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CleanTech and Community Capital: Key Insights from Industry Leaders

In a rapidly evolving investment landscape, CleanTech founders are turning to online capital formation to fund innovations that are reshaping the future. The recent DealMaker-hosted webinar brought together pioneering CleanTech leaders to discuss their capital-raising journeys, the power of community-driven funding, and the brand-building benefits of engaging retail investors. Here are the key takeaways from the discussion, featuring direct insights from the founders of EnergyX, Global Air Cylinder Wheels (GACW), and TimePlast.

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The Path to Community Capital

For many founders, the journey to securing capital begins with traditional investment avenues—venture capital, angel investors, and institutional funding. However, as these founders shared, the limitations of these paths often drive them toward alternative financing options, such as equity crowdfunding.

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Teague Egan, founder and CEO of EnergyX, highlighted the challenges of venture capital dominance in early-stage funding:

“Those discussions are always difficult… venture capitalists typically have all the leverage over entrepreneurs unless you're one of those explosive growth companies that investors are competing over.”

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For EnergyX, the solution was a hybrid approach, leveraging both institutional venture rounds and crowdfunding to validate market demand and sustain momentum:

“We’ve had this hybrid approach… leveraging one raise to go into the other, showing venture capitalists that the valuation we’re asking for is legitimate, and that’s backed by the market.”

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Similarly, Manuel Rendon, CEO of TimePlast, found that institutional investors often failed to grasp the long-term vision of his company’s water-soluble plastic alternatives:

“We considered it a big risk to get our governance diluted and our vision diluted… Every venture capitalist or big angel investor we spoke with didn’t really understand our vision.”

Instead, TimePlast turned to equity crowdfunding, allowing them to retain control and build their company in alignment with their mission.

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Why Communities Rally Behind CleanTech

A common misconception is that companies need an established audience to succeed in community capital raising. However, the panelists demonstrated that communities naturally form around impactful innovations.

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Harmen van Kamp, CEO of GACW, noted how retail investors rallied around their airless, recyclable steel tire technology:

“We raised over $1.8 million in 36 hours because we had the right placement, and an article picked up on it.”

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For Teague Egan, the CleanTech transition itself created a strong investor base:

“If you believe in the transition to electric vehicles… then batteries are needed for that, and therefore lithium is needed to make those batteries. We play a critical role in that supply chain.”

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This alignment between investor values and the companies' missions fuels long-term engagement and reinvestment.

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The Brand-Building Power of Retail Capital

Beyond fundraising, digital capital raising strengthens brand recognition and credibility. Investors become brand ambassadors, advocating for and promoting the company’s mission.

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Manuel Rendon explained how equity crowdfunding became integral to TimePlast’s brand growth:

“Thanks to equity crowdfunding, we saw an opportunity in the market… and every month, we get to a new level of scrutiny, which only strengthens our position.”

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For EnergyX, retail investors provided not just capital but also validation:

“As long as you are executing on milestones… that’s exciting not only for us but for our investors because they know their investment is growing.”

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Raising on Your Own Terms

Equity crowdfunding offers founders an opportunity to set the terms of their raises without external pressures. Harmen van Kamp emphasized this point:

“I’ve had VCs say, ‘You’re raising money publicly, you’re uninvestable for us.’ But I cut them off. People are putting their life savings into this because they believe in a better world.”

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This level of alignment between companies and their investors fosters stronger relationships and sustainable growth.

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The Future of Digital Capital Raising

As community capital becomes an increasingly viable path for high-growth cleantech companies, founders are proving that innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s also about rethinking how companies raise and deploy capital.

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As Jon Stidd, CMO of DealMaker, summed up:

“You get that incredible response when you go back to your community and say, ‘Hey, we told you we were going to do ABC. Now we’re going to do XYZ and we’re raising capital again.’”

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For today’s CleanTech pioneers, community-driven financing isn’t just an alternative—it’s a competitive advantage.

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Transcript

Jon Stidd: Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us. We're going to give the others just a few more minutes to join. We'll start here at 3 after.

We're gonna start off with some quick introductions, a list of questions, and then we'll save some time at the end for Q&A. So if you have any questions, go ahead and drop them in the comments there and we'll try to prioritize them for the tail end when we do Q&A at the end. Thanks.

I want to give a big welcome to everyone and thank you for joining. My name is Jon Stidd. I'm the CMO at DealMaker. I've been immersed in capital raising and community building for about a decade now. First is the co-founder of the Ridge Growth Agency, where we ran the digital marketing campaigns, raising over $500 million for our customers. That agency was acquired by DealMaker, so we could bring those marketing capabilities in-house to continue to power the capital raises of amazing companies like the ones we have on today's panel.

I was telling everybody in the back room there, you know, I feel very lucky at DealMaker. We get to work with tons of innovative companies, but folks like this who are in clean tech and material sciences, are really changing the world. I feel really lucky to be here on the panel with everyone. I want to thank them for the time. I'm excited about what we're gonna jump into today. So I mentioned at the end, you know, we'll jump in to some Q&A. We're gonna start off first with some intros and then get into the agenda, and then we'll go ahead and get started.

So I want to start off with some welcome and introductions. You can see here on after that, we'll get into founder stories, what led everybody to this, what was their founder journey that led them to raising capital digitally like this?

Why do communities love clean tech, right? So, you know, not every company has to start off with a community to raise community capital. These communities exist out there already.

And then we'll talk about some of the brand building benefits of retail capital, how having an army of shareholders on your side can be good for your brand. And then next, how and why founders need to diversify their capital stack. Lots of folks on this call have raised other forms of capital in addition to equity crowdfunding, and we want to talk about that a little bit, and then we're gonna jump into the Q&A as I mentioned. So please continue to drop your questions in the chat there. It already looks pretty active.

All right, let's start off with some introductions.

First, we have Teague. So Teague is the founder and CEO of Energy X. Energy X develops lithium extraction, battery, and refinery technologies that are gonna power the transition to sustainable energy.

Next we have Harman. He's the co-founder and CEO of Global Air Cylinder and Wheels, or GACW. Literally reinventing the wheel with steel tires that are both airless and 100% recyclable, their patented design won a time best innovations award not long ago.

And lastly, we have Manuel, CEO of TimePlast. Timeplast creates water-soluble plastic alternatives that are time programmable, meaning that they can be formulated to last a predetermined amount of time, and once that time is hit, they safely dissolve without leaving any microplastics or harmful chemicals behind.

So, as you can see here from the intros, this is why I'm really excited to be amongst us. Uh, exciting group, uh, we're truly changing the world with their companies that they're leading. So thank you guys for joining.

Manuel Rendon: Thank you for having me.

Jon Stidd: First up, we're gonna start off with a poll. Let's get to know each other a little bit better here. We're gonna pull up a poll, let all of our attendees answer some questions here. I think we'll be able to use this to cater the answers a little bit more to this audience. So, you know, knowing what types of capital people have raised here.

Great. I think we're locked there. OK. It's a lot of angel investment, some venture that that maps out, right? Equity crowdfunding, good, you're in good company. All of the founders on here will talk about it at the tail end. I know some of you have raised different types of capital, so at the end, we're gonna talk about that capital stack and how you guys all think about the different types of capital that you've raised, maybe talk about some of the pros and cons of that.

First, I want to start off with some founder stories, right? I talked about how cool the companies are. I would love our audience to understand, you know, what led you guys to this path. So I wanna start off with Teague on this first one, you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, What it was like when you first set out to raise capital for Energy X, and what made you decide to do things differently?

Teague Egan: Yeah, absolutely. It's a pretty cool program. I like the, uh, polling and the, you know,

Jon Stidd: You're on the main stage. I'm

Teague Egan: So when I started Energy X, I knew that lithium was a big idea and that we had a lot of tailwinds. There was a lot of momentum behind electric vehicles and batteries. I went, I started talking to potential investors about the most common form of investment. Well, when you start out companies, it's mostly friends and family, right? And I was fortunate enough to have the ability to invest some of my own capital to get the company off the ground. So we had a nice foundation, and a start that allowed us to cross a few milestones in terms of executing some agreements for IP.

Getting a very small MVP, minimum viable product, in the research and development stage, and ultimately with that foundation, I said I'm gonna go out and raise venture capital money.

Those discussions are always difficult and uh that tends to be the case because they typically have all the leverage over entrepreneurs unless there's obviously the stories that people hear about these explosive growth companies that are out in Silicon Valley, and everybody, all the investors are competing over them. That's typically not the case. Usually it's the companies competing over investment dollars from venture capitalists.

I started thinking about alternatives and while we were ultimately successful in raising some venture capital, the impetus to that was one of my buddies was working at a crowdfunding company, not DealMaker, a different 11 of the aggregator sites, and he introduced me to crowdfunding. We put up our first campaign and saw a lot of organic traction. I mean even prior to that, I would get emails with people asking me how they could invest in EnergyX. So I knew that there was really something there. So for us, my capital raising journey was initially me putting in my own money.

Then getting some friends and family, that were actually, debt instruments, convertible notes that are basically debt that converts into equity in the next round of financing. That next round of financing was, uh, some crowdfunding. Um, then we leveraged that to go do, uh, our first kind of institutional venture round, which was our Series A. Then we went back and did more crowdfunding. Then we went and did another institutional round of Series B, and then followed that with more crowdfunding. So we've had this hybrid approach, which has worked for us. We've kind of leveraged one race to go into the other, showing the venture capitalists that the valuation we're asking for is legitimate, and that's backed by essentially the market, investing it at that valuation. Then we go kind of back and forth. So that's been the story of Energy X capital raising.

Jon Stidd: Fantastic. Thanks for that Teague. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that Capital sack story, sort of like, doing those in tandem when we touch on that in that final segment there. But yeah, I love that you found this organically, literally through a friend, who told you about it and it just seemed to match up with the experience that you were having out there trying to raise venture capital. And it was really good timing for him to approach you. So we're obviously glad that you did.

Manuel, how about you? Tell us about your story to ultimately community capital. What led you here?

Manuel Rendon: Right? Um, thank you.

