Donnel Baird, founder of building electrification startup BlocPower, agrees with Guy Raz on the projected scale of the carbon capture market over the next 50 years.
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Baird: NYC will get most electricity from Quebec hydro by 2023
“What we do have in New York City is we get most of our electricity, or will next year, from a hydroelectric project in Quebec. Oh. And so there's this giant dam in Quebec that spins a bunch of turbines, and Produces clean electricity and sends that electricity…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
BlocPower trained and disbanded a 50-member New York street gang
“Guy, we had a whole street gang that was like out dealing drugs a few months ago, and there's like 50 of them, and they came to us and they said, look, we're willing to shut down the gang if you guys are willing to train us and get us certified and get us jobs…”
Disclosure
Donnel Baird: BlocPower will forfeit profitability to scale for IPO
“Over the next two to five years, as we prepare to like go public and IPO, we will not be profitable. If I'm doing my job, like we will be investing in R&D and expansion, just like Uber did, right? Or Airbnb or any other tech company, because we want to take th…”
Insight
Baird: Targeting low-income customers gives BlocPower a mass-market advantage
“We've flipped that on its head and said, we're going to start with the lowest income people first, and that allows us to be mass market first, and so that has been a painful journey, but now that we've seen a little bit of success, yeah, we do have a competiti…”
Opinion
Baird: Building decarbonization can be accomplished within ten years
“We can do this in the next 10 years.”
Opinion
Baird: All required hardware, AI, and capital exist to electrify buildings
“We have all the hardware we need. Wall Street's gonna give us all the capital we need. We have all the machine learning and digital twin technology that we need to figure this out. We have everything we need to go do this, right? And like, we can do it. It's a…”