Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, is on a mission to help companies get to net-zero but she refuses to sacrifice her personal life for the startup. Michelle talks with Darrell and Jordan about how motherhood has eased her imposter syndrome, the “scar tissue” she had from a tough exit of her first startup, why the planet needs more effective carbon removal methods now, and how she’s using those learnings as a second-time founder. Don't miss Found Live with Toyin Ajayi from CityBlock this Thursday (3/3) at 12pm PT/ 3pm ET. RSVP: https://hopin.com/events/found-live-mar3
Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, is on a mission to help companies get to net-zero but she refuses to sacrifice her personal life for the startup. Michelle talks with Darrell and Jordan about how motherhood has eased her imposter syndrome, the “scar tissue” she had from a tough exit of her first startup, why the planet needs more effective carbon removal methods now, and how she’s using those learnings as a second-time founder.
Don't miss Found Live with Toyin Ajayi from CityBlock this Thursday (3/3) at 12pm PT/ 3pm ET. RSVP: https://hopin.com/events/found-live-mar3
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Darrell Etherington 0:01
Hello and welcome to found I'm your host Darrell Etherington and I'm here with the sequestration to my carbon.
Jordan Crook 0:10
Jordan crook here happy to be sequestering.
Darrell Etherington 0:13
Here's the question all my career, you know what that position is, as the physician is me is like, the horrible pollutants. There's too much of me around just losing out on the atmosphere and you're like, Don't worry, I will absorb all of his bad shit and take care of it. So doesn't harm the rest of you.
Jordan Crook 0:30
Isn't carbon like a building block of life, though? I mean, it's also for worse thing. Yeah, yes. Like you being carbon. Let's not like gaslight, the situation, something's not carbons, fine. It's just in too much in our Earth. It's not so great and requires a sequester. Now we're
Darrell Etherington 0:48
doing reputational work for carbon, carbon, it's okay.
Jordan Crook 0:55
A block of light.
Darrell Etherington 0:58
This all matters, and we'll get to that in a minute. But first of all, you know what this is. This is a podcast from TechCrunch called found. And we're all about the stories behind the startups and the people behind the syrups. The founders, and we had a great founder on this week, and we'll tell you about her in a minute. But first of all, I wanted to let you know about something special we have coming up. So we have a live episode a live recording of found which includes us and video. You can see our one Yeah, smiling
Jordan Crook 1:29
faces, you'll watch it and interact, you can pop in the chat and ask questions. Probably will have questions for us more constructive compliments for us. But you might have questions for our guest. I'm actually really excited about the guest we have coming Yes,
Darrell Etherington 1:44
it's totally gonna die from city block. And she is fantastic. I've had the privilege of speaking Jarrett. Previously, we had her on stage at disrupt last year, she was one of our guests. And it was maybe the most entertaining and interesting panel I've been on or been a part of personally,
Jordan Crook 2:04
definitely. There were some fireworks. I mean, it's cool, because the city block is like, actually good. And I don't say that and say like every other startup isn't, but like, there's a difference between like creating a startup that like could be good or might be good. But like also making all this money and like, loses its path. And then they're just like the startups that actually think about the way things actually are in reality and fixes them not like in some idealized version. And city block is a great representation of that. That's a unicorn, and twin does not. She doesn't pussyfoot around, oh, maybe I shouldn't say well, but toyon doesn't around plan like says what she means. She means what she says. And
Darrell Etherington 2:50
if you want to go back and watch that disrupt me also realize she doesn't suffer fools. So should be should be a good time.
Jordan Crook 2:56
She doesn't at all. Yeah, I mean, with the two of us, she's gonna be exhausted because we're two fools. But we're really excited about that. And you can obviously ask your own questions. So I and so you can RSVP to that with the link in the show notes, to join hoppin and ask your questions live. That's going down on March 3, which is a Thursday. Yes,
Darrell Etherington 3:15
that's right. So we look forward to seeing you there. But it's interesting journey, you're talking about mission driven companies, and our founder this week, also the founder of a mission driven company. So this week, we are talking to Michelle you from super critical. And what supercritical is, is a platform that assesses a company's carbon impact, but then creates an actual plan for actually helping them reduce their emissions, and then provides advice on high quality carbon removal mechanisms that the company can invest in, in order to offset that. So basically, you hear a lot about carbon offsets, you'll hear from Michelle Why not all carbon offsets are created equal and why supercritical?
Jordan Crook 3:57
Yeah, I didn't know anything about that. So that was, No, it was
Darrell Etherington 4:00
it's very illuminating. It's one of these things that's like, you know, people have been hearing about carbon offsets for a long time. But maybe it ended there for a long time. Right now we're getting to a more sophisticated part of that discussion, where it's like, what what does it actually mean? What's behind it? And Michelle can provide a lot of context around that and around why she wanted to do this because her background was not in green tech or anything even close to this. So I think it's best if we let her explain her path as an entrepreneur and why she's doing that now.
Hi, Michelle, thanks for joining us.
Michelle You 4:41
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Darrell Etherington 4:43
Yeah, great to have you on. So we typically start these off by having you just give us in our listeners a bit of a 10,000 foot view on what your company is so supercritical. I know that it involves
Jordan Crook 4:58
carbon footprint, simple for critical sounds like me. Yeah, maybe
Darrell Etherington 5:02
it started. What is it? Actually?
