This week we talk to the runner-up in Tech Crunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield: Megan O'Connor from Nth Cycle. Megan first found out about the impending shortage of materials used in batteries, phones, electric vehicles, and many of the products needed for a more sustainable green economy while studying at Yale and immediately began working towards a solution. She co-founded Nth Cycle which has developed a technology to help mining and recycling companies recover every bit of critical minerals from their operations by more efficiently recycling the materials and working to fill the gaps in the supply chain.
This week we talk to the runner-up in Tech Crunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield: Megan O'Connor from Nth Cycle. Megan first found out about the impending shortage of materials used in batteries, phones, electric vehicles, and many of the products needed for a more sustainable green economy while studying at Yale and immediately began working towards a solution. She co-founded Nth Cycle which has developed a technology to help mining and recycling companies recover every bit of critical minerals from their operations by more efficiently recycling the materials and working to fill the gaps in the supply chain.
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Darrell Etherington 0:00
Hey, welcome to found. I'm your host, Darrell Etherington. And joining me is my co host, and also the key element in my supply chain.
Jordan Crook 0:10
My name is Jordan crook. Thanks for having me. Again every week. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for making sure everything arrives on time. Yeah, that the
Darrell Etherington 0:19
product comes off the the production line, as intended,
Jordan Crook 0:24
right? Indeed, yeah, high quality.
Darrell Etherington 0:28
We're making allusions to supply chain and to material sourcing, because our hosts or guests this week, our hostess, as I just explained this week is Megan O'Connor, who is the co founder and CEO and cycle and cycle is somebody that we actually encountered recently at TechCrunch. Disrupt they were the runner up in our disruptive battlefield competition at this past disrupt in September. So very exciting to have her here. And it's a super cool subject. It's a deep tech startup Jordan, what did you think about our chat with Megan?
Jordan Crook 1:07
I think like in classic Jordan fashion, I really perked up and started paying attention when she talked about how we would no longer be able to do anything that we like to do if we don't solve, essentially like a material shortage for things like batteries. Yeah, so that definitely got my attention. And I also love I have a like thing for Battlefield runner ups just because they tend to be really successful.
Darrell Etherington 1:33
That's right, they get the hunger most better than the winner. So then they go and do better than
Jordan Crook 1:37
they go out and do better. Yeah, they're like they like have a chip on their shoulder forever. Yeah. So those two things combined really got me listening on it. I think Megan's pretty cool. In general, she's like fun fun to talk to. She made a lot of like, deep tech sciency stuff more relatable.
Darrell Etherington 1:53
Yeah, I think she's awesome to explain this stuff. And you know, the subject is kind of like abstract, but also something that we encounter every day. So basically, what it does is they recover materials from existing sources could be spent batteries, electronics, and those materials are the base metals and things that we need that are crucial to building more of these in future, right. And so this is stuff that typically is mined elsewhere, or even if it's mined in the US, it's refined elsewhere to bring it to like the usable form that we need for our electronics production, and then brought back and what most people don't probably realize is that not only is it much better ecologically, to recycle that stuff, but it's also like in short supply, kind of on the global stage, and it's limited supply, so we need to get it back. So what ends cycle is doing is introducing a new process that can recover those. And they can also create new, refined materials out of or in a new way that hasn't been possible, previously. Really, really exciting stuff, and could dramatically change the supply line in ways that are crucial for the US and the world at large. Actually,
Jordan Crook 3:02
yeah, it was a great conversation. If you guys want to also listen to it. We could do that. Like right now.
Darrell Etherington 3:08
Here we go.
Hi, Megan. Hi.
Welcome to the show. It's great to have you. It hasn't been that long. Well, we didn't interact at Disrupt. But I saw you disrupt presenting and cycle during the battlefield competition. And you walked away, I noticed I went to your site, and it would have down at the bottom and has like a banner that was disrupt second place. And I was like, second place. It makes the sound so but it was actually a runner up. runner up is even better. I feel like but winner in my heart. No, I can't I'm not allowed to say that attraction.
Jordan Crook 3:45
You know, you know the story, right of people who come as runner up and disrupt Battlefield, they have historically been more successful than our winners. One thing that's exciting about Cloudflare is a runner up. Yeah, yeah.
Megan O'Connor 4:02
Well, I'm proud to be runner up, I should say it was a great group of companies pitching this year. So it was excited to just you know, be in the top five.
Darrell Etherington 4:09
Nice. Yeah. So do you want to give our listeners in case they missed that? Although they should go back and watch it if they have but yeah, give us a rundown on in cycle and a little bit about the history behind the company?
