it’s electric: Beating Tesla Was the Easy Part

Josh: Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I’m Josh Muccio.

Lisa: And I’m Lisa Muccio. And on the show today we have Tiya with it’s electric. She’s raising four million dollars.

Josh: It's electric

Lisa: Boogie woogie woogie. You can do it. It's electric.

Josh: I don't actually know this song. I want to join you, though.

Lisa: It's the electric slide

Josh: I know, I know, but it's one ... You know, I focus more on the dancing than the singing.

Lisa: I, I don't think you even know this dance.

Josh: So I don't really think it's necessary that I do the dance because-

Lisa: Cause you don't know it

Josh: It's a podcast, so nobody can see me dancing, Lisa.

Lisa: Lies. All lies.

Josh: Anyways, less boogie woogie, more vroom vroom. THIS it’s electric is a charger for your vehicle, an electric one.

Lisa: So it's pretty easy to have an electric car when you have a garage where you can charge your car.

Josh: When you live in the burbs.

Lisa: But if you live in a city and you park on the street, where do you charge your car?

Josh: What are you gonna do?

Lisa: Well, enter

Both: It’s Electric.

Josh: They’re putting electric car chargers on public curbs in big cities so anyone can charge anytime. But if there’s one thing I know in this world… it’s that investors hate municipal government contracts. Because cities are notoriously slow at…

Both: everything.

Josh: Which makes it really hard to scale your startup.

Lisa: The Pitch for it’s electric is coming up after this.

Josh: But first… we are hosting two live events this season. One in SF, coming up at SF Tech Week. And another one in November in NYC.

Lisa: We’re also hosting our next taping of season 17 in San Francisco. Join us at any of these events. Go to pitch.show/events

BREAK

Welcome back to the pitch for it’s electric. Let’s meet the investors.

Mike Ma with Sidecut Ventures

I got strings, I’m not an easy yes

Rohit Gupta with Future Communities Capital

sloshing money around all over the place

Michelle Kwok with Draper Associates

we were deep in the cut for 3 hours my brain just like, lit up 

And Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund

My best deals have been the ones that I've committed on the spot

Michelle: It’s electric [clap]

Tiya: Hi.

Mike: Hello, how are you?

Tiya: Good. Hi, I'm Tiya.

Mike: Hi, Mike.

Tiya: Nice to meet you.

Michelle: Nice to see you.

Tiya: Nice to see you.

Elizabeth: Hi, Tiya, Elizabeth

Tiya: Hi Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Nice to meet you

Rohit: Good to see you again. How are you?

Tiya: Hello. Good to see you. Good. Hi everyone. All right. Should we get started?

Rohit: Let's go.

Tiya: All right. So my name is Tiya Gordon and I am the co-founder of It's Electric. I build functional technology for cities and I'm here with my raspy allergies from New York City, where we're racing towards a massive problem. The 80,000 ride share vehicles in New York City need to be all electric by 2030. But how many public chargers do you think we have in New York City? London, comparable population, has around 10,000 public EV chargers. So how many public EV chargers are in New York City? Go

Michelle: A thousand

Tiya: Anyone else? One hundred

Mike: Public

Tiya: Public chargers

Mike: Public.

Tiya: So we have a massive problem in New York City that we need to solve and we to solve it quickly. My background is also based in New York City The biggest project I worked on before co-founding its electric, was all of the technology for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum of the World Trade Center. people don't realize it, but there's about 200 layers of embedded technology. And what I wanted to do is take all of that knowledge that I had and transfer it into my work for energy. So what its electric is doing is making sure that public EV charging is as ubiquitous as a fire hydrant. We're putting chargers on curbs in cities everywhere.

And the reason why we are doing this is 'cause we need to catch up. We being the United States, we need to catch up to the UK, we need to catch up to the EU, we need to catch up to the Nordics. We are way behind. And the reason why we're behind is because the accessory power. So the power that goes just below the sidewalk and that goes through the street lamps and the lampposts in cities like London and Paris and Rome. it's the right voltage. It's 220 or 240. But here in New York and in Philly and in DC and in San Francisco and in New Orleans, it's too low. It's 90 volt. It's the same as what is right behind you, what you're plugging in to plug in your phone when you're here charging. And so that's why we can't quickly scale charging the way that other cities have. So what is everywhere in a city that has power at the right level that we can power a public charger from? The answer is buildings. So we designed a charger that's powered by the spare capacity in buildings.

the idea came to us in a fever dream during the pandemic. We built a little cardboard and rubber prototype that I put in front of my apartment building. I submitted that to Hyundai's Open EV Innovation Challenge. They gave me my first $300,000 of non-dilutive, which is now a total of 7 million of non-dilutive that we've raised. to be able to do our first prototype for New York City. And guess what? It worked. We went on to, beat Tesla to win the contract for the City of Boston. Uber then backed our seed round. 10 months to a year ago today, we had zero curbside chargers in the ground. Today we are live in six cities. I’m here today, because I am raising, our extension of our seed, we raised our seed in 2024. So we're raising additional 4 million to get us to 14 million in revenue to build out our team and to carry us through as we also start our expansion into Canada. So I'm looking for investors that are looking for a return into their fund, and also investors that want to make a dent in the universe with me.

Michelle: Nice. So what, what's your revenue looking like now?

Tiya: Yeah, so we just turned revenue on. So our charges in San Francisco are performing to scale where we're getting around a thousand dollars per month per charger.

Michelle: So what does that look like for the whole city of San Francisco? What, what does the contract look like?

