WEBVTT
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And that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill.
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And it was a sign of respect and absolutely was a challenge.
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In other words, don't let me down.
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There's a lot of writing on this.
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Welcome back, Mateo.
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It's great to be back.
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We had a great time chatting last week about form energy and the future of storage.
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We're going to take a slightly different tact this week and talk about more, Mateo, you as a person.
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So we asked this question of every guest that comes on giant ideas.
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If you had to pick three photographs of your life that define your life, what would they be?
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And what have you learned from them?
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I I I'm not going to go with, you know, the kids being, I have three kids.
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I'm not going to do the the kids being born one or me getting married.
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I sort of assume that those are they have been done on this show before.
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So that's good to hear.
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But uh let let me let me start with one that is maybe relevant for the for the conversation.
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Um so uh when I after I left Tesla, I was thinking about what does come next for energy storage.
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You know, I very continue to be super curious about that.
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And as the thought experiment was really trying to figure out what kind of battery could compete with fossil fuels um on the grid.
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And and I did come across this iron air chemistry that was in the public domain.
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And and I was fortunate enough to be able to sort of run that thought experiment in a fairly controlled environment.
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I um I was a entrepreneur in residence at something called uh what's called Activate Now, it was called Cyclotron Road Then, but it's sort of you know hard tech uh incubator for for essentially PhDs.
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And it was run founded by a friend of mine, Elon Gurr, uh there in Berkeley.
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And um and it was just a place for me to sort of counsel younger entrepreneurs kind of early in the stage there.
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But they did have a very rigorous process for sort of evaluating hard tech ideas.
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And uh and and Elon brought a lot of structure to my thinking about that.
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And I have you know the fortune of having some amazingly smart friends um who uh who I could bring in and you know, sort of red team it with, and we did a in a very formal process around it.
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And uh sort of reached the end of it, and I had never it sounds a little naive.
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I never really had thought about founding a company, but uh after I the smartest people that I could bring in ran through a very rigorous process, uh I sort of was looking at the page, and you know, my friend Alan was right there, and he's like, I think you need to start the company.
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I just I remember looking at the battery specification that I had come up with that that was represented by this iron air approach.
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I just like I it it just became clear as day.
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Like I we we happened to do that at Stanford.
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There was there was a there was a conference room that we were all in doing this red team, blue, blue team exercise.
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And I just like I can picture the windows and the light coming in the windows and sitting at that desk looking at looking at the specification on my computer, and I was like, I think I need to start a company.
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And that was like a you know, sort of a you know, eyes closed, to take the snapshot moment there.
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And I had no idea what was going to come next, but that part was extremely clear.
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Aaron Powell Love it, accidental entrepreneur.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So I've been in batteries even before Tesla, I was at a company called Gaia Power Technologies in New York, and and we sold lead acid batteries, essentially, to to behind the meter applications.
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We're doing demand charge reduction back in you know early 2000s.
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And uh I was uh you know, I was everything I was technically the COO of the company, but I was battery installer, I was battery maintainer, I was like customer, you know, business development guy, I was you know, doing all of it.
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And uh and and I remember installing batteries in the Starbucks, you know, at 1 a.m.
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Because you had to do it off off hours and in Manhattan and like, you know, taking these heavy batteries down the down the very precarious stairs, you know, in in in Midtown.
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And uh I remember sort of having a very crisp moment to myself, I was like, have have I have I committed to the wrong thing?
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You know because I coming out of divinity school, I it was my first job in storage.
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And like I I I was sure that it was, you know, sectorally, I was sure that it was the right bet.
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Like we had to have a better way to store energy.
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And so I committed this this company as my first you know, first storage job, and as a fears in it, just like doing things that I never imagined that I'd be doing, and like really having that moment.
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Like I wasn't getting paid because the company was having a you know really tough time getting through it.
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Like from from the from the altar to uh to the to the staircase carrying carrying battery storage.
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Yeah, exactly.
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It's like what you know, what choices have led me here to you know to carrying batteries down there down a hatch off of a midtown you know street here in in Manhattan, you know, middle of the night.
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And like, what am I doing here?
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Um and that was a you know, really those moments create the resolve, I suppose.
