Entrepreneurship Unfiltered with Celine King, Founder & CEO @ GreenIRR Inc.

Oh, welcome to another episode of the Grove. Shout out to our partners Craz and Friends for making this happen and clean tech growth lab. If you're looking to grow in clean tech, you do it with them. But without them, it would not be possible to interview awesome people doing awesome things like Seline.

Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I I don't even think I'm I'm not even going to add any type of introduction. I am super excited to talk about what you're building, how you're building it. Um, but before we do that, I would just like you to give a brief introduction of

yourself and what you're building. Um, so I was born and raised right outside of Philadelphia, still there. Um, two older sisters, two wonderful parents, and um, I went to Fairfield University in my undergrad and studied business analytics and biology. So, my background's super nerdy. Um, I did climate change research for the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Always have had an affinity for science. I thought I wanted to be in the lab and in the field. And um I actually had the chance to present that research to policy makers in Oregon and Washington.

And it was dismissed pretty quickly. And so I realized that if I wanted to have an outsized sort of impact on the planet, it wasn't going to be uh unfortunately in the science realm. And so I switched on to the business side of things. I worked at Greenbacker Capital, which is a private equity firm that

invests in renewable infrastructure and sustainable assets, which is essentially just solar and wind. And so I was doing a lot of power purchasing agreements. Um and then I got started founding Greener about three years ago today and have been working hard on it ever since.

So then let's so then let's focus on um before we get into the story of how you built greener and uh what it's been like to develop the product and uh explore the market and stuff like that. I want to understand um what it was like for you at that time leaving uh leaving a job that provided

more security maybe you know a lifestyle that was more secure. um what was the decision to jump into entrepreneurship? How do you um I mean you gave a little bit of background but did you have familiarity with entrepreneurship at the time?

That's such a good question. So I was introduced to entrepreneurship through Fairfield's startup program um which is essentially a 9-month accelerator for undergrad where you come up with an idea, you work on it for nine months and then you pitch it to investors. Um and so At the beginning when there was a lot

of ideiation going on, I didn't exactly know what greener was going to be, but I really like the idea of accountability and transparency. Um, and once the idea started to take shape, uh, I felt like I didn't have a choice but to pursue it.

So, it was like this very sort of, um, divine and like blissful feeling of, wow, I found something that feels so true and I felt super called to pursue it. Um, and it was just like this massive adrenaline rush for months and months to pull that idea out of my head and make it tangible. And so, um, that

was my introduction. Well, I should say that was the genesis of the idea and what it felt like. Um, and then through the Fairfield startup program, I was uh able to follow more of an academic curriculum on, you know, what is a competitive landscape look like, how to do a market sizing, what's channel

distribution, sort of the elements of a standard business model that anyone would need to know. Um, which was particularly helpful for me because I was coming from the science world, so I knew absolutely nothing about business at the time. um went through the program and then couldn't shake the feeling of needing to continue to pursue the idea.

Um it was all I wanted to spend my time doing. Um and so I stuck with it and I remember distinctly what you're talking about that decision of am I going to follow the traditional uh you know I have my major those predefined steps and you know pre pretty predefined path for me if I wanted to go into finance if I

wanted to go into some sort of uh analytical or compsai role uh I knew exactly how I was going to get there and I feel like the fear of doing something uncertain uh is a pretty terrifying feeling. feeling um and over time learned that uncertainty can be a superpower. And I knew just through pure

excitement about, you know, how big this idea could be where I wanted to end up and sort of had to let go of how I was going to get there. Um which I think is a a really good practice if you can sort of force yourself into leaning into uncertainty. You'll always be surprised

by where you end up or I should say how you get there. And so, um, for me, it felt like I didn't have a choice. Uh, I needed to pursue the idea, but I do remember turning down a few job offers, wondering if I was doing the right thing. But my family is incredibly

supportive. My friends are supportive. I had established relationships with people that taught me how to believe in myself and bet on myself. And so, that decision was a little bit easier for me because I had enough people in my corner to encourage it. So with that context, so um when you were working with the

private equity firm, was that still during school or was that post school? That was still in undergrad. So So what was your um what perspective did you gain, you know, what did you learn from working in private equity um that either pulled you towards the industry or pushed you away from it? I

think uh a few things from a what valuable lessons did I learn? It was my first real experience inside corporate America which when I look about who when I look at who we're selling into today, it's important to understand how organizations work, how decisions work, um who's responsible for what. Um, and so I remember being super impressionable

at that time and just understanding how different teams cross functionally interacted was really relevant I would say today more so than when I was ideiating. That was amazing. Um, and then I think from a what pushed me away from it was on a personal level, every day felt predictable, which sounds a little crazy

to say, but I woke up every day knowing exactly what I was going to do from 9 to 5, which is which is great for some people. Um, but I didn't feel like in the near future I was going to be put in a position where I could be making decisions of consequence, which is the

type of ownership that I wanted to have, not just professionally, but in my life. And I didn't necessarily feel challenged in a way that required me to have any sort of original thought where I wasn't able to think creativ creatively or strategically in a way that impacted the overall business. um it was more so heads down work and the

mission of the company was amazing but my contribution to that mission felt a little bit small and um I personally feel like that can be found in other areas or corners of corporate America but um for me that sort of pushed me away and my ultimate goal was to have an outsized impact and seeing

the speed at which certain and organizations were moving uh versus you know the the almost urgent or critical timeline that we need to be acting when it comes to climate change didn't feel fast enough and I felt like I could take control and ownership over my impact by taking things into my own hands.

So there was something that you had said in that answer which is decisions of consequence. Is that true? Mhm. What is that? So for me, uh, and I'm probably going to insult some people when I say this, but as an anecdote or as an analogy, if you're consulting, if you're in consulting, you're you're doing a bunch

of research to inform other people of how to run their organization, what decisions should be made in order to make the organization more efficient, more effective, more profitable. but you don't ever have to personally deal with the emotional consequence of a decision that's being made. You're telling other people how to do it. Um, and so it's not

so much from a level of seniority standpoint where if I'm a VP, you know, I'm making decisions of consequence. It's more so like organization size and then just organizational culture. And so I feel like if you can put yourself in a position where the decisions you're making, you're personally responsible for the outcome and dealing with what

comes from it, whether it's a positive decision or a negative decision, that's ultimately how you're forcing yourself to grow as a person. Is that something that's always been uh important to you? I think so. I think I wasn't aware of how important it was to me when I was younger. um but have always gravitated

towards leadership because I liked the responsibility of an outcome which you know pressure is a double-edged sword where I constantly found myself gravitating towards opportunities or experiences where I was constantly under pressure. Um I would encourage anyone to do something do do things that are hard.

Uh you know if there's two paths to get to the same point uh take the harder path uh and you'll learn a lot about yourself. But um I think that as I've gotten older, I've realized that I seek out pressure because I want to have autonomy over living the whole experience. And I think when you are in

a position where the decisions you're making force you to deal with the outcome, um it it sort of inherently or innately does that. Well said. Thank you. That was so great. Um, do you with the perspective that you have on um what it's like to run greener at the moment relative to when you started the

company? Is entrepreneurship or has running the company been what you expected to any degree? Uh, not at all. And I think so in general I would say startup and entrepreneurship is over glorified um because a lot of times people focus on success stories and it's always the you know zero to 100 unicorn company or you

know Jeff Bezos or Elon they were sleeping under a table they were eating ramen for years and look at what they did and you know it's like that's a great story now cuz they made it. Um, but no one talks about how much suffering is involved to get to that point. And I think that was something

that in general is something that you can't understand unless you go through it yourself. So what I didn't I would say something that was a misconception to me was that when you're pursuing building a company when that's essentially you pursuing your dream in public, it requires an incredible level of vulnerability. Um, everything is

personal. So, this is much more about building yourself into the person that can run the company that you want to have than building the company itself. Um, and so I think I didn't understand the level of emotional burn that was going to come with it. I also had no appreciation for how difficult things

