S03|11: Building Bold Visions in Renewable Energy with Dan Balaban

Dan  00:02

I remember when they called me that morning telling me they were pulling out of the deal, and I was quite shocked. And, you know, spent about an hour just kind of shocked. Then that afternoon, I was on the phone trying to raise money for Greengate to keep us alive. I had to mortgage my house, and I pretty much went all in in that moment to inject liquidity into the company and keep it going. We were able to raise capital somehow in a really difficult environment.

Leah  00:35

Hello and welcome to Season Three of The Founder Mindset, brought to you by ATB. I'm your host, Leah Sarich, and I'm delighted to be back for another season of talking to Founders about what it's really like to build a company from that first big idea. If you've listened to previous episodes, you know, I was a journalist for over 20 years, so I'm more curious about why anyone would ever want to become an entrepreneur, not so much about the business model, product, market fit and so on. I want to understand why entrepreneurs keep going, why they think they're the ones to solve a massive problem, and why they want to make a real impact in the world. And if you're here, I bet you want to know why too. Let's find out.

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Joining me today in the studio is Dan Balaban, Co-Founder and CEO of Greengate, a company leading the energy transition by developing renewable energy products of scale in North America, including Canada's largest wind and solar energy projects.

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Dan, thank you so much for being here. I realized that in that introduction, you actually do a whole bunch of things that we'll talk about, but we'll get to those. We'll get to those. Let's go right back to the beginning. How did you even get into entrepreneurship? You were what, twenty-five?

Dan  01:47

I started early. I think it really has to do with, I think the way I grew up. I grew up in Calgary. My late father Jack, was an entrepreneur in the energy business. From a very young age, I got exposure to entrepreneurship and a lot of, you know, great mentorship through my dad. So going through school, I was always interested, ultimately, in starting my own thing. I never really went to school with the idea of getting, you know, a job in a company, and moving my way up. I always kind of envisioned that I was going to start my own thing.

Leah  02:25

Oh, cool. And then you did, right?

Dan  02:29

And yeah, and then I did so, you know, grew up here in Calgary. I ended up going to Toronto for University. I graduated with a computer science degree from the University of Toronto, and I started my career in technology consulting, so helping companies use this new technology called the internet to help their businesses. I've always been interested in tech, and I've always been interested in innovation, and then I ultimately, in my mid-20s, started my first company, a company called Roughneck, and what it did was, it was an oil and gas operations management solution. So oil and gas companies would use this software to help them manage various operational things, including their greenhouse gas emissions reporting. And this is going like way back into the late 90s, early 2000s, so that gave me early insight into some of the environmental challenges I could see the energy industry facing, and I had a successful exit from Roughneck. It was my first successful exit at the age of thirty, and I knew the next thing I wanted to do was something green, did my research, and ultimately landed on renewable energy development as the thing that I thought could match my skill set well, and that was more than 18 years ago, and started Greengate with my own money, my brother Jordan, and there's a lot of history there.

Leah  03:58

No kidding, but let's just take a moment to reflect on what that must have been like for you at 30 to sell this company and to, you know, I mean, how did that even feel? You're so young and you've already had this great success really early on.

Dan  04:12

You know, my response to those sorts of things has changed over time. But when I was 30 years old, and I, you know, I successfully exited my first company, I wasn't too interested in taking a break, right? I was interested in getting right back into something, you know, right away. I couldn't wait. And yeah, so I was pretty diligent and eager, and just got back on the hamster wheel right away.

Leah  04:39

Did you take a minute to reflect on that and, like, emotionally process that? But maybe we're not even thinking about that at 30, are we?

Dan  04:45

Yeah, I mean, I did. I mean, I took some time. I took a bit of a breather, I guess, in comparison, but no reflection. I still felt like I had a lot that I needed to do from an entrepreneurial perspective. Still a lot more that, you know, that I wanted to prove and and ultimately, more purpose. Yeah, felt like there was still so much to do.

Leah  05:07

Yeah, cool. Well, that brings us nicely to Greengate. So tell us, what is Greengate?

Dan  05:12

So Greengate is a renewable energy company we started 18 years ago, like I said, with my brother Jordan. We've been behind the developers, behind the largest renewable energy projects in Canadian history.

