# Techstars Founder Spotlight Sessions with Powertrust

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Techstars
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqWwJYovWBM
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/27787

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

featuring uh Nick and Ricky from Power Trust that was part of our Texas energy program in Norway back in 2023. For all you repeated customers or viewers, as you might remember, this is a very direct and honest conversation that I have with founders here, Ricky and Nick, where the aim is to extract valuable lessons for you all dialing in. Before we get that, let me just quickly introduce myself. Um I'm Abdul and I spent soon 10 years actually as a managing director in Tech Stars and that includes six years running our energy program in Norway with Ecuador, one year running our Paris sustainability program and right now I'm keeping busy setting up a new program and a new setup in the Middle East, more specifically in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Uh in addition to that I also serve on our investment committee together with uh our techstar CEO David Cohen and one of the founders Brad Felts. Enough about me. Um this will be about 35 minute conversation uh or maybe 40 minutes depending on how the flow goes and towards the end we'll also have about five minutes for live Q&A that I will do uh and the questions will be fed into my document and I'll answer the questions afterwards. So please get your uh questions ready. Um in short ladies and gentlemen uh the fantastic company that I have with us today, Power Trust, it is a climate finance and infrastructure company that enables corporations to decarbonize supply chain s and at the same time allow funding to flow into distributed energy renewables in developing countries such as Brazil and India. Many people that work in this space um or some know but many don't know that large global corporations actually struggle massively with renewable energy procurement outside the US and EU markets and this is exactly where power trust comes into the spotlight. So today we will explore how Nick and Ricky has managed to build first a small company into something actually significant today and that journey. I want to extract learnings from your investor conversations, your customer conversations and your partner conversations. So with that welcome Nick and Ricky. So, please tell us a little bit more about yourself first and why you started Power Trust and after that explain what Power Trust does like you do it to a 12-year-old. — Okay. Well, great to see you again, Aen, and uh lovely to meet everybody. My name is Nick, uh along with Ricky, one of the co-founders of Power Trust, and I'm the CEO. I'm based here in Vancouver, which is my hometown. my background. I mean, starting at the very beginning, I studied economics in university, and that's really how I look at the world through trade-offs and through making sure we maximize the value of everything we do. And that's really what we focus on at Power Trust. I I've been working in the energy industry for about 15 years before for before Power Trust. I focused on developing large utility scale wind and solar projects. Uh I did that in the UK. Uh and then came back here and along that journey where I was before uh met Ricky. So that was kind of how we originally met maybe about 10 years ago, Ricky. So um yeah, so that's me. Uh Ricky, why don't you take over and then we'll talk about power trust. — Yeah. Uh yeah. No, thanks Nick and out and again thanks for the opportunity to chat here. Um so Ricky, as Nick said, I'm one of the co-founders. I focus on the technology side as CTO. Um my background actually I started in engineering. I studied electrical engineering and computer science. Worked uh at Microsoft for a few years and then went to business school. Um and that's really when I switched into energy. Um I spent about uh almost 10 years at General Electric in corporate strategy uh for the energy business. So I looked at everything from oil and gas to uh distribution to power generation. Uh my focus there was really around organic innovation and figuring out how to get a large company like GE to grow particularly in emerging markets which was really when I was able to go deep. um and uh not only did I get sort of firsthand experience trying to develop energy projects uh in emerging markets like uh subsaran Africa but also um to understand the growth potential around distributed solar um and one of the things that we often hear in the news are very large you know progress around very large utility scale projects but um one of the hidden secrets is about 40 to 45% of global installs that are projected um through 2050 will be in the distributed solar space so it is a fragmented market uh and one that is I think ripe for uh scale and uh systemization and so that's really what we at power trust are focused on. — Yeah. So maybe going into you know precisely what power trust does. So out you talked about the customer journey

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