In my case, it has been quite the challenge to raise funds through the institutional route, not because there's not, there's so many options, but because of the vision of Timeplast. So Timeplast was founded with the idea that 100% of everything we manufacture has to be polar, as you may understand, there's only two types of materials on the planet. You have nonpolar and you have polar materials. Now, everything essentially that's non-Timeplast is nonpolar, but the surface of the earth and even our own bodies are composed of water so for us it didn't make much sense to go the nonpolar route. My point is our perspective is so counterintuitive that when I was working for PepsiCo I was privileged enough to work for global directors such as Brad Rogers, in Plano, Texas, he was the global director of packaging discovery, and I was able to get a glimpse of the big corporations think about plastic. Early on Nestle acquired one of our technologies for PET depolarization and so we kind of played around with a venture capital firm in Canada and I understood that the vision of Timeplast could be diluted if we went that route of institutional funding and that's why I started to have a conversation with crowdfunding companies and can understand the benefits and it has been incredible because every other venture capital or big angel investor that I have spoken with, they really don't understand our vision and we considered that it was a big risk to get our governance diluted and our vision diluted for that matter if we were in the institutional funding so everything we've done so far has been equity crowdfunding incredible success. We're super happy about everything we've done in the past and what we're doing today and I would recommend this to all of those companies that have super innovative products with great technologies, but, you know, the vision may be counterintuitive, but if you stick to your future and and you know what's best for your company, equity crowdfunding can be the only way for you to realize your dreams because even PhDs in chemistry they early on they didn't really follow our chemistry so for just to give you one example. We launched one of our products uh to the consumer. I sent a link, it's for the 3D printing community. We created four dimensional filaments to create four dimensional objects, the likes of which, nobody has ever seen before. For example, we can make a filament that it's burnable. It's the first burnable filament we can make a filament that's dissolved in the presence of water predetermined length of time you can make 4 dimensional objects such as an automated speed pod, which, you know, would be like an analog computer in which water is the battery, so these things, I don't think that institutional funding would have allowed us to go this route. They essentially go to and want to do the big business with the big companies we wanna grow organically and so we thought, you know, to keep our vision undiluted best is to get equity crowdfunding and it has been great for us.

Jon Stidd: Oh, fantastic. Manuel thanks for sharing that. So if I could say that back to you. You know, they may have understood the vision scientifically, but you feel as though they may have hampered it in the sort of commercialization of that, plus some of the ownership and dilution that comes with taking on institutional funding, is that correct?

Manuel Rendon: Yeah, that's correct, yes, they maybe just wanna go and find the Costcos of the world and the Walmarts of the world and just do business with the big companies. We would like to create a better world, product by product, so we're more on the, organic product by product growth instead of just the raw material B2B big businesses, and I couldn't find an institution or venture capitalists that would understand this vision that could support us, so we'd rather win the equity crowdfunding instead.

Jon Stidd: Great. OK, yeah, that makes sense. I think it's John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, who jokes about some of the institutional investors. They're like hitchhikers with credit cards and they're happy so long as you take them where they want to go, you know, so if you want to commercialize a direct to consumer product, which sounds great. I know you all have some traction in that, you know, may have been swayed off that path.

Harman, very curious to hear about your path, right, particularly, you know, given how would I characterize it, the breadth of what you all had to build, you know, scientifically, you know, tell us how you came to raising capital direct to consumer like this, and your story behind that.

Harmen van Kamp: Thank you, John. It's been a ride. We started back in 2016 with the company. I think we've got a great concept back then. We're going out to potential clients, and, and talk about an airless wheel design and the first question you get back is, well, if it's so great, why didn't anyone else come up with this or why are the tire companies not doing this?

Uh, so we did get a bit of angel loans and that was converted, and then, we go out to all these feces that are all, you know, green and into innovation, but for them to grasp something that's such a change in paradigm, it was just either seemed too much or cases that, you know, for the amount of money we need because we're dealing with big toys, those rounds would have killed us because, you know, they typically want to take 33% for a million bucks. That's very typical at those stages - and that's for us half a set of R&D wheels and, you know, we need to make 12 so far. So that was a bit frustrating, also back then, I'm talking 2020, you know, if you weren't a crypto, pharma, or marijuana, I literally had companies hanging up on me. What I see now it's an awful lot of AI. Hey, can you put something, anything with AI in your wheel and, and it will sell like crazy. I said look, we're clean tech, we're tangible products, we can, but I don't want to sell it as AI. It's a real solution for a real problem.

Then I got in touch with Anders, who's with DealMaker, and you know, he guided me through this because there's this big misconception that you're crowdfunding. So what's, I like to call this crowd investment, you know, we're not just holding our hands out for a freebie, we're taking people extremely seriously and I've had VCs coming to me saying, well, you're raising money publicly, you're uninvestable for us, and lately, in particular, I just, I cut them off. I said, look, I'm highly respectful of people that have put in $300-1000 dollars, but we've got people that put in $25,000, $50,000, $100,000.

And people are putting their life savings in this because they believe in a better world. And like you said in the introduction, John, people want to see change. And just because the corporations don't want to do it doesn't mean the public doesn't want to do it.

So when that happened, we got involved with crowdfunding and the response is just phenomenal and definitely in the first couple of rounds, we've had a couple of days, one day in particularly we raised, I think it was over $1.8 million in 36 hours because we just had the right right placement and I think it was who finance and picked up on it and it just went through the roof. So that meant for me, OK, it resonates well with people, people want this, people want to be part of things that up until now they've been excluded from and it was only destined for VCs, and we've got an amazing investor base. We're very active in contacting them, like writing emails, I'm on the phone with many of them and it does create this feeling of community, even though myself, I'm not a big, social media person at all, but being in touch with people that really believe in your product is not only a financial boost, but definitely also encouraging boost for us, you know, to keep up the work and keep on going because at the end of the day, that, that's what we're doing it for, you know, to change the world, for everyone.

