Jason Kaminsky  00:00

We had a great outcome, but it took 11 years and you know three pivots and a lot of capital to get here. And I guess I would probably focus on like customer revenue earlier.

Nico Johnson  00:14

All right, welcome back to SunCast. I can't wait for today's conversation. It's one of those kinds of conversations that you hope to be able to have. You interview someone. In this case, Jason Kaminsky came on the show almost exactly a year ago, episode 833. I think we'll leave the link in the show notes for you to check it out. And in the course of that time, his business was acquired, which is fantastic. Not only is a wonderful outcome for us in the industry, for us as entrepreneurs, to see that all this effort does lead to these kinds, the kinds of liquidity events or exits or sort of positive note for the industry that we are excited about. But it, for me, it gives an opportunity to circle back around to a founder and ask some of the harder questions about what is it like to go through an acquisition. How do you navigate that? And frankly, a lot of conversations around acquisitions just focus on the deal, who bought them, what are the numbers, what happens next. Candidly, we're not going to talk about much of that today for a lot of reasons, but the deal is really the final chapter of what is ultimately a longer story. Jason Kaminsky helped to build KWH Analytics from its earliest days, eventually stepping into the CEO role and leading the company through the strategic decisions that culminated in an acquisition by major global company known as Beasley. What interests me most is not the transaction, but everything that has to happen to get to it. How do you build something another company actually wants to own? How do you decide that it's time to shift gears to a new product that would make better sort of acquisition material or a higher enterprise value. If you are unfamiliar with the term enterprise value, welcome to the game. How do you keep a team motivated when the future is uncertain? And what does leading through an acquisition really actually teach you about building a company at all? We're going to cover more of that in detail in today's conversation here on SunCast. I'm glad that you're here, and it is my honor and privilege to welcome Jason Kaminsky back to SunCast. Jason, great to see you.

Jason Kaminsky  02:29

Hey, Nico, thank you for having me again. Good to be back.

Nico Johnson  02:32

You know, I've had the great opportunity to watch as you guys have built this business. A lot of folks probably know some of the backstory. I'll invite you to share some of that. You know, from the very beginning, as a co-founder of KWH Analytics, you've been involved in the decisions, but you weren't the original CEO. Why don't we start there? For those who haven't listened to episode 833, what was the nugget of an idea? How did you get roped into being an entrepreneur, co-founder at all, alongside our friend Richard and this thing called Kettlebech Analytics.

Jason Kaminsky  03:05

Very very briefly, my background as a solar developer called SPG Solar had moved into project finance, doing tax equity at Wells Fargo, and had met Richard somewhere along the way. And you know he had basically convinced me that this was a good idea, which is we're going to try to use data to help do something. Sort of the idea. And I was at a point in my life where I, I there's very very few instances that I can reflect on that say if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it when I'm 65 and retired. And for me, that was like entrepreneurship. Like I didn't know I was going to like it, or if I was going to like it, but I knew if I did not try it, I might regret it. And it was sort of a safe time in my life. I was not married at the time and didn't have kids, so I took a leap, and that was-I thought I'd try it for two or three years, and that was what, like, 12 years ago. So it's been a journey.

Nico Johnson  04:00

Yeah. What was the original thesis? You know, you tongue in cheek said like, let's figure out how to use data to make something matter. But I remember those days. You know, we're talking late teen, late late sort of aughts, early 2010s, where kind of everybody was talking about big data, but nobody really knew how to harness it in a meaningful way to create a business around it, other than you know the the large sort of consumer businesses like Roku is a great example. How were you thinking about data back then, and how how did that formalize into a product in those early days? A

Jason Kaminsky  04:38

lot of it was fake it till you make it, and just throw a bunch of spaghetti and see what sticks. If I'm being totally honest, appreciate

Nico Johnson  04:45

that. Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  04:46

I mean Richard went around, and his art is developing deeper relationships with broad array of stakeholders, and basically begged and pleaded for data from different people. He was coming at it from a McKinsey lens, which is everyone says they're the best in. World that obviously can't be the case. So how do we use data to inform that? I was coming at it from a banking lens, which is we didn't even have our own house in order. Like we obviously did very deep underwriting at the bank, but my last project there was just organizing all of our data into a spreadsheet, so that if we knew how much Satcom we owned and where it was located, like that was they had a banker do that project, and it was a mix of software development. So we ended up building software for banks, which we still sell today, called Heliostats, which is basically an asset management software. And really, really grateful to the support of the Department of Energy because we had, I think, over the course of the company, we've had nine different awards that have all been non-dilutive financing that helped get the company different milestones, including our entry into insurance, helping build out an original database. You know, some some were obviously more successful than others, but they were very instrumental along the way of building the company in the early days, especially.

Nico Johnson  05:56

What did the Department of Energy support look like? Did you guys sit around and go, you know what? We should go get non dilutive capital from the DOE. Or how did that surface?

Jason Kaminsky  06:05

I think Richard did.

Nico Johnson  06:06

Yeah. When

Jason Kaminsky  06:06

I joined, there was actually already a DOE grant in place. So I think that was his like very very first project was how do I fund this thing? And the original thesis was a project to go build out a data set. And again, we didn't have a data set at the time, so we were sort of going around promising people we would help them understand something and do some benchmarking.

Nico Johnson  06:27

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  06:28

and we needed a first, a first to get to a second to get to a third.

Nico Johnson  06:32

Yeah, and you ultimately, I remember in those early days, the first announcement. I mean, there were some really clever things that I feel like you guys did. I was a part of the Solar 100 when you guys were doing? It was about the same time that I was starting SunCast that you guys started sort of acknowledging the 100-ish people in the industry that were influencing sort of the direction of the industry. That's a clipper marketing tactic, but it was really trying to draw attention to a company that had created this thing called a solar put. Am I getting that right?

Jason Kaminsky  07:00

Solar revenue put right. So we're now in 2016, 2017. I guess,

Nico Johnson  07:05

and this is the first thing that I think KWH really became known for: flag in the sand of like this is what we can do to help developers. Where did that first product idea come from? Like, and as you reflect back on it with the wisdom of having now built and sold a business that that that kind of originated around this early idea. How has your thinking evolved around this idea of a solar put? How did you guys sell it to folks? Like, give me a little context there.

