Climate Cowboys

In this episode of Climate Cowboys, host Silas Mahner sits down with Sampriti Bhattacharyya, founder and CEO of Navier, at their headquarters in Alameda, California. While traditional maritime manufacturing remains antiquated and reliant on brute force, Navier is taking a fundamentally different approach: building all-electric hydrofoiling vessels that literally "fly" above the water—reducing drag by 90% and slashing operational costs by 15x. Sampriti breaks down her journey from MIT roboticist to building a generational American maritime company, her vision for a "generalized marine vessel platform" (the Nvidia chip of the sea), and why she chose conviction over hype when VC investors doubted her timeline. ⚡ SUPPORT THE SHOW & JOIN THE MOVEMENT: Become a Paid Subscriber: Unlock exclusive deep dives, founder insights at Climate Cowboys Substack. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 – Intro & What is Navier? Building the Generalized Marine Vessel Platform 02:47 – Why maritime innovation stalled and how efficiency unlocks economies 07:54 – Computing, manufacturing, and robotics: Enabling hydrofoiling tech 11:45 – Sampriti’s origin story: High-energy physics to MIT underwater drones 16:54 – Go-To-Market Strategy: Gathering real-world data with recreational boaters 20:59 – The "Nvidia Chip" of the sea: Separating the base layer from the payload 27:07 – Overcoming VC skepticism and ignoring funding hype 35:03 – 3 Guiding Principles: Scale, Range, and Reliability 46:07 – The Video Game Analogy: Choosing to play on "level seven" 55:54 – Rebuilding American maritime and the frontier builder spirit 01:03:50 – Expanding the frontier with optimism over "hall monitor" energy 🤝 SPONSORS: Lehmann’s Terms: Master your message for high-stakes media, investor pitches, and stage appearances. Learn more at ltmediatraining.com. Climate Finance Solutions (CFS): Secured over $1.6B in grant funding with a 90%+ success rate. Discover grant opportunities at ClimateFinanceSolutions.com. Roosevelt Talent: Headhunting and talent acquisition for frontier and CleanTech startups at half the price. Find your next hire with Roosevelt Talent. 🔗 CONNECT & FOLLOW: Connect with Silas Mahner on LinkedIn Follow Climate Cowboys on LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climatecowboys.substack.com/subscribe

Silas Mahner previews NY Climate Week’s most exclusive event: the Climate Capital Summit by Equal Ventures. Gathering over $1.3 trillion in climate capital and federal funding, this invite-only summit on September 24th features legends like Sophie Purdom, Leticia Webster, Jonathan Silver, and Jim Coulter. Space is strictly capped at 400 people. Listen to this for the full scoop and discover how to request an invite. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climatecowboys.substack.com/subscribe

#291 Building Physical Infrastructure at the Speed of Software | Cole Ashman | Pila How Pila is decentralizing home energy storage, cutting $7,000 in installation soft costs, and upgrading the grid one smart node at a time. Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts Key Quotes “We’re reinventing the home battery by spreading it out throughout the home... they automatically recognize each other, they communicate over this mesh network.” – Cole Ashman “A whole home battery today is gonna cost like $15,000. About half of that is soft cost installation, design, permitting, like BS.” – Cole Ashman “The power grid that we have is built around like the worst case. You know, like we’ve built a 10-lane super highway, but on most days the utilization is 40%.” – Cole Ashman “Software is becoming so easy to replicate in the world of LLM-generated code... having a physical place in the world and a platform that’s generating new useful data is being so much more interesting and defensible.” – Cole Ashman Episode Overview Whole-home backup power traditionally requires $15,000 upfront, expensive electrical work, and months of permitting. As retail electricity prices skyrocket and outages multiply, home energy resilience remains out of reach for most people. Cole Ashman, Founder & CEO of Pila (ex-Tesla, Span), is fixing this with modular battery nodes that plug straight into standard wall outlets. Operating over a wireless mesh network, Pila delivers instant outage protection and load balancing with zero installation costs—making energy storage accessible to renters and homeowners alike. Key Topics Covered: Positioning CleanTech: Why pitching safety, comfort, and savings beats leading with "climate." Hardware Moats: How physical infrastructure protects against AI software replication. Grid Economics: Using distributed batteries as shock absorbers to lower peak-demand costs. Check Out Our Sponsors! Lehmann’s Terms: Executive media training and message positioning for CleanTech leaders preparing for high-stakes investor pitches and national press. Learn more. Climate Finance Solutions (CFS): Expert grant funding strategy. Secured over $1.6B in non-dilutive government funding for climate tech startups with a 90%+ success rate. Learn more. Roosevelt Talent: Technical headhunting for frontier and energy tech companies. Delivering top 5% candidates at half the price of traditional recruiters. Connect with Roosevelt. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro & The Pila Solution: Modular batteries for every outlet 04:33 – Un-stealthing and fundraising against rising retail power rates 08:19 – Storytelling: Sell reliability and savings over climate anxiety 16:36 – Bypassing the $15K installation barrier and permitting bloat 18:40 – B2B Playbook: Deploying networks across multi-family real estate 21:54 – Smart Monitoring: Predicting appliance failures via outlet data 34:19 – HardTech Moats: Why physical infrastructure wins in the AI era 43:00 – Hardware Velocity: Tesla Energy takeaways on scaling manufacturing 54:07 – Grid Optimization: Distributed batteries as shock absorbers Links & Resources Guest: Cole Ashman | Pila Energy Host: Silas Mähner on LinkedIn Socials: Climate Cowboys on LinkedIn | YouTube Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climatecowboys.substack.com/subscribe

