Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) Podcast: Transcripts
#218:
Sean Kelly, CEO of Amperon – $35M for Machine Learning in Energy Demand and Price Forecasting. 20 Years in Energy. Boxing for Sanity. Long-term Relationship Building.
Podcast Introduction
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Sean Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Amperon. And yes, this is what it sounds like when a podcast host has four members of his family down with a cold. Amperon is a Houston-based technology company specializing in AI-powered electricity forecasting and analytics solutions. Founded in 2018, Amperon provides high-precision demand, renewable generation, and price forecasts to enhance grid reliability, manage financial risks, and support decarbonization efforts. Their platform serves a diverse clientele including utilities, financial traders, and independent power producers by leveraging advanced AI models and real-time analytics to navigate the complexities of modern energy markets. In October of 2023, they raised $20 million in Series B funding led by our friends at Energize Capital, underscoring their commitment to innovation in the energy sector.
For almost 20 years, Sean has been at the forefront of the energy trading industry working for Tenaska, Lehman, EDF, and E.ON. While at EDF, he led the transition of two nuclear plants into the NISO market, then led the build-out of E.ON's North American trading desk. Next, he co-founded Bridge Power Consulting and sold it to Albireo Energy in 2019. Long pause, unfortunate. In this podcast, you'll learn these takeaways and much more: how to utilize AI and machine learning for accurate energy demand and price forecasting; the significance of automatic weighting and analyzing diverse weather data from energy
How founders should not sell themselves short or sacrifice on their long-term thesis when working with investors; why building strong, long-term, non-transactional relationships with investors and early adopter customer prospects is crucial for company growth; why he finds value in books like The Dao of Bill Murray and The Devil in the White City; and finally, how boxing—yes, boxing—keeps him sane and healthy on this wild founder journey. Please give Sean and Amperon a shout-out on all the socials. Consider today an act of generosity, right? Bringing more folks to hear the important work they are doing. Thanks so much.
Alright, 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 guests 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 a 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:
Hey, Sean Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Amperon. Welcome to the podcast.
Sean Kelly:
Thanks so much for having me, Chris.
Chris Wedding:
So we're just joking or reliving perhaps—you’re off-site with a bunch of CEOs south of the border—and so I have high expectations for the insights you're bringing. You totally raised the bar for the podcast, just so you know.
Sean Kelly:
All right, all right, I'll do my best here.
Chris Wedding:
Let's hop in as two country boys on a podcast about climate tech. What is Amperon exactly?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, Amperon combines energy data and AI to deliver the most accurate demand, renewable generation, and price forecast. And that's now in all of Europe, the United States, Canada, and also Australia. So we cover 19 different countries to date, and we help power and utility companies make smarter decisions, improve grid reliability, and drive the energy transition forward.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so a lot of fun places to go with that. You said the two most important letters in the English dictionary right now are the alphabet, A and I. So what does AI mean? I'm pretty sure you guys were doing it before it was cool. So what do they mean practically for Amperon?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, so practically, we deal less on the large language model side of things. Where we're really using it is just in our forecast. AI also being machine learning, and machine learning—something that we've done since we ran our first forecast in April 2018 after getting our pre-seed round in. And for that, it looks at a couple of different things. One, how we choose weather points. We don't go in and choose— I mean 20 plus different weather variables across five different weather vendors and across 40,000 weather points by hand. And so this is where you do have to use AI and machine learning for that. And then last, we published a really thoughtful blog about a month or so ago that talks about how we ensembled the different forecasts. And so because of the energy transition, no one forecast is always correct.
And so what you're seeing behind the scenes is very simple, like linear regression, a lot of gradient boosted trees, and then some of the latest and greatest deep learning, and then ensembling those together. The ensemble is automatically weighted. So this isn't us typing 24% of you and 36% of you; it's automatically weighted just so that we can always give the best overall forecast.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so what does it mean to automatically weight— I suppose—those different datasets or variables? What does that weighting describe?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, you hire a really talented team of PhD data scientists. And secondly, it really just understands who the client is. So if you're looking at a large commercial and industrial load, there's still a model that deals with residential because we have millions of residential meters on there. But that's not going to get included in the weighting. Vice versa, if there's— I mean solar, wind, etc.— we're continually looking at those different methodologies, and then it's going to find its best fit.
