TIP202: INVESTING IN RENEWABLE ENERGY

W/ BRYAN BIRSIC

5 August 2018

On today’s show, we learn about investing in the renewable energy market. Our guest is Bryan Birsic and he’s the founder of Wunder Capital. His company invests over $100M in the renewable energy market and has a deep understanding of how the market might progress in the future.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • How do renewables do as an investment during a recession?
  • What are the bull and the bear case for investors in renewables?
  • Why are electricity prices so volatile, and why are they sometimes negative?
  • What would happen if we took away all subsidies in renewables?

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Preston Pysh  0:02  

On today’s show, we talk to the founder of Wunder Capital, Mr. Bryan Birsic. Bryan’s forte is renewable energy. As you’ll quickly see in this conversation, there are many things about renewable energy that are drastically different from fossil fuels and other types of businesses that we typically talk about. If you’re interested in solar, wind or other forms of energy, you will find this discussion quite interesting. 

For example, you will learn about how energy sometimes has a negative price where the producer actually has to pay someone to remove the power off the grid. You will learn whether renewables are a decent investment during recessions. You will also learn about what might happen if subsidies were diminished in the marketplace. 

Without further delay, we hope you enjoy this very thoughtful conversation with the talented Bryan Birsic. 

Intro  0:53  

You are listening to The Investor’s Podcast where we study the financial markets and read the books that influenced self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.

Preston Pysh  1:13  

Welcome to The Investor’s Podcast. We are thrilled to have everyone with us today. Like we said in the introduction, we have Bryan Birsic with us today. 

Bryan, how are you doing? 

Bryan Birsic  1:23  

I’m doing great this morning. 

Preston Pysh  1:25  

That’s fantastic. Well, we are thrilled to have you here with us. I want to start off by setting the foundation of what you’ve accomplished in a very short amount of time. 

You’ve been in business for five years and in that short amount of time, you have rapidly grown your business. You just recently raised $112 million in venture capital. Talk to us about the struggles and talk to us about the passion that you have for renewables.

Bryan Birsic  2:01  

More than a few struggles along the way, as always. It is interesting that you started the interview around the topic of passion because Wunder Capital actually was born from three serial founders in the technology startup space. 

[They] were all looking for something that took what they believed in changes that they wanted to see. [They were also looking into] problems that they were excited about solving and combined it with a background in technology startups and how to build them, how to raise capital, and how to build scalable software.

There was really an outgrowth of us trying to take our backgrounds and combine it with our passions. We really felt as though as people that are of course a part of the company, have to go out and build the startup. The ability to throw yourself into it and get up on a hard day or do that extra leg of travel or get another note from a venture capitalist with a smile and go right back to work. 

It was so much easier, frankly, for us and just comparing this company to some previous companies that I’ve been involved in. We think it’s just a lot easier when you’re making these hard sacrifices and you know exactly why you’re doing it and be really excited about the impact you can have if you solve the problem you’re going after.

Then from a purely kind of Machiavellian standpoint, and I tell this to VCs sometimes when they’re worried about us being a nonprofit in disguise, that today across hiring and across marketing, having an authentic and compelling story about why what you’re doing above and beyond the economics is exciting, enduring, and impactful. We think this is a huge advantage, irrespective of how you feel about those things. 

Just from a pure, as I said, Machiavellian standpoint, it’s not why we do it, but I do think there’s a good argument to be made. It’s actually a huge economic advantage as well. 

So yes, in a lot of ways Wunder was us taking that passion and combining it with things we knew about. In the case of our CTO, it is solar. In my case, it is software-enabled commercial lending. Then putting all those together with our background and in technology startups. That’s basically where Wunder Capital came from.

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