Jason Kaminsky  07:31

Yeah, so we'd spent a few years building a data company. Turns out, still really really hard to sell data products, create data products, sell software. Still a very challenging business I think in our space at least the way that we were sort of looking at it and developing and we had an insight that we knew a lot about how this equipment performs right and one of our Department of Energy projects was developing the first really data validated production model right so we have a great model, and what can we do? We could go compete head to head with the IEs and sell model results, or you know, if you know the risk the best, go take the risk, right? Like go go bet on your own Kool Aid. So that led to the idea of the revenue put, right? We think we know production forecasting the best. We know project finance. That's my background. A few others in the company, and can we go risk transfer or basically insure tail risk in a way that's accretive to the industry? Yeah, and I would say tail risk

Nico Johnson  08:32

being the revenue, the long to the long-term revenue, the

Jason Kaminsky  08:36

long-term downside revenue scenarios. Right. The thesis was if you have a if you have a credit worthy counterparty backstopping revenue forecasting, you should be able to underwrite a high higher level of revenue within the private finance model, and that was really very early days. And I'd say from 2017 was our first deal with Coronal. If you remember those guys,

Nico Johnson  08:56

yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  08:57

up through 2020 we had really steady growth, and that was really the core product of the company-the solar revenue put. So at that point, we put a lot of messaging around production, production forecasting. That was when we launched the solar risk assessment. Some might remember something called the solar generation index. I've heard since that people thought it was self-interested marketing, and then that was coupled with, but now all of our data is basically showing that all of those stats were pretty correct. So we did put out a lot of content marketing thought leadership to bring attention to this idea that hey, there's a real risk here, and you can buy a product, offload it. And yeah,

Nico Johnson  09:37

what were the conversations like in those early days about how to get visibility in the industry that led to things like the Solar 100 and the Solar Risk Assessment Report.

Jason Kaminsky  09:48

I would say we had a very supportive board generally. One of our board members, a guy named Larry Ing, serial entrepreneur, fintech entrepreneur. So he had a. Of really fantastic ideas that we would leverage, right? I think Solar 100 might have come from him. He also said, "Here's the next step of Solar 100. Not to, I don't want to make the next the next conference have everyone have these oversized animals. He's like, go buy stuffed animals, put your logo on it, make them just cute enough that they want to bring them home for their kids, and just big enough they can't fit in a backpack. And then you have all these people walking around RE plus with these oversized animals with your logo on it. So we've got 100 stuffed lions, and we've made a little handkerchief with the KWH logo. So just little, I mean, little insights that honestly I never would have thought of that helped, I think, establish a presence in the industry, and our whole our whole company lifetime up to today, we've had a marketing team of one, and I think we've sort of batted above our weight. I'm pretty I'm pretty proud. I mean, Richard and Sister Sarah started a lot of it, and we've sort of carried it through. But I think we've batted above our weight in some regard of of branding brand awareness. Sorry, building brand awareness, which is ultimately very important as we're talking about sort of acquisitions, right? Brand credibility, brand awareness, thought leadership becomes very important as people are saying, "Okay, we want to get into a space. Who who should we talk to?

Nico Johnson  11:16

So we mentioned that Richard was it was sort of the original sort of genesis of the idea brought you in almost immediately. I think employee number one now now notably co-founder because you and he pretty much developed the idea alongside one another. But when you look back over the course of the decade or so of building this business, describe how your role evolved from helping build the company to ultimately being the person responsible to lead it.

Jason Kaminsky  11:45

So, for most of the company life up until 2022, I was chief operating officer. So, for us, that meant basically keep the house in order, right? I did finance, I did accounting, I did HR, I did obviously operations. Worked through our CTO very closely. Very, I'd say, like strategic operations. I guess I'll call it that. So obviously talked to Richard every single day about what we wanted to do strategically, but was mostly the guy doing the details and making sure that we were not getting out of. I guess it was legal too, right? So making sure that we sort of had our house in order, which ended up, by the way, paying dividends during a very deep diligence process because they're going to check every single contract and flip over every single cabinet that they can find. And then actually the same week, I learned I was having a child. Yeah, I was going to say having a boy, but we didn't know at the time, and that Richard was stepping down, and that I was going to step into the CEO seat. So that all happened basically in tandem, and then over the course, we spent quite a lot of time orchestrating that handoff and the messaging to the team and the market. And then I became CEO, and I was like, I don't know what this job is because I didn't have a COO, so I was still doing my COO job and trying to figure out what a CEO did. And I thought of it like safe hands, like I need someone to come in. I'm having a child in like a month that I can just trust. And I've known this guy Michael Backrode, who's our chief operating officer now, for over a decade, I was like, "He's got it. I can bring him in. I know he'll take care of it. And then my child is two weeks early, so I'm like, "Two weeks of training.

Nico Johnson  13:29

Oh my gosh, he

Jason Kaminsky  13:30

got thrown into the fire. And I think it took me probably six months to actually figure out what a CEO did and get comfortable with that. And Richard's greatest gift to me was he managed to like give me the space to make decisions and not relitigate near like basically any decision I made. He never challenged me on, which I think is probably even harder than being the CEO is being a guy who's started and run a company for nine years and then said, "Here are the keys. I'm not going to get in your way.

Nico Johnson  14:02

What changed in you? Not not the title, the new sort of strategic, sort of higher order thinking. When you think about that six month period, what changed in you that made you ready for the responsibility of CEO? Now, when you look back on

Jason Kaminsky  14:17

it, I'd never considered myself the best at strategy, like I, I thought I was very good at operations, and I knew how to do legal and accounting and finance and all that stuff, HR. And I think it was mostly just getting comfortable that hey, I made a decision, and not everyone's going to agree with it. But I think it's the right decision, and building conviction around that because it was it was not more than a year later, we had to do layoffs of the company, and this was attached to a pivot that ended up being a very important pivot for the company. And we did a lot of planning around it. You know, I tend to operate very transparently, worked super closely with our other executives on how we were going to do it. I think we probably overplanned it. So we had exceedingly high retention, and we built a lot of trust with the team. And everyone, both those that were included in the layoff and not, were exceedingly graceful, like more gracious about it than I ever could have imagined. Terrible day for me, of course, but I think it was just, hey, we got to do this, and I'm the guy that has to make the decision, and just like getting comfortable with that. So, I've never considered

Nico Johnson  15:25

my someone myself someone with imposter syndrome, but maybe it was that. Like, am I am I really the guy that's suited to make this? And it took me some time to get comfortable with. Yeah, I feel I feel okay making these hard decision decisions. Yeah, I think that a lot of folks try to manage by consensus. If you've been in operations long enough, then you get comfortable with making people mad or upset, right? That not everything goes their way, or things have to happen in a certain way or order. And certainly, you probably develop the muscle of sort of managing conflict because you have to manage so many different things, you know. From the CEO role, strategically, you stepped into a business that I think was still uncertain in terms of what is there here worth buying. Can you talk to me about the process of evaluating how to ultimately build something that not just could sell to customers, but they could create what we like to refer to as enterprise value-that thing underlying a business that another company would say is worth acquiring. When you look back, I'm curious if there was one or more strategic shifts that created the most enterprise value. Since now that now post acquisition, you can reflect on.

Jason Kaminsky  16:42

Yeah, this is probably like the most important part of the story, right? So absolutely, right. When we when we pivoted into property insurance, that is ultimately what the company and the the traction that we had that became attractive to an acquirer, and it was a mix of surrounding yourself with the right. Well, I guess it was also surrounding yourself with the right people, right? I was going to sort of bifurcate it, but I was going to say it's sort of like strategic luck with surrounding yourself with the right people. But part of it was very early on. We were so far away from being in a position to even think about exit. But I met a few bankers, right, just to check my own intuition on things. A lot of a lot of it was here's what I think. Does this sort of sound right? And it was okay. If we're going to launch a new product, should we think of international or should we think of domestic? Should we think like I have a hypothesis that acquire is going to want recurring revenue? Is that correct? Yes, of course it's correct. The revenue put was not recurring revenue, you know. Just sort of like here's four or five strategic questions I have about how might a buyer think about the world. The other advice I got from the same board member, again, so far in the future, was create a list of every company that could acquire you and categorize them and think about what's important to them. Right? What are their KPIs that they're going to measure you on, not to design your business around acquisition, because I think that like you always got to build something your clients want and execute on it, but you also can't ignore it, right? You have to sort of know what is going to be attractive at the end of the day to some class of potential counterparty. So that was part of it, is like sort of a map of here's the market that we operate within.

Nico Johnson  18:24

Sure.

Jason Kaminsky  18:24

And then part of it was I got invited to a call. I still remember the call very clearly. This was probably early 2020, after the DE Shaw Midway Hale event happened. It was like an 80 million dollar claim, and then carrier started pulling back coverage, and Eric Heintz of M and T invited me to this call, and it was a bunch of lenders. It was the two lenders consultants, and they all were basically on the phone saying, "We don't understand insurance. We're finance people. We don't get insurance, but this is the first time insurance is leading to a top credit issue. Like our credit officers are concerned that we're not getting adequate limits, and that we could lose our loan if something happens, and that was like an aha moment. Like, hey, there's a pain point here. We know I got the call because it was like you guys know insurance and you know renewables, so maybe there's something here for you to learn. And that set out on a journey of channel checking. I remember I called I called Jenya, who's been on your podcast, and I was like, Jenya, what do you know about claims? You're a technical expert here, and consistently, the feedback I heard was the market at the time, again we're in 2020, had really priced to prior losses, and there were not a lot of prior losses, and there was a shock event, this big hail of loss, and that there was an opportunity to do something different, right? And to do something data driven. And oh, by the way, we are sitting on a pile of data. So that ultimately led to the pivot that we made in 2023. That led to the the rip I referred to earlier. But it was, I think it was, it was, it was. Build surrounding yourself with people that know a lot about the market and are going to be sort of thinking through both of those lenses, right? What what do our customers need? Which is I'll call it the lender conversation, but then also is it aligned with what ultimately might be valuable to someone down the road if we execute on it? But we got to take a big bet, right? I mean, we hired underwriters. We had to go acquire new data sets. We hired a reinsurance broker to go raise capacity because to write insurance you need a balance sheet, right? So we had to go through a whole process to do that. That call is 2020. We launched the business 2023, so it was not through the weary to say we're gonna take a big swing at this, yeah. But it ultimately ended up being the right bet in the end. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  20:46

for for context for folks, De Shaw Midway Solar is a project down in Texas that suffered a catastrophic hail event in the fall of 2019. As I recall, it was almost a half a million modules lost. It was close to 100 million. It was like it was definitely over over. I think was I think

Jason Kaminsky  21:04

I think the claim was high 70s,

Nico Johnson  21:06

high 70s. Yeah, but that

Jason Kaminsky  21:08

was that was like the entire year is a premium for renewables. Like it was a massive number.

Nico Johnson  21:14

Yeah, exactly for renewables writ large, like for the industry. So yeah, so from an actuarial perspective, a catastrophic event in insurance terms. What convinced you specifically that property insurance represented? I'm going to call it the future of the company for KWA Analytics, such that you would you would incubate it as an idea for three years, and maybe categorize for me or like qualify. What does it mean to move in the direction of property insurance? Like, what are you moving from and towards?

Jason Kaminsky  21:43

We had a category, and I think there's an element of entrepreneurship, which is I'm going to do something brand spanking new, and it's going to be awesome, right? And the solar revenue put Munich Re had had done it in a slightly different way,

Nico Johnson  21:59

right?

Jason Kaminsky  22:00

But it was brand spanking new, right? The way we sold it was brand spanking new. the The way that we packaged it up was exciting. Property insurance, every single project bought, you could sort of think it was maybe boring, but it had some of those things that are are good from an operator perspective. It had recurring revenue. It had an existing client base. It had a need, a compliance need, because every project has to purchase it for their lenders. It was stickier, right? Lower margin. You're selling it through brokers, right? The revenue put we sold ourselves, so lower margin, but higher TAM, higher growth. Called that, and of course it was incremental, right? So we had this thesis. We checked the market. The other very important event that we did is we had to say, okay, can we can we get data to underwrite this? Right, we know everything about these assets and how they operate and where they're located. We know anything about their losses, right?

Nico Johnson  22:53

Right.

Jason Kaminsky  22:53

So I had an incredibly talented chief of staff. This guy named Hao Shen, and we sent him to a conference and we said, How this is sort of in the creative marketing bucket. We said we want to put out a. We need this data, and b. I think we linked it into some sort of report or some sort of benchmark. We basically said, go talk to all of these stakeholders, and there's no harm for them to share their lost data. It's not going to be at their detriment, but we could really use it to help bring new capacity to market. And he like didn't even register. He sat in the lobby for like three days and talked to a bunch of people. And he came back. He's like, "Hey, I got all this data. Here you go. So he was incredible. You know, we leaned on our investors. We had some strategic investors that owned assets that we leaned on, and we basically cobbled together enough where we could start drawing correlations to say, "Okay, we we think we can use the data in a very compelling way. Like we can see that there's certain things that lead to losses and certain things that don't lead to losses. So that gave us the conviction then to go through the next step, which is okay. How do we hire someone to help us get the capacity to tell our story? But I think we at that point we felt like okay, this thing could work. Now we got to go build the machine to make it work.

Nico Johnson  24:05

The guy you mentioned, his name was Hal, right?

Jason Kaminsky  24:07

Hal Shen, correct?

Nico Johnson  24:09

Yeah, I'm pretty sure, if memory serves, he was the first KWH Analytics person to come on the show. I think it was talking. He was talking at the time about the solar risk assessment. If I had to guess, probably,

Jason Kaminsky  24:20

probably. Yeah, he's a great, great dude.

Nico Johnson  24:23

Yeah, under I don't know if he was chief of staff at the time. I feel I feel like he was just an he was an analyst at the business. I can't recall the the detail, but I do remember being very impressed by this guy Hal.

Jason Kaminsky  24:35

Yeah, so he he went to the hotel. He sat in the lobby. He came back. He said, "Hey, I got you some data. So that I mean that led us to say, okay, well, we can we have a data set, we can buy a natural catastrophe model, we have engineers that know how to process and analyze information. The next step was okay, we had to hire right, we had to bring in people that actually knew insurance underwriting because we didn't have that skill set, yeah, and then we had to pack. Up and market it essentially. So a reinsurance broker is essentially an investment banker for reinsurance. They package it up, they tell your story, they help you raise capacity, and that process just always takes longer than you want it to, right? So I think we were hoping to be in the market mid 22, yeah, and we ultimately got in the market early 23, but but we knew but we knew, probably in late '22, that we needed to pivot the business. We just didn't

Nico Johnson  25:28

do it. What sign said "pivot the business" Like sales going down. What like what were the real?