Megan O'Connor 4:19
Sure. Sure. So overall, and cycles mission is to enable a very secure green supply of all the critical minerals that are going to be needed for the energy transition. So I'm talking about materials like cobalt, nickel, manganese, the main materials defined in lithium ion batteries that power all the clean energy technologies. No, that will get us to full electrification. So we've actually developed a new refining technology called electro extraction, which is a much greener alternative to the traditional refining techniques out there today that are called hydro and Pyrometallurgy. And so we're really excited to bring this new technology to the market. And we actually developed this technology over 10 years ago. So my co founder Chad receitas, was a professor at Harvard. You Diversity for many years developed the technology there with some other students for different applications. I came across it in about 2014. And that's really around the same time that I was becoming really passionate about circular economy, electronics recycling in general. And, you know, really ask the question of why hasn't anyone figured out a way to recycle all these great materials like spent lithium ion batteries and E waste in general to create a new secure supply of all these materials that were at really high risk of having a supply shortage over? And so from there, I worked on this technology for my PhD spun it for metals recycling, and started the company about the day after I defended in 2017. Wow,
Darrell Etherington 5:37
that's amazing. So I think there's a bunch of stuff that you raised there that I think people are maybe not even super aware of when we recycle our electronics now, which I think you know, people who are diligent and dutiful probably do do that maybe drop them off at Best Buy, or one of the places where they recycle them for free. Right. But like what happens there? Because I think the assumption is a lot of that is being saved and reused. But it sounds like not the case. Probably
Megan O'Connor 6:01
not the case at all. So worldwide, there's less than 5% of lithium ion batteries. If we take you know, one subset of electronics waste that is actually recycled today. And the electronics recyclers that we have here in North America, or at least in the United States, you know, you can be electronics recycler legally, as long as you collect the materials, and then you're allowed to safely ship it, you know, mostly overseas, right? So that's what they're legally allowed to do. And you can call yourself a recycler you know, a lot of it still ends up in a landfill, unfortunately, or is recycled in illegal ways overseas. So what we're trying to do is try to keep that material over here and truly chemically recycle it back down to the individual metal components so that they can be directly put back into the manufacturing streams here in the States.
Darrell Etherington 6:43
Right. Nice. Yeah. So that's crazy, though, the definition of recycle is essentially just like until it's out of our purview. And then it's like, great, it's on to another cycle, the cycle being whatever we don't get.
Megan O'Connor 6:55
Sadly, yes. Wow. Yeah, that's
Darrell Etherington 6:57
I don't mean to laugh. I mean, that's, that is awful. But like, I also want to hear more about the process, like the actual thing that you develop, because, you know, you hear about one company that I think we've covered a lot in that movie gets a lot more attention because of the pedigree of the founders read materials, right. So you got JB Straubel, co founder of Tesla, former CTO of Tesla, and he has a recycling concern as well. And they also are looking to reuse and put back into ecosystem materials specifically for for spent batteries, I think, right, but right, so how, what is your process? How is it different than perhaps what they are doing? You mentioned a little bit about how it's different about other other methods. But can you go into a bit more detail about that?
Megan O'Connor 7:37
Absolutely. So I'll even take a step back from there. And there's really no a couple big issues across, you know, the recycling sector in general, right, there's the first one is consumers even bringing back their devices you mentioned before, there's a couple folks that know where to bring them who to bring them to not to throw them in the trash that goes to the general landfill. A lot of people don't, right, even my parents did not know what to do with all their old phones. So I think step one is educating and getting more incentives in place for people to bring back their electronics. And there's a lot of companies trying to solve that Redwood materials. And there's folks like lifecycle and the other big startups in this space are working on logistics, how do we get these batteries to a place that they can be recycled safely. So Redwood has, you know, done a great job, I think of setting up their facility in Nevada, and really coming up with a streamlined way of sort of filling in a lot of the supply chain gaps that we need here in the States, one of them being collection of these batteries, processing these batteries, and then actually making them back into materials that go into a cathode, right. So they've just announced they're going to do you know, sort of all those steps are, what they're really doing right now is logistics, right? Getting all these batteries in one place. What they're not doing is innovating on the way you chemically recycle material. So they're using the very traditional hydro pyrometallurgical techniques that have been around in the mining space for a very long time, you know, 50 years or so. And so what we're doing is actually innovating on that one single step. So we don't see Redwood materials as a competitor, we actually see them as a potential partner of ours because we can help enhance and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of how they chemically recycle these materials into the metals that would then go into their cathodes.
Darrell Etherington 9:04
Cool. Yeah. So then you mentioned like that this process was originally built like 10 years ago by your co founder and you yourself. You're a Yale grad. Right. So Yale grad somehow connects with Harvard grad. Are you enemies? I don't know anything about American school systems. Maybe Jordan can jump in here.
Jordan Crook 9:20
Yeah, no, I don't think that they're proper enemies. I mean, if it was my specific analysis of it, it would just be that they're, they're better than everyone else.
Megan O'Connor 9:33
would agree with that. So I'm not actually a formal Yale grad. So I actually got my degree from Duke. But I was a visiting student at Yale when I developed the technology. So I have both affiliations, although not a formal degree from there, but yes, Harvard and Yale, you always there's the big bright football game that everybody goes to so I did attend. It is fun to see the two schools going out of over football, but yeah, so my co founder developed it over 10 years ago. I took it while I was at Yale flipped it for metals recycling.
Darrell Etherington 9:57
Okay, cool. And it was this was it always kind Have your passion or like how did you decide like, Oh, this is this is the way that I want to orient my skills and my education, my expertise.
Megan O'Connor 10:07
Yeah, so I've always been passionate about the environment in general, I just really didn't know where I wanted to direct my energy. So actually, in undergrad, I was a chemistry major and started off, you know, in environmental chemistry lab, working on all sorts of things like how Teflon is removed from Teflon pans and actually sticks to bind to the proteins in your body. That was really cool. But I wanted to do research that had a much shorter term impact. So wanted to work on much larger scale projects. So I went to get my PhD in Environmental Engineering, again, very environmentally focused, still did some chemistry, but at a much larger scale, and was working in a bunch of, you know, other projects in the oil and gas industry wasn't super passionate about anything there. And around the same time that I had met Chad, my co founder from Harvard, I was actually in the hallway with some professors at Yale, and they were talking about this screen electronic summit that they were about to host in a couple of weeks time. And they had invited some folks from Apple, Dell, Intel, Samsung, really the big, you know, electronics and semiconductor manufacturers you can think of to Yale to help direct this specific centers research over the next five years, right to talk about the sustainability issues they saw at a corporate level, this was very much close to students and other professors, it was really meant to be a private meeting for these folks. But I was really determined, as I had just recently started reading literature about circular economy, electronics waste, we had really no way to solve that. So I had to be in this meeting. So I literally banged on this professor's door for three weeks straight until he finally let me in. And the only way that he was as a scribe, and I wasn't able to bring my laptop. It was a completely, you know, everything was top secret. So I sat there taking notes by hand for nine hours, but it was totally worth it to just be a fly on the wall. And listen, because it was customer discovery. Before I knew what customer discovery was, right? They were all talking about the real issues that they've saw coming down the pipeline, five to 10 years, right. And this was back in 2015. So with the issues that we're having today, and the two things that kept coming up over and over again, and I just remember, like circling them in my notebook like this is a big deal was waste management, right? Even, you know, folks like Apple admitted, like, they push iPhones on people every single year, right? They want you to, they want you to upgrade and get the new one. Right, exactly. So what are they going to do with all these phones once they come off? Right? I mean, they have incentive buyback programs and things, but they still don't do anything with those phones, like they have some fraction of recycled content, but they're not nearly as recyclable as they say they are. And then the other big issue was Supply Chain Management, right? They saw the supply chain issues coming right that we're going to have a significant shortage of cobalt, we're going to have a significant shortage of nickel. And that's only going to continue to grow as EVs become more prevalent, right? Because EVs use the same type of batteries as your cell phone does as your laptop. Yeah, everything that is electrified has some type of battery in it, right. And it's usually lithium ion battery, they all use cobalt, they all use nickel. And so there's just going to be this massive shortage. And so they were like, how are we going to protect our own supply chain? You know, while all these other companies are coming into the space with massive EVs, you know, have 10x the amount of cobalt, if not more in them? And so
Darrell Etherington 12:58
and they're fixed pools, right? Like those are not renewable resources, like once, once it's gone, it's gone.
Megan O'Connor 13:04
That's right. There's really no at the time, there was no technology that could essentially recycle it back into sort of the supply chain. And so I was at that meeting thinking like, how has nobody developed a solution that could a recycle anything to get it back into the supply chain? Right, try and try and solve both problems, you know, sort of with one stone, you want to say that and then four and make it economical, right? So nobody had developed, there's recycling, right. But everyone kept seeing dollar signs and not in the good way, right. And not that it was gonna make them money, but that was gonna be too expensive to use. That same day, I walked out of that meeting into my advisors offices that I really want to develop a solution for this. I don't know what its gonna look like, I don't know how to do it. But I just met this Chad guy. And he has this really awesome technology that, you know, I think we could probably use for metals recycling, again, don't know if it's gonna work. But can I try it? She was like, yes, if you want to, she was an awesome advisor was very supportive of this. He was like, you probably won't graduate on time. already been here for three years. And then I was like, that's fine. I will take that risk. I don't know if my husband was excited that I took that risk. But, you know, so I went off. And you know, I started working with Chad. And I approached him and said, Hey, can I work on this for metal recycling? I think this could really be something and he had sort of been waiting for a student to commercialize it. So we went off and started doing that.
Darrell Etherington 14:14
Nice. Now, what about the direction did Chad? Was that something that was he surprised by that, that you thought like could apply in this particular area? Or what did he think about that path to commercialization?
Megan O'Connor 14:23
He had actually, he had one student that did a little bit of work with more metal remediation. So trying to clean up metals out of the environment. And so he already had seen some really encouraging results at a very preliminary level for removing metals in general, but not necessarily making metal products, right, just removing the sort of contaminant levels that were in different wastewaters around the world.
