970: 11 Years, 3 Pivots, and a Successful Exit | Jason Kaminsky

0:00Suncast is proudly brought to you by CPS Americas. We had a great outcome, but it took 11 years and, you know, three pivots and a lot of capital to get here. And I guess I would probably focus on my customer revenue earlier. Alright, welcome back to Suncast. I can't wait for today's conversation. It's one of those kinds of conversations that you hope to be able to have. The interview someone, in this case, Jason Kyminski came on the show almost exactly a year ago, episode 833, I think, will leave the link in the show notes for you to check it out. And in the course of that time, his business was acquired, which is fantastic. Not only is it a wonderful outcome for us in the industry for us as entrepreneurs to see that all this effort does lead to these kinds of liquidity events or exits or sort of positive note for the industry that we are excited about, but it, for me, it gives

1:04an opportunity to circle back around to a founder and ask some of the harder questions about, what is it like to go through an acquisition? How do you navigate that? And frankly, a lot of conversations around acquisitions just focus on the deal who bottom, or the numbers, what happens next, candidly. We're not going to talk about much of that today for a lot of reasons, but the deal is really the final chapter of what is ultimately a longer story. Jason Kyminski helped to build KWH analytics from its earliest days, eventually stepping into the CEO role in leading the company through the strategic decisions that culminated in an acquisition by major global company known as Beasley. What interests me most is not the transaction, but everything that has to happen to get to it. How do you build something another company actually wants to own? How do you decide that it's time to shift gears to a new product that would make better some acquisition material or a higher enterprise value?

2:06If you are unfamiliar with the term enterprise value, welcome to the game. How do you keep a team motivated when the future is uncertain and what does leading through an acquisition really actually teach you about building a company at all? We're going to cover more of that in detail in today's conversation here on Sungas. I'm glad that you're here and it is my honor and privilege to welcome Jason Kyminski back to Suncast. Jason, great to see you. Hey, Nico, thank you for having me again. Good to be back. I've had the great opportunity to watch as you guys have built this business. A lot of folks probably know some of the backstory I'll invite you to share some of that. From the very beginning as a co-founder of KWH analytics, you've been involved in the decisions, but you weren't the original CEO. Why don't we start there for those who haven't listened to episode 833? What was the nugget of an idea? How did you get roped into being an entrepreneur, co-founder at all, alongside our friend Richard and this thing called KWH analytics?

3:09Very, very briefly. My background, a solar developer called SPG Solar, had moved into project finance, doing tech equity at Wells Fargo, and had that Richard somewhere along the way. He had basically convinced me that this was a good idea, which is we're going to try to use data to help do something sort of the idea. I was at a point in my life where there's very, very few instances that I can reflect on that say, if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it when I'm 65 and retired. For me, that was like entrepreneurship. I didn't know I was going to like it, or if I was going to like it, but I knew if I did not try it, I might regret it. It was sort of a safe time in my life. I was not married at the time and up kids. I took a leap, and that was, I thought I'd try it for two or three years, and that was what, like 12 years ago. So it's been a journey. Yeah. What was the original thesis? You know, you tongue-in-cheek said, like, let's figure out how to use data to make something

4:11matter. But I remember those days, you know, we're talking late teen late late, late, so our odds early 2010s, where kind of everybody was talking about big data. But nobody really knew how to harness it in a meaningful way to create a business around it other than, you know, the large sort of consumer businesses like Roku is a great example. How are you thinking about data back then and how did that formalize into a product in those early days? A lot of it was fake it till you make it and just throw a bunch of spaghetti and see what it's like to have a good stick, if I'm being totally honest. I mean, Richard went around and his art is developing deeper relationships with broad array of stakeholders, and basically begged and pleaded for data from different people. He was coming out of from a McKinsey lens, which is everyone says they're the best in a world that obviously can't be the case. So how do we establish to inform that? I was coming out of from a banking lens, which is we didn't even have our own house in

5:11order. Like, we obviously did very deep underwriting at the bank, but my last project there was just organizing all of our data into a spreadsheet so that if we knew how much sack on we owned and where it was located, like, that was, they had a banker do that project. And it was a mix of software development. So we ended up building software for banks, which we still sell today called Heliostats, which is basically an asset management software. And really, really grateful to the support of the Department of Energy, because we had, I think over the course of the company, we've had nine different awards that have all been non-divided financing, that have got the company to different milestones, including our entry into insurance, helping build out of original database, somewhere obviously more successful than others. But they were very instrumental along the way of building the company in the early days, especially. What did the Department of Energy support look like? Did you guys sit around and go, you know what, we should go get non-dilutive capital from the DOE or how did that surface? I think Richard did. When I joined, there was actually already a DOE grant in place.

6:14So I think that was his very, very first project was, how do I fund this thing? And the original thesis was a project to go build out a data set. And again, we didn't have a data set at the time. So we were sort of going around promising people we would help them understand something and do some benchmarking. And we needed a first, a first to get to a second to get to a third. Yeah. And you ultimately, I remember those early days, the first announcement. I mean, there were some really clever things that I feel like you guys did. I was a part of the solar 100 when you guys were doing. It was about the same time that I was starting to broadcast that you guys started sort of acknowledging the 100-ish people in the industry that were influencing sort of the direction of the industry. That's a clever marketing tactic. But it was really trying to draw attention to a company that had created this thing called a solar put. Am I getting that right? Solar revenue put. Right. So we were now in 2016, 27, I guess. And this is the first thing that I think KWH really became known for flagging the sand of like, this is what we can do to help developers.

7:17Where did that first product idea come from? And as you reflect back on it with the wisdom of having now built and sold a business that kind of originated around this early idea, how is your thinking evolved around this idea of a solar put? How did you guys sell it to folks? Like give me a little context there. Yeah. We'd spend a few years building a data company. Turns out still really, really hard to sell data products, create data products. So software, still a very challenging business, I think, in our space, at least the way that we were sort of looking at it and developing. And we had an insight that we knew a lot about how this equipment performs, right? And one of our Department of Energy projects was developing the first really data validated production model, right? So we have a great model and what could we do? We could go compete head to head with the IE's and sell model results. Or, you know, if you know the risk the best, go take the risk, right? Like go bet on your own cool it.