Jason Kaminsky  25:34

Yeah, it was just very very lumpy revenue from the revenue put. Sink or swim, right? It's elephant hunting, so it's very hard to plan your year and to give your board conviction on your forecast. The interest rate environment had changed, so it made the value prop around that product slightly different. And just like the revenue quality of the property business, we knew was better, and that there was still a market need for it. And we had conviction that we could sell it, but we couldn't we couldn't pivot into it until the business was launched, right? So,

Nico Johnson  26:04

how long into launching the product before you knew this is working? Before you could fundamentally go back to the board and say, "Guys, like thank you for your trust. This is working. A

Jason Kaminsky  26:14

couple months, then we started right away.

Nico Johnson  26:16

That was fast.

Jason Kaminsky  26:17

Well, well, I'll say we launched our first deal was March of 2023, and summer 23 is when we made the hard pivot. So I feel like we had the conviction pretty quickly, but of course it was it was still a strategic bet, right? I mean, yeah, you don't know a whole lot in three months, but but we knew we could sell it. We knew brokers would trust us. We knew what did you we had to stop

Nico Johnson  26:42

to make that pivot in the business? Would you have to stop doing, or even stop believing about KWH?

Jason Kaminsky  26:48

The hardest thing about it was probably trying to get people to stop doing new things and like like chasing new ideas and saying we just we just got to execute right. Like building a muscle of saying no was probably the most important muscle to build.

Nico Johnson  27:03

What's something interesting, even like intriguing, that you had to say no to that you remember?

Jason Kaminsky  27:10

I mean, people would knock on our door and say, "Can we do revenue put deals? And we would say, "No, we're pausing that for the moment. We got to go build this other business. And that was hard, right? But but fortunately, we had an incredibly talented head of business development, a guy named Jeff Lev, who's still with us, and he raised his hand to go help build the the property business. So we needed him focused on that business. We had to execute on it, but that sort of meant he was, you know, playing double duty, right? And we needed all of his bandwidth and focus going into building this new business for us, so so we had to tell the team we're not we're not doing this right now. Sorry, guys, we got to put on hold. That that changed after we had a year under our belt, and we felt like we um had a business that had a little bit more of a machine around it. But sure, that was hard. That was for sure hard. That's a big culture change.

Nico Johnson  27:57

Is there anything that surprised you? Maybe the way the team showed up, maybe customer or market reaction, or something internally to you about leading the company through that that shift, that process.

Jason Kaminsky  28:12

I'm very grateful to the team. I alluded to this earlier. I think I was most surprised that people just sort of went with the flow. Like we, like to me, we were doing. We, we, I mean, we shrank by a quarter, right? Maybe slightly more than that. We changed our whole business line, and I think we had 100% retention for like 18 months. And people were not freaking out about it, they weren't. They were not as. I guess they. They. I don't know. They just sort of went went along with it, and maybe that means that we did a good job explaining to them why we're doing it, and maybe they saw the same things that I was doing. But I think I was most surprised about that because if I go back to like, is this the right strategic decision? You know, you're sort of making a huge decision for the company,

Nico Johnson  29:04

right?

Jason Kaminsky  29:04

They had no reason to believe me, right? We're three months into this, and they their friends just got laid off. Like that sucks. So I think I was most impressed. So that plus, I guess, if I want to couple it, I saw some very early emails of brokers going back and forth. This is now early 2023, and they were like, "Oh, this is KWH. Like they're quoting this. They're high quality, and we should go with it. And I was like, "We had zero brand in property insurance at the time,

Nico Johnson  29:31

right?

Jason Kaminsky  29:31

But our brand in revenue put and just sort of the solar market was able to carry over to this new distribution. We're brokers. I was I was surprised by that. I didn't think that we would sort of get as much credibility early on.

Nico Johnson  29:45

What do you think that

Jason Kaminsky  29:46

would carry? Are there any from Are there any

Nico Johnson  29:48

artifacts of the business from the brand building side that you think carried more weight, perhaps than they ought to, or that you than you expected? Things that, from a content marketing perspective, or a visibility perspective, or activities you did in biz dev that that were that allowed you to have like that outsized brand visibility.

Jason Kaminsky  30:11

Yeah, so I think this, I think the solar risk assessment, which is sort of an objective view of the market, turns out Beasley has a similar one. They call it risk and resilience, but it's how do we take objective lenses? There's on energy transformation, and put a wrapper around it. And I, I know I was shocked though that brokers who we had not sold through in the past were aware of who we were and you know willing to give us a flyer on it. I mean, it was also it was also a tough market at that point, right? Any capacity was good capacity, so that helped. We certainly went went to a spot of need.

Nico Johnson  30:44

How do you think about keeping everyone on the team rowing in the same direction over those final years? And we can start to talk about the acquisition and the time of sort of pre and and like pre acquisition discussion and then during acquisition discussion. But how, as a leader, do you think about keeping everyone in sort of in sync? The

Jason Kaminsky  31:04

interesting feedback I got. So, I'll say through I kept in touch with bankers throughout that period. Right, I probably picked up my conversations with them in the last 24 months. Call it. But the thing that I heard from them, which I'll use to answer your question, is they're like, "There's so few entrepreneurs not shocked by this that say they're going to do something and then they do it. Yeah, right. Just like you, like you put out a number and you hit the number. You said you were going to get cover holder status and you got cover holder status, which is avoids a London avoids a London thing. So, okay. So how do we get team alignment on that is, I mean, a simple stuff, right? You have OKRs, so we do a semiannual OKR process, objectives and key results. We talk about what's important. We're doing one-on-ones all the time. We have a leadership team meeting once a month. I mean, there's just things that you do to create that alignment.

Nico Johnson  31:59

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  31:59

and you got to be really consistent on it, right? And you got to say the same thing 456, times. I could still be better at that, like painting a vision 456, times. What are we doing here? What's our goal? And obviously, the numerical output is what most investors care about. Most of the team cares about: Are we making a difference, right? So linking, especially in our industry, like linking the impact on the industry, I'll call it the mission-driven element of it, with yeah, this is also a good economic business for us and for for call it a venture acquirer as part of the art. I don't know. I mean, it's just it's it's knowing when to say no, right? It's sort of saying you're going to do something and then making your decisions around that framework.

Nico Johnson  32:46

How did the acquisition ultimately surface as the right next step? Did someone? Was there an inbound? Did you guys decide let's? It's time to run through a process.

Jason Kaminsky  32:58

So I had never done fundraising before, right? Richard had always done fundraising in the past, and I remember actually in my 360 process, we always have like, "What's your development goal? And I was like, "I'm not sure I can handle being said no to like 99.99% of the time. Actually, a lot easier than I expected because usually the no is like, "That's not quite. They like put a lot of sugar on it, so I was okay with those. But like most companies, right, we had cap table and some financing that necessitated us to figure out a solution, right? So I sort of knew it was. I mean, I knew it was coming. Not I sort of knew. I knew it was coming. The question was, what is the right capital solution? Right? Is it bringing on more capital? Is it exiting the company? Of course, companies are bought, not sold, right? So, continuing to execute through that period and finding a partner that sees value in what you're doing. So, yeah, we interviewed bankers. In the end, we did not end up using one, but they came to the board. They presented, you know, how it could work. I going back to when I put together that original list that I referred to. Like I was trying to network with, you know, every company on the list.

