deMITasse Energies

Starting a company is incredibly difficult. Starting one in #ToughTech like manufacturing clean gas turbines is even more daunting. But in my nearly decade long journey of building deMITasse Energies, the single most difficult thing about building a company is finding the right people. You can have every other resource at your disposal, but without the right people — the company is going nowhere. Period. Unfortunately most people are not crazy enough to jump into a boat that’s most probably going to sink. The few you may find, are often unaffordable. I’ve had to build a lab scale demonstration and two months of convincing, to get my own [then] girlfriend onboard, let alone strangers with a knack for single crystalline manufacturing at Rolls Royce. But because my first ever VC pitch ended with a valuable advice — “it’s unfair, but without a team you are uninvestable… resourcefulness of building a team with nothing is what makes one an entrepreneur”, I decided to keep my introverted personality at bay and become good at connecting with people. I’m proud to say, over the years I’ve convinced brilliant young engineers to drop out of fine colleges like Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Cornell University, and quit “safe” jobs at companies like Intel Corporation and DRDO, Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India. 🙌🏻 And today I’ve got truly amazing teammates like Vivek Kumar, who ALWAYS make magic happen… even when I can’t. He’s single handedly built our Proof of Concept for US Navy and Indian Navy that not many believed could be done within the budget and timeframe that we had. It is the sheer determination and passion of such engineers that brilliant solutions to great challenges like #ClimateChange can be engineered. And that makes me love my job, even if it’s taken me slightly afar from building things myself. #Team #Hustle #LDES #EnergyStorage #CleanTech #MadeInUSA Vivek Kumar deMITasse Energies NSRCEL Megha Rawat National Renewable Energy Laboratory Vital Rajan Ram Thayi Amit Mital DOE Grid Deployment Office Social Alpha National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, Haryana Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Breakthrough Energy Drummi B. Lowercarbon Capital Bloomberg Green BloombergNEF Saur Energy International Magazine Forbes Green Climate Fund

During our first Proof of Concept demonstration for deMITasse Energies #LDES technology, our compressor exploded! The 23kg piston flew at near supersonic speed, missing my head by a few millimeters, but breaking my wrist instead. This was during #COVID lockdown, so help wasn't readily available. I grabbed my scooter, had a colleague sit behind, and drove 12km with a broken hand to a hospital willing to take me in for first aid. Couple of intramedullary rods and several months later, my wrist is okay. Phew! But my obvious nervousness around pressure vessels with a potential to explode is insignificant when compared to the paralyzing fright I get from shooting videos - especially when shot in a fancy studio with [what seems like] a billion cameras all around. But I think this one came out okay. What do you say? p.s. it was all great editing by friends from Pluc.tv, I was most certainly a terrible piece of work for the editors. https://lnkd.in/g_-GV5zH #LongDurationEnergyStorage #CleanTech #StartUp #Interviews #EnergyStorage #Batteries Megha Rawat pluc.tv #Solve Vivek Kumar