and their needs and Ricky you mentioned how there's a lot of distributed solar which is where we focus and by distributed solar we mean like projects that are rooftop or maybe small ground mount ones. uh if I look at through maybe the eyes of one of our customers and I'll take Netflix they were our first customer so they have a very strong climate commitment they are headquartered in the US they consume a lot of electricity in their operations um and but their operations are now global so they have some kind of a footprint all over the place um and they want to ensure that the electricity used for making their stuff for the movies that we all watch on Netflix is sourced from renewable electricity In the US, the way they do that is connect bilaterally to solar and wind projects. They came to us because in India where they had a smaller footprint that just that wasn't an option through the local utility there. And so we convinced them that they could work with local solar developers uh to achieve basically what they achieve in the US which is investing power in solar around to generate around the same amount that they consume locally in that country. And so that really helped them have complete their global sustainability program. And so that's effectively what we do. We go to customers and we say we can help you do exactly what you're doing now achieving huge impact through the process you already have. We can extend it to where the opportunity is which is emerging markets Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. So that in a nutshell is what we do. — Great. Thanks Nick and Ricky. I have to say, you know, one of the reasons also why we invited you to come back is that you managed to actually um sign off a very impressive list of really large corporates. I know we can't talk about all the kind of financial specifics, but you know, you have you're working today with Netflix and Apple and also Microsoft with really large uh contracts. And that is what I find incredibly um kind of intellectually interesting with Power Trust. And that is why I want to drill into now how you actually managed to get there. Right. So, but let's first talk about your investor uh process. And we all know that convincing investors is very challenging like really challenging. We all know that and everyone that's a tech star founder and part of any program around the world, you know that you drilled a lot on that. So tell us actually how you managed to close off investors in the beginning but also now in your kind of seed round that you now have closed. — Yep. Yeah. Like you say, it's never easy. Um I say maybe starting at the beginning actually you know what starting even before we set up power trust I think that one thing that's been key is having uh an experienced team. So both Ricky and I have a background in this space. Uh and kind of consistently bringing that up in our investor conversations and showing how that I guess manifests itself into achieving our commercial goals at Power Starts has really been helpful. I think having some early traction early on um has really helped us. We're not just an idea. We've got dollars coming in right from the beginning. So that's really helped as well. Um and then I think leading in and this is where Techstar has really helped us out is in you know putting the process in place. So systematically identifying all the potential investors who we could work with, narrowing them down, profiling them, running a process to, you know, speak with them all. Um, I'd say that's in the early days that was absolutely key to that. I was going to say I would just to add, you know, um we I think prior to Tech Stars and meeting you and the Epore team and and you know, being embedded for three months versus, you know, coming off of that program, I think was a real step change for us in terms of our commercial focus and just ability to understand how to tell the story to investors. Um and so that was, you know, for us was I think was a pretty profound experience. — Thank you. Thank you for saying that. And for everyone, I didn't ask them to say that right. So that's that came straight from their heart just to be clear. But every talk a little bit more about the experience you had with Ecuador because I mean for those of you who maybe don't know Ecuador is was our partner in the energy program in Norway and I mean in Europe Ecor is very well known. It's a large energy company but maybe in the US it's not that well known but it's one of the really big uh energy companies out there globally and you guys Nick and Rick you managed to get stuff done with them right and even having them as investor. How was that process? Uh Nick and Rich. — Yeah, I mean, yeah, Ecuador is quite unique. You know, a large oil and gas company. I think that gives them a pretty long-term perspective across the entire energy space, not just electricity, which we focus on. So, that gives us some kind of wide context. And I think that when we think about how our offering lines up with other decarbonization options that any of our potential customers have, we got to see a lot of that. uh how Einor considers that internally. There we also got to see you know uh like not just from the investor perspective but they really

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

helped us in getting some customers as well because we see how these large companies contract for what is effectively kind of like infrastructure type contracting. So that was pretty good. Um they yeah so that was fantastic and I think yeah working with them for those months over the tech stars program was helpful because we got to know pretty much everyone in the Ecuador ventures team much more than we could have over you know maybe just a first 30 minute 30-minute call. Um so that was helpful. We also made a point of you know talking about how potentially we could work with some other uh portfolio companies. So trying to identify some of those strategic interests as well. — Great. So let's link this process to storytelling. I mean uh that's one of the things that's very important to me is storytelling and that able to communicate your own message in a very powerful way. How important do you think storytelling not just the financials but storytelling is in a fundraising and investing process? I well I mean it's