8:18So that led to the idea of the revenue put, right? We think we know production forecasting the best. We know project finance, that's my background, if you know there's another company. And can we go risk transfer or basically ensure tail risk in a way that's a creative to the industry? Yeah. And I would say it was being the long term revenue. The long term revenue. The long term downside revenue scenarios, right? The thesis was if you have a credit worthy counter party backstopping revenue forecasting, you should be able to underwrite a higher level of revenue within the product finance model. And that was really very early days. And I'd say from 2017 was our first deal with Coronal. Do you remember those guys? Yeah. Up through 2020 we had really steady growth. And that was really the core product of the company and the solar revenue put. So at that point we put a lot of messaging around production, production forecasting. That was when we launched the solar risk assessment. So I might remember something called the solar generation index.

9:19I've heard since that people thought it was self-interested marketing. And then that was coupled with, but now all of our data is basically showing that all of those stats were pretty correct. So we did put out a lot of content marketing thought leadership to bring attention to this idea that, hey, there's a real risk here. And you can buy a product offload it. And what were the conversations like in those early days about how to get visibility in the industry that led to things like the solar 100 and the solar risk assessment report? I would say we had a very supportive board generally. One of our board members, a guy named Larry Eng, a serial entrepreneur, FinTech entrepreneur. So he had a lot of really fantastic ideas that we would leverage, right? I think solar 100 might have come from him. He also said, here's the next episode, 100. Not to, I don't want to make the next, the next conference, I've everyone have these oversized animals. Because like go buy stuffed animals, put your logo on it, make them just cute enough that they want to bring them home for their kids and just big enough they can't fit in

10:22a backpack. And you have all these people walking around, R.E. Plus with these oversized animals with your logo on it. So we've got 100 stuffed lions and we made a little pinker chip with the KTA beach logo. So just a little, I mean, little insights that honestly I never would have thought of that helped, I think, establish a presence in the industry. And our whole, our whole company lifetime up to today, we've had a marketing team of one. And I think we've sort of batted above our weight. I'm pretty proud of Richard, his sister Sarah started a lot of it and we've sort of carried it through. But I think we've batted above our weight in some regard of branding brand awareness, sorry, building brand awareness, which is ultimately very important as we're talking about sort of acquisitions, right, brand credibility, brand awareness, star leadership, becomes very important as people are saying, okay, we want to get into a space, who should we talk to? We mentioned that Richard was sort of the original sort of genesis of the idea brought you

11:26in almost immediately. I think employee number one, now notably co-founder because you and he pretty much developed the idea alongside one another. But when you look back over the course of the decade or so of building his business, describe how your role evolved from helping build the company to ultimately being the person responsible to lead it. So for most of the company life up until 2022, I was cheap operating officer. So for us that meant basically keep the house in order, right? I did finance, I did accounting, I did HR, I did obviously operations, worked with our CTO very closely. Very, I'd say like strategic operations, I guess I'll call it that. So obviously talk to Richard every single day about what we wanted to do strategically. But was mostly the guy doing the details and making sure that we were not getting out of, I guess I was legal too, right? So making sure that we sort of had our house in order, which ended up by the way paying

12:28dividends during a very deep diligence process because they're going to check every single contract and flip over every single cabinet that they can find. And then actually the same week I learned I was having a child, you didn't know, it's going to say having a boy, but we didn't know at the time. And that Richard was stepping down and that I was going to step into the CEO seat. So that all happened basically in tandem and then over the course we spent quite a lot of time orchestrating that handoff and the messaging to the team and the market. And then I became CEO and I was like, I don't know what this job is because I didn't have a COO. So I was still doing my COO job and trying to figure out what a CEO did. And I thought of it like safe hands, like I need someone to come in. I'm having a child and I'm like, I'm on that I can just trust. And I've known this guy Michael Backroad, he's our chief operating officer now for over a decade. I was like, he's got it. I can bring him in.

13:28I know he'll take care of it. And then my child is two weeks early. So I'm like, two weeks of training. Oh my gosh, he got thrown into the fire. And I think it took me probably six months to actually figure out what the CEO did and get comfortable with that. And Richard's greatest gift to me was he managed to like give me the space to make decisions and not relitigate. And you know, like basically any decision I made, he never challenged me on. Which I think is probably even harder than being the CEO is being a guy who's started and run a company for nine years and then said, here are the keys. I'm not going to get in your way. When you're looking at the solar market, you have to ask who is the partner you can really trust for the long haul. That's why I hope you'll take a closer look at CPS America and see how they are shaping the industry's next chapter. The evidence is clear. Woodback has confirmed them as the number one market leader for stringinvers in the US

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15:31When you think about that six month period, what changed in you that made you ready for the responsibility of CEO? Now when you look back on it. I'd never considered myself the best at strategy. I thought I was very good at operations and I knew how to do legal and accounting and finance and all that stuff. I think it was mostly just getting comfortable that, hey, I made a decision and not everyone's going to agree with it. I think it's the right decision and building conviction around that because it was not more than a year later, we had to do layoffs of the company and this was attached to a pivot that ended up being a very important pivot for the company. We did a lot of planning around it. I tend to operate very transparently. We're super closely with our other executives on how we were going to do it. I think we probably over-planned it. We had exceedingly high retention and we built a lot of trust with the team and everyone both those that were included in the layoff and not were exceedingly graceful, more gracious

16:34about it than I ever could have imagined. Terrible day for me, of course. I think it was just, hey, we got to do this and I'm the guy that has to make the decision and just getting comfortable with that. I've never considered myself someone with a poster syndrome but maybe it was that. Really the guy that suited to make this and it took me some time to get comfortable with it. Yeah, I feel okay to make any sort of decision. Yeah, I think that a lot of folks try to manage by consensus. If you've been in operations long enough, then you get comfortable with making people mad or upset, right? That not everything goes their way or things have to happen in a certain way or order. And certainly, you probably develop the muscle of sort of managing conflict because you have to manage so many different things. You know, from the CEO role strategically, you stepped into a business that I think was still uncertain in terms of what is there here worth buying.

