#186 Supercool Earth: Making It Rain, Literally

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

Lisa: And I’m Lisa Muccio. On the show today we have Dacia with Supercool Earth. She’s raising 3 million dollars.

Josh: Do you remember when we had a dry spell where no deep tech companies had ever gotten funding on our show?

Lisa: I do remember that vividly.

Josh: And then we brought on geCKo Materials.

Lisa: Yes.

Josh: And Capella raised over a million dollars just from our fund and SPV.

Lisa: Yes.

Josh: Which is insane, and that was the moment that I realized that you all listening, love science. You love deep tech.

Lisa: Yeah.

Josh: Y'all are like, "Forget B2B SaaS. Give me something interesting."

Lisa: Yeah.

Josh: So I'm proud to say that we are back with some hard science. To make it rain.

Lisa: Or snow! Using cloud seeding with natural proteins! It’s… super cool.

Josh: But it could be a little nefarious to control the weather… Will that cause a storm in The Pitch Room, or will Dacia be able to make it rain in more ways than one?

Lisa: The pitch for Supercool earth is coming up after this.

But first… we are hosting two live shows this season. One at SF Tech Week in October. And another one in November in Brooklyn. We’re also hosting our Big Pitch Event to record season 17 in San Francisco this November. You’ll get to hear all the pitches live and ask questions that might get featured on the show.

To learn more about any of these events go to pitch.show/events

BREAK

Welcome back to the pitch for Supercool Earth. 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 

Jesse Middleton with Flybridge

I am so sick of people that are building stuff for building stuff's sake.

And Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund

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

Jesse: Supercool Earth [clap]

Mike: Hello.

Jesse: Hello.

Dacia: Hi

Mike: How are you?

Dacia: Good. How are you all?

Mike: Mike

Michelle: Hi, I'm Michelle.

Dacia: Hi. Nice to meet you

Jesse: Jesse.

Dacia: Hi Jesse.

Elizabeth: Elizabeth. Nice to meet you.

Rohit: Hey, great to see you again.

Dacia: Hey. Rohit.

Michelle: I love your sweater.

Dacia: It's my power sweater. You gotta put your power shirt on coming to pitch, right?

Michelle: I love cows

Dacia: So my name is Dacia and I am CEO and co-founder of Supercool Earth. Our big vision at Supercool Earth is to make it rain and snow on demand. A couple years ago I was talking to a lettuce grower in Salinas Valley and he said to me, water is something that I think about every single day. I have to make a trade off between generating too much material waste or water waste. And as he was talking, I started thinking that there have to be better solutions, not just for growers, but for everybody. We need more tools in our toolbox for water. Let me add another layer to this tragedy sandwich than I'm building here. The technology for making it rain and snow already exists. It's existed for 50 years. It's called cloud seeding, and it's held back by the chemical that is used for cloud seeding. That chemical has poor activity. It is also not great for the environment. At Supercool Earth, we are building a natural product that is two times as effective as the traditional cloud seeding chemical that's used today, which means we can get two times more water out of clouds. We can target more geographies, more seasonalities. And it is compatible with the environment. Think about it like a probiotic for clouds. We are leveraging the natural mechanisms that already exist in clouds, nudging clouds to precipitate when they otherwise wouldn't, or getting more out of storms that are already going to happen.

And this is big. Think about any market that is connected to precipitation, ski resorts, water districts, hydropower, agriculture, disaster mitigation. And we're not just making it rain and snow from clouds. We have an early revenue product where we're making snow from snow making machines. The same natural product that goes into the clouds, we're putting inside of snow making machines to make snow at higher temperatures. We have two pilots lined up for this winter with two major ski resorts for our snowmaking additive, and many folks within our BD pipeline for cloud seeding. I'm here raising a $3 million round to validate our cloud seeding technology in the field, to become a revenue generating company, and to realize our big, big dreams of reliable precipitation. Are y'all ready for a video?

Elizabeth: Yeah

Jesse: Let’s do it

Mike: Sure, let’s do it

Dacia: So let me share this with y'all. And so what we did was we had a snowmaking consultant in Wisconsin and He first turned on the snow gun and was just using air and water. And in these conditions it makes rain. Because there are marginal conditions. The temperatures are too warm to actually make snow.

Rohit: Like what range of temperature are we talking about?

Dacia: So generally, snow making is done 26 Fahrenheit and below where you don't need to add anything. But anything between 26 Fahrenheit to 30 Fahrenheit is where the additive helps. so when he added our product, you can tell that there's snow coming out of the snowmaking machine. This is our very first trial that we've done. We have more in the pipeline to do, but it's definitely a very positive signal for our first trial in testing our product out in the field.

Michelle: At ski resorts, a lot of them have struggled with getting enough snow Are you able to completely replace snow or it, there's a base layer and it still needs to naturally snow?