absolutely key because you start with you know a very limited amount of their time and really the only way you can get across the big picture and get to that second meeting I think is to have a pretty sharp story and really being able to I don't know get I think get not get lost in the weeds or get lost in too much of the detail for that first initial meeting. So the storytelling yeah it's there's nothing really else to say other than it's absolutely key especially at that first stage. I was also going to say I think part of the the benefit we had of sort of that initial early part was just the traction we were able to demonstrate and in that quantify a lot of the outcomes to weave into the story. So it's not just a kind of a subjective narrative. It's like, well, this is actually what's happening on the ground. And to point to that figure and say, well, you know, as Nick said, you know, our first contract actually was signed during the Tech Stars program uh with Netflix and we were able to say this is what exactly happened. This is how we're able to do it. And I think that was an indication of how we could then scale from that point because we were able to really show that we could have replicable processes. — Remember that was quite important when you got that sign. Remember that you can use that in your further communication, right? Of course, that's key. Um, Ecuador I mean um I guess this is also a public news right but they have invested in you few times right so share that process how also that worked because it's not that many uh companies that actually received a real uh you know financial commitment and backing from our partner back then Ecuador — can you describe how that process was also gentlemen — yeah so I guess I mean the process really started with relationship building through that tech program in particular my main contacts uh at Ecuador. I still speak with them, Michael, you know, every two weeks, I think. — So do I. Yeah. — So that so that's been fantastic. Um yeah, and coming right out of the Tech Stars program, we did a convertible note with them right away, which was great. And then I think we just kind of kept, you know, increasing our traction, which helped along the way. So yeah, they've invested in us uh a few times. Now our one of our big goal for this year is our next fundraising and they've Ecuador has been a huge help for us in sort of preparing for that and identifying other potential investors in their network uh so that we can bring others to the table more to the table next time. — Great. That's also one of the learnings to founders, right? When you have a good uh anchor investor with a with an important name, you know, use them also to help you get more names into a deal, right? There's nothing as efficient and as having a good investor reach out to other investors saying that, hey, there's a round open for your company, right? It's fantastic. So, well done getting to use that, right? So, it's um what time is it? Only quarter past. Great. you have still plenty of time. So, a lot of founders they, you know, they struggle with rejection, right? I mean, I know that you have to talk to probably hundred investors before you get a yes. And that's just for me, that's just normal. But some founders I meet, they struggle with rejection. How did you manage to stay resilient and positive throughout the process when all the nos you receive, right? And you're laughing. That's great. — Yeah. Well, you certainly receive a lot of nos. I think um through I mean I try and keep a pretty structured process throughout the investment process and part of that is what do you do when you get rejection and that kind of keeps the emotion out of it a little bit. So uh I always ask for detailed feedback like even have a like a call with them afterwards to try and get that and um anyway you can often get some more information from them at that stage and then also just make sure you incorporate that feedback into whoever you're talking to the next time. Um, and I find just kind of stick to that kind of helps with the uh the personal rejection, I guess. And also remembering sometimes it's not just the company, it's the environment they're operating in. And you know, there can be a variety of different reasons for that. — That that's something we've kind of instituted as sort of a pillar I think because it's not just the rejection on the investor side. We've

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

had plenty of, you know, customer rejection also. um whether it's timing or alignment or you know oftentimes we'll spend uh you know six months in negotiation and it goes nowhere. Um, but I think a lot of what we've tried to do is put the mindset of like how can we just reuse some of this, recycle it, you know, refurbish it, put it towards other conversations. And so a lot of the material that we've now developed, you know, over the over time is really built on lots of nos we received along the way trying to tweak the content and the presentations and the collateral and, you know, things like that. Um, to then figure out the right anchor for you know, a particular customer. — Great. I I love what you're saying. It's fantastic because what you're saying is that you just learn from the nose, right? And you don't take it personal. You know, it's not that uh it's not that investors don't like a company typically. It's just that it doesn't fit maybe even and you know, it's really important that founders are able to extract knowledge from that and just move on, right? Don't get emotional about it. It's nothing emotional especially when you have a wonderful business regardless like you guys have like I also know that many of founders have. So, great. Yeah. Okay. Let's