17:35Could you talk to me about the process of evaluating how to ultimately build something that not just could sell to customers but they could create what we like to refer to as enterprise value. That thing underlying a business that another company would say is worth acquiring. When you look back, I'm curious if there was one or more strategic shifts that created the most enterprise value. Now that post acquisition, you can reflect on. Yeah, this is probably like the most important part of the story, right? So absolutely, right? When we pivoted into property insurance, that is ultimately what the company and the traction that we had that became a track into an acquireer. And it was a mix of surrounding yourself with the right, well, I guess it was also around yourself with the right people, right? I was going to sort of bifurcate it, but I was going to say it's sort of like a strategic luck with surrounding yourself with the right people. But part of it was very early on. We were so far away from being in a position to even think about exit, but I met a few

18:39bankers, right? Just to check my own intuition on things. A lot of it was, here's what I think, does this sort of sound right? And it was, okay, if we're going to launch a new product, should we think of international or should we think of domestic? Should we think like, I hypothesis that a acquireer is going to want recurring revenue. Is that correct? Yes, of course, it's correct. The revenue put was not recurring revenue. Just sort of like, here's four or five strategic questions I have about how might a buyer think about the world. The other advice I got from the same board member, again, so far in the future, was create a list of every company that could acquire you and categorize them. And I think about what's important to them, right? What are their KPIs that they're going to measure you on? Not to design your business around acquisition, because I think that you always got to build something your clients want and execute on it. You also can't ignore it, right? You have to sort of know what is going to be attractive at the end of the day to some class of potential counter-party.

19:40So that was part of it. It was sort of a map of, here's the market that we operate within. Sure. And then part of it was, I got invited to a call. I still remember the call very clearly. This is probably early 2020. After the D.E. Shaw midway hail event happened, it was like an 80 million dollar claim. And then carrier started pulling back coverage. And Eric Hyens of M&T invited me to this call. And it was a bunch of lenders. It was the two lenders' consultants. And they all were basically on the phone saying, we don't understand insurance. We're finance people. We don't get insurance. But this is the first time insurance is leading to a top credit issue. Like our credit officers are concerned that we're not getting adequate limits and that we could lose our loan if something happens. And that was like in a ha moment. Like, hey, there's a pain point here. We know I got the call because it was like, you guys know insurance and you know we're new a bull. So maybe there's something here for you to learn. And that set out on a journey of channel checking. I remember I called, I called Genia who's been on your podcast and I was like, Genia,

20:43what do you know about claims? You're a technical expert here. And consistently the feedback I heard was the market at the time, again, or in 2020, had really priced to prior losses. And there were not a lot of prior losses. And there was a shock event, this big hallow loss. And there was an opportunity to do something different, right? And to do something data driven. And oh, by the way, we were sitting on a pile of data. So that ultimately led to the pivot that we made in 2023 that led to the RIFI record to earlier. But it was, I think it was, it was, it was, surrounding yourself with people that know a lot about the market and are going to be sort of thinking through both of those lenses, right? What do our customers need? Which is, I'll call it the lender conversation. But then also is it aligned with what ultimately might be valuable to someone down the road if we execute on it? But we had to take a big bet, right? Let me, we hired underwriters.

21:43We had to go acquire new data sets. We hired a reinsurance broker to go raise capacity because the right insurance, you need a balance sheet, right? So we had to go through a whole process to do that. That calls 2020. We launched the business 2023. So it was not through the weary to say we're going to take a big swing at this. Yeah. But it ultimately ended up being the right bet in the end. Yeah. For context, for folks, Disha, midway solar is a project down in Texas that suffers. For the catastrophic hail event in the fall of 2019, as I recall, it was almost a half a million modules lost. It was close to 100 million. It was like, it was definitely over six years ago. I think the claim was high 70s. High 70s, yeah. But that was, that was like the entire year is a premium for renewables. It goes a massive number. Yeah, exactly. For renewables, writ large, like for the industry. Yeah. So from an actual perspective, a catastrophic event in insurance terms, what convinced you

22:46specifically that property insurance represented? I'm going to call it the future of the company for KWA channel, such that you would incubate it as an idea for three years. And maybe categorize for me or qualify, what does it mean to move in the direction of property insurance? Like, what are you moving from and towards? We had a category and I think there's an element of entrepreneurship, which is I'm going to do something brand spanking new and it's going to be awesome. Right. And the solar revenue put, Munichery had done it in a slightly different way. But it was brand spanking new. Right. The way we sold it was brand spanking new, the way that we packaged it up. It was exciting. Property insurance, every single project bought. You could sort of think it was maybe boring. But it had some of those things that are good from an operator perspective. It had recurring revenue. It had an existing client base. It had a need, a compliance need because every project has to purchase it for their

23:46lenders. It was stickier, right? Lower margin. You're selling it through brokers, right? The revenue put, we sold ourselves. So lower margin. But higher, tam higher growth called that. And of course, it was incremental, right? So we had this thesis, we checked the market. The other very important event that we did is we had to say, okay, can we get data to underwrite this, right? We know everything about these assets and how they operate and where they're located. We know anything about their losses, right? So it had a incredibly talented chief of staff. It's gotten into how Shen and we sent him to a conference and we said, how, this is sort of in the creative marketing bucket. We said, how we want to put out, A, we need this data and B, I think we linked it into some sort of report or some sort of benchmark. We basically said, go talk to all of these stakeholders and there's no harm for them to share their lost data. It's not going to be at their detriment, but we could really use it to help bring new capacity to market. And he like didn't even register. He sat in the lobby for like three days and talked to a bunch of people and he came back

24:47and he's like, hey, I got all this data. Here you go. So here's incredible. You know, we leaned on our investors. We had some strategic investors that owned assets that we leaned on. And we basically cobbled together enough where we could start drawing correlations to say, okay, we think we can use the data in a very compelling way. We can see that there's certain things that lead to losses and certain things that don't lead to losses. So I gave us the conviction that to go through the next step, which is, okay, how do we hire someone to help us get the capacity to tell our story? But I think we, at that point, we felt like, okay, this thing could work. Now we got to go build the machine to make it work. The guy you mentioned, his name was Hal, right? How shan, correct? Yeah. I'm pretty sure if memory serves, he was the first K-Dubation Analytics person to come on the show. I think it was talking, he was talking at the time about the solar risk assessment if I had a guess. Probably. Probably. He was a great dude. Yeah. Under, I don't know if he was chief of staff at the time. I feel like he was an analyst at the business.

