful to drive and that they work well. That you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who drives an electric classic truck who would want to go back to a diesel once they get behind the wheel, but I think that first leap, it’s no BS. It's a real leap because like you said, trucking with thin margins, if your wheels aren't moving, you're not making money. And so, to leave the combustion truck behind for new technology is appropriately a little scary.
Chris Wedding:
So, to get those early adopters to say yes, was there any sweetener? Was there any insurance, guarantees, backstops? If it existed, anything you want to share? I know that many listeners are commercializing the first of a kind of something and they know that getting the first yes, the first revenue, the first POs, purchase orders is really hard. Any insights that have worked that you want to share there?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, I think that's one thing that we're really committed to as Forum Mobility and I'd like to think it's unique is that we spend a lot of time on what's called the cargo owners, the beneficial cargo owners and those cargo owners are your Ashley Furniture, IKEA, Walmart, Target, Amazon, et cetera. Those are the people who have the stuff inside of those containers, REI, North Face. There's a lot of progressive brands out there who care deeply about their scope three emissions. And so, as part of our business and part of the service we provide our customers, we have a team and they are dedicated to going out there and connecting cargo owners with these early adopters.
23:05
It's one of the things that, I think a really tangible thing that we can bring to the table a lot more than, “Here's a shiny brochure, this is a brand new Peterbilt, this is a Volvo,” is, “I've also got some folks here that want to talk to you about doing some work, and they have a preference towards zero emission.” That for me is one of the best sales tools I can bring to the table is, if Chris Wedding Trucking wants to get into a zero-emission truck, I say, “I've got some work lined up for you,” or, “I'm working on lining up some work for you.” I think that's a really important service that we need to provide, especially at the beginning of this.
Chris Wedding:
So just to make sure I understood that properly, who knows, maybe in the background I'm hatching Chris Wedding Trucking coming to Oakland near you. When you say bring business, do you mean literally you would try to find other containers for them to carry, if you will? And then, “Oh, by the way, as you bring in more revenue, hey, look, can I also help you to meet these regulatory requirements?”?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah. Again, imagine you're a trucker and you're in a zero-emission truck, I mean, the goal for Forum is that we have cargo owners that are looking to move those containers and zero emission trucks. That we are going to connect their logistics teams that are out there working with the cargo brokers and 3PLs and whoever they typically use to get containers out of the port to distribution, and we're telling those folks to come to our customers.
And so, if corporate X is moving widgets out of the Port of Long Beach and they're moving two containers a day in and out of the port, I want them to talk to Rudy at Hight Logistics. We can point and say, “He's got trucks going, he's a small fleet, he's got small operators, he's got employee drivers, he's doing it and I think he can do it at a rate that's really, really competitive.” And we've done that, we've successfully paired customers with cargo owners, which again, I think it's just any little step we can make.
25:11
Make it cost effective. Make some of the risk out by making sure that we have technicians on site. Make it a secure lot. Get a really good software interface so everybody can see where their truck is and the state of charge, and then line them up with work. I mean, there's just a lot of little things that we got to do to make sure that all these carriers who are mandated to convert feel like it's an opportunity as well.
Chris Wedding:
It’s interesting that part of what you're describing is almost a broker model, two sides of a marketplace that need each other. Obviously, you're not a broker, but it's just interesting to hear you talk about stacking these different ways you create value for your ultimate customer to get them to a yes. I mean, I can imagine you do charge for some of those provisions of value, let's say, and you don't charge for others because you know what your core product is. Is that right?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, I mean, as a small business, in a startup, we just want to have the customer. We obviously would never charge our customer for an introduction to a cargo owner.
Chris Wedding:
Of course, yeah.
Matt LeDucq:
Our only desire there is to just get them more comfortable with making a switch and get them more comfortable with working with Forum Mobility. But the core product we offer, it is a secure lot with staff. There's a charger that is always dedicated for you. If you need to charge in the middle of the day, there's a charger waiting for you. You never have to wait in line. It's always clean. It's always secure. It's always reliable. It's a very utilitarian one price. One monthly fee, you make the transition and I hope you have a lot more money in your pocket at the end of the year for having done it than you did at the beginning.
Chris Wedding:
So, on the finance side of things, the $400 million JV, certainly a big number, will be bigger, I presume, given the Manhattan projects size requirements you're talking about, again, just for the state of California. What else can you say about what motivated those I guess you would say asset financiers to either get comfortable with tech or business model? Or maybe just to throw out a million more questions into one, I think for most listeners, it's surprising that your fixed fee all in could be at or below diesel. So, is that more of a CapEx discussion, more of an OpEx reason, more of a cost of capital reason to get that to be competitive?
27:45
Matt LeDucq:
One, infrastructure and private equity love contracted revenue and obviously, the revenues that we have are contracted and we control those assets. I think a lot of folks know that there are a lot of ESG-minded LPs out there and there are a lot of funds that they have a mandate or they have a strong preference to invest in environmentally conscious businesses like Forum Mobility. And so, I think that the business itself is really well suited for that type of capital.
