In this episode I speak with Jason Ethier, Founding Partner of the Energy Tech Nexus. He offers a thoughtful perspective on entrepreneurship in the energy technology space, drawing on his background in engineering and his philosophical approach to business building. We discuss:
How his spiritual journey through absurdism and Buddhism shapes his view that focusing on process rather than outcomes leads to greater fulfillment in entrepreneurship.
Why the Houston ecosystem offers unique advantages for energy transition startups through its combination of technical, business, and financial leadership.
How his experience founding Dynamo Micropower taught him crucial lessons about market timing and the challenges of innovating in established industries.
The evolution of startup support systems from traditional incubators to flexible community hubs like Energy Tech Nexus that adapt to founders' distributed needs.
Why creating transformational experiences for founders—helping them grow alongside their businesses—forms the core mission of his work.
David Valerio: How would you describe Energy Tech Nexus and the work you do there?
Jason Ethier: We describe ourselves as a startup hub rather than an accelerator or incubator. While those platforms have specific programs with defined beginnings and ends, we focus on helping founders who are working in the energy transition grow as individuals. We support startups across the spectrum—from nature-based solutions to extracting energy from the earth itself.
What unites everyone in this industry is a desire to make energy more sustainable while maintaining accessibility. It's an incredibly complex balance to strike. Our approach centers on building a strong community around these founders, because community creates access to resources and capital. That's the flywheel we're building—connecting people who care deeply about solving these problems with the tools they need to succeed.
David Valerio: I've always found startup ecosystem terminology confusing. Could you clarify the differences between accelerators, incubators, venture studios, and how Energy Tech Nexus fits into this landscape?
Jason Ethier: The landscape is constantly evolving, which makes it confusing. Every decade brings new ways to fund startups, and the industry itself only matured in the last 40 years.
A modern accelerator typically runs a defined 12-16 week program ending with a prize competition. It's designed to rapidly drive product-market fit, then showcase progress. Shorter versions, like the Rice Business Plan Competition here in Houston, compress this further into a few days focused solely on pitch practice.
Incubators take a more residential approach. You're typically there for 18-36 months with programmatic elements—classes, coursework, and structured development paths. They guide you from initial business model canvas exercises through progressive stages of growth.
The common thread is that startups need force multipliers. Founders have limited time and capital but must accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Each business has unique needs that require tailored support.
That's where Energy Tech Nexus differs. We recognize that many teams today are distributed across multiple locations. Rather than requiring everyone to work from the same physical space, we focus on building connections between founders wherever they are, helping them grow both personally and professionally while providing the community infrastructure that creates access to resources.
David Valerio: How would you describe your spirituality and the way it shapes your approach to entrepreneurship?
Jason Ethier I developed my sense of spirituality through reading Camus and absurdism. It's not a traditional spirituality, but it blends well with elements of Buddhism that I was exposed to growing up. My mother raised me with Buddhist principles. We didn’t strictly practice, but it was present in our home life.
What connects absurdism and Buddhism for me is the acceptance that people often create their own suffering by searching for the universe to provide meaning. When you realize that the universe isn't really here for you—you're simply in the universe alongside others—you gain freedom. You can control what you want and how you respond to circumstances.
This perspective is invaluable in the startup ecosystem, where it's tempting to believe you can will your business into existence. Thinking "if we do this, we'll be successful" or "if we excite these people, they'll give us money" can create attachment to outcomes you can't control. When you accept that you're part of something larger and focus on the work itself rather than the results, you can accomplish things that feel impossible.
There's a famous line in Eastern philosophy: we're entitled to our work, but not entitled to the fruits of our labor. You might work incredibly hard for a decade without achieving "success" by conventional metrics. That could be bad luck or simply the world not having product-market fit for what you're offering. But if you're passionate about your mission, it transcends measurable outcomes.
This mindset is especially critical for those of us working in climate tech and energy. No one does this just for money—it would be far easier to build a SaaS company and find product-market fit in 12 months. We do this work because we're driven by purpose, and you can't get fixated solely on quantifiable results.
David Valerio: Your point about energy tech startups being fundamentally more challenging than software startups really resonates with me. You're dealing with physical reality and constraints that software doesn't face, which requires a different kind of commitment.
What initially drew you to energy? You could have chosen an easier path with software and potentially made more money more quickly.
Jason Ethier: I've always been fascinated by how things work. I studied engineering and was particularly interested in engine systems, which naturally connects to energy production. I worked on rocket motors in high school and early college, then shifted to jet engine systems when I realized how long rocket development takes.
My college motorsports club was probably the most enjoyable hands-on experience I've had. While I don't have the patience to work extensively with my hands anymore, that experience sparked my interest in complex systems optimization.
Energy technology is similar. You're developing a fundamental innovation, but then you have to build an entire solution around it. One of our Houston companies is working on a photocatalyst system, essentially a light and pellet mechanism that transforms energy more efficiently. But to make that viable, they need to build a complete reformer, handle balance of plant issues, and hire many specialized people.
What makes energy so complex is the interdependency combined with requirements for both low cost and high reliability. With software, an outage might be acceptable for a day—it's just temporary. But with energy and power, reliability is non-negotiable, and downtime is prohibitively expensive. That additional complexity makes it a genuinely interesting problem to solve.
David Valerio: I've noticed in my work that there's often a tendency to apply software startup mentalities to physical-world problems in climate tech. Coming from Earth sciences, I see fundamental mismatches when people try to copy-paste B2B SaaS approaches to energy systems. What failure modes have you observed in this space?
Jason Ethier: In the early days of climate tech, around the mid-2000s, there was a dominant "build it and they will come" mentality. Companies raised millions or even billions of dollars without proper product discovery or market fit. There was a naive assumption that simply making a kilowatt hour cheaper would automatically create demand, which ignored the complex realities of energy systems.
The traditional startup world has gotten remarkably good at finding product-market fit quickly through experimentation and customer-centric approaches. Bill Aulet has a great line about this: "You've got to check that the dog eats the dog food." You can create what you think is the perfect product and market it brilliantly, but if nobody buys it, it's simply not useful.
These verification principles do apply to climate tech, but implementing them looks very different. While software startups can run A/B tests and deploy updates in a week, energy projects operate on different timescales and constraints.
The smart money in this space has adapted accordingly. Instead of looking for rapid iteration, investors look for letters of intent and off-take agreements. The gold standard is a "take-or-pay" agreement, where customers commit to paying regardless of whether they use the product. These agreements often lock up supply for 10-20 years, which is how you secure financing and make the economics work.
This approach represents the opposite of "build it and they will come." You're establishing product-market fit years before building anything. The challenge is that these commitments require both deep belief in your solution and genuine customer need substantial enough to justify long-term investment.
David Valerio: Tell me about your journey founding Dynamo Micropower. What were your key takeaways from that experience?
Jason Ethier: My entrepreneurial path started right after college when I worked on a silicon engine company called Kapiri Micropower. We raised about $300,000 and went bankrupt within six months. It was a valuable learning experience about team dynamics. One of our key people was focused purely on making money rather than creating customer value, which caused the whole enterprise to evaporate.
I started Dynamo Micropower partly because I didn't know any better. I was still fascinated by engine systems and had interesting technical knowledge, but we were essentially a solution looking for a problem. After about two and a half years of development, securing an SBIR grant and winning some prize money, we came to Houston and identified a genuine need—the oil industry needed reliable power generation in remote field operations and had the ability to pay for it.
We developed the first hybridized gas turbine system that could generate and store power, creating self-balancing microgrids for pumping units in the field. Our technology reduced the size of these systems by 60% while improving efficiency and offering a battery life of about 10 years.
The technology worked well. We reached a million dollars in revenue and deployed 25 turbines, which is significant for a startup in this space. But we missed on market timing. When we entered the market, oil was around $120 per barrel, but it dropped approximately $80 over just two quarters. Our champions within customer organizations lost their jobs, and our sales pipeline dried up.
It was a humbling lesson that you can't will a product into the market, regardless of how well it checks the boxes. If your business model doesn't align with the capital cycles of the industry, you're vulnerable. The shale revolution had completely disrupted funding patterns in oil and gas.
We also realized our technology was more of a "vitamin" than a "painkiller.” A nice-to-have that would save money rather than something essential. The oil industry exists to extract energy and produce oil, and if you're not directly enabling production, your product becomes secondary. When we tried to raise our Series B, there was simply no capital available. We were at the mercy of both energy markets and financial markets, with most investors having doubled down on the shale revolution. I needed funding in 2016, but the market wouldn't recover until the 2020s. There simply wasn't time to wait it out.
David Valerio: Your experience really highlights the chaos and randomness we discussed earlier. You can execute the process perfectly and still fail due to factors beyond your control, selling into the oil and gas industry during a market bust being a perfect example.
Jason Ethier: This taught me another valuable lesson: the importance of riding waves and trends rather than fighting against them. When you have genuine product-market fit, customers will give you money upfront, buy your product even when it's imperfect, and work through challenges with you. That doesn't mean becoming a copycat—you still need to lead and innovate—but there's an unmistakable feeling when the market is pulling you forward.
In hindsight, I should have recognized the signals that the market was saying "no." I could have closed the business two and a half years earlier, but I didn't know those were signals I should heed. I wanted to do right by my investors and exhaust every possibility, but ultimately, the timing simply wasn't there.
Climate tech is especially dependent on timing. Look at the Inflation Reduction Act. Who could have predicted six months beforehand that it would pass and catalyze so much investment? The nuanced lesson here is that you need to position yourself near opportunity while maintaining enough flexibility to not be entirely dependent on any single capital source.
This isn't always easy when you're burning cash to keep operations running. But developing that flexibility is crucial for navigating the unpredictable funding cycles in climate and energy.
David Valerio: After Dynamo Micropower, you helped create Greentown Labs. Tell me about that experience. What is Greentown and what was it like founding and operating the organization for 12 years?
Jason Ethier: Greentown was one of those rare situations where product-market fit was immediately apparent. We founded it in 2012 during a time when people were becoming passionate about climate solutions, though venture capital hadn't yet flooded the space. When you open your doors and customers are lining up, struggling to give you money, that's a clear signal you're onto something valuable.
I joined when it was just four people co-renting a space in North Boston, before it was even called Greentown. When we found a new location in South Boston, the landlord said, "I only want to deal with one entity. I want one lease and one check. You figure out how to pay me." That emergency moment catalyzed us to formally establish the company. The business model evolved from there, driven primarily by startup demand and community input.
The first four years were truly magical, and I think some of that energy still exists in the Boston location today. What I learned is that communities flourish when you empower them and create opportunities for contribution. Many of Greentown's quintessential services were actually conceived and implemented by members during those early years.
Part of this was because we were working with virgin territory where innovation could happen organically. But more importantly, when customers truly believe in what you're doing, they'll actively help you build it. That's a crucial lesson for any founder: don't turn away help. When people are excited about your mission, they'll contribute time, money, and resources. Your job is to focus that energy productively.
We're applying the same approach at Energy Tech Nexus. We've established committee chairs, provided tools and backend services, and we're saying, "Let's create our charter together and determine how we want to contribute to the ecosystem." As long as initiatives align with our mission of supporting energy transition entrepreneurs, we embrace them.
It's about cultivating a "yes-and" mentality rather than a control mentality, especially when activating a community. The results can be astonishing when you give people permission and opportunity to contribute.
David Valerio: I'm curious about how you maintain focus as an organization. I can imagine Energy Tech Nexus potentially going in countless directions with different community initiatives. How do you balance expansion versus maintaining a coherent identity? Is it simply that your energy tech focus naturally filters the kinds of projects people bring to you?
Jason Ethier: There are two key pieces of context to consider. First, entrepreneurs are inherently driven, high-performing, passionate individuals. They accomplish remarkable things with limited resources, which is fundamentally different from corporate environments where lack of focus often becomes political and people operate with a scarcity mindset.
We approach this with an abundance perspective. The pie is ever-expanding, and our role is enabling people to capture opportunities within it. That said, keeping the mission front and center is crucial. For us, that means supporting entrepreneurs and founders, being people-forward, creating authentic connections between founders and stakeholders, reducing barriers to critical resources, and helping make the founder's journey truly transformational.
If an initiative fits within these core principles, we trust these high-performing individuals to figure out the details. We're not here to micromanage how they accomplish their goals. Many founders leave corporate environments precisely because they're seeking a place to channel their creativity. They're not solely motivated by self-interest or financial gain. They genuinely care about community and giving back. Our job is to nurture that energy rather than constrain it.
David Valerio: That approach makes sense. Establish core principles, then let talented people execute within those boundaries.
I'm curious about the broader implications of this startup-oriented economy. Growing up in Houston's corporate oil and gas environment, I caught the startup bug through internet exposure. Is it healthy for society that high-agency individuals like us are channeled primarily into startups? Historically, was this entrepreneurial energy captured differently? I've tried academia but never felt drawn to corporate environments. Startups seemed like the only place offering true agency and responsibility. Should we be developing other institutional structures to harness this energy?
Jason Ethier: This question touches on the classic concept of the innovator's dilemma. Once a business model becomes entrenched, organizations become structurally resistant to change. Take ExxonMobil. Regardless of how you view them, they've built an extraordinarily profitable business extracting oil at low cost. Their corporate governance structure and shareholder expectations (primarily dividends) make pivoting to something entirely different nearly impossible.
The innovator's dilemma suggests that meaningful innovation often requires stepping outside established systems to start something new. I don't fault companies for responding to the incentives they've been designed around.
America has historically exported innovation. It's been our specialty since the Industrial Revolution. I was recently listening to an Acquired podcast about the Mars company's founding during the Great Depression. It's a distinctly American story of innovation without systems or support, requiring extraordinary timing and talent to succeed.
The difference today is that you don't need to win the lottery to build a significant business. Resources are abundant, roadmaps exist, and there's accumulated knowledge about finding product-market fit and building supply chains. The barriers to launching a company and the associated risks have never been lower, which is why more people should consider it.
What's not obvious to most aspiring founders is that ideas themselves are commodities. The real value lies in understanding the nuanced systems around your business. Identifying buyers, determining what they'll pay for, and targeting segments that create extractable value. This requires experimentation and flexibility, which startups enable.
As a founder, you need to articulate why you specifically see a unique gap in the ecosystem that others don't. Interestingly, when you launch, you'll typically discover several competitors working on similar ideas. That's actually a positive sign you're at the beginning of a trend. Everyone sees the opportunity, but you're all figuring out different approaches to capture value.
Eventually, successful companies grow large, become rigid, and resist change. That's perfectly natural. You return capital to shareholders and move on to build something new. That's the founder's journey: the perpetual opportunity to create.
David Valerio: How did you start your podcast and become involved with energy tech startups? What was your thinking behind those decisions?
Jason Ethier: When I was at Greentown Houston, we had built up the organization and raised about $11.5 million in capital. My initial strategy was to reach 90 members, which we accomplished within nine months of my stepping into the role. This naturally raised questions about where the organization, and my own time and talent, should go next.
I realized that interviewing people is one of the most efficient ways to connect with interesting minds in the ecosystem. The organization wasn't particularly interested in launching a Greentown-affiliated podcast, so I decided to create my own platform to speak with people I found compelling. It served as market research while I contemplated my next steps, either on the technology side or in supporting the startup community.
The formula for our show is straightforward. We ask about hidden resources entrepreneurs have discovered and what Houston is missing. This discovery process helped me understand what entrepreneurs in our ecosystem needed. We've continued the show because it gives me an excuse to have fascinating conversations, provides value to our members, and frankly, functions as free marketing.
I believe any entrepreneur trying to establish relevance should engage in some form of content marketing. I'm terrible at writing but comfortable with conversation, so podcasting was a natural fit for my strengths.
Through the podcast, meeting founders at various stages has been enlightening. It's humbling to watch people rediscover principles that I learned seven or ten years ago. Despite all the free content online and accelerator programs everywhere, everyone still starts at zero.
I describe our startup hub role as being ecosystem sherpas—we help people climb Mount Everest, guiding them level by level. Everyone begins at base camp, and we teach survival fundamentals repeatedly. When we bring guests back on the show, seeing their growth and maturity as leaders is truly rewarding. It reinforces that the founder's journey is continuous. They're always evolving and improving.
David Valerio: Do you think learning entrepreneurship is something you simply have to experience firsthand? You mentioned concepts that seem second nature to you that others keep rediscovering. Why isn't this knowledge more easily transferable? Is it fundamentally an embodied experience?
Jason Ethier: I think there are two distinct components at play. First, there are the mechanical aspects of running a business—finance, spreadsheets, marketing theory—which can be taught conventionally. But entrepreneurship as a cohesive discipline is relatively recent. Many entrepreneurs we work with have 15-20 years of experience but never had formal entrepreneurship education in college.
When I attended Duke, entrepreneurship was barely emerging as a master's program. Not an undergraduate discipline, just a club you might consider joining. Today it's far more developed because we have frameworks, courses, and tools. The business model canvas—where you map customers, vendors, and suppliers—was a novel concept when I started my career. The I-Corps program, which I consider one of the country's best entrepreneurship programs run by the SBA and NSF, didn't exist 15 years ago. Then there's Disciplined Entrepreneurship, offering step-by-step guidance for business building.
These resources exist, but many people simply aren't aware of them because entrepreneurship wasn't part of the cultural lexicon when they were in school. And ironically, once you're actually building a company, much of what you thought you knew gets thrown out the window because the reality of talking to customers and navigating markets often contradicts theory.
The mindset shift is substantial. I was speaking with an entrepreneur recently who described how working in industry means socializing ideas within your company about 80% of the time, while only spending 10-20% thinking about new strategy. In a startup, those proportions flip completely. You're thinking about what to do 80-90% of the time, constantly assembling puzzle pieces in real-time.
The closest parallel might be high-performance competitive environments like car racing, where you're constantly reacting and adapting. Even that comparison falls short because businesses are extraordinarily complex. The first two years of entrepreneurship often feel magical as things somehow fall into place and the right people appear when you need them. As you grow, that sensation persists. Everything feels slightly surreal, and you're never quite sure if you're skilled or just fortunate. Every entrepreneur experiences this, especially when they're finding product-market fit.
David Valerio: If you had to distill your experience into three core principles that every founder should understand, what would they be?
Jason Ethier: First, you have to genuinely love the problem you're trying to solve. Some call this your big hairy audacious goal or your mission, your reason for being. When you love the mission, you'll tolerate all the strange complexities and challenges that come with running a business. That passion creates resilience.
Second, understand your cash conversion cycle. It sounds mundane, but collecting payments from customers upfront while strategically timing vendor payments creates breathing room. In corporate environments, you rarely think about cash management, but it's critical for startups.
In the energy industry, major companies typically pay on 180-day terms. I once sent an invoice to a company where we had negotiated clear payment terms, and their accounts payable department replied, "It's 180 days regardless of what your contract says, but if you take 2% off, we'll pay in 15 days." They understand cash flow intimately.
For startups trying to reinvest capital into growth, this creates challenges. However, I've found that customers who truly value your product will prepay. Use that as a filter. It makes everything easier. You'll need less venture capital because you're essentially borrowing customers' money. If you can then extend vendor payments three months out, you can potentially float four months of operations without external financing. The companies that grow without significant outside capital are those that master this cash conversion cycle.
Third, hire good people and treat them well. This means paying them appropriately, ensuring they feel secure, and meeting their unique needs. Bring in those high-agency individuals who can break down barriers for you, then let them do their jobs while you focus on strategic growth initiatives. Being cheap with talent is penny-wise but pound-foolish. You'll waste valuable time micromanaging when you should be creating value.
David Valerio: How do you spot talent?
Jason Ethier: If I had a perfect formula for that… In today's dynamic environment, being personable and adaptable has become increasingly important. The ability to work effectively with diverse people across different situations is critical.
Every CEO claims they have "the best people working on the problem". It's practically part of the job description, but you also need to genuinely believe it yourself. The reality is that sometimes you get it wrong, and you need the courage to have those difficult conversations when things aren't working out.
Creating high-performing teams is like a distillation process. You want to attract good people, retain them, and minimize turnover. In startups especially, turnover is extraordinarily expensive. When someone leaves, you're not just losing their knowledge and skills—you're spending significant time and resources finding and training replacements.
I worked at a company where it took six months to fill a single role. When you calculate the collective time spent on recruitment and the work that wasn't being done during that period, it's staggering. If we had simply retained the original person by paying them more or providing the benefits they needed, we would have saved tremendous "people capital." Sometimes what seems like financial prudence in the short term becomes extremely costly in the bigger picture.
David Valerio: Having produced around 70 Energy Tech Startups episodes so far, what are the most interesting insights you've gained from these conversations?
Jason Ethier: Everyone has a personal climate story or some climate impact that has profoundly affected them. It's rarely about money—I want to emphasize that point. The passion comes from somewhere deeper.
I'm consistently amazed by the technical depth people bring. What initially appears straightforward on the surface reveals incredible complexity once you start exploring. The best interviews are those where I barely need to prompt the guest. They keep talking because their enthusiasm and knowledge naturally flow.
Those passionate entrepreneurs are the ones to watch. Their energy and determination shine through, and you can almost predict who will succeed based on these conversations. Their sophistication becomes evident in how they articulate complex challenges and solutions.
David Valerio: What signals sophistication to you in an entrepreneur? Is it technical depth, communication style, or something else entirely? What indicates during an interview that someone has what it takes to succeed?
Jason Ethier: It's partly their nuanced understanding of how different elements interconnect—the market dynamics, the technology itself, and genuine insight into customer needs. They grasp how these components form a coherent whole.
The founders who can raise capital effectively share another quality: exceptional storytelling ability. They distill complex concepts into concise, accessible explanations. We often advise early-stage entrepreneurs to synthesize their product descriptions so clearly that a 12-year-old cousin could understand them.
This isn't about oversimplifying or reducing the complexity of the language. Rather, it's making concepts accessible enough that someone who's only half-listening can accurately repeat the essence to their boss or partner. That memorable simplicity becomes the hallmark of brilliance.