25:50I can't recall the detail. I do remember being very impressed by this guy, Hal. Yeah. So he went to the hotel. He sat in the lobby. He came back and he said, hey, I got you some data. So that led us to say, okay, well, we have a data set. We can buy a natural catastrophe model. We have engineers that know how to process an analyst information. The next step was, okay, we had a hire, right? We had to bring in people that actually knew insurance underwriting because we didn't have that skill set. And then we had to pack it up and market it, essentially. So a reinsurance broker is essentially an investment banker for reinsurance. They package it up. They tie your story. They help you raise capacity. And that process just always takes longer than you wanted to, right? So I think we were hoping to be in the market mid-22. Yeah. And we ultimately got in the market early 23. But we knew, but we knew probably in late 22 that we needed to pivot the business. We just didn't do it. Why?

26:51What sign? Said pivoted business. Like sales going down. Like what over the real? Yeah, it's just very, very lumpy revenue from the revenue put. A sink or swim, right? It's elephant on day. So it's very hard to plan your year and to give your board conviction on your forecast. The interest rate environment had changed, so it made the value proper round that product slightly different. Yeah. And just like the revenue quality of the property business, we knew was better and that there was still a market need for it. And we had conviction that we could sell it. We couldn't we couldn't pivot into it until the business was launched, right? So how long into launching the product before you knew this is working before you could fund them. I go back to the board and say, guys, like, thank you for your trust. This is working a couple of months. That's right away. That was fast. Well, I'll say we launched our first deal was March of 2023. And summer 23 is when we made the hard pivot. So I feel like we had the conviction pretty quickly.

27:51Of course, it was still a strategic bet, right? I mean, you don't know a whole lot in three months, but we knew we could sell it. We knew brokers would trust us. We knew what did you have to stop to make that pivot in the business? Would you have to stop doing or even stop believing about KWBH? The hardest thing about it was probably trying to get people to stop doing new things and like chasing new ideas and saying we just got to execute, right? Like building a muscle of saying no was probably the most important muscle to build. What's something interesting, even like intriguing, that you had to say no to, that you remember? I mean, people would knock on our door and say, could we do revenue put deals? And we'd say, no, we're pausing that for the moment. We got to go and do this other business. And that was hard, right? But fortunately, we had an incredibly talented head of business development, again, him Jeff Lev, who's still with us. And he raised his hand to go help build the property business. So we needed him focused on that business.

28:53We had to execute on it. But that sort of meant he was playing double duty, right? And we needed all of his bandwidth and focus going into building this new business for us. So we had to tell the team, we're not doing this right now. Sorry guys, we got to put a whole, that changed after we had a year under our belt. And we felt like we had a business that had a little bit more of a machine around it. But that was hard. That was for sure hard. That's a big culture change. Is there anything that surprised you? Maybe the way the team showed up, maybe a customer or market reaction, or something internally to you about leading the company through that, that shift in that process? I'm very grateful to the team. I alluded to this earlier. I think I was most surprised that people just sort of went with the flow. To me, we were doing, we, I mean, we'd shrank by a quarter, maybe slightly more than that. We changed our whole business line.

29:55And I think we had 100% retention for like 18 months. And people were not freaking out about it. They weren't. They were not as, I guess they, I don't know, they just sort of went along with it. And maybe that means that we did a good job explaining to them why we're doing it. And maybe they saw the same things that I was doing. But I think I was most surprised about that. Because if I go back to like, is this the right strategic decision, you're sort of making a huge decision for the company. They had no reason to believe me. Right? We're three months into this. And their friends just got laid off. Like that sucks. So I think I was most surprised. So that plus, I guess, if I want to couple it, I saw some very early emails of brokers going back and forth. This is now early 2023. And they were like, oh, this is KWH. Like they're quoting this. Their high quality. And we should go with it. And I was like, we had zero brand and property insurance at the time. Right. But our brand in revenue put and just sort of the solar market was able to carry over to this new

30:59distribution. We're brokers. I was, I was surprised by that. I didn't think that we would sort of get as much credibility early on. What do you think that would carry over? Are there any, are there any artifacts of the business? From the brand building side that you think carried more weight, perhaps then they all to or that you then you expected? Things that from a content marketing perspective or a visibility perspective or activities you did in BizDab that were that allowed you to have like that outside brand visibility? Yeah. So I think this, I think the solar risk assessment, which is sort of an objective of the market. Turns out, BZ has a similar one. They call it risk and resilience. But it's how do we take objective lenses? There's a zone energy transformation. And put a wrapper around it. I was shocked though that brokers who we had not sold through in the past were aware of who we were. You know, willing to give us a flyer on it. I mean, it was also a tough market at that point.

32:00Right. Any capacity was good capacity. So that helped. We certainly went to a spot of need. How do you think about keeping everyone on the team rowing in the same direction over those final years? And we can start to talk about the acquisition and the time most of pre and like pre acquisition discussion and then gering acquisition discussion. But how, as a leader do you think about keeping everyone in sort of in sync? The interesting feedback I got. So I'll say through, I kept in touch with bankers throughout that period. Right. I probably picked up my conversations with them in the last 24 months, call it. But the thing that I heard from them, which I'll use to answer your question, is they're like, there's so few entrepreneurs not shocked by this, that say they're going to do something and then they do it. Yeah. Just like you put out a number and you hit the number. You said you were going to get a couple of holder status and you got a couple of holder status, which is a Lloyds allundin alloys allundin. So, okay, so how do we get team alignment on that?

33:02Is, I mean, a simple stuff, right? You have OKRs, so we do a semi-annual OKR process, objectives and key results. We talk about what's important. We're doing one-on-ones all the time. We have a leadership team meeting once a month. I mean, there's just things that you do to create that alignment. And you gotta be really consistent on it, right? And you gotta say the same thing, four or five six times. I can still be better at that, like, painting a vision four or five six times. So what are we doing here? What's our goal? And obviously, the numerical output is what most investors care about. What's the team cares about? Are we making a difference, right? So linking, especially in our industry, like linking the impact on the industry, I'll call it the mission-driven element of it, with, yeah, this is also a good economic business for us and for, or call it a venture acquire. As part of the art, I don't know. I mean, it's just, it's knowing when to say no, right?

34:02It's sort of saying you're gonna do something and then making your decisions around that framework. How did the acquisition ultimately surface as the right next step? Did someone, was there an inbound? Did you guys decide it's time to run through a process? So I had never done fundraising before. Richard had always done fundraising in the past. I remember actually my 360 process, we always have like what's your development goal? And I was like, I'm not sure I can handle being said no to like 99.99% of the time. Actually a lot easier than I expected, because usually the no is like, that's not quite. They put a lot of sugar on it, so I was okay with this. But like most companies, right? We had a cap table and some financing that necessitated us to figure out a solution. Right? So I sort of knew it was, I mean, I knew it was coming. Not I sort of knew, I knew it was coming. The question was, what is the right capital solution?