Tiya: we are first of a kind in every city that we go into. So when we get these city contracts, sometimes you just get straight contracts. Sometimes you get exclusivity. But other cities like San Francisco, built a pilot and they raced three different companies against each other to compare them. Everyone had the same starting line of January, 2025. We chose our site, we got our contract, we got our permits in place, we went to the board. The board approved us. Four days later, we had chargers in the ground. San Francisco just let us put our first two in to test. The other two companies still have not put their chargers in the ground because they use a direct utility connection, which is the old school way of doing things as opposed to our building powered.

So we don't have a contract with the city, to answer your question, but we're gonna be able to now scale to their target of getting to 1000 and 3000 chargers as first mover in the city. We get to put chargers in the ground and we get to keep all the revenue and other companies can try and come and compete, but we've already proven that we can beat the competition.

Michelle: Can you remind us of like the grid infrastructure? How, how are you doing it with buildings and are there contracts with the commercial buildings?

Tiya: Yeah, so literally any building, a single family home, a library, a 30 unit apartment building, any building is eligible. All you need to do is you go into the basement of that building, open up the panel and see if there's two slots open. That's enough to power a dishwasher. And that's what we use to power the charger. We then run a very shallow conduit from the building below the sidewalk to the curb. It's shallow tech, it's not deep tech. It's the most simple solution possible, and we just pull the permits to be able to do so. The contrary to what you're asking is the utility connection, which is where everyone else is basically trenching 10 feet down to the high voltage utility and looking to make that direct utility connection. That requires an inner utility connection agreement, which takes 18 months to procure. And those chargers, at least in New York City, each charger costs $180,000 to be installed

Michelle: But for them, it's one contract and they get a bunch of connections.

Tiya: Yeah.

Michelle: So how does it work at scale for you

Tiya: So, We work, um where we can get 40 or so, buildings from a single property developer. usually midsize boutique is our sweet spot. Or affordable housing associations work really well. City owned properties are also great. But at the same time, we do have wait lists on our website and we do love doing one-offs with, with individual buildings. For people that really just wanna have the chargers in their neighborhoods as well.

Mike: Why can't someone take, another different property and run the same, shallow tech conduit from breaker to curb.

Tiya: Mm-hmm.

Mike: You actually have just domain that no one else can run this inside New York.

Tiya: Well, we're not in New York yet, to be clear. We're based in New York, but we're not deployed in New York.

Mike: Okay sure

Tiya: But yeah. One is in many of these cities, we have exclusivity, 5, 10, sometimes 15 years. So they can't get in behind us in any meaningful way. So as you're saying, if another competitor comes along and tries to build the same exact hardware as we have. Some cities will not let them in, number one 'cause we already have the exclusivity of the contract.

Mike: Okay.

Tiya: Number two, if it's an open city where they wanna let other competitors in, the timeframe to get UL certification is about two to three years. So for them to be able to get the type of hardware design that we have, they would have to be in process and be running out behind us. And that's gonna be a really long period of time to do that. Third, they're gonna have to convince a landlord that we've already installed with to rip out a profitable piece of hardware and install theirs instead, or compete directly next to us. The cities don't want competing hardware. They're looking for a conformed hardware solution throughout the city

Elizabeth: I'm trying to understand, like, I guess, what is the difference between public charging and private, like, for example, at our, whatever, local grocery store there are EV chargers installed. I assume that's a private deal they've done with the grocery store. Talk to me about kind of those differences and is it in price or how does that?

Tiya: What city are you in?

Elizabeth: This is down in Mountain View, California.

Tiya: Okay. Yeah. So what you’re referring to is what's known as a destination charger, something that's off street, in a parking lot, in a shopping mall, and that's perfectly fine. A public charger is something that is fully available to the public, on public right of way, or on public streets where drivers are already parking their cars overnight, meaning you don't have to go to a Trader Joe's or a Walmart on the weekend to charge. You wanna charge in your neighborhood publicly on the streets where you're -

Elizabeth: Got it

Mike: Curbside. It’s curbside

Elizabeth: Okay. Okay.

Tiya: Lot charging has actually really slowed down the market because it's really not meeting people where they are. A level two EV charge is a six to eight hour affair, and you don't wanna ask someone to go to a Walmart for six to eight hours and sit in the parking lot.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Tiya: So you wanna be able to have them go home, plug in their car, wake up to have the full battery, the same experience you have if you have a garage. Which is the gold standard of EV charging.

Michelle: So you're not focused at all on the private charging in the lots?

Tiya: No, it's a saturated market. We have no desire to enter that space

Rohit: Even though that's faster.

Tiya: It's faster. It's a lot easier to bring a backhoe into a Walmart parking lot than it is to negotiate the politics of the curb.

Rohit: Sure.

Tiya: So we have a unique edge, we have a more captive audience. We have a repetitive customer, as opposed to someone that's gonna just be tangentially charging for one or two hours a day while they're shopping.

Elizabeth: But I guess there's this question of like, what the charging needs are.

Tiya: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Like if somebody goes to Walmart and charges for a couple hours and then kind of has a workflow of, oh, I charge here, I charge there, I charge, like, is that, is that sufficient? Because that's what people are doing now.

Tiya: So we want all of the above. I want chargers at workplaces. I want chargers in people's homes where they have driveways and garages. I want chargers in airports so you can top up before you go back home. But I also want chargers for the 70 million drivers in the United States that live in cities, specifically rideshare drivers that don't have access to a driveway or a garage, that need to be able to charge conveniently where they live. The reason why Uber, came in and backed us is that their drivers are losing around 20 to 30% of their revenue every single week for the time that it's taking them to find these chargers, wait in line for these chargers, and then their use of these chargers are blocking these chargers for the use of regular drivers that are putting on less vehicle miles traveled.

Mike: What cities are you in? Boston?

Tiya: Boston, Detroit, DC, LA, San Francisco, Alameda is where we're currently live. We'll be announcing our next two cities over the next quarter.

Mike: Remind me again about the sales cycle process. And how those started and how they're going now.

Tiya: Yeah. So there's two ways that we enter cities. One is through a competitive RFP. There's been four competitive RFPs to date for curbside charging in the United States. It’s electric has won three of them, and we are in best and final offer for the fourth right now. So we are really leading the space. In the cities that we're in, where we're not doing a competitive RFP or a competitive procurement process, that's where we come in and build a pilot with that city to help them figure it out in terms of how they scale that charging.

Mike: Why are you three for four or four for four in these RFPs is, it just comes down to everyone else's trying to do it at the utility level. No one else is trying to bid at a building level?

Tiya: Oh no, we, we have a few different differentiators.

Mike: Sure.

Tiya: Building powered

Mike: Sure.

Tiya: Form factor. I can show you a picture of our chargers afterwards. they're really sleek. They look like little tiny silver fire hydrants and they have no cables attached to them. So we're the only detachable cable solution in North America. This is not weird, it's just European. It already exists everywhere overseas. But in the United States, maybe Gen 1 charging was a little dumb. Maybe they made everything look like a gas pump. Maybe they didn't have to do that. 'cause if you're putting beautiful chargers on people's residential blocks. Where they're walking their dogs, where their kids are playing. They do not want cables laying in the street. There's no cable on our charger when a car is not charging. The cable is the first component that breaks on a public charger. I'm sure we've all pulled up to a public charger and the cable has been cut or broken or mauled or a combination of the three. So we avoid all of that, by being the distributor of cables until the OEMs start to put the cables in the car the same way they do in the EU.

Rohit: Can you walk me through, what is the experience charging? So, I, and I'll tell you that the experience that I had, I, I went to go charge at a, uh, Loop charger over the weekend and it was a $2 fee just to plug my car in and a $70 hold on my credit card.

Tiya: Hmm.

Rohit: And I don't even know why they would do that.

Tiya: Mm-hmm.

Tiya: It's not our official tagline, but we like to say that we're the disco and sunshine of EV charging and that we're trying to make things just better and not shitty. there's no, there's no service fee, there's no credit card hold. It's very easy. you pull up to the charger, you have the cable, and then you just tap your RFID on the charger, or you hit go on the app. We also have the ability to tap to pay with a credit card on our chargers. And then we're working on a form of technology that allows it to basically just automatically connect via the cable that plugs in

MIke: plug and charge.

Tiya: plug and charge. So the whole idea is that we're just taking out all of the friction for charging. My favorite thing to do is just watch people use our chargers. Sort of like stealth behind the bushes, um, and just see them just like, get the cable out, plug, plug, tap, and then just go and they're done. And there's none of this chaos. There's again, like my background is public facing technology. There's no screens that are faded because they've been in the sunlight for two years. There's not a broken, push button like phone keypad that you have to punch a pin number into. That's my whole background, is putting public technology in physical space that doesn't break when it's exposed to people and the elements and cities and dogs and everything else.

Rohit: I know you don't work for Loop. Maybe I don’t know, why would they put a hold on my credit card?

Mike: Cause they know about you, Rohit

Rohit: It’s so weird. Was it a personal thing?

[crosstalk]

Tiya: Yeah. Um, I have no idea. I think that the entire EV charging industry in the United States did everything ass backwards and that we are here cleaning this shit up and this is what we're here to do.

Rohit: And so what are your rates for charging?

Tiya: Yeah, we basically do an upcharge on the base rate for the kilowatt hour. We learned this by surveying drivers. And unanimously everyone was like wanna pay per kilowatt hour. So that's how we built the system. We can change it, we can switch it up in the backend. It's very easy. But right now, let's say the base rate for energy in San Francisco is 23 cents per kilowatt hour, we charge drivers 41 cents per kilowatt hour. And that arbitrage is our profit. This is how it already works overseas. The United States got it wrong. EV Gen 1 got it wrong and its electric is getting it right.

Elizabeth: Do you worry, especially since your use case is ridesharing, that the autonomous ride sharing companies will come in and not need this?

Tiya: My favorite question

Tiya’s answer to her favorite question, after this

Elizabeth: Do you worry, especially since your use case is ridesharing, that the autonomous ride sharing companies will come in and not need this?

Tiya: My favorite question, where will 5,000 autonomous vehicles in New York City charge?

Elizabeth: Well, I think Google or Zoox or whoever would, I mean, they wanna own the full stack, right?

Tiya: Yeah.

Elizabeth: So they would probably set up their own.

Tiya: that's a depot situation, right? If you have, let's say 80,000 rideshare vehicles and they're all human driven right now and they're AV in the future, that is 26 hours of consecutive traffic through the Lincoln Tunnel. If you wanna send those AVS to Jersey. Or that is 16 Brooklyn Bridges of continuous traffic. If you wanna send 'em out to Queens, you need to put charging where the drivers and where the autonomous vehicles are, and that is in the dense populated cities.

Elizabeth: But I guess my worry would be that since these companies enjoy being full stack, both Amazon and Google.

Tiya: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Like, would they work with third parties? I, kind of feel like they don't for anything

Tiya: They can acquire us.

Michelle: Is that the goal? Is that the dream? Like what are you thinking in a few years? Like what's the timeline?

Tiya: We have a lot of options. We see a clear pathway to IPO. We also see acquisition possibility from an AV company. We see acquisition possibility from a rideshare company. We see acquisition from a utility. We see acquisition from an OEM. You look at things like, Rivian’s, Adventure Network, right? They're putting chargers up by state parks. But who is the network for cities? It doesn't exist yet. And we're building the first.

Michelle: If the AV market is moving so quickly and you're thinking about potential acquisition from AV, wouldn't that acquisition come pretty soon? And what does that look like in terms of like a venture return?

Tiya: Yeah, I don't think it's gonna come that soon to be frank. Because if you look at the numbers of AVs, even your peak AV cities of LA, SF, Austin, you're still below 5,000 autonomous vehicles in those cities. we're not nearly at a threshold where their charging needs are that great. we're looking at more of a, you know, a position for us to be in a, king seat in about 10 years, across those spectrums for either IPO or acquisition.

Mike: Given the political environment that we're even at the municipal level, are you seeing like a slowing of demand or slowing of process with electric vehicles writ large?

Tiya: no. Um, let's check the oil prices today and see where we are.

Mike: Fair play Yeah. But it is a question of whether this if this resolves like this, this could be a month quarter blip, and we're looking at investments as you just said, it's gonna be a long time.

Tiya: Mm-hmm.

Mike: So, I'm kind of looking long horizon, particularly picking US as your footprint.

Tiya: Yeah. Uh, we're expanding into Canada right now as well, they're gonna have 40,000 BYDs in market in the end of next year. we also need to make sure that even though it's not the strongest market to start in, in terms of adoption, it is the most promising market. Especially if we just look at California, we can drive our entire business just from that one state. We're putting chargers in cities that they have really aggressive, state mandates. So that's California, that's Massachusetts, that's New York, where they have green rides initiative that require rideshare to be electric. Where they have low carbon fuel standard credits, where we're getting money paid back from the state for every kilowatt of energy that we sell. So we have tiered stacked reasons to be able to build our model and to be able to thrive as EVs grow. Also, forget, cities have also pushed a lot of their fleets into being EV as a cost savings mechanism against gas. They're not gonna switch back at this point.

Rohit: What does it cost per unit?

Tiya: To fabricate $2,000. Our highest cost is installation around $9,000 per unit. we get a little bit of subsidies back from our utilities usually when we install. so all in, we're around 10,300 per unit. Payback is around a year and a half. If we're getting 40% utilization, we're making around 70 grand lifetime value on that single charger.

Rohit: How much is a charger, like a, in a grocery store parking lot. How much do those cost?

Tiya: Depends. Is it a level two? Is it a fast charger?

Rohit: Fast charger

Tiya: Yeah, I mean, a fast charger installation is usually a 10 year payback. Let's say you're buying a small lot in San Francisco to install a four Tesla supercharger station. You have to pay for that real estate, and then you have to pay for the about six figure hardware per unit cost. the delta between level two and fast charging is massive, which is why we're squarely focused on level two as our solution

Elizabeth: And may I ask sort of an a-hole question

Tiya: Please.

Elizabeth: You got started in the pandemic, so 2020 or 2021? It's been-

Tiya: 2022.

Elizabeth: Okay. Roughly four years now. but you're just going live with revenue. I guess what have been sort of the blocking points to going live with revenue in these cities?

Tiya: Sure. 2022, we literally had a cardboard prototype. So what we've been doing is we built a unique piece of hardware that no one else has. We built our entire, uh, supply chain around it. We are now manufacturing. We've onshored, we're fully by America, build America. all produced, in New York City. and we've been winning our city contracts. We've been doing our land grab significantly to make sure that we're blocking competition in the cities that we go into. if I was just putting these in a parking lot, I would be in a different revenue position because I would just be putting these in parking lots everywhere and making whatever revenue I'd be making from theirs. I am putting them on public curbs, which is very hard to do, and which no one else has done. So that's what we've been doing, is we've been building out this massive moat. And also convincing the city that this is possible.

Elizabeth: But I guess where I'm going with this question is more of, I, I wanna understand what is sort of the life cycle in working with the city? Because yes, I understand it takes time to build hardware and yes, it takes time to get a government contract. Once you have those pieces in place and you have many cities.

Tiya: Yeah.

Elizabeth: But it sounds like you have two chargers in SF and it sounds like, I, I'm unclear about the number in the other, right, like typically when I see an enterprise sales cycle it’s, like, okay, we have one customer and now we have one charger, and then we find the next customer and we have another couple of chargers, right? Like it's a little bit more linear, but it sounds like you've got a bunch of different cities in parallel, but they've barely started.

Tiya: Yeah, 54 chargers across 6 cities in 10 months. So we've been proving out all the points to the point now where we have our permits. We have our cities, we have our host properties that we work with.

Mike: This may set up the question, 'cause I, I'd love to know your fundraising history. uh, I mean, so 7 million Non-Dilutive. Uber backed you. Walk me through the non-Dilutive. Dilutive and then I will ask the, the a-hole question, which is. If it went so well at plan and you said you've hit all your milestones, why the bridge?

Tiya: Sure. 7 million in non-dilutive that has been awarded. We've only pulled down around 1.3 of that. Venture, 2.2 pre-seed, which allowed us to build our first product, hire our first team, that was going back in 2023. Then in 2024, we raised our 6.5 seed round that was co-led by Uber here in the US and [firm name] up in the Nordics. altogether that gave us our two years of runway. And so why the bridge? Because we are currently in the middle of negotiating some very large city contracts as well as pushing into our Canadian expansion and we felt that for us to do a really strong series A for us to be able to have this 14 million of first revenue. That's a nice boost for us to be able to get in.

Mike: So I'm gonna double click on that a second.

Tiya: Yeah.

Mike: That 6.5 million round had milestones and plans. and those plans have sound like they've gone awry, right?

Tiya: No.

Mike: So then if that were the case, then why wouldn't you have raised the right round, like a, a bigger round then? was the plan to raise an extension?

Tiya: the plan was not to raise an extension. We're raising the extension because of the-

Mike: So what is the delta between what the round thesis was when the 6.5 went in and where you are today?

Tiya: we're buying ourselves about another 12 to 14 months to close these city contracts. City contracts take a long time to close, and that's also a great moat for us. But when they take longer, it takes us longer to actually get chargers in the ground. So we need a little bit more time to get that work in place.

Mike: I'll ask one more on this.

Tiya: Yeah.

Mike: And then I'll let this go. It's like, why did it take longer from what you thought?

Tiya: Oh. Because you can't predict the rate at which cities move. if I knew what I knew now, then, I wouldn't have done any of this. 'cause it's crazy. It's really hard.

Elizabeth: Yeah

Tiya: It's not easy.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Tiya: Yeah

Elizabeth: I mean. Big props to you for getting these six cities. It's really hard.

Tiya: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Working with government is tough. I think at the same time, like, because of that, unfortunately I'm going to be out.

Tiya: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: It's not a lack of trying and trying to get these contracts. I think you've done a phenomenal job. I think that it's too hard to predict what the, these municipalities will do. And you've raised a fair bit of money already, so it's pretty diluted. We typically are first check-in, so for us, I mean, coming in $8 million later is not something that actually I don't think we've ever done. so unfortunately I'm gonna sit out. But I hope you knock this out of the park.

Tiya: Thank you.

Michelle: You mentioned that you had just turned revenue on, and that starts with SF, but you've already closed all of these cities with these contracts. So what do each of the contracts look like and how are you projecting revenue for the rest of this year and onwards?

Tiya: So, yeah, we have two different parallel revenue streams. We have our utilization based revenue stream, which we're looking to get around 4 million in revenue once we have the chargers up and running. What we've learned also is that it takes a couple of months for them to ripen, for everyone to kind of understand the chargers are there and to start using them. we're looking at around 6 to 7 million at the end of this year and another 6 to 7 million, for 2027, which then allows us to scale and then to hit that series A stronger. Revenue is definitely not what we've been focused on. We know that the revenue will come once we have this solution in, because there's no one else that we're competing with. There's nowhere else to charge in these areas. we've had, anecdotes come in from people that they were ready to sell their EV and they kept it because of our chargers that are being put in their neighborhoods. So we're really bullish on what we've done. And now, like I said, it's time to hit the big green button for have everything to happen at once.

Mike: So when, can I just go back to fundraising history, a second? 2.2 pre-seed. What were the terms of that?

Tiya: seed was

Mike: pre-seed

Tiya: Yeah. 2.2 on 7. seed was 6.5 on 18 post.

Mike: where are you on this raise right now?

Tiya: Yeah, so this is priced, we've got a million open on the four and it's on 25 pre.

Mike: Gotcha. Okay. This is not a fit for us. Uh, we're definitely not the firm. For, for you from this perspective. this is a fair amount of dilution, And, you have more to come. On merits of valuation and sort of the traction and time and capital, that's why I'm out. That being said, I live in New York. I have multiple EVs. I am pulling for you and I would love to stay connected, literally, and be the first to plug in there. And I, yeah, I know. Luckily this administration's gonna be a little bit more amenable to- to what you're building.

Tiya: That's awesome. Well, I'd love to get you on our wait list for New York City,

Mike: please.

Tiya: All right.

Mike: I'm here for it.

Tiya: Alright, thank you.

Rohit: I'll do it. I'm in.

Tiya: [gasp] yay!

Rohit: I don't have a number for you, but probably 50 to 100.

Tiya: Alright, thank you.

Rohit: It's just too big of a problem. There are too many cars and there's nowhere to charge 'em.

Tiya: I'm gonna put a hold on your credit card for that.

Elizabeth: You know he's good for at least 70.

Mike: Get it 70 bucks at a time.

Rohit: yeah there’s no limit on that Platinum.

Michelle: It shows up on his Amex.

Rohit: Yeah, I know.

Michelle: Every single time that notification until like 50K hits.

Tiya: That's awesome.

Rohit: That's a lot of miles though. Lot of points.

Michelle: True.

Tiya: Thank you.

Michelle: I think for the same reasons as Elizabeth and Mike, we have to be out, I, it's really tough for us to always interface with governments. I think the dilution is a little bit tough, but I, I could definitely see this being a really huge business, I think it's awesome that you've been able to get a lot of these multi-year contracts locked in. I think a little bit about it is it's just the IP moat as well. It's like, it's not quite there for us yet, but I wanna use the charger. I wanna see the charger also.

Tiya: Yeah. Come!

Michelle: I love a good design.

Tiya: All right. Thank you guys so much.

Mike: Thank you. Thank you.

Tiya: This was so much fun. Thank you.

Mike: Thank you.

Tiya: And thank you.

Rohit: Yep. Good to see you again.

Tiya: Thanks.

Mike: Take care

Tiya: Take care

Rohit: Let’s get this done.

Rohit: I guess only I get a handshake.

Mike: You're the only one that got a handshake.

Elizabeth: That’s what you get for investing.

Josh: You get a handshake and a charge. Okay. So Rohit, what did you see in this business that none of your other panelists saw?

Rohit: It's a pain in the ass. I think she's sort of downplaying how difficult it is to build something and get it certified and get it approved and get cities to say you can do this. And I, I think that's also a reason to hesitate here, but she's done it. Like selling to San Francisco sucks.

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

Rohit: I could see like, oh, I sold to Alameda. Well Alameda is like a suburb of San Francisco. Maybe cities like that will bite, but the fact she's got some tier one cities on there that are doing this is pretty crazy.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that's impressive. Those contracts.

Rohit: I think she's gonna crush it. We've looked at a lot of EV charging and there's gonna be a lot of different models that win, a lot of different products that win.

Josh: Yeah.

Rohit: I don't see anybody doing this.

Josh: So why are you not worried about the dilution or the past fundraising history? And the current valuation?

Rohit: Yeah. Dilution is not great. Current valuation I feel like could be higher.

Josh: Lower?

Elizabeth: Higher?

Mike: Higher?

Rohit: No, I mean, you know, for the amount of money that she's taking.

Josh: Oh sure.

Rohit: Like she should be raising at higher valuation. It’s like-

Elizabeth: Yeah,

Rohit: the only way you counteract dilution is with a higher valuation.

Elizabeth: Right. But I mean, at the same time, it makes it harder to raise.

Rohit: and you're like 25 million and you know, 4 million bucks and she's, this will put her what, like 10 something 12 total raised and another seven non dilutive.

Elizabeth: Yeah she’s raised almost 9 to date

Mike: Yeah. 8.9.

Rohit: A lot of discomfort there, but I don't see anybody, I don't see anybody catching up with her in the next couple years. I mean, I could see LA the Olympics in 2028. They're spending a ton on infrastructure. I would want to ask her like, what does that look like? 'Cause they're gonna be sloshing money around all over the place.

Josh: Yeah. Okay. I think that's a wrap. It's time for lunch.

Elizabeth: All right.

Michelle: Nice

Josh: Tiya walked out of the pitch room with a 50k commitment from Rohit. A rohitment. After the break, Rohit does his diligence in the sheets AND the streets -

Lisa: The sheets??

Josh: Spreadsheets, Lisa.

Lisa: Okay

Josh: Rohit takes a field trip to an it’s electric charger after this.

BREAK

Welcome back. A few weeks after her pitch, we caught up with Tiya.

Josh: Well, good morning, Tiya. How are you doing?

Tiya: Are we on? Are we recording?

Josh: We are. Welcome to the post show.

Tiya: Good morning, guys. I'm doing great. How are you?

Lisa: Doing well.

Josh: Okay. So Tiya, I've been wanting to know, how was your experience pitching on the show?

Tiya: Oh, it was so much fun. I really enjoyed everything about it. I enjoyed all of the other founders that I got to meet, and I'm text friends with several of them now.

Lisa: Aw.

Josh: What? Can you name who you're besties with?

Tiya: Dacia, who has the company Supercool. There's also a climate podcast called "Supercool."

Lisa: Oh.

Tiya: So I've been trying to get "Supercool" on "Supercool."

Josh: Yesss

Lisa: That's so cool.

Josh: That's awesome.

Tiya: I like companies that you really can, like, wrap your head around what it is that they are delivering and building, and I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about, like, middleware AI wrappers.

Tiya: I just kind of start doing, like, the Kermit nod. So, you know, Dacia's solution is real and, and it's great. So yeah, I mean, it was just hats off, guys. It was so fun.

Lisa: Aw.

Tiya: Mhm

Lisa: So the way I remember your pitch is it felt intense to me. Like, the VCs-

Tiya: Oh

Lisa: -had some strong opinions, but you came out of the pitch room, like, ecstatic. Like, you and I went into the green room afterwards to debrief, and you were like, "I loved that." But it seemed- ... like, grueling to me. So tell me why did you love that?

Tiya: Wait, did it sound grueling in the recording? Was I being raked over the coals?

Josh: It sounded like it was a lot that you were having to tackle. They were hard questions. Did it not feel that way to you?

Tiya: Well, that's my life. Um, I'm, I always... I'm a female founder who works in climate and hardware, so-

Lisa: Ugh. Ugh. ...

Tiya: I get the short end of the stick every day.

Lisa: Yep

Josh: So that's a Tuesday for you. Okay.

Tiya: That's a Tuesday. Exactly. So no nothing deterred me. I mean, like, when I'm having conversations that people who all are you know California-based, and they have garages, and it's very easy for them to charge their EV, they don't understand the issues.

Lisa: Yeah.

Tiya: Or they live in New York, and they don't have a car. It's a straddle that you kinda have to do to help them understand the larger problem.

Lisa: Yeah. That's super interesting that probably never ever is one of the VCs you're pitching your ideal customer.

Tiya: Sometimes they are, and that's when the conversation gets really good. But it's also, like, the same thing as, like if you're a fem tech founder and you're pitching to a male VC about, you know. Exactly.

Lisa: Yeah.