Michelle You 5:05
Yeah, sure. So we are a software platform that helps businesses get to net zero, we measure your carbon emissions, and we help you come up with a pathway to net zero with what actions you'll take to reduce your carbon emissions. And then we only sell high quality permanent carbon removal, because that's the only type that counts towards that zero,
Darrell Etherington 5:25
we're on a bit of a kick here, we're having ESG theme, we tend to get in these themes, we had a health one, but now we recently had on Kintaro from Persephone, so I'm sure you're probably familiar with the company, but it's, you know, like accounting essentially for carbon footprint. But one thing they don't do is that second part that you were talking about which sort of paths to actually taking steps to adjusting your carbon footprint. So I mean, that that's super interesting. I would like to hear a bit more about how you like because I think something that people are concerned about is greenwashing. Usually Jordan is the one who brings up greenwashing I pretty
Jordan Crook 6:01
much took all I have to offer something else to contribute to the conversation.
Darrell Etherington 6:09
But like, how do you go about ensuring for your customers that those things are, you know, authentic and actually do contribute to their bottom line from an ecological standpoint?
Michelle You 6:20
Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about carbon offsets my kind of path to getting to supercritical was after I left my first business, I spent a few years kind of looking into climate change. And you know, coming from a consumer internet company into climate, it was like, What am I going to do? Am I going to get to clean meat, I'm going to be into nuclear. And I got really attracted into the world of offsetting, because I saw a lot of my peer companies were going out and buying offsets. And I also Angel invested in a company called Ren, which is out of YC, that does consumer subscription to offsetting. And that was my real entry point into, like, what are these offsets? What are people buying? And the more I looked into it, the more I felt convinced that most of the conventional offsets in the market were just really crap, like they weren't doing anything, even ones that are verified by third parties. I felt that and it's not, you know, it's not like my feeling. But there's been a lot of research and studies around how does offsets aren't really doing what they say they're going to do. And a lot of the companies they talk to you I interviewed like dozens of companies before starting supercritical who went carbon neutral for buying these offsets. And all of them said, Oh, well, when it came to buying the offsets, I felt really weird about it. It's like insanely cheap, like $5 a time. So you've doubled or tripled my spend just to cover my ass and make sure I was doing something. But if you buy twice as much of something that doesn't do anything, it's pretty much crap. Really.
Darrell Etherington 7:40
Three zero is still zero. Exactly,
Michelle You 7:42
exactly. And I think the other thing I learned in that journey was the critical need to scale carbon removal. So carbon removal is this early technology that comes in various forms that literally removes carbon from the atmosphere and sequestered it somewhere. So the best example is probably direct air capture, which everyone's heard about, it's a fan that absorbs carbon dioxide, and then berries into the ground. And the kind of macro climate context around this is the planet needs to start removing, or we as a species need to start removing billions of tonnes a year in the next few decades, in order to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming are the scientists, the UN scientists who have modeled out how we're gonna stay safe and Stable on point five degrees of warming. They've all assumed that these technologies scale to 10 billion tons annually. And meanwhile, they've only removed a few 1000 tons today. And so when you have this like scaling challenge, when I learned that I was like, Well, what are we doing about this, because we're assuming it's going to happen, and no one's really making it cheaper to scale these technologies. And it just felt really obvious to me that that's the only way you should try to address your common impact, if you're going to, if you're going to buy an offset is to like literally remove your own emissions. And so that's why we've kind of narrowed in on that. And we actually vet the offsets ourselves, because the third party certifiers don't yet vet these early stage technologies, I'm sure that's going to change. And that will, that will happen in the next few years. But like, for example, direct air capture is not yet certified by any third third party. So we have a scientist from a team who does it piggyback on the great work of companies like Microsoft and Shopify and Stripe who publish transparently their carbon removal kind of proposals that they received. And it's a very early industries. We're all trying to figure it out together,
Darrell Etherington 9:26
I think. Yeah, for sure. I think that we've described a previous podcast is still in the kind of wild west phase, right? So there's a lot. There's a lot of potential pitfalls. And I think that businesses respect and you can correct me on this, but like, businesses are thinking ahead to when regulations catch up and when auditing processes are in place, and they want to be shipshape for when that happens, as opposed to playing catch up by the time that happens. And they also realize that there's real upside like, the other part is not it's not like oh, you just want to trick somebody. It's like no, no, like we really have to Do this for real tangible reasons that are important to human survival upon which business realized, right, like it.
Jordan Crook 10:08
Gotta be someone to sell to. Right?
Michelle You 10:11
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think you're totally right about the regulation point, you know, more than half the world's GDP has made a net zero commitment. And long, you know, the UK was one of the first countries to do that. And it's only a matter of time that they know figure out what if the country is committed to it? How do we make every business every every civilian get to net zero because we all have to do it if we're going to get to net zero. So that regulation is absolutely coming.
Darrell Etherington 10:36
But you mentioned in there your journey to this and your previous company. So, you know, our listeners may know, but I found it super interesting that you you you previously founded Songkick with one of your co founders is also the co founder for this venture right co founders from Songkick,
Michelle You 10:52
he wasn't a co founder at some point, but he was the CTO many years.
Darrell Etherington 10:57
Right? So you did work together for a long time on a totally different area? That really is I mean, I'm sure there's crossover because the music industry generates carbon impact, just like everything else, but like, not really, right. Yeah, I know you had we went to VC for a little while. But what was your journey to this? And then also, like, why did you go back and say, like, look, we work together on this other venture, but I think we're a good fit to take this on together too.