Dacia: Yeah, so our two products between the snowmaking additive and cloud seeding are actually compatible. So at the beginning of the season, they would use the snowmaking additive to help build that base layer and actually protect when they open. Which is very key for all ski resorts as we all know, they've been opening later and later this season and that really sucks. So they can open two to four weeks ahead of time. And then our cloud seeding technology, what it would do is be used during the season to generate more snow and as we all know, ski resorts make most of their money on powder days. Heavenly will make 4 million in a day on a powder day. We have yet to do any cloud seeding, so we don't yet know what the quality of our snow will look like. I don't wanna call it like on demand powder days 'cause that's overstating it. But they would be extra snow days that would boost revenue during the season.

Elizabeth: Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got into this?

Dacia: I'm a biologist. I got my PhD at UT Austin and I've been in the biotech field for about 7 or 8 years. And for me, this company made a lot of sense to start because bio is the core of this tech and it's applied outside of healthcare. Like no one yet has applied bio to atmosphere and that blows my damn mind.

Elizabeth: But I guess like how did you land on this problem set?

Dacia: I read papers when I'm sad. I like to read scientific papers

Jesse: Bad snow, bad snow season.

Michelle: And then she gets even more sad. Like, how can I be happy?

Dacia: It's actually really therapeutic. So as a scientist, science kicks you in the balls all the time. So I read papers to believe in science again, and while I was in one of these mental health readings, I read about ice nucleating proteins, which is the core of our technology. They make ice under conditions where ice wouldn't normally form. And then I thought, we have to leverage this for something. So I actually started thinking that we could use the proteins for glacier preservation. That was my first idea. I have yet, not yet abandoned it. And so the whole exercise for me when I learned about this amazing biology was, what the hell do we use it for? And then it was clear like, we can freaking use this for water.

Mike: Can, so I've worked in the ski industry for 20 years.

Dacia: Cool.

Mike: Um, it's funny, I'm actually less interested in that part, although we could talk about snowmaking. And I have connections in that space. I'm actually more curious about the transition to get outta the ski industry into glaciers and crops. Can you walk me through like the big broad strokes of what that looks like?

Dacia: Yeah, of course. So we're starting in ski, which is our beach head market. It makes a lot of sense. And we're focused on snowpack augmentation. So from ski, we go to water districts and hydropower, and that's where a lot of cloud seeding is done in the US today is to augment snowpack that then melts into water basins and is used for hydropower. That then is used by people. Our expansion market is in ag but we have mirrored our go-to market strategy with development of the technology. So it's much easier to seed in cold weather It's much harder to deliver rain away from mountains into ag fields, but we want to get there. We believe that there's a lot of value in that for growers. So what we would do at an ag field is physically go with our formulation and our drone and essentially fly the drone over the ag area and make it rain directly on the ag field.

Michelle: And how are you thinking about the competitive landscape? Like I think Rainmaker’s probably raised more money. How are you thinking about displacing them? How are you looking at the competitive landscape and where you fit in?

Dacia: Yeah, so our main differentiator is the biology. Everybody else is limited by silver iodide. We are the only ones that have developed a biological and we have filed a patent on it, and we have the best in class biological that we make at scale. So our secret sauce is taking this natural protein, putting it into a microbe, making gobs and gobs of it within the microbe, using it as a factory, and then being able to also maintain that natural activity of the protein. The second piece is how do you disperse it? It's not a drop into the chemical that's using cloud seeding today because that chemical uses heat to be dispersed, and that's not good for proteins. So we are developing a way to disperse our proteins into clouds, and that is our second piece of, not just internal knowledge, but also maybe some provisional patent that we will file around as well.

Michelle: How does the protein bind in clouds?

Dacia: It's really cool. The proteins are these long filaments and all they do is essentially order water to be able to become ice under conditions where that normally wouldn't happen. So the long filaments have the water attached around them, and then that's how that ice forms and once that ice is large enough, it falls as precipitation.

Michelle: Hmm. That's really cool.

Jesse: Economically, how do you view the cost difference? are you better, faster and cheaper. Are you the same price?

Dacia: Yeah. So at scale we're definitely better because we can target more geographies, more seasonalities, we can get more water out of clouds, and we are cheaper as well. So using drones for our delivery allows us to be cheaper. Cloud seeding today uses planes and generators and they're not as efficient as, for example, using a drone to directly deliver.

Jesse: Got it.

Dacia: One piece back to the competition I'll say is that Rainmaker, for example, is very focused on the drone and drone deliveries and developing that hardware. While we are focused on the biological, I'm not building four companies into one. So we are partnering with drone operators to be able to have a hardware for us. And we have one that we're testing right now

Elizabeth: I'm no synbio expert, but I wanna hone in on what you said the IP is. Is it the protein that you're making or is it the act of distributing the protein using microbes like, Because I mean, like their, Ginkgo Bioworks does that. They may not have this exact protein and probably not this use case at all, but like where in here is your IP?

Dacia: Yeah. So we can't protect the protein at all because it's natural.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Dacia: And we decided to not engineer it as much as I would love to for speed and regulatory. What we have patented are the microbes to make that protein.

Elizabeth: I see.

Dacia: So we have made modifications to the microbes to increase the concentrations of protein that we make and also maintain that activity. And what's really amazing about our platform is that the protein becomes secreted, it gets kicked out by the microbe. So when we think about commercialization and whatnot, it's very easy to separate the microbe that we've engineered from the natural protein and that's essentially our, our final product. I know a lot of people associate biomanufacturing, synbio, with like, this is super expensive, but I have spent so much of my career in this space and I have been burned before by a biological that's way too expensive. So we put a lot of thought into how to manufacture a biological at scale.

Elizabeth: I know we had started to talk about sort of the unit economics on this, but maybe you could spell that out?

Dacia: Yeah. So you mean the unit economics on the scale up, the fermentation, or like what, where, or all of it.

Elizabeth: uh, all of the above. Like the costs that go into this at the different stages. And then I guess I didn't quite get how you're selling this or where the revenue comes from.

Dacia: Yeah. So, once we're at scale we're calculating around 50 cents per gram of protein that we produce. we're calculating that we would need about three grams of protein per night of snowmaking. And then looking at it from the cloud seeding perspective, we are mirroring off of numbers that are used for cloud seeding today with silver iodide, and we're calculating around 50 grams per mission And one mission is essentially, one like 10 kilometer run of the drone. And then in terms of how we make money off of this, so the snowmaking additive is very simple. We sell a ski resort and bag of powder it's a drop in into their existing operations and we tell them how much to mix it and they go. In terms of cloud seeding, right now we're looking at a per mission charge. That's how cloud seeding is done today. They're charged anywhere between 2 to 8,000 per mission. We're saying we're gonna charge 5,000 per mission and we would have a seasonal contract with our customer. We want to eventually move to a per acre foot charge of water because that's our main value prop. I told you we can make more water. And so in order to capture on that piece, we want to move to charging per acre foot of water.

Elizabeth: So, let's take Heavenly, they've got a lot of different runs. You're gonna charge them 5, let's just say 5K per mission. Like how many missions would they need for their whole resort?

Dacia: They would probably need one mission for their whole resort, but we would seed like 40 missions in a given season.

Elizabeth: Right. I understand you would, you know, bundle it and have it in bulk. Okay.

Dacia: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Got it. Well, I'm just trying to understand, like you had mentioned they can make 4 million a day.

Dacia: Oh yeah.

Elizabeth: And one mission would happen in a day. That'd be 5K. So it's a no-brainer to them if they pay 5,000 to make 4 million.

Dacia: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Kind of thing.

Dacia: Yes. I do believe that once we move to the acre foot charge, we would probably be able to charge more. But it's capturing that, how much precipitation did we generate, which is the key part of this whole technology.

Mike: can I ask, this 3 million, how far will this get you in your go to market? From both, ski to ag, and then on a revenue basis, what do you look at the milestone to be for this?

Dacia: Yeah. So the 3 million gets us two big things. One is becoming a revenue generating company, and that will start with the snowmaking additive. So we have targets for around 200K in revenue starting winter in the US, November 2026, by selling to three ski resorts for our snowmaking additive. The other piece that the 3 million gets us is to be able to validate our tech in the field. So be able to say how much precipitation we're generating and be able to reliably generate precipitation. So for our series A, we're making money, we have customers, and we're ready to scale our tech.

Mike: Can I ask about, three resorts 200 K is what you were targeting.

Dacia: Yeah. So about 70 K per, per ski resort

Mike: How are you approaching? Are they independents? They part of like Alterra, are they a part of Vail? Like what's that go to market look like?

Dacia: Yeah, so initially we would door-to-door ski resorts, and that's how we've been approaching ski resorts now to, to line up pilot trials. I've been cold calling ski resorts ever since we started this company, but obviously it makes a lot of sense to directly go talk to Vail, directly talk to Alterra, and be able to make those sales in that way. What I would love to do though is start door to door, have three ski resorts that are buying from us. We have data, we have customers that are already under our belts. and then directly to Vail or Alterra.

Dacia: Unless you have contacts, which-

Elizabeth: You should chat

Mike: I do. I mean this is -

Jesse: I heard he worked in the industry.

Mike: Don't make fun of me.

Jesse: I'm not.

Michelle: No, I think it’s cool

Mike: Next time that I find you falling on your snowboard, I swear to God I'm gonna spray you so hard Jesse.

Jesse: I don't know how to ski or snowboard. So I'm not

Rohit: It’s gonna happen real soon.

Michelle: I actually need him. He needs to teach me snowboarding tricks.

Michelle: Do you need people on the ground to do every mission?

Dacia: Yes. Right now we would need three people on the ground, two drone pilots and one meteorologist. As we scale, because given that, as we are an operations heavy company, we're looking at, different ways to scale and getting ideas from other companies that are also operationally heavy, that have scaled like Uber, for example. So dominating a hub in a certain place like Tahoe where we service all their ski resorts. Versus like, having one contract in Nevada and another one in Europe somewhere, like that, to me is really hard.

Elizabeth: But my worry is like, you make 5K per mission and you need three people for each mission.

Dacia: Yeah. So over time, what we wanna do is make that cheaper. So our vision is to make cloud seeding super, super easy, where we don't need somebody as specialized as a drone pilot or a meteorologist. And what we're pricing our COGS for our missions today, our predictions are about a thousand per mission.

Mike: What is, the fundraising history before this, tell me about the round dynamics you're looking at

Dacia: Yeah, so we started the company eight months ago, our first check in was from SOSV. That was a 200K check, and we've raised a bit of a pre-seed round throughout that it was 950K with other investors, Superorganism, Dangerous Ventures and Climate Capital. And now, we're raising the $3 million round, and the last check in I took was at 12 million valuation cap.

Mike: Can you tell me about your team you've mentioned yourself, science and ops. Are there other parts of the team and the go to market aspects since this is the part that you're saying you're cold calling. Uh,

Dacia: It's fun. Yeah. So our team, we have a team of four, including me, My co-founder is a fungal biologist. And then we have Steph, who's a senior scientist on the team, another badass scientist. She's a protein biochemist. And then we have Wolfgang, who is head of atmospheric science

Michelle: Who runs the commercial motion?

Dacia: Me. I'm the one cold calling.

Mike: Do you have some of this 3 million earmarked for hiring for people to do the…

Dacia: Yes. We're hiring likely two folks, an operations person, And then we want a hardware engineer that's gonna be able to interface with our hardware partners.

Mike: I just, are there more head count you're looking to hire? someone in the field who's gonna help you do the go-to market on this? Is that in the proforma of this?

Dacia: We have advi- I lean on a leaner team and so we like to hire people actually that have multiple areas that they can cover. So yes, we have room for a seventh person to be a sales person. and actually one of our snowmaking consultants is like texts me all the day if if we could hire him to sell to ski resorts.

Mike: I guess here's a question.

Dacia: Yeah.

Mike: what if I were to tell you, I think your hiring pattern's wrong in this. What is your reaction to that?

Are we in The Pitch Room or the foxhole right now? Who can say. We’ll be right back.

Mike: what if I were to tell you, I think your hiring pattern's wrong in this. Either you raise more money or one or two of these people have to go and you need to reallocate it towards distribution and go to market. What is your reaction to that?

Dacia: So the, the 3 million is for six to seven seats, and I've, I've told you six seats.

Mike: Great. So, so what if the market told you you needed two people in sales? Who would go?

Dacia: Likely our hardware engineer, a hundred percent our hardware engineer would go.

Mike: Is that, and again, this is like we're just on vibes here.

Dacia: Yeah.

Mike: Is that an easy answer, answer for you to say? No? No, because this

Dacia: No. it's not on vibes. Let me give you a bit more about how I've arrived at this answer. So our current push is to get some sales for our snowmaking additive. The hardware engineer is for cloud seeding, which is coming later. So they are not needed today. the operations person can help with the snowmaking additive operations piece, right? Like they, they can slot in there. And so that way we can make two spots for these salespeople

Elizabeth: Wait, sorry. So you are working with three resorts?

Dacia: Two resorts.

Elizabeth: Two resorts. Two resorts that you said were in pilots.

Dacia: Yep.

Elizabeth: What does the pilot look like? Are they paying you?

Dacia: So, unpaid right now the pilots essentially look like us making snow for three nights at their resort. they deeply know how much snow they make every single night and what that looks like, and also the quality of the snow. They want to move the snow around with the snowcat. And so we would show up with our protein, we would put it into their, pump house, and then they would, they would make snow for three nights and then they would decide.

Elizabeth: And they had, you've done this already or you have not done it?

Dacia: We haven't done it yet. So the one field trial we've done that I showed y'all a video of was with a Snowmaking consultant who's an expert in the field. We bought him some snow guns online. You can buy snow guns online and make snow in your backyard for like a winter wonderland if you would like.

Jesse: I'm getting one after this.

Michelle: Oh my gosh I’m learning so much!