#290 Meet The Hottest Grid Solution... A Kitchen Stove? w/ Sam Calisch | Copper How Copper is bypassing expensive electrical panel upgrades and grid bottlenecks by hiding smart battery storage inside beautiful induction stoves. Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts Select Quotes From This Episode: “You could have free wind and solar out on the grid, and you’d still be paying about as much as you are today just to get it to your house.” – Sam Calisch “Installing the best home batteries are like 1200, 1500 bucks a kilowatt hour... If we instead put batteries into an appliance that already has efficient sales channels... we cut out that extra 10x.” – Sam Calisch “What you see is what you get. There’s an authenticity in material... It’s real California walnut. It’s not spray-painted plastic.” – Sam Calisch “For too long homes have been just a consumer of electricity... We’re entering a world where homes have the opportunity to be bi-directional consumers and producers of power.” – Sam Calisch What’s the solution to rising electricity prices? Kitchen stoves. Despite dropping solar and wind generation costs, home electric bills continue to surge—with up to 70% of utility costs going toward delivery infrastructure. In this episode, Sam Calisch, co-founder of Copper, breaks down how putting smart batteries inside induction stoves bypasses expensive 240V panel upgrades, avoids peak grid demand, and elevates the home cooking experience while turning homes into active grid participants. Check Out Our Sponsors! Lehmann’s Terms: Media and pitch training for clean tech founders and executives preparing for high-stakes media, TV, and investor appearances. Climate Finance Solutions (CFS): Global consulting firm helping climate tech companies secure non-dilutive government grant funding ($1.6B+ secured with >90% success rate). Roosevelt Talent: Specialized headhunting and recruitment for energy tech, battery, and frontier startups—delivering top talent at half the traditional recruiter cost. 📝 Show Notes & Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro & Sam’s background in math, physics, and early climate tech. 04:33 – The grid’s delivery problem: Why cheap solar doesn’t mean cheap electricity bills. 08:18 – The “Trojan Horse” Strategy: Why Copper put a battery inside an induction stove. 10:35 – Bypassing the electrician shortage and avoiding 240V panel upgrades. 14:00 – Building Emotional Value: Why a product needs to be more than just a spreadsheet ROI. 16:00 – The Design Philosophy: Authentic materials, California walnut, and the “walk-up test.” 24:47 – Expanding the Vision: Selling to apartments and licensing tech to legacy appliance OEMs. 33:21 – Timing the Market: Why legacy companies couldn’t build this 10 years ago (The battery cost curve). 38:43 – Escaping “throwaway culture” and building durable, high-quality hardware. 47:04 – The Bi-directional Home: Transforming houses from passive consumers to active grid participants. 51:06 – Manufacturing in the U.S. and reigniting the American builder’s spirit. Links & Resources: Connect with Sam Calisch | Copper Connect with Silas Mähner on LinkedIn Follow Climate Cowboys on LinkedIn Disclaimer: This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climatecowboys.substack.com/subscribe

#289 The Ocean Cowboy. Will O'Brien. Ulysses | Ocean Robotics & Stewardship Tech Why the future of marine conservation, national security, and global abundance relies on underwater robots and a true frontier spirit. Episode Overview 71% of the planet is the ocean, yet it remains largely unexplored—the ultimate geopolitical and environmental frontier. To help us understand it, we sat down with the Ocean Cowboy, Will O’Brien. He and his crew are building Ulysses to tame the ocean frontier by building autonomous underwater robots to become stewards of the ocean at scale. Starting with restoring seagrass, they’ve expanded across environmental, commercial, and defense markets. Will embodies a strong focus on Stewardship Technology: tech serving humanity and stewarding scarce resources with technological progress, a frontier spirit, and projection of strength. Select Quotes: "It’s kind of clear that in the future, robots are gonna do all the important jobs... the ocean’s just getting more and more and more important. It’s gonna need robots, and they’re the ones that we build." – Will "Functionally, at the end of the day, you want to build a business that really fully realizes your vision... You want to move to a world of abundance, right? Let’s go forth and conquer it." – Will "I kind of draw the line between what I would call ‘stewardship technologies’ and climate tech... we need this pro-human framing." – Will 📝 Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro & The origin of Ulysses: Discovering the ocean as a massive business frontier. 02:57 – Why underwater robotics? Solving the manual labor problem in seagrass restoration. 05:20 – Moving to San Francisco: Why the Bay Area is still the undisputed king of HardTech. 07:51 – The Strategic Ocean: Geopolitics, AI, deep-sea minerals, and subsea cables. 10:23 – Pragmatic Business Models: Using defense and commercial revenue to fund nature restoration. 13:17 – Grey Warfare & Illegal Fishing: The environmental destruction caused by foreign fleets. 17:35 – The Case for U.S. Manufacturing: Supply chain security, geopolitics, and clean industrial standards. 23:14 – Making Climate Bipartisan: Why focusing on abundance and energy resonates with the median American. 35:44 – Hiring “Farmers” and Builders: Why hands-on projects beat fancy engineering degrees. 42:13 – “Stewardship Tech” vs. “Clean Tech”: Rejecting scarcity for a pro-human, expansionist mindset. Sponsors: Lehmann’s Terms – Preparing founders and executives for high-stakes media and investor moments (ltmediatraining.com). Climate Finance Solutions (CFS) – Securing billions in grant funding for climate tech (ClimateFinanceSolutions.com). Roosevelt Talent – Headhunting, candidate screening, and hiring consulting for energy tech and frontier startups. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climatecowboys.substack.com/subscribe