Tiya: The problems that they're, they're not quite aware of.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah

Lisa: Yeah. You understand, Josh.

Tiya: Josh understands.

Josh: Well...

Lisa: Or you have a wife who shares TMI with you.

Tiya: Exactly.

Lisa: So you do understand some femtech problems.

Josh: I do, yeah, a little bit- ... by proxy. But you did get a commitment from Rohit in the room, who was very quiet your entire pitch, and then all of a sudden he jumps in at the end. Were you surprised?

Tiya: He was very quiet. Just to give you some backstory there, we had had a conversation or two before we were in the room, and he just really understood what we were doing.

Josh: So you'd been courting him.

Tiya: I had met him right after we closed our last round.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Tiya: And he wasn't able to get into our last round. When we went to raise this round, I reached back out, and we were playing tag and going back and forth. And then he had said, "You should go on the pitch." And I was like, "Oh my God, I just had a call with Josh three days ago." And it was one of those things where It was just... I love when, like, where everything just sort of comes together.

Lisa: Yeah.

Tiya: It's like, I don't wanna say kismet or whatnot, but it's-

Josh: It's fate. It was bound to happen.

Tiya: I love when there's little signals in the universe like that.

Lisa: Mm.

Tiya: And as a founder-

Lisa: Mm

Tiya: you need those, those signs-

Lisa: Like the confirmations

Tiya: that something is going in the right direction. You know, Future Communities is about transforming legacy, and for me, like let's think about that broadly. Like, moving away from gas and oil, like rethinking how we distribute energy in cities. Like this is what we're going after with It's Electric, and those are the investors that we want. It's hard for me to be in a portfolio next to like, you know, healthy dog food. Um, it's, it’s, it’s-

Josh: What, you don't care about dogs, Tyia?

Tiya: I love dogs. I will sell really healthy dog food, and I will crush it after this because that sounds a lot fucking easier, um- but than winning large municipal major city contracts-

Josh: Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah

Tiya: and installing infrastructure that's basically moving electricity between buildings and cars. So yeah, dog food sounds amazing.

Josh: All right. So back to the Rohit story. After the show, you had another call with Rohit.

Tiya: Yes.

Josh: How did that go?

Tiya: It was great. Rohit told me he went to use the charger.

Rohit: So I borrowed a friend's car and drove out to your one, uh, one of your two chargers on Herman Street in San Francisco

Rohit in the wild: Today's our experiment. We have an It's Electric charging cable. We are preparing to charge. Plug charger in, press start charger. Boom, charging.

Peter: Cool.

Rohit: Sick, dude. Car is intact

Peter: For now

Rohit: For now …

Rohit: Happily his car didn't explode,

Tiya: No, it won't. I, I guarantee that it won't. 'Cause, uh-

Rohit: You don't know until you try

Tiya: We're, we're, we are UL certified. We have every certification under the sun.

Rohit: But I, I told him, I was like: Look, it's a startup. There's a chance your car might explode.

Tiya: No, no, no, no.

Rohit: But I'm just, I'm just bracing people for worst case scenario. So yeah, it was flawless. It worked. It was 35 cents a kilowatt hour, so-

Tiya: Yep ...

Rohit: significantly cheaper than Tesla Supercharger, which I think is what he normally uses. Anyways, I get it. Totally makes sense. I see where you fit in the market. Yeah, happy to join. Will you take 50K from me?

Tiya: I would love to take 50K from you. Yes. Yes. Let’s do this. Handshake.

Rohit: Handshake.

Lisa: Did Rohit sign and wire?

Tiya: Yes, he is wired in. We are done and dusted. He is on the cap table. He gets my investor updates. We text each other. I am so happy.

Josh: Another bestie.

Lisa: Oh.

Tiya: Yeah.

Josh: At what valuation?

Tiya: 25million. pre-money valuation. So we're raising four on twenty-five, and Rohit came in at fifty.

Lisa: Awesome.

Josh: That's awesome.

Lisa: Congratulations.

Tiya: Thank you, guys. Thank you for making that possible. I'm so excited.

Lisa: Yeah.

Josh: Well, you know, maybe it would've happened anyway, but, uh, maybe we accelerated it.

Lisa: We charged it.

Josh: Yeah, we charged it.

Lisa: Okay. So how's the rest of the round going?

Tiya: It's going well. At the time of this recording, I'm just gonna see what the New York Times headlines are today. What's going on in the Middle East? Okay. So we're still at war, and then the next Google search that I will do is oil prices. Oh, we're up. So yeah, the raise is going great.

Josh: Oh my gosh.

Lisa: Oh my gosh.

Tiya: We're really excited. We actually have had an influx of new interest from investors who are foreign, mainly from countries that are reliant on Middle East oil and who have high levels of EV adoption-

Lisa: Wow

Tiya: that are just skyrocketing right now. So we're really excited. We've closed a million on the round so far. On the three that's open, we have 4.1 in diligence.

Lisa: Okay. Awesome. Congratulations on that.

Tiya: We all know that's not, that's not a close, but

Lisa: Yeah. Yes, yes.

Josh: I hear you launched in a new market, the greatest city of all time. Philadelphia?

Lisa: Clearly this was written by our producer.

Tiya: Um, yeah. So It's Electric has won the award for the city of Philadelphia. We have a 10-year exclusive right to deploy on curbside there.

Lisa: Wow.

Tiya: It's for the largest deployment of curbside in the country. Philadelphia wants up to 1,000 chargers.

Lisa: Wow.