Leah  05:26

Okay, let's just take a moment there. Like, that's pretty amazing. You've got a big grin on your face, but can we just talk about, like, what you just said there? Like, that is outrageous. That's incredibly impactful.

Dan  05:37

It is. Yeah, thank you for pausing me there, because, yeah, you know, it is a cool thing to reflect on. You know, I think another interesting element is we did it in the hard oil country. So we were focused on doing renewable energy development in Alberta, which actually has the best renewable energy resources in Canada—wind and solar, and also some of you know among the best in North America, however, an interesting place to do the work that we did, especially given you know the the dynamics around oil and gas and renewables can sometimes be seen in a very adversarial manner. I’m a big proponent of—we should be developing it all… gas and renewable energy…

Leah  06:23

Not an and/or situation, it's an “and” situation.  

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Dan  06:27

But plays out in an interesting way. However, Alberta, you know, is a very pro-business place. You know, sound regulatory environment. And you know, when the political conditions are maintained, which is not always the case, it can be a very good place for the sort of business that we did. So yeah, we had very bold ideas, so we started in the business, like I said, we started with our own money, with no previous experience developing power or renewables, but I think a good head on our shoulders, and we were able to attract a really excellent team to support our efforts, but we had a bigger vision than anybody ever had, right? Like our first project that we did was double the size of the largest project in the province at the time, which was developed by ENMAX, right? These are big, multi billion dollar companies we’re competing with. We did double the size, and then our next project was double the size of that, which is the largest project in Canada at the time. And then we followed up with the largest solar project in Canadian history. Yeah, it's pretty cool to have big ideas and be able to see them come into fruition.

Leah  07:32

Where did that boldness even come from, though? Like, how did you get that confidence, and how did you know you had to be bold also?

Dan  07:39

You know, so from a business model perspective in the renewable energy business, there's a lot of steps the company needs to go through to take an idea for a project and turn it into, you know, iron in the ground. There's lots of engineering, lots of permitting, lots of analysis that needs to be done over many, many years. Like these projects take a very long time, and we kind of reached the conclusion that you might as well go as big as one credibly can, because the steps are the same, but there's more, ultimately, more money, more impact with a bigger project. That goes against a lot of conventional thinking, because a lot of companies say, you know, we'll start small, right, and grow from there. But no, we went straight for the top, and we, you know, seemed crazy at the time, but we were persistent and persevered. And like I said, we had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people and partners along the way, and we were able to see our vision come to reality.

Leah  08:39

Wow, that's unbelievable. The other thing that I'm reflecting on when I think of what you've done is these are not, to your point, small projects, but they are projects that will last, arguably, for a lifetime. You know that these will change the trajectory, you could say, of the country.

Dan  08:55

I grew up with the idea that, you know, we're all here for a purpose. We're supposed to leave the world in a better condition than it was when we got here. I think we all have that responsibility. You know, different people can express that in a different way. It doesn't have to be business. It can be community leadership, spiritual leadership, education, business. So it's a vehicle to do it. Sure, I happen to be good at business, so that was the, you know, the vehicle that we used and, or that I used, and again, I'm very proud of the legacy that we've left behind. I think we've demonstrated what's possible with big thinking, what's possible in Alberta. Yeah, I'm very proud of it. I mean, we demonstrated so well that, you know, the political tides completely turned against the renewable energy industry in this province, and at the moment, a very hostile environment to develop renewables. Hopefully that changes, we can get back to seeing this industry grow. But yeah, it's interesting to see how the pendulum swings.

Leah  10:00

It does swing, doesn't it? Yeah, and you guys just keep going, Incredible. The one thing I'm a little bit curious about, too, is you mentioned this—you built this company with your brother. What's that like to work to build with your brother?

Dan  10:12

We actually, about just over two years ago, have largely exited the business at Greengate. So you know, I'm no longer working with my brothers. Our team is much smaller now, but building this thing with my brothers has been unbelievable. They're great human beings that I can trust, incredibly hard-working. Take a relationship that, you know, really difficult to replicate, for sure anywhere else, just the you know, level of trust and common thinking and tremendous joy to work with them. I think it was fantastic, but it does put a bit of a strain, I would say, on a traditional family relationship, because it's… you're intense all the time, right? And difficult to separate, you know, family stuff from business stuff, for sure, but you know, it worked very well for us. You know, now that we've exited the…  You know, the relationship has evolved into something more normal. I'm enjoying that too.