A lot of people talk about the new technology, but nothing we're doing is actually particularly technologically revolutionary as a company and very intentionally. Are the trucks that we own Parker trucks and BYD trucks and Volvo trucks and the chargers were operating our name brand financeable and chargers really just inverters in reverse. These are assets that have been financed in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
And so, what we've put together is I think it's an innovative business model, but it's really reliable technology that can attract the kind of capital that we could raise from a CBRE, IM and Homecoming Capital because obviously venture money is one type of money. Venture money is prepared to go to zero if it has to. Infrastructure money is not. That infrastructure money needs its downside protection and our model does it, contracted revenues.
And so, the way we've set up the JV and concert with Forum Mobility at a corporate level, we can really bring that kind of infrastructure like profile cashflow to a relatively new business using, like I said, there's nothing revolutionary about our technology on purpose. We're putting trucks on the road using CATL batteries with name brand companies. This is pretty reliable stuff that's been financed many, many times over.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I think you're saying several important things here. One would be, for those listeners that have a new company, there's some innovation, whether it's the tech or the business model, to consider parallel financing. Corporate venture capital, let's say, and then separately infrastructure slash project financing, different kinds of cost of capital.
Also, seeking out contracted revenue that certainly increases the amount of capital you can raise, the cost of capital you can raise and really, maybe back to the first point, business model innovation can be as catalytic as technological innovation. You-all’s intentional choice to not have tech risk, but to do something from a business model point of view that has certainly not been done on any scale with drayage, yeah?
[00:30:46
Matt LeDucq:
That's right and we need the technological innovation. We need new charging technologies, and we need really cool software, and all that's going to be an important part of that ecosystem. We also really need to be able to attract lots of cheap capital.
Chris Wedding:
Yep, for sure.
Matt LeDucq:
So that, again, there is a bounty of options available and those options are economic to the people making that transition. So, we've elected to go with the bountiful, low risk, lots of money raised option. But I don't want to take anything away from the folks that are out there taking true bleeding edge technology challenges on.
Chris Wedding:
Of course. Yeah, it takes both. It takes both.
Hey, it's Chris. Just a brief message from our sponsors and we'll get back to the show. Just kidding, we don't take sponsors. On the other hand, I do have the privilege of leading the only executive peer group community for growth stage, CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. With monthly group meetings, annual retreats, and one-on-one executive coaching calls, our members help each other boost revenue, impact, capital raised, clarity, confidence, work-life balance, and team effectiveness. Today's 30 plus members represent over $8 billion in market cap for assets under management for climate solutions. If you're interested, go to entrepreneursforimpact.com and join the waiting list today. All right, back to the show.
All right, let's switch as we do from the company to the person building the company. So, Matt, maybe share something that you strongly believe in, which has influenced perhaps how you all decided to create the company or maybe the culture you're building at Forum Mobility.
Matt LeDucq:
I believe that the beginning of these transitions, there is nothing more exciting than being at the front end of something. When I got into solar early days, just the thrill of the disorganization and fragmented and the insanity of the market, there's nothing quite like it. And it took me a long time personally to realize I can't do the steady state business, I couldn't be a utility scale developer for too long. I have to be doing something like this and to be able to do something where you can have a really big impact, both financially and environmentally is something that I care about deeply too.
33:22
I mean, I think that we are a mission-driven company, but we are equal parts missioned and equal parts capitalist at Forum Mobility. We want to solve a problem. We want to solve a worthy problem. I think we've identified that worthy problem to solve, but we want to also do it in a way that is incredibly economically sustainable as well for our shareholders, for ourselves, for our customers. And so, building on that as a business, we care about the mission. We talk about the mission.
I deeply care about the mission. I also want to deploy billions and billions of dollars and build a massive business that's really valuable and that’s how we talk about the business unapologetically too. Because I think that that is what's going to have the biggest impact is I think people who are thinking and putting themselves in the shoes of our drivers and we talk about that all the time, and truly understanding the issues at hand for the drayage fleet. We also need to put in billions of dollars of equipment and get a good rate of return on that.
Chris Wedding:
Well, I think you have a choir of sorts who hear you say that and say, “Amen, totally agree.” It makes me think about when I was in private equity many years ago, we were considering launching a separate environmental hedge fund. And so, that required us private equity folks to learn about the hedge fund space a little more. I recall being on the bus commuting to work, and I was reading this book, I think it's called More Money Than God, about the hedge fund space.
I recall my, let's call it delightfully liberal friends on the bus thinking, “Man, what kind of a sellout are you? All about the money.” And I was like, “Hold on a second. You got to understand how to move lots of money in the right directions to deliver what those investors require, but to do lots of good at the same time.” Anyway, yes to all this.
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah. Like solar energy is now in many, many markets, the cheapest form of generation.
35:31
Chris Wedding:
Oh yeah.
Matt LeDucq:
And yeah, there was a lot of capital cost improvements, sure. It also attracts some of the cheapest and most efficient capital on the planet. It's reliable. It's stable. It doesn't move around. The amount of money that goes into solar is why solar is so cheap now.
Chris Wedding:
For sure.
Matt LeDucq:
And I think that people have to wrap their heads around that as well. When they think about truly decarbonizing as a planet, we need to make this so we can attract trillions of dollars of cheap, cheap money, because that's going to turn into cheap megawatt hours and cheap miles driven and everything, we need to make the transition economic and equitable.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Again, just to stress, we get to cheap cost of capital by reducing risks. Let's switch here. So, tell us some advice you might give your younger self, Matt. Could be personal, could be business, you pick.
Matt LeDucq:
I resisted actually the finance side. I came in as a tradesman. My first job in renewable business 20 years ago, I was an installer in Berkeley. I think I brushed off the things that made me feel uncomfortable for a long time. So, you come from a private equity background, that stuff made me feel very uncomfortable. When people were talking about levered and unlevered returns and NPV, I just pushed that off as, that's the folks upstairs, I work downstairs, I'm in the field.
I think that I would have told myself that to throw myself into a little bit more discomfort. I'm happy, and I think my background in the trades has served me well as a builder in just thinking about these assets. But it took me a long time to cross that threshold and look at a financial model and realize like, “Oh my God, this is like eighth grade math. It's just a lot of it in one place.”
Chris Wedding:
Don't tell anybody.
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, and so I think that I probably would have told myself to have a little more confidence in myself to take on the things that were -- It's always one of those things like you think something's impossible until you do it and you’re like, “It's not that bad.” And so, I think taking some leaps of faith in myself would have been a good thing.
37:53
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. Someone smart who I don't remember who this was, said something like, our growth occurs basically at the edges of our comfort zone, let's say. So, I think what you're saying certainly supports that approach. How about recommendations, Matt, books, podcasts, tools, quotes, et cetera, you think that listeners may find value in?
Matt LeDucq:
There's a book that I read a long time ago. I would guess a good percentage of people have already read it. It's the book The Alchemist. That book has been a pretty big part of my life and I think it's one of those books that a lot of people get a lot of different things about. Everybody has that little bug in them that tells them which way to go at a fork. It tells them when to leave a job, a relationship, a situation, a place where you don't feel safe, a place where you know you're not going to excel. That book talks a lot about, your happiness is dictated by whether or not you listen to that little voice or not.
I’m pretty proud of Forum Mobility because there's partners in the business and my partners, Topher, Tom and Bobby are incredible. But this little bug told me there's a compulsion to start this and I know that if I hadn't done it, that I would have regretted it forever. In The Alchemist, it's one of those things that pops into my head a couple of times a week, is just trust your gut, just follow that voice. You know the right way to go and just get in there and do it.
So, I've always found that to be true. I mean, I think that, and a lot of my buddies and my wife, and I try to teach my kids that you know a good situation. You know a friendship that's filling your cup versus one that's emptying your cup. Listen to yourself. You're right. You just got to believe it.
Chris Wedding:
It’s so funny that you mention the book, The Alchemist. Our youngest child who's 11, partly through school, partly out of school, she loves to read. She'll read 50, 60 books a year, but one of those she was maybe required to read was The Alchemist. We have two copies in the house because we like it. We were so excited like, “Well, how was it? What did you think?” And I think her response was, “Garbage.” I think it takes a certain level of maturity to realize what that voice is saying or not.
40:27
I think another nuance is, if the voice, it's talking about fear of what you're currently doing, as in like run away, maybe that's the voice we could ignore. But if it's the fear of doing something else, which maybe is a calling or better for you and you're letting that fear get in the way, that's the fear perhaps, not to be fearless, the fear exists, but to go through it, let's say. Because we all have voices, right?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Some of the voices would say, “Shut the hell up, get out the door.” Others, it is the voice you're talking about, yeah?
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah. In fact, I think it’s hard to talk about because it's the difference between being seeing through and knowing what to cut bait, and there's nobody that can answer that but you. I mean, I think everybody's stayed at a job or stayed with a girlfriend or a boyfriend for longer than they should have. They probably in hindsight wish they would have cut bait and then there's also things that, “Boy, am I happy I saw that through,” and I think that's what The Alchemist proved to me. It’s like you know in your gut when you need to see something through. You know when you got to hang on and not cut bait. And so, yeah, it's funny, but your daughter, probably she lives by her gut every day anyway, so she doesn't have all this baggage that we get and put it in our brains over decades.
Chris Wedding:
It could be.
Matt LeDucq:
Yeah, she’s just in the moment.
Chris Wedding:
Present moment, baby, present moment. Yeah, despite decades of meditation practice, it's like, oh, just be a kid, right? They don’t worry about the past or future too much. Well, listen, Matt, we're out of time for I'm sure what is a meeting in two minutes for you, the next one back-to-back. Listen, we are all rooting for the success of Forum Mobility and excited to watch you-all’s progress.
Matt LeDucq:
Thank you, Chris. I appreciate you having me on. Like I said at the beginning, man, I appreciate you shining a light on Forum Mobility. We're really proud of what we're doing and anytime somebody puts this up like you have, it really helps the business. So, thank you.
42:35
Chris Wedding:
Hear, hear.
Thanks for listening and if you want more intel on climate tech, better habits and deep work, then join the thousands of others who have subscribed to our Substack newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com or drop me a note on LinkedIn. All right. That's all, y'all. Take care.
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