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Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I'm Akshatrati this week, luck, location and

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Speaker 1: lots of risk. Last year, venture capital firms invested seventy

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Speaker 1: billion dollars into climate tech globally, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: that money came from one place, Silicon Valley. But how

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Speaker 1: did a place better known for investing in social media

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Speaker 1: and silly internet companies start investing in heart tech designed

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Speaker 1: to solve real world problems. That's what we are going

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Speaker 1: to talk about today with my guest, the painter Saluja.

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Speaker 1: He's one of Silicon Valley's early venture capitalists and a

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Speaker 1: veteran climate tech investor.

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Speaker 2: Transforming energy is probably the biggest opportunity in the history

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Speaker 2: of the world. I think in testing for financial returns

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Speaker 2: and social good is not only possible, I think it's

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Speaker 2: easier to do than not.

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Speaker 1: The pain there is the managing director of the Capricorn

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Speaker 1: Investment Group, which has some nine billion dollars under management.

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Speaker 1: The group was created in two thousand and four to

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Speaker 1: manage the money of eBay billionaire Jeff's goal. But it's

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Speaker 1: not all skulls money anymore. Capricorn's success as impact investors

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Speaker 1: has attracted money from wealthy families foundations and even institutional investors.

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Speaker 1: The pain There made handsome returns on his early bets

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Speaker 1: on Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. He now leads Capricorn's Technology

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Speaker 1: Impact Fund, which focuses on climate solutions. Through that fund,

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Speaker 1: he is invested in battery recycling company Redwood Materials, electric

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Speaker 1: aviation startup Jobe, and even in nuclear fusion through Helion Energy.

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Speaker 1: These are not household names yet but could become so

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Speaker 1: one day. There are a few people as deeped in

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Speaker 1: valley culture as the pain There, so I wanted to

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Speaker 1: learn from him about how climate tech got started, why

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Speaker 1: he continues to think like an engineer rather than an investor,

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Speaker 1: and what responsibilities venture capitalists have for the things they fund.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, the pain There.

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Speaker 2: Thanks, It's great to be with you.

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Speaker 1: Now you've been a VC for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps we can start by just having your story. How

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Speaker 1: did you get into this business? What has kept you here?

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Speaker 2: I grew up professionally in here in Silicon Valley, and

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Speaker 2: next week we'll be completing thirty five years here and

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Speaker 2: came here mainly to study and work in the semi

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Speaker 2: conductor industry three decades ago, and it was a lot

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Speaker 2: of fun, you know, because it was this exciting period

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Speaker 2: where the semi connector industry was getting disaggregated from where

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Speaker 2: the only railway to do semiconductors and those days was

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Speaker 2: to be part of a vertically integrated company that had

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Speaker 2: it all, that had their own design, that had their

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Speaker 2: own fabs, that had their own software, their own IP

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Speaker 2: and they would build these systems that were very expensive

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Speaker 2: and needed a lot of capital, but were changing the world.

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Speaker 1: Semiconductors are made with silicon, and they are what computers

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Speaker 1: run on. It's that material that gave the region its

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Speaker 1: nickname Silicon Valley, the pain that arrived in the Valley,

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Speaker 1: and a moment when the people who had started out

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Speaker 1: in big semiconductor companies like Texas Instruments and Intel were

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Speaker 1: taking their experience and getting creative.

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Speaker 2: Anybody with a good idea anywhere could design a product

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Speaker 2: and not have to be part of some large institution

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Speaker 2: or company, and create a description of what they had

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Speaker 2: built in a language and ship that description to a

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Speaker 2: fab in most cases in Taiwan at that time and

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Speaker 2: even today, and just take that description and put it

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Speaker 2: onto silicon, and you would get a silicon chip, and

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Speaker 2: you could iterate on it. You could work on it,

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Speaker 2: and then you could then take that chip and write

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Speaker 2: software on it or build a system out of it,

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Speaker 2: and ship it to various parts of the world predominantly

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Speaker 2: Asia at that time, and get a full product, you know,

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Speaker 2: whether it was a phone or a computer or a

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Speaker 2: desktop box or whatever electronic product you wanted. So that

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Speaker 2: was a beautiful thing because it really led to the

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Speaker 2: explosion of the electronics industry. And as that started exploding,

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Speaker 2: you know, we all was starting to think what impact

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Speaker 2: were electronics and semi connectors having on the rest of

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Speaker 2: the world. You know, we were building technology for technology's sake,

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Speaker 2: and that can be a lot of fun. But we

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Speaker 2: would look at some of these other industries, like you know,

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Speaker 2: I remember in our semiconductor days, for some reason, I

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Speaker 2: have no idea why, but people started picking Caterpillar as

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Speaker 2: an example as sort of the metaphor for a company

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Speaker 2: that had such a large footprint and had made real products.

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Speaker 1: But the industrial manufacturer Caterpillar.

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Speaker 2: That category right, which was that they were devoid of

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Speaker 2: technology as we call technology in Silicon Valley. I have

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Speaker 2: no idea why. I mean, I'm sure Caterpillar had a

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Speaker 2: bunch of technology in it, but you know, you use

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Speaker 2: something for language, and Caterpillar was example. So that whole

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Speaker 2: category of these industries that were very large, and I

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Speaker 2: would say energy in general could be one industry that

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Speaker 2: you know came up, but agriculture, food, healthcare, and transportation.

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Speaker 2: You know, thinking through that and thinking about what next

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Speaker 2: for my career, I really felt excited about the opportunity

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Speaker 2: and energy to make things better, cheaper, faster, But it

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Speaker 2: was also representing a very large problem, which was forms

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Speaker 2: of energy that we had grown up using were literally

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Speaker 2: out of the Stone Age as far as Silicon value

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Speaker 2: was concerned. As one of the well known vcs in

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Speaker 2: Silicon Value would say, is it's not a good excuse

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Speaker 2: to use stones just because there are lots of stones around, right.

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Speaker 2: So this was a way to think about getting out

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Speaker 2: of the stone age? How do you combine tech with

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Speaker 2: some of those energy technologies.

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Speaker 1: What I'm hearing you say is that you didn't start

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Speaker 1: out as investing in companies that would solve the climate problem.

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Speaker 1: You were just looking for companies, energy companies that would

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Speaker 1: be better off were they to be able to use

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Speaker 1: the value technology coming out in electronics and software.

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Speaker 2: Is that right? So your observation is correct that the

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Speaker 2: majority of the companies that we've done have been around climate,

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Speaker 2: and we've had a thesis around that and have gone

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Speaker 2: looking for opportunities that have a positive impact on the

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Speaker 2: climate problem. But we haven't been exclusively focused just on that.

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Speaker 2: We've done a few things outside of climate. They're all

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Speaker 2: in that category of a deep technology problem and deep

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Speaker 2: technology solution that improves an industry like energy or transportation, agriculture, food,

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Speaker 2: health care, etc. I would say, I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 2: seventy eighty percent of what we've done has largely been

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Speaker 2: aimed at climate and clean tech or renewables.

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Speaker 1: So if you were to distill your investment thesis now

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Speaker 1: having done it for a while, or even if you

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Speaker 1: want to talk about how your investment thesis might have

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Speaker 1: changed over the time, how would you distill that.

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Speaker 2: So we're looking for large problems in the world like climate,

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Speaker 2: and that is the area of focus right now, and

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Speaker 2: then differentiated technologies that move the needle. And one of

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Speaker 2: the important things we look at is doing it at

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Speaker 2: large scale. Now you hear that all the time, so

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Speaker 2: it's question of what does that mean? A great example,

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Speaker 2: because we can do it in hindsight as well, is

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Speaker 2: is cars. You know, for the longest time, electric cars

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Speaker 2: were a bit of a joke. I remember top Gear

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Speaker 2: doing videos fifteen seventeen years ago where they would essentially

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Speaker 2: make fun of electric cars as being essentially golf cards.

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Speaker 2: It was always viewed as this was going to be

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Speaker 2: a super niche and it was not something that could

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Speaker 2: really compete and do much in the world.

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Speaker 3: It's twenty miles back to the garage, and I know

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Speaker 3: I'm going to run out of juice and I'm going

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Speaker 3: to run out of juice in my Evy one, and

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Speaker 3: the gangs in Los Angeles would get me and company

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Speaker 3: of me into little places.

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Speaker 2: We all in Silicon Valley knew that automotive was the

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Speaker 2: industry you stayed away from because it was just the

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Speaker 2: opposite of what we were used to hear from a

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Speaker 2: speed point of view, from a profitability point of view.

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Speaker 2: I used to joke at that time, the one thing

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Speaker 2: you have in common with startups and automotive is they're

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Speaker 2: both losing money all the time, right, So that's something

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Speaker 2: we knew that you're constantly on this edge of bankruptcy, right.

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Speaker 1: And you were an early investor in Tesla. So what

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Speaker 1: convinced you at that time to bet on it?

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Speaker 2: It was simple science and math, right for all of

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Speaker 2: us who've been electrical engineers or electrochemical engineers. The math

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Speaker 2: was pretty clear that the way power electronics was evolving

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Speaker 2: and the way batteries were evolving. At that point in time,

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Speaker 2: lithium ion batteries had started making their moves out of

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Speaker 2: the power tools industry that they had originally been developed

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Speaker 2: for into consumer electronics. At that time, our laptops had

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Speaker 2: started getting litheumine batteries.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, moving on from nickel cadmium match right exactly.

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Speaker 2: And so when you looked at those curves and where

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Speaker 2: they were headed, and you applied even just a little

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Speaker 2: bit of Moore's law to all of that, you could

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Speaker 2: see that those would converge.

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Speaker 1: Very nicely named after Gordon Moore, one of the founders

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Speaker 1: of Intel, More wrote a paper in nineteen sixty five

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Speaker 1: noticing that the amount transistors you could put on a

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Speaker 1: chip doubled roughly every two years, and he depicted that

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Speaker 1: on a curve continuing for the next ten years.

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Speaker 4: That was a wild extrapolation of very little data, and

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Speaker 4: amazingly enough that ten doublings in complexity that I predicted

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Speaker 4: turned out to be nine doublings actually pretty close.

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Speaker 1: A remarkable enough prediction that people still reference it today.

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Speaker 4: It got the name Moore's law, which is stuck there

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Speaker 4: everything that changes exponentially ever since.

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Speaker 1: And back in two thousand and six, the pain there

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Speaker 1: after coming up in the semiconductor industry, where this curve

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Speaker 1: was well known, looked at lithiumine batteries in laptops and

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Speaker 1: thought there could be a similar curve to drive down

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Speaker 1: the price of lithemine batteries if you could just make

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Speaker 1: enough of those cells.

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Speaker 2: If I remember correctly, HP and IBM were like the

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Speaker 2: leaders in the laptop business, and the entire capacity that

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Speaker 2: they were using was probably good for a few thousand

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Speaker 2: tests less at that time, right, because you were going

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Speaker 2: to replace a device that needed nine cells with a

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Speaker 2: device that needed six thousand cells. Let's say, looking at

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Speaker 2: it from this high technology side, a software problem or

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Speaker 2: a semi connector problem. To one person from one vantage point,

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Speaker 2: working with six thousand of something can be a huge

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Speaker 2: problem or can be a huge obstacle. But to a

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Speaker 2: simple computer, whether it's six thousand or four, it's nothing. Right.

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Speaker 2: I mean, you can handle millions of decisions in a second,

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Speaker 2: trillions of decisions, and so that was hardly a problem.

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Speaker 2: And just bringing that thinking from two different industries has

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Speaker 2: made such a big impact. And it sounds simple now,

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Speaker 2: but the whole world at that time was obsessed with

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Speaker 2: how do you get away with the smallest battery possible?

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Speaker 2: And along came this company that said, how do you

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Speaker 2: build the biggest battery possible that you can fit into

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Speaker 2: a car? And people said, you're crazy. That's the toughest,

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Speaker 2: most expensive part of it. Why aren't you building the smallest. Well,

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Speaker 2: it's very simple. If you have a bigger battery, you

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Speaker 2: end up with, let's say generously at that time, a

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Speaker 2: couple of hundred miles of range instead of forty miles

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Speaker 2: of range, which means every time you cycle a battery

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Speaker 2: you get two hundred miles instead of forty miles, which

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Speaker 2: means a number of times you cycle those cells is

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Speaker 2: five or six times less than the smaller battery. And

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Speaker 2: you've solved for a big part of the problem, which

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Speaker 2: is cycle life.

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Speaker 1: It's something we've all experienced. A new phone battery just

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Speaker 1: doesn't provide the same level of charge two years later.

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Speaker 1: That's because lithiumon batteries are complex chemical boxes where small

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Speaker 1: things keep going wrong every time you charge the battery.

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Speaker 1: Teslas solution was to build a bigger battery with many

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Speaker 1: individual cells in it.

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Speaker 2: You have a much better way of managing the pack.

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Speaker 2: If a couple of cells out of a forty mile

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Speaker 2: battery go out of whack versus a three hundred mile battery,

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Speaker 2: gotto whac, it's a non event. And these problems were

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Speaker 2: not even considered because the fundamentals of how do you

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Speaker 2: deal with six thousand components was like an obstacle. Right.

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Speaker 1: Many of your recent investments are in the space of

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Speaker 1: electric aviation, are in nuclear fusion. Now. Both of those

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Speaker 1: technologies so to speak, aren't in the scaling decarbonization now moment.

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Speaker 1: They are ten, twenty, maybe thirty. I mean, fusion has

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Speaker 1: been talked about for so long, but you think because

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Speaker 1: they are better products. An electric plane would be a

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Speaker 1: better product. Nuclear fusion would give us infinite power forever,

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Speaker 1: and they also happen to have decarbonization. That it's a

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Speaker 1: good bet to make. Is that fair?

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Speaker 2: You know, our role is as investors is to invest

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Speaker 2: in things that are significantly better that are solving a

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Speaker 2: problem that has not been solved, that are riskier, I

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Speaker 2: mean to some extent. You know, risk is always considered

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Speaker 2: a bad word. Everybody wants to avoid risk. For venture

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Speaker 2: the role really is to invest in those risky companies.

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Speaker 2: In fact, as odd as it sounds, there's a problem

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Speaker 2: if you're not taking enough risk, because then you're not

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Speaker 2: solving an important enough problem or a problem that deserves

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Speaker 2: to be solved, or that really deserves this kind of capital.

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Speaker 2: The role of this capital is to solve that kind

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Speaker 2: of risk, and it's reflected in the returns that are

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Speaker 2: expected from this capital as well. You know this is

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Speaker 2: it's you've got to return a lot to keep up

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Speaker 2: with the expectation of the SASSA classes, So you need

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Speaker 2: some risky media ideas. Transforming energy is probably the biggest

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Speaker 2: opportunity in the history of the world. I think investing

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Speaker 2: for financial returns and social good is not only possible,

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Speaker 2: I think it's easier to do than not. And that

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Speaker 2: one to me means more in energy because one of

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Speaker 2: the things in venture capital that people have not asked

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Speaker 2: is like, is it possible to invest in things that

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Speaker 2: are profitable and do good for the world. I find

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Speaker 2: it harder to pick things to invest in which really

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Speaker 2: have no obvious good for the world. I mean, to

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Speaker 2: be able to look into a crystal ball and say,

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Speaker 2: you know, selling pet food on the internet is going

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Speaker 2: to be a big deal, it would be very hard

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Speaker 2: for me to do. But on the other hand, if

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Speaker 2: I look at what are the big challenges in the world,

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Speaker 2: what are the kinds of things that the world can't

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Speaker 2: do without, and if I can find a company to

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Speaker 2: build that addresses that, that to me is like actually

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Speaker 2: quite easy.

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Speaker 1: After the break, we talk about what the pain there

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Speaker 1: has learned from past failures and the investments he thinks

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Speaker 1: are going to change the world. The pin there and

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Speaker 1: I grew up in India. It's a country that has

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Speaker 1: massive potential for scaling clean technology, but it's been hard

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Speaker 1: to unlock. I wanted to know how the painter thinks

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Speaker 1: about the challenge of getting innovation from one part of

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Speaker 1: the world to another.

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Speaker 2: So, I mean, this is one of those interesting problems

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Speaker 2: where if you just solve it in one area of

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Speaker 2: the world, it's not going to make a difference, right.

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Speaker 2: It's also not a reason to not solve it in

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Speaker 2: one area of the world. You just have to solve

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Speaker 2: it in as many areas as quickly and as well

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Speaker 2: as possible. You don't ignore the most populous countries in

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Speaker 2: the world because by definition, that's where the consumption is

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Speaker 2: going to be.

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Speaker 1: That's where the impact is, that's where you could make money.

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Speaker 2: That's right. And there's a really cool graph that I

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Speaker 2: used to use fifteen years ago in the early years

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Speaker 2: of when we were evangelizing this, which is a graph

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Speaker 2: of progress and energy consumption. It plots the countries that

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Speaker 2: are well recognized in the modern definition of industrial progress,

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Speaker 2: like per capita GDP and their per capita emission. You

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Speaker 2: learn a lot from there. One thing you learn is

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Speaker 2: all progress was proportional with energy over time, and you

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Speaker 2: look at the time curve. There's no mystery there. You

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Speaker 2: produced more if you had more energy, and that remains

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Speaker 2: true today. Obviously, the good news from those graphs is

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Speaker 2: because some of those populated regions couldn't afford it, their

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Speaker 2: per capita consumption has remained low. But what's clear is

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Speaker 2: if they take the same path, that's going to be

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Speaker 2: a disaster for a variety of reasons.

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Speaker 1: Right, there's a goal versus solar for a.

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Speaker 2: Very clear example, right, we've gone from conversations ten years

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Speaker 2: ago which was complaining about how the cleaner way, the

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Speaker 2: better way, was more expensive and that it was a

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Speaker 2: burden on a bunch of communities and countries to have

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Speaker 2: to take that path of cleaner energy because it was

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Speaker 2: more expensive while the rest of the world had prospered

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Speaker 2: and developed through cheaper energy which was not as clean

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Speaker 2: to now today, ten years later, where those cleaner options

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Speaker 2: are actually cheaper to your example, solar versus goal almost

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Speaker 2: anywhere in that part of the world. If you're building

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Speaker 2: it today, it's going to be much cheaper if you

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Speaker 2: build a solar power plant. Yeah, So then it comes

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Speaker 2: down to what's the right focus. Obviously, we would all

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Speaker 2: love for innovation to happen everywhere in the world, and

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Speaker 2: innovation is not anybody's birthright or exclusivity, right, and innovation

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Speaker 2: comes from all over, But you can't ignore the fact

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Speaker 2: that there are certain regions in the world where innovation

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Speaker 2: happens faster and comes to fruition better. And definitely here

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Speaker 2: in these four or five zip codes around where we

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Speaker 2: are sitting today, that innovation has come a lot more,

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Speaker 2: but deployment is not limited by any means to hear.

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Speaker 2: In fact, if anything, there's very little deployment. In fact,

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Speaker 2: one of the big complaints of this region is that

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Speaker 2: all this innovation happens and then when it comes to

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Speaker 2: scaling and manufacturing, people leave. I think the short answer

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Speaker 2: to your question would be, we have to focus on

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Speaker 2: deployment to begin with, and deployment is something all of

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Speaker 2: these technologies and companies that create them crave for. I

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Speaker 2: know there's a lot of interest in solving that, and

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Speaker 2: I think something like that would move the needle a

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Speaker 2: lot further in the bigger scheme of things than necessarily

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Speaker 2: trying to to just say how do we replicate Silicon Valley?

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Speaker 2: But I don't find enough going on yet to say

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Speaker 2: how do we do the simpler stuff, which is enable

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Speaker 2: cheap capital to flow from parts of the world where

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Speaker 2: chief capital is plentiful to parts of the world where

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Speaker 2: that chief capital can be put to work to deploy

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Speaker 2: some of these forms of energy.

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Speaker 1: The high cost of capital, or put crudely, high interest rates,

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Speaker 1: is a big problem across developing countries for financing clean energy.

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Speaker 1: It's something we talked about in our episode with Rebecca

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Speaker 1: Shirley from the World Resources Institute and mark their d'op

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Speaker 1: of the International Finance Corporation during COP twenty seven in Egypt.

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Speaker 1: We'll link the episode in the show notes. The issue

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Speaker 1: will come up again in a big meeting in Paris

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Speaker 1: in June, when Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and French

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Speaker 1: President Emmanuel Macron bring together world leaders to discuss how

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Speaker 1: to form the global financial system to solve problems of

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Speaker 1: the twenty first century, including climate change.

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Speaker 2: But at the same time, I also don't feel bad

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Speaker 2: about the fact that focusing on innovation where it's happening

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Speaker 2: well is not wasted because that innovation, when you are

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Speaker 2: building forms of energy, it's a lot more applicable to

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Speaker 2: global markets than something, let's say that would be in

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Speaker 2: fashion or even food for that matter. Right, energy is

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Speaker 2: pretty universal, so all the advancements in solar have pretty

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Speaker 2: much gone global. All the advancements in batteries have gone

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Speaker 2: global and will continue going global. It's just tipping points

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Speaker 2: at different states. So I don't see anything in our

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Speaker 2: fifty sixty companies that we've done over the last decade

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Speaker 2: and a half that are exclusive to just one geography

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Speaker 2: or the global North or global South. I think they

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Speaker 2: will get everywhere, and we want them to get it everywhere.

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Speaker 2: I mean, talk about our new exciting companies. Well, not

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Speaker 2: so new as Redwood Materials, the battery recycling company. Yes,

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Speaker 2: it started, you know in California and Nevada, but it

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Speaker 2: is one of the biggest looming problems and opportunities in

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Speaker 2: the world. Batteries are consumed everywhere, Electronics are consumed everywhere.

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Speaker 2: Today they're shipped to get recycled and taken care of.

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Speaker 2: In the future, they will be recycled where they are

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Speaker 2: and redeployed everywhere, right, and it will be a very

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Speaker 2: large industry around the world. It won't be just limited

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Speaker 2: to where it was developed or invented.

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Speaker 1: There is a view of venture capital which fair and fair,

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Speaker 1: you can decide, but they've bet on companies that have

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Speaker 1: also caused more problems than they've solved them. Take the

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Speaker 1: troubles that Facebook is going through over democracy issues or

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Speaker 1: freedom of speech, or Twitter, which is facing similar problems

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Speaker 1: in parts like India. When you think about venture capital,

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Speaker 1: what is it that is doing well and where is

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Speaker 1: it feeling?

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Speaker 2: So I would say, you know, venture capital has been

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Speaker 2: just such an amazing tool in creating the essence of

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Speaker 2: what silicon value is. You know, everybody's obsessed with replicating this,

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Speaker 2: and one of those critical ingredients for that perfect storm

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Speaker 2: is venture capital. And it's that mindset that venture capital

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Speaker 2: comes from. Now, having said that, there are very few rules,

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Speaker 2: so I can't paint it with one broad brush, but

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Speaker 2: the aspects that are common is it is, at the

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Speaker 2: end of the day, about investing in very very early ideas,

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Speaker 2: to take very high risk and to go after you know,

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Speaker 2: making sure that these companies can come to life. Now,

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Speaker 2: I would say that at that stage of the company,

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Speaker 2: you're not thinking about what problems could it create fifteen

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Speaker 2: years from now. We've not observed any discussion where people

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Speaker 2: sit around and say, you know what, this product's going

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Speaker 2: to really go stir the part in the political hallways

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Speaker 2: of the world, right, I mean it's like, in fact,

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Speaker 2: if anything, the initial reactions to this was kind of ridiculed, right,

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Speaker 2: I mean, initially these were pretty simple ideas of sorts, Right,

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Speaker 2: they were like, hey, maybe this is just a nice

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Speaker 2: bite sized way of communicating. So who would have thought.

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Speaker 2: So whether everybody comes out and says, let's simulate every

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Speaker 2: possible outcome and try to avoid something I think that

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Speaker 2: would kill the innovation, right. I mean, that's the responsibility

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Speaker 2: that you can't put on anybody right now. Fifteen years

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Speaker 2: down the road, when a company evolved into something, yes,

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Speaker 2: of course people have to think about it and say

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Speaker 2: how do you do it? By then it's well out

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Speaker 2: of venture capital.

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Speaker 1: You said, one of the things that is excellent about

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Speaker 1: venture capital is that it allows for failures, because having failures,

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Speaker 1: or at least some of it or enough of it,

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Speaker 1: is a sign of success. Just talk us through some

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Speaker 1: of the failures that you've had in your career, specific examples,

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Speaker 1: and what have they taught you about clean tech and

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Speaker 1: how we scale.

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Speaker 2: The biggest failure in a single category for us has

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Speaker 2: been in doing the transition from innovating in solar PV

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Speaker 2: technologies to having commercial success with those PV technologies. And

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Speaker 2: the failure in that case was not recognizing that for

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Speaker 2: a very long period of time, most of the world,

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Speaker 2: except for China, would have no appetite to manufacture solar

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Speaker 2: or to adopt new solar technologies. That was a very

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Speaker 2: important observation and lesson.

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Speaker 1: And that's not something you could have predicted.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I think, I mean, if you can predict

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Speaker 2: a failure, you would hopefully avoid it, especially in an

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Speaker 2: opportunity rich environment like Silicon Valley right where there's so

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Speaker 2: many ideas. I mean, we do six seven companies a

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Speaker 2: year new we obviously have to support the thirty forty

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Speaker 2: fifty that are alive. There are a lot of companies

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Speaker 2: you say no to, and many that you say no

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Speaker 2: to the first time, but then you know later on

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Speaker 2: for a variety of reasons, you decide it's a good idea.

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Speaker 2: But there's a lot of no's. And I joke with

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Speaker 2: our team all the time that if you're saying no,

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Speaker 2: you're likely to be right because you're more correct when

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Speaker 2: you say no that when you say yes. And in

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Speaker 2: our business, the only thing that really matters is saying

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Speaker 2: when you can say yes, because saying no is easy,

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Speaker 2: and you'll be very smart for saying no, because most

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Speaker 2: of those things that you say no time going to

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Speaker 2: turn out to be failures. The most satisfying way of

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Speaker 2: failing is when all of that that you assumed comes

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Speaker 2: out correct, but somebody else does it better. That's the

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Speaker 2: best way to fail, because that means the best product

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Speaker 2: is winning, and it's winning for that reason, and you know,

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Speaker 2: the people that were working on what you failed at

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Speaker 2: did their best and did what they set out to

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Speaker 2: be and were able to achieve what did they just

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Speaker 2: somebody else did it better and so the product comes

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Speaker 2: to life. It's still a good idea, but somebody else

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Speaker 2: does it and somebody else reaps the benefit of it.

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Speaker 1: Wonderful. This was a fascinating conversation. Thanks for coming on

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Speaker 1: the show.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, it is a pleasure.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to zero. Each week, Bloombergreen publishes hundreds

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Speaker 1: of stories about the climate crisis and its solutions, including

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Speaker 1: an investigation from my colleague Leslie Kaufman looking into the

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Speaker 1: greenwashy claims of recyclable plastics.

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Speaker 5: Terror Cycle is a favorite partner of consumer goods companies

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Speaker 5: looking to make plastic packaging, such as chip packets seem

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Speaker 5: more environmental friendly. Items like car seats, cigarettes, and baby

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Speaker 5: food pouches are very difficult to recycle, but TerraCycle says

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Speaker 5: it can do it, and so if a company pays

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Speaker 5: TerraCycle of fee, they get to put a recyclable label

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Speaker 5: on the package and claim all as well. In twenty

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Speaker 5: twenty one, TerraCycle earned seventy one million in revenue this way,

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Speaker 5: but I wanted to know where do all those baby

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Speaker 5: food pouches, snack wrappers and bubble wrap really go. To

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Speaker 5: find out, I put trackers on all three of those

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Speaker 5: items and followed them online and then literally all the

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Speaker 5: way well to landfills. I was talking to two waste

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Speaker 5: sorders and a founder of TerraCycle for this article, and

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Speaker 5: it turns out that recycling plastic the way TerraCycle promises

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Speaker 5: is far more dirty and uncertain than consumers and companies

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Speaker 5: are ready to face to.

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Speaker 1: Read Leslie's article and see the photos of the investigation

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Speaker 1: follow the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed

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Speaker 1: this week's episode, please share it with the or someone

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Speaker 1: who recently mentioned Moore's law. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd

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Speaker 1: and senior producer is Christine Driskell. Our theme music is

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Speaker 1: by Wonderly Special thanks this week to Kira bin Rim

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Speaker 1: and Venkot viz Vanathan I am Akshadrati back next week