Rob Hanson, CEO of Monolith, discusses why deep-tech and climate startups cannot be accelerated merely by pouring early venture capital into them.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Like if you can build a company just by pouring, you know, capital on it in one or two years, I mean, you don't have a real moat. Maybe there's, you know, network effects and different things in software, but in climate tech, I mean, your moat comes from fundamental technical capacity and, you know, knowing secrets about nature that others don't. And that just takes time and it takes a lot of smart people. And yes, it takes capital, but I think that time and smart people are probably the biggest two components to that.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rob Hanson
AssertionSupported
Hanson: Monolith has scaled methane pyrolysis to commercial operations
“And we started in 2012 have raised a lot of equity over the years and have taken technology that was almost there and got it to full commercial scale.”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 7:36Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
Opinion
Hanson: Hydrogen industry must replace color labels with lifecycle carbon metrics
“I mean, this stuff is sufficiently complex that we should be able to do good life cycle analyses, include all the upstream portions of it, and come up with You know, kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of hydrogen or whatever the end product is. Like, we …”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 10:21Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hanson: 100% of Sand Hill Road VCs rejected Monolith in 2012
“We started in twenty-twelve where, and we were in Silicon Valley, and we went to everyone on Sandhill Road, and precisely 100% of them said no.”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 13:17Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
Opinion
Hanson: Clean tech multi-plant rollouts cannot realistically be funded on equity alone
“I don't think the idea that you're going to Build, you know, multiple plants every year, repeatably all on equity is, is very real in the longterm.”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 29:14Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
AssertionPartly supported
Hanson: Monolith built the world's largest plasma torch exceeding 16 megawatts
“I mean, so the key to our process is you got to get this really high temperature heat generated electrically. And so we use a plasma torch and we've now built the largest plasma torch in the history of the world. It's over 16 megawatts. It's high nineties perc…”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 38:06Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hanson: Black mulch at Home Depot likely contains Monolith's carbon black
“So if you go to Home Depot and you buy mulch that happens to be colored black, it's likely got monoliths carbon black in it that's making it black.”
Rob HansonJan 10, 2022▶ 45:35Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back hydrogen
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.