were going to be. So, well, the the the thing the thing that captured me was um uh and I'm afraid that's probably going to happen again, but it's okay. we'll roll with it. So, so just just the the the thing that um that captured me was build yourself into the person that can run

the company that you want. Yeah, that is uh a very powerful concept of uh entrepreneurship that I think um more people need to talk about. So, I guess my last question on this piece, um, which I'm glad that the the lights gave me the opportunity to ask is at what point did you have the vocabulary to

describe that type of self growth? I would say probably last year, middle of 2024. And it the whole journey has been introspective. So I would say like one of the hardest things about entrepreneurship is everything that's well one the material side of it is there's an unbelievably high amount of high frequency high

intensity bad news that like you just would never experience unless you're going you're putting yourself in a position to be constantly told no constantly discouraged. um that's material. That's actually that's pretty easy to deal with. I would say the hardest part is the personal, mental, emotional, spiritual side of it where it's like should it be me? Can I

continue to believe in myself? I'm hearing no 100 times a day. How can I keep going? Um, and like you know that piece of it, I feel like to build the mental fortitude to protect your unconditional belief in the company so that when you hear no, you feel like the other person's wrong. Um, is a really

interesting sort of journey. And so what I was going to say is from the beginning you're introspective because you're facing like you're forced to sort of just look at yourself in the mirror every day. That's that's all it really is. and like you have to be introspective about am I capable of this

and like can I execute? I'm responsible for other people. I'm solving an impossible problem. Um larger sort of philosophical questions I feel like is the more difficult piece of it. So I've always been introspective about it. I would say that there was a point in time where we turned a corner as a company

where I had for a year been pulling the idea out of my head uh which is a process I love in general. It's super creative. But we were in like this like we were talking about earlier material generation phase where it was we're building decks non-stop. We're building one pagers non-stop. We're building like

the foundation of our our story on paper like digitally to promote to investors to prospective customers to partners. And once that uh chapter closed, it turned into selling the product and commercializing. And um I would say at that time because I had just gotten through what to me seems like the first cycle of ideiation into something more

tangible, I was able to look backwards and then realize like just how insane the entire journey was. And that's really when I feel like um I was able to understand how personal the journey was. I don't know if that makes sense.

Well, so so well it it does. And it's a good transition into uh what I was curious about because I really appreciate you indulging the questions. I mean, I love getting into the self-growth stuff. We could do an entire episode just about that and maybe we should, but um for some context into

what led you to this point to be able to discuss these things, the vehicle which is greener. So at the beginning you said there was a lot of work um making decks and making a lot of content. So, so let's just so let's just start at the beginning. So, what did Greener look like when you started when

you just like what how would you describe what the beginning was? The beginning for me was like this almost frantic and manic need to learn as much as I possibly could to become informed enough to actually pursue this dream in a way where I felt in control and confident about what I was talking

about. And so the beginning was just non-stop research trying to understand vocabulary words. What is a cap table? What's the difference between venture capital and private equity? Like things that you know I'm using every day or that seemed so trivial but I just didn't know cuz I was so young. I was 20 years

old. And so um the beginning was just this obsessive learning. Um and really just pulling I keep saying pulling ideas out of my head that that's always been true for me. like typing everything out, writing everything out that was in my head and then trying to put structure around the idea. Um, and then when I got

into the Fairfield startup program, that helped me, you know, sort of have a format for how should I be thinking about this idea. Um, and working backwards. So, it was always, you know, the intention is at a super high level like just save the planet, right? That's my what's my problem? I want to solve

climate change. And then how am I going to do that? Working backwards. And then what's even more difficult is how am I going to be profitable doing that? And so that was sort of what the beginning looked like for me.

What what was the value proposition like? What what was the company at that point? It was something uh the tech was the same. The idea and the market were completely different. So we were pitching in this is keep in mind when ESG was a buzzword and carb criteria for like portfolios was super important. um

we were providing a service to provide um private equity firms with ESG data um on how their portfolio companies were performing against any sort of decarbonization criteria they had for their portfolio. So our target market was private investors. Um the platform is pretty much the same from a we wanted to be providing real-time data that

couldn't be manipulated. Um, and I'm sure the features and the functionality that we brainstormed were completely different. Um, but that was at the time what we were pitching. Well, and so this is the question that I had about um about the company today, but like you so if you're saying it's the same, I'll just ask you now, but at

the time, if you are a company that has a layer that's trying to make sense of a lot of this data, where's the data coming from? like do you have to integrate into certain hard like hardware data collection um uh devices like was that ever a thought that you would do that? Do you partner with

particular you know all those types of questions? Yes. And I will say probably the best way I can clarify it is the mission behind the tech is the same in the sense that our core thesis was around transparency.

Um the product itself probably looks very different than it did when we were pitching it in the earliest days. And so we do leverage we do leverage integration. So we're software only. Um but we integrate with one hardware piece called a telematic device which is a hardware component that exists inside of every vehicle when it's manufactured. Um

or it can be installed after the fact and we partner with the providers of those hardware devices. We connect through an API and it allows us to pull real-time vehicle performance data. And then the secondary system to your point about integrations that we leverage is fuel cards. So credit cards that are used by drivers, every time they

purchase fuel, a range of transaction data points are collected. So very similar to when you and I swipe our credit card, you know, it's telling us what we purchased, where, how much we spent, same sort of thing. And so in trucking and logistics, those are the only two primary data sources that can

be used for the type of reporting or calculations or analytics that we're providing. Oh, okay. So what I wanted to ask, so you said uh you talked about the integration with uh uh with the different hardware pieces. You explained how you guys are a software layer on top of the data collection. And so my

question was for a little bit of context. So, at what point did you transition from being this uh this software layer for private investors into uh the trucking logistics space? Because the two pieces of hardware that you just described were specific to the transportation.

Yeah. And so what and so at what point did that did that transition happen? So when that's a good question. Um, I'll preface by saying when we were still targeting private investors, we were focused on those that invested heavily in transportation. So, the idea of leveraging telematic systems uh or asset tracking systems, fleet management

software was something that was still part of the genesis of the original idea. Um, had no idea what fuel cards were until we did a true pivot into trucking. Um we made the full transition. We did about 65 80 customer discovery interviews with different PE firms and um that was a grind. That was

over how long? Uh 6 to 8 months. Okay. Um and we were trying to get feedback. So like our iterative process was I needed to learn the PE industry beyond just my experience working at Greenbacker by having these conversations uh understanding okay if you have ESG criteria or you're taking sustainability as a factor of your

investments and your your monitoring of your portfolio what does that look like to we have mock-ups of what the software is going to be can we do a click through and show you um would this be useful to you what type of data would you want to seeing is what we've mocked up similar

to how you would envision this. What type of integrated system should we be integrating with from like a private investor standpoint? Is the tech do you use in-house? Is it outsourced? Those sorts of questions. And then ultimately those discovery interviews, I would say, snowballed into would you pay for this?

And the answer was no. Like maybe not outright. several people were direct enough and honest enough to tell us that, but it was always, you know, like maybe if you could do this, if you could and it was becoming more and more obvious to me that like selling this in a private market is extraordinarily

difficult because they're they're unregulated. Um and so we needed to pivot into a market that was under pressure that was being that felt the the pressure you know regulatory and that was highly underresourced. Private equity firms aren't underresourced and so um the immediate pivot was to supply chain and then okay that sounds

focused. it's not um what transportation mode within the supply chain is under the most amount of pressure, who's responsible for the most amount of emissions, what's the legacy industry and it was trucking. So, so then who um this was you said it was 6 to 8 months that you were doing these interviews. So

was it 12 months in total after you had like like la like like launched you know like what whatever you would describe as the beginning was about 12 months that you arrived at this point and you said we need to it was probably 12 to 14 months from the very genesis of the idea.

Okay. So I'd like So then So then how how far after like hey I'm deciding to do this? Um I would say probably 14 16 months. Gotcha. Okay. So I went through the program at Fairfield pitching this idea we're talking about and then um about halfway through or I should say a few months after

finishing the program was when it was that uncomfortable like wow this thing I fell in love with Yeah. is not going to work. Yeah. Uh so that's the timeline. Okay. So followup question, but what uh well asked before that is so you made this transition into uh the transportation uh industry. What was

your experience there and and how how did you how did it turn turn into a company that you ended up like like an industry you ended up building a company inside of? Um, I'll say that on a personal level, the pivot was the one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever gone through in my entire life because I

I really like when you're ideiating, you're dreaming without consequence. And everything that I had spent the past year, year and a half on learning and like immersing myself into the entire network I built was in private equity. So like the idea of divorcing that and having to make that pivot like in less

than a week really to to keep the company alive and keep going, keep the momentum going was like a really difficult decision that required me again to lean into uncertainty. And so um it was I would say I don't want to say starting from scratch but from like a knowledgebased perspective I when I I knew a little bit about

private equity because I worked at Greenbacker and because you know like my network was there was family there was friends there was like other mentors that worked as uh private investors. I knew nothing about trucking. And so, um, building that knowledge base from scratch was like again the start of an obsessive process. What's the difference

between full truckload, less than truckload? I had no idea what a four hire versus private fleet was, what's a dedicated operation? What's a third party logistics company? And like really learning the ecosystem. And then trying to force myself to have conversations with professionals. this time, not even from a customer discovery standpoint, but like to understand like what does

the day-to-day uh conversation sound like? And so that was that was much more difficult than understanding the private equity industry. How long ago was that? Um the that pivot the decision mid 2023. Okay. So it twoish years. Yeah. So, so how can you just describe the process of starting like you said effectively from

scratch to you know hitting you know whatever whatever substantial milestones however you would define milestones but just the process of going from scratch to then this milestone this milestone if you could just Yeah. So there was a concentrated two months of like I'm going to spend every waking moment understanding at a minimum

like just how this industry works. How does freight get from point A to point B? Like I really didn't know anything. Um and I was constantly making ecosystem diagrams. So like okay I can think of the market and this is like pre AI which I'm I'm actually really grateful for. So like I was reading full articles like

nonstop and I was retaining it because I was writing it down by hand and like constantly making these ecosystem diagrams of okay generally speaking the market could be broken up into four higher and private fleets. And I remember that was like a massive uh sort of point of retention for me. And then

like um essentially just two months of really researching the vocabulary, the ins and outs and then trying to figure out who I could talk to and uh one of my very good guy friends from uh Fairfield, his dad owns a trucking company. His name is John Scurbo. He is the president of Daybreak

Express. And hey, you should talk to my dad. And that one conversation actually ended up being I would say the most critical milestone that we've had as a company because they ended up being our first beta test pilot and customer. And so like he basically chose to believe in what we were building before we had

built anything. So his name is John. His name is John. Um thank you John. Yeah. He's he's a champion. And so like that sort of him betting on us let us get started. Um, and then a similar sort of thing that was ironic and it was so difficult for me to have to even get on

someone's calendar because like they I would say trucking in general is a very close-knit community where they um are skeptical of people that aren't from the industry. Same thing. I had a guy friend from Fairfield whose dad was the president of operations for UPS in New York. Um, and he would sit with me every

week for six weeks and just teach me about the industry. Leo Cummings, amazing amazing person. And so, um, those were pivotable and then they opened doors for me to have those same sort of conversations. So then, so then using those two, uh, um, huge pieces of momentum, how is it that you started to like, you know, at

at what point is it that you know, so how many people also at the time? Is it just you or do you have a team? Um, a team of four. Okay. Yeah. So, so then so then how are you balance like at what point does funding come into the conversation like at what point does going to market you

know with this idea how do you how or how how did you uh at that time again around a year ago like uh address going to market? So we did a friends and family round. Uh first that initial bit of capital was I'll take one step back.

The most difficult phase for us was moving from ideiation to MVP. So we couldn't raise money because we didn't have an MVP with this trucking with this trucking idea. Yes. We And then we couldn't build an MVP because we didn't have money. So there is uh someone that um I was very good friends

with who is a part of the team but wasn't at the time that we promised stock to in exchange for him to build the MVP that would enable us to raise money to pay him the rest of what he deserved for the time that he spent building MVP.

Um and he built the MVP for us. We raised capital from our friends and family and then it let me hire um our first engineer. Um, and so that was like sort of the genesis of building a team and getting to market.

Um, and then continued to raise money because in in parallel with the MVP being made, I met John. John promised to beta test it with Daybreak. So now we had a pilot customer and that's like a great milestone to go raise. Yeah, exactly. And so you're like constantly trying to stack these micro wins. Um,

and then you know we have $500,000 in capital and now NFI, one of the the largest four hire fleets in North America is piloting with us and so is DB Shanker through but but you but you acquired those um so the funding came from from a lot of pitching or it also came through

a network uh an unbelievable amount of pitching. Okay. So, so then, so then once uh once that happened then what was it? How did you acquire these uh these larger scale uh pilot or or customers? Was it through your network or was it through just I don't know some other type of marketing

sales, you know, some other lever? So, I was grinding industry events. I was going to everything I could in person. PMTA events, New Jersey Motor Truck Association events, and I spoke at a New Jersey Motor Truck Association event. Um, keynoted it more so from an educational perspective, and this is the problem we know that exists in the

industry. Raise your hand if you're feeling this. And it was, uh, I was always mindful not to sound condescending. There should never be fear involved in the conversation, like, hey, this is coming and like, you better you better have the ability to report.

It was always like, we're here. We're in your corner. we're trying to take this off your plate. And um through those industry events was able to meet the right people where this was it still is a new problem to the industry. It resonated and hey, let's have a conversation and we're looking for a

design partner. We're looking for a collaborator. Would you be willing to pilot this and give feedback? Um and that's sort of how we got started. Um yeah. So then so so then so then through all of that how like where are you at at this point you know given given so you you you raised that round of funding you

I mean I assume you know grew a team you know correct me if I'm wrong and then uh and then you started these pilot programs and you started gain this momentum you know where where does it bring you to today? Um, and so now we're commercial. The team is 10 people. We've raised a little over a million dollars

in funding. Um, we have amazing partnerships, which was part of what the focus was on in 2024, building channel partnerships because we're a bootstrap team. We didn't have the sales infrastructure to sell direct to all the fleets that we wanted to without a reference account. Um, so building partnerships with Geotab, with Isaac,

with Omnitrax, Wex, EFS, Spark 360, the consulting firms that were going to be advising the I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking all of those companies as you were saying. Yeah. Yeah. And so like really we were trying to build an ecosystemled go to market strategy and now we have it. But that was not something that I

understood until firsthand experiencing that direct sales was not our best path forward. This is I I just like I I'm almost like shaking how many questions I have, but the one that I've been holding on to the whole time because I think the uh the way that you've laid out the the the

trajectory of the company where you have this this period of time, you know, 14 to 16 months of validating uh or trying to validate the first uh I the first version of what this idea was and then and then you pivot into this uh this second place where you have you uh you

have a direction that you I think you want to go in and then you start gaining momentum like you said very small wins but this unbelievable amount of work that goes into it. However, the the interesting thing that I see in these two halves of the story is that there's just as much if not more work because

there's more at stake with this new direction the the one that you've gained traction in at first the first 14 to 16 months. What what got you to what led you to not stop? Like there's a lot of anxiety involved from pressure and so like um it was this constant anxiety of feeling like we were

behind where when I set out to build a company. We've hit milestones that I never even dreamed that we would hit. But like I think every founder is guilty of like constantly feeling like you're up against the clock and like when you take money from outside investors there's always that third layer of

pressure too. And then when you take money from friends and family it's sort of the same thing. And so I would say it was a it it was always unconditional belief that let you keep going or that let me keep going. Adrenaline to make this what I know it could be and what I

believe it could be. and then anxiety of um we're up against the clock and you know this is the time to really double down and just just get it done whatever it takes. But like for so for for example like in that first 14 to 16 months there's no evidence that that's reflected at you that says that

what you're doing is working. So that's why it's it's it's still it's not easy. It is extremely hard to continue working uh you know from the position that you're in. But I just think it's a fascinating period of life and it's fascinating when people make the consistent decision to do so like you

did when you are just you just continually um pushing in a in a certain direction when you don't have um when you when you really don't have a lot of uh evidence at your disposal. Well, that to your point and um I don't know how much we even need to talk about this, but I would say there's two types

of burnout and like the physical burnout is really easily understood cuz you're overworking, you're not eating, you're not sleeping, and like your body just sort of breaks down. But what you just described of putting 200% of yourself into something and there being a lack of momentum, like when you wake up every day and put in 16 hours and the needle

doesn't seem like it's moving, that's like type two burnout. And like I would say a lot of founders are oblivious that like that can happen. and like that to be able to overcome or to be able to continue to work hard without seeing the needle move trusting that you know your consistency will stack on top of each

other and like good opportunities will come is again like uncertainty you're just betting on yourself. So uh in and along the same lines of you know what makes uh this journey challenging for someone like you. I have uh a few mentors that are very uh close to me. You know who you are and uh

they're they're uh they're all women and they talk about their experience being women in um in deep tech environments and funding in funding environments. And so, um, what has your experience been, um, being a woman, not only in the the the typical like, you know, male-dominated funding spaces or male-dominated entrepreneurship spaces, but also, you know, without further

context, like trucking to me seems like a very male dominated space. And so, uh, in any of these areas, you know, what's your experience been? I would say it's similar. My answer would be similar for both in the sense that I think establishing credibility takes twice as long. And I have never very few times in my life have I felt

outright like, you know, someone's being condescending to me because I'm a woman or uh, you know, they're being rude or dismissive. It's never been that. I feel like maybe it has I can see when it's taken longer for someone to take me seriously, especially in the beginning because I was I was straight out of

college, you know, raising millions of dollars and, you know, I don't have experience. I'm a woman. I'm a I'm a a young person, too. And so, I feel like for investors, um, it took for me to really become an expert in what I'm talking about. And that's true of trucking, too. So like one of my most

favorite like I love being not just in a thoughtful conversation but I felt like when we were fundraising Q&A was really where I could shine because it's like you know anyone can pitch a good idea and anyone can do it 10 out of 10 with enough practice but like do you really know what you're talking about and are

you capable of executing and I felt like I was able to gain credibility in investor and fundraising spaces and circles through demonstrating domain expertise which came from like just years of nerding out and obsessing and researching over what I'm building. Um, and then in in trucking, they are I mean, I just adore the industry, their

legacy. They have old-fashioned attitudes which have been difficult to overcome from a sales perspective. Um, but I've never felt rejected by the industry. They're actually very welcoming. And um I think it's the same sort of thing like you know does this does this girl know what she's talking about when she's coming in here and just

being super mindful that like sustainability has been a wound for the industry when policy swings back and forth and like I'm never trying to come at it from a you need to do this you know let's save the world even though maybe that's my own internal motivation um but to just talk about it practically

and I think practicality Um, and like talking about it with a voice of reason to both trucking and investors is a way to sort of overcome any attitudes. Well, I uh I I have three uh three more questions and uh this one of my favorite questions ever. And the uh the first one that I really wish we

left more time for, but uh you know, answer to whatever capacity you want to is uh you know, whether it's it's focused uh on women founders or or just founders in general based on your experience so far and what you've learned um you know, what would you tell somebody that is just starting out? You

know, you three years ago? Oh my gosh. I think I could take like a year to answer the question. We should just do another episode on that. But just choose, I guess, uh the two things that come to mind.