Dacia: So they're like 400 bucks. So we shipped him a couple of Snowmaking guns and he did this in his backyard. We were racing against the winter ending in order to be able to test our product.

Elizabeth: So you have these two pilots, you're starting in the fall and then what happens if they're successful? Do you convert immediately into a contract?

Dacia: Yes. So they can make decisions really quickly

Elizabeth: For that same season.

Dacia: Yep.

Elizabeth: And what does success look like for them?

Dacia: Two things, one is that the formulation is stable There exists another product out in the market that's a Snowmaking additive, it's called Snowmax. It's been used for a very, very long time. People don't like to use it because it contains bacterial cells in it and it’s stinky and it doesn't have a good shelf life stability, and it's expensive. So we deliver on two things. We deliver on the formulation. Our formulation is more stable. It doesn't need to be stored anywhere. It's not stinky. And actually we're gonna sell at 20% cheaper the cost of Snowmax to drive adoption. And we can, because our application rate is lower than Snowmax. So in terms of the ski resorts, we've aligned with many of them that if we have the same, performance as Snowmax that they are used to and we sell for cheaper, and the storm formulation is better, they will convert. And they can make a decision on the spot.

Elizabeth: So what does that, design partnership to contract look like? Like what kind? Have you talked numbers with them yet?

Dacia: Not yet. So the furthest that we've gotten is, obviously, they know how much Snowmax costs and I tell them we're selling at 20% cheaper. And that definitely piques interest. We have LOIs signed with the two major ski resorts that I mentioned earlier, and there's some language in there about converting to a paid contract

Elizabeth: But no numbers.

Dacia: We did not put numbers into those, uh, early LOIs. This was, I wanna say like month three or four that we had started the company. So future LOIs will definitely contain numbers.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I think, um, it sounds like you have a, a really sharp scientific team, and I'm very impressed by what you guys have built. I think for me, I am concerned about this customer acquisition cycle for twofold. One is. Okay. Ski resorts, it seems like the cold calling is starting to work, but it, it feels a little bit like a long cycle. But then it's not just that, it's like even if you unlock that, unlocking the other markets is like starting over. And so I think I'm concerned about sort of that transition as well, which is a big part of the story and so I think for me, unfortunately, I'm gonna be out. Thank you.

Dacia: Thanks for the feedback.

Mike: Here's my quick thought. I would take another meeting with you. I would not do it at a 12. And I'm going to come with the opinion that you're, you're gonna have to look. This is a, this is a long putt, doing ski, and I've done it. I have one exit in the ski industry. It's brutal. and the second is, you need to de-risk the second ladder from ski to ag. So it's with that sort of disclosure, if you would like to have a second meeting on that, that would, I would definitely love to dig in with that. But also there's an option where it's like, I don't buy that at all. and that's also perfectly fine as well.

Dacia: Let's have a second meeting. Let's dig in more

Mike: Great.

Jesse: For me, it's just not, I don't know the category at all. I'm also not a skier or a snowboarder. I, the first business, I'm not totally sure I buy being a big one. And I think the leap to getting to the ag stuff, I think is the one I would want to believe in. I just think you're, you're early for that. For me to wrap my head around is that plausible. And so for that reason, I, I'm not the right fit here.

Rohit: Well, I, I missed your last round, so I'd like to do this one.

Dacia: Awesome.

Rohit: I guess I have a million other questions I can ask you about this, but like, what are the weird use cases, right? Like we're talking about, we're generating snow and water where it's needed. What about like, okay, floods in Hawaii, right?

Dacia: Yeah.

Rohit: You know, giant storm is coming. Can you brunt a flood?

Dacia: Yeah. we could do that. it's speculative, but we can definitely, uh, the way that it works is you would seed before the flood happens.

Jesse: Yeah.

Dacia: And then release the water before all of the water comes out all at once.

Rohit: So hail is-

Elizabeth: It’s like Elsa.

Rohit: So hailstorms are probably similar

Dacia: Hailstorms. Yes. So that is less speculative. 'cause people do do that in Canada. There are cloud seeding companies that help prevent hail and you just make the hail pellet smaller by seeding the clouds.

Rohit: What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else? Like one day we're just like, you know what? Screw Arizona

Dacia: So, so yes. A couple of thoughts there. I had, I did have a crazy thought one time that we could use, so nature, every time it has, makes something also makes the opposite of it. So there's anti freeze proteins that exist. It's like, wouldn't it be crazy if we seed clouds with antifreeze proteins and make it not rain? I don't know. That seems like it could be a thing that we could try. See what happens.

Michelle: What's the, what’s the fallout of that though?

Dacia: I mean, we're not gonna do that.

Rohit: I’m not into that. Just gonna put that out there. Not into like, causing drought

Jesse: All I’m going to remember going forward from this is, you really don't like Arizona.

