Unreasonable Stories

The Battery Built for Traffic Lights, Now Powering AI Data Centers.

ZincFive is the world's leading nickel-zinc battery company. Its batteries cannot be forced into fire, are over 90 percent recyclable through a smelter-free chemical process, and deliver power in millisecond bursts that lithium cannot match on its own. Nearly 2 gigawatts are deployed or under contract for data centers globally, and the company just launched its first battery cabinet engineered specifically for AI workloads. Tim Hysell commercialized the first nickel-zinc product in 2012 as a battery backup for traffic lights. By 2016 he had merged his company with PowerGenix to consolidate the chemistry and the manufacturing under one roof. ZincFive now holds over 80 patents globally on nickel-zinc and is positioned at the center of a $90 billion addressable market. In this conversation with Daniel Epstein, Tim talks about how a 90-day challenge to his engineering team led to the founding chemistry, why he believes the "no asshole" rule is the most important value at the company, the cardiologist who taught him in his early twenties what real leadership looks like, and the mother who worked alongside him in the fields from age five with eight hours of conversation a day. Tim joined the Unreasonable Fellowship through the Unreasonable Impact program in 2018, run in partnership with Barclays. In September, after thirteen years as founder and CEO, he handed the company to his longtime COO Tod Higinbotham. His wife and both sons still work at ZincFive. (00:00) Introduction (02:09) Why ZincFive Exists (03:00) The Stoplight Problem That Started Everything (04:45) From Stoplights to Data Centers (06:14) Sprinter, Not Marathon: Nickel-Zinc vs. Lithium (07:06) The Battery That Won't Catch Fire (08:42) Two Gigawatts Deployed (11:12) How AI's 50-Millisecond Power Bursts Work (13:00) The $90 Billion Market (15:40) The Other Industries Still Waiting (18:33) Why He Wanted to Manufacture in the First Place (20:43) The 90-Day Empowerment Story (22:16) Where the Leadership Style Comes From (24:00) Food Stamps and the Fields With Mom at Age Five (27:50) The Two Parents Who Shaped Him (29:53) What Team Sports Taught Him About Building Culture (31:50) Coach vs. Quarterback: The Real Job of a CEO (34:30) The 2018 Culture Session That Changed Everything (37:54) The "No Asshole" Rule (42:30) Eight Years With Barclays (46:43) The Cardiologist Story (50:15) Hard Conversations and Almost Missing Payroll (54:46) Handing the Reins to Tod Higinbotham (58:25) What He Tells His Sons (Who Also Work at ZincFive) (1:03:30) Where the Name ZincFive Comes From (1:05:32) Closing Reflections

Renewable Energy That Saves India’s Factories 40% on Their Power Bill

Fourth Partner Energy finances, builds, and operates renewable energy for India’s factories. Clients save 30 to 40% on their power bills and pay nothing upfront to switch. The company now serves over 400 clients across 23 states, has raised $475 million, and is building a gigawatt of clean energy a year. Saif Dhorajiwala co-founded the company in 2010 with very little money. They started by building small solar plants for rural schools in interior India. Today their largest facility has 91 wind turbines and a thousand acres of solar, connected by a 90-kilometre transmission line that sends power from south India to factories in the Himalayas. In this conversation with Daniel Epstein, Saif talks about growing up in a 250-square-foot apartment in Mumbai, why there are no job titles at Fourth Partner, how every employee owns stock, what happened when they couldn’t make payroll in the early years, and the shared belief in karma that holds a Hindu co-founder and a Muslim-born co-founder together through 15 years of building. (00:00) Introduction (02:10) The Genesis of Fourth Partner Energy (06:00) Starting with Rural Schools (07:38) The Pivot to Commercial and Industrial (08:44) The Scale Today (11:09) A Gigawatt a Year (13:07) How the Economics Work (16:00) Zero Cost to Switch (18:10) John Kerry and the Advice That Changed Everything (19:57) A 560-Megawatt Facility You Can See from Space (22:05) The Hardest Part of Building at This Scale (25:22) Raising $475 Million (27:07) Why It’s Called Fourth Partner (28:34) No Titles, No Offices, No Hierarchy (29:09) They Eat, Sleep, Drink Fourth Partner (30:23) Trust as a Foundation (32:49) When They Couldn’t Make Payroll (36:09) Faith, Karma, and Doing the Right Thing (40:09) Growing Up in a 250-Square-Foot Apartment (44:19) What Saif Has Learned About Fundraising (47:22) Working Two Days a Week (49:29) What Makes a Good Mentor (51:07) The Next 10 Years (55:21) How to Get Involved (57:13) Closing Reflections

Wimbledon Players Shower in Solar-Heated Water. Here's Who Built It.

Heat is responsible for 40% of global emissions and more than half of all energy consumed on the planet. Most of it still comes from burning fossil fuels, and almost nobody is talking about decarbonizing it. Christophe Williams co-founded Naked Energy to change that. Their solar collectors convert up to 80% of the sun's energy into hot water, compared to about 20% for traditional solar panels. The hybrid version generates both heat and electricity from the same rooftop. Payback runs four to eight years, and an industrial system can save over half a million pounds annually. Before clean energy, Christophe spent 15 years as a film editor in advertising, cutting music videos and working on global campaigns. The pivot came from his grandfather, a physicist who worked on wave power and flywheel storage in the 1970s. He told Christophe as a child that if we put all known fossil fuels into a calendar year, we've only got minutes left. In this conversation, Christophe talks about selling his house and pulling his kids from school to start the company, what it took to raise £30 million as a first-time founder, the independent test that came back short and the CTO who turned it into a roadmap, Barclays helping land the Wimbledon project, and the question that drove everything: could I live with myself if I don't give this a go? (00:00) Introduction (00:25) Why "Naked Energy"? (03:01) The Warm Elephant in the Room (07:26) Hotels, Hospitals, and Factories (09:40) How the Technology Works (12:43) Storing Summer Heat for Winter (14:26) The Economics of Solar Thermal (16:34) 80% Efficiency vs. 20% for Traditional Solar (18:42) Solar Thermal Meets Heat Pumps (22:22) From Film Editor to Clean Tech CEO (24:46) Diana Ross, Joy Division, and Dennis Hopper (27:11) A Grandfather Who Worked on Wave Power (29:08) "We've Only Got Minutes Left" (33:08) Winning the Shell Springboard Competition (34:23) "Could I Live with Myself If I Don't Give This a Go?" (39:27) Selling the House and Taking the Kids Out of School (44:34) Hardest Lessons as a First-Time CEO (46:03) Crying into a Beer in Germany (51:20) E.ON, Barclays, and Wimbledon (54:26) What 1% of the World's Heat Demand Looks Like (59:46) A Physicist Daughter Joins the Business (1:03:13) How to Work with Giant Corporations (1:06:31) Closing Reflections

She Studied Time Travel at MIT. Now She's Making Food from Air.

Lisa Dyson has a PhD from MIT in string theory. Her thesis covered rotating black holes, cosmology, and time travel. She is now the co-founder and CEO of Air Protein, a company that makes protein and other food ingredients from CO2, water, and energy. The technology was originally developed by NASA during the Apollo program. The idea was to feed astronauts on long space voyages by recycling the carbon in exhaled air through cultures that could turn it into nutrients. When the program ended, the work was shelved. Lisa and her co-founder Dr. John Reed found it in the research literature decades later. When she called NASA, the scientist on the other end told her he could cry. He never thought anyone would pick it up. Air Protein's cultures work like yogurt starters. Instead of milk, they feed on CO2, water, and energy and produce protein in hours. The process runs day and night, needs no farmland, and uses orders of magnitude less water than conventional agriculture. A soy farm the size of Texas would match the output of an Air Protein facility the size of Walt Disney World. In this conversation, Lisa talks about going to 14 schools by the age of 14, what she learned from an entrepreneur father who modeled both resilience and failure, leaving BCG to start a company on the fringe of what seemed possible, and the mentor at an Unreasonable Impact Program who told her to stop carrying the weight of the world and let her team inspire her instead. (00:00)  Introduction (01:57)  What is Air Protein? (04:30)  The Cultures Behind the Science (08:31)  Environmental Advantages (10:28)  An Entrepreneurial Father and a Scientist's Mind (12:24)  String Theory, Black Holes, and Time Travel (12:59)  14 Schools by Age 14 (15:46)  Discovering the NASA Research (17:20)  Leaving BCG and Taking the Leap (19:19)  The NASA Scientist Who Could Cry (20:16)  The Birth of Kiverdi and Air Protein (24:55)  Physics Meets the Future of Food (28:42)  The Hardest Part of Starting a New Industry (34:13)  Let Your Team Inspire You (36:16)  Working with Barclays and Mars (39:27)  What the World Looks Like in a Decade (42:12)  How to Get Involved (44:45)  Closing Reflections

A Million Babies and What It Cost to Save Them

Jane Chen co-founded Embrace Global as a student project at Stanford in 2007. She moved to India at 25 and spent four years working 12-to-15-hour days to bring a portable infant incubator to market. That technology — a sleeping-bag-like device that maintains 98 degrees for six hours on a 30-minute charge — has now saved over a million babies' lives in humanitarian crisis zones worldwide. In this conversation, Jane talks about the real cost of that mission. A major distribution deal collapsed a week before signing, leaving seven days of cash in the bank. Mark Benioff responded with one line: "I will fund your company." Years later, a second deal was fully signed, but the acquiring company shut down before the wire transferred. Jane hit rock bottom — severe panic attacks, depression, unable to get through a meal. She left everything behind and went on a healing journey that took her from Indonesia to frog poisoning ceremonies to Internal Family Systems therapy. The breakthrough: her drive to save powerless children came from feeling powerless in a violent home as a child. She shares what she learned about trauma, self-compassion, and why resilience isn't about grit — it's about being kind to yourself in the face of immense struggle. The conversation also covers identity in the age of AI, the illusion of control, somatic awareness, and how to make decisions from love instead of fear. It closes with Jane surfing in Honolulu with Nathan — a two-pound baby abandoned in China, saved by an Embrace incubator, now 14 years old and catching waves beside her. (00:00) Introduction (02:30) The Book and the Fellowship (03:54) What Writing a Memoir Revealed (06:09) The Why Behind the Why (09:17) Worth Beyond Achievement (13:39) Identity in the Age of AI (15:28) The Illusion of Control (18:27) What We Can Actually Control (20:37) Throwing the Book in the Ocean (22:27) The Gift of the Process (23:31) The Origin of Embrace Global (26:22) Moving to India and Building the Company (29:57) The Distribution Deal That Collapsed (32:13) Mark Benioff and the Meditation at Davos (34:10) The Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurship (36:40) Burnout and the Second Collapse (39:23) Rock Bottom and Panic Attacks (40:56) Resilience Is Self-Compassion (42:37) The Coincidence That Saved Embrace (45:00) Tony Robbins and the Rebirth of Embrace (47:52) A Million Babies and Nathan's Story (51:00) What Healing Looks Like (55:27) The Science of Trauma (57:28) Internal Family Systems and Self-Compassion (59:54) Leading from a Healed Place (1:01:15) Decisions from Love or Fear (1:07:17) The Wisdom in Difficult Emotions (1:08:22) Jane's Coaching Practice and How to Connect (1:13:44) Closing Reflections