uh now we talked about the investor part. Let's talk about customers. Uh because you also have a somewhat complicated um customer uh profile because you need to talk to farmers or others that actually have power uh in Brazil and in India and other developing countries and you have massive corporations like Microsoft, Netflix and Apple on the other end. How do you build this all together guys? So it becomes an appealing um project and product for both ends right because it needs to you need to work on both sides. If not then nothing works basically. How do you do that? Such a complicated process. Maybe I could start and say that I think we've learned how to speak both languages. Uh and that's part of because we have experience working with very large corporates. We understand the matrix decision process that they often go through and we've also developed projects and so we understand how to speak with renewable energy developers and you know what we like to think of as sort of our secret sauce is how we combine those two together. On the one hand, you have, you know, very large corporates with a standard process that they apply to procuring energy and then you have developers who are um, you know, in a much more kind of agile operating manner who are looking to develop lots of projects very quickly and how you structure those two together. And I think framing how we communicate with each of those parties has been, you know, obviously very instrumental for us in being able to build that bridge between the these two uh these two sides of the equation. — Yeah. Just on the corporate side, one thing I might add is so yeah, we've been we've specifically targeted the biggest names in our sector like anyone who consumes electricity or anyone who makes a product where electricity is a factor is a potential customer of ours. It's potentially you know everyone. We focus on the big companies. So right now we're working with Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce like a lot of tech companies. Uh and the reason we choose them is first of all they're big customers. that can be big contracts, but also they're considered leaders in our space and really setting a precedent for others to follow. So, as we scale our sales process and go towards maybe the sort of the next tier of customers, it what they look for is really those our existing customer base to see how we've done. So, that's kind of maybe a second order effect there. — Great. — And many of as you mentioned Nick, many of your companies are really big, right? It's it's pretty difficult to hey I want to talk to someone in Netflix or someone in Microsoft it's like it's a massive organization right so how did you manage to find those internal champions that actually have a decision power towards what you are selling right that is yeah how do you do — yeah I mean so go ahead — no I was say you know this is it's sort of there's no it's sort of an easy answer but it's also very hard to do which is you have to find your internal champions. I mean we were lucky in that our first uh you know customer Netflix we happened to know the head of the procurement department quite well um and we were able to connect with her uh Alexia and she was already you know a leader in the space and was really looking at innovative mechanisms and we were able to sort of latch on to that. We spent a lot of time trying to you know get our network to respond uh help us kind of hone the value proposition. We leveraged that very heavily early on. Um, and so in some sense, you know, Netflix was an ideal customer because they're very big, but the procurement team was very small. And so we were able to find that balance of like they were able to make decisions, they had the budget, um, you know, they were able to move very quickly and yet the impact was large because obviously of their market positioning. And then from that point on, we're able to use that as a stepping stone. Alexi was a

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great advocate for us not only internally but also then externally where we're able to start leveraging that initial contract to say okay well you know help us find the next two to three customers she helped us position connect um and I think that was really our that was that linkage was very key to us getting our second contract which was with Salesforce. — Great. — Yeah. And then one thing we've done more recently I think as we scale is we we're starting to do partnerships with companies that have maybe adjacent offerings to us and so they themselves know who the the champions are in these companies. So Watershed is a carbon accounting firm. We've done a partnership with them and there's a couple other things like that. So that really helps sort of narrow down exactly not just who the people are but the specific value proposition for each one which is unique. But the learnings here is that you know finding that internal champion with some you know sway or power internally is key right? — Yeah. — Yes. That's also what I've experienced myself and it's sometimes really complicated right. remember some of the days back in with Ecuador, right? We had workshops just identifying you know who knows exactly about the specific technology that might be useful for any founder right it's like a puzzle you just have to go through right every founder to be successful — great insights thank you — I ideally you're able to do a traditional stakeholder map and figure out who the decision makers are but I know at the same time when you're early in the process it's about showing traction as quickly as possible and so you know I think we were lucky to some degree that I think we found the right customer was able to help