Mike: Everyone. You heard it here first. Rohit created the end of the world.

Elizabeth: He's thinking he can invest in this company, create like floods and droughts and whatever

Jesse: He’s gonna be like, pointing at the map. Rain.

Michelle: Make it rain anywhere.

Rohit: This is straight Dr. Evil right here.

Dacia: Don't worry, we're not doing that. Everyone listening.

Josh: Where you going with this Rohit?

Rohit: We're, $1 million dollars.

Rohit: I got a stupid one.

Dacia: Let's go.

Rohit: What if you dropped it into a hurricane?

Dacia: Yeah. It's not stupid. There's, there is one company out there that's doing uh

Rohit: Not stupid?

Dacia: That, and yes. people have been thinking about this for a while. Like, what if we could stop hurricanes or make them not as bad by seeding them, there's super cold liquid in them. And so yes, we could do something like that.

Michelle: Hmm

Elizabeth: Hmm.

Rohit: Alright.

Michelle: You're saving the world now.

Dacia: Yeah.

Jesse: You're the head of new projects.

Rohit: Can we create hurricanes?

Elizabeth: He’s Arizona.

Michelle: I mean, this is definitely up our alley, so I also would wanna take a second meeting. I, but we've, uh, we've looked at a few companies in the space, including Rainmaker, But definitely up our alley.

Dacia: Cool

Mike: Thank you.

Jesse: Thank you.

Elizabeth: Thank you.

Josh: Before you go, um,

Mike: Sorry, Josh

Josh: Yeah. Uh, Mike, how much would you be investing?

Mike: So, yeah, quarter million

Josh: You, Michelle?

Michelle: Probably around 500 is usually our check for this.

Rohit: Peanuts, probably like 100k. I feel small today next to all of you ballers

Jesse: Thank you.

Mike: Now. Thank you.

Elizabeth: Thank you.

Dacia: Thanks for all the questions and I don't know, being cool people

Jesse: Thank you

Elizabeth: It's great to meet you.

Dacia: Yeah, you too.

Michelle: We're super cool.

Mike: Oh, wow. You just did that

Dacia: I was waiting for that.

Mike: I don't know a lot about this, but shoot, from an anti-portfolio perspective, if I passed on someone where their wedge market is selling in ski resorts of me, of all people that would look incredibly stupid. Um, so, and no, I'm being very honest.

Rohit: No, I get it.

Jesse: It's a very pragmatic way of going about it

Josh: You don't want to look stupid.

Mike: Yeah. I, I don't know. My actions sometimes bear otherwise. No, but like, I mean, I can see how this sells very easily in that market, particularly given this past season. I'm aware of the business dynamics on, on this and I have some people in ski.

Josh: So even though you don't like the market, you still think it's a good market.

Mike: That one is fine. No, that one is fine. The harder one is this, and I think this is what Jesse's saying, it's like to get to escape velocity, where this matters from, for my portfolio. it's the second turn of this distribution lever.

Jesse: Yeah.

Mike: That matters. And I-

Jesse: How big is Snowmax? Like how big of a business is Snowmax? is it, is it a billion dollars?

Mike: Look, I had one exit in the ski industry and we bought ourself like a nice car. Like it was like, it's just, it it, it's the second one.

Rohit: What if like, that's not the second one

Mike: or whatever.

Elizabeth: Second one is creating hurricanes for other people.

Mike: Something. I mean, my point is

Jesse: You can have any amount of money you want if you start creating hurricanes

[crosstalk]

Elizabeth: Can you imagine, you could do like world cup sabotage? Like if you're playing in Santa Clara but you want all your other competitors in Texas to like -

Jesse: It’s a bidding war.

Elizabeth: So you just like, pay $5,000 to rain on everybody

Jesse: It’s Kalshi for weather-

Elizabeth: Yeah, integrate with Kalshi and then bet like crazy. That's how you really make money. That's the better business.

Josh: Okay. Rohit, I have a problem.

Rohit: Yeah.

Josh: You can't sit there quietly, an entire pitch and then just be like, well, I'm in.

Rohit: Yeah.

Josh: I have no idea what's going on in your brain. And then you just pop in. And then drop the hurricane comment

Rohit: We're, okay. Water scarcity is a problem, right?

Josh: Yes.

Rohit: We're gonna start seeing cities run out of water. It's already happening globally.

Josh: Right.

Rohit: And in the US we feel like it's not a problem because we always turn the tap on. There's always water. I don't know if we get to that point, but it's not crazy to say that we could. And who else is doing anything about it? Like silver iodide doesn't work.

Josh: Hmm.

Rohit: And she's just so far ahead of other people,

Elizabeth: I actually think rich people would want to use this. At 5,000 a pop, you can have your kids' birthday party be like a snow fight.