Darrell Etherington 14:41
Cool. Now, this is maybe a separate question. But is that a path to can you eventually remove the waste metals and then make them into usable material?
Megan O'Connor 14:50
Absolutely. So we're actually we're already going down that path with a lot of tailings ponds of the waste metal ponds that come out from mining, so that's a form of waste remediation that we're trying to go after because there's something to 30% of the valuable metals that come out of mines end up in these waste ponds that just sit there for decades. And if
Darrell Etherington 15:05
you're if listeners, if you're not familiar, like just go Google tailings ponds, and it's gonna, it's gonna stick with you, it'll be a memorable image church, right?
Megan O'Connor 15:13
It's definitely stick with you for sure.
Darrell Etherington 15:15
I mean, that's amazing. But like, it is a problem. And you I know. So I worked at Apple and I know their level of secrecy, right? It's not something that they're ever going to want to talk about. And so I understand the the challenge to get into that meeting and be in that room is immense, especially when it's like not just them, but a bunch of their peers and competitors, who are also equally conservative. Right. But then you think about the other side. And you know, this is very fresh to mine, because we've just gone through to Apple events. And now they have a slide at least one slide. In every one of their device presentations that talks about there's material sourcing and talks about how what percentage of the device is the supply comes from like renewable sources, right? So is obviously something that now has become a marketing temple, in addition to something but to your point, right, it probably is that way, kind of coincidentally, or because I mean, it matches with the ethos of their customer now as their customer has evolved, but like initially, it was because hey, this is not sustainable from a p&l standpoint, in terms of our balance sheet, we cannot keep going this way, because it will end badly for us. Right?
Megan O'Connor 16:21
Yeah. And you see other companies doing this too, right? I mean, Elon Musk has come out and said, like, I want sustainable nickel, who can provide me with that? Yeah. Right. And so he's trying to buy up supply because everybody sees these issues coming now. And I think to like you said, consumers are starting to care about this. They're starting to care about where the materials come from, and don't want cobalt that comes from a mine, you know, that was dug up by a child over in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So I think, you know, a lot more transparency and at least supply chain tracking will start to happen.
Darrell Etherington 16:50
Yeah. And tip to tail, right. Instead of like the usual like, Well, beyond the shores. It's sort of like outside of our purview. Right. Like, that's another thing. That's a trend. No, we want to see the whole thing all the way down. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Now I recycled my things. Jordan probably doesn't believe me, but I do ethically, that's
Jordan Crook 17:06
something that they do in Canada. Yeah, I noticed that you haven't mentioned Canada yet. So I'm just wondering when
Darrell Etherington 17:13
I don't know how Canada, Canada's record is particularly good on this. I don't know, we're advocating we want this pipeline to continue. Right. And Biden's like no more pipelines. We're like, we need those pipelines. Because we don't. There's nothing else for like, we have no reason to be the middle of our country. Yeah. But I don't know, maybe Megan could tell me more about how Canada is on on metal production and ethical medical reuse and recycling. next hop.
Megan O'Connor 17:39
There are some pretty big startups coming out of Canada, I would say in the battery recycling space. So lifecycle, as well as a couple of refineries that are starting to try and get back up and running to help supply at least a fraction of the critical minerals will need. So I they're getting there. And we're I think North America in general is is behind the curve a little bit. But you know, we're trying to catch up. So that's
Darrell Etherington 18:01
interesting. So who's ahead of the curve? Like I imagine China probably realize this much more quickly, because things become much more urgent when you have 1 billion consumers as opposed to a few 100 million or whatever.
Megan O'Connor 18:11
Yeah, I would say I mean, Europe, right. I feel like in terms of regulations, and pushing, you know, innovation to solve a lot of these issues, or I've seen them ahead of the curve. For a lot of this. I mean, they put in some pretty strict or aggressive, I should say, goals in mind, for the percent of us that needs to be recycled by 25. I don't have the numbers off top my head, but you can look them up online. And they're they're pretty aggressive. And I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think we need to get the government needs to push us to get to that direction. I think industry is really driving it here. But I think you'll quickly start to see, and we've already started to see that right? I mean, the Biden administration pushed out the critical minerals supply document back out, I think it was in June of their whole plan to push out money and infrastructure bill and things like that. So we're eagerly watching all of those things happen over the next couple of months, you're starting to see more momentum behind this movement. And one other thing about
Darrell Etherington 18:57
kind of like primary order level solutions, right. So like, what about battery alternatives? Because once in a while you see headlines about like, well, maybe this alternative technology being developed in the lab is like the more sustainable battery path forward or whatever. But how does that fit into your plan? Do you? Are there any really promising alternatives out there that are more sustainable at a base level? And do you think that that could pose a threat to end cycle and future or how do you think about those? Yeah,
Megan O'Connor 19:25
no, that's a great question. And we get that one a lot of do you see your business, you know, declining at all, when LFP or higher nickel content battery comes on? The answer's no. All right, we're 10 years behind any change in cathode chemistry, if you will, or battery chemistry change, because right, we have to wait for the EVS to come off the road. So we're now just seeing the EVS that were manufactured in maybe 2011 2012 coming to us as spent batteries right so we have to wait like almost a decade given the the lifetime expected lifetime of these EVs and even consumer electronics are two three years at best to get them back. So we have a while before we'll actually see that change, I haven't seen anything personally that I it gets me really excited about a change in chemistry, I still think we're going to have a lot of nickel. Even if we can reduce the amount of cobalt in EVs, we are still going to have a very high nickel content and nickel is just as critical as Cobalt is in terms of supply chain risk in issues along with that in consumer electronics, right. LCBO, which is the very standard cathode material they use has a very high content of cobalt, and I don't see that going away anytime soon. So at least in the electronic sector, I don't foresee the chemistry changing much, there probably will be a move to higher nickel content in EVs, but, you know, still very critical mineral and something that in cycle recycles and processes. So we're not in I should say, even taking a step back batteries is a very big focus for us. But we're actually also looking at a number of the other critical minerals on the list, like the rare earth metals, vanadium, things like that, that come from all sorts of different feedstocks around the US whether it's raw ore or other types of scrap,
Darrell Etherington 20:53
okay, so it doesn't matter what the mix is, like, you're always gonna have a role, even if it shifts and you kind of like go with the flow. I guess.
