Donnell Baird created BlueCower to address a major problem central to the global effort to tackle climate change. It’s a big problem, with investors pouring in more than $100 million in debt and equity financing to help solve the problem. About one-third of the carbon emissions in the United States come from the energy needed to heat buildings. Most of the energy comes from oil and gas, which leads to the problem of carbon emissions. Donnell finally wondered, “What if we could change the energy source? What if we electrified buildings instead?
Donnell Baird, Founder, Block Power
As with many creative stories, however, Donnell didn’t arrive at this particular problem overnight. In fact, he spent several years building BlocPower before he realized it was the right issue to tackle. Every great story has a central conflict that the protagonist must overcome. The bigger the conflict, the better the story. In Susan Collins’ best-selling book The Hunger Games, for example, protagonist Katniss Everdeen must overcome impossible odds to win the games and survive. That is the main conflict of the story. In the world of startup stories, the conflict in the story is the customer problem the founder and his team choose to attack. The story of how Donnell came to the problem of “electrification” is informative for any entrepreneur struggling with a similar challenge to solving a real problem.
Donnell started BlocPower in 2014 with the general idea of ”green buildings” in cities and hiring local people to make it happen. He grew up in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, the son of Guyanese immigrants, with a dysfunctional heating system. He recalled that his family used to heat the apartment by turning on the stove and opening the oven door. Donnell points out that they should open the windows of the apartment to avoid being killed by carbon monoxide! This was a very inefficient method of heating buildings on a city scale; For the family itself, it was very unhealthy. Donnell joined the Obama campaign as an adult. As he drove down the streets in 20-degree weather in places like Cleveland and Bridgeport, he saw apartment buildings everywhere with the windows open. Not much has changed. Donnell realized that there was a real “power neglect” or “power poverty” in these communities, and he wanted to do something about it.
Donnell worked on this problem in the Obama administration, but with little success. Later, while pursuing an MBA at Columbia, he decided he could attract venture capital to attack the problem at scale and build a business. His first plan was to try to switch the main energy source in buildings from oil to gas. Gas was a fossil, but it burned cleaner than oil. This was the first problem he set out to solve. He attracted a team, built a business plan, found investors, signed utility partners and was ready to go.
Around that time, he met Eric and Wendy Schmidt, who were interested in investing in climate change mitigation. When he met the Schmidts, they were enthusiastic about the work, but reluctant to invest in a gas-related solution. Also at this time, Donnell and his wife had a child. Along with his own son, Donnell dug deep into climate science to make sure he had the right solution for the planet’s future. As Schmitts suggested, he realized that gas was only a bridge fuel. The real goal was to develop clean electricity generated by renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydropower. He realized that he had to rewrite his creative history with a different conflict. Instead of solving the problem of simply moving away from oil, he decided to attack the challenge of making buildings generate electricity.
At the time, a new technology, the air source heat pump, was being developed. Manufacturers Mitsubishi and Daikin have found ways to turn cold air into hot air even in cold weather. This state-of-the-art technology, powered by electricity, will be part of the BlockPower solution toolkit, which includes hardware, software and installation/service to make it seamless for building owners. The installers are hired from the local area. In the year It was February 2018 and BlocPower had a new story. Now was the time to get colleagues, partners and investors on board. It was not easy. Their business partner was divided over the decision. He had to rewrite the terms with many utilities. And he had to convince his original investors, Ben Horowitz and Mitch Kapor, that this was a better problem to solve. These were key investors.
Donnell When the lights went out in midtown Manhattan in the winter of 2019, he knew he had picked the right problem to solve. He remembers that night in part because a heartbroken Jennifer Lopez canceled her concert at Madison Square Garden and made headlines. At the time, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo was considering approving a permit to run a natural gas pipeline to supply New York City and Long Island to address such power problems. But despite the uproar over his disappearance, Cuomo ultimately turned down the request. In the short term, it will negatively affect the water quality around the proposed pipeline; And in the long run, investing more in fossil fuels won’t help reduce emissions in the state by 85% by mid-century. In effect, Cuomo was saying that New York needed to move away from gas now and toward clean sources of electricity. BlocPower had chosen the exact right problem to solve. JLo wasn’t happy, but Donnell knew he was onto something.
Today, BlocPower is directly contracting with municipalities to run large-scale electrical projects in neighborhoods from Oakland, California to Ithaca, New York. Solving a big problem leads to a big opportunity. BlocPower has a bright future (pronounced), because it seems to have picked the right problem to solve.