When someone can simultaneously grasp intricate technical details and translate them into straightforward explanations, it signals a special kind of intelligence. That dual capacity—understanding complexity while communicating with clarity—is how you identify someone who will successfully attract investment.
David Valerio: How do you approach this with technical founders who often struggle with communication? I come from an Earth science background and was doing a PhD. Five years ago I was the stereotypical lab hermit who couldn't communicate effectively. Now I believe I've developed those skills. Is teaching this mostly about encouraging them to start the process, trusting they'll iterate and improve naturally?
Jason Ethier: It begins with being strategic about who you want to become. You can remain the solitary expert who possesses specialized knowledge, but if you want to transform systems or build a billion-dollar business, you must motivate others. People need to see and understand your vision.
We call this backcasting—you're creating a future vision and showing everyone the path to reach it. This doesn't happen through intelligence alone. Being extraordinarily smart isn't sufficient; you need to guide people through the journey. It's a skill you consciously choose to develop through practice. Some people need more practice than others, and some naturally have the gift of communication, but there are low-stakes opportunities to practice, and improvement comes with time.
At Energy Tech Nexus, we encourage founders to practice thought leadership deliberately. Like any skill, you improve through practice. If your idea deserves to exist because it solves a genuine problem, you need to start somewhere—whether that's at pitch competitions or on podcasts. The only way to discover what works is by putting yourself out there. People become skilled by starting and then refining their approach.
David Valerio: I'm curious about what you've learned about podcasting as a medium. After ~70 episodes, what insights have you gained about conducting interviews effectively?
Jason Ethier: There's the production aspect of podcasting that I'm admittedly not great at, which is why we partner with Digital Wildcatters. They handle the technical side and make us look good. That's a lesson in itself—the best partnerships feel effortless.
The most important element is creating a genuine conversation. You need authentic interest in the subject matter, and establishing comfort happens in the opening moments of the show. It's fascinating to watch how people transform when you tell them they're recording. They suddenly tense up and switch to their "radio voice."
One of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab, does something brilliant that I've come to appreciate. When guests introduce themselves, they deliberately include the stumbles and awkward moments in the final edit. It humanizes the guest and signals to everyone that this is a conversation, not a formal interview.
These subtle touches make all the difference. They're the behind-the-scenes craft elements you wouldn't notice unless you understood how the production process works. But they fundamentally change the listener's experience from hearing a structured interview to feeling like they're eavesdropping on an interesting conversation.
David Valerio: I approach these as conversations rather than interviews. If it were simply an interview, I could send a list of questions for written responses. What fascinates me about this format is discovering unexpected connections. Tugging on one thread leads to another, creating a nexus of ideas we might never have explored otherwise.
Conversation has become my fastest learning method, which represents a significant shift from my academic background where I'd study papers and research extensively. Now I find that talking with people who have deep expertise in a subject is remarkably efficient. It's almost like a shortcut to understanding.
Let's talk about Energy Tech Nexus. What's your vision for the organization's future and its role in Houston's tech ecosystem? How do you maintain momentum and keep people engaged?
Jason Ethier: Several transformative shifts occurred during our time building Greentown Houston. The most significant was COVID, which fundamentally changed how people work. Not only did it affect people's willingness to come into physical offices, but remote collaboration tools like Zoom dramatically improved.
As a result, startup teams have become nationally and even globally distributed. When you look at founders today, they might have team members in Seattle, Denver, and Houston with "offices" that are essentially people working from home. This distribution has changed the relevance of the traditional co-working model we had established at Greentown.
Additionally, startups in 2021 raised unprecedented seed rounds, allowing teams to grow to 12-15 people almost overnight. There's never been more capital flowing into climate tech than there is today. The needs of entrepreneurs remain consistent, but they're no longer concentrated in a single location.
At Energy Tech Nexus, we're focused primarily on building community and creating authentic connections between founders. While Houston remains central—I believe all entrepreneurs working in energy and decarbonization need to engage with Houston to execute their projects successfully—we recognize that entrepreneurs are dispersed.
We're developing strategies to meet entrepreneurs where they are. If they're attending RE+, we should have a presence there. We aim to establish ourselves at major industry conferences and in cities where entrepreneurs need a connection to Houston. This doesn't necessarily mean creating full-scale operations in each location, but rather organizing community-building activities across various cities.
We'll be launching initiatives in three different cities next year, essentially extending our hand and saying, "We've built this community, and when you're in Houston, we want you to be part of it."