35:02Right? Is it bringing on more capital? Is it exiting the company? Of course, companies are bought not sold, right? So continuing to execute through that period and finding a partner that sees value in what you're doing. So yeah, we interviewed bankers in the end we did not end up using one, but they came to the board, they presented, you know, how it could work. I going back to when I put together that original list that I referred to, like I was trying to network with, you know, every company on the list. Yeah. For us, there would be reinsurance partners, right? So there would be insurance or reinsurance partners for our core business, because they're all insurance companies. But also then would just try to develop relationships there. So it was a mix, right? It was a mix of, I'm talking to a bunch of investors who are sending you referrals. We're sort of in the market all the time, raising capacity, right? So insurance capacity. And then making sure that we're executing and putting out aggressive but reasonable targets

36:05that we can hit and write high quality business. You mentioned having some non-dilutive capital from the DOE. Did you guys also raise outside capital or keep the company going? We had. Yeah. So there was venture in 2016. And then a bridge in 2020. And then a second round of financing in 2021. So yeah. So we did have for sure capital for revenue. You meant to give me at least a ballpark, like how much money it took to get the business to exit? Yeah. So it was 11 million of venture total across those two rounds. And then the 2021 round was 20 million. Structure is a convertible note. So those investors were really supportive of us. But at some point it was always clear to us they were really more of a lender than an equity investor. So that in many ways helps inform, right? You sort of look at your cap table. Sorry. Yeah. It helps inform what can I do here to help satisfy the needs of my investors? Was that like a five-year note?

37:05So 2021 to 2026 that was coming due in 2016? Yeah without getting into all the nitty-gritty. I understand that. Yeah. Right. The public. I would say it was, I'm just curious like the time pressure. It was a time box note. But we had to, like we did extend it a few times. Right. So part of my job, one of my most important jobs, was keeping my board informed and happy with what we were doing. Because we needed to ask for favors for things. Right. Like anything, right? Your board is at a very important stakeholder here. Yeah. So how we managed our board, right? And we have quarterly meetings. I'd have the key executives come and present their business. We would operate with a full level of transparency to them. Here's what's going well. Here's what's not. Hey, we had this giant loss in our book. Like I'm calling you on day one. So you know, so that's not a surprise. Because ultimately we're going to need their help to get this thing through. That's right. And with the lender, it was really the duration of the note

38:07was where they were most helpful. So you ended up not using a banker. Like how did ultimately the acquisition target the party that you finally sealed a deal with come to light? I had met them through another contact. That sort of alluded to earlier. And I had, again, going back to my board, I'd basically put in fourth the timeline. I said, if one of the conversations I have ends up being one that we all like, let's pursue it. Yeah. And if that doesn't happen by a certain date, let's go with the banker. And fortunately, we're able to get into exclusivity by that date. Like I do think that banker's out a lot of value. So you went out and started socializing. We are considering a different capital strategy. We're looking to see if there's anyone who might find this asset valuable enough to bring in house. Correct. Okay. Was that all with insurance companies like competitors to be easily consumed

39:08presently in my list of candidates. It was the most likely outcome. But we spoke, no, I mean, in a insurance company. Well, it's okay. Sure. Yeah. That class. But we spoke to everyone because a lot of frogs, right? I mean, we talked to, we talked to growth investors. We talked to venture. We talked to, like, recapping the note. I mean, I did turn over basically every rock. And it was, that was this oriented, right? As a guy who had never done capital raising to say, there's 20 ways you could structure this deal. Right. And a lot of my own effort, sort of the flip side of hearing no 99% of the time, is I had to say no a lot, right? Like, this class of this class of investor, a pure venture investor, they're not cool with venture, like with convertible note on the value sheet. So like, I sort of know, I had to talk to a set of them. And I'm like, I sort of know they're not the right fit for what we need. And I go talk to this class of investor and be like, okay, that could work or could not work. So I was sort of doing my own tearing and parallel to say,

40:09I think these are the solution sets that could work for us. Hey, pardon the interruption, but I wanted to just let you know how much of an impact you have on SunCast. Yeah, you, thank you for clicking play. Without you, this show is just me shouting into the void. But there's still people who don't even know about SunCast. I know I can hardly believe it myself. But that's where you can help me yet again. There's a simple way that you can show some love and help others discover the show. If you cruise over to www.ratethispodcast.com forward slash SunCast, I'd love it if you would leave a five star rating and enthusiastic review. That's possibly the single kind of thing that you could do for me today. So if the show has helped inspired or even entertained you at all, I'd love it if you would head over to ratethispodcast.com forward slash SunCast

41:13and give me a virtual two thumbs up. All right, back to today's episode. I wonder if if you could have done it again. Would you have taken the convertible as a debt instrument knowing now who it potentially shut out of the, sort of kept out of the running, so to speak? Like did anything occur and you were like, oh crap, if I didn't have this debt instrument, I would actually be in a better position such that you wouldn't do it again. It's a hard question to answer. What I would say is if you go back to 2021, valuations at that point were much higher than they are now. Right, especially if you look at ensuring some multiples, you look at clean tech multiples. So the double you know or the double you don't, what we did not have was a crazy valuation that we had to try to stretch our way into. Wow, yeah. So in some ways it was helpful, right? And I sort of knew, here's the solution I need to solve for.

42:18You know, I know that there's other entrepreneurs. This is an us that say we just want the vanity valuation and we're willing to give away a lot of prefort or sort of all these economic terms for it. I'm grateful I was not in that situation of like, you know, we got a, now it's all finance, right? So you're construction of the deal, the end of the day the economics could feel similar. But I don't think it was the wrong decision for us to take that money back in 2021. I mean, it was certainly the capital we needed to get to the milestones we needed as a business. Right? And we had the option to take less at that point in time and we said actually we think a little bit more we'll help us get to the milestones that we need. And you were right. I mean, I guess I mean for the story that existed, yeah, it was the amount of money we needed, right? I mean more would have given us more track record, last we would have had to figure out a solution earlier. Right. But yeah, I think we had, we ended up building the business I'd say to hit those milestones for the capital that we had.

43:19So at some point you socialize the idea with a bunch of potential suitors and someone from Beasley shows interest. Can you talk to me about being in a position as a CEO where now it looks like this thing that you've maybe as an entrepreneur sort of longed for or dreamed might be possible is imminent. It's sort of in the it's in the line of sight. Talk to me about the conversation internally. How transparent can you be during that process, not with your stakeholders but with your team? Yeah, I think the internal management is probably more interesting and more appropriate for a podcast. I would say. You know, I think the first conversation there's a few conversations needed to have, right? The first conversation starts with the executive team of like what do we all want, right? Are we are we gonna do we want to sign up for another three to five years of being entrepreneurs and building a business independently and having the freedom of that?

44:22Or how do we feel about being part of any other company, right? Call it call it any company. And you know, maybe you quote unquote leave some money on the table, but you have the stability of a larger company, right? And the other lens is okay, what do they want it like? Why are they interested in the business, right? Do they want to keep the people? Do they want to keep the mission? I think that one of the things that surprised me I'm fast-forwarding a little bit. Yeah. Is that for the team when they hear we're being acquired? A lot of people here we're gonna do layoffs. I do not. I really under I greatly underappreciated that, but that is the mindset I think of a lot of like the the fact the fact pattern, right? So I'm one of the company said my brother-in-law's company was acquired. They laid off half the people, right? And unfortunately a lot of acquisitions I think go like that, right? It's how we juicy, but don't get shared services and sort of do all this stuff. So that was important to us, right? They value the team, they value our expertise.

45:22They like what we're doing in the market. So how transparent was I? I mean people knew I was capital raising and I kind of left it at that, right? That's sort of they're sort of a pyramid, right? So the executive team knew everything, right? I was talking about everything every day. The leadership team knew more, but probably shades of gray less. How big is the team just for context for folks who are 30? 30-ish call it. 30-ish. So somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of like three to five people were in the know and the rest were sort of in the dark. There's a lot of sausage making, right? So you don't want to make everyone nervous to give them every twist and turn along the way. And any deal could die at any time for any reason. Oh, they died. They could die at the very signing table. So I wanted to take that burden away from the team and say, like we're working on it, things are looking okay. And we'll let you know more and we know more. And again, we are given the grace. I'm so grateful to the team to say, okay, great,

46:27we're going to keep our heads down and execute and try to hit our, like I was consistent with them. The best thing you could do to help this process is execute on our targets. Like that is what we need right now to help make my job easier. And people took that to heart, right? I mean, that is nothing works unless you're executing. Like my job is so much easier when you're executing. Can you distinguish the job of a board member in that execution process of getting to a completion of an acquisition? Like you've distinguished sort of how the executive team participated, but the board, you have independent board members. Some probably played a more constructive role. Others were probably more passive. Can you talk a bit about that back and forth for you? Imagine that took a lot of your time as well, managing board expectations, getting feedback from them, like teaching, teaching yourself through them and others, how this is supposed to work? I tend to advise towards transparency and just being direct about what's going well and what's not. And I had a few stakeholders I had to manage, right?

47:34I had investors, right? Some of which had board representation. I had a lender who had board who sort of knew the board and was engaged at that level. Certainly Richard as a founder, right? Important stakeholder. Give me a long leash to go make a bunch of decisions, but I didn't make sure he was sort of along for the ride for everything. And then the team, right? Myself and the team, I guess, but the team, very important stakeholder. So yeah, I had to bring them along for the journey, right? To say, here's what I think could happen. Here's why I think we should make the decision that we're going to make. I had brought in as well an outside advisor that had been through another serial entrepreneur that had been through a few exits to be like, hey, I'm talking to these four, however many strategics, right? Or these however many growth investors. Here's what I'm hearing. How does that land on you? Like, does this response make sense? Like, what do I need in a term sheet before I sign it? Sort of just, I did not have the professional advice of a banker,

48:35right? But I did not have any experience myself doing this. So I leaned heavily on, I'd say, Larry, my entrepreneur on the board. And a few outside advisors that I was just like, here's what, here's what I'm hearing. That makes sense to you. I'm curious as an entrepreneur, thinking about myself and others who are listening to this, like, if I want to bring on outside of my advisor to help me go through an acquisition, am I promising them some, like, some sort of upside? Do you get advisors who are just like, hey, I'll meet you for coffee and talk you through this? Like, how does that work? I don't know. I think it's pretty reasonable. If you're asking anyone for any material amount of their time to give them options in the business, right? So everyone of the company has options, unless it was pre-series A when you get stock, but like, you know, 0.001 part. Everyone in the company has options, right? So everyone participates in a successful outcome. Oliver Board, our independent board, you got options, the advisors get options. I think it's a way

49:39to compensate them for their time. They're giving you real valuable feedback and helping you build build value in the business. And yeah, like, I want them to win. So you have to go to the board then and say, hey, I've got advisor A. I want to bring them on to help us through this. And then I want like, an option pool. Do you create an option pool? Who gets diluted when that option pool is created? Typically, key points in the business, most typically, at a financing, you create an option pool and as foreign employees or, I mean, we're talking a very small portion of the pool would be for advisors, but you don't bring out a ton of advisors. You only bring them on. If you know what they're there for, where they're going to help you, you know, what is that the kind of thing that like, if you don't use it, then it's a creative to everyone else on the cap table, right? Like you set it aside. And then if you don't end up bringing an advisor on, then it just gets back goes back to the leadership. Yeah, but it's, but it's like an employee, right? The bet you're making is they're going to add more value to the business and the value.

50:43100% I'm just trying to ask them a canis for folks who've ever been. Mechanically for us at least, we had an option pool and the board has to approve every option grant. So I'd go to them and say, either we're hiring these people, right? That's in our sort of budget plan. So they know that those hires are coming or, hey, I want to bring on this individual as an advisor, right? And like going back three or four years, it was Matthias Weber, the former chief underwriting officer Swiss Ray, like, credible executive, nose insurance and re-insurance structures, like super helpful for us. John Peters, the chief insurance officer at lemonade, right? Like a insurance company that grew and John T. John was a personal advisor. Yeah, that's amazing. Talk to John all the time. You know, Mike Miskowski, he's a serial entrepreneur and soul, right? Super successful. Been through multiple exits. Yeah. So everyone had a reason we were working with them. And yeah, we would think of them as, you know, I'd set up a monthly cadence with them or sort of an ad hoc

51:47call. And it was great. And I learned so much from them. And I'm incredibly grateful that they would spend time with us. I love that. I had this conversation. I won't mention the entrepreneur, specifically, it was a broad-minded advisor, but I had this conversation with Paul Grana when Folsom sold Aurora. And a friend of mine had been an advisor and I reached out to him and I was like, hey, what was it like being an advisor? And he was like, to be honest, like, I had like one phone call with Paul. And I talked to Paul and Paul's like, yeah, but that one phone call was worth X. Yeah, that makes total sense, right? I think I think some people do it. I'm very much out of line because I'm speculating, right? Yeah. But like, I want their name on the website. Well, there you go. And I questioned the value of that, right? Like, no acquires. Like, oh, you're surrounding yourself with these people. That's fantastic. It's all in their experience and how much they're able to help and give you insight. Because honestly, like, wasn't really their network, it wasn't

52:54really there. They weren't on calls with any of the counter parties. They didn't present to the board. It was all just what kind of advice and insight can you give the executive team to help us make better decisions? Okay. So I have two questions now specifically to this, the, and not the board, but the outside advisors piece where there are moments where they gave you an entirely new way of thinking or like sharpened instincts. So can you talk about specific things where you're like, you don't have to give examples, but where you can reflect back and go, oh, yeah, actually, like that materially helped us in the exit. Or was it simply like for you, almost, I'm not going to be in the hands of you, but like a safety blanket. Like, I knew that I was making the right choices because I had these people around me validating the decisions. A lot of it was a safety blanket, especially, especially like, hey, I just had this call, hush, I think about it. Sure. Because I think what I learned is I could trust me intuition, which is a nice thing to learn. It is. They're for sure though, where things where I'm like, hey, I can't think of a specific

53:59example right now. But hey, this thing happened not about the acquisition, just like about the business, right? Like, hey, whatever we heard this from in a carrier, this feels either really, really good or really, really bad or broke or whatever. Like, is that the right feeling to have? And sometimes it'd be like, no, that's totally normal. Like, don't freak out about it. Like, that's just the way the world works. And move on. And don't don't worry about things. So that's good. Less naval gazing. Yeah. Yeah. But they have, I mean, if you bring in people with experience, that's just right. I don't say, yeah, they say, I've seen this a hundred times. And sometimes a carrier will do that and has nothing to do with you. Um, that that's really, really helpful insight. Right. So it helps you pick your battles, honestly. Like, yeah, you should like focus on this other thing, not that. Like, that's normal. You're not going to change that that kind of thing. Yeah. Exactly. Right. So it's, it's, if it's higher level, I mean, it's higher level insight than you have when you're like in the trenches, trying to execute it, frankly. Okay. The other question is if

54:59another founder or executive listening wants to prepare for this kind of eventual acquisition years or quarters before the acquisition presents itself, what kind of advisors should you start building relationships with? Like, how do you think about digging that well before you need the water? I said this about a advisor. It's the same thing about marketing, Nico, which I know you've been asking about is everything you do should have a reason associated with it. Right. So it shouldn't just be an advisor because you want an advisor. It should be an advisor because you need experts for us. We need expertise and insurance. Right. We are a bunch of renewable energy folks. We didn't know how to do that. You know, we have an empty seat on the board. So who do we want? Like, I think someone gave me the advice, it's not who you want on a good day. It's who you want to talk to and everything is going wrong and will help stand by your side and get you through it. Right. It's, it's, yeah, certainly an option pool. You also need to like find your way to them. Right. So

56:00yes. Having a network that gets you to the people that you want and that you can ask for help to say, Hey, I need an advisor to help me with xyz. Who do you know? Yeah. I think it's mostly just like being authentic to yourself and being authentic to your vision. And don't like no one wants to, I don't think many people want to be an advisor for the sake of being an advisor. Like they want to use their time. They're, most of these people have done well themselves and they want to make sure that they are actually being helpful to the business. Right. Right. I don't think most people are into vanity advisor roles. Yeah. I know that big of a check. Well, I just mean like, yeah, they're at the point of their career. They want to be helpful to an entrepreneur building a business. So if you have a good reason, you need them. Then the right person will find it attractive to be supportive of you. And most of the people that you named, I know some of them are not, they're not trying to add more work to their plate. They've been very successful and they are trying to add value to their network as much as possible or spend time with their family.

57:05Usually they're interested in your business and I want to see it be successful. Right. And that is why they do it. So again, I come back to like what is, okay, you have a problem or you have an initiative. Do you have the expertise internally to figure it out? The answer is yes, you might not need an advisor. The answer is no. Hey, we're getting into insurance and we don't know anything about insurance. That's a good opportunity to go find an advisor to say, what don't I know? Who should I hire? What kinds of things? What, how long will this take? How much is it going to cost? And that will be more rewarding for both parties, I think. I would love to have been a fly on the wall with you and the guy from lemonade because that's a completely different animal that he built. Wow. Now that you've lived through this chapter, what do you understand about building a company that maybe you couldn't have appreciated five years ago? I mean, they're hard to build, right? There's a lot of stressful nights building them. A lot of planal damage. Yeah, but I do think, I do think that they can be very rewarding, right? Like we've been fortunate to

58:11have an incredible team and they work really well together and we've had really good solid retention for a long time. And people like working here, right? Like they, like, I think to me, it's maybe the most rewarding is to build a company or people, people like showing up and working in for a greater goal, right? It's like not just people show up to work and they clock out because it's time to clock out. I mean, I'm sure some people do that. But like that, you can build a company where people are excited about the projects is nice to see, right? And I think we're unique all of us in the climate space to say most people care about what you're doing, right? They wake up in the morning because they want to make a difference on the world. Most industries are not like that. So we're lucky in that regard. I don't know. They're really hard, Nico. And like deals are incredibly stressful. I slept the worst. I've ever slept during the course of getting a deal done.