us demonstrate that. But I know it's always a challenge to make sure you're talking to the right people. — Yeah. Great. — You already mentioned that you work with your investors or Equinor and they will they help you with other investor conversations, right? which is fantastic, a fantastic kind of um flywheel. But you also work with some of your investors, other entrepreneur uh towards other customers of yours, like introductions to other big brand names out there that might use your services or Ricky, can you think of any examples of that? I think um yeah I mean yeah ENOR themselves have introduced us to a few companies um and there's been a few yeah introductions there so yeah we always do try and look for that kind of strategic leverage with potential investors and that would be the most obvious one which is the uh you know the potential customers and then other ones would be potentially any um so the customers are sort of half of our business the other one is securing the solar projects from developers and we've had some introductions to some of the developers as well in country. — Okay. — One of the benefits I think with Ecuador is that because they have operations in places like Angola um they understand some of the challenges and opportunities of working these markets and so it's good for us to sort of point to that and say like look they like you know we've sort of helped operationally like they've helped us kind of think through some of these challenges and that's a good way to then you know as we're looking at potentially getting clients to say look like we work with companies that have you know firsthand operative experience in these markets. Um and it's a way for us to demonstrate that like we understand what we're talking about when we when it comes to trying to secure solar projects uh in some of these areas. Yeah. — Great. — Thank you guys. Uh so now we talked a little bit on investor side and the customer side. Let's talk a little bit more about power trust and also how you have grown and scaled um the company. Um, can you name two or three of your most significant barriers to actually scaling your solution and how you potentially overcome it? — Yeah. Um, when I think of you know the significant barriers, a lot of it's around kind of process and timing. So our corporate customers have their process for buying and the timing can be quite long like the it can take us 6 months to a year to sign with them. Sometimes when we do sign them, then we generally sign a long-term contract for say 10 or even 20 years. Whereas with our solar developer partners, they're developing projects much quicker. Like maybe every 3 or 6 months they have a project coming online. And so aligning those two is like that's definitely a challenge. Um that's probably the first one I would think of. Ricky, can you think of any other ones? — Yeah. Yeah, I think I think we from the very beginning like we were very focused on automating as much of this sort of end to end uh you know climate finance process as possible and I think we're still early in that journey. Um as we're you know right now working I think uh we have active contracts in about 20 to 25 markets. Um each one's a little bit different. We have the benefit of working under a single global standard um which is the international renewable energy certificate standard. And so to some degree there is a lot of standardization and that's helped us in terms of thinking through automation but at the end of the day there's still a little bit of pess that 20 the last 20% is still a little bit bespoke on a market bymarket basis particularly when it comes to communication with developers

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and we're trying to constantly figure out how we streamline that process and overlay what Nick mentioned with sort of the timing difference where you have corporates that tend to take a very long time and you have developers who are trying to move very quickly um and to then apply some kind of automation across that is something we're sort of constantly grappling with makes sense. — Um when it come to talents uh gentlemen uh I mean finding growth talent and talent for any startup it's a challenge for everyone that I work with uh how do you and hire and motivate um people to stay Nick and Rick? So I guess you know when we're looking for people we make sure we talk about the mission of power trust and make sure that everyone is kind of mission aligned and then that's a really kind of solid anchor and I think make sure we're all pulling in the right direction but they're in it for the long term as well. So that's definitely helped in terms of attracting people. Um we also look for people from like very diverse backgrounds. You know we're fortunate to work in you know Ricky mentioned 20 or 25 countries. So we have actually hired some local people especially in some of the markets where we have more of a presence. So in Ghana in uh in India we've hired and also in Brazil. Um so that's good. Um yeah I think hiring people from different background we have a relatively small team still. There's 10 of us I think a couple of consultants. So everyone has the role but we also you know pitch in for everything as well. And so making sure that everyone has kind of there's a diverse background of people and skill sets and experiences helps there too. — Yeah, we we've uh just like on the customer side where we've kind of leveraged uh you know champions that's also how we've been able to get some of our uh you know colleagues uh is to look at the network and say you know who do you work with? Who's looking for an opportunity? Um and that's kind of our first step. We we've done both. we've hired, you know, through