Leah  11:08

That's nice. That's nice. But, you know, in the building of every company, I ask every Founder who sits in this chair the same question. There had to have been one or two or three or many, do or die moments, a pivotal moment when it was like a go, no go situation. Can you reflect back on Greengate’s past and share a story for us?

Dan  11:29

Oh, absolutely. So, yeah, you know, I feel very fortunate for the success that we've been able to have as a company, you know, the projects and legacy that we've been able to deliver for the way we've changed the narrative, for the return, tremendous return that our shareholders have realized, however, it's not a straight path and not an easy path, and we had many ups and downs. So, you know, one that definitely comes to mind for me is the global financial crisis of 2008 that will forever be etched in my memory. So going back to then, there was, I guess, a mini boom in renewables at the time. Renewables have evolved, but the interest has been there for a while. So a lot of interest in renewables at the time. We had a large portfolio of projects that we were looking to finance. We had enough runway to ultimately get that financing concluded. We were working on it for a while. We signed an LOI with a company to advance that portfolio and continue to give us runway. The deal was supposed to close within 60 days, two weeks after we signed the LOI Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the global financial crisis fully took hold. For those of us that were around at that time, capitalism froze. There was no capital flowing. Even banks weren't lending to other banks. Nobody trusted the financial system. Complete freeze of the financial system for several months.

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Leah 12:59

So what did that mean for you guys?

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Dan  13:04

Well, we were out of money, so the deal fell apart that we had, because they're like, well, we can't do it anymore. And we were out of runway because we had enough runway to get this deal done and we felt very confident we'll get the deal done. I remember when they called me that morning telling me they were pulling out of the deal, and I was quite shocked. And, you know, spent about an hour just kind of shocked. Then that afternoon, I was on the phone trying to raise money for Greengate to keep us alive. I had to mortgage my house, and I pretty much went all in at that moment to inject liquidity into the company and keep it going. We were able to raise capital somehow, in a really difficult environment, put wind back on our sales.  

Leah  13:51

You sure did. But let's just take a moment to reflect on what that phone call would have been like for you. How did you feel about that at that moment? You said you took a morning, but that's not a very long time. But let's talk about how it felt that morning.

Dan  14:04

It's like getting the wind knocked out of you. It's quite a shock to go through that sort of moment. But if failure is not an option, which it wasn't like, you know, I had a lot of money invested in the company. I'd raised capital already from third parties… I felt a huge responsibility to continue to see this thing through. And I also felt like there was something there. I tried to maintain a lot of optimism, right? Like this is, you know, this is a temporary moment in time. We just got to continue. Things will get better. And they did. You can feel it, but you can't feel it for too long, because you've got a job to do, so you got to continue going. So I just tried to be optimistic and mentally tough and plow ahead.

Leah  14:51

And you did. What have you learned from that situation, now? I mean, of course, we're well beyond that now, but at that time, what did you learn? From that moment as the Founder.

Dan  15:05

Okay, well, I learned a very important lesson about timing. One can execute their plans perfectly. And I hear this a lot about companies. They're like, okay, you know, we've got this far. We're going to get to the next milestone, and once we get to the next milestone, our valuation will increase. That is not always the case, because external circumstances can really impact even the best laid out plans. So just because things are good, now, one cannot take for granted that those conditions will maintain, and even if you continue to advance your plan, you may not be able to capitalize on it. So, I really learned a lot about timing and taking advantage of windows of opportunity as they open up, because just as quickly as they open, they can close. This is a perfect example of that.

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So, you know, I think it impacted our strategy going forward. We were much more, I guess, vigilant about, you know, external circumstances. Made sure we had parallel tracks for various activities so we could handle various potential contingencies. And, yeah, it's one that ultimately a lesson that I learned and was able to execute as time went on.

Leah  16:21

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You know, there's another story that I think you told me in our prep call that I would love for our listeners to hear. It had to do with that moment when you were trying to get a landowner on side, and you're like… correct me if I'm wrong here, but your competitor had just been there. But you guys came in and you did a deal. Tell the story.