And outside of that, we wrote a lot more about it just in the paper in terms of how we do that because there's different— we actually run an ensemble of all the different weather models as well.
And so it'll say that we like this weather model the most, and then this one comes in second. And again, this is done programmatically as opposed to us just typing in, like, 25, 25, 25, 25; sure.
Chris Wedding:
Do you recall the title of that blog or paper you're referencing?
Sean Kelly:
I can make sure to get that to you.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, we can add it to the show notes for fun bedtime reading for our listeners. Let's go back a second. There was a— clearly, there was a gap that you decided needed to be filled in 2018. I guess, what was that gap, and what does that gap look like today?
Sean Kelly:
I suppose, yeah, I mean, going back to your comment earlier about being like country boys, I grew up in Houston, and Houston is the energy capital of the world. But technologically—the data science, data engineering—we haven't really seen as much talent here as opposed to, I mean, the typical Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, etc. And so the thesis was I was living in New York, and New York didn't have, especially in 2018, the domain expertise that we do in energy here in Houston. But Houston didn't have the technical expertise. And this was before remote work. So we actually kind of wanted to find the arbitrage there earlier before everyone went fully remote in 2020 with COVID. And that's what we were able to do. So the joke at the beginning that—
Our co-founder, my co-founder, said is "I'll build it if you can sell it." And that's what's been unique about us—high-end, like, we recruit against the big tech companies. It wasn't really popular in 2018, and now I mean, you know from being in this space, people are paying attention to it for the first time. And in 2018, I really didn't feel that was the case.
Chris Wedding:
Right. That's an interesting quote. "I'll build it, if you sell it." It sounds like a great framing for two co-founders.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, it worked out. It worked out quite well, and it's still working out. I'm still not even close to done.
Chris Wedding:
That's amazing. I know from also looking at maybe it was a year-end blog, maybe or website—maybe something different—you know, Google or other big tech companies, or smaller providers, will come out with different weather forecasting tools. And I think it may be easy for less expert folks to say, "Oh, well, that looks like competition for Amperon." And I believe you have a different take on what all these new announcements mean for you guys, right?
Sean Kelly:
I mean, it's good for business because we use five weather models right now. We're incorporating a sixth, and we're fully up and ready to use the Google one whenever it's fully released and productionized. And I mean, you're looking at, again, just going back to the whole point of Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and all of the above paying attention to energy—then, like, the rest of the world is, right? I feel very confident saying that they'll be larger, with a larger market cap than Amperon everywhere, and they're really paying attention to it. Microsoft's been a great partner to us at Amperon, doing some really big things with them when it comes to just helping forecast for utilities, both in North America and EMEA in general.
And so, having the big hyperscalers throwing money at it—I mean, that's what's really gotten this data center move going. I mean, this is where a lot of the AI movement came from—just through these hyperscalers. And now we all get to reap the benefit of it. So yeah, when there's a new model—especially on the weather side—we're definitely very excited about it. And we're still, I mean, only at 100 people, so we can be fast and nimble enough to move with it. As opposed to smaller companies that may not have enough people to have the bandwidth to do it, and larger companies that may have more process in place that you can't be as nimble. So I kind of feel that we're here in the sweet spot.
Chris Wedding:
That's a good way to put it. Yeah. I think searching for other words for large companies beyond process—it's just the friction, the inertia of heading in a certain direction. Harder, harder to move. Talk to us about the pain of being wrong. Not so much you guys, but maybe—I'm getting ahead of the better question—describe your customer types, maybe most prevalent and less common. And then, if they don't have your solution, how bad is the pain? And what does that pain look like?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I mean, so our customer types are wholesale energy traders, which is my background—what I did for 11 years. Next is IPP, so independent power producers. This could be everything from a traditional thermal asset to wind and solar. I mean, there's some biomass in there, just all across the board. Anything that counts as generation—we want batteries in here as well, as they are obviously generating despite also being demand. And so those are two of the important ones. And we've expanded to utilities. There's a lot of different ways we can touch utilities. Sometimes it's on the more traditional portfolio meter management, which is where we actually started the company—with retail energy providers.
We did something a little unique—we ignored utilities for the first five years, just because we knew that, I mean, utilities shouldn't trust a brand-new, lightly funded startup. In my opinion, of me, what, four years old, with $2.76 million, I do not want my infrastructure fully supported by a startup that you don't know if it's going to be there tomorrow. And so because of that, they do have a lot of innovation teams who will go to, like, a $50,000 pilot, give you a chance. It's great to see. But for us, we wanted to build the Amperon product the way we wanted it to be built. And so we actually avoided utilities. Now utilities make up a large portion of our revenue— Just because we're able to sit back and say, "This is the Amperon peg," and "Is there an Amperon hole?" as opposed to having to mold to that utility. And so that's become a larger piece of the Amperon puzzle. And then, also, public power looks a lot like—looks a lot like utilities in terms of—they're not trying to make money like a trader; they're trying to mitigate risk. And so, this is municipalities and cooperatives in the United States. There are 3,300 of them, so they make good clients. We've got a couple hundred on the platform in some way, shape, or form. And so those are the different customer segments that we have in terms of how they use us, and how them being wrong—especially on how much wind is going to blow or how much solar is going to shine.
And then, especially again where we started off on the demand forecasting side—that's where you look at these big events that we have. We have a 1 in 100 event every handful of months these days. I mean, the last two MLK weekends, we had, like, a big significant event across the entire East Coast that is roughly supposed to be the coldest day every year. So, like, they might keep— we might keep seeing that. We had Winter Storm Elliott, which turned off a lot of people's power across the East Coast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which definitely gets you on the naughty list as a utility. And then, in Houston—or Texas, where I'm based—we had Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. Made for a very uncomfortable Valentine's Day. So I guess we're learning that climate change does appreciate holidays. And then, this is where Amperon’s called it—I mean, we've called all of those events anywhere between, like, 7 and 12 days prior. And so that lets those clients know, especially the load-serving entities, "Hey, by the way, I need to go buy enough electricity to cover my demand," or "Hey, I sold so-and-so this amount of wind, and it's probably not going to show up." And that's where our forecast— which traditionally goes out 360 hours or 15 days—has been extremely important. Winter Storm Uri, for instance, we called it on February 3rd, and the power went out at 2 a.m. on February 15th. So we had a lot of our clients able to go buy power at $60, $150, etc., when it went to $9,000.
So, still a catastrophic event, just with ancillaries, but they were able to mitigate a lot of that risk just by using the Amperon platform.
Chris Wedding:
So, is it the case that your ROI for customers is kind of like—Amperon’s pretty cool, pretty cool, pretty cool—holy cow, they say? Does a GABA mudding? You know, pretty nice, pretty nice, pretty nice? Is it kind of these episodes that make up, whatever, 80% of the ROI for customers?
Sean Kelly:
It absolutely is. I mean, it's definitely going to save you in your day-to-day. But when you realize that you just paid off, like, 10 years of our platform cost, and we're thinking, "Do we charge enough here?" And, like, in one event, then, yeah, it's extremely important. So, that is definitely because then it's kind of too late. It's hard to come in and say, "Hey, hey, we know it's coming." Like, we'd love to. A lot of times, the trades are already over. So yeah, we've got well over 100 clients, and they definitely fully appreciate what we do for them on those days. We've been doing a lot of case studies on our website just to continue to say, "Hey, just if you're—if you're an insert client here, then this kind of looks like me."
I'm a municipality, I'm a cooperative, I'm a utility, or a large industrial. Then you can see a case study that fits for you and understand how they looked at it—probably similarly as you would during that event.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so you're describing how you sell to these companies a little bit. Now, I want to go back to that quote with your co-founder: "I'll build it, if you sell it."
Sean Kelly:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
I'm also thinking about your power trading background, maybe just. And one more point you referenced earlier was, "Hey, look, Mr. Utility, Mrs. Utility, if I'm—whatever—making it up—a seed-stage funded, you know, tech company, you shouldn't trust your five nines of reliability on us yet." So I'm kind of combining all those data points to ask: how have you found it effective to sell these very, very large entities on Amperon, which you know, obviously, you're not a tiny, fledgling-funded company anymore? We're going to get into that in a second. But yeah, how have you found selling to be effective with very large entities like this?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah. The joke I've heard—and I'll steal it—is that all of these large entities want to be first, to be second. And so once you go through, and someone else vouches for you—that someone they look up to or are in a working group with—then that's when they take a step back and say, "Wait a minute, we should be doing this." And so we have multiple utilities on our cap table. And because of that, having their seal of approval—both in dollars and recurring revenue—is enough to help push it across the line. But in the early days, you really just have to find that early adopter willing to give you a chance.
