S03|16: Turning Gaps into Innovations with Natasha Kostenuk

Natasha  00:03

When I see a gap in something or something that somebody… there's something that needs to be done, something that needs to be fixed, and I think I can help, I have this non-ability to walk away from that. Maybe. And I just have to step in and kind of help and try to try to fix it. And I didn't do it alone, like I definitely had help and pulled in lots of people to make it work. But maybe I can't walk away from a gap I see.

Leah  00:27

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, 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. Joining me in studio today is Natasha Kostenuk and CEO of Ayrton energy, a climate tech company working toward energy security fueled by simplified and safe hydrogen storage and transportation. Natasha, thank you so much for being here.

Natasha  01:22

Yeah, thank you for having me. Very excited.

Leah  01:26

It is fun, isn't it, just to sit down and take a moment, right? Yeah, I'm sure. So, as we do with all of these conversations, we go back in time. So you're an engineer by trade, yes, a mechanical engineer? So how did you go from engineer to entrepreneurship?

Natasha  01:41

Yeah, so early in my career, somebody told me that your career should not be a ladder. Should be a jungle gym. Sometimes you need to go down and around to get up. And I'm really glad I heard that advice early, because I took that advice to heart. And so yes, I'm a mechanical engineer by training, and I started at the beginning of my career working in oil and gas and an energy service company. Great experience, great company to work for, and a variety of different roles. So I did actual, like more technical engineering, got into a special project, helped do project development, got into technical sales for a couple of years, selling down hole tools and equipment. Then got into business development, where I was doing licensing and channel partnerships, and really loved that idea. I loved working with new technology. And then I realized that my passion, you know, wasn't oil and gas, it was really around the new technologies. So I took the opportunity to kind of leave in 2019 and started working with early-stage tech companies, a variety of software and hardware, tools, et cetera. And then met my Co-Founder, and fast forward a little bit, and we created Ayrton Energy.

Leah  02:46

Wow, that's exciting. So it almost seems like this kind of path that was sort of like almost linear, but not quite.

Natasha  02:53

Yeah. And it's almost like people say, How did you make that big leap? And it wasn't a leap, it was just a bunch of baby steps. So just take a bunch of steps towards something that you're interested in.

Leah  03:02

Yeah. But what I'm hearing though, is that you identified fairly early on what it is you like to do. Yeah. That's critical, isn't it?

Natasha  03:09

Yeah. I think it's really important to like, yeah, keep moving towards the things that you think you're good at and the things that you're interested in. And I always think if you do those steps, you'll always find a good path.

Leah  03:18

Wow, there you go. Okay, so that brings us to Ayrton Energy. And so you said this started when you met your Co-Founder. Is that right?

Natasha  03:26

Yeah, so I was doing some work on the fringes of hydrogen, and got the idea to do a hydrogen generator system, and I hired my now Co-Founder as a consultant at the time, and asked her to help me find the pieces in the market. So she's a PhD chemist, and did her PhD in fuel cells, and I hired her as a consultant to help me build hydrogen generators so that we could, you know, fill the need for hydrogen for energy, using hydrogen for, like, small, industrial kind of applications. And we couldn't find a good hydrogen storage solution. Everywhere we looked, I was like, well, that doesn't make sense or this doesn't make sense. And if it was a movie, the movie would show us in 10 minutes at my kitchen table with an idea. But nothing's ever quite that easy in life. So it took us a few months of kind of circling around and trying to figure out what would be a good idea. And then once we figured out, no this would actually be better, we abandoned the idea of, you know, building a hydrogen energy system, and she came in as a full Co-Founder, and we created Ayrton.

Leah  04:25

Wow, that's so exciting. So yeah, I mean, let's dispel this romantic idea where it took like, two seconds. It actually took quite a while, and you both had the opportunity to really work on that idea and keep digging and digging and digging until you found the solution you were looking for.

Natasha  04:40

Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of startups, unfortunately, come out of a university, for example, where they have created or invented something very cool, and then they have to try to find a market or a home for it, right? And we started with a problem that we could not solve. We couldn't find a good hydrogen storage solution for what we were trying to build. And we went down a ton of different, you know, avenues of researching different types of hydrogen storage. And we would find, oh, we like this part of this, but not this part or that part. And, and really trying to figure out what would solve the problem, and, and that's what led us to creating our hydrogen storage solution that we came with today.

Leah  05:16

That's so exciting. Okay, so let's do a little one-on-one on the company. So what exactly is Ayrton Energy?

Natasha  05:22

So Ayrton is developing a hydrogen storage solution that takes hydrogen gas and chemically binds it to a carrier oil, so that it's a room temperature, room pressure liquid. This type of technology is called a liquid organic hydrogen carrier or LOHC, and when it's bound to the carrier oil, you can reuse existing infrastructure—tanks, trucks, pipelines, rail cars—with no modifications. Anywhere you can put diesel, I can put hydrogen. Yeah, and then you can store it like indefinitely. As long as you can store diesel, you can store our hydrogen. And then when you need the hydrogen again, we do the reverse reaction and we chemically unbind it from the carrier oil and return the carrier oil over and over again. It's like a sponge that kind of soaks up and releases hydrogen, kind of over and over.

Leah  06:05

Wow. That seems remarkable to me. That's incredible.

Natasha  06:09

Thank you.

Leah  06:12

Yeah, right. I did that!

Natasha  06:15

We did that. I have a large team that's very much making it happen. So yeah.

Leah  06:17

Of course, yeah. But that's amazing. So then, okay, what does this mean? Then, like, what would you use this hydrogen for?

Natasha  06:22

Yeah, so today, hydrogen is very hard to store and manage because it requires very high pressures or very cold temperatures, and these require complex logistics, new infrastructure, think tank trucks and tube trailers and all those really fancy hydrogen specific equipment and infrastructure, which is expensive. And so it can cost up to 70% of the total cost of hydrogen can be just in the cost of storage and transportation. And so because we can reuse existing infrastructure that the world already has, we can dramatically reduce the costs of enabling hydrogen. And so that's really what we're looking at is decoupling production from end use. We really believe that the way to make hydrogen the lowest cost, is to make it where it's low cost, and then bring it to where you need it, rather than forcing yourself to make it where you use it, right?

Leah  07:13

That totally makes sense. Okay? And so, how can hydrogen actually be used? Like, what's it good for?

Natasha  07:18

Oh, there's lots of things that hydrogen is good for because it's a clean energy source. So hydrogen can be used to produce energy using a fuel cell, and the only output from that is energy and water vapour. So it's clean, clean. And you can also use it as a feedstock. So ammonia is one of the largest uses of hydrogen today. So ammonia feeds the planet, right? Everybody needs that to be fertilizer for crops and such. And so hydrogen is a $200 billion a year market today and growing, and we're just trying to unlock it for additional uses. And so, because it's already used in many places that production volumes are there and new uses that are coming out are energy generation, like I mentioned, but that includes heavy duty trucks, bus refueling, warehouses, so for forklifts and such. And yeah, there's lots of areas where an electric vehicle makes sense to be battery electric, and there's other places where a hydrogen electric vehicle would make more sense.

Leah  08:18

Wow, so the applications are pretty broad.

Natasha  08:22

Yeah. And we're never… Sometimes in the hydrogen space, there can be a lot of competition where they say, No, no, it's battery. No, it's hydrogen. And we really believe in the “and”. Like it's not “or” it has to be “and”. The world needs nothing but more energy. And so we need it all, wind, solar, hydrogen, battery, all of it, yeah. And so we're not trying to replace electric or batteries. We're just trying to add another way of using clean energy.

Leah  08:47

Yeah, I've heard that before. I like it sounds amazing, all right, so let's talk about some of the basics of the company. So when did you launch?

Natasha  08:54

Well, so we started working on the idea in 2021 but we didn't officially form the company until just before the end of the year, in December of 2021 so it's been just over three years.

Leah  09:06

Incredible, and you've got three patents filed. Is that right?

Natasha  09:10

Yep. I'm just trying to think if we filed another one recently, because we actively working on them, but we are working on three patent families, and we have one granted patent that my Co-Founder brought into the company at the beginning.

Leah  09:20

Okay, that's exciting. Cool. How many employees do you have these days?

Natasha  09:24

We're at 20 now. Yeah, no, I can't hardly believe it, and it's amazing to build such a team. But yeah, 20 full-time, plus a handful of part time contractors and principal.

Leah  09:35

And how much money have you raised? Do you mind talking about that?

Natasha  09:39

No, I don't. So we did pre-seed money that we raised just over a million dollars in March of 2023 and led by a New York investor, and then we raised $6.8 million US in August 2024 last year, led by BDC Capital here in Canada, and also a Boston company called Clean Energy Ventures, and so that's what we've raised from investors. And we've also done… worked really hard to get some non-dilutive funding, and we're at about six and a half million dollars to date in Canadian of non-dilutive capital as well.

Leah  10:18

Wow. Can we just take a moment to reflect on that.

Natasha  10:22

It's a high percentage. And my goal is to get dollar for dollar. For every dollar an investor gives us. I want to bring $1 of non-dilutive in so we're actively working in that space.

Leah  10:33

I mean, how does it feel to hear these numbers, like, whether it's the number of employees or the dollar figures? Like, how do you reflect on that?

Natasha  10:40

Honestly, it's scary.

Leah  10:40

I bet.

Natasha  10:46

I know, I know. I'm probably not supposed to say it's a little scary, but it's a little scary for moving so fast and doing such amazing things and the speed can be a little scary sometimes, but at the same time it's exciting. This journey is a roller coaster, and roller coasters are both scary and exciting at the same time. So I like to use that analogy. But I love what we're doing. I love the people we're building it with, and we've got just an amazing team and an amazing group of supporters. And so yeah, I'm overall really happy.

Leah  11:13

Oh, wonderful. But as we know, in the beginning of every company, there is always a moment when it's like, holy man. I don't know if this is going to work. I call it the do-or-die moment. And I ask every Founder who sits in this chair to sort of reflect, maybe share a story that was one of those crazy moments for them. Do you have one that comes to mind?

Natasha  11:31

Yeah, I feel like some of those moments are maybe more than just one, because we have different moments where, you know, on the tech side, you know, when we’re up against a bit of a challenge, especially very early. We… the very first kind of lab work that we did was putting our liquid in a beaker with dangly wires in it, and if you tilted your head and squinted a little, you could see these little hydrogen bubbles. And we were like, that's hydrogen coming off of our carrier fluid. And so there's definitely been moments where we were like, not sure. And then on the same side, on the commercialization side. So just because you think you're solving a problem and you're hearing that it's a problem, are people going to step up and kind of, you know, be a partner with you and pilot your technology. And so we're really fortunate early to be working with ATCO locally here to be able to pilot technology. And so that was a big relief when we kind of get the first little bit of commercial traction, and then with Hawaii Gas. And so we announced a partnership with Hawaii Gas, and we're super excited to be working with them as well to deploy technology there.

Leah  12:35

That's so incredible. So… But what's it like, before we get to all these exciting wins. We all know that that's like the highs. There's also some of the lows there that I like to dig into a little bit on this podcast to dispel some of those myths that exist about there… what it looks like to be an entrepreneur. So tell me a little bit about that for you. Like, what does that look like?

Natasha  12:54

So it's every day, we joke. It feels that way, not every day but or every week, but I have a joke that I tell people that my husband will check in with me at noon and I'm just crying, and then he comes home at the end of the day and he's not sure what he's going to walk into. Like, every good husband, like, sneaks into the house, right? Kind of. And then I'm popping champagne, and he's like, what happened on the same day? And I'm like, it's just Tuesday. Like, that's just a It's just what it is, and that's how it can feel. Sometimes you can go from the very lowest lows where nothing's going to work and nobody's going to support you, to this is amazing, and it's going to work, we're going to be huge. So… and back and forth. So at the end of the day, we just kind of stay focused on the big picture, that, you know, we're solving a real problem that really exists in a big market and people, people are there for us.

Leah  13:44

Yeah, quite obviously. So exciting. The one thing that you talk a little bit about too, particularly on your website, are your values. And you and I have talked about this Your values are really important to you and to your company. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about your values and what they are?

Natasha  13:57

I can. So, our number one value is honesty. And it means something a little bit differently than what probably first comes to mind, but we always say that we're solving really hard problems, and to do that, we need to be really honest with ourselves and each other, and we have to do that with trust and respect. And so we have to every day, really ask, Am I on the right path? Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right method to be doing to get our step? And if you're honest with each other and honest with ourselves, that's how we're going to solve the hard problems. So that's one of our key values. Another one that I really like is our get it right value. And I read this somewhere, so it's definitely not from me, but it's about getting it right, not being right. And it sounds almost similar, but it's really not. And so it's about checking your ego at the door. It's about accepting failure, because in order to get it right at the end, sometimes you have to make mistakes along the way, and it's just about persevering until you get to the right answer, like just being really you know... Working hard towards getting it right and then not just stopping when you think you're right or being right.

Leah  15:05

Right. Just to keep going, that perseverance is so essential. Yeah, I love that notion of… in our organization at Thin Air, we have a value called infinite curiosity, which kind of encapsulates the same thing, where you're infinitely curious. So if you're always curious, you're going to be curious about something and try something, and it's not going to work. But it doesn't matter, because you're just you're just learning along the way, right? And to your point, that's how you solve those big challenges.

Natasha  15:05

Yep.

Leah  15:05

Yeah. Exactly. Cool. So when you're thinking about your team, is there something about your team that you think is super special that you want to share?

Natasha  15:37

So much. My team is amazing. We're very lucky that we have a really strong group. I like to say we're a high performance team. We do that because we do the hard things. We focus on the hard things first. We work in an environment where we purposefully have conflict with each other. And it sounds scary to say, like we promote conflict on our team, right? But if you have conflict with the base of trust and respect, and it's that honesty kind of piece, you get clarity on what you're doing and why. And if you have, if everybody on the team has clarity on what we're all doing and why, you have accountability, and that's how we get results. And our team has really leaned into that as a way of working together. And all the new people who come into our team, we really quickly embrace it. And I think that's one of our superpowers as a company, is we have an amazing team of high performance people that are really embracing, you know, the hard things first, and the hard conversations and challenging each other.

Leah  16:35

So out of curiosity, can you give me an example of what that might look like? Like, I'm actually curious like, how does that go down on a day to day basis?

Natasha  16:42

Yeah. So an example might be to sit in a room with engineers and to be talking about our next deployment and what pressure we think we need to design to. You know, you can obviously do something lower pressure. You can design it quicker. You can be… it's lower cost, but it's limiting, because in the future, you're eventually going to have to do higher pressure anyways. So do you take the time now to go to higher pressure, spend the money now, or do you get out quicker to something? A lower pressure would be a real example. And at the end of that, you know, half an hour/hour kind of rumble, kind of discussion, we have a decision as a team. This is what we're going to do, and this is why we're doing it this way. And then everybody knows and can go forward and feel confident that we're on a critical path.

Leah  17:24

I like this. And then if it doesn't work, you're like, Okay, well, we tried that, and then we're on to the next thing. I like that thinking. There's a lot of freedom in that thinking.

Natasha 17:24

Thank you.

Leah  17:24

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Leah  17:56

But I'm also curious a little bit… We've got you and your Co-Founder. You're both women and you're women in energy. That's cool

Natasha 18:03

Yeah. Yeah

Leah  17:05

Talk to me a little bit about that. What's it like to be these two women, Co-Founders of an energy company and doing this kind of work in this space in Alberta?

Natasha  18:11

Yeah, so I've been in oil and gas, and I've been in energy my whole career, and so it's always been a place to be one of few. And doing a deep tech hardware company, there's very few founded by women. There's very few that are… have only women as their Founders. And so I think Brandy and I are rare. But I… we work very, very well together. We're… we bring out each other's strengths, and we challenge each other, and we support each other's, you know, areas of growth, and I feel like that kind of partnership, it works well for us. And we lean into any of our vulnerabilities. We're very good at, you know, communicating with our team and each other, and we are very good at asking for help when we need help, and we just kind of share those. And I think that is kind of unique for us. And I think that's partly because, you know, we're two women doing this.

Leah  19:09

Yeah. What's it like operating as two female Founders in energy in Alberta? Like, what's that like negotiating that space these days?

Natasha  19:17

Yeah, I think I've been always very fortunate to have always built a lot of credibility in the work that I do, and because what we're doing makes a lot of sense, and we come about it with a very practical mindset. And so I find that our work is very accepted. And, you know, I… people can say that sometimes it's hard being in a male dominated space and a male dominated area, but no, we've been really fortunate. Alberta has been a great place for us and a good supporter. Alberta Innovates, I'll shout them out, has been a really great supporter of Ayrton. We wouldn't be here without their support and people like them. Their people, not just their money, like the actual, the actual people from Alberta innovates. And so, no, I think Alberta is a great place for entrepreneurs in Canada, and I'd argue, probably the best place. I'm obviously biased because I'm here, but they have such amazing support here, and a real environment that encourages people to take those risks and kind of build something.

Leah  20:14

Yeah, I love hearing that. Clearly. We agree with you here at Thin Air Labs.

Natasha  20:19

Yeah.

Leah  20:21

Clearly. But as we also know, as an entrepreneur, it's not a nine to five kind of job. You know, there's calls, there's stuff happening all the time.

Natasha  20:27

Is there a weekend? I heard something mentioned about a weekend, and I'm not sure what that means…

Leah  20:34

Right? What is a weekend?

Natasha  20:36

What is a weekend?

Leah  20:37

Exactly. So what is that like for you? And you've got, is it three kids? Do I have that right?

Leah  20:39

I do. I do have three children.

Leah  20:41

And to be clear, I'm asking every Founder that, not just the female Founders, but what is it like to sort of, you know, build your family alongside you as you build this company?

Natasha  20:49

Yeah, I think, I think balance looks different to each person. I think balance looks different each day… or each week. And so it's just about being present in any moment that you're in. And so when I'm doing something with my kids, I'm all in with my kids. And when I'm working, I'm all in at work. And so I have three kids, one figure skater, two hockey players

Leah  21:12

Whoa.

Natasha  21:14

Spend a lot of time in rinks. I have done a lot of work on my laptop in rinks. So, you know, bring laptop, will work anywhere. And really trying to find that balance of being present when I need to be and getting the work done. So it's a… the balance looks different, and it looks different every day.

Leah  21:30

Yeah, fair enough. I get it. So, as we know, though, with the business and with a family, you have to be pretty diligent. I would imagine about taking time for yourself and staying well and healthy, and as a leader in a company, you need to be well and healthy, but not everybody gets there. So I'm curious about what that looks like for you.

Natasha  21:48

Yeah. So for me, it's usually smaller moments, because I don't often get big chunks. So for me, I… I'm trying to run in the mornings as much as I can. It's not something I get every week as much as I'd like, because I also value sleep, but I try to run in the mornings. I have a ladies night golf night that I try to do when I'm in town or it's not raining. So that's some time for myself. My family and I, we go camping a lot in the summertime, and so get like, these little weekends, you know, kind of away a little bit. And then I travel for work quite a bit. And oftentimes I try to take a couple of hours wherever I am to do a walk, explore, see something, experience something. I was in Montreal a few weeks ago, and I took an hour and a half, I went to a local museum and kind of walked around. So just all those little kind of moments are just kind of ways for me to, you know, find a little bit of downtime for myself.

Leah  22:45

Yeah, and recharge a little bit. Sometimes those little moments sort of give you that fuel, right, give you that energy. Recharge the tank a little bit.

Natasha  22:50

Yeah, I maybe don't get to take like, you know, a week off or two weeks off at a time to really, really step away. But those little moments are enough for me and they're enough for you. It works for me. And again, I find if you just kind of spread them out and work them in, I… for me, it's enough.

Leah  23:06

That's amazing. Yeah, because some Founders will sit there and say the exact opposite, you know, that they have to, like, you know, no phones, no laptops, no nothing, and check out completely for a week to get that same rejuvenation and refresh. But then you and I have also talked about the fact that you don't even need coffee in the morning.

Natasha   23:20

Yeah, that's true. I don't drink coffee.

Leah  23:22

So I might need to just ask you a little bit about that. Is that true that you don't have any caffeine, not even tea?

Natasha  23:27

Not even tea. And it's, it's not, it's not a principle or anything. I just don't care for coffee or tea, so I just don't drink it. I'm a water and wine kind of person, so

Leah  23:37

Okay, well, I'm not gonna knock that either.

Natasha  23:41

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I try to read a lot, like, when I'm on an airplane, I find it very hard to work on airplanes. They're just not ergonomically made to get much work done, so unless I have a really hard deadline, you know, I read when I'm on an airplane and take some time to do some thinking and like, so I just find those little kind of moments that are enough for me. But yeah, I know I don't really need to check out for a whole week to feel refreshed.

Leah  24:02

Wow, that's incredible. You did sort of gloss over the sleep, but sleep is very important to you.

Natasha  24:07

I do, I do try to… I'm not a night owl. I usually am in bed pretty early so that I can start my day at a reasonable time. And yeah, I try to get good sleep most of the time. So, I've been that way my whole life, even in university. I… after 10 or 11 o'clock at night, there's nothing that's going to stick in my brain, so I might as well, might as well sleep.

Leah  24:27

There you go. I love this for you. That's amazing. But you know, we also have to talk about you as a Founder of a nonprofit as well. So you're not just the Founder of Ayrton Energy. You're also the Founder of a nonprofit. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Natasha  24:41

Yeah, it's called Calgary Apraxia. And so my youngest son, who's 14 now, but when he was a toddler, was diagnosed with apraxia.

Leah  24:47

And what's that?

Natasha  24:50

So apraxia is a motor planning disorder where you can hear everything and you understand all speech. So their ability to understand speech meets any other kid their age, but they can't coordinate their tongue, their lips, their mouth, to make the right sounds, and so they can't express themselves. And so they often need hundreds and hundreds of hours of speech therapy to kind of, you know, really learn something that the rest of us kind of learn very easily and without thinking about it. And yeah, so I started this group about 10 years ago, and we run summer camps for kids with apraxia. Basically, we just wanted the other kids to be able to come together, to see other kids just like them that had the same communication challenges. And we started the first year, I think we had two weeks and about 10 or 11 kids at camp, and then now, I think last year, we had five or six weeks of camp and probably 65 kids. And I have a whole board now. I've stepped back a little bit. I'm kind of more just the Founder, instead of like the “everything”. We have in a great, amazing group of volunteers and parents that are running that now and growing it beyond what I could ever have taken it to.

Leah  26:03

Wow. Okay, but now here again, I just have to understand, like, so you've got a child that has some challenges, and you know, you're working all the time. Like, how did you do that?

Natasha  26:15

I don't know. I think you just do like, I don't know how to, how to, how to say… It's kind of like asking how somebody knows how to drink a glass of water or something you just do right? I just think that you just step up and step in and do what you need to do. So I… I'm not special. I don't think it's a superpower. I think it's just I had something I needed to do and I just made sure I got it done.

Leah  26:37

I hear that, but the reason I keep pressing on this is because some people will have that idea. You know, like, I've got a kid with a congenital heart defect. Okay, well, you know, I should really start this organization, or we should participate more in this. And then we just don't, because, you know, life intervenes and it gets going. Why did you decide that you were going to do this? You could have not done this.

Natasha  26:58

It's true. I definitely could have not done it. It was a lot of… it's a lot of work. It's really a lot of work, and a lot of time. I just, I think I have this ability… lack of ability to step away from a gap, like when I see a gap in something or something that somebody, there's something that needs to be done, something that needs to be fixed and I think I can help, I have this non ability to walk away from that, maybe, and I just have to step in and kind of help and try to fix it. And I didn't do it alone, like I definitely had help and pulled in lots of people to make it work. But maybe I can't walk away from a gap I see.

Leah  27:33

It's certainly something that I'm hearing, right? I mean, there's a lot of people that… You know, whenever you even try to figure out the hydrogen problem, right? You know. Or maybe I've already tried it. It's too hard, you know?

Natasha  27:44

Yeah, that's true. You see a solution. There are actually tons of people with good ideas all the time. So I'm saying, and it is, there's that something… that inertia to be able to go from like, Oh, that's a cool idea, to like, actually pushing it forward and actually making it happen. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that is something that only some people know how to do. I don't know.

Leah  28:06

Well, clearly you're doing it. So it's something about you. There's something but, you know, it's funny, because as I talk to more and more Founders, there is some pattern recognition that you starts to emerge, you know? And there is a lot of Founders that are like you, in that sense, that they see this thing that needs to be solved, and like, well, I might as well just do it. But that's the leap that I'm always really curious about, because, like, I would never do that. I think it's nuts.

Natasha  28:28

Well, and I guess it's just, it's just something that just, I don't know, I never thought about. I don't know why. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should have thought about it? Maybe, maybe I should have put more thought into it beforehand. But no, I enjoy solving problems and and so, yeah, I think I just kind of dove in.

Leah  28:46

Well, we're grateful, that's for sure. And that leads me actually to talk about impact. At Thin Air Labs, we talk often about creating meaningful human impact in the world. And I know this is something you've thought about a lot, particularly in the clean energy space. But when you start thinking about creating impact in the world, what comes to mind?

Natasha  29:05

So you can tell I'm an 80s girl. When I talk about when I grew up, it was reduce, reuse, recycle. And today I feel like reuse is fallen off. Like so many times people are like, it's broken, buy a new one, you know? Like there's not really a fix it and keep using it type of mentality. Things are like that, with our clothing, with our computers, like electronics, everything is it's broken, just toss it. And so at Ayrton, we're really enabling people to reuse infrastructure that they already have, and not having to rebuild billions of dollars of infrastructure, I think, has a huge impact, not only in lowering costs for market and in lowering barriers for hydrogen adoption, but it just makes more sense from an impact point of view on the climate to not have to rebuild something that already exists.

Leah  29:56

Yeah, absolutely. And then I have to ask, in terms of impact, how do you think about impact when it comes to even your nonprofit that you started? I mean, that's having a huge impact on the world for these kiddos.

Natasha  30:05

It is, it is. And that's everything. And I think when you can see the impact directly, you know, you look at the nonprofit, you look at all these kids, these families that I've gotten to know over the years and seen their kids grow up alongside my kid, it's amazing the amount of impact you can have when you just, you know, lean in and help a little.

Leah  30:26

I love that. All right. Well, as we come to the end of these conversations, I always ask people the same two questions. So, you are the Co-Founder of Ayrton Energy. You're writing the story for it. How do you hope that story goes?

Natasha  30:40

Well, that's a big question, but we really think we're solving a real hard problem and a real need in hydrogen. So we believe that we're going to be successful, that in a few years, we're going to, you know, really deploy some commercial units, start bringing in some meaningful revenue and and build Ayrton into something that is a known way of moving and storing hydrogen today, so that it's as known as compressed hydrogen, or liquid hydrogen, and it's just another accepted method of storing hydrogen. And I believe that Ayrton can do that and be that solution and be that big player in hydrogen. So that's really what we think we're building, and we're excited to hopefully make true.

Leah  31:18

I love this. And as a Co-Founder… You know, you're the Co-Founder of this company. How do you hope your own story goes?

Natasha  31:25

I hope that I always keep learning and growing. I am a really big believer in that growth mindset. And if anybody hasn't read that book, I highly recommend it, because if this is as smart as I'm ever going to be, it's kind of sad. I'm old, but not that old, and so I always hope to be smarter tomorrow than I am today. And so for me, this whole journey is doing nothing but teaching me, and I'm just learning more and more every day, and I look forward to being able to grow and learn as a person and take those learnings into whatever I do after.

Leah  32:10

Natasha, thank you for this conversation.

Natasha   32:12

Thank you. I really enjoyed today.

Leah  32:14

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