Tiya: We announced it the way I always imagined, where I called historic Philadelphia and I asked for a Betsy Ross impersonator. And-

Josh: Of course you did.

Tiya: We put one of our chargers just standing in front of Betsy Ross' house, and I had this amazing historic-

Lisa: I love this

Tiya: ... actress who s- she stayed in character the whole damn time. And she was charging an EV, and she's like, "Oh, Mr. Benjamin Franklin would love this." But I chose Betsy Ross because she is a founding female.

Lisa: Yeah.

Tiya: Shout out to historic Philadelphia. Go Birds.

Josh: What else you got going on? Anything you're holding back?

Tiya: So I'm in LA today doing this call with you 'cause we just announced our partnership with Slate EV. If you guys don't know about Slate-

Josh: I don't ...

Tiya: They are building a sub $25,000 EV mini truck. They are very cool as a company. Not only are they putting an affordable EV on the streets that's manufactured here in the United States, but they're making sure that whoever buys these EVs has a very clear plan on how they're gonna charge. And so we are partnering with them to be able to put chargers on the blocks of new people who have just signed up for their pre-order for their Slates.

Lisa: What?

Tiya: Yeah. So we're super excited. They're like these really cool little modular Lego-style cars. You can customize color, you can do accessories. Furthermore, because we're the only detachable cable solution in North America, they are gonna distribute cables for us. So that's one of the things that you can say, "Oh, I'm gonna be doing curbside charging. I want my Slate cable." And we just did a big ice cream social with them in Koreatown, and we had really cool ice cream cups that said, "Extra sprinkles, zero emissions." Um, and that's what it's about. It's about reaching out to communities and just creating excitement around electrification in this country.

Josh: Tiya, I love what you're doing.

Tiya: Thank you

Josh: I don't know if you know this, but we have a fund-

Tiya: Okay.

Josh: Did you know this?

Tiya: I half knew it. I thought it was for maybe dog food. Um, so

Josh: Dog food only.

Tiya: I didn't know if it was for me. I didn't know if it was for me.

Lisa: You are outside of our price range.

Josh: Yeah. It's hard 'cause it's like, ah, well, we could throw in a 50K check and if you end up being massively successful, it doesn't return our fund, so it doesn't... The math doesn't make sense to write small checks.

Josh: But, like, I'm trying to figure out a way to go on the journey with you' cause I, I'm-

Tiya: Well, we also have what we call spiritual investors. So, you know, if it doesn't work, I'd love to make you guys our spiritual investors and put you on our spiritual cap table.

Lisa: Oh my gosh. Is that... Tell me what that means.

Tiya: Well, I've had lots of conversations like this where I've met lovely, amazing people, but like you said, the math didn't work. But you still get the updates. You still know what's going on. Like-

Lisa: Yeah ...

Tiya: you don't get a return. You get a spiritual return from us. You get really good karma.

Lisa: Storing up my treasures in heaven

Tiya: Yes. I think it makes a difference. I think that when you help people in this world, it makes a big difference.

Lisa: Yeah. 100% agree. Okay. Well, at the very least, we would love to be your spiritual investors, Tiya

Tiya: Yay. Okay. Done.

Lisa: But keep us in the loop-

Tiya: Welcome

Lisa: in case we are able to also be financial investors.

Tiya: Fiscal investors

Josh: Don't, don't rule us out.

Josh: Gosh, this is a tough one.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Josh: I really like the company. I like electric cars. She's made incredible progress on the company, even though it's, like, not necessarily enough progress for how much she's raised. Like, the stuff she's doing, the contracts she's getting, in the cities she's getting them is really, really hard to do.

Lisa: Yeah. It's impressive.

Josh: But the price.

Lisa: Yeah. But the revenue is coming soon. It looks like she hasn't made progress because the revenue is little. It just feels like she did it out of order. Typically in a startup, you raise a little bit of money, you make a little bit of revenue, then you raise more money, and you make more revenue. But, like, she's basically done all of her raise and is now, like, teed up all of these contracts to, like, turn on at the same time-

Josh: Yeah ...

Lisa: so she gets all of the revenue. So it's just, like, a chunkier-

Josh: Oh, it's chunky.

Lisa: Just a different model, different order of doing things.

Josh: I just hope being a spiritual investor comes with the truck.

Lisa: Oh my gosh.

Josh: I want their truck so bad.

Lisa: I know you do, but you can only have it if you sell the Stingray.

Josh: No.

No offer to invest in it’s electric is being made to the listening audience on today’s show. But you can invest in The Pitch Fund, where we invest alongside the VCs on the show. We’re currently deploying Fund II, and we’re open to new investors through the end of the year! To learn more, go to the thepitch.fund

Next week on The Pitch…

Elizabeth: How did you land on this problem set?

Dacia: I read papers when I'm sad. I like to read. It's actually really therapeutic. So as a scientist, science kicks you in the balls all the time.

That’s next week! Subscribe to The Pitch on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss future episodes. You can watch full length versions of every pitch over on our Patreon at The Pitch Uncut.

And if you’re a founder raising a pre-seed or seed round, apply to pitch at our next event! It only takes a couple minutes to apply, just go to pitch.show/apply

We’ll see you next week, in the PITCH ROOM.

–

This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, and Enoch Kim. With deal sourcing by Peter Liu, John Alvarez, and Phoebe Sun.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Breakmaster Cylinder, The Firmware Rebels, Boxwood Orchestra, Nightdrive 2086, Cosette, and Peter Jean & The Runaway Queen.

The Pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.