David Valerio: You mentioned how remote work has transformed since the pandemic. I've worked exclusively remotely during this period, but I've observed that many early-stage startups struggle with this model. How do you make remote work effective, especially considering the serendipitous conversations and tacit knowledge sharing that typically happens in person?
Jason Ethier: I won't claim we've perfected this, but effective remote collaboration requires intentional over-communication. We've developed a hybrid approach where certain meetings—particularly strategic discussions—happen in person with our founding partners at least weekly, while more tactical conversations remain on Zoom.
About half our team isn't in Houston. We have support staff distributed across the country and globally. Success in this environment depends on establishing clear systems for effective communication. My partner Nada excels at clearly defining requirements, specifications, and expectations. It sounds mundane, but documentation becomes essential when you need people to follow processes rigorously across different locations.
We've also invested in a robust data system that serves as our single source of truth about members and the broader ecosystem. Without this shared foundation, synchronization would be nearly impossible.
Ultimately, it comes down to ensuring everyone remains aligned with our mission and vision. When everyone understands what we're doing and why, remote team members can make independent decisions that advance our goals. The key is empowering people to contribute their best work, regardless of location.
David Valerio: What's your assessment of entrepreneurship in 2024? How has it evolved, and what trends do you find most interesting?
Jason Ethier: The current entrepreneurial environment faces significant capital constraints. While founders always seek funding, the situation is particularly challenging now because we haven't seen many IPOs or exits in recent years. This creates a cascade effect. Venture capitalists can't cash out, which means they can't return capital to their limited partners, who then can't redistribute it into new funds.
Additionally, high interest rates have made traditional investments more attractive than riskier asset classes. When you can earn a reasonable return keeping money in the bank, the appeal of startup investing diminishes. This forces startups to operate extremely lean and not depend on outside capital.
I'm hopeful we'll see more seed capital flowing in the coming year as the stock market has performed exceptionally well, though much depends on inflation trends and policy changes. Despite these funding challenges, entrepreneurship remains attractive because the barriers to starting a company and the risks of joining a startup are historically low.
The energy transition has particularly captured people's imagination here in Houston. We regularly encounter experienced professionals with 20+ years in the industry who are eager to contribute to this transformation. Many approach us asking how to get involved and looking for startups to join.
One limitation we face is that we don't always know which companies in our cohort are hiring or have capital. Since funding typically precedes hiring, and capital has been scarce, I can't always direct people to specific job opportunities. However, there are other ways to engage, such as advisory roles.
The key is positioning yourself near opportunity. When companies do secure funding, they'll need to hire quickly and they'll look first to people they already know and trust.
David Valerio: Let's talk about Houston's role in the energy transition. I know you discuss this frequently, but I'd love to hear your case for why anyone serious about energy and climate innovation should consider Houston essential. I've met many people who have moral hesitations about working with oil and gas, but that perspective often ignores practical realities. Why is Houston fundamental to any meaningful energy transition?
Jason Ethier: What makes Houston uniquely powerful is the convergence of business, technical, and financial leadership all concentrated in one ecosystem. The financial innovation that emerges from Houston specifically around energy is remarkable. Figuring out how to fund billion-dollar projects where various stakeholders need to make money while managing different types of risk.
When you're working to achieve climate impact at scale, you simply can't accomplish it with a $10 million business. You need to operate at unicorn scale, and Houston becomes almost a prerequisite for scaling these massive projects, particularly in energy production, chemical manufacturing, and developing fossil fuel alternatives.
Even if you're not building your own facility, you'll need to integrate with existing infrastructure, and the best talent for doing that is concentrated here. You could certainly develop technology in New England with its excellent universities, but when it comes to building an actual production facility, that specialized talent exists in only a few global hubs.
The complexity of executing large-scale projects lives here because of the oil industry and NASA. There's a sophisticated understanding of complex systems that's difficult to articulate but essential to success. Building a billion-dollar factory might require $15 million in engineering work alone. You want that designed by firms that do this every day within our ecosystem to ensure on-time, on-budget delivery. When you're risking a billion dollars, you need confidence that you're spending it correctly.
David Valerio: Have you observed many startups from the East and West Coasts looking to establish a presence in Houston specifically for hard tech, energy, and climate solutions? Or are they still focused on lab-scale development without considering eventual project deployment? What trends are you seeing in this space?
Jason Ethier: Since we work with companies at relatively early stages, we don't necessarily see all the later-stage companies establishing operations here. However, one of the major accomplishments of the Greater Houston Partnership and organizations like Greentown has been putting Houston on the innovation map.
It's remarkable to hear people at conferences say, "I'm coming to Houston because it's an innovation hub for energy." That simply wouldn't have happened in 2019. So yes, companies are definitely coming, though this doesn't mean they're relocating their entire operations.
Typically, they'll establish a satellite office focused on sales or what I'd call "sales engineering." The teams that determine how their technology integrates with a customer's project. They're not typically moving their R&D operations here, but rather creating a strategic presence to facilitate deployment and customer relationships.
David Valerio: Switching topics completely, there's considerable hype around LLMs in startups right now. What interesting use cases have you seen that might be applicable to the energy and climate space?
Jason Ethier: We're developing something internally that I can't discuss yet, but I've observed several promising applications emerging. One particularly interesting use case is navigating grant applications. Nobody wants to parse through lengthy funding opportunity announcements to determine relevance. LLMs could streamline this process significantly.
The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to effectively prompt these systems. Language models are ultimately computational tools. If you input poor information, you'll receive poor outputs. The question becomes how to structure your inputs to match with available systems effectively.
Digital Wildcatters is doing fascinating work with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) implementations in the energy industry, creating a specialized knowledge base tailored to industry-specific needs. Similarly, the Martin Trust Center developed a RAG-based LLM to answer entrepreneurship questions and guide founders through disciplined business development.
Applying this approach to climate tech could be transformative. Imagine capturing the collective knowledge of experienced founders who've built successful businesses in this space and creating an interactive knowledge system that preserves their nuanced understanding.
For example, many entrepreneurs want to understand how to connect to ERCOT (the Texas electricity grid), but this information isn't comprehensively documented anywhere. It exists as tribal knowledge. An LLM that could guide founders through these specialized processes would save tremendous time and effort for the entire ecosystem.
David Valerio: As we wrap up, what three resources would you recommend for aspiring energy founders?
Jason Ethier: First, I'd have to recommend our Energy Tech Startups podcast. I might be biased, but I believe it provides valuable insights from practitioners across the ecosystem.
Second, the book Disciplined Entrepreneurship offers an excellent handbook for rigorously developing a business plan. Having a structured guide for where to begin is incredibly valuable, especially for first-time founders.
For the third resource, I'd focus less on specific books about business mechanics—there are plenty of resources on creating cap tables and other technical aspects. Instead, I'd emphasize customer discovery resources that help you understand what people will actually pay for. That's where founders should concentrate their time when determining if they have a viable business concept.
David Valerio: "Will they pay me money?" seems like a fundamental question to ask.
Jason Ethier: Absolutely. Everyone needs to get paid, and every business needs to create value. The greatest challenge for any startup lies in both creating value and capturing it. These are distinct functions that don't automatically align.
We often see startups that create tremendous value but haven't figured out how to monetize it effectively. The founder might love their solution and it genuinely solves a real problem, but without a mechanism for value capture, the business remains unsustainable. If you don't figure out how to capture that value, someone else eventually will—and that's always a difficult position to be in.
David Valerio: Last question. What are you striving to achieve in your life and work going forward?
Jason Ethier: For me, making the founder experience truly transformational is the ultimate goal. If we can help founders grow alongside their businesses, that's mission accomplished.
The most painful thing to witness is when a founder takes a business to a certain stage only to be outgrown by it. When their skillset no longer matches what the company needs, and they lack the resources to bridge that gap. Often, founders struggle to release control of something they've built their entire career, but at some point, separation becomes necessary, especially when outside capital enters the picture.
Our best contribution is helping founders become who they need to be. If we can do that for hundreds of entrepreneurs in Houston, we'll have created something meaningful. We want to develop exceptional leaders who don't just succeed once but multiple times because they understand the fundamentals of building value. There's no hard KPI for this work, but that's the vision driving our community.
Personally, connecting back to our earlier discussion about spirituality and purpose, I want to experience the full spectrum of entrepreneurship. I'd love to IPO a company someday. I've already gone through bankruptcy once—don't need to repeat that experience. I'd like to lead a turnaround. Each challenge tests whether you have the knowledge and skillset required at different stages of business building.
This is my third business now, and we're cash flow positive. A stark contrast to my first venture, where it took 30 months to generate any revenue. I'm constantly learning, and it's getting easier, which naturally raises the question: what's the next challenge?
I'm driven by experiencing everything entrepreneurship has to offer. We're heading to Sweden over the winter holiday to see the northern lights during solar maximum. Life reminds us that if we don't seize opportunities when they arise, they may not come again.
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