Startup Spotlight #189: Paces
Startup Spotlight #189: Paces
Paces derisks the development and operation of your green infrastructure project.
Author’s Note: Apologies for the delay in this week’s Startup Spotlight. I’ve recently become ill (hopefully not COVID) after travel.
I got the chance to speak with James McWalter, co-founder and CEO of Paces, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Currently, McWalter is the CEO of Paces, a venture-backed startup that provides actionable data and analytics for green infrastructure developers, operators, and investors to understand what and where to profitably build. He also hosts the Carbotnic Podcast where he has long-form conversations with experts in cleantech.
In the past, McWalter was the founder of Hale, a personal training marketplace. He was Director of Operations at Respondent, a market research marketplace, and Director of Business Development and employee #1 at Hello Vera, an AI chatbot startup acquired by a tech giant. Before that, McWalter sold data to US quantitative hedge funds and portfolio analytics tools to EMEA asset and sovereign wealth managers. He grew up on an organic farm in Co. Mayo, Ireland.
Charles Bai is co-founder and CTO of Paces. His background is in AI and data. In the past, he led the efficiency effort of large model inference at Facebook AI and built data intensive solutions at various startups. Originally from China, Bai graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Computer Science. He is currently based in New York.
Startup Spotlight: Paces
Problem: To avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to build the trillions worth of clean energy and transport infrastructure. However, nimbyism, zoning, and grid capacity issues mean that only 1 in 5 green infrastructure projects are actually built, costing $18 Billion in canceled US projects per year.
Market: Paces’ TAM is the US Green Infrastructure Market. It is ~$200B now, with $85B in Clean Energy, $100B in Green Buildings, and $15B in EV Charging Infrastructure.
Solution: Paces provides actionable data and analytics for green infrastructure developers, operators, and investors to understand what and where to profitably build their next projects. By aggregating deep due diligence data and applying advanced analytics, Paces can dramatically increase the success rate of projects.
Team: James was employee 1 at Google-acquired AI startup Hello Vera and has +$4M in career enterprise SaaS/Data sales. Charles led the AI efficiency effort at Facebook AI, and had extensive experience building data-intensive software.
Recent Success:
McWalter: We did a great job defining our MVP and executing it. There are a couple of other limited solutions that have been in the market for a couple of years, and we were able to catch up fast by identifying and implementing the most essential features. This is mainly because we are extremely user-centric. We consistently have trial check-ins with users, where we listen to their feedback and test out new mocks and features. Some of our favorite moments in the week are when we have a trial check-in session with a user and are able to show them that their feedback has already influenced a feature now live in the product.
Recent Struggle:
McWalter: Some of our users are less tech-savvy than we thought they would be, and it takes some time to onboard them and gets them used to using a data platform software daily. We are used to writing code and product testing on big fancy monitors but when we have users screen share and walk through how they use the product, they are often working on small slow screens. Our users also tend to be older and so making text large and clear enough is also important. We have started using an old computer for product testing so that we can really put ourselves in the users’ shoes and better build for them.
Founder Advice:
McWalter: Put yourself out there a lot! A strong network is really really important. In 2015 when I left NYC to travel, I had a really strong network of finance people and basically did not keep in touch with anyone and so all that strong networking had mostly died. This time, I knew I needed a really great network in order to do anything in tech. So I set out to build that network and be helpful to the community in all the ways I could, mostly meeting people through online climate communities like MCJ and Airminers and also by setting up my own monthly in-person event in NYC which now gets +30 attendees.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
McWalter: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Louis Potok, Founder of Recoolit: Recoolit mitigates climate change by preventing refrigerant emissions!
Quincy Edmund Lee, Founder of Electric Era: Electric Era engineers and manufactures AI-driven high-power storage systems for EV fast charging stations!
Jason Yosinski, Founder of Windscape.ai: Windspace AI uses machine learning to increase energy production, turbine life, and project ROI of wind farms!
Who should I profile next? Leave your suggestion in the comments:
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Case Study: Paces CEO James McWalter Learned To Turn Rejection Into Success Through Curiosity
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