Michelle You 11:23
Yeah, that's a great question. So I, you know, I started soccer in 2007. We were one of the first British companies in yc. We raised from indexing Sequoia and exited to Warner Music. And I spent nine years there. And after leaving Songkick, I was really burned out and I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I was just like, completely lost and I spent a year backpacking around the world. It was a real privilege. Paulie mitigated a lot of carbon because we took a lot of flights. But in that in that kind of wilderness here, I had the opportunity to just be outdoors in nature, which I never was an outdoorsy person. I hiked I camped, I climbed Bay surfed, and I really loved being outside and I was when I was reading Yvonne Chouinard, who's the Patagonia CEOs can no more it was really company values handbook, I always looked up to Patagonia as a business, doing the right thing. And I read that like in the back of a camper van, and it's all about climate change and how bad it is. And I remember reading it being like, God, I knew climate change was happening. But I you know, when I recycle, but I thought scientists have this figured out and I didn't realize how bad it was. And I got really scared. I was like, Oh my God, what are we going to do about this? And coming from, you know, we had 20 million monthly users on our mobile apps. What is it that I'm going to do about climate change? I have no idea. And I really took that time at the venture fund localglobe To learn about climate change, and give myself the time and permission to figure out what am I going to do about it. And I didn't know for a long time I talked to loads of people looked at loads of companies limiting methane emissions from callbox, all the way to like decarbonizing the grid loads of different companies. But it was really when the founder of localglobe tasked me with getting them to net zero, he's like, we need to get to net zero, or LPs are asking us you care about the to go figure it out. And I found that process of figuring out what to do incredibly frustrating. It was just, there's so much information using all these acronyms not talking to a normal human being. And I talked to consultants who were giving me quotes and timelines that just made no sense for VC fund, like all the net zero guidance out there is really pitched towards mature companies with supply chains and physical products, not tech companies or VCs. And so I just thought, well, if it's this hard for me to do this, and I really care about this, then no one's going to ask if we don't make it super simple. So that was really my catalyst for coming up with supercritical and leaving to start that company. But I wasn't sure I wanted to start another company took me I had the idea for supercritical year before I started it, but I needed to work through a lot of issues. And I think any second confounder hopefully would relate just around what happened to the first company, what did they make from it? How did it fail? And what are you gonna do differently and all the trauma really related to and I had to just work through it and my my co founder at the time, he was really impatient because he never started a company like when are you ready? I'm just like doing these salting gigs and waiting for you. And I really had to just cut better cut off the pot.
Darrell Etherington 14:21
I'm some scar tissue I got to work through first listen.
Jordan Crook 14:25
We talk more about the scar tissue like what would you say was the biggest piece there that you kind of like sucked up the most of your energy and attention when you were thinking about like, Okay, I'm gonna go do this again. Like, what was the thing that kind of hung
Darrell Etherington 14:39
out to be like, I have to be okay with this
Michelle You 14:41
part of it. Yeah, I don't think there was one thing probably the main thing was so we at Songkick, we ended up suing Ticketmaster for antitrust violations because they are a monopoly and they were crushing our business and this, dude, yes, yeah. Yeah, now you know, maybe If we were in court today would be a different conversation because the antitrust environments bit different, but you know, we want a settlement from them for $100 million. And that's not an outcome you plan for when you start a company. You're not like, Ooh, I'm going to win a lawsuit. And this is what I'm going to done for you kind of want to grow and have big ambitions. And so with that ending, and the that exit, it was kind of like, what happened? Was that a success? Did I do something meaningful? Or was that just like a side bad market chosen, and like I said, ending to something you worked really hard on so unpicking that and what I made of it, and kind of extracting myself from my, you know, my soccer identity and who I am as a person took a lot of time. And I think that the other big thing that I had to work through is, I had Songkick or we, we did soccer when I didn't have any kids, I had a kid after I left song cake. And being a mom and a founder was like, I didn't know if I could do it. I don't know if I could be the kind of mom I want to be and be the kind of founder I wanted to be. So I had to really think through my values and how I would prioritize, and it's still a struggle today for sure.
Jordan Crook 16:05
Did you win the lawsuit?
Michelle You 16:06
We want a settlement. So we didn't actually go to court. Or we settled out of court, you described it as the end. So how did that end things? Right,
Jordan Crook 16:15
like you get $100 million? And say, We're done with Songkick? Like what?
Michelle You 16:19
Yeah, so the product and the team were acquired by Warner Music, and I'm really happy that the products still alive. I think whenever you do an acquisition, you assume that your product is going to end and it's still going. But Ticketmaster acquired our IP and the parent company as part of that settlement. Okay, yeah. Right,
Darrell Etherington 16:37
because you had merged with crowd surge, right? And then before, yeah,
Jordan Crook 16:41
before the lawsuit, yeah. But then like, there's the other side to that, right. Like that could I could totally see how that would be a struggle, right? Because you're like, Okay, I'm gonna build this thing. And the users are going to love it. And it's going to deliver this value and like, we're going to keep growing and then like the lawsuit, things happens, right? I mean, I think a lot about I got an email recently from the PR person for Aereo. You remember Aereo? From 10 years ago,
Darrell Etherington 17:04
do you mean the Dario, Dario, over the air
Jordan Crook 17:07
to over the air, many antenna free Hulu live, and
Darrell Etherington 17:12
they like stacked antennas? And they were like, each individual antenna is owned by a person, it was the way to get around? Because
Jordan Crook 17:17
yeah, exactly. And I remember that going all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruling against it and feeling like that was like a really bad choice by the court. Like, just based on what I understood of the law, and like spent a lot of time with that. I mean, I'm no expert on anything. So what do I know? But like, almost anytime, whether you win or lose, like, I just feel like going through the court system in general is this like, really heartbreaking thing? Like, you just see everything that's unfair, like just right in your face all the time, right? It must
Darrell Etherington 17:51
grind you down, like, it
Michelle You 17:53
works in years and decades, but it was as a founder girl, like, I don't get an answer for a year.
