Energy Tech Startups

Fresh off their win at the Rice Lily Pitch Competition, Sean and Chen-Yang share their journey from PhD students at Rice University to pioneering entrepreneurs tackling the critical issues of energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In this episode, they discuss how their material science background led to the development of advanced heat management solutions, addressing inefficiencies caused by poor thermal conductivity in traditional semiconductor packaging. With AI and GPU technologies on the rise, HEXASpec is at the forefront of creating next-generation materials to meet the growing demands for efficient heat management. Sean and Chen-Yang also reveal the importance of customer feedback, which prompted them to pivot from HVAC applications to the semiconductor industry, showing how adaptability is key to startup success.

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - What is Heat Management
05:20 - Current Materials in Use
08:15 - Discovering and Developing New Material
10:52 - Market Entry Strategy
16:43 - Pivoting in Business
20:30 - Market Research for Beginners
21:24 - Building a Prototype
23:05 - Fundraising Tips
29:02 - Lessons from Competitions
35:49 - Student Entrepreneurship
39:37 - Houston’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
42:04 - Houston’s Hidden Gems
47:21 - Innovation Ecosystem Gaps
49:40 - Supporting NanoSono
50:13 - Founders' Podcast Thoughts

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

This week we sat down with Emma Konet, co-founder and CTO of Tierra Climate to discuss how her startup is decarbonizing the grid by creating a new revenue stream for grid-scale batteries. Tierra Climate has a proprietary algorithm to estimate and certify how batteries can shift power from the grid during periods of low carbon production to supplant producers who are carbon-intensive. They anticipate issuing carbon credits to companies that want to offset their emissions. Emma provides an inside look at how she and her co-founder are building a marketplace to accelerate the energy transition by making batteries an attractive grid asset. She shares insights from her experience in energy trading and the battery industry, fundraising challenges, and key learnings from participating in competitions like the Rice Business Plan Competition. Emma explains how Houston has been an ideal launchpad for Tierra Climate as a hub bridging energy markets and climate solutions.

Key topics covered:

• How grid-scale batteries help enable renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions
• Challenges of making batteries economically viable on the grid
• Creating a new carbon offset methodology for grid batteries
• Partnering with data providers on emissions factors
• Getting practical pitch experience through competitions like RBPC
• Fundraising challenges for hard tech climate startups
• Building diverse founding teams with complementary skills
• Navigating energy regulations and carbon verification
• Houston as a hub for energy innovation

Get in touch: Company Website: www.tierraclimate.com

CEO & Co-founder Jacob Mansfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-r-mansfield/

CTO & Co-Founder Emma Konet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmajohnsonkonet/

Find Emma on Twitter or X? @koneticenergy Her personal website is www.koneticenergy.com

Tierra Climate partners with REsurety, which provides emissions data for the power grid. https://resurety.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/resurety/
Whitepaper: Charging Towards Zero: https://www.tierraclimate.com/resources

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Ethan Novek is a multiple award-winning chemist and is the sole inventor of 25 granted utility patents with over 150 patent filings in the materials science and sustainable energy industries. He has invented 9 new platform technologies in heat transfer, electricity storage, gas separation, refrigeration cycles, calcium oxide & cement production, tidal power, power generation, and CO2 conversion. He is the inventor, founder, and CEO of SolvCor Technologies.

Ethan delves into:

• How industrial cooling systems work today - 2:00
• What viscosity is and why keeping it low matters in cooling systems - 6:35
• How Ethan developed technology based on physical sciences technology and decided to launch SolvCor - 11:50
• How Ethan went about finding first adopts for his novel and disruptive technology - 18:00
• How improving cooling systems can significantly reduce carbon footprint - 23:40
• How entrepreneurs and inventors have to develop a critical attitude to maintain focus - 29:05
• Why Houston is a strategic location to grow a startup - 36:00
• Where the cooling industry has opportunities to create efficiency by 2050 - 41:45
• Why investing and achieving our climate goals and bringing energy innovation to market is not a tradeoff, and how technology will enable us - 50:00

Get in Touch:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-novek/

https://innovatorenergy.com/

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Ian Bishop is the CEO and co-founder of Elemental Recycling (ER). Elemental has developed a single step process to recycle all plastics and tires into hydrogen and graphite /graphene. The process is also patented for electronics and greenhouse gases and has the potential to solve single stream recycling challenges while making money for plant operators.

Ian Explores:

• How Ian and Ron made one small change with a Ph.D. chemist and developed a critical innovation for recycling - 1:15
• How a culture of tinkering started with inventing an automated Margarita Machine - 3:35
• How the Elemental Recycling process works - 6:08
• How their new process enables ER to monetize waste streams differently - 13:09
• Why this process can save the world - 18:27
• Why mass producing graphene (an output of the ER process) is a game-changing material - 21:40
• Why Houston has such a strong entrepreneurial spirit - 29:25
• Why the ION district is a hidden gem in Houston - 36:25
• What the basics are which entrepreneur needs to learn - 43:30

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

AI and sustainability—two buzzwords that actually make a lot of sense together, especially when you’ve got sharp minds like Robin Goswami and Sandeep Roy putting them to work. These guys built Planckton Data to crack one of the biggest challenges in energy and industrial markets: making carbon footprints actually measurable (instead of just a marketing buzzword). From filling in the massive data gaps in supply chains to helping companies navigate sustainability regulations without drowning in paperwork, they’re proving that AI isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a game-changer. Toss in some wild stories from their careers at Infosys, McKinsey, and even the BP oil spill response, and you’ve got an episode packed with insights, real-world impact, and a little startup chaos.

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

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