Energytech Startups

Donald Kendall from New Climate Ventures

Venture capital in the energy transition is getting more complicated, but Donald R. Kendall Jr., General Partner at New Climate Ventures, says the multi-trillion dollar opportunity isn't going anywhere. We get into how they find picks and shovels plays in crowded markets, what $100 oil means for climate startups, why management teams matter more than technology, and what it actually takes to get a first-of-a-kind project financed. Click here to watch a video of this episode. [https://app.collide.io/content/mo8FQbq] Join the conversation shaping the future of energy. Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward. Apply today at collide.io [http://collide.io/] Click here to view the episode transcript. [https://share.transistor.fm/s/128fcd4b/transcript] 0:00 New Climate Ventures and Investment Thesis 8:00 Data Centers, Cooling, and Energy Independence 10:00 $100 Oil and What It Means for the Energy Transition 14:00 SAF, Carbon Alternatives, and Portfolio Companies 21:00 Don's Background in Project Finance and Early Renewables 26:00 SolarCity, Financial Engineering, and Residential Solar 32:00 What Makes a Fundable Team 38:00 The State of Venture Capital for Climate 42:00 Why Invest in Climate Over AI 43:00 Houston's Role in the Energy Transition 49:00 Most Exciting Technologies Right Now 51:00 Wildlife Conservation and Closing https://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Ashish Gupta & Siddhartha (Sid) Paul from KonsciousPlanet/KP Labs

Critical metals like nickel and cobalt are slipping through the cracks and into landfills, and KP Labs is on a mission to get them back. Dr. Ashish Gupta and Siddhartha Paul, CEO and CTO and co-founders of KonsciousPlanet/KP Labs, break down how bacteria can pull valuable metals from e-waste, why recycling is really just energy independence in disguise, and why they're calling it urban mining. Click here to watch a video of this episode. [https://app.collide.io/content/CWyX5op] Join the conversation shaping the future of energy. Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward. Apply today at collide.io [http://collide.io/] Click here to view the episode transcript. [https://share.transistor.fm/s/934ce585/transcript] 0:00 - Intro and KP Labs origin story 3:26 - How the e-waste recycling technology works 8:39 - Black mass, battery chemistry, and the logistics problem 11:00 - America's recycling problem 14:40 - Democratizing the recycling process 18:29 - Commercialization plans and funding 24:02 - Founders' backgrounds and how they met 30:00 - Challenges in energy transition investing 35:39 - Houston ecosystem and helpful resources 38:07 - Investor misconceptions and how to pitch it right 42:58 - Reframing the business as urban mining 44:13 - What KP Labs is looking for right now https://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Imran Kizilbash & Abhinav Jain from Titanium Innovation Investments

The industrial world is still running on manual processes and siloed data while our phones got smarter ten times over, and that gap is exactly where Titanium Innovation Investments is placing its bets. Abhinav Jain and Imran Kizilbash, co-founders and managing partners at Titanium Innovation Investments, break down what it actually takes to sell tech into enterprises that move slow by design, why product market fit is something you can lose just as fast as you find it, and how they evaluate founding teams when the revenue is basically zero. Plus some real talk on Houston's startup ecosystem and whether the city has the deal flow to back up the ambition. Click here to watch a video of this episode. [https://app.collide.io/content/QRLTqGp] Join the conversation shaping the future of energy. Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward. Apply today at collide.io [http://collide.io/] Click here to view the episode transcript. [https://share.transistor.fm/s/0ef01c56/transcript] 0:00 Introduction 1:00 Titanium Innovation Investments thesis and origin story 4:17 Why industrial tech adoption lags behind consumer tech 7:01 Data as an asset in M&A and enterprise transactions 10:23 Imran and Abhinav's career journeys from field to finance 15:04 What product market fit actually looks like at seed stage 19:24 Unit economics and business models in hard tech vs software 29:56 Cutting through the AI hype in industrial applications 34:23 Data ownership, legal challenges, and enterprise selling 40:16 Change management and why adoption cycles are longer 43:21 Portfolio construction and sector diversification 50:13 Houston's startup ecosystem and deal sourcing nationally 1:04:18 Advice for founders on fundraising and building trust https://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Jamal Khawaja from Symplii.ai

Jamal Khawaja, founder and managing director of Symplii.ai, sits down to talk about his journey from studying scorpion mating habits in Brazil (seriously) to 25 years in tech at IBM, Deloitte, and Accenture before starting his own AI company. He breaks down why AI has been around since the 1960s but only recently became useful, how emergent capabilities let models do things they were never programmed for, and why entry-level jobs are facing the roughest market he's ever seen. Jamal explains his pivot from building an AI marketplace to focusing on last mile AI solutions for small companies, walks through a real example of AI agents listening to law firm client calls to auto-fill forms, and shares why being AI-first means doing the work yourself instead of delegating it to interns. Click here to watch a video of this episode. [https://app.collide.io/content/JQx5Zv5] Join the conversation shaping the future of energy. Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward. Apply today at collide.io [http://collide.io/] Click here to view the episode transcript. [https://share.transistor.fm/s/b4b0b478/transcript] 00:00 - Welcome and Jamal's background 02:12 - From biology to self-taught tech 07:16 - Houston's pragmatic startup culture 08:07 - AI history since the 1960s 11:24 - From precision to statistical significance 14:17 - Emergent capabilities and what models can do 17:37 - Can AI actually think? 19:16 - Leaving IBM to start Symplii 21:18 - Entry-level job market collapse 24:57 - Are people getting lazy with AI? 30:54 - Claude projects and AI workflows 34:16 - Taking the leap with family support 36:15 - Pivoting from marketplace to last mile AI 41:06 - Law firm client intake automation example 45:27 - Building for future context awareness 48:32 - AI guardrails and pragmatic reality 50:35 - Advice for being truly AI-first https://twitter.com/collide_io https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters

Mehrab Momin from aiCTO

AI has been “old news” since the 1950s, but Mehrab Momin of aiCTO Services breaks down why it suddenly feels everywhere, how founders should actually think about AI (data first, buzzwords later), and why Houston’s physical-world industries might be the perfect playground for the next wave, from vision models to humanoid robots. Click here to watch a video of this episode. [https://app.collide.io/content/7fXQ3NN] Join the conversation shaping the future of energy. Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward. Apply today at collide.io [http://collide.io/] Click here to view the episode transcript. [https://share.transistor.fm/s/01d904c4/transcript]  00:00 Show intro and guest setup  01:10 Fractional AI CTO explained  03:10 Early AI work and swarm intelligence  05:10 AI “flavors” from ML to deep learning  07:10 Transformers and the LLM leap  09:10 Where AI shows up in industry  12:00 Language, context, and why LLMs work  18:00 Energy AI applications and examples  19:30 Computer vision basics and VLMs  23:30 Open source models and fine-tuning  26:20 Houston vs Bay Area AI maturity  29:20 Solar, drones, and practical vision AI  31:00 Humanoid robots and physical AI  33:20 Edge computing and model stacks  36:00 Testing, validation, and “AI going rogue”  37:20 Common startup mistakes with AI  40:20 Human intuition vs machine intelligence  48:00 Language preservation and climate tech link  51:20 What’s next for Houston startups  53:50 How to connect and wrap-up  https://twitter.com/collide_io https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters