#211: Daniel Schnitzer, CEO of SparkMeter – $30M for Grid Management in 30 Countries. Millions of Customers Served. AI for Climate. PhD Research from Carnegie Mellon.

SparkMeter offers grid-management solutions that enable utilities worldwide to run profitable, efficient, and reliable systems. Their investors include mutual friends at Clean Energy Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Elemental Impact.

Dan’s prior experience includes work at DNV GL and a PhD in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon.

In this episode, you’ll learn these four important takeaways.

1. How an 8th-grade science project and a trip to Haiti laid the foundation for this company
2. Why they chose to build solutions involving hardware, software, and communications instead of just one or two of those pieces
3. How their structured customer discovery channeled 75 utility executive interviews into the formation of their new product offering
4. Why we shouldn’t wait for a crisis to start building health relationships with mindfulness and therapy tools like IFS

🔗 PODCAST SHOW LINKS:

SparkMeter -https://www.sparkmeter.io

Dan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-schnitzer-600934bb/

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist (book) - https://shorturl.at/EYrJp

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead (book) - https://shorturl.at/hlgO9

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win (book) - https://shorturl.at/2ZVRZ

High Output Management (book) - https://shorturl.at/wvZjo

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🤔 PODCAST HOST:

Dr. Chris Wedding is the CEO of EFI (climate CEO peer groups), cofounder of Terraset (carbon removal), Senior Advisor at Javelin Capital (investment banking), Board member at World Tree (regenerative forestry), Board Advisor at DG Matrix (next-gen power electronics), Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, occasional monk, father of three, 2x ax-throwing champ (huh?), Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2006 (Google it), and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio).