Kathy Hannun
Co-Founder and President, Dandelion Energy. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@KathyHannun ↗LinkedIn ↗kathyhannun.com ↗
Hannun incubated Dandelion Energy inside Alphabet’s X before spinning it out in 2017 to decarbonize home heating and cooling through residential geothermal systems. Under her leadership, the company developed proprietary low-cost drilling methods and its Dandelion Air heat pump.
1shows
1appearances
20statements
9resolved
6supported
3contradicted
67%fully supported
Everything Kathy Hannun said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Geothermal cuts home heating operating costs to one-fifth of fossil fuels
“If you look at, for example, in the Midwest, comparing using a fuel to using geothermal, your operating costs, so how much you have to actually spend to heat your home, it's maybe a fifth with geothermal. It's similar in the Northeast, and emissions-wise is si…”
Hannun: Geothermal ground loops last as long as the home
“Whereas if you invest in putting in ground loops, and we can talk a little bit more about what that entails, but if you invest in that infrastructure so that you can access all of that free heating energy that's already in your yard, then you can draw on it es…”
Google X targets software moonshots requiring massive upfront capital investments
“The issue was, you know, X really looks for a very specific type of project. Their ideal project is something like the self-driving car, Waymo, where you have to invest a lot of money up front to create, ideally, something software or software adjacent, like a…”
Hannun: Operationally intensive geothermal was a better fit as a startup than Google X project
“And for geothermal heat pumps, it involved things like drilling deep holes in homeowners yards, It was operationally intensive, and I should also mention you didn't need a billion dollars up front to get started. It was the type of problem that seems like it w…”
Hannun: Dandelion's financed geothermal was cash flow positive versus fuel oil
“We launched with a financing option. So from the beginning, homeowners that signed up with us
Would come out ahead. Like, you could come out cash flow positive against fuel oil”
In-housing installation labor improved Dandelion Energy's unit economics despite capital intensity
“It's true that having a model where you're insourcing the labor is more capital intensive, but the economics of each install were also much better. So it ended up being a financial net positive for the company, even though it did require us to, yeah, raise the…”
Hannun: Geothermal installation margins depend entirely on asset throughput
“And this business is all about throughput. So if you have your rigs and your people and like all of your assets constantly working to put in systems, then you're able to amortize that overhead over many, many, many more systems, and the cost is much, much lowe…”
Geothermal heat pumps cost half as much as air-source in cold climates
“Especially in places where it gets cold, the cost to operate a ground source heat pump is about half of the cost to operate an air source heat pump because you have access to that constant temperature ground.”
Hannun: Dandelion Energy customers do not require fossil backup heating
“Many homeowners in the northeast today that decide to get an air source heat pump use a fossil-fueled system for backup, and that allows them to Make sure they have enough heating on the coldest day and, you know, with our customers, none of them have a, you d…”
Silicon Valley VCs passed on Dandelion Energy's initial seed round
“When I was first pitching the company with our initial seed round, and I would pitch to venture investors in Silicon Valley, I didn't get a lot of traction. When I would go to New York or Massachusetts-based investors, that ended up, those were the investors t…”
Hannun: Buildings drive 40% of emissions, mostly from heating and cooling
“And buildings are responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Heating and cooling is more than half of that.”
Hannun: 20% of Swedish Homes Use Geothermal Heat Pumps
“20% of homes in Sweden use geothermal heat pumps.”
Nearly all new Swedish homes are built with geothermal heat pumps
“Pretty much all new homes going in use them.”
Hannun: Dandelion Imported Swedish Drilling Rigs for US Geothermal Installations
“We've imported most of that back to the United States and really adopted the same rigs they use over there.”
Hannun: Residential geothermal in New York originally cost over $50k-$60k
“Yes, that was the typical price of Gio, actually quite a bit higher than that in the markets in New York that we started in.”
Hannun: Dandelion scaled from 2 to 14 drilling rigs in 18 months
“So to give one example, only 18 months ago we had two drilling rigs of Standaline, just small rigs that we've Adapted to be optimized for geothermal in small suburban residential yards. So we went from having two to now we have 14 running full time”
Air-source heat pumps would double winter peak grid demand in Rhode Island
“A study was done for the state of Rhode Island of just, like, what will happen if you convert all your heating systems to air source heat pumps, and the peak demand on that grid would double, and the reason for that is on the coldest day, All of the air source…”
Homebuilder Lennar invested in Dandelion Energy's recent funding round
“One of our investors in our most recent rounds, Lenar, the home builder, we're really interested in starting to get into new, new homes, new construction.”
Geothermal is most cost-effective when installed in batch during new home construction
“New homes is the ultimate case where you can just put in like a hundred Ground loops, two underground loops at a time, and it's very, very cost effective.”
Hannun: Dandelion cut installation wait times from a year to four months
“In terms of our wait times, they've varied at our worst. We forced our customers to wait over a year in some markets because we had so much demand, but now we've managed to bring it down. It's more like four months, so we've made a lot of progress there.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kathy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and President, Dandelion Energy | 1 | 20 | 67% 6/9 | full record on How I Built This → |