Jon Stidd: Yeah. And Harman, thanks, you're making my job as a moderator pretty easy cause I wanna talk about community next, right? You know, just to grab some threads of what you guys all touched upon there, you know, ownership, not just in terms of percentage owned, right, but really being able to take your company in the direction, that you need to, that you want to for business, right, being a part of that and also access to capital, that you guys were able to raise, you know, given the strong businesses that you're building and people wanting to invest and change, so, you know, you were able to take the reins and raise on your own terms, right?

Like I said, Harman, I love that you mentioned community. You know, I think a misconception that people come in with is, you know, oh, I don't have a large existing community to raise from already, right? And maybe that's sort of that misnomer that you're touching on there, harming around, you know, crowdfunding, which is a phrase and a term I personally, dislike because, you know, people are making these investment opportunities, but I guess that's what happens when you let congress name things.

But for you guys, that misconception of people's thinking, oh, you know, I don't have a big audience, how can I go do this, right? And you guys have all proved that you don't need to, right? These communities will find you, right? Particularly in the Cleantech space where a lot of these communities exist already. You know, Harmon, you mentioned the article that kind of took off, right? Some of them are just getting it out there in the world for people to see it in these communities say, oh, you know, basically, I've been waiting for this, right?

You know, cause Teague, your end users and the consuming, consumer, a mixed consumer and lithium there. You know, they're not buying lithium directly from you. So, I'd be curious to just go around and hear what you guys have experienced from running your raises publicly, right? And the ability to tap into these communities. Any interesting anecdotes that you've experienced of people, reaching out because there are these pockets of, you know, people wanting to pay, invest for a return, right? B) to investing companies that they're like, oh, these companies are changing the world. So whether it was directly through paid media or existing communities, can you guys talk about the experience you've had in tapping into these communities and also the response that you've had from them?

Manuel, I want to start with you on that one.

Manuel Rendon: Thank you, yeah, no, absolutely. I think that once we figured out that we could have an impact in the market and that the message that we're crafting in the equity funding campaigns, you know, is resonating with the public, then we noticed that we could turn the same marketing capability into selling products and that is a that is a pretty easy shift because most of the things that you require to have a D2C business, you develop those for your equity grant funding and paying meaning relationship with um marketing agencies, you know, understanding how the need to see D2C channels work from, you know, the algorithm at Meta and how to operate the, you know, social media and the internet to your favor, so for us it was an easy transition going from selling stock to selling products and as we all know that's one of the best tools ever made by humans, you know, AI and the Internet put together allows companies like ours to essentially have an infinite amount of pragmatically, limitless amount of eyeballs to show your products. Not only that, but, if you have a niche like the 3D printed market, it becomes so easy because the algorithm already knows who is out there. So instead of us shooting a video for an equity funding campaign, then we just go ahead and shoot a video for our products and we know we're more familiar with the entire process and it was very easy for us to, you know, to, to leverage and capitalize on the, on the market now instead of selling stock for selling products because we did equity crowdfunding and and and everything that we learned during that process.

Jon Stidd: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing that. I think, Harmen, you touched on this a little bit, the article that took off, right? You all fall in this overlap of not just material sciences, right, but, you're building this hardware. There's a lot of, you know, air compressors in these tires, like that sort of thing, right? And you fit in this clean tech space. Did you get any interest in sort of inbound from the communities that took hold and, you know, what did they share with you about why they were investing? Harman, if you're, if you're able to hear me there, the audio may have cut out.

Harmen van Kamp: Sorry, was that directed to me?

Jon Stidd: Yeah, Herman, I'd be curious you all operate in this interesting uh sort of venn diagram overlap of, you know, it’s both clean tech, right, and there's a hardware element to it as well. So I'd be curious, you know there's communities around, if anything bubbled up from those different communities, where, you know, you had interest inbound from them in terms of why they were investing.

Harmen van Kamp: So we did get a lot of people thinking along with us. It's not always helpful, I must say, I mean, we always appreciate people thinking along with us, but it's a highly engineered product and we're dealing with the mining industry.

So you do get very interesting conversations with people that have been in the mining industry and they just said, look, I get it. And what I see also when we're managing, yeah, I'm not a big social media fan, but on Facebook at the when we're dealing with people on Facebook, um, you know, they are very good conversation starters and it just shuts down all the negativity and it brings a lot of people to the table. Oh, I never knew about this, or now you make me think, and OK, this is perhaps a good idea.

So, so our product is not a B2C, so we don't sell to to consumers, but the people that think along with us that happen in the business to create a huge amount of awareness which again pulls in more people, first of all, to really think and rethink what we're doing, and then, you know, tantalizes them to, to become part of that community.

Jon Stidd: Fantastic. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, I like the way that you phrase it, right? The ability to find pockets of people that think along with you. You know, there's folks in mining who, you know, they're basically saying, you know, hey, I didn't even need to read the website, you know, I get what you're doing, and I love that.

Teague, for you, as an Austin-based company, I'm also in Austin. I've had the pleasure of being at some of the events with the investors there, swarms of investors. It's just super cool to see that in person. As a side note, it's one of those things that it's really interesting about raising capital online, right? There's this digital component. And while you touched on this, it's like, oh, all of the eyeballs that you can, can garner via digital, but you still want to have that sort of investor experience where it feels a little bit 1 to 1. Teague for you all in the lithium space, right? A lot of communities around that, lithium being white hot. When you're in person with those investors, do they talk about it more from the community base? Is it a financial return? Is it both? What are they saying to you in terms of their affinity to clean tech in the space, um, for, you know, why they invested?

Teague Egan: Yeah, I think, I think it's a bit of both. At the end of the day, any investment, really any investment is predicated on financial returns. Like, let's be honest. So, that is probably the first and foremost reason that anybody invests. We've had a pretty good track record with hitting milestones and continuing to achieve higher share prices based on those accomplishments, both from an institutional side and a retail side. Right now, this is all still on paper, right? We haven't had any sort of liquidity event or, you know, go public or change of control, but on paper, investors' share price has now been marked up several times, which is, you know, a good thing. I mean that's how all accredited investors and, and angel slash, venture capitalists work.

They make investments as more investors come on, that's typically at a higher price, and they hope for some sort of exit event. So, I have those conversations with investors then there's obviously the impact side, like what we're doing is a huge need in the supply chain and basically the thesis is that if you believe in the transition to electric vehicles, and electric vehicles.

You know, taking over market share, then batteries are needed for that and, and then therefore lithium is needed to make those batteries. So we play a critical, integral process in kind of the supply chain of batteries and, and therefore electric vehicles. So there's a lot of questions about that and about, you know, what our next big milestones are, how our progress is with developing our technology and, and our projects, and I think that, you know, it's somewhat of a community.

You know, I'm not gonna sit here and say that like all my investors know each other and are talking like on message boards and things like that, but there's, there's definitely a community in the clean tech world. Be it, you know, like Tesla owners clubs, like those people are friends and those people are advocates of the energy transition and stuff that we're doing. We obviously try to have some events and stuff at our facilities here in Austin.

Like you said earlier, you know, it's not something like that, we don't sell directly to consumers. It's almost similar to maybe say like an Nvidia play, like, it's not like Nvidia is selling chips to, you know, your average retail consumer, but I think that's the type of supply chain mindset that our investors are seeing.

We're in the supply chain of batteries that are gonna power, you know, essentially, hopefully all types of mobility devices from cars to other, whereas Nvidia is in supply chain of AI and data centers and you're not to say that we would have the type of returns that Nvidia had, but you know there's that similar kind of mindset of investing into critical supply chains for future technologies.

Jon Stidd: Yeah. And I, I like how you mentioned the milestones that you spoke about, right? And there, well there is a community, you know, that's not gonna max out your raise, right? You know, people are looking for a financial return. I do just find, you know, clean tech, it does, there are pockets of people that, you know, make it easier to target, but, you know, ultimately, you know, people are looking for a return. So, you know, maybe some of them don't care about Cleantech, but I like what you talked about because, you know, it's not just the communities that are out there already, it's the ones that you start to build, right? So T, you talk about hitting those milestones that you've hit, right? And I've seen it on live raises for you all when you hit those milestones and then go back to that community and say, hey, we told you we were gonna do ABC, right? Now we're gonna go do XYZ and we're raising capital again.

You get that incredible response, right? And I know, you know, all three of you have done that to some degree across your capital raises, and that really shows the power of building community, bringing them into your brand. So, you know, I think that's important for everybody to know that's out there, that sort of I think of it like a glacier, right? Cause it's, it kind of, you know, it can build slowly, but it can be really powerful and forceful as you have these milestones, as you update your community and tell them what's going on because, you know, it's not just your investor list that you're building, you're building a list of, of followers, right? And all these email addresses that you have, who maybe they didn't get in the last round, but as you continue to send these updates, right, they could come back and either reinvest or make a first-time investment. So, you know, I think that's one of the powers of digital capital raising that you guys are all executing on. So there's an element of, you know, investor capital that comes from that, but I'm curious, just from a brand building perspective, right? If anything has come from that, you know, Harman, I know you mentioned you're not indeed a D2C, right?

We've had raises in the past where you know, companies have landed a B2B banking customer as a byproduct of their raise. I'm curious if you have any interesting anecdotes of, you know, brand building that happened, you know, whether that was with partners that you're trying to manufacture with or introductions that were made, anything that has happened as a result of you putting your brand out there in the world through a digital capital raise and seeing the benefit come back through you that maybe wasn't even directly invested capital.

It's OK if the answer is no. I put you on the spot there.

Harmen van Kamp: I'm thinking actually no, the thing is we don't need many clients. We don't need many suppliers, you know, we're dealing with mining companies, so we're, they typically don't get involved with us on that level. OK, so to that point, it does give a lot of validation in a way to your product as well.

Um, again, some VC’s say, oh we don't touch that is dangerous and, and for me in Dutch you would say the unknown is, is what you're scared of.

I just don't really know how it works because it's still relatively new.

Uh, so, you know, the question of what comes up, what does it look like on the capital it's actually just one line item and how do you communicate with them.

It's not that difficult. Like you said, you throw out a good quarterly report and you get fantastic responses and create real expectations that are obtainable, and yeah, if you hit them, make sure you communicate that.

But when it comes down to, to us helping the business to the next level, we've had some references to it. But dealing in mining companies that are typical clients, you know, we have to go through at least 6, 7, 8 departments. So there's a lot of people that have said, hey, I know someone, you know, I know a tire fitter. Well, it's actually not the person I need to talk to. I need to speak to procurement and to purchasing and to innovation, and then I need to bring it to management level and then to implementation and then risk assessment. So, just in our case, it's rather complex and it takes years to yeah, to nurture these relationships, and it's almost impossible that with one phone call you get the right person. Well, it's one of the right people, on the call. So for us that hasn't been a value add, again, in our case.