Jordan Crook 18:01
Run a weekly timeline. Best, right? Like, so it's just like a really, I could understand how like, emotionally, that could be just a really painful experience, no matter the outcome, just the fact that it exists and the loopholes, and the lawyers and the paperwork and all that stuff. But like, at the same time, you can look at that and say, like, I'm gonna go start a new company, and I've at least done this thing. Like what could be like a worst thing? Ever? Outcome? Yeah, exactly. Like I'm done at least, right. Like, I know what it entails. I know what it looks and feels like you obviously don't plan for it or want it. But like going in as a serial founder being like, okay, worst case scenario, at least did that once I could do it again. I don't want to
Michelle You 18:43
that's a healthier perspective on I think my view was, I left the company to that outcome I suck. I don't want to do that to get like, do I have the right to start another one? When I had that, that failure? I saw it as a failure at the time. That's the first time
Jordan Crook 19:01
anyone's called my perspective healthy. So thank you.
Darrell Etherington 19:05
But did you have so you had to do that work yourself? Did you Did that come up in conversations when you were out fundraising for supercritical? Or was it more just like something that you realize, like, Oh, this is a reflection on myself that I have to deal with that it's not really a perception.
Jordan Crook 19:20
Other people don't care as
Michelle You 19:21
much no other people. I mean, VCs love second time founders. I saw that from the inside. When I was at the fund. It was worth that I didn't do myself, but I knew I needed to start my own stuff out before I started the company. So I had a coach and lots of crying and lots of talking to get there.
Darrell Etherington 19:39
Oh, but that I mean, that brings up because I was also gonna ask, like, how has your leadership changed from one company to that right? Do you feel like you're a very different leader now than you were then? And do you ever look back and go like, Oh God on some of the decisions you made as a leader before or how's that been for you?
Michelle You 19:57
I love that question. Actually. I mean, the difference Right now is I'm the CEO of supercritical, I wasn't the CEO sancha goes the CTO. So that role now is very different. And you know, even though I, the CEO was my co founder, I, being the CEO is different, and I feel that responsibility a lot more. I think that being a second time founder, I'm a lot more confident about certain things. And my decisions on certain things are a lot quicker. So for example, when we were fundraising, I was very clear that I wanted half of my cap table to be women. And when I started Songkick, I was 25. It just like, I didn't really know, I didn't encounter sexism, I didn't think about it. This was like, 2007. Three, me too. And like the tech community's reckoning with their kind of sexist culture, like, you know, the stuff locked into being a female founder, and he didn't really think about it. And then I experienced a lot of things and had a lot of strong opinions and got a thicker skin. And so with supercritical I was a lot more focused on I want this to be a great place to work for any kind of person I want, you know, the diversity and inclusion conversations a lot more mature now. And so I could start the company with those intentions. And that was very different as well. Yeah.
Jordan Crook 21:08
Can we circle back for a second to the second piece that you had to work through? I feel like I wouldn't normally ask this of someone, but you brought it up. So I do want to kind of get your take on being a mom and a founder. And like, what, how you thought through that, and like what boundaries you drew or like, how you planned for it, and how it's adjusted over time. As you know, I'm sure your kid grows up and the startup grows up, like how those things are changing and how you think about it.
Michelle You 21:33
Yeah, I don't think people talk about it enough. We'll probably most founders aren't parents, because they're so young.
Jordan Crook 21:40
And it's like, also not a kosher thing to ask about, really, I don't think like we're all over the like, we'll do like to be a female founder, what's it like to be a founder? Right, but like, it is a real thing. So it's like hard to find the balance of how to talk about it without being like, that's who you are. And we
Darrell Etherington 21:54
reckon with that, like internally in the newsroom, right, like to have these conversations about like, look, this is definitely not something that you should but then that I think the next level, and you know, I guess even Alexis Ohanian has been pretty vocal about this. It's more like, well, you should ask more about the balance for everyone.
Jordan Crook 22:10
Right? Yes, we should ask the
Michelle You 22:12
Father. Yeah, you should ask parents what it's like to be a parent. And, and on that point, I mean, I'm really lucky that my husband is an equal caregiver, you know, we took the same amount of parental leave, he's like completely half the household is half the childcare half have to work in. And that is a struggle, right? Because I think in most families, there's like a default primary caregiver and a default breadwinner. And that's not the case for us. So anytime my son is sick, it's likely to juggle or schedule to be like, Oh, who's taking the day off now? And what are we going to do? And it's always a scramble. But for me, I think with being a parent and starting a company, one of the reflections I had like after I left Songkick, before I had my son, I had a lot of reflections around, what would I do differently both in like managing people and my work life balance my personal life. And I always thought back to the way I would default prioritize socket over my personal life, no matter what, you know, I would meet that person at the pub for a meeting at 9pm, if that's the only time he or she could meet to close the deal, or whatever, that kind of stuff. And the canonical example in my head was my mom and my sister came over to the UK for a week and like your to have salt cake, and they wanted to go on a trip to Ireland. And I said, I couldn't go because it was too busy. And so they went on this two week trip to Ireland, and I didn't go and when I think back to that time, like I didn't do anything important that week, I should have just gone on holiday and live in America. I don't see them that much. Why didn't I make that prioritization? And so I really wanted to be more thoughtful around what was important to me, and how do I prioritize my personal life and my personal relationships, because they are important, and with supercritical. Now, I think, because my co founder is also a parent to a young child, I, you know, I clock off at 5am. And I'm very strict about that. I don't do anything after that. I will occasionally log on in the evenings and work, but I don't expect anyone to you. And we've made it really clear to the entire team, your family and your personal relationships matter. Like prioritize yourself. This is, you know, an important part of your life. But it's not the only part of your life. And we don't expect you to kill yourself by working here. So that's been, you know, a very clear value from day one. In reality juggling that is a lot harder, you know, like when I need to go away on a trip now for three days that that comes at a cost to my family, and those decisions are a lot harder. So it's not easy, and I haven't I don't have it figured out. But it's an ongoing work progress.