Rohit: Yeah. You can just buy snow. Like I, I think you can just buy the guns for 400 bucks and just start spraying snow a little.

Jesse: You shoot it right at the kids. It's no problem.

Rohit: There you go.

Elizabeth: No, I'm, I'm only half kidding. 'cause I just think some of these other markets are easier to sell into as opposed to like ag, it gives me a headache. Government, it gives me a headache.

Jesse: Just personal, I’m not allowed to use the hose

Elizabeth: That would be interesting.

Josh: Are you coming around on this one Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: Only if he's their go to market

Mike: You can buy my seat.

Rohit: I would trust Mike more than me. Like honestly

Josh: All right. You guys are crazy. Let's turn it around

Jesse: Alright

Mike: Alright

Elizabeth: I think it could be a good press opportunity.

Jesse: Great press.

Elizabeth: Like they could have…

Dacia walked out of the pitch room with commitments from Rohit and Michelle, and a second meeting with Mike. Can she “rain” in all three after the show? I’m snow excited for diligence. We’ll be right back.

Break

Welcome back. A few months later, we caught up with Dacia to see what happened after the show

Dacia: I'll tell y'all something before we start. We recently hired a hardware intern who's fabulous, and he's staying on for the semester. He loves y'all's show.

Lisa: That's basically why he's working for you, 'cause he found out you're a Pitch founder.

Dacia: Yeah. It, I mean, it certainly helps. Anything I can do to keep Olaf on the team for as long as possible.

Lisa: And his name is Olaf? That's amazing.

Josh: No way.

Dacia: His sister's name is Elsa.

Lisa: No. Stop..

Dacia: I swear.

Josh: What?

Lisa: Is he from Norway?

Dacia: No. I know.

Josh: Would they, did they name their children after?

Dacia: Before.

Josh: They must have lost their minds when that movie came out.

Dacia: They did.

Lisa: Are you ready to dive in?

Dacia: Ready to dive in.

Josh: All right. I have a question for you.

Dacia: Okay.

Josh: What was your experience like pitching on the show?

Dacia: I mean, it was awesome. You know when you do something difficult and you kill it, and you're like, "Wow, I'm a superhuman. I'm amazing!" So like after getting off of the show, in the room with Lisa, I really could have climbed Mount Everest.

Lisa: Aw.

Dacia: Like I could have lifted a car. I have been recommending it to everyone afterwards. You just feel like so great after doing it.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Dacia: And especially if like you feel like you, you killed it.

Josh: Just like a cold plunge.

Dacia: Like a cold plunge.

Lisa: I was thinking the natural high after birth

Dacia: Like 10 cold plunges. Yes. That, I mean, that definitely came to mind.

Lisa: Oh, wow.

Dacia: That natural high after birth. Yeah. Actually, that's really accurate, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you.

Josh: You just compared coming onto The Pitch as- to giving birth? What?

Lisa: Okay, I did, but what I meant is like when you do hard things and you're like, "Wow, I did that." And that's what giving birth feels like. You're like, "I just did that really hard thing."

Josh: Yeah.

Lisa: Anyways. Continue.

Dacia: So I've been tapping into that high as much as I can, since like The Pitch episode of, you know, anytime I have to do something difficult, I just kind of remember I did that.

Josh: Well, like I always say, if you can make it rain, you can come on The Pitch.

Lisa: Oh my gosh.

Dacia: I love that.

Lisa: Don't.

Josh: I do. I say that very often, actually. Yep.

Lisa: Yeah. All the time.

Josh: So you got two commitments in the room, and a sort of commitment from Mike because he loves snowboarding. So let's start with Mike. What happened after the show?

Dacia: Mike was very fast. So we had a couple meetings after the show, and went through diligence with him. And he's, has such a great perspective because I have never met anyone that has been in the ski industry or has had a company in ski before. It's usually like rare for VCs to have a ski portfolio company that has also exited. So he had a unique insight, but yeah, ultimately he passed. I think we're a bit outside of his portfolio. We're bio and hardware and you know, like atmosphere. And so would have loved to have him on board, but you never know about the future.

Josh: So no trip to the foxhole?

Dacia: No trip to the foxhole.

Josh: So I remember when he was going through diligence with you, I actually got to meet up with him in person, and he talked about how he wanted to see you more like making it rain, and he seemed less excited about selling to ski resorts-

Dacia: Yeah

Josh: which I think makes sense, like coming from an industry that you know super well, like you're just gonna see what's wrong with that side of the business.

Dacia: Oh, yeah.

Josh: You're just gonna see the personalities behind it, that you're like, "Ah, no, I know that guy, that runs Vail. He's not gonna say yes." He's gonna imagine them and just have a hard time thinking about how you're gonna scale the business that way. Do you think that's what you heard from him? Or am I hearing a different story?

Dacia: No, no, that's accurate. My inclination was like, "Oh, he knows ski industry. He's gonna love this." This is gonna be great.

Lisa: Yeah.

Dacia: And he's gonna go like, "This is gonna be- Yeah ... a match." I've never met anyone that's, uh, has a company in ski. But it was actually kind of the opposite. Which, you know, I, we all have our baggage. I got mine. Uh- ... so that makes, that makes sense. But at the same time, we have s- fair amount of traction with the water districts. I just got back from a trip, and we've essentially planned our winter program for this coming winter between ski resorts and water districts. And so we're not stuck in ski resorts. We're doing trials at water districts this coming winter, which is huge. Lisa: Mm.

Josh: All right. Next up is Michelle Kwok.

Dacia: Yeah.

Josh: You recorded your pitch with her after the pitch to send to their investment committee, AKA Tim Draper. What happened after that?

Dacia: Well, I had a couple more meetings with them, and I actually have one, another one right after this call.

Josh: No way.

Dacia: Yeah.

Josh: Okay, so the diligence is still going on?

Lisa: Oh my gosh

Dacia: The diligence is still going on. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about them.

Josh: Yeah.

Dacia: And I think they would be a good fit for us, given like what they fund and, and whatnot, and so-

Josh: Oh, yeah

Josh: They love all the weird shit.

Dacia: Yeah. We're weird.

Lisa: I feel like you're like in the dating process and- you're just like waiting for them to pop the question. Do you have an inkling which way they're leaning? Can you tell?

Josh: Lisa.

Dacia: I try. So my head go... Dating, right?

Lisa: Yeah.

Dacia: Your head goes there. It's like, "What are they thinking?"

Lisa: Yeah.

Dacia: I try to not go there as much as possible.

Lisa: Hmm.

Dacia: But the one thing I do tell myself is that when investors invest time in you, it's not a bad sign.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Dacia: That's as far as usually my brain goes, because I'll tell you frankly, like, I've gone to places where, "Oh my God, so-and-so's gonna invest. I like them, they like me," blah, blah, blah. And then they don't. And it's a bummer.

Lisa: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah.

Dacia: So I, I try to stop my brain from thinking, like, positive or negative either way-

Josh: Yeah

Dacia: and just take it meeting to meeting.

Josh: Yeah, you gotta protect your heart.

Dacia: Yeah. I mean, exactly.

Lisa: We're laughing, but for real.

Dacia: No, but yes. Yes, Josh. The up and down swings are so high, uh, in-

Josh: Yeah

Dacia: a startup, and so you kinda just wanna maintain neutral as much as possible.

Josh: Yeah.

Dacia: Especially if you're one of the founders, 'cause no one else on your team wants to see you swing.

Lisa: That's fair. Yep.

Josh: Right. Oh, man. All right. Um, yeah. This is f- this is fun. Um

Dacia: Josh is having fun.

Josh: We are getting Dacia uncorked, and it's, this is great.

Dacia: Dude- y'all, I think you all know this, but this is how I operate. Like, I, it's hard for me to, to be corked. So...

Josh: Okay. So finally, we have The Pitch Room's super villain of the weather, Rohit Gupta.

Dacia: Yeah.

Josh: How was your call with VC Dr. Evil? Any more genius go-to-market ideas from him?

Dacia: Rohit's the best. We had, like, an immediate bond. And our rapport is really great.

Rohit: I have a question for you.

Dacia: I love your questions, Rohit.

Rohit: Uh, well, here-

Dacia: Here it comes.

Rohit: Um, how do you feel about prediction markets?

Dacia: Yeah. Uh, yeah. It, it, I, I mean, I can't say that's something that we are currently watching too much of or, like, have on our radar.

Rohit: How concerned are you? E- even if it's not you, right? Like, both of you seem very sort of straight and narrow people, right? Like, you're just sort of like reasonable, not predatory human beings. But like, you know, like you have an employee who's like, "Oh, I know where our next mission is gonna be. I'm going to..." Like, how do you- I mean, do you even care? Is that a thing where you're like, you're not allowed to use prediction markets if you work here?

Dacia: Yeah. I mean, So you're, you have read us correctly. We do like to steer away from, evil's a strong word, but like we do have a moral compass and lines we will not cross. One of those lines, for example, is weaponizing cloud seeding. Not only is it illegal but that's something that we would never, ever do.

Rohit: Totally get it. I appreciate that. That's very aligned with how we think about things and how we want technology to be used. So yeah, look, I've done my homework. I'm in at the terms discussed on the show.

Dacia: Cool.

Rohit: Send me a safe and wire instructions.

Dacia: Amazing.

Rohit: Done. Appreciate you.