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Uh but but I you know I can still I sometimes still actually go past that Starbucks when I'm in Manhattan.
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It's like there's the reminder there that like it, you know, the road is not linear for you know by any stretch of the imagination, and you you can end up, you know, in some strange scenarios.
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I had a funny, slightly similar scenario where immediately after graduating from Princeton, um, also with a not not to studying to be a a priest, but with a degree in philosophy and religion, I was gigging around New York and my band, and I was um signed up to be uh I say snuck in to be a bartender at Webster Hall because I didn't really have the uh the credentials for it.
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And I was there on the night delivering uh making drinks, and it was a hip hop night, and I didn't know I didn't actually know many of the drinks that were being ordered.
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And it was uh it was a somewhat disastrous evening where I also sort of had a moment of being like, whoa, was this the right decision?
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Um anyway, here we are now.
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Yeah, those those are the impactful ones.
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Uh and then you know, maybe a little bit more recently, um you know, we built a factory here in West Virginia, formed it, and it's on an old steel mill site.
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Uh you know, the steel mill that produced for a hundred years and you know, 12,000 jobs that went away 25 years ago.
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And uh the state of West Virginia really committed us, um committed to us uh to to bring us here.
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And there was there was a bill that was passed in the legislature, in fact, to fully fund the the economic development package that they put in front of us, which is$290 million, a very meaningful amount uh from the state.
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And uh there was a signing ceremony, and we went to the signing ceremony, and and our our local state senator, this guy named Ryan Weld, he's he's from here, his grand grandparents, his grandfathers worked in the mill, and uh and he introduced me at the at that signing ceremony.
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He was on stage in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the capital of the state.
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And uh and and as he was walking off stage and I was walking on stage, and Ryan's an Air Force guy, and um, and and as folks may know uh from people in the military, um there's the challenge coin.
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So, you know, f from the branch that they represent, or the um generally or their their division, that there's a coin, sort of, you know, the size of a sort of large silver dollar, and uh and the tradition is to sort of put you know, you palm it when you shake somebody's hand and you receive that challenge coin.
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It's uh you know very much a sign of respect and honor.
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And uh and and I've had the honor of receiving uh a couple challenge coins over over the years uh and um their tradition in the military.
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And and as I shook Ryan's hand coming up as he was coming off stage, there was a coin that he palmed for me.
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Uh and uh and and he came in close for a second, he's and and I looked at it.
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It was not a military challenge coin, it was a it was a badge with a number on it, and that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill.
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And he said, uh, there's a number on there, and it said Jim Zirkel, as his grandfather would be proud.
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And it was a sign of respect, and Ryan, you know, because he's savvy about these things, absolutely was a challenge.
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In other words, don't let me down, right?
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Stay as community to you, there's a lot of writing on this.
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And uh and that was you know, sort of the the responsibility and the and the weight of the moment really was there, but it was also just an extremely genuine, you know, human moment coming from from Ryan.
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Last question to wrap up this episode what is it about Mateo yourself that has allowed you to be so successful in life?
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And modesty is not not allowed in this answer.
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We want you to be uh uh foresomely boastful.
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So yeah, well, you've done a lot.
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Um what do you think is about you that's allowed you to do that?
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Uh I I think it's a combination of my personality, which is uh I I'm pretty low-key, I'm pretty even killed.
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In fact, you know, very even killed.
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Um that that's one thing I hear from my team frequently is that you know the fact that I don't sort of you know get too high or too low is is important there.
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And at the same time, and I will p not pretend to be humble about this, I am insanely ambitious.
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The powerful combination.
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I don't want to work on something that doesn't matter.
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I don't see why we can't go, you know, build literally build a trillion dollar product.
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Uh I know we can, I know it's possible.
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Uh and I also know that it's uh sometimes it's to get there, you just kind of have to keep going.
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And the small stuff, you know, it's like the the the vicissitudes of day in, day out, like not worth reacting to.
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Just keep plugging away, don't ever give up.
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Um and keep your sights, you know, set on the highest possible outcome that you that you can.
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Uh and that's where you know you you asked a little bit about the culture before the forum.
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I I think there's one thing that characterizes maybe why we have collectively been successful is you know, there is uh an insane amount of ambition.
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And for the amount of ambition, a relatively low amount of ego.
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And that's also how I've tried to select for people on the team as well as like that right quotient, right?
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It's like just incredibly ambitious for the company and for even for yourself.
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But your own personal ego has to be, you know, just a notch below that, right?
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That ratio is super, super important.
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I think that's a key ratio, isn't it?
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The ambition to ego.
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And you want you want the ambition to be as high as possible, the ego to be as low as possible.
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When those two talk to invert, that's when you get in trouble.
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Or if the ego just gets too close to the ambition, then that's the other area you have trouble.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that that's right.
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And so I I think that has enabled me to, you know, very immodestly talk about goals like what we're talking about, going and building a trillion dollar product, um, and still attract people who really want to work hard, right?
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And be a part of it.
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I guess the third part of that triangle is you need the ambition, the skill needs to match the ambition as well.
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Because if you have ambition without skill, then I think it can it can also fall down.
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Delusion.
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Today it can be delusional.
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Well, what's the phrase?
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Amb ambition without execution is delusion.
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Yeah.
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It's like or vision without execution is delusion.
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And I, you know, to some extent, like you know, making sure that we were never too far apart, right, on that vision and and and capability, right?
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Yeah.
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Uh thin line, thin line between genius and uh and folly, I guess.
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Right.
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So um thank you so much for joining us on Giant Ideas again, Mateo, and sharing these wonderful snippets of your life.
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Um, very excited about form energy and its future.
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And it's been so great chatting with you.
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Yeah, Cameron, it's been a pleasure.
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Thanks so much.
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And that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill.
00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:13.599
And it was a sign of respect and absolutely was a challenge.
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In other words, don't let me down.
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There's a lot of writing on this.
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Welcome back, Mateo.
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It's great to be back.
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We had a great time chatting last week about form energy and the future of storage.
00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:29.839
We're going to take a slightly different tact this week and talk about more, Mateo, you as a person.
00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.960
So we asked this question of every guest that comes on giant ideas.
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If you had to pick three photographs of your life that define your life, what would they be?
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And what have you learned from them?
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I I I'm not going to go with, you know, the kids being, I have three kids.
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I'm not going to do the the kids being born one or me getting married.
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I sort of assume that those are they have been done on this show before.
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So that's good to hear.
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But uh let let me let me start with one that is maybe relevant for the for the conversation.
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Um so uh when I after I left Tesla, I was thinking about what does come next for energy storage.
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You know, I very continue to be super curious about that.
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And as the thought experiment was really trying to figure out what kind of battery could compete with fossil fuels um on the grid.
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And and I did come across this iron air chemistry that was in the public domain.
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And and I was fortunate enough to be able to sort of run that thought experiment in a fairly controlled environment.
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I um I was a entrepreneur in residence at something called uh what's called Activate Now, it was called Cyclotron Road Then, but it's sort of you know hard tech uh incubator for for essentially PhDs.
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And it was run founded by a friend of mine, Elon Gurr, uh there in Berkeley.
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And um and it was just a place for me to sort of counsel younger entrepreneurs kind of early in the stage there.
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But they did have a very rigorous process for sort of evaluating hard tech ideas.
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And uh and and Elon brought a lot of structure to my thinking about that.
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And I have you know the fortune of having some amazingly smart friends um who uh who I could bring in and you know, sort of red team it with, and we did a in a very formal process around it.
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And uh sort of reached the end of it, and I had never it sounds a little naive.
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I never really had thought about founding a company, but uh after I the smartest people that I could bring in ran through a very rigorous process, uh I sort of was looking at the page, and you know, my friend Alan was right there, and he's like, I think you need to start the company.
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I just I remember looking at the battery specification that I had come up with that that was represented by this iron air approach.
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I just like I it it just became clear as day.
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Like I we we happened to do that at Stanford.
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There was there was a there was a conference room that we were all in doing this red team, blue, blue team exercise.
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And I just like I can picture the windows and the light coming in the windows and sitting at that desk looking at looking at the specification on my computer, and I was like, I think I need to start a company.
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And that was like a you know, sort of a you know, eyes closed, to take the snapshot moment there.
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And I had no idea what was going to come next, but that part was extremely clear.
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Aaron Powell Love it, accidental entrepreneur.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So I've been in batteries even before Tesla, I was at a company called Gaia Power Technologies in New York, and and we sold lead acid batteries, essentially, to to behind the meter applications.
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We're doing demand charge reduction back in you know early 2000s.
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And uh I was uh you know, I was everything I was technically the COO of the company, but I was battery installer, I was battery maintainer, I was like customer, you know, business development guy, I was you know, doing all of it.
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And uh and and I remember installing batteries in the Starbucks, you know, at 1 a.m.
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Because you had to do it off off hours and in Manhattan and like, you know, taking these heavy batteries down the down the very precarious stairs, you know, in in in Midtown.
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And uh I remember sort of having a very crisp moment to myself, I was like, have have I have I committed to the wrong thing?
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You know because I coming out of divinity school, I it was my first job in storage.
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And like I I I was sure that it was, you know, sectorally, I was sure that it was the right bet.
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Like we had to have a better way to store energy.
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And so I committed this this company as my first you know, first storage job, and as a fears in it, just like doing things that I never imagined that I'd be doing, and like really having that moment.
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Like I wasn't getting paid because the company was having a you know really tough time getting through it.
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Like from from the from the altar to uh to the to the staircase carrying carrying battery storage.
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Yeah, exactly.
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It's like what you know, what choices have led me here to you know to carrying batteries down there down a hatch off of a midtown you know street here in in Manhattan, you know, middle of the night.
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And like, what am I doing here?
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Um and that was a you know, really those moments create the resolve, I suppose.
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Uh but but I you know I can still I sometimes still actually go past that Starbucks when I'm in Manhattan.
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It's like there's the reminder there that like it, you know, the road is not linear for you know by any stretch of the imagination, and you you can end up, you know, in some strange scenarios.
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I had a funny, slightly similar scenario where immediately after graduating from Princeton, um, also with a not not to studying to be a a priest, but with a degree in philosophy and religion, I was gigging around New York and my band, and I was um signed up to be uh I say snuck in to be a bartender at Webster Hall because I didn't really have the uh the credentials for it.
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And I was there on the night delivering uh making drinks, and it was a hip hop night, and I didn't know I didn't actually know many of the drinks that were being ordered.
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And it was uh it was a somewhat disastrous evening where I also sort of had a moment of being like, whoa, was this the right decision?
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Um anyway, here we are now.
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Yeah, those those are the impactful ones.
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Uh and then you know, maybe a little bit more recently, um you know, we built a factory here in West Virginia, formed it, and it's on an old steel mill site.
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Uh you know, the steel mill that produced for a hundred years and you know, 12,000 jobs that went away 25 years ago.
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And uh the state of West Virginia really committed us, um committed to us uh to to bring us here.
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And there was there was a bill that was passed in the legislature, in fact, to fully fund the the economic development package that they put in front of us, which is$290 million, a very meaningful amount uh from the state.
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And uh there was a signing ceremony, and we went to the signing ceremony, and and our our local state senator, this guy named Ryan Weld, he's he's from here, his grand grandparents, his grandfathers worked in the mill, and uh and he introduced me at the at that signing ceremony.
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He was on stage in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the capital of the state.
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And uh and and as he was walking off stage and I was walking on stage, and Ryan's an Air Force guy, and um, and and as folks may know uh from people in the military, um there's the challenge coin.
00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:19.839
So, you know, f from the branch that they represent, or the um generally or their their division, that there's a coin, sort of, you know, the size of a sort of large silver dollar, and uh and the tradition is to sort of put you know, you palm it when you shake somebody's hand and you receive that challenge coin.
00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:22.639
It's uh you know very much a sign of respect and honor.
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And uh and and I've had the honor of receiving uh a couple challenge coins over over the years uh and um their tradition in the military.
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And and as I shook Ryan's hand coming up as he was coming off stage, there was a coin that he palmed for me.
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Uh and uh and and he came in close for a second, he's and and I looked at it.
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It was not a military challenge coin, it was a it was a badge with a number on it, and that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill.
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And he said, uh, there's a number on there, and it said Jim Zirkel, as his grandfather would be proud.
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And it was a sign of respect, and Ryan, you know, because he's savvy about these things, absolutely was a challenge.
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In other words, don't let me down, right?
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Stay as community to you, there's a lot of writing on this.
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And uh and that was you know, sort of the the responsibility and the and the weight of the moment really was there, but it was also just an extremely genuine, you know, human moment coming from from Ryan.
00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:42.240
Last question to wrap up this episode what is it about Mateo yourself that has allowed you to be so successful in life?
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And modesty is not not allowed in this answer.
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We want you to be uh uh foresomely boastful.
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So yeah, well, you've done a lot.
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Um what do you think is about you that's allowed you to do that?
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Uh I I think it's a combination of my personality, which is uh I I'm pretty low-key, I'm pretty even killed.
00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:04.080
In fact, you know, very even killed.
00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:12.080
Um that that's one thing I hear from my team frequently is that you know the fact that I don't sort of you know get too high or too low is is important there.
00:09:12.399 --> 00:09:19.360
And at the same time, and I will p not pretend to be humble about this, I am insanely ambitious.
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The powerful combination.
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I don't want to work on something that doesn't matter.
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I don't see why we can't go, you know, build literally build a trillion dollar product.
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Uh I know we can, I know it's possible.
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Uh and I also know that it's uh sometimes it's to get there, you just kind of have to keep going.
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And the small stuff, you know, it's like the the the vicissitudes of day in, day out, like not worth reacting to.
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Just keep plugging away, don't ever give up.
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Um and keep your sights, you know, set on the highest possible outcome that you that you can.
00:09:52.960 --> 00:09:57.840
Uh and that's where you know you you asked a little bit about the culture before the forum.
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I I think there's one thing that characterizes maybe why we have collectively been successful is you know, there is uh an insane amount of ambition.
00:10:05.519 --> 00:10:08.720
And for the amount of ambition, a relatively low amount of ego.
00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:14.879
And that's also how I've tried to select for people on the team as well as like that right quotient, right?
00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:19.279
It's like just incredibly ambitious for the company and for even for yourself.
00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:23.120
But your own personal ego has to be, you know, just a notch below that, right?
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That ratio is super, super important.
00:10:24.799 --> 00:10:26.559
I think that's a key ratio, isn't it?
00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:28.320
The ambition to ego.
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And you want you want the ambition to be as high as possible, the ego to be as low as possible.
00:10:31.759 --> 00:10:34.480
When those two talk to invert, that's when you get in trouble.
00:10:34.559 --> 00:10:38.159
Or if the ego just gets too close to the ambition, then that's the other area you have trouble.
00:10:38.399 --> 00:10:38.960
Yeah.
00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:40.399
Yeah, that that's right.
00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:51.200
And so I I think that has enabled me to, you know, very immodestly talk about goals like what we're talking about, going and building a trillion dollar product, um, and still attract people who really want to work hard, right?
00:10:51.279 --> 00:10:51.919
And be a part of it.
00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:57.519
I guess the third part of that triangle is you need the ambition, the skill needs to match the ambition as well.
00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:00.879
Because if you have ambition without skill, then I think it can it can also fall down.
00:11:01.279 --> 00:11:01.600
Delusion.
00:11:01.919 --> 00:11:02.879
Today it can be delusional.
00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:05.039
Well, what's the phrase?
00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:07.039
Amb ambition without execution is delusion.
00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:07.360
Yeah.
00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:09.840
It's like or vision without execution is delusion.
00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:16.720
And I, you know, to some extent, like you know, making sure that we were never too far apart, right, on that vision and and and capability, right?
00:11:16.879 --> 00:11:17.120
Yeah.
00:11:17.279 --> 00:11:21.120
Uh thin line, thin line between genius and uh and folly, I guess.
00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:21.440
Right.
00:11:21.519 --> 00:11:29.120
So um thank you so much for joining us on Giant Ideas again, Mateo, and sharing these wonderful snippets of your life.
00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:31.919
Um, very excited about form energy and its future.
00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:33.519
And it's been so great chatting with you.
00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:35.200
Yeah, Cameron, it's been a pleasure.
00:11:35.279 --> 00:11:36.159
Thanks so much.