Megan O'Connor 21:00
That's right. That's right. We don't consider ourselves a battery recycler, we like to say we're a metals processing technology, really trying to close the big gaps in the supply chain here to keep as many of the critical minerals here as we can to get back into manufacturing into provide a solution for a lot of the issues and strains that we have. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 21:17
and I mean, like global trade and global political issues also means like, it's more important than ever, right? Like people are looking to same source, because it's like, well, you know, some of the relationships that perhaps we had previously are not as great as they once were. It's much better to be self reliant. And I mean, I don't think that applies just in the US, right. So the business is probably the same internationally.
Megan O'Connor 21:38
That's right. That's right. A lot of countries are feeling the strain of being 100% reliant on some other countries that control a lot of the supply chain, like China controls over 90% of the rare earths refining, they control a wide or a large percentage, I should say, of the cobalt refining, the mining doesn't have in there, but they control the refining of it. So it's really the refining capacity that the US is lacking, because even if we mined the material here, we still don't have the refining capacity. So we still have to ship it, even if it's our own ore, which is crazy to think about. So there's just a huge bottleneck in terms of where our refining capacity is around the world. And like you said, we're not the only country feeling that and so there's a big push for Europe, the United States, Canada to really move in the direction of getting our own refining capacity. And that's exactly what and cycles trying to do is trying to create very micro sized refineries to put all around the states all around Canada, around Europe to try and refine as much material again, we don't care if it's end of life scrap, we can take scrap we can take or, you know, we can take mine tailings, you know, we're trying to get access to any kind of feedstock we can to try and just get the amount of materials we need. Because even if we were to recycle 100% of lithium ion batteries that are available in 2030, it would be a small fraction, like near 10% of what we actually need in terms of demand. So we need to find other sources, we need to start mining sustainably and we need new technologies to do that. Right. We can't continue to rely on the dirty hydropower we've been using forever.
Jordan Crook 22:57
So curious Megan about like cop, like how you communicate kind of and cycle mission, right? Because you can go super, super specific and get like super nerdy with people, right? And I'm sure there's, you know, like speaking to customers, or even certain investors, that works really well. But like, talk to me about like getting the layman on board, right? Like, you don't want to fear monger and be like, Oh, you'll never have a phone again, because we're going to run out of batteries. Right. But that kind of is like the nuts and bolts of it. Like talk to me about how you kind of hone that message. Yeah, I think
Megan O'Connor 23:28
you sort of hit the nail on the head there. It's, it's, I don't want to instill fear. But if we don't find a new supply of these critical minerals, we will not have access to technologies like we have say, We will not be able to get a new phone every every year, we will not be able to get our your Apple Watch or smartwatches, whatever brand you want to say, right? We just won't have all these fancy electronic devices, we will have EVs or at least we won't have, you know, sort of the expansion of EVs that we need, right to really meet our climate change goals. And so I think that's really what the scary thing is, is it's not even like the consumer electronics side of it. It's all of these technologies that we need to transition to a greener, cleaner economy rely on these materials. And if we don't have these materials are sort of like the building blocks, I like to say, of the clean energy economy, we won't be able to transition nearly as fast as we need to, to meet the climate goals that the world has set. So I try to, you know, instill that into everyone I talk to is it's not necessarily about all of these political things. Yes, it's a big national security issue. But it really comes down to like, the world will not be able to transition over if we can't get the building blocks that we need for wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, all these great, great technologies that have been invented and developed over the past several decades to help us transition away from fossil fuels. We just won't be able to do it in nearly the timeframe we need to
Darrell Etherington 24:40
that's amazing because you think you think you get the oppression that a lot of people believe that their lack of action and their movement there is like largely due to incentive or motivation, like especially on the part of large entrenched interests, like oil and gas industry or whatever, right. But like, it sounds like even if they were like, even if the willingness is there, it's like, well, I mean, we just can't do it like we just cannot source there's a physical blocker of that part is missing from the equation.
