Spark Club Podcast

Welcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is program five in the series with my conversation with Jo Hume from Fulcrum3D.

Welcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. Our four conversation in the series is with Mark Chilcote from Energy Renaissance.

Welcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell interviews founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. This is our third conversation in the series with Alex Post from MGA Thermal. 

Welcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. 

Welcome to the Spark Club Export Podcast series. In this export series Grant McDowell will be interviewing founders and leaders from seven energy tech companies based in Australia. We’ll hear the back story on how they got started, what problems they aim to solve and what the future holds, here in Australia and in global markets. We kick off the with the first conversation with Andrew Mears from SwitchDin.

In mid-March this year, just days before lockdown in Australia,  I had the pleasure of sitting down with Birchy, as he's known, to talk about what he's been building at OpenSolar and SolarApp.  In our conversation Birchy shares his views on the mega trends in energy and the work he’s doing on the big levers with the objective to bring about big change in the energy transition. Birchy and his team have bold ambitions for OpenSolar, the online solar design tool they are developing for the global market, and in order to scale quickly it's FREE.

How our world has changed in a simple matter of weeks. On the 4th March 2020 the Spark Club community came together at EnergyLab in Sydney to hear a panel discussion on the biggest rule change in the Australian electricity market in decades. We are now in a new world and the impacts have stretched to include the 5 minute rule change start date. In this podcast you'll hear a broad consensus that the rule change, whilst contentious, was on target to meet the 1st of July 2021 start date, now delayed a year. As a global community we're having to adapt to change rapidly and accept the world is moving on. There is a cost to delaying the inevitable and the 5 minute settlement ruling is no different. Enjoy the podcast. Our panel included Kris Funston who oversaw the rule change when he was at the AEMC, David Havyatt from Energy Consumers Australia and Jamie Lowe from Engie.

We sat down for a live Fireside chat with Fiona Waterhouse, founder and CEO of Utilitas, to learn about what it takes to be a startup founder in the energy sector. We discuss Fiona’s early life and this formative time was instrumental in building the resilience she would need as a startup founder. We also discuss Fiona’s Four M’s to raising finance. And I recommend listening through to the end where Fiona shares her Three Whys on her hardest lessons learned as an entrepreneur. The Raising Capital Master Class was a fantastic Spark Club event. I trust you’ll enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed the Fireside Chat with Fiona.

At Spark Club we believe Australia can take our natural advantage in Energy Tech and do the same.   Glenn Platt from CSIRO joins us for the Fireside Chat and then the panel shares the stage.  Glenn story provides an insight to the challenges in energy, the importance of the work given climate change and a foundation to the panel conversation. Darren Miller, Jon Jutsen and Marten Duursma come up onto the stage and discuss raising a fund to build an export industry in Energy Tech, to harness the natural advantages Australia has a global leader in the future of energy, and to develop the local ecosystems needed to build businesses with our talented men and women, with the express intention to take our Energy Tech global. Hope you enjoy the podcast and forward onto someone in energy who may enjoy it too.  

Energy Tech startup funding Raising investment for a Startup in the energy tech sector is challenging and demands a dynamic approach.  Kyle Bolto brings a fresh perspective to the energy sector and with it a unique approach to raising investment.  Kyle shares fantastic lessons learned as an industry outsider with experience in the way Silicon Valley sees the world.  An absolute must podcast for energy entrepreneurs.  

California has set a bold target of powering its electricity grid with 100% renewables. The Californian Assembly passed the historic SB100 bill in August last year setting the Golden State on an ambitious decarbonising journey.  SB100 has an initial milestone of 60% by 2030 with the objective of carbon free electricity generation by 2045.   We've invited Danny Kennedy from the Californian Clean Energy Fund, CalCEF, to join us on the Spark Club stage and share his view on this ambitions objective for the world's fifth largest economy. 

The Battle of the Batteries event was recorded on the 26th September 2018, just ten months after the Tesla big battery was installed at Hornsdale in South Australia. Spark Club thought it timely to hear from the experts on this fast changing technology. We invited Lachlan BlackHall from ANU in Canberra to represent the Lithium ion technology and Colin Gillam from RedT Energy to represent Flow batteries. We were at EnergyLab again and had a great turnout for this event. Enjoy the podcast.

Today we're with Murray Hogarth from Wattwatchers sharing his experience competing in two European Energy Tech competitions, Free Electrons in Lisbon and Start up Energy Transition in Berlin. Murray talks openly about the Wattwatchers start up journey sharing lesson learned along the way.  Interestingly, returns from Europe with a new found appreciation for Australian networks as their preparedness to engage with the digital disruption seems far better than their European counterparts. We're in front of a live audience, returning to our original home base at Polyglot in Glebe. Enjoy the podcast..

Jonathan Englert was inspired by the founders journey and how critical communications is in shaping the start-up destiny. The lines between marketing and communications can be blurred which is why I invited Jonathan Englert onto the podcast to discuss communications and the book he co-authored, No Dead Monkeys. Jonathan helps draw the lines between marketing and communications and shares some of his insights from his book and how he believes communications shapes your destiny. Jonathan is generously offering 10 No Dead Monkeys books to our Spark Club community, listen to the podcast for details.

ClimateKIC are running the ClimateLaunchPad program, deadline is the end of May 2018.  In this short podcast Chris Lee introduces the program, how Australia fits into the global context and provides the detail on the application and the process. The competition is open to any Australian resident – being a start-up, SME, researcher, student, public organisation, consultant or anyone else with an innovative green idea, whether it’s fully fledged or sketched on the back of a coaster. Participants must have: not yet started a business or started it less than one year ago no substantial revenue attracted less than € 200,000 in total funding (this includes research grants, government loan, angel or VC investment etc, but excludes your PhD salary for instance) not yet sold products, solutions or prototypes on commercial terms.

Our Sales and Marketing podcast brings two leading lights to the stage for our Fireside Chat in March 2018. Both speakers draw on deep experience during the tech boom in Silicon Valley and are applying lessons learned here in Australia. Spark Club Members and Elders will learn key Sales and Marketing insights from Joanna and Sidney. More importantly we will learn and how the Silicon Valley ecosystem created billion dollar companies as our boom time in energy tech kicks off.

Blockchain is coming to energy at hyper speed. In the podcast Grant McDowell interviews Matt Hale as he unpacks the fundamentals of blockchain specific to energy. The podcast is a great entry point for blockchain in energy, both here in Australia and in other global energy markets.

Danny Kennedy is Managing Director at California Clean Energy Fund and is at the centre of energy disruption.  Grant McDowell has 'hallway' discussion with Danny about the clean tech startup scene in the US and Australia and how they compare.

In our third Fireside Chat Grant McDowell interviews Ulric Ferner.  Ulric shares his own journey from entrepreneur at MIT in Boston to VC with Right Click Capital here in Sydney.  Ulric sees energy tech start-ups from a unique vantage point and shares key insights for clean tech entrepreneurs.

In the second episode of the Spark Club podcast series, Spark Club co-founder Grant McDowell interviews Paul Fox, investor, strategist, business builder, technologist. Paul offers great insight through his time spent in Silicon Valley and then back here in Australia working at AGL New Energy.  Paul shares invaluable lessons learned along the way and a rare glimpse into how the big players see the market.