59:11So like, you know, it's not for the weary, but it's incredible. You can like, look, we had no business showing up to the property insurance segment and growing a really solid business here again, some of the biggest companies in the world, right? And just like what you're able to accomplish with the really intentional motivated group of folks, you can really punch above your weight. And it's really cool to see, has your definition of success changed? I, I'm going to say, I don't think so. I mean, there's the classical definition of success, which is like, did you make money? Right? And then there's the entrepreneurial definition of success, which is like, are you making an impact? And, and I guess are you making money? But like, I don't know. In our capitalist society, are you making money? Is also akin to like, are you selling something that people want? Are you having a positive impact? I think we've always

1:00:13approached our business as we want to grow the business, but we also want to share what we know and get feedback to our clients and be a good partner to our brokers because we want to build a better infrastructure as an industry. We want to build more resilient infrastructure, higher quality. Like, we want to share our knowledge with the world because it's ultimately going to be better for the solar industry. And I sort of check both of those boxes, right? Like, if you're you're straight with people, they'll be straight with you. So I don't think my definition has changed, I guess. I don't know. Try to do right by people and they'll do right by you. Maybe that's simplistic again, of the supposed to be over the world. So not this year or anytime in the next three to five years because you're comfortable with the future you've created for yourself, but in the eventuality that you might someday start another company, is there anything that you will do differently on day one? The Department of Energy Grants were a blessing, mostly a blessing, but it took

1:01:16a decade, which a long time to get to real revenue as a business. And I think I power to do it again. It would be how do we how do we get to revenue and sort of building quality revenue earlier in the company lifecycle? Those Dewey grants are obviously they can change with the administration. They take a lot of resources, but I was probably that would be the biggest change. We had a great outcome, but it took 11 years and three pivots and a lot of capital to get here. And I guess I would probably focus on my customer revenue earlier. I want to make sure I'm hearing what you're saying. Okay. That perhaps perhaps the research aspect of the business funded through non-delutive capital, which sounded like a good idea and indeed helped build the early team and early sort of shots that were taken was perhaps a distraction from the real product creation.

1:02:22It's a little bit of the paradox of KWA, right? Is we couldn't have done any of this without the data sets that we had? That's right. And that data sets we built were a lot of it was not revenue generating. Yeah. Some of it was revenue generating, but most of it was not. So you sort of have this riddle, right? Of like I say on the one hand, getting revenue earlier would have made life more comfortable because you're not as reliant on like this treadmill of grant making and sort of meeting government deliverables. But also it would have been hard. We were I guess until our acquisition, the only independent company writing renewable energy property insurance, right? So like the rush the bar we had to clear to enter that market. Let's talk about the pivot and like how great it was. The bar we had to clear was really, really, really, really high, right? Other companies tried and then we're able to do it because they didn't have sort of a differentiator. So I don't know. I just think if I did it again,

1:03:28personally, I would I would like the revenue is proof that you're building something valuable for the market. For KWA, though, it seemed to work, right? Like we couldn't have gotten to where we were, had we not had the funding. Jason, acquisitions often get remembered for the announcement. The companies, they're are really built and ultimately acquired. However, on thousands of decisions that nobody outside the business ever sees, for the last hour you've pulled back the veil a little bit and given us some insight into what it takes to build and sell a business I'm grateful for that. I want to know as we wrap here, what's one thing when you think about everything that led to the outcome that you are now able to appreciate and joy tell everyone about? Is there a decision or a habit or a principle that turned out to be more meaningful? It mattered more for you than you realized going through this process. I know this is going to maybe sound too simplistic, but I think just being honest and direct and telling people what you're going to do

1:04:28and then doing it goes so far. There's like a tendency to over promise and there's a tendency to say we're going to be the biggest baddest company in the world, but with customers, with investors, with your board, just like, here's what we're going to do. Here's why we didn't do that. We change our decision or something went wrong. Generally, people can understand that. I think the biggest the biggest thing you can lose is trust and it's so easy to lose trust. Is that because the, is your answer to that because at the end of the day, the conversations you've had with folks at Beasley are we were watching and we saw you do what you said you were going to do and that's why we want this business. No, not at all. I think it's because any entrepreneur gets to the point by having a supporter of their board, right? And you go tell your board that by getting a supporter of their customers, things go wrong. You got to be able to go to a customer and say, hey, we screwed up. Here's why. With your insurance partners, right? We did have,

1:05:30we've had losses as an underwriter and you get the grace if you're straight with people and you say, here's why it happened. Here's how we're addressing it. It's not that we screwed up. This has something bad happened and we're taking care of it. And I just think all of those decisions go to building trust as a leadership team, as an executive, as an individual, as a company. That leads to the outcomes that you want because the rule of one, two, and three is you got to execute. Those are the things that are like to execute. The acquisition is just an outcome that is like not that those are the cause, actually, effect, I guess, right? Yeah. So I don't know. The effect on us today as the beneficiaries of this conversation is that we have more clarity and visibility into at least one vector, one example of what it looks like to build something over a decade to pivot three times and to ultimately land in that promised land of entrepreneurial joy

1:06:34that is the acquisition. There's so many things that we haven't. You got like a week of joy. Yeah, exactly. Wow. There's still a lot of work to do. Turns out, turns out I'm going to, this is, I've still got a job. Now you got new bosses and you get to go do it all over again. Jason Kaminsky, thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey with us, Jason. Is the former co-founder and CEO of KWBH Analytics now managing KWBH Analytics inside a much larger animal and beasley? I look forward to hearing more about how that evolves. Well, of course, be checking back in with you and your team and the risk products and the solar risk assessment and whatever that evolves into as often as you'd like. You've got to welcome, welcome Matt rolled out for you, my friend. Well, thank you, Nico. It's always a pleasure. And the first time I've been given a microphone to share any of these thoughts. So I appreciate you inviting me. What a pleasure. My honest and sincere pleasure to host this conversation

1:07:40with you. Thank you for being open to it. Thanks to Craig and the team for helping coordinate, thanks to everyone else who helps makes this, make this all possible and I appreciate you, my friend. Well, I'll have you back home sometime soon and see how it's going. Thank you. Thanks, Nico. Hey, Jason. Thank you so much once again for taking us behind the headlines. It's easy to look at an acquisition. And now it's been an assume that the story is starting there and sort of try to dig in and pull like the layers. What today's conversation really makes clear is that those moments are really the product of years of strategic choices, leadership, difficult pivots, and intentional company building, ally building, allegiance to a vertical or a product often has to get placed on the altar of business outcome. So whether you're building first startup or leading a business through its next chapter, I hope that this conversation gives you a much

1:08:42clearer picture of what it takes to build something that lasts. And perhaps someday, something that someone else wants to own. I'm grateful that you're here. I hope that it means that this episode and the many others preceding it have added to your own toolkit so that you can become a better operator, a better entrepreneur, a better leader, or entrepreneur. As we transform the energy sector and the world around us. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up, Solar Warrior. It's half the battle.