Darrell Etherington 24:29
Right. But at least it's like a consideration now. Whereas before, it was absolutely not right. You were just like, oh, no, this is the one that wins by default. Yeah.
Jordan Crook 24:36
Yeah. Yeah, not probably helps with other things too, right. Like if you have these two, kind of like family and startup and these are my two priorities, and they have to balance at any given time then like when something else comes in, like that gives a lot more perspective as well. Like a friend wants to do XYZ or whatever like the other things that have to fit into the puzzle. It's easier because you have to things that are already trying to balance how you know what I mean?
Michelle You 25:03
Yeah, and in a weird way, I also think my becoming a mom has really helped with my anxiety insecurity imposter syndrome. I just don't have time to indulge my own brain with my stupid crap that's going on in there just like to shut it off and get stuff done. So I think I've become a lot more, I guess, confident by being a mom.
Darrell Etherington 25:22
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Cuz I'm busy days. I'm like, Oh, I'm way less anxious. And then most days, I have plenty of time, though, to be like, Wow, I'm terrible at this, which I think I really I don't know, Jordan gets a lot it for me. But like, what am I doing? I'm really bad at this, right? And she's like, No, really, okay.
Jordan Crook 25:41
Good things. So I've recently become like a pseudo co parent, we have a 14 year old in the house, my partner has a teenager, which is like a weird jump to start into any sort of parenthood. But I do feel like there's this weird dichotomy between being less anxious about a lot of things like you said, because like, you're just too busy. And you have like, other kind of priorities. There's no time to like, sit and worry about XYZ. And then also being like, kind of more anxious about the past to write like, because you like, zoom out a little bit like it gives you a different level of perspective. So it's like easier to kind of like, Oh, I'm worried about the one thing that I said, because it has a ripple effect. Right. As opposed to, it's a weird thing. I also feel like probably slightly more decisive, just based on having less time to, like you said, Sit and mull over and over and over again. But it is a weird thing.
Darrell Etherington 26:37
Like another thing that came to mind while you're talking about that is, especially when we are talking about song kicking kind of outcomes there. And then wanting to build a company that has a certain effect and has a certain outcome and has a certain sort of set of results. And like, I think it's much more sustainable, right? Like the way that you're going about your own personal leadership, and everything is much more sustainable now. And that's the thing that, especially when we're younger in our careers, like we don't realize that that pace or that intensity is not sustainable. So like for long term impact, it's a much better, healthier approach. Right. But
Jordan Crook 27:11
it's so I think, I think we can all I think we should all agree and stated as fact, it makes me sad, too, because it's one of those things. It's just like, I'm sure you feel this a lot show with your kid. And I feel this a lot too, where you can't tell someone younger, like I can't sit and talk to a 23 year old founder and be like your pace and the way that you're thinking about things and you're like kind of commitment to this above all else, even yourself is going to, you're going to pay the price for it eventually, right in one way or another. It's like a mistake people have to make
Michelle You 27:45
to live through it. Yeah, I
Jordan Crook 27:47
don't learn that lesson totally, you inevitably will, you know, you like get better at it as you age and start like perspective taking. So
Darrell Etherington 27:55
since you're found listener, I'm gonna bet you're also pretty interested in startups and technology. Great news, we're gonna give you an offer for 25% off a subscription to TechCrunch plus, PC plus is our premium product. And when you get there, our deep dive interviews with some of the best startup founders and investors in the industry, you get surveys of different investors in different areas of expertise and geographies, you get market maps of opportunities in new and emerging industries. And you get deep dive looks at some of the hottest startups out there, you can subscribe to TechCrunch plus at TechCrunch plus.com. As probably the easiest way to get there. Or if you're already on TechCrunch, just follow the links for TechCrunch plus, and you'll get a prompt to subscribe. Once you're there, just enter the code, which is found the name of this podcast during checkout, and you'll get 25% off a one year TechCrunch Plus subscription. I do I want to get back actually to the product a bit just because like something that you said early on and talking about it is something that I think a lot of people still don't realize around this market. Like if you're purchasing carbon offsets, which a lot of companies were talking about early on, right? Like, that just might mean, you're basically like famously Tesla's like, you know, sells a lot of carbon offsets. And that makes it a big part of their business, right? And it's like, if you're buying that you're offsetting your impact in like the most indirect way possible, right? It's sort of like, if you were like, oh, like, I'll put some weights over here on this on the end of this seesaw, and you're like, but I'm not even on the other end of that seesaw, like, that's somebody else's Sisa so conventional
Michelle You 29:24
offsets are essentially paying other people to stop emitting right and that's paying other people to stop doing something do nothing essentially and if we think about so that's like, you know, the traditional renewable energy project offset or clean cookstove offset, and in the world of net zero, you know, goal, if you emitted time and you pay someone to stop emitting, your ton is still out there and warming the planet. It's still there. And so you need to actually remove it to get to net zero and I think there there can be conventional emissions avoidance offsets. have impact. But there's been study after study that has shown that they aren't doing anything. So the best example is probably all the forestry protection credits that they've sold that are now kind of going up in flames in California, like, what are we doing about those offsets that we've sold now that don't exist anymore? Because trees are dying. So you can't, with Nick with nature based solutions, like trees, you can't really guarantee that that tree will stay alive for the 1000s of years that your carbon dioxide will stay alive.