Jon Stidd: I'm glad you've had the experience of leveraging those investor updates. I see that Jason asked a question here around, you know, how do you leverage some of those big announcements. Um, we just see it as table stakes being able to, you know, continue to update this community and keep them engaged, so I'm glad you're doing that on that front.

Manuel, for you, somebody who, uh, there is a D2C component of what you do. I know which has had some traction recently. Can you talk about any of the brand building of, you know, what happens when you put time blast out there in the world through a digital capital is and what has come back to you again, sort of maybe not invested capital directly, but, you know, inbound partnerships like that sort of thing.

Manuel Rendon: Yeah, no, I think the future, it's definitely going to be related to equity crowd funding. I think that it happened in many aspects of human life, I think, equity funding 5 years ago was, or even a little bit more so was was looked down upon much like back in the day when you met your wife through an online dating site and people were like, oh, what did you guys meet and you're like afraid to say online because it is not looked up-right, but nowadays it's the other way around I think the future it's definitely crowdfunding because the level of scrutiny that we have gotten is through the roof.

Every little argument that we make out there, all of our patents and all of our products have been continually, scrutinized and that's good, you know, because it means that the companies that do make it out uh they funding into let's say an IPO event or something like that, those companies are potentially better off than a company that maybe grew through, you know, just some venture capital and institutional funding that didn't get the level of of scrutiny that only comes with thousands up and thousands of investors looking into your patents looking into every detail. In our particular case, I think that yes we can, you know, if we get our manufacturing going, we can rival a big petrochemical company, but that's not the point I think, unlike let's say lithium production, plastic is so tightly controlled by a few number of companies and they already produced a super high quality, very cheap material. So for us to penetrate that saturated market, it was difficult. However, thanks to equity crowdfunding, we saw an opportunity out in the market and if you follow, many of the companies that have reached a $1 trillion dollar valuation, typically D2C they have somewhat of a component. So in our particular case we have many technologies, chemical technologies.

And we have been busting our asses to find ways to make our business model a B2C model so that we also have a path to become a $1 trillion dollar company and we think that opportunity is out there, but, equity crowdfunding is an essential part of building our brand because every month we get to a new level of scrutiny I think and there's no going back if you surpassed all of your concerns all of the questions that people may have about your technology, you launch your product, people love it, people like it. It's very difficult for you, I think, to fail out there once you have a proven track record for raising funds, and for producing products. I think this is the future and, and, you know, we're happy that we're here.

Jon Stidd: That's great. Well, yeah, sunlight is the best disinfectant. So, you know, people, all the eyeballs coming into it. I love what you said about the analogy to dating apps, which I totally get, right? I joke, you know, if you were gonna reinvent raising capital today in the world of the internet, you probably wouldn't start with this analog and conversations, right? You'd leverage the power of the internet to raise capital for your company. I’m just a huge fan of what you three have done to propel that forward because, yeah, in the early stages of equity crowdfunding, I think there are, it was just a different time period and there's a much higher quality caliber. Companies raising capital now and you know, these eggs continue to hatch as they either grow or have liquidity events, right, you know, some of the early companies are now on the NASDAQ and it's really great to see that maturation process happen across the industry, with great companies like the ones that you guys are leading.

Teague, touch on the community question just as the, the last go around here in the panel before we move on to some thoughts on Capitol Stack. But as the one who's done the most number of rounds here, right? I think EnergyX may be able to fill a stadium with the number of investors there. I'd love for you to tie that into what that means when you all have an update, right, and the capital that you're able to raise on the back of that continued progress now that you have that sort of glacial momentum going, or even, when you open up the new facility in Austin, what that means for, you know, investors coming out to that. So how has the community contributed to the brand that you've built?

Teague Egan: Yeah, absolutely, I mean. As you have success, it's certainly compounding. You know, the first, the first, uh, reg CF we did was about I think $1.4 million or so, and then the second Rex CF was like $3.3 million and then the first Reg A+ and the 3rd overall crowdfund offering we did was about $7 million.

And then last year we knocked out of the park and did the full $75 million Reg A+ for our 4th retail offering. So there's been momentum, there's been learning, you know, learning what works, what doesn't work, building a larger and larger investor base. I think we have, you know, close to 40,000 investors now. As long as you are executing on milestones and continue to progress the company forward and they're hitting, you know, whatever it may be like re revenue marks or profit marks or operational milestones.

You know that's exciting for not only myself and people that work at EnergyX, but also the investors because they know that, you know, theoretically their investment is growing.

So when we have announcements or when we have events at our ribbon cutting for our new facility in Austin, I think we had a few 100 people come out, you know, that included, uh, partners and investors, I didn't just invite anybody from all over, but we invited investors that were and that lived in Texas. So maybe people hopped on a flight and came down, but yeah, it was, it's exciting that this is, you know, now kind of mainstream. I thought that was a pretty good analogy, Manuel, about online dating, where, you know, something that maybe looked at is not the norm initially and then like takes the main stage and kind of becomes the status quo, not to say that raising money online through Rex CF or Reg A+ is quite there yet, but it's certainly widely accepted. Case in point with what EnergyX did, we had one of the most successful Reg A+ out there, and now we're talking to the SEC about how we can increase the limits and all these companies that could take they could have more benefit and more impact, and investors that could have more access to exciting companies that are doing, you know, similar things to us.

Jon Stidd: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, again, just big fan, you know, not only are you guys innovating in the industries that you're in, but also for raising capital this way in general, right? Um, so a lot of good learning there.

It's gonna go back and this is the, the final segment here and we'll jump into some Q&As. So we'll try to keep this one a little bit more brief. So we have some time for Q&A. There's a lot of questions here in the thread. Harman, you had mentioned it earlier, right? And I love that you had spoken about, you know, hey there, they want it when a VC comes in, they're wondering what that cap table looks like and you, you know, tell them, you know, hey, it's one line item on the cap table. Can you guys just broadly talk about your capital stack? And sort of alleviate some of those concerns because we do hear that commonly from potential customers coming in, you know, hey, what are, what are VCs and institutions going to think about this? So Harman, can you share broadly some of the conversations you've had and what those conversations were like with other investors that weren't familiar with equity crowdfunding?

Harmen van Kamp: Yeah, so I treat every investor equally and I did see a few comments coming by, you know, there's, it's time consuming and some of the smallest investors sometimes scream the loudest.

I think it's very manageable as long as you set the expectations right. So I clearly say to everyone, look, there's a quarterly update and, and it will come, but you know, I can't just, if anything happens straight away, throw it out in the open because, well, in our case, definitely with engineering, you know, things change all the time, designs change, we're upgrading it, we're updating it.

So that's the way I think, to control it, webinars have helped us a lot, that, you know, people get very excited about what's going on and seeing a face behind the company. I think that will help massively, that that's just just a piece of paper coming through. I found it very manageable. It's very doable, as long as you, yeah, are on the front foot of that communication and like Teague said, you know, everyone wants to hear what you're doing. There's an awful lot of people that have put money in and just forget about it. I've, I've seen that as well, but equally so there's a lot of people that are so passionate about it, to be part of it. I actually have received quite a few ideas on what to do and how to create mission statements and vision statements. So, yeah, I enjoy it.

Jon Stidd: That's great. I love that you touched on webinars underutilized medium that people have to do updates, right? And it provides a substantive update and gives that 1 to 1 feel to it too. Manuel, any comments that you have on sort of, you know, alleviating concerns around the capital tax, you know, have you known your success in equity crowdfunding dissuaded other investors or have you just, you know, not needed to, to go that route?

Manuel Rendon: Its legislation is actually in favor of the companies to go this route instead and it makes a compelling case for companies to go. In the IPO without an underwriting firm, there's also a significant amount of exposure. However, if you go and you disclose everything that's happening that may be a risk for potential investors. The legislation is on your side, so it doesn't matter how odd it is if you think it's a risk, you just put it in the Form C, Form A, or whatever it's the regulation that you're working with, and then you're gonna be fine. I think that managing investors is easy. We have over 6000 investors right now and we use Klaviyo, an automatic system to reach out to all of the investors, and typically I would say a very small percentage of the investors will reach out and, you know, be asked tough questions. Most of them, if you maintain an open dialogue and you essentially disclose everything you're doing, most investors are gonna be happy with you. Remember these people put money in because they believed in you, right? So they're most likely to be your friends and your enemies. Now having said that, of course, I would recommend everyone to disclose everything they're doing that there's no risk of disclosing. There is risk in not disclosing, but once you've disclosed everything on your forms, I think, you know, even an alienated investor has no claims because he invested knowing the risk that you told him beforehand. So I think from that perspective it's a great tool to have and I don't really see much problem handling thousands of investors in all honesty.

Jon Stidd: Yeah, and thanks for diving into some of the functionality that you used for that. I think people get a little concerned about it and you know, you're able to use things like Klaviyo to do that sort of outreach. Teague, I want to talk about what you had mentioned. It sounds like there's a little bit of a, like a volley where, you know, you're able to raise equity crowdfunding, right, and then potentially need some institutional investment. You can go to them and say, you know, hey, we just raised them. Is that because It helps validate that valuation in the market, and you know, they see this momentum that you have, and you share a little bit more about how you leverage that.

Teague Egan: Yeah, absolutely. There's certainly some of that in there. For us, it's all about continuing to hit milestones, as we scale up our technology to commercialization.

Ultimately, EnergyX needs to go build big lithium production plants, but these will be like billion dollar revenue per annum plants, but it takes a lot to get there. So we brought in huge strategic partners, including General Motors, POSCO, which is a big Korean steel and battery company, and Eni, the multinational oil and gas company out of Italy. When we brought them in our Series B, they obviously had questions about the retail offerings that we would do. It's something that's still generally unfamiliar to institutional or corporate investors, but, we created comfort with those investors based on the SEC regulations - it's black and white in the SEC like, these are all, you know, all the investors that come in through Reg A+ or one line item on the cap table and things like that. So we really create comfort with our institutional partners, using Reg A+ or crowdfunding is kind of like a baseline of evaluation has been something that's been discussed in meetings. Obviously, institutional investors bring somewhat different value than a retail investor. Number one, they can invest, you know much larger check sizes, $10, $20, $50 million dollar checks. That's not something that retail investors can do. And with that comes, you know, certain rights, for preferred shareholders. They also are bringing, you know, strategic value, like being a customer, right? Ultimately, you know, GM could be our biggest customer. So there's value in that. So they could get discounts because of that strategic value that that they bring, but, you know, nonetheless, like, all the money that we've raised has been very important for our mission and continuing to hit milestones and objectives and the people that invested in the first Reg A+ or the first Reg CF, you know, have gotten tremendous returns on paper from where they invested and I hope that that continues to be the trend, you know, as we continue to scale and commercialize our technology.

Jon Stidd: Well, it's certainly been exciting to watch and thank you for sharing your experience in that, all of you guys, you know, it's, we've run into that, people are concerned, you know, will raising equity crowd funding sort of dissuade other investors, right? And it's clear that that's not the case.

I want to save the final 6 minutes for Q&A. I was hoping to do the last 10. I'm gonna cherry pick some of these guys, these questions in here, then if you three have, you know, any experience in piggybacking on that, I'd love for you to just join in on the conversation. One of the first ones I see here, and just for everybody, a lot of questions in here, in the email that we send out probably next week, there's a lot of questions to answer. I want to get back to all of your questions and make sure we do answer them, but I'm gonna cherry pick a few here. So Jerry, you know, my first experience with crowdfunding, is there a method for determining crowdfunding interest before diving in, right? Yes, testing the waters. Another thing that probably could have been named better, that's like the official name that they have for it there. So that would be a testing the waters campaign. I think EnergyX has had some success in this with when they closed a round opening up a test in the waters campaign so that, you know, people can continue to fill out, say, you know, hey, I'm indicating interest in reserving shares here. So, yeah, Jerry, there's a function for that for companies to um test the water, so to speak.

Next one here, Renji. OK, so I, yes, I get that most of the money comes in the final weeks. So all three founders here are certainly familiar with that, but are you sitting around, you know, watching your campaign that long? Don't people have better things to do? Yes, we want to make sure that all of these founders are, you know, spending their time on the business.

Guys, you know, I know this is part of the marketing approach that we typically share, you know, hey, you wanna, you know, test slowly and linearly right, making sure that we're scaling up and in line with benchmarks so that we can spend efficiently on your way there.

So, Renji, there's an optimization approach to that. We want to make sure that the benchmarks are on track with what we've seen for digital capital raises. There's also the dynamic that, you know, in that final 30 days, it's like anything, everybody needs a deadline, right? I can imagine that happens in the institutional VC world. All sudden when that, you know, lead investor comes in, things start filling up right now there's a deadline. That is part of the approach we typically see anywhere from 50-60% of the capital raised in that final month, and I know it's high pressure for all the founders on here, but it is part of the dynamic. We're trying to scale up, spend efficiently on the way there, and that means message testing, what assets work best, what channels are working best, and then ultimately leveraging those learnings, plus time-based scarcity to finish out the round efficiently.

We've got 3 minutes left here. We'll see another one, OK.

Teague Egan: John you should keep going and answer some of these questions, but, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bounce.

Jon Stidd: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I'm just, I'm doing a read along here. Teague, thanks so much for joining you guys can jump as well just so everybody knows. I'm gonna stay on and answer some more questions. We'll shoot a note. The guys, seriously, thank you so much. This is a real blast to do. I appreciate it.

All right, in the final couple of minutes here, we'll answer a few more. How does everyone find the pressure of so many investors and are you afraid of anything legally having so many investors? That question is from George. Yeah, I think Manuel touched on this, you know, not the legalities of it, but just, you know, how to communicate with people in terms of the scale of those investors. There's a lot of systems that make that easy. Time glasses on Klaviyo, so they're able to leverage that to communicate to their investors. Harman, you know, touched on this as well, how to do regular updates and letting them know that you'll send quarterly updates. So it sounds like some good expectation setting and transparent communication, it is just a good way and a best practice to do that.

We have one more minute left.

Let's see here. Alexandra, we have hundreds of investors on our cap table already. That's a lot to manage. It is. I also find smaller investors sometimes demand more attention. Harman mentioned this. What have the panelists' experiences been with crowdfunding as it relates to adding small investors to the cap table can be a huge drain on resources.

I'm happy to answer on Harman's behalf, but it sounds very much Harman like what you were talking about there. Sometimes those are some of the louder voices. You treat everybody equally, incredible best practice. But it sounds like, you know, part of your response to them is, you know, hey, we do quarterly updates. That's just how we run the business. So I think it sounds like some clear communication that you have with them, and then, you know, sticking to your, to your word and your best practices about, you know, how to yeah, deliver updates to them on a quarterly basis, is that correct?

Harmen van Kamp: Yeah, absolutely. And it's also fine to agree to disagree. Don't be afraid to tell people that, look, OK, you know, you've invested in my company, we're the management team that you put your trust in. We're the industry product engineer experts here.

So I take it on board. I'll have a look at it, but again, just got more than even with 10 people, even with 4, 5 board members, there's always one that disagrees with everything.

So you have that anyways, but you need to be able to learn how to navigate that. And again, it's, it's very fine to sometimes say thank you very much. I'll take it on board, but you know, sometimes we agree to disagree.

Jon Stidd: We'll put, well, I know we're at the top of the hour and actually a minute past. So Manuel, Harman, seriously, thank you guys very much. This is a lot of fun to come on and discuss with you. For everybody, we didn't get your questions. I've mentioned, we'll send out a follow-up email that tries to answer everything. There's a lot of good questions here that we didn't get to, but a wonderful discussion that just left us less time for Q&A. So I wanna say thanks to everybody who attended and another thanks to Harman, Manuel, and Teague. So I really appreciate it guys. Thank you very much.

Manuel Rendon: Thank you for having me, man. I appreciate it.