Megan O'Connor 25:05
Right. I mean, that's I think that's what a big push from the administration is now is putting the investment that we never did, right? I mean, if you look back, we'd never invested in sort of this age of technology to try and build out that refining capacity. So we just don't have any refining capacity here whatsoever. Even if we had the materials here, which we do, we actually have cobalt nickel, in different mines across the states, like there's a massive cobalt belt in Idaho, there's nickel across the Midwest, we just don't have the technologies of the refining capacity. Because right, these old hydropower facilities are hundreds of millions and three 500 million, if not a billion dollars to invest in install, wow. And we just we never did that. So we need to come up with new ways to try and solve that issue. And Canada has some of the refining capacity that we need, but then they issue a shipping it so shipping all that heavy, or you know, from say, Idaho all the way up to northern Canada, it just is not economical. And so we need to figure out a way to refine it here locally. And that's really the pain point that in cycles trying to solve so that you know if we can find the material here sustainably, right, reducing the carbon footprint not using these harsh chemicals, you know, having something near those ore bodies to actually refine it into the metals that we can put right into manufacturing instead of having to worry about shipping it you know, across the world.
Jordan Crook 26:16
Yeah. And Go Canada, as well. I'd like to say,
Darrell Etherington 26:20
Well, I mean, we got it, but then we're too. Too expensive. So it doesn't matter. I guess it's good for us for self sustainability. But yeah, because that's what like, I'll bet and I this is again, not my area of expertise. But I Bay it's like, well, we could just ship it on a slow barge and then go somewhere where it's actually cheaper to refine and come back like longer round trip, but much cheaper. Yeah, right.
Megan O'Connor 26:41
Yes. And we've talked to customers who do that. They ship it to China then to have companies in Canada refine it, because yeah, right. It's cheaper
Darrell Etherington 26:49
than last in our standards of living. Yeah, it's, it's such a treat, I think it's like one of those things where you when we think about, especially over the course of our lifetimes, like you think about where I've environmentalism has gone and comfort like it came from, and I'm probably dating myself a bit here. But like, it was the three R's for like my generation, and there was not really any kind of like depth to that at all. It was just like, Okay, I mean, reduce, reuse, recycle. Here's the slogan, here's, here's some like things you can do remember to put this in this bin instead of that, but like, no serious rigor as to what happens after that, or what do when those things actually mean long term or long tail. And it sounds like that wasn't just like local to consumers. It sounds like that was the thing that everybody that we assumed was in charge of this and like, had plans and were able to think about it, we're not really think about it, right? Like, it was like the most basic steps of this were kind of forgotten and left to last minute. And now people like yourself are stepping in and saying, well, we need some drastic solutions to fix this instead.
Megan O'Connor 27:56
Right. I mean, I think you see greenwashing in a variety of industries, right? I mean, even plastic recycling, right? I mean, I think you feel good when you put plastic in a recycling bin, but the realistic, you know, look at it is it doesn't get recycled, right? If it had any kind of residue on it, it has a sticker, right, that all sort of, you know, mixes it out of the recycling process, because it's such an old, antiquated, you know, whatever other words, you can think of synonyms for antiquated process that they use, it's it's just not a very good process at all. And you see that in electronic recycling too, right? People felt good about dropping it in a bin at Best Buy, and not worrying about where it went after that, where realistically, it goes over to India or China is dumped in a landfill. So yeah, yeah,
Darrell Etherington 28:36
man, but see what I like about this. It's a little bit it's a little bit, so downer, but it's also it's very motivating in that it's like truly existential right. And that's like a thing that gets a lot of attention. And like, really, it wakes you up, Elon uses it to great effect, Elon Musk, I'm not gonna use the first name or
Jordan Crook 28:54
Elon you speak of.
Darrell Etherington 28:57
But I think he uses it in a way that is ridiculous. And probably like, whatever he's pursuing his things, we can debate the merits of them later on. But like, I don't think backing away by using them perhaps responsibly in the same way that you would use them in something like this, right? Like the industry is not nearly as flashy or as attractive or as interesting as like a fast car or a big rocket that goes to space or whatever. But like this is much more genuinely existential than any of the things that he's talking about. And that should be very motivating, right? I think it is now motivating. It took us a while to get to this point. And I've spoken to other people about the kind of like 2007 2008 clean tech boom and how it seemed like that was a moment but was not really but this one feels like a real one. It feels genuine, it feels like people are actually getting the point across all the interest where you need the people to get the point. And that is reason for hope. Do you share that impression, or do you think there's still kind of like a lot of work to do there?
Megan O'Connor 29:54
No, I completely agree. I think right now it's definitely a movement you see people truly understanding What needs to be done to get, you know, to the goals that we've put in place for climate change in the clean energy economy and electrification, whatever, you know, sort of word you want to put to that movement. But I really see a change even in the last 12 months of like, yes, it's it's great, it's flashy, it's cool to have an electric vehicle. But these are all the things that need to be done to get us, you know, so everybody can have an Eevee. So everybody can have solar panels. So everybody can, you know, have a fully electric, clean, sustainable house, right. So I think industry is pushing a lot of it, I think you're starting to see regulators in the administration get behind it, and push the investment that's needed for companies like mine, and everyone else that's trying to solve these issues, right, because there's not, this is just one of many, as I mentioned, across the supply chain, you know, manufacturing being another big one that we need to move back here. So I completely agree, I think this is going to be one for the books, I think you're gonna see a lot of movement in the next couple of years, following on to all this great stuff is happening this year alone?
Darrell Etherington 30:52
And do you do you find that when you go into conversations with investors is it's something that you don't really need to do a lot of convincing up front to be like, Look, this is the state of it. And then is it more like, okay, let's focus on the business fundamentals? Or do you still have to do the kind of like, no, the problem is a real part of the discussion.
Megan O'Connor 31:07
No. So I think you're right, I haven't had to do much pitching in the sense of showing people why this is a problem. I think people get it, people understand it. So that's a very short part of my pitch, I only have I look at my deck right outline. It's a very short section, because people understand, right, I think you have to point out where the specific pain points are in relation to North America in general, but they understand like, yes, these materials are needed. There's a whole critical materials list that the Department of Energy, and even the EU has put a lot of time and energy defining why they're critical in the timeframes that we actually need to solve these issues on. So it's not a hard pitch on my part to try and tell our story.
Darrell Etherington 31:40
It's good. Part, right? What are the hard parts? What do you go in? What's like, what's the most difficult part of pitching and cycle specifically to investors?
Megan O'Connor 31:52
I think, in particular, just showing how we're different from the other big recyclers that are coming out, like us early like redwood, right, I think it takes time to dig down and see, you know, we're not trying to do the collection or the final processing, we're really a new way to chemically process the material. So we sort of fit in into their technology stack. So we're one piece of this, you know, grand puzzle. So once we dig in, and try to really show them, like how we can enhance what they're doing, not replace what they're doing, they start to understand. So I think that's, that's really the the piece we need to dig in the most. When we talk to new investors.
Darrell Etherington 32:23
Do you get a lot of people like VCs being like, No, I think you're a conflict with thing XYZ in our portfolio. And you're like, No, no, we're not. Because we're different. We're over here. I know, they have recycling in the name.
Megan O'Connor 32:35
Right? Sometimes, sometimes, but I think most time they give us at least the opportunity to dig into that and show them why we're different. But But yeah, we do get a lot of comments about like, Well, what about these two really large companies that have raised, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars? Yeah, I'm aware of it.
Darrell Etherington 32:51
We're, we're in discussions, we have an MOU. What about hiring? is hiring a challenge for you? Because it's kind of like, you know, it's maybe an abstract part of the process for a lot of people, even though it's actually very tangible and practical when you get down to it. But is that a conversation that you're finding difficult for the specific type of talent you're getting? Like for you? It was like, Oh, this is an obvious way for me to make impact short term. I imagine that's a big sell. But how does that go?
Megan O'Connor 33:14
I think hiring in general, when I was really difficult across any industry, I think there's just a shortage of people who who are available to work and want to switch jobs, especially here in Boston. It's a very competitive market. Right now. There's a lot of companies that got funded through COVID, which is great. I mean, not that I want any companies to go under, but there's no sort of recycling of talent in this space at the moment. So it's been really difficult just in a competitive space of right, you know, we're a series a level startup, we can't offer the salaries of big corporations can but I think once we sit them down, and you know, talk to them about, you know, our mission and where we fit into the supply chain, I think it really hits home. And we've gotten a lot of really good people on the team who understand, you know, what we're trying to solve, and sort of the big vision for the company is not just to be a bad recycler or, you know, a mine operator, we're really trying to solve this issue of critical mineral supply chain issues. So I think once they and like we talked about, right, so sort of the big existential issue you talked about, like I think was the understand at that level, they're like, oh, wow, like this is needed. Even if we're not the only ones to try and solve this. There's a lot of development that has to be done in this space.
Darrell Etherington 34:15
Yeah. I mean, talk about a mission that I think most people can get behind. That's, that's a great one, right? As opposed to like, I don't know, go sell more doodads. I'm thinking of
my own past experience. What motivated me. So yeah, I really think everybody should get a new Dude, that was actually one that worked for me, but you know, close to my heart. I love New dude.
Megan O'Connor 34:38
Everyone does. I don't have any different getting those new doodads? Right. So.
Darrell Etherington 34:45
But that's a real question to you like, is it? Do you think that there is work to be done on that side of the equation? Are you that just kind of like a lost battle like do are we in an age where people are just like, No, this is what I want. This is the kind of lifestyle I'm going to pursue and I'm not going to forget Oh, that yearly update cycle or whatever is for hot new gadget X.
