The Building Efficiency Podcast Featuring Catalyst Power CEO Gabe Phillips

Catalyst Power CEO Gabe Phillips recently joined Jim Schafer on The Building Efficiency podcast to share his journey to founding Catalyst Power, and how he’s helping commercial and industrial (C&I) customers decarbonize their operations through retail energy supply and onsite generation. The conversation dives into Catalyst Power’s mission to make distributed generation more accessible to businesses, while also touching on the critical roles of people, culture, and hiring in scaling an energy company.

Below, you’ll find a few highlights from their discussion.

You can listen to the full episode here: https://www.buildingefficiencypodcast.com/podcast-episodes/141-entrepreneurship-energy-and-leaving-things-better-than-you-found-them 

 
The interview below has been edited for brevity. 

Thoughts on Entrepreneurship: 

I believe that, as an entrepreneur, you always have to be comfortable wearing many different hats. And so I learned that it's important to constantly educate yourself and be willing to put on those different hats, sometimes from one hour to the next or, hopefully, more orderly than that, day to day. But it's also really important to surround yourself with a team that can do things you can't, which can be a little uncomfortable for people at times. Managing folks who could do things that you have zero familiarity with and figuring out how to, as their coach and manager, put the right players in the right positions and help everyone to succeed is one of the tougher challenges, that I've found as an entrepreneur.

On Catalyst Power's Unique Energy Model: 

We have competitors in each silo of our business, but no one who does them all in one place. And I think that's a competitive edge that we generally have that we try to lean into. So we don't have to do as much education, since they're being pitched by an on-site generation guy. They're getting pitched by a retail supplier. They're aware of it, researching it, working with a broker, having an advisor, doing energy-efficiency audits, etc. But they don't ever have one neck to strangle where they have a solution for all of them in one place, with the same credibility that can be transferred from, "oh, you've been my retail supplier of record, you give me good data, you provide me great service. What else can you do for me?" Like, that answer is always really easy for us. "Well, here's the list." No one else is gonna give you that. They're always gonna stop short. 

Enjoyed the conversation? Contact our Energy Experts today to learn how you can partner with Catalyst Power on cogeneration or other energy-efficient solutions for your business.