traditional LinkedIn channels posting jobs and we've also done it sort of um, you know, via the network. Um, and obviously there's a level of comfort and confidence going in, you know, via the network saying like this person's already demonstrated that they can execute um, you know, they have a reference point and so it's easy for us to kind of, you know, incorporate them into the team and I think that's still very much our prior like our focus will remain like using that to continue to get people in market. — Makes sense. What would you um what do you wish you known now when you started uh your company? — Tough one. — That's a good one. Um I would I don't know. You know, we've been at this for a few years now and there's been we I felt like we've ridden the wave through a couple of fads. Like when we started there was everything was around blockchain and crypto and then after that within the energy sector there was a bubble around hydrogen and uh I guess now I know that these fats kind of come and go. So I think that maybe would have been useful uh earlier on um just looking back at those things. Yeah, I would that I and we we're certainly have been guilty of, you know, when blockchain was a fat, we had a blockchain's part of the story and then when there was green hydrogen, we had a green hydrogen part of the story and we've sort of like tried to latch on to these fads. Ultimately, we don't you know, we don't focus on either right now really. Um and so I think that that's one that you know we should we could have probably like avoided some loss cycles doing that. The other thing I would just add is you know even though uh like our mission is to connect corporates and developers there's an element of this which is really around process um and obviously it's very important to show sales traction to show that a growing network but to really make that happen for the wheels to turn there has to be like a very defined process and I think we're now getting to a stage where the process has matured but I think earlier on if we had focused on okay let's establish the workflow let's the you know the milestones the stage gates like let's really focus on the stuff that isn't showy and flashy but really moves you know projects through the life cycle. I think you know we probably could have uh avoided some of the pain that we had on the way. Great. Okay guys, we are actually coming uh towards an end here. But um but a few things before we we end off. Um just looking ahead for power trust, right? I mean after you now raised your roundly looking towards now a series A. I know that um and you also closed this deal with Microsoft. What are you like truly most excited about for the next 12 months and maybe even 36 months, right? Um so I mean maybe starting with this Microsoft deal you talked about out in um to put that in perspective that's 10 times the size of uh a deal that we had done before. So that is extremely

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exciting for us. It's a huge milestone. Um and what we are doing this year now is really all about executing that. So specifically we're finding 270 megawws which is a big number of very small projects in Brazil and Mexico. So that is going to really show we are have the opportunity to demonstrate that what we've been doing for the last few years we can do at a to totally different level of scale which I think will snowball into some new customers. That's certainly pretty. I mean just how much is actually 270 megawatt just to explain that to people, right? I mean — I mean the dollar figure is in the is a nine digit number that we Microsoft just committed to. — I meant actually how many houses impacted by that in just to get the perspective it's huge. — Yeah. Ricky, do you have an idea what the it's uh you know depends on this on the household items. If we look outside the US — then it's several hundred thousand. — Yes. Which is very impressive. It's a significant deal. Great. I'm so excited for you guys on on that part. Great. — Yeah. And then — and then of course the fundraising. So um this will be our first price round. So we're doing our series A. We've been building up to it now. really building off this momentum we have with some of our more recent customer engagements I think is you know giving us a lot of confidence going into that. Having said that it's always difficult fundraising to take us back to where we started this conversation. So it'll be a big challenge but yeah we're looking forward to it this year. — I think we also um one of the things I'm quite looking forward to is really testing some of these adjacencies that we have been able to kind of think about a little bit. you know, our core offering has been this uh you know, forward renewable energy certificate uh structure, but in the process of executing that, we've been able to learn a lot about these markets and collect a lot of data. And we think there are some really interesting services that we can layer on top both to the corporates and to the developers. And I think we're at an interesting inflection point to really test some of that out over the next 12 months. — Great. Thank you guys. Um, so just before we get to the Q&A here, I just want to also give you the opportunity also to maybe ask everybody here on the call, right? Is it anything that you any ask that you have or anything that you need actually help with, Nick Henry? — So, we're always looking for more customers. Uh we have some fantastic ones now, but like there's hundreds of thousands if not millions of companies that could potentially use our service, which is effectively anyone who has an operation or supply chain or anything like that uh in Asia or in Latin America and