The Solar Panel That Makes 50% More Energy on the Same Footprint — Eric Rubenstein

[00:00:00] Eric Rubinstein: One of the companies we invested in created a solar panel that can produce 50% more power than a traditional solar panel. So the panel itself is going to be a different price than a traditional solar panel, but it's because it produces 50% more power. The output ends up defining the price, not the panel itself. So you can use less land. There's a cost savings by using less land, or you can produce 50% more power with the same amount of land. [00:00:29] Speaker 2: Today, I'm joined by Eric Rubinstein, founding manager partner at NCV. Eric has a very pretty and unique background for climate investors. His career has taken him through finance, alternative investments, healthcare and entrepreneurship, before moving into venture capital and climate technology. Today at NCV, he has invested in mostly early stage companies working to fundamental change, how we produce power and like, you know, consume everything from energy and industrial technology to carbon reduction, food, agriculture, and other technologies that could reshape the economy. What's particularly interesting about NCV is that the thesis isn't simply about investing in companies that are like good for the planet. The firm is looking for technologies that can actually become commercially visible, scalable, resilient, affordable, and competitive with solutions. So today, I want to get into the business side of climate tech, what makes a climate company investable, how you separate real opportunities from hype and what Eric believes the next generation of industrial companies will look like. Eric, welcome to Business Unmasked. I am Rachel. I'll be hosting you today. Hi. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Amazing. So your backgrounds, like, you know, spans finance, alternative investments, and like now climate ventures capital, like what originally pulled you [00:02:02] Eric Rubinstein: toward climate technology? It was rather gradual, actually, and organic. Originally, professionally, was in commodity trading on the traditional energy side. And while on commodity trade desks, so while trading oil and refined products, natural gas liquids and petrochemicals from the trade desk at Citigroup, I started personally investing in venture capital funds, and then directly in companies. And then I found a path while at Citigroup to invest on behalf of Citigroup in companies and startups as a strategic investor. And we had customers, the Coca-Colas and Pepsis of the world that had set their targets for how much recycled plastic was going to be in their bottle mixes. And they had set those targets so high that they were seeking to fill those targets with as much recycled plastic as they could to meet those targets. And they came to us to seek solutions. So what I saw was the waste management companies who collect plastics from cities, they get paid by the city. So in talking to them, they didn't see themselves as having excess recycled plastic to be able to sell. They were just selling it into the open market. The petrochemical companies who are customers of ours, they were buying recyclers and had to provide recycled plastics also to these companies that wanted the recycled plastics. So they didn't have any access to sell. Our credit groups, the ones who lend to companies, they were uncomfortable lending to recyclers because the recyclers credit had not been strong enough historically for them to be able to lend to them. But because I had been investing in companies as a strategic investor to streamline our processes and enhance our trade analytics, I saw there were companies out there that could turn your clothing into new plastic bottles. And I reached out to those companies to see if they would take investment and what the valuation would be and did my diligence on those companies. And that was the beginning of really diving further and further into investments in a sustainability theme. But really it was all driven by customer interest by knowing that in this case, Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Danone, the brands wanted the recycled plastic. In other instances, knowing that the airlines wanted sustainable aviation fuel. In other instances, knowing that carbon removal was becoming more and more of a interest to companies that were clients. So in seeing what the client interest was, we really started to target these different areas for them. Eventually, that turned into a wide and broad understanding of what the world wanted, what customers like you and I want, what corporations want on the back of knowing that the trends and what we want to purchase, what we're actually doing. And that led to new climate ventures being born out of that understanding of customer interests, both from the consumer side and the corporate side, which then led to just a broader interest in the types of technologies that the world was gravitating toward. [00:05:24] Speaker 2: So Anthony talks about a new industrial resilience technology that can change how we produce power and consume without requiring people to completely change. And like, especially change how they live. So like, what does that thesis mean to you personally? [00:05:42] Eric Rubinstein: Yeah. So when we launched in 2021, it was at the very tail end of COVID, of all the different various shutdowns and having to stay home and work from home. And in seeing the disruption that COVID had on supply chains, it really opened my eyes. And I think the eyes of many, many people to the importance of having the ability to produce locally, or at least have access locally to the things that you need day to day. That could be anything from toilet paper in the face of COVID all the way down to gasoline. Right. And it's the same thing with natural disasters like hurricanes, where maybe you're unable to access gasoline because the power is out and the gas station literally can't allow you to use the pump because they don't have power to pump the gasoline from their tank. So in seeing that and understanding the importance of supply chain resilience, but also understanding the importance of just the resilience of companies. So seeing coming out of the commodity space and understanding the cost to produce something like oil and the cost to refine it and the cost to move it somewhere, both the oil and the refined products and really watching and understand the economics and seeing how industry changes to adapt to different economics. There's an underlying belief that you need to be economic in order for a company to do something. You can't charge more than the market is willing to pay. Otherwise, the market won't buy that product, regardless of what that product is. So that underlying understanding of market pricing, and then also layered with distributed manufacturing is really the underlying belief of the way that companies can address the world. You need one, the other or both in order to really sustain a business in particularly climate tech space, [00:07:41] Speaker 2: but I'd argue in any space. Like NCV emphasizes technologies that can eventually reach price [00:07:47] Eric Rubinstein: partly with the traditional technology. There are traditional incumbent technologies that are already there is ideal. I mean, either you need to be that price parity, I guess, can be adapted to. I'll give you an example. One of the companies we invested in created a solar panel that can produce 50% more power than a traditional solar panel. So the panel itself is going to be a different price than a traditional solar panel, but it's because it produces 50% more power. The output ends up defining the price, not the panel itself. So you can use less land. There's a cost savings by using less land, or you can produce 50% more power with the same amount of land. So the price adjust to the power output, not so much to the panel itself as a unit. So just as one example, another would be to performance, I guess, is a adjustment item for what price, but that price parity is defined by the performance. So I think that's true of many different technologies. Another company we invested in made a next generation window that can reflect heat away from sunlight. So that reduces the energy need of a building by up to 30%. It has other attributes, like it can strengthen glass, so you don't need as much glass as part of that window. It can adhere to acrylic, so it can adhere to plastic. So you can have a window that's much bigger than a glass window that weighs significantly less. It also has a sound barrier property where there's significantly less sound that comes through. So they tell a story of an installation they did on the first floor of a building in New York City. And there was a lady who went to her doctor and said, "Look, my hearing, something's wrong. Like, I can't hear the street noise the way I used to. I think I'm losing my hearing." And the doctor asked, "Well, was there anything that's changed recently?" And she realized through that conversation that the window installation changed and she wasn't hearing the sound because the sound wasn't coming through the windows anymore. So it wasn't that she was losing any hearing. It was just that the windows were that good that she couldn't hear anymore the sound. They can also eliminate condensation. So like Coca-Cola, getting back to Coca-Cola again, a brand, or testing these windows on refrigeration units. So you can see the product at all times, because the number one interest is in the customer seeing the product at all times without that fog that you can see when you open and close the window, that condensation. So if you can see the product at all times, you're significantly more likely to purchase a product. So you have all these different attributes. Different customers are going to want different attributes, but the, I guess, result is you just have a better product. So it'll price differently than a single pane window or a double pane window because it behaves more like a triple pane window. So it's, again, the performance that's defining price, but it's competing [00:10:45] Speaker 2: with a different segment of the market. So you've invested across areas like energy, materials, industrial technologies, and carbon production, and much more. What's the common thread you're looking for across all these seemingly different industries? [00:11:01] Eric Rubinstein: Oh, well, the one kind of common thread I'd say is customer interest. So one way we like to diligence a company even is by showing that technology to a potential customer and seeing if that customer would, what it would take at least for that customer to become a customer of that company. And in a lot of instances, we're showing it to energy companies. In the case of, if it's a window technology, we might be showing that to a builder and saying, look, we got this new window. What do you think of these specs? What do you think of that window? But in other instances, it's say a company, we just invested in a company that can take emissions off of industry and put it directly in the reactor and make chemicals. So we're talking to refiners, oil refiners about that company, showing them the technology and seeing if they would consider being a customer of that company, but also if they'd like to invest. And there's actually a refiner who has already invested in the company and another one who's very interested in it from both becoming a customer and an investor in the company. So the customer interest, I'd say is a very important factor. The technology being proven enough that we think that the risk associated with proving that technology out further is scaling risk, making bigger and bigger application of that technology rather than the science risk. So more engineering versus science risk is another thing that we think about. But all of it comes back to the customer and whether there's a customer, a willing, paying customer that would want to that service, that technology type, the output from that technology. [00:12:47] Speaker 2: So like NCV describes itself as an active investor that provides founders with operational support, team building, mentoring and access to investors and corporations. What can a venture investor actually do after writing the check that materially changes a company's odds of success beyond the dollars [00:13:15] Eric Rubinstein: the fund itself is putting in? There are a number of different areas. One would be similar to what I'm talking about customer introductions. That's very important. Another is introductions to potential investors because the a lot of these many, many startups, nearly all startups are going to need more money at some point in time. And having access to the right type of capital at the different moments in time when they need it is important. We also generally bring in other investors alongside us. So we'll make introductions to investors when we're investing in a company. Usually investors that we think can add value to the company by one way or another. We'll give advice. So a lot of times we'll take a board seat or we'll have a board observer role or we'll be an informal or formal advisor to a company. We'll review pitch decks. We'll advise the company on business strategy. We'll make introductions to different third party vendors that can be helpful to the company depending on what the needs of the company are. So there's a lot of ways I think investors can be helpful to companies and sometimes they don't even realize how helpful they can be just by giving advice. [00:14:30] Speaker 2: Absolutely. So let's talk about NCV itself. Where do you see the biggest opportunities to grow the firm over the next three to five years? [00:14:40] Eric Rubinstein: Oh, that's an interesting question. So we are like a startup ourselves where we have raised our first fund and we've deployed most of the first fund. So the growth from here is going to be twofold. One is in supporting the companies that we've already invested in so that those companies can be more and more successful. So, you know, in order for us to succeed in the end, we need these companies to be successful and we need them to give us money back in some way or we need to sell our interest in the company. So they need to be bought, the company itself. So M&A needs to