Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:19:19 · Taylor Francis
[00:19:19] S0: We found it so hard to pick a name. So after we picked this idea, we made a sales deck that was, hey, here's what it is we do, and we went on the road, and we talked to 50 customers in the next month. And we got all the way to being a couple days before signing a contract with our first customer. And we were like, we don't have a name. The sales deck didn't have a logo on the first slide. It had the customer's logo on the first slide. And so we killed ourselves for two weeks trying to pick a name. And The thing we liked about Watershed is, again, back to the outdoors, there's actually two ecological meanings of a Watershed. One is the connected ecosystem of rivers and trees and meadows that all flow out the same river. And that, to us, resonated with the idea that companies are connected in ecosystems of what they produce on carbon, and we were gonna try to enable a cascade of decarbonization. But then the British definition of a watershed is the ridgeline, where if a water drop falls on one side, it goes out to one river valley, and if it falls on the other, it goes out to another. And that's where you get this phrase of the watershed moment, because that is the turning point of, am I gonna be in California or New York by the time I make it to the ocean? Feel, and for all the bad news on climate, for all the bad news on climate policy, it does feel like in the last ten years, we have flipped to the other side of the mountain where the world is gonna decarbonize, and it's just a question of how long it's gonna take. So anyway, time a few outdoorsy threads together around that.
00:20:59 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:20:59] S2: You perfectly teed up my next question, which is at this point, you have major companies, FedEx, Walmart, Airbnb, Spotify, many global banks, and you're not just helping them individually. But to your point of the Watershed, you're actually helping entire ecosystems because there's a network effects to what you're doing. Say more. Help me understand that.
00:21:23 · Taylor Francis
[00:21:23] S0: Yes. Yes. Exactly. So, the carbon in the economy is very connected across supply chains. What's a good example? If you are producing electronic devices, we work with one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the world, your emissions are generally coming from the things you're buying from your suppliers. And it's coming from fabs, and semiconductors, and plastic, and aluminum. And In order to decarbonize, you actually need to work with your supply chain. And that collaboration is not easy, but it's also where all the magic happens. And so, that is our theory of change. Our theory of change is that if this demand signal can come from companies, from regulators, from consumers, it can show up at each stage of a supply chain, in a company making a very concrete decision to switch to clean power, produce a lower carbon material, be more efficient, move a good with an EV truck rather than an internal combustion engine truck. And in order for that to happen, there actually needs to be a means of value exchange between those companies. And that's where keeping score on what's the carbon of each trade off, what's the carbon of each product and decision, enables companies to collaborate on that. So we feel like we're the supporting player. We're behind the scenes. We're just trying to enable these massive companies, massive suppliers with huge impact. But that type of collaboration is the thing that we think can change the world.
00:23:09 · Alexa von Tobel, Taylor Francis
[00:23:09] S2: I love that. And we're gonna talk a little bit about where you think the world is heading in a second. But one thing I just quickly wanted to say, so Watershed Series A was notable in that you were two of the more influential investors of the last few decades. Sequoia's Michael Moritz and Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr co led the round. Before that, in your career, you interned with Sheryl Sandberg. You've had some exceptional people around you, and as you, you know, said you got to work with the Stripe founders. I would love just to get a sense of having been able to be and learn from some really iconic people. What if... What do you feel like you've absorbed from having that be your boardroom? [00:24:00] S0: Yeah. We've been so lucky on investors. I think two things, maybe three things. One is hard work, man. Know? Amen. Really, I don't know that there's a lot of well, it's nice to see people at the very top of their game and realize there's no shortcut. Feel like Mike Moritz and John Doerr, two of the best investors in history, fastest people to respond to an email, most prepped people at a board meeting. They just put in the work, and they put in the hours, and they put in the time. [00:24:39] S2: By the way, Taylor, above that wall is a big joke. It's no shortcuts. [00:24:43] S0: No shortcuts. [00:24:44] S2: There's no shortcuts. And
00:24:46 · Taylor Francis
[00:24:46] S0: There's probably smarter people who have found shortcuts. I definitely have not found them, and it's been comforting to me to see people at the top of their game who... So I I think that's thing one is just the grind and the hard work is true for people who would have a lot of excuses to spend a lot less time and coast on past... I think about John Doerr, who has shown up to tons of our sales pitch meetings, who's helped send introductions to get the first call, who is at his core a seller to this day. So I think that's one thing. Second thing is there's definitely a calmness and a long term orientation that I see in investors who've been a part of some of the greatest companies ever. When we have had our best quarters have been when our investors have said, hey. I think you're not watching the pipeline over here, and you're setting yourself up for a tough quarter two quarters down the road. Or how could we be going even faster given we feel the wind at our back? A lot of what made this quarter good was not your execution. It was the environment. We should be pressing our advantage more than we are. And then we've had bad quarters, and the investors have said, Hey, you got the important thing right, which is you hired the right people, and you made the customers happy. And that's going to turn out in beating your numbers down the road. So I think there's a long term horizon that is also tied to a calm that I've really observed and learned from them. And then the last thing, which is it's a company value for Watershed that I think I admire in a lot of the people that I've been able to learn from, is this notion of people who excel at the intersection of intensity and care. So intensity is competitiveness, drive, hard work, accountability. It really matters for your self satisfaction, your view of yourself that you succeed, that you put great work in. But care is kindness and warmth and giving a damn about what's going on in people's lives outside of work. It's easy to work with people who really spike on one of those. I think it's actually pretty rare to work with people who spike on both, and it's really rare to be a part of a team or an organization that spikes on both. Everyone who's been on our board has been at the intersection of intensity and care. It's one of our operating principles as a company.
00:27:26 · Taylor Francis, Alexa von Tobel
We tell every person that when they interview for a role, so that they can opt out of either the intensity or the care. [00:27:36] S2: The people who opt out of the care are a real self selecting group. [00:27:40] S0: No, I think people opt out of both. Think there are people who hear the words kindness and warmth and don't want a workplace that's about that, and there are people who hear the words intensity and say, wow, that doesn't quite sound like you know, what I wanna bring to this next role, and that's great. And we end up with a, you know, a culture of people who've kinda opted in to both halves of that. [00:28:01] S2: I love that on many levels. I feel like I would enjoy being a teammate at Watershed. This feels... That feels [00:28:09] S0: If only we could be so lucky, Alexa. [00:28:11] S2: I'm I'm like, there's gotta be, like, an internship or something I could apply for. I want to just take a step back. As I think you know, I care a lot about climate. And what's happening with climate right now? Like, just can you give us your point of view? And I don't mean politically. I mean, just what's happening to the planet that we all, as human beings, stewards of this place? What's happening right now? Can you cut through a lot of the noise? Yeah. And I feel like even I'm overwhelmed sometimes by the media of like, what's this and what's... Just facts. Like, what's happening right now,