Africa. And it's actually you don't need to be a big company to work with us because we also do very small projects. And so really we would like to engage with much more of that sort of the broader community. So if I had one ask, it's really if you if there's anyone out there who think that they could work with us or knows people that would want to work with us, then uh I'd love to chat with them. — The flip side of that coin is we're always also looking for developers to work with, right? the other side of the equation and so particularly in Southeast Asia um you know going back to like if the focus is you know start with the network if we think of sort of the techar community as the network or we're you know anyone who knows folks for developing projects in places like Malaysia or Indonesia or Vietnam um we're always looking for more entities uh and more projects there — so it's those countries plus India and Brazil right that's where you're most active — those are largest markets Yes. — Yeah. — Thank you, Nick and Rick. Then that actually concludes our conversation. Fantastic. We are basically wow spot on time. Impressive. Like exactly to the minute. So let's move to questions. Uh we have a lot of questions. So we need those 10 minutes. Um so I'll question both on LinkedIn and on Zoom here. So I'll just read some of the questions to Nick and Rake. Uh first question, how long was power trust in operation prior to applying it to tech stars? — So power trust wasn't we started in 2020 technically. Um and we went into tech stars in 22. So for that first year or so we were really sorting out our business model and how exact we knew that there was lots of corporates wanting to go into emerging markets. We knew there was lots of solar developers. It took us some time to sort out the business model. Uh so yeah it takes it two years there. — Years. Okay. Thank you. And next question here. Actually on this one I have very strong views myself. So I'll be quiet. I'll let you guys answer it first and then I'll also comment. Um were your first pilots free or paid? Does it really matter? What would you recommend free or paid? To make negotiation short uh and get a pilot

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ASAP. So we've we never did a free pilot. The first one was paid and I would just point out like um yeah I mean what are you trying to prove through a pilot is that the customer will pay for what you're doing. So like I would suggest you have a you know you always ask for money for what you're doing. And then the other thing is if you look at the value proposition to the companies that we work with, especially these large ones, the there's the cost they pay to us, but the real cost to them is if we fail and they have to scramble to go find something else or something like that. So the monetary value they pay us is only a big component of the bigger cost for them. So I don't think doing a free pilot. If we'd offered it free, I don't think that would have really would have helped. — Yeah. Yeah, the deal that we did was quite small the first one, but it was a you know the key was that we got paid for it and we're able to demonstrate that there was value here that we're providing. Um I will say um sorry just related to the first question um you know we uh we had that two-year window before we applied to tech stars and I think we uh in that two-year window we had the benefit of some non-dilutive capital that we were able to get and um it went part of was we had missional aligned uh you know foundations and organizations the Shell Foundation was our actually our first anchor funer they were really focused around trying to catalyze uh solar and other renewable energy in some of these markets. Um and that was also a way for us to demonstrate that we were getting paid to provide value because you know obviously the funding helped us really start building the initial parts of the network. Um testing the value proposition uh showing that we could sort of make this happen. Um and that was I think also instrumental in sort of landing the first customer Netflix is we had that proof point from some non-diluted funders saying okay well this has worked. they have shown some you know trust in the in these guys and the solution and so that was again a stepping stone for us I think you know going into the textur 22 accelerator program — great thank you and I said I also want to comment this something on this point myself and as you said Nick right I mean uh when you're working with big corporates I mean uh the money involved in pilots are usually very small uh and uh I always have the founders's interest in in mind when I give this advice, but I think you should never ever do a free pilot with anyone. Um because corporates can always pay a small amount to show uh that commitment. Um, I've actually seen, uh, unfortunately, this is nothing to do with our partners in in our program here, uh, with Texas Energy, but I've seen actually, um, startups, um, being exploited by big corporates and they end up in a kind of dark rabbit hole. H, and even worse, sometimes they complete a pilot and there's no next steps, right? And that is maybe the worst thing that you do a pilot and there's kind of no uh pre-aggreed way to measure a successful outcome or not. Uh and basically it says that oh we'll talk again right and that is a disaster because then there's another six months of conversations before you do something else. The only time I would even consider doing something free for anyone as a startup is that if you simply do a pilot where the aim is to test out something fairly quick and if that works out according to uh predefined and pre-aggreed upon outcomes then that automatically kicks in a commercial contract then I would actually consider doing it right but if that mechanism not in place I would seriously avoid it. Sorry if that was too direct, but I have very strong views on this. I've seen the dark side of this too many times. Yeah. Okay, great. This uh on a more light lighter question. Um third question. Uh when dealing with corporate clients, how do you currently handle contracts and legal compliance? Do you use external counseling or in-house expertise? — Ricky, you want to handle that one? Yeah. So we started um without using uh outside council. Um we actually had some contracts uh from sort of other stakeholders that we had received again in part because of some of the non-dilutive capital we were able to raise. Uh some of those uh donors had some elements of contractual pieces that we could piece together. So we started that way. Um I think we quickly found out that there were uh we like Nick and I are not lawyers. Um, and there were lots of sort of gaping holes in our contracts. Um, and so we ended up actually asking one of our customers who they work with. Um, and they ended up uh suggesting some outside counsel that we now work with on the deal side. Uh, and so that that's how we've been able to do our contracts. We've learned the hard way. Uh, I think you know um, starting again sort of peacemail, you know, sort of building stuff together from other

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contracts that we had come across. uh and now I think we're in, you know, we've kind of continued to iterate on that. Uh every corporate thinks that they are special and that they have their own way of doing you know legal contracting and their own language. Um but now I think we're at a point where we've seen enough diversity to say like look across these you know 10 fortune 100 companies like these are very similar terms and we've agreed to them and so now we kind of have our standard paper that we work with um as kind of the initial starting point. — Great. Thank you. uh how do you pre-qualify your product developers for projects in emerging markets? — Great question. — Yeah, we so this is part of the I guess my point on establishing the process. So, you know, where we are today is again, you know, miles different from where we started. Now, we have a pretty robust uh due diligence uh workflow that we run through. So things like sanction checks and uh you know bank statements and um validating reference points and uh looking at prior pipeline and projects that have been deployed and you know trying to ensure that we can get some comprehensive view or risk assessment of you know if ultimately we're going to contract with this developer for a certain number of megawatt hours can they actually deliver um and so and I think that's increasingly where we're also starting to apply analytics. you know, we've now had a lot of data come through of what developers say they're going to do and what actually happens and that now we've been able to feed that back into our kind of, you know, learning cycle uh as we move ahead. But, you know, we we've employed I think and this is going back to sort of also the key hires like we had we hired people who knew how to do some of this, how to vet partners, understand who to trust with, who had experience working in these markets. Um, and we're able to kind of, you know, put piece that together into a process that I think we've now deployed that is quite robust. — Great. Thank you. And I have a pretty long question here. Uh, it's a it's an explanation first and a question afterwards. So bear with me. We are a startup focused on electrifying rural airports across the United States. We've completed uh commercial solar for community facilities training and are advancing our projects with direct technical support from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Rural airports, energy poor, grid constraint anchor infrastructure are an ideal fit for power trusts direct model and federal co-inancing through FAA electrification grants and US USDA's rural electric electricity for America program exists to derisk these projects. Our question does power trust platform extend to rural US infrastructure like airports where direct revenues can be stacked on top of federal grants to make projects bankable and what would a pilot partnership look like? We are public access LLC benefit company. Uh so we have we do not operate in the US currently. Um but we have partners um that do operate in the US and so I guess maybe the long answer short is you know we'd love to connect and maybe connect you with some of our partners that do operate in the US that have similar models to what we're doing. Great. Yeah. Agreed. Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. Yeah, I can't actually see any more questions on my screen from LinkedIn here. Uh, that was the last question. Anything else? Uh, Jessica and team, any other questions you see coming in? Okay, great. Okay, then I want just want to end off on saying that I'm so proud of even knowing you, Rick and Nick. you know, you come a remarkable way since the first time I met you uh in in Norway a few years back. I mean, some of the commercial deals that you have signed is beyond impressive. So, well done and I'm just really glad to follow your journey coming up and I know you'll do great stuff. So, thank you very much. Um we will have another session uh in a few weeks I believe. So just keep on following us on LinkedIn and you will then see when the next uh session is coming up. And with that I just want to say thank you to Nick and Rick. Thank you for coming and thank you for being awesome founders. — Thank you for hosting out. Thanks everyone for listening. Bye.