And we knew that was going to be hard in the early days, and that's why we kind of avoided utilities—just because, like, "Hey, we're not going anywhere." So we just took—went with traders who are easier to adopt. And I mean, it helps that I knew that space extremely well—from the first 11 years of my career, managing assets. I've run five nukes and over three dozen assets overall. And so, that's where you get to say, "Hey, I've been there before," and "Hey, I've sat in a seat." That's just an advantage that we had due to my background.
And it was also a, "Hey, like, we got along well in our careers. I'm going to give you a shot." I'm going to give you a shot because I know that you look at the world the same way I do. And really, having that "been there, done that" background helped us develop a strong product-market fit early on.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to say "been there, done that." I've been in your shoes. Oh, by the way, you know, elbow, elbow—we used to work together or do deals together. Yeah, that positive relationship inertia definitely plays a critical role. Let me switch topics a little bit. You referenced it a couple of times: that you do have outside funding to grow the company. However you choose to describe it, what are some lessons you've learned? Feel free to reference your favorite investors—your favorite children. Just get—what are some takeaways for folks listening, many of whom have outside capital, want it, or are on the other side of the table as investors? How should they listen to and bet on folks like Sean?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. Something I wish I could tell my early pre-seed and seed-stage self—tips I’ve learned. From my standpoint, I think building relationships is key—just saying, "Hey, we met three years ago, and now it makes sense to invest." We’ve had that. I mean, HSBC led our Series A, and Mike saw us in early days back in 2018, right when we started, when he was at another shop. But then, when HSBC was set up, he and I had a good relationship, and we understood what we were getting into with each other.
It's like the "get married" model for investors—because you're in this for the long haul together. And then Energize was exactly that story. I mean, we raised a very fast Series B in summer 2023. But John Tough, the managing director there, was literally our first email after we got our C-Corp—February 1st, 2018. So, just getting to know those investors and hearing what you're saying—everyone always downplays whatever revenue targets or growth rates you have. But if they see that you deliver on what you say, that makes them comfortable to invest.
And on the flip side, you get to know what kind of investor they’ll be—through the good times and the bad. That relationship is huge. We spent a lot of time early on pitching investors who were too big for us, but now it’s all come full circle. We have that long-term relationship. I was in a growth equities office this morning here in Houston, and I realized we've known them since 2020. It’s just nice—they’ve been following us for four or five years, and now they see it’s actually working. They give advice and referrals along the way, and we've hired a number of executives through those investor connections.
My biggest takeaway is: don’t sell yourself short. When I started, I had a very short-term view. Early days, take a deep breath and ask, "What could this actually become?" Honestly, from our pre-seed deck to now, Amperon’s vision is significantly bigger than I imagined back in 2018. I didn't come from a venture background; I was just a trader. And now I look back and say, "Wow, this is where you need to tell the full story—your total addressable market, what products you can add, how to build on them." Investors need to see that they can underwrite a big, compelling story.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, two great points for sure. And I’m just thinking back to conversations around how important relationships are in your funding journey. You first reached out to John Tough in 2018, closed your Series B in 2023—that's about five years of relationship-building. Were they in the Series A as well? No? Makes sense given their style preference. That five-year "dating" process really pays off. By the way, if listeners are curious about Energize’s strategy, John Tough was also on the podcast about 18 months ago. You also used this phrase—"they will fade your revenue or fade your timeline." I think you’re being very kind.
They will slash or destroy your revenue projections to be more "realistic"—or, at least, what they call realistic.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
And you also made an interesting point earlier: "We're not going anywhere." Right? So, "Hey, utilities, we’ll talk to you later. We’re not going anywhere." This is a long-term play. You count on us being here. That ties back to the idea of not selling yourself short. If you focus too much on near-term deals, it’s tempting to accept less—versus thinking, "Hey, this is a long-term game." Like a 10-year overnight success, or a 20-year plan—baby, I’ve got all the time in the world to get to know people. Yeah, that’s really reassuring.
Let me switch gears quickly. We've also discussed this in our EFI calls—policy. There’s been a change of policy in D.C. Some listeners are aware of this.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
You have a particular take on this. How does policy affect or not affect what Amperon is doing?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, from a policy standpoint, the big thing I want is a resilient company that can operate during any side—regardless of who's in charge. We've seen that. We operated under Trump 1.0, COVID, Biden, and now back to Trump 2.0. Each administration has a different flavor. But at the end of the day, you really need a company that's resilient no matter what. That's what we focus on. One thing we did was address churn in 2022, which was mostly a fallback from focusing on Texas retail energy providers. Winter Storm Uri hit badly—everyone with load got impacted.
And so, we had bad churn, but it wasn’t our fault—it was our problem. So, in 2024, we've worked to diversify our customer base so that no one segment accounts for over a quarter of our revenue. That way, we can be resilient if policies like IRA impact certain sectors. We don't see a change there. The big shift we do see is driven by the hyperscalers—data centers and AI. Load growth is huge. Electricity demand in 2030 could be 25% or more higher than 2021, which is crazy. For example, Texas's peak load might be around 90,000 MW, but could reach 150,000 MW by 2030—probably too high, but still, it’s on the table with all these data centers.
Load growth is the key factor everyone talks about. Regardless of administration, more megawatts are coming online, and by 2030, about 50% of generation is expected to be renewable. Trump, in his last term, put more wind in the ground than any other president—so wind and solar, plus batteries with ongoing tech improvements, make price volatility more significant. That’s where Amperon’s work becomes even more vital.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, you’re full of quotes today, Sean. I think you’ve saved all these from our prior chats to just, like, download into the podcast. It’s like you’re walking around as a business school professor or something. Since I wear that hat too, I’ll just say: I’m just complimenting Sean. Just kidding. It’s good stuff. Let’s shift from the business side—lots of green nuggets there—to the personal side. Three questions. First: what’s some advice you’d give to younger Sean to be more effective, more impactful in building the business or career you’re building?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I mean, the biggest advice I’d give is build your network. I remember the tipping point when it all clicked for me—second semester of freshman year, so I guess that was 2002. I went to a leadership conference and thought, “Wow, this is amazing,” and realized these are the people I want to be around. Building a network is one of the most important things to me. Because of that, I have a lot of people I help and who help me in return. When you're dealing with something a CEO is doing—and I’ve been fortunate to do this with EFI and connect CEOs—that network becomes invaluable. For example, I recently called two CEOs from Energize’s portfolio. I said, “Hey, I need to discuss this,” and they both jumped in. One called me 20 minutes later; the other scheduled a call at 7 p.m. and it was a done deal. Having that network is just so important.
Next, stick to your thesis. Spend a lot of time on it. I asked many people in 2017-2018 what they thought about my thesis when starting Amperon. A favorite quote of mine—"If you want advice, ask for money; if you want money, ask for advice." If I asked someone for a check, they’d give me advice instead; if I asked for advice, they'd think I was serious and write the check. So, go in with a clear thesis, ask questions, and get feedback. Everyone wants to be heard. I’ve built ideas based on conversations, and some people said, “That’s a genius idea,” when I was just following their suggestions from six months earlier. Find your thesis, ground it well, and pursue it.
And start now. I’m a big believer in side hustles. I started my first company, Bridge Power Consulting, while still trading. That gave me a safety net. Later, I handed it off and sold it in October 2019. Always have a side hustle—if it doesn’t work, you can stop. You can run multiple business models simultaneously. I love having options. I probably watch too much college football, running the option, like an old trader. So, my three tips are: build your network, stick to your thesis, and start now.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I like those. On the first part—the example of calling CEOs who are eager to respond quickly—you know, I think we often overlook that most people enjoy helping others. We get a rush from it, which is why CEO peer groups work so well. The quote—"If you want money, ask for advice; if you want advice, ask for money"—I heard that years ago. With my first startup, I didn’t ask for money, but I raised angel capital. It works.
The "start now" reminder reminds me of when young couples decide when to have a baby—the answer is never. Just do it, figure it out. Babies and startups have some overlap, I think. Next, habits and routines. What do you do to stay healthy, sane, and focused?
Sean Kelly:
Biggest thing: my three-and-a-half-year-old. I’m very intentional with my time. I get up before he does, take him to school every day when I’m home—my travel schedule isn’t ideal, but I prioritize that time. I make him breakfast—two to three eggs or cereal. It’s a routine I cherish. Spending time with him recharges me. I try to keep a 5 to 8 p.m. window for family, then work from 8 to 11. I’ll have coffee during the day or meet at 8 p.m., but I aim to keep that evening time for him. That’s what recharges me most.
I also recently got a Peloton, which is great—20-30 minutes of quick exercise. Also, I started boxing back in New York. If you’ve had a tough week, just go hit the bag and blow off steam. Staying healthy is high on the list. And, whether I’m with my wife, son, or just alone, I try to be purposeful with my time and disconnect when needed.
I don’t know how well she’d say I do at this, but I try to be intentional with my time, why I do things, and whom I see.
Chris Wedding:
Well, if you want, you could give me your wife’s email, and I could send her this podcast, telling her to check her husband and make sure he’s being fully present with her and Alex.
Sean Kelly:
Oh yeah.
Chris Wedding:
And, hey, if you’re working the night shift—how do you turn your brain off so you can sleep at night?
Sean Kelly:
It’s hard. I watch something brainless—absolutely nothing related to work. I spend the last 30 minutes doing something completely different—TV, reading, chatting about the week. I’ve learned that sending emails before bed results in crazy dreams. So I try to wind down with a show or a book, and avoid work right before sleeping.
Sean Kelly:
But it’s tough; I often push until I’m exhausted, then decide it’s time to sleep. I’m open to suggestions.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, most folks agree that dreams and emails don’t belong in the same sentence.
Sean Kelly:
No, they definitely don’t.
Chris Wedding:
On the boxing front, I recall a guest from last year—Brian Riordan from Avalanche, a micro-fusion reactor company—who said, "Get destroyed in the gym. Destroyed." That’s a very visceral way to unplug.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, that’s pretty intense. Definitely one way to disconnect—hopefully with not too many repercussions. If you’re doing boxing or martial arts, it might take a second to heal.
Chris Wedding:
That’s right. Just go hard for sure. Now, onto the last category—books, podcasts, quotes, tools. What two or three would you recommend to entrepreneurs and investors for value?
Sean Kelly:
I’ve read all the typical startup books. But I like to explore outside of energy—broader perspectives. For example, The Smartest Guys in the Room, the Enron story—how power markets started in the 90s with deregulation. If you're into power trading, it’s a wild story, especially if you’re in Houston; you’ll recognize landmarks.
I also enjoy history-based books by Erik Larson—The Devil in the White City, Churchill (the Splendid and the Vile), and others. The best "unplugged" book I’ve read isn’t about how to run a company but The Tower of Bill Murray. I met him once; a bunch of stories like that. It’s more of a relaxation read for me. I also get energy from hanging out with CEOs and clients. For podcasts, I don’t listen to many, but I do listen to yours when friends are featured. Guy Raz’s How I Built This is fantastic—amazing stories of founders. We listened during COVID on a long road trip.
That’s what I use to unplug—blogs, quick reads, funding announcements. I consume energy news via a handful of newsletters.
Chris Wedding:
Well, clearly, you passed the test, Sean. You referenced my podcast and newsletter—perfect. I’ll publish this, and others can listen. Otherwise, I was just thinking, "Great to chat and learn more. Rooting for Amperon’s success."
Sean Kelly:
Thanks so much, Chris. It’s been a pleasure.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, thanks for listening. And if you’re not sick of hanging out with me yet, please join over 20,000 entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators who get our 3-minute newsletter on changing the world through startups, finance, humor, and wisdom—or at least, our poor attempts at the last two. Subscribe on Substack or at our website entrepreneurs4impact.com. You can also check me out on LinkedIn, where I share five or ten posts weekly about climate, tech, startups, impact investing, better habits, and maybe too many references to lessons from Buddhism that may apply to our work 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’s not my kids’ favorite thing I say most mornings before school, but it’s still true. All right, take care.