happen, mergers and acquisitions. We need the company to go public or we need to sell our stake in the company in order to monetize our investment. So on the one side, there's helping the companies to succeed and ultimately exit. On the other side, we're going to need to raise more money in order to raise new funds. So on the second side, it's certainly raising capital and having a second fund, a third fund, more funds in the future. But in in the next two to three years, it would be raising a second fund and deploying that capital efficiently and responsibly into a new industrial revolution theme, which we think is the dominant theme in our [00:15:56] Speaker 2: fund one portfolio. So how does NCV actually find the companies that make it into the radar? [00:16:03] Eric Rubinstein: There's roughly five ways that we source our deal flow. One would be from other venture funds. So we have funds that we've co-invested with. We have funds that are not in our sector that want guidance and on whether a company is worth investing in. So other funds will come to us either because they want to share deal flow just as we share it with them or also because they want help on diligence with accelerators and incubators. So there are groups out there that will help companies to in their very early stages to help their business and also in other stages will will be helpful, whether that's they give money and then they enter a program and it's usually program based. There's fellowship programs like the Breakthrough Energy Fellowship and the Activate Fellowship program that we're friendly with and we'll show them companies and we'll also source companies from their programs. There are these accelerators that are also phenomenal out there, whether that's something like the traditional ones like Techstars and Y Combinator all the way through to um uh SOSV has a great one and uh called Hacks and another one called IndieBio that that they've done historically that are that are very good um on the incubator side Greentown Labs in Boston and Houston has uh many companies that that they incubate so these are companies that actually uh work there and have office space there so we can pop in and out and get to know the companies. We also will source companies from our founders and those are one of the best forms of of sourcing because founders are very good at identifying other founders that might be successful so we've we've had a lot of success in identifying companies to invest in through founders that we've invested in or have known in the past. We also will choose a sector and a sub-sector and really understand a certain area that we think deserves having companies uh create a solution and then we'll we'll look for companies that are doing that specific thing uh and so it's it's more direct sourcing in that form and um that's yeah that's largely how we find our deal flow. I guess the the final way would be through our investor ourselves so the ones those who invested in our fund uh they might find a company that they think is is very strong and show it to us and that's that would be another way to to source deal flow I'd say. So if [00:18:32] Speaker 2: more clients so more climate tech founders and entrepreneurs knew exactly what NCV could offer them before they started fundraising what could that do for NCV's deal flow and the quality [00:18:50] Eric Rubinstein: of opportunities you see um I think if the right founders yeah knew how we help then that would certainly guide you know strong companies toward us I mean that's that's a way that we've sourced deal flow in the past and that's been good uh an example of that is a company called fast metals we led the seed round for fast metals just this past year this year and that was showed to us by a founder of another one of our portfolio companies this has actually been reported on in Connecticut Yale University put out a an article and um it's been in the press about how staff sheehan who is a co-founder of a company called airco air company and he uh started a company called project omega but he went to the Yale innovation summit a year ago may so in 2025 and after that summit he gave me a call and said look there's one founder here which i think is the best founder that i saw at the entire event across everything that i i everyone i was talking to everything i saw uh you should really take a call with him and uh sumed who is the founder of fast metals he hadn't even left his his full-time job yet but i was introduced to him then and a few months later we were talking about him uh raising money for his company and uh we ended up providing him terms for that investment round and we ended up uh investing and bringing other investors into that round so uh that that's a very distinct real example of the benefit of having a founder who knows the value of having you as an investor and is both willing to tell other you know companies about that but also other investors and really uh make those connections happen absolutely so like when you look um five to ten years into the [00:20:51] Speaker 2: future what would you have to happen now what would have to happen for you to say we've got this right these were the technologies that really changed the economy i think the company is gaining real [00:21:06] Eric Rubinstein: commercial traction and for us i mean so there's two things one would be changing the world and the other would be really having an impact for our fund the changing the world's very important and you know our belief is if you're successful in business and changing the world and in a in a good way that that's going to come back and you'll be able to sell that company and monetize it or we would be able to sell our equity and monetize it so so while we need you know i think from a fund perspective in order to show returns to our investors we need to see companies buying our companies that we're invested in or we need to see ipos happen that needs to happen i think on the one end on the other end what's going to facilitate that happening is showing commercial success by these companies so an example of that would be fast metals who we just talked about actually taking the red mud that they use as an input and producing valuable metals out of that and those metals being sold in the market so that should start to happen over the next you're saying five to ten years in five to ten years i would hope they would have many many of these large facilities that are funded by uh by industry in order to extract that value from the metals that currently are sitting in the red mud that's in piles across the world and more and more of it is being produced and piled up every day and reducing those piles not allowing those piles to keep growing and produce a lot of value out of that and then those metals can go into making computer chips they can go into uh building buildings they can go into uh the defense sector there's a lot of different applications for these critical minerals [00:22:51] Speaker 2: and these different metals that they're able to extract absolutely well eric thank you so much for sharing that with us it was lovely having you here and having a crazy good conversation