Darrell Etherington 30:29
And you're talking about just natural phenomenon. But sometimes they're even sold. And it's like, there's no guarantee that only that will be logged in two years or whatever, right? Like,
Michelle You 30:38
yeah, absolutely, yeah, or the logging ends up leaking somewhere else and happened somewhere else. And I think that's because conventional offsets are really underpinned by this concept of what they call additionality, where you have to prove that you're that that offset would not have happened without you spending that money. But that means that you have to predict this hypothetical counterfactual scenario of if I didn't spend this money with this renewable project have gone up anyway, with this clean cookstove transition have happened. And in the case of renewables, now, you know, it's cheaper than coal. So how can you say that your money was US renewable is wouldn't have happened otherwise, that probably would have happened already. So just get you get into this weird, logical conundrum of like, what's this future that you're predicting, or this, you know, and it makes you predict a future that probably isn't realistic or real? Just so you can sell offset?
Darrell Etherington 31:27
Yeah, you have to be like, given no other company will make this contribution instead and given and there's so many Givens that it's like those games that don't make any sense, right?
Michelle You 31:34
Yeah. and the European Commission did a study of offsets a few years ago. And they found that 85% of them are not additional and didn't have a climate impact that they reset that would. And I just like when you get into that net of like, how do you prove these things, whereas probably you're buying a ton of carbon being removed, there's no other thing that's happening there. There's no other way that money would be spent. So it's pretty straightforward and clear what you're buying and what you're getting?
Darrell Etherington 31:59
How much do you get involved in sort of like novel methods for that, or innovative approaches that are up and coming?
Michelle You 32:06
Private customers, tech companies, and, you know, they get really excited by being an early adopter to these technologies, because they get scaling cost curves, like, all that sort of stuff. And so we work constantly sourcing new removal methods, they get engaged in the story of what they are and how they work, you know, and they, it's just amazing, because there's so many ways of removing carbon, we're so early in the journey that we need all of them to start getting to scale
Darrell Etherington 32:32
well. And given your history, it would seem to me like you would end up being like, almost a scout for investors, especially green tech investors or whatever, where they would come maybe they're like, Oh, my LPs are asking for this. And I want to find a way to like green some of our businesses, and then they're like, oh, wait a minute, I also want to invest in expenses. Does that happen? Or how does that happen? Or is it something you're thinking about? I don't know, I don't think
Michelle You 32:53
that's happened in terms of being a scout. But I do think that there's a huge advantage for being early in the carbon removal market, just because as the world realizes, okay, we can't get to net zero without carbon removal, it will be incredibly supply constrained. So the fact that we have supply now at this price, means that we'll have an advantage, I think, in the marketplace.
Darrell Etherington 33:13
And I've heard an argument to you know, which I it's not my position, but I've heard an argument. They're like, well, carbon removal is all well and good, but like, the only real way to do it is to not put the carbon into the system to begin with. But like, you know, to me, it's obvious, both are needed. But like, what is kind of your position on that? I guess?
Michelle You 33:31
Yeah, both are absolutely needed. I think that we need to do both. We left it too late. Now we both need to stop emitting and reduces emissions and also clean it up, clean it up around this amazing tweet storm about it. And they're like, it's like, we've been in the pool for the last 500 years. We need to both stop in the pool and clean up the turds in the pool.
Darrell Etherington 33:50
Yeah. Now we're gonna deal with it.
Jordan Crook 33:55
Turns out people's walk by and squat. Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 33:59
So I think then my question would be if you're like going into novel methods, and like, so how do you work around like vetting them? I guess, what's your hiring mix? Like, do you have people internally? Do you work with organizations outside? Like, how do you make sure that especially for ones that are new and upcoming, like, oh, this really is worth our clients investing in or sourcing from
Michelle You 34:19
we do but internally, but we piggyback on a lot of great work that is already out there. So you know, Stripe and Microsoft all published their common we will proposals from all the suppliers that they work with, and so that that's very transparent. It's great to the limited extent that third parties are verifying some of the methods like biochar, for example is verified by third party we will work with those third party verification systems but in the absence of a trusted source for this we we have to bet it ourselves. You know, we have a climate scientist who has decades of experience and she'll ask the lifecycle analysis questions and look through the documentation.
Darrell Etherington 34:55
Oh, great. Yeah, cuz I was gonna ask you the hiring mix to like, is it has it been for HR usually very different than your last company. But how has it been like sourcing and finding talent and retaining talent has been a challenge? Or is there a lot out there? And people are just like, I wish I could help somebody, but nobody's hiring? Or which way is it? Yeah,
Michelle You 35:13
our team right now is about a third product in tech, a third kind of commercial good market. And a third, like the footprint things climate science side of things. And I think that every founder finds it challenging to hire right now. It's an incredibly competitive market. But I think that working for an impact focused company has a lot of attraction, we get a lot of great candidates who want to work in climate, they really care about it personally, and they want to find a way to contribute. And so we've got a lot of candidates that way. And I think the more interesting thing I've seen is that across our customer base, and again, we work with tech companies for the most common reason why tech companies start working with us as for their employer brand, so they hear a lot from their team, like what are we doing about this or talent as their engineering asking what is your sustainability policy? And so the most common role we work with is a chief people officer because they want to have a strong sustainability policy to attract the right talent. And one of my angels is Khrushchev, who runs the planet kind of stuff at YC. And he was like, I think climate for the next day. And I if like five years ago, people were clueless about DNI and really know what to do, and how not to just have I think climates the next year, and I must have I agree,
Darrell Etherington 36:22
especially So Jordan, is your favorite part of the podcast, Canada, or Shopify? Because you mentioned Shopify at the top of the call, but like I work there, right. And I have first hand experience with their employer brand team and their employee efforts. And that is a very values driven organization, right? So the way they hire is heavily concentrated in like, Oh, do you align with our values, and they make a big deal about advertising them, they have, like, I don't know, if they still do this, I have issues with it as well. But like they do a lifestyle interview, a lot of other companies do this, too. Like, the first interview is like, Oh, it's just a chat with somebody. And then it's like, do you align with us and like how we kind of, and it's kind of like vibes interview? And um, you know, it's problematic for a number. But that's neither here nor there. But like, overall, I do think they lean very heavily into the impact part. And they are early movers on that in the same way, like exactly like you're talking about, right? Because DNI does play a big role there as well. And they do a lot with employee resource groups, and like, a lot of stuff internally to make sure that that's what represented, but like, they are ramping up on that side, too, on the impact side, right. And they're really, especially when they are positioning themselves as like an Amazon competitor. It's very, very important, right? Yeah, I think that's where startups really stand to benefit from this. Like, if you want something that your legacy competitors can't really catch up to on like, this is the thing, right? It's very easy to make early moves now. And make yourself very attractive from that perspective. Right.
Michelle You 37:58
Yeah, I mean, the earlier you start, the easier it is. And we you know, we do loads of team engagement, things like get them to vote on the cardinal rule portfolio they buy or luncheon learns, and they always get really great feedback from their team around it. And maybe other three other reasons why we focused on tech is that tech as a sector, including hardware, and all web streaming, has more emissions than aviation globally. So we have a huge responsibility to act and more people who work in tech understand that the more they're going to demand that their employers are doing something about it.
Darrell Etherington 38:29
Yeah. And it also comes into play on the LP side, like you mentioned, right? So it's pressure from both sides. On that funding side, I didn't want to ask you we're running short on time, but I got to get into I noticed in your your Canada, no, I wanted to ask about Michelle got her start in publishing and then in media and fled in our terrible industry. She managed to get away from how do you do this? But I do want to know like, how did you get your start in that? What was your What was your path from that out? And do you ever still think about media or and give it any kind of
Jordan Crook 39:11
think about us publishing?
Michelle You 39:15
Miss writing a lot, I think my happiest times are when I can. I mean, I never get to do this anymore. But sit down for two hours and just write down what I think I really think we are hiring
Jordan Crook 39:25
a climate reporter. Free Yeah.
Michelle You 39:32
I feel like my path into tech was really accidental. Like it didn't I'm never I've never been one of those people with a 10 year career plan here and stuff I'm going to take. So after I left, I went and did my Master's in literature thinking I was going to be an academic because I love reading but I soon realized is a terrible academic. I'm not good at working by myself.
Darrell Etherington 39:51
I think that's probably to your credit.
Michelle You 39:55
And after that, I went to China to study Chinese. It was really and more like a gap year, I didn't know what I wanted to do next. And I'd always wanted to live in China. And I met my co founder there. We were both studying Mandarin in Beijing. And we became friends we actually started dating and he quit his job first to start Songkick because he'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur. He's like, you know, from day one wanted to do that. And I started helping him on evenings and weekends. And the more I got involved, like, Oh, this is really fun, like in designing the product, things like that. And so I eventually left my job in magazine publishing to join full time. But you know, I grew up in the valley, my mom worked at Apple I, I've been around tech my whole life, I think I've always seen Tech is a tool and been more interested in how it affects our culture and how we live and communicate and our humans together. So that's been my angle. But I've always felt like an outsider, because I am not a developer. I'm not technical, like, I can just write stuff and tell people what to do.
Darrell Etherington 40:53
Yeah, but I mean, useful skills and ones that are sorely missing from a lot of the folks in the other camp because I like I have a similar feelings about it. I still, I'm not a techy person. Jordan, I don't know your own feelings, probably similar vibes, like, you know, it's, it's good to have those people in positions of influence in an industry whereby, you know, it's useful to have, I don't want to, I don't want I'm not gonna use the term, I'm not gonna use the term that Andreessen has been throwing around. But you all know what I'm talking about, I think
Jordan Crook 41:23
I want you to say,
Darrell Etherington 41:25
it's useful to have a few words, cells mixed in with the shape.
So you've no no plans to start your own sort of like zine or anything, you're not going to start a poetry monthly.
Jordan Crook 41:48
For TechCrunch, we couldn't give you time first.
Darrell Etherington 41:52
But thanks so much for joining us. It was great, great talking to you. And I think supercritical is as the name. Is that where you got it like it is super critical right now to that's where
Michelle You 42:03
my wordsmithing comes in. Because it's double Yeah, double meaning suit is super critical, obviously. But that's actually the physical state that the co2 has to be compressed into in order to be injected underground. It's called a supercritical fluid.
Jordan Crook 42:16
It's kind of became when I Googled supercritical. It was like, here's some science. And I was like, this is like, thank you.
Darrell Etherington 42:27
Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah. Then be sure to keep us up to date. And hopefully, we'll talk to you again soon. sometime. Yeah, thanks. Yeah.
Michelle You 42:36
Oh, thank you. Thanks, guys. Nice.
Darrell Etherington 42:49
All right. So that was a conversation with Michelle. You, Jordan, what did you think about our chat with Michelle and her startup supercritical.
Jordan Crook 42:57
I really liked hearing about her journey between Songkick and supercritical and kind of sharing how that ending for Songkick and like going through a lawsuit is like she said, that's never what you dream of as a founder for that to be the way things go at all. I'm gonna sue someone. Clearly, she's
Darrell Etherington 43:19
not like, I mean, there's a whole businesses in the US that are basically that's their whole goal and mission and dreams. It's not what she said.
Jordan Crook 43:30
And she was like, really candid about the kind of like emotional toll it took, I think this is true founders, they get so attached, they become like, their identity is wrapped up in the product that they create in the company that they create. And I think it could be really hard when those things don't go as planned to kind of bounce back from that. And I thought it was cool her talking through kind of her journey and her thought process of kind of like rebuilding or re realizing her identity as a founder and entrepreneur, and then also how she like kind of got interested in climate and environmentalism and kind of that whole story was really interesting to me. I like to
Darrell Etherington 44:11
Yeah, she was very one of the more candid candid founders you've had on when talking about how like to her the song kick thing didn't seem like it felt like a success. Yeah, right. Which is funny because we define it in very different ways, I think depending on who you are, but like, it was clear that it was a source buffer she even talked about Yeah, she talked about scar tissue and having to deal with that right and work through that. And that's for an outcome like that. Like it can be easy to kind of forget that there's a lot of human pain behind the scenes and something like that right. I think we see a lot of exits that are like you know, decent exits, but fire sale prices, but you're like, Oh, well the the founder probably made it all right. And then we make kind of assumptions about it. But the actual impact of that on a person and like what it means for their life is much more difficult to see. So I thought that was great that Michelle was willing to talk about,
Jordan Crook 45:01
yeah, it's easy to like boil things down to the numbers, right? Like, you know, selling for a few million, even if you had a much higher valuation. So like, everybody's fine. But there is a lot that has an emotional side to it. There's a human side to it. And I thought it was cool that she went into that. And she talked a lot today about like, what she's changed this time around as an entrepreneur, and like how she sets really clear boundaries between her personal and, and her professional life. And like, how she takes perspective in terms of what's important on a day to day basis. And that was all really cool, too.
Darrell Etherington 45:35
Yeah. And she talked about like, a pretty strict, I'm off at five, right, like, I'm no longer available. I think she said she will sometimes do work after that. Right? Like, that's not unusual, but it's not like she's online and working and like,
Jordan Crook 45:49
yeah, it's like the standard that she said that not only for herself, but for the rest of the company as well. Right?
Darrell Etherington 45:56
Yeah, that was great. And I and we also talked about how it was different for her to now be a mother and like, what the challenges are there, right. And we sort of showed a little bit of our own kind of like, not biases, but like thinking around that and sensitivities around that. Because you were like, Oh, well, you know, I would normally bring this up. It's not something you normally want to broach especially because it's like seen as Oh, of course, you're going to ask about how do you balance all this stuff of women specifically when their mothers right? And so I think and specifically like Marissa Mayer days, and like the way that Marissa Mayer approach being a mother, and I think it kind of was like, You and NASA. Samantha don't ask this of a woman. Right. But what we came around to in this conversation was like, and I think she Michelle specifically said, you know, you should you should ask what it's like, but you should everyone.
Jordan Crook 46:48
Yeah, ever all parents. Right. And I think that was good point. And I also like, I do think those conversations are valuable, right, like, as long as they're equitable as well. And, yeah, there was a lot to glean from that, I think,
Darrell Etherington 47:01
I think so too. Because if you even if you like gameplay a situation where you're like, Oh, well, you didn't ask and the guys are like, well, it doesn't have to do with this and you're like, Oh, why does it right? Like that's, that's an interesting part of the conversation. If this doesn't, if you keep these edited entities so separate, and they they never conflict with one another right? Like that is also worth asking about and investigating. So
Jordan Crook 47:24
look at us. Wow, crisis advice. This
Darrell Etherington 47:27
state of the art journal innovators. Oh, no. Michelle, for us too. So it's to her credit hours once again,
Jordan Crook 47:39
the usual but we do want you to come see our live show. So definitely do that on Thursday. Come hang out with us. Yes plan from city block. It's gonna be a hoot.
Darrell Etherington 47:51
Round is hosted by myself, TechCrunch news editor Dale Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. We are produced by Ishaku Kearney and edited produced by Maggie Stamets TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henrik pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcast Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast and on Twitter at twitter.com/found. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us at 510-936-1618 and leave us a voicemail. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/bound listener survey. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next
Unknown Speaker 48:25
week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai