Meet Peter Godart & Gadi Ruschin, Founders of Found Energy
Below is the story of Found Energy, as told by their founders
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Motto or mission: Transporting renewable energy is hard. We Found a solution hiding in plain sight.
Founders: Peter Godart & Gadi Ruschin
Year founded: 2022 Stage: Pre-Seed Location: Boston, MA
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Intro
We each had a different path to arriving at the same conclusion. Peter was working at NASA JPL on transporting energy to other planets, and he eventually realized his time would be better spent applying those solutions to similar problems on Earth related to climate change. In a more “down-to-earth” story, Gadi became a young father and quickly became deeply concerned about Earth’s future - enough to become proactive about it.
Transporting renewable energy across the world is tough, and our inability to do so in a way that competes with fossil fuels on energy density, cost, and safety is leaving many heavy industries out of the renewable energy transition. At the same time, we are already moving energy around as various materials, much of which ends up in landfills or polluting the environment. We found a way to leverage one such material, aluminum, as a clean fuel for global energy transportation.
The inspiration for this approach came from Peter’s time at NASA, where he realized we could mine the energy dense aluminum we were already sending to other planets for energy locally. When he realized we could do the same on Earth, he left NASA to pursue his PhD at MIT to figure out how to make this solution practical.
Solution
Found Energy is building high-energy-density, carbon-free hydrogen as a service to ultimately eliminate carbon emissions from heavy industrial applications ranging from maritime shipping (3% of global CO2 emissions) to fertilizer production (2% of global CO2 emissions).
Business Progress
We have demonstrated our technology at the kW-scale and are currently building towards MW-scale, which will allow us to enter the market, starting with making heavy industries like aluminum production more efficient.
Culture
Our first company value is “Respect Life” and that goes for our planet, our coworkers, and ourselves. We try to foster a culture of proactivity and candor to build trust between everyone on the team, especially as we grow.
Challenges
Building a company is challenging, scaling technologies up and out of the lab is challenging, and fighting climate change is challenging. Our approach to all of these is to face the unknowns head-on and trust in our team and process for rapidly identifying and solving problems.
Key Takeaways
Even though Gadi is 2x founder, we are both still learning every day. One of the most important lessons has been the importance of leaning on the climate tech communities. We are all addressing important pieces of the larger puzzle and the support we’ve received from the broader community has been invaluable.
Asks
How can the broader climate community help you on your mission? Keep up your amazing work, and we are always interested in connecting with founders and companies working in industrial decarbonization and hydrogen. Feel free to reach out at info [at] found.energy.