I would say if you are if you're starting a company to make money versus starting a company to solve a problem that you feel personally passionate about. If you're building the company just to make money, you will not have the grit to get through some of the hardest times that you're going to go

through like on the journey of building a company. So like I think something that has saved me uh when things get really challenging is like I am able to zoom out and say like yes I'm building this company because I want to make you know 100x uh on a return when I exit or

because you know I want to um build this integrated system. I want to digitalize trucking. I want to help automate in a legacy industry and old school industry. But like when you're hearing no every single day for weeks and weeks at a time, it's like, okay, well, why am I still doing this? And it's because I

want to have a positive impact on the planet. And if you don't sort of have that root motivation or that root inspiration, I think getting through those valleys is almost impossible. Um, I would say pick a problem that feels impossible to solve that's 10 times bigger than you because you will never run out of ways to continue to innovate

and ways to continue to solve the problem. You know, when greener is successful and we exit. The problem I'm still trying to solve is climate change. I'm going to go find another way to do that. And it's, you know, maybe not in supply chain or maybe it is, but um, I would say pick a a problem that's bigger

than you. And then really I would say the biggest lesson that I've learned is uncertainty and like don't let fear of uncertainty stop you. If you can practice letting go of how you're going to get to where you want to be and like you're always going to be surprised by what comes from that

journey like that is something that you should practice almost like a religion. Well said. at this at this moment in time uh what is the largest hurdle that you're navigating with greener and how is it also an opportunity I would say the biggest hurdle that we're facing and have been facing is uh

just the legacy nature of the industry okay so it's not like we're selling a new tire or a new part sustainability and software is something that's not a line item in the budget and at the same time automating a legacy industry. Uh not just to help them solve a painoint but to make them more efficient is probably

one of the largest opportunities that I can think of and trucking is a massive industry. And so for me um I think proving that sustainability is the same thing as efficiency and the efficiency is the same thing as profitability and really trying to be a thought leader in that narrative versus like sustainability means like you know salt

of the earth like you know let's save the world and like you know sometimes fleet managers don't want to have that conversation if at all which totally makes sense but it's like if we can help you reduce your fuel consumption by providing you the analytics to make more informed operational decisions and you

know you're saving 5% of your fuel every year like you're actually more sustainable and you're more profitable and so I think transitioning those legacy attitudes by bringing the proper tech at the same time is a challenge and an opportunity. So with this challenge and opportunity in front of you, you spoke, you have spoken to it in

different ways uh throughout this uh this conversation, but how would you answer the question, what inspires you? Oh, that's a good one. Um a lot of things. I think this is not a perfect answer, but I would say the what inspires me is sort of back to the problem. What gets me mad

is when I think about our relationship to our planet and like just feeling this it it never goes away. This like burning desire to do something about it. And so that I think is inspiring being in communities like Greentown Labs or New Lab or you know just other client being around other climate tech clean tech

founders where we're you know we're solving the same problem on the same mission in a million different ways and seeing them do it and it's like this is the real deal. You know this is not um any sort of fluffy tech or like you know this vibecoded startup. No offense to anyone that buy codes, but like this is

this is the real deal and this is like disruptive and transformative and seeing them do it is is ultra inspiring. And then I would say back to my teen like um maybe I was the genesis of the idea, but that's almost the easiest part.

Executing 10,000 times harder and they execute every day and they double down every day and they go through the bad news and the peaks and valleys with me. and like seeing them say stay so committed is like just unbelievable and I feel lucky to have people on my team that believe in this dream just as much

as I do. So uh if anyone else was uh inspired to follow along with your journey or greener's journey, what's the best way to do that? Um probably go to our website um our LinkedIn. I would say follow us on LinkedIn. you can always see updates and then if you want to reach out direct

directly to me um uh you can always reach out to me through greener's website. Perfect. Selene, thank you so much. I'm excited to stay in touch. I'm excited to see where you are uh in a couple months from now. But thank you so much for your time.

Thanks for having me.