Dan  17:04

So the wonderful thing about the renewable energy industry, you know, it's a really cool business, because you get to interact with so many different types of people, right? So one of the main relationships we have is with landowners, right? So there was a project that we wanted to pursue. We set up a meeting with the main landowner, which is what happened to be a Hutterite colony. So I made an appointment. Drove up three and a half hours to the colony. Got there, said, “We're here to meet the boss.” They said, “Oh, well, the boss isn't here. The boss is with the turkeys.” So we drive, you know, in our cart or vehicle to the turkey barn. “Where's the boss?” “Oh, no, the boss is with the cows.” So then we drive to another place on the you know, we're driving around for probably an hour trying to find the boss. Eventually, we track the boss down. He invites us into his, you know, some very humble dwelling that he lives in, and says, “What can we do? How can I help you?” I said, “Well, you know, we're here to sign your land up like we discussed on the phone.” He said, “Well, I think you're talking to the wrong person.” And he pushes over a card, and it's a card of one of our competitors. He said, “They were here this morning, and they want to do the same thing.” We said, “Well, did they come with a check?” He said, “No.” I said, “I'll write you a check right now, but you need to sign with me today.” Looks at me, thinks about it. He's like, “Okay,” so he wrote in the check. He signed the land up for us, and that was the base of a project that's now operating a $350 million wind project.

Leah  18:48

So, I mean, how did you know to be so bold in that moment, to write the check immediately?

Dan  18:54

Well, we actually hadn't fully done due diligence on the land. It was mostly diligence, right? You know, I've dealt with a lot of people in my life, and I felt like this individual was a person of integrity. I knew I really wanted the land. I came with a checkbook just in case. Came just in case. So, you know, I was mentally prepared. I, you know, it's, it was also a competitive landscape at the time, so I was prepared to make bold moves on a risk adjusted basis. I thought it was a good move to make, and it really was.

Leah  19:28

Yeah, I love that story. Thanks for sharing it. The one thing we also talk a lot about on this podcast is, you know, you're doing these deals, you're being really bold, you're pushing ahead really aggressively, but it's really easy to get lost in some of that work, right? So can you talk a little bit about how being an entrepreneur affected you personally and your personal life?

Dan  19:46

Well, I'd say this is probably a topic, one of the most interesting topics to me right now. You know, like I mentioned, you know, I we largely exited from renewables… business activity at Greengate is significantly scaled down now—a much smaller team. Our investors have done very well. So, you know, did my job. You know, that gave me a lot of time, you know, to really reflect on my life, because I've been an entrepreneur for half my life, almost all my adult life. I'd say the number one thing for me is I did not take care of my personal wellness as nearly as well as I should have. And you know, we have a finite amount of energy as humans, right? And we can choose to direct our energy outwards into building great things, great businesses and you have great legacies, but you know, it's also important to direct some of that energy into ourselves, to keep ourselves healthy, to keep ourselves sharp, you know, physically, mentally, spiritually. So that's actually been the thing I've enjoyed the most, I would say, post exit is this wellness journey that I've been on. I just ran my first half-marathon in June. I used to play a lot of sports growing up, but I haven't been in an athletic mode since my teens… early 20s, and I picked up running last year, and I completed my first half marathon. Yeah, it felt...

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Leah 21:22

That's huge.

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Dan 21:25

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's great. And, but, you know, I learned a lot through my kind of entrepreneurial mindset in terms of how to do it, right, like, turn my health around a lot. Fortunately, I didn't have, you know, any acute health problems, but I just felt depleted, right? And I certainly wasn't capable of running a half marathon. I wasn't even capable of running 100 meters straight, right? But I realized that with purpose, and follow that up with consistent high quality action, just grinding away like I grinded away for years in my business, you know, remarkable things are possible, and I prove that to myself, and I've got my family, you know, running with me and working out and prioritizing wellness. And so it feels great.

Leah  22:12

That's amazing. And I would suggest that you're probably hoping that other young entrepreneurs are hearing this and saying, “Hey, you know, keep this in mind as you're building…”

Dan  22:21

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. My number one piece of advice for any young entrepreneur is, remember that you matter. You're actually the number one priority. If you're not taking care of yourself, then you don't have the ability to take care of the people around you, your business. To be your best version of yourself, you got to start with taking care of yourself. So that's got to be a foundational component to everything. In hindsight, I should have continued more consistently, but it's certainly going to be part of my life going forward, and something that I impress upon my kids and yeah, a strong piece of advice for aspiring or current entrepreneurs—find time for yourself and take care of yourself.

Leah  23:03

I hear you. I hear you. That's good advice, right there. Let's talk about some of these entrepreneurs. You are now an investor with Augur VC. Why don't you tell me a little bit about that?

Dan  23:11

Yeah. So quite excited about Augur VC, partnered with a couple other individuals, Dan Chapman and Graham Harrison, and we invest in pre-seed and seed stage companies at the intersection of energy and AI—those two things are inextricably linked. There's lots of potential use cases for AI in the energy industry to make it more efficient, more productive. But on the flip side, energy is very valuable, inextricably linked to AI. AI is a massive consumer of energy, yeah. So anyways, that's very exciting for me. It takes me back, I think, to my history, right? I have a computer science background. Started my career in tech, got involved in new, you know, new energy initiatives, with Greengate, and now I can, you know, bring it full circle, those two things together. I think what I have to contribute there, my partners are very bright and hard working, I can provide some wisdom and realism as an entrepreneur who's been there, I think, provide some great coaching to, you know, the leaders of our portfolio companies. Yeah, I've really been enjoying it. There's so many interesting things that we're looking at and investing in, and things are moving very quickly. And there's a tremendous opportunity there.

Leah  24:32

Yeah, no kidding, you know, clearly you have a lot of passion for entrepreneurship and investing. What do you really love about this space?

Dan  24:42

I love the intellectual stimulation, you know, looking at new things, trying to understand them, you know, trying to connect the dots and, you know, make a call on where the world's going. I, mean, that's pretty much been the story of my career, is having a vision and moving ahead with it. But, you know, as I enter this… I'd say a new phase of my career, I'm also very excited about working with the brightest, you know, the next generation of bright minds, you know, generally, sharing some of my experience and perspectives, and help, I think, why not help each other in this world?

Leah  25:17

Why not? Absolutely. And we should mention you're also doing this with OCIF, the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund.

Dan  25:22

Yeah, so I'm also chairing OCIF, as you mentioned, it's almost now, a $200 million fund, mostly city money, some provincial money in it as well. And what we do is we invest in initiatives that build our innovation ecosystem in Calgary, things that attract new companies to our city, create jobs, up train our people, fill up office space in this city, and it's been really great. I have a great board of people that I work with… other business leaders from across the city with great perspectives. We've got a great CEO, Brad Perry, that I get to get to work with, yeah, we funded so many interesting initiatives. I'll share, you know, one that I think is probably the coolest. A lot of them are cool. Yeah, there's many that are cool. But one that just jumped to mind is this Aerospace Center of Excellence that we, what we funded at the airport. We basically kicked in some funds for Lufthansa to locate a global engine repair facility, like state of the art. They could have put it anywhere in the world, and they chose Calgary, and they're going to be servicing certain type of Boeing engines from all over the world in Calgary. And then that creates high quality, high skilled jobs for the aerospace students coming out of SAIT, for example. And it just kind of gets the the flywheel going in that sector. And then WestJet is going to be subsequently signed a deal where they're going to be servicing all of their aircraft there for, you know, I think, you know, well over a decade, and we helped put those pieces together, right? And see this new sector really, you know, grow in the city. We've done it in quantum computing. We've invested in AI initiatives. We've invested in, you know, venture capital funds like yours. So I really enjoy it. And, you know, get to meet a lot of cool people along the way.

Leah  27:21

Clearly, you've got a lot of passion for it. I love how excited you're getting here just talking about these opportunities and what you're building in the city. It's really exciting. You know, it kind of leads us to this notion of impact. When you think about impact and creating impact in the world, what does that mean for you?

Dan  27:35

It means leaving the world in a better place than it was before we got here, you know, in whatever way one can express that, you know, so for me, you know, I started it in the business domain, got a lot of great experience and some credibility there. It's helped me to develop my leadership skills. We got to find time for a few different things. You know, we need to take care of our livelihood, our businesses, whatever it is, our jobs, if there's, you know, time, hopefully carve out time contribute to our community in some type of way. You know, I'm doing that through OCIF right now. That's a volunteer role. I'm doing it to try to help the city, yeah, be better and, you know, have an impact on the people. Every interaction you have with a person is an opportunity to leave some type of impression, right? So, you know, why not spread some positivity in this world? I think that's ultimately the impact. Let's have more positivity.

Leah  28:33

Absolutely. And, you know, I also can't help but reflect on the impact, you know, environmentally, particularly with the projects that you've gotten off the ground with Greengate. Can you talk just a little bit about that? When you think about Greengate’s impact, I mean, we touched on it briefly, but, I mean, it's profound. And I'm trying, I'm really trying to, like, articulate how incredibly profound the impact of these renewable energy products is.

Dan  28:57

We have an issue that we're facing as human civilization with, you know, our long term sustainability. There's some people out there that are alarmists, you know, climate change and believe the end is imminent. I don't believe that to be the case. However, I do believe we have a sustainability challenge that we need to we need to deal with. Our population is growing, our energy demands are growing, our emissions are growing, and that is not a sustainable thing. So we need to find ways going forward of being more efficient, more prudent with the use of our resources. So in the case of Greengate, we were pioneers, and in terms of the large scale adoption of what, at the time was a relatively new technology, renewable energy technologies, wind and solar, we proved what was possible, and I think, helped birth an industry. Our boom resulted in a tremendous amount of investment in the province, over $2 billion of investment that was attracted into the projects that we conceived out of our minds and are now either spinning or sitting there generating electricity from the sun which has, you know, tremendous environmental impact. It's like taking, you know, hundreds of 1000s of cars off the road, like the equivalent of emissions reductions that the projects that we've been behind are contributing, right? So helping Alberta advance its, you know, environmental goals. Problem, though, is the politics of it. And you know, the politics in the world has changed around this. The narrative, you know, climate change used to be probably the highest priority, you know, the biggest input in strategic decision making. You know, the wars that have broken out around the world have shown that security is an issue. You know, the move south of the border, with the protectionism there, and the onshoring movement, like a lot of things, are changing in real time. I've always tried to be pragmatic about it. I think there's a role, you know, for all these things. You know, we can be more sustainable. We can also, you know, consider, you know, energy security and our, you know, economic, you know, opportunities. We can find a way to balance those and yeah, just become very polarized. It has yeah now, so I think there needs to be more voices of reason there, and more nuanced conversations.

Leah  31:16

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, fascinating. All right, well, as we move towards the end of this conversation, we ask the same two questions. So you are continuing to support the energy transition and support Founders in many different ways. How do you hope the story goes for that transition in those Founders?

Dan  31:34

I hope the story is the happy ending. So, you know, I hope that we're able to continue moving in the right direction, you know, and make our energy system and our economy more sustainable. I hope it gets done in a manner that turns down the heat on the polarized discussions that exist in the world, that we can find some you know, happy, way forward where there's, you know, opportunity for everyone. I'm kind of smiling and laughing because that's a very utopian way of looking at the world. I recognize that. But why not have an optimistic view of the world? We manifest a lot of what we think. So I choose to have an optimistic view. And, you know, there's certainly things we need to be concerned about. The rate of technological change in the world right now is unmatched in history with AI. We need to make sure that the human experience continues to be something that where people can find joy and happiness, and you know that people don't get left behind in this tremendously fast moving, changing world. Think a lot of it starts with, you know, some of the mindful practices that I'm talking about—taking care of yourself, viewing the physical world. So those are my random thoughts.

Leah  32:53

I love it. I love it. And I really love your optimism, because I share that with you. And then finally, you know, how do you hope your own personal story goes as a Founder and an investor, what does that look like for you?

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Dan  33:04

I feel very fortunate and blessed for what I've been able to accomplish so far and the way I've been able to, you know, make important changes in my life that make me feel better and more sustainable. Personally, I hope my story goes with, you know, one where I maintain my physical vitality and, you know, run more races and get better and faster and watch my you know, kids continue to grow up and successfully graduate university and and launch their careers. You know, continuing to do things that  I enjoy and being as as busy as I want to be, yeah, and you know, continue contributing in the ways I have I feel. I feel fortunate for the for the position that that I'm in. I don't take it for granted.

Leah 33:53

I love that. Dan, thank you for this conversation.  

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Dan  34:02

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Leah  34:07

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