Nico Johnson  34:14

Yeah. For

Jason Kaminsky  34:15

us, they would be reinsurance partners, right? So they would be insurance or reinsurance partners for our core business.

Nico Johnson  34:20

Yep.

Jason Kaminsky  34:20

Because they're all insurance companies, but also then would just try to develop relationships there. So it was a mix, right? It was a mix of I'm talking to a bunch of investors. They're sending you referrals. We're sort of in the market all the time, raising capacity, right? So insurance capacity, and then making sure that we're executing and putting out aggressive but reasonable targets that we can hit and write high quality business.

Nico Johnson  34:47

You mentioned having some non dilutive capital from the DOE. Did you guys also raise outside capital to keep the company going?

Jason Kaminsky  34:55

We had yeah. So there was venture in 2016, and then a bridge. In 2020, and then a second round of financing in 2021. So yeah, so we did have for sure capital. You mind giving me at least a

Nico Johnson  35:06

ballpark, like how much money it took to get the business to exit?

Jason Kaminsky  35:10

Yeah, so it was 11 million of venture total across those two rounds, and then the 2021 round was 20 million. Structure as a convertible note, so those investors were really supportive of us. But at some point, it's always clear to clear to us they were really more of a lender than an equity investor. So that in many ways helps inform. Right, you sort of look at your cap table. Sort of helps inform what can I do here to help satisfy the needs of my investors?

Nico Johnson  35:43

Was that like a five-year note? So 2021 to 2026, that was coming due in 2026.

Jason Kaminsky  35:49

Yeah, without getting into all the nitty-I understand that. Yeah, public. I would say it was.

Nico Johnson  35:56

I'm just curious, like the time pressure. It was. It was a

Jason Kaminsky  35:57

time box. It was a time box note, but we had to like we did extend it a few times, right? So part of part of my job, one of my most important jobs, was keeping my board informed and happy with what we were doing, because we need to ask for favors for things, right? Like

Nico Johnson  36:14

yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  36:14

like anything, right? Your board is a very important stakeholder here,

Nico Johnson  36:17

yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  36:18

Um, so how we managed our board, right? I mean, we'd have quarterly meetings. I'd have the key executives come and present their business. We would like we would operate with a full level of transparency to them. Here's what's going well. Here's what's not.

Nico Johnson  36:30

Yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  36:30

Um. Hey, we had we had this giant loss in our book. Like, I'm calling you on day one, so you know, so that's not a surprise. Um, because ultimately we're gonna need their help to get this thing through, right? That's right. And with the lender, it was it was really the duration of the note was where they were most helpful.

Nico Johnson  36:47

So you ended up not using a banker. Like, how did ultimately the acquisition target, the party that you finally sealed a deal with, come to light?

Jason Kaminsky  36:58

I had met them through another contact that I sort of alluded to earlier, and I had again going back to my board, I'd basically put in forth a timeline that said if one of the conversations I have ends up being one that we all like, let's pursue it.

Nico Johnson  37:17

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  37:17

and if that doesn't happen by a certain date, let's go with the banker, and fortunately, we're able to get into exclusivity by that date.

Nico Johnson  37:25

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  37:25

like I do think that bankers add a lot of value. So you went out

Nico Johnson  37:29

and started socializing. We are considering, you know, a different capital strategy. We're looking to see if there's anyone who might find this asset valuable enough to bring in house,

Jason Kaminsky  37:42

correct?

Nico Johnson  37:42

Okay. Was that all with insurance companies, like competitors to Beasley consume? Presumably,

Jason Kaminsky  37:47

in my list of candidates, it was the most likely outcome. But Beasley was no. I mean, an insurance company was okay.

Nico Johnson  37:55

Sure, yeah, that class. But we

Jason Kaminsky  37:56

spoke to everyone. We kissed a lot of frogs, right? I mean, we talked to we talked to growth investors. We talked to venture. We talked to got it. Like recapping the note, we. I mean, I did turn over basically every rock.

Nico Johnson  38:08

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  38:08

and it was that was disorienting, right? As a guy who had never done capital raising, to say there's 20 ways you could structure this deal, right? And a lot of my own effort, sort of the flip side of hearing no 99% of the time is I had to say no a lot right like yeah this this class of this class of investor a pure venture investor they're not cool with venture like with not with convertible note on the balance sheet so like I sort of know I talked to 10 of them and I'm like I sort of know they're not the right fit for what we need and I go talk to this cost investor and be like, "Okay, that could work or could not work. So I was sort of doing my own tiering in parallel to say, "I think these are the solution sets that could that could work for us.

Nico Johnson  38:54

I wonder if if you could have done it again, would you have taken the convertible as a debt instrument, knowing now who it potentially shut out of the sort of kept out of the running, so to speak. Like, did anything occur, and you were like, "Oh crap! If I didn't have this debt instrument, I would actually be in a better position, such that you wouldn't do it again.

Jason Kaminsky  39:14

It's a hard question to answer. What I would say is, if you go back to 2021 valuations at that point were much higher than they are now, right? Especially in like if you look at insurance multiples or you look at clean tech multiples. So you know the devil you know or the devil you don't. What we did not have was a crazy valuation that we had to try to stretch our way into.

Nico Johnson  39:39

Wow. Yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  39:40

So in in some ways, it was helpful, right? Because I sort of knew here's here's the solution I need to solve for. You know, I know that there's other entrepreneurs. This isn't us that say we just want the vanity valuation and we're willing to give away a lot of prep for it or sort of all these economic terms for it. I'm grateful I was. Not in that situation of like you know we gotta now it's all finance right so you can structure the deal the end of the day the economics could feel similar but I don't think it was the wrong decision for us to take that money back in 2021 I mean it was certainly it was certainly the capital we needed to to get to the milestones we needed as a business, right? And we had the option to take less at that point in time, and we said, actually, we think a little bit more will help us get to the milestones that we need. And

Nico Johnson  40:30

you were right.

Jason Kaminsky  40:32

I mean, I guess I mean for the story that existed, yeah, it was the amount of money we needed, right? I mean, more more would have given us more track record. Less we would have had to figure out a solution earlier,

Nico Johnson  40:42

right?

Jason Kaminsky  40:43

But yeah, I think we had we ended up building the business. I'd say to hit those milestones for the capital that we had.

Nico Johnson  40:51

So at some point, you socialize the idea with a bunch of potential suitors, and someone from Beasley shows interest. Can you talk to me about being in a position as a CEO where now it looks like this thing that you've maybe as an entrepreneur sort of longed for or dreamed might be possible is imminent? It's it's sort of in the it's it's in the line of sight. Talk to me about the conversation internally. How transparent can you be during that process? Not with your stakeholders, but with your team.

Jason Kaminsky  41:28

Yeah, I think the internal management is probably more interesting and more appropriate per podcast. I would say. Yes. You know, I think the first convers. There's a few conversations need to have. Right. The first conversation starts with the executive team of like, what do we all want? Right? Are we are we gonna do we want to sign up for another three to five years of being entrepreneurs and building a business independently and having the freedom of that, or how do we feel about being part of any other company? Right? Call it call it any company, and you. you know maybe you quote unquote leave some money on the table, but you have the stability of a larger company, right? And the other lens is okay. What do they want it like? Why why are they interested in the business, right? Do they want to keep the people? Do they want to keep the mission? I think that one of the things that surprised me. I'm fast forwarding a little bit,

Nico Johnson  42:20

yeah. Is

Jason Kaminsky  42:21

that for the team when they hear we're being acquired? A lot of people hear we're going to do layoffs, and I did not. I greatly under I greatly underappreciated that, but that is the mindset I think of a lot of like the the fact pattern, right? Someone in the company said my brother in law's company was acquired. They laid off half the people, right? And unfortunately, a lot of acquisitions I think go like that, right? It's how do we juicy BitDAW and get shared services and sort of do all this stuff. So that was important to us, right? They value the team, they value our expertise, yeah, they like what we're doing in the market. So how transparent was I? I mean, people knew I was capital raising, and I kind of left it at that, right? I mean, sort of. There's sort of a pyramid, right? So the executive team knew everything, right? I was talking to them about everything every day. The leadership team knew more, but probably shades of gray, less. How big is the team?

Nico Johnson  43:19

Just for context, for folks who are

Jason Kaminsky  43:21

3030 ish, call it

Nico Johnson  43:23

30 ish. So somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of like three to five people were in the know, and the rest were sort of in the dark.

Jason Kaminsky  43:29

There's a lot of sausage making, right? Yeah. So you don't want to make everyone nervous to give them every twist and turn along the way, and any deal could die at any time for any reason.

Nico Johnson  43:39

Oh, they die. They can die at the very signing table,

Jason Kaminsky  43:41

so I wanted to take that burden away from the team and say, like, we're working on it. Things are looking okay, and we'll let you know more when we know more. And again, we were given the grace. I'm so grateful to the team to say, okay, great, we're going to keep our heads down and execute and try to hit our our like I I was consistent with them. The best thing you could do to help this process is execute on our targets. Like that is what we need right now to help make my job easier. And people took that to heart, right? I mean, that is nothing works unless you're executing. Like my job is so much easier when you're executing.

Nico Johnson  44:20

Can you distinguish the job of a board member in that execution process of getting to a completion of an acquisition? Like you've distinguished sort of how the executive team participated, but the board you have independent board members. Some probably played a more constructive role; others were probably more passive. Talk a bit about that-that back and forth for you. I imagine that took a lot of your time as well. Managing board expectations, getting feedback from them, like teaching teaching yourself through them and others how this is supposed to work.

Jason Kaminsky  44:53

I tend to bias towards transparency and just being direct about what's going well and what's not. And I had a few stakeholders I had to manage, right? I had investors, right? Some of some of which had board representation. I had a lender who had board who sort of knew the board and was engaged at that level. Certainly, Richard, as a founder, right, important stakeholder, gave me gave me a long leash to go make a bunch of decisions, but I need to make sure he he was sort of along for the ride for everything, and then the team, right? Myself and the team, I guess, but the team very important stakeholder. So yeah, I had to bring them along for the journey, right? To say here's what I think could happen, here's why I think we should make the decision that we're going to make. I had brought in as well an outside advisor that had been through like another serial entrepreneur that had been through a few exits, just to be like, "Hey, I'm talking to these four, these however many strategics, right? Or these however many growth investors. Here's what I'm hearing. How does that land on you? Like, does this response make sense? Like, what what do I need in a term sheet before I sign it? You know, sort of just I did not have the professional advice of a banker,

Nico Johnson  46:07

right?

Jason Kaminsky  46:07

But I did not have any experience myself doing this, so I leaned heavily on I'd say Larry, my entrepreneur on the board, and a few outside advisors. I was just like, here's what here's what I'm hearing. That makes sense too.

Nico Johnson  46:23

I'm curious as an entrepreneur thinking about myself and others who are listening to this. Like, if I want to bring on an outside advisor to help me go through an acquisition, am I promising them some like some sort of upside? Do you get advisors who are just like, "Hey, I'll meet you for coffee and talk you through this" Like, how does that work?

Jason Kaminsky  46:40

I don't know. I think it's pretty, pretty reasonable if you're asking anyone for any material amount of their time to give them options in the business, right? So

Nico Johnson  46:48

every one of the company has options.

Jason Kaminsky  46:50

Every one of the company has options, right? Yeah. Unless unless it was pre Series A when you get when you get stock, but like you know point 0001 par. Every one of the company gets options, right? So everyone participates in a successful outcome.

Nico Johnson  47:04

Yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  47:05

All of our board, our independent board, get options. The advisors get options. I think it's a way to a compensate them for their time. Like they are giving you real valuable feedback and helping you build real value in the business. And yeah, like I want them to win. So you have to go.

Nico Johnson  47:22

You have to go to the board then and say, "Hey, I've got advisor A. I want to bring them on to help us through this. And then I want like an option pool. Do you create an option pool? Who who gets diluted when that option pool is created?

Jason Kaminsky  47:36

Typically, at key points in the business, most typically out of financing, you create an option pool, and it's for employees. Or I mean, we're talking a very small portion of the pool would be for advisors, but you don't you don't bring on a ton of advisors, right? I mean, you only bring them on if you know what they're there for, where they're going to help you.

Nico Johnson  47:55

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  47:55

you know what is that? What

Nico Johnson  47:57

is that the kind of thing that like if you don't use it, then it's accretive to everyone else on the cap table, right? Like you set it aside, and then if you don't end up bringing an advisor on, then it just gets the it gets back goes back to the leadership.

Jason Kaminsky  48:08

Yeah, but it's but it's like an employee, right? the The bet you're making is they're going to add more value to the business than the value. 100% I'm just trying to ask the mechanics

Nico Johnson  48:17

for folks folks who mechanic

Jason Kaminsky  48:18

mechanically for us at least, we had an option pool, and the board has to approve every option grant. So I go to them and say either we're hiring these people, right? That's in our sort of budget plan, so they know that those hires are coming, or hey, I want to bring on this individual as an advisor, right? And like going back three or four years, it was Matthias Weber, the former chief underwriting officer, Swiss Re, like incredible executive, knows insurance and reinsurance structures, like super helpful for us. John Peters, the chief insurance officer at Lemonade, right? Like a insuretech company that grew. And John was a

Nico Johnson  48:59

personal advisor.

Jason Kaminsky  49:01

Yeah, that's amazing. Talk to John all the time. You know, Mike Miskowski, he's a serial entrepreneur in solar, right? Super, been through multiple exits.

Nico Johnson  49:09

Yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  49:09

So everyone had a reason we were working with them, and yeah, we would think of them as you know, I'd set up a monthly cadence with them or sort of an ad hoc call, and it was great, and I learned so much from them, and I'm incredibly grateful that they would spend time with us.

Nico Johnson  49:25

I love that. I had I had this conversation. I won't mention the entrepreneur specifically that was brought on as advisor, but I had this conversation with Paul Grana when Folsom sold to Aurora, and a friend of mine had been an advisor, and I reached out to him and I was like, "Hey, what was it like being an advisor? He was like, "To be honest, like I had like one phone call with Paul, and I talked to Paul, and Paul's like, 'Yeah, but that one phone call was worth X. Like, yeah, that makes total sense, right? I think, I think, I think some people."

Jason Kaminsky  50:00

Do it. I'm very much out of line because I'm speculating, right? Yeah. But like, I want their name on the website. Well, there you go. And I question the value of that, right? Like, no acquirer is like, oh, you're surrounding yourself with these people. That's fantastic. It's all in their experience and how much they're able to help and give you insight because honestly, like wasn't really their network. It wasn't really their. They weren't on calls with any of the counterparties. They didn't present to the board. It was all just what kind of advice and insight can you give the executive team to help us make better decisions? Okay,

Nico Johnson  50:36

so I have two questions now specifically to this, the and not the board but the outside advisors piece, were there moments where they gave you an entirely new way of thinking or like sharpened instincts? Like, can you talk about specific things where you're like, you don't have to give examples, but where you can reflect back and go, oh yeah, actually, like that materially helped us in the exit, or was it simply like a for you? Almost, I'm not gonna. I don't want to be handsy here, but like a safety blanket. Like I knew that I was making the right choices because I had these people around me validating the decisions. A

Jason Kaminsky  51:12

lot, a lot of it was a safety blanket, especially, especially like, hey, I just had this call. How should I think about it? Sure, because I think what I learned is I could trust my intuition, which is a nice thing to learn.

Nico Johnson  51:24

It is.

Jason Kaminsky  51:25

There for sure, though, were things where I'm like, "Hey, I can't think of a specific example right now, but hey, this thing happened not about the acquisition, just like about the business, right? Like, hey, whatever. We heard this from a carrier. This feels either really, really good or really, really bad,

Nico Johnson  51:42

right?

Jason Kaminsky  51:43

Or broke or whatever. Like, how should like is that the right feeling to have? And sometimes they'd be like, "No, that's totally normal. Like, don't freak out about it. Like, that's just the way the world works, and move on, and don't don't worry about things. So that's good.

Nico Johnson  51:54

Less navel gazing. Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  51:56

yeah, but they have. I mean, if you bring in people with experience, that's just matter. They say they say, "I've seen this 100 times, and sometimes a carrier will do that and has nothing to do with you. That that's really really helpful insight, right? Also

Nico Johnson  52:10

helps you pick your battles. Honestly, like yeah, you should like focus on this other thing, not that. Like that's normal. You're not going to change that that kind of thing. Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  52:20

exactly right. So it's it's if it's higher level, it's higher level insight than you have when you're like in the trenches trying to execute. Frankly,

Nico Johnson  52:30

okay. The other question is if another founder or executive listening wants to prepare for this kind of eventual acquisition years or quarters before the acquisition presents itself. What kind of advisors should you start building relationships with? Like, how do you think about digging that well before you need the water?

Jason Kaminsky  52:48

I said this about advisors. It's the same thing about marketing, Nico, which I know you've been asking about. Is everything you do should have a reason associated with it, right? So it shouldn't just be an advisor because you want an advisor. It should be an advisor because you need expert for us. We need expertise in insurance, right? We are a bunch of renewable energy folks. We didn't know how to do that. You know, we have an empty seat on the board. So who do we want? Like, I think someone gave me the advice: it's not who you want on a good day. It's who you want to talk to when everything is going wrong, and we'll help stand by your side and get you through it, right? It's it's yes, certainly need an option pool. You also need to like find your way to them, right? So yes, having a network that gets you to the people that you want and that you can ask for that you can ask for help to say, hey, I need an advisor to help me with X, Y, Z. Who do you know?

Nico Johnson  53:41

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  53:42

I think it's mostly just like being authentic to yourself and being authentic for your vision, and don't like no one wants to. I don't think many people want to be an advisor for the sake of being an advisor. Like they want to use their their most of these people have done well themselves and they want to make sure that they are actually being helpful to the business,

Nico Johnson  54:01

right?

Jason Kaminsky  54:01

Right. I don't think most people are into vanity advisor roles.

Nico Johnson  54:05

Yeah, not that big of a check.

Jason Kaminsky  54:07

Well, I just mean like, yeah, they're at the point in their career where they want to be helpful to an entrepreneur building a business. So that's right. If you have a good reason you need them, then the right person will find it attractive to be supportive of you.

Nico Johnson  54:19

And most of the people that you named, I know some of them are not. They're not trying to add more work to their plate. They've been very successful, and they're trying to add value to to their network as much as possible, or spend time with their family.

Jason Kaminsky  54:36

Usually, they're interested in your business and they want to see it be successful. That's right, and and that is why they do it. So again, I come back to like, what is okay? You have a problem, or you have an initiative. Do you have the expertise internally to figure it out? If the answer is yes, you might not need an advisor. The answer is no. Hey, we're getting into insurance, and we don't know anything about insurance. That's a good. Opportunity to go find an advisor to say, what don't I know? Who should I hire? What kinds of things? What? How long will this take? How much is it going to cost? And that will be more rewarding for both parties. I think

Nico Johnson  55:11

I would love to have been a fly on the wall with you and the and the guy from Lemonade because that's a completely different animal that he built. Wow! Now that you've lived through this chapter, what do you understand about building a company that maybe you couldn't have appreciated five years ago?

Jason Kaminsky  55:28

I mean, they're hard to build, right? There's a lot of stressful nights building them. Collateral damage. Yeah, but I do think I do think that they can be very rewarding, right? Like we've been fortunate to have an incredible team, and they work really well together, and we've had really good, solid retention for a long time. And people like working here, right? Like they like. I think to me, it's maybe the most rewarding is to build a company where people people like showing up and working for a greater goal, right? It's like not just people show up to work and they clock out because it's time to clock out. I mean, I'm sure some people do that, but like that, you can build a company where people are excited about the projects is nice to see, right? And and I think we're unique, all of us in the climate space, to say most people care about what you're doing, right? They wake up in the morning because they want to make a difference on the world. Most industries are not like that, so we're lucky in that regard. I don't know; they're really hard, Nico, and like deals are incredibly stressful. I slept the worst I've ever slept during the course of getting a deal done. So, like, God, you know, it's not for the weary, but it's incredible. You can you can like look. We we had no business showing up to the property insurance segment and growing a really solid business here against some of the biggest companies in the world, right? And just like what you're able to accomplish with a really intentional, motivated group of folks, you can really punch above your weight, and it's really cool to see. Has your definition of success changed? I, I'm going to say I don't think so. I mean, there's the classical definition of success, which is like, did you make money, right? And then there's the entrepreneurial definition definition of success, which is like, are you making an impact? And and I guess, are you making money? But like, I don't know. In our capitalist society, are you making money is also akin to like, are you are you selling something that people want? Are you having a positive impact? I think we've always approached our business as we want to grow the business, but we also want to share what we know and give feedback to our clients and be a good partner to our brokers because we want to build better infrastructure as an industry. We want to build more resilient infrastructure, higher quality. Like we want to share our knowledge with the world because it's ultimately going to be better for the solar industry. And that sort of checks both of those boxes, right? Like if you're if you're straight with people, they'll be straight with you. So I don't think my definition has changed. I guess I don't know. Try to do right by people, and they'll do right by you. Maybe that's simplistic and of the simplistic view of the world.

Nico Johnson  58:27

So, not this year or any time in the next three to five years, because you're comfortable with the future you've created for yourself. But in the eventuality that you might someday start another company, is there anything that you will do differently on day one, the the

Jason Kaminsky  58:41

Department of Energy grants were a blessing, mostly a blessing, but it took KWH a long time to get to real revenue as a business. And I think if I were to do it again, it would be how do we how do we get to revenue and sort of build in quality revenue earlier in the company lifecycle, those DOE grants are obviously they can change with the administration, and they take a lot of resources. But that was that probably would be the biggest change I would like. We had it. We had a great outcome, but it took 11 years and you know three pivots and a lot of capital to get here, and I guess I would probably focus on like customer revenue earlier.

Nico Johnson  59:27

I want to make sure I'm hearing what you're saying. Okay, that perhaps perhaps the research aspect of the business funded through non dilutive capital, which which sounded like a good idea, and indeed helped build the early team and early sort of shots that were taken, was perhaps a distraction from the real product creation. It's a little bit of the paradox of KWH, right? Is.

Jason Kaminsky  1:00:00

We couldn't have done any of this without the data sets that we had. That's right, and that data sets we built were a lot of it was non-revenue generating.

Nico Johnson  1:00:13

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  1:00:13

some of it was revenue generating, but most of it was not. So you sort of have this riddle, right? Of like, I say on the one hand, getting revenue earlier would have made life more comfortable because you're not as reliant on like this treadmill of grant making and sort of meeting government deliverables. But also, it would have been hard. Like we were, I guess, until our acquisition, the only independent company writing renewable energy property insurance, right? So, like the thrush, the bar we had to clear to enter that market. I talk about the pivot and like how great it was. The bar we had to clear was really, really, really, really high, right? Other companies tried and they weren't able to do it because they didn't have sort of a differentiator. So, I don't know. I just think if I did it again personally, I would, I would like the revenue is proof that you're building something valuable for the market. For KWH, though, it seemed to work, right? Like we couldn't have gotten to where we were had we not had the the funding.

Nico Johnson  1:01:11

Jason, acquisitions often get remembered for the announcement. The companies there are really built and ultimately acquired, however, on 1000s of decisions that nobody outside the business ever sees. For the last hour, you've pulled back the veil a little bit and given us some insight into what it takes to build and sell a business. I'm grateful for that. I want to know as we wrap here, what's one thing when you think about everything that led to the outcome that you are now able to appreciate, enjoy, tell everyone about? Is there a decision or a habit or a principle that turned out to be more meaningful? It mattered more for you than you realized going through this process.

Jason Kaminsky  1:01:51

I know this is going to maybe sound too simplistic, but I think just being honest and direct and telling people what you're going to do and then doing it goes so far, and there's like a tendency to overpromise, and there's a tendency to say we're gonna be the biggest, baddest company in the world. But with customers, with investors, with your board, just like here's what we're gonna do, here's why we didn't do that, right? Like we changed our decision, or something went wrong, and generally people can understand that. Is I think the biggest, the biggest thing you can lose is trust, and it's so easy to lose trust. So yeah,

Nico Johnson  1:02:31

is that because though? Is your answer that because at the end of the day, the conversations you've had with folks at Beasley are we were watching, and we saw you do what you said you were going to do, and that's why we want this business.

Jason Kaminsky  1:02:45

No, not at all. I think it's because any entrepreneur gets to the point by having the support of their board, right? And you go tell your board that by getting the support of their customers, things go wrong. You got to be able to go to a customer and say, "Hey, we screwed up. Here's why. With your insurance partners, right? Like we did have, we've had losses as an underwriter, and you get the grace if you're straight with people, and you say, "Here's why it happened. Here's how we're addressing it.

Nico Johnson  1:03:12

Yeah,

Jason Kaminsky  1:03:12

you know, and like it's not that we screwed up. It says something bad happened, and we're taking care of it. And I just think all all of those decisions go to building trust as a leadership team, as an executive, as an individual, as a company, and that leads to the outcomes that you want. Because the rule one, two, and three is you got to execute, and those are the things that allow you to execute. The acquisition is just an outcome that it's like not the. It's the those are the cause. That's the effect, I guess, right?

Nico Johnson  1:03:41

Yeah.

Jason Kaminsky  1:03:42

So I don't know.

Nico Johnson  1:03:43

The effect on us today, as the beneficiaries of this conversation, is that we have more clarity and and visibility into at least one vector, one example of what it looks like to build something over a decade, to pivot three times, and to ultimately Land in that promised land of entrepreneurial joy that is the acquisition. There's so many that so many things that we haven't been able.

Jason Kaminsky  1:04:12

You got like a week of joy. Yeah, exactly. Oh wow, there's still a lot of work to do. Turns

Nico Johnson  1:04:17

out, turns out I'm gonna. This is. I've still got a job. Now you got new bosses, and you get to go do it all over again. Jason Kaminsky, thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey with us. Jason is the former co-founder and CEO of KWH Analytics now managing KWH Analytics inside a much larger animal named Beasley. Look forward to hearing more about how that evolves, we'll of course be checking back in with you and your team, and the risk products and the solar risk assessment and whatever that evolves into as often as you'd like. You've got a welcome a welcome mat rolled out for you, my friend. Well, thank you, Nico. is a always a pleasure. And the first the first. Time I've been given a microphone to share any of these thoughts, so I appreciate you you invited me. What a pleasure! My my honest and sincere pleasure to host this conversation with you. Thank you for being open to it. Thanks to Craig and the team for helping coordinate. Thanks to everyone else who helps makes this make this all possible, and I appreciate you, my friend. We'll we'll have you back on sometime soon. See how it's going. Thank you. Thanks, Nico. Hey, Jason. Thank you so much once again for taking us behind the headlines. It's easy to look at an acquisition announcement and assume that the story is starting there, and sort of try to dig in and pull back the layers. What today's conversation really makes clear is that those moments are really the product of years of strategic choices, leadership, difficult pivots, and intentional company building, ally building, allegiance to a vertical or a product often has to get placed on the altar of business outcome. So, whether you're building first startup or leading a business through its next chapter, I hope that this conversation gives you a much clearer picture of what it takes to build something that lasts, and perhaps someday something that someone else wants to own. I'm grateful that you're here. I hope that it means that this episode and the many others preceding it have added to your own toolkit, so that you can become a better operator, a better entrepreneur, a better leader, or entrepreneur, as we transform the energy sector and the world around us. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up, Solar Warrior. It's half the battle.

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