Megan O'Connor 35:04
I think there's a lot of work to be done. This is not just from the consumer, but also from the manufacturers, right? I mean, planned obsolescence is a real thing, right? They Yeah, they want us to get a new phone or a new watch or, you know, any kind of electronic doodads that we get right on my iPad I I'm, I'm no different. I have all the gadgets right in front of me right now. So. But I think there's a real movement for people to try and use any kind of material longer, whether it's an electronic device or piece of clothing, or anything that you have in your house or in your life in general, I think people are now starting to realize like, we can't just go through these things every single year, because the amount of waste generated is astronomical. I mean, it is so large, and it's so difficult to deal with. And, you know, the story is starting to get out there like, Oh, if we put this piece of plastic or this piece of clothing in the recycling bin, that doesn't necessarily mean it's recycled. So I think people are starting like that veil has been sort of lifted, right? And they see what's behind the curtain and showing really like, oh, that's, that's actually not being recycled, it's just been a landfill. So I need to start doing better on my part and use less single use plastic and things like that, that would just end up in a landfill in a matter of weeks. I think you starting to see move in that direction. But I think we have a long way to go on sort of both sides.
Darrell Etherington 36:11
Yeah, for sure. I actually, I just I just upgraded Of course, my phone, my wash a Mac, Max came in. And I did do the trading on each one of those, right. So Apple now very, they're very good about the processes this at least from the end user perspective, like you say, I want to do a trade in, they immediately give you an assessed value. They work through partners, I don't actually know their partners in Canada, or I can't remember even in the US, but like, you know, they send you the box, which is essentially like their box that they use for new shipping. It's a very clever design and very minimal, although it does still use plastic in there, right? Like they have the one sheet of plastic to like pressure fit over the thing to protect it in transit. But it all seems so clean and efficient. And well thought out that I find myself convinced that like, well, if this part of the thing is so designed, then that means that when I send this back, whatever happens after is going to be equally well designed and thought out and efficient. And it sounds like that's like there's been progress. But that's still probably not the case. Right?
Megan O'Connor 37:12
Yeah. I mean, you know, who knows what Apple's doing behind the scenes, like you said, but we have not seen any evidence that true recycling is happening by them. They have partners and whatnot. But so what you're saying is they're marketing scheme worked on you. Yes, yeah, for sure. But I think all companies are moving in that direction. And Apple is doing a great job of their marketing and trying to move in that direction. So you know, we've seen you know, Liam and Daisy, the robots that can disassemble phones and things like that. That's all really, really neat because that's one bottleneck people. When I say this, I am completely serious have in battery recycling facilities today, people are manually disassembling phones and EB packs to get the batteries out to get the actual cells out. So you can imagine that we have a lot more EVs alone, one woman working to just assemble a pack that takes her whole eight hour shift is not gonna fly, right, we're gonna have to figure out a way to automate that. So yeah, Apple is well in front of the curve on that one. So I think
Darrell Etherington 38:03
they're putting their money into the, like the manufacturing, like their partners. There's their funding that they're funding, like, you develop the you're doing well, to own the robot, we're gonna pay for it. And they can apply those learnings to other things, right? Absolutely. And
Megan O'Connor 38:15
I think there is transparency, right? If we want all industry to be able to do this, and to make a difference, like Apple, you know, every other company, right, such as Apple is going to have to be more transparent of how they're doing this, or at least be willing to partner with folks outside of just the Apple brand. So
Darrell Etherington 38:29
yeah, and I bet they probably have like a lot of IP protections now that I even said that like, in place where it's like, well, if you just waved a bunch of those, like it would actually be much better for the overall problem. Right. Right.
Megan O'Connor 38:39
But you know, we've said a lot about Apple, but they're, I think they're doing a great job. Oh, really leading the charge of, and I think I think a lot you'll see a lot of companies follow suit. So
Darrell Etherington 38:48
yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I only cite them because they make a lot of claims they are they are more transparent than others about these things. So it's easier to bring them to mind as an example. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that about is at the end of time here. I think we talked, we talked a lot, the solutions that you're kind of like personal experience with it, but I mean, it's just such a massive issue. And so I think that it's important to bring those up, because it's lost a lot of people like I think you're talking about how the industry now kind of understands it better. But the average consumer, I think, doesn't have that kind of insight or knowledge into what's involved in these processes and what it's needed to make sure that they're sustainable, right. And the sustainable thing is another that's a word that's kind of devalued, right? We've almost sucked all the color and energy out of the word sustainable, but it's meant very literally, like he said, like, maybe you won't have your gadget like your new I just, maybe you won't have a car, maybe there won't be EVs because it's not sustainable. Maybe we'll go back to an agrarian society.
Jordan Crook 39:52
I'm actually for that bad. I'm all. I mean, I have no skills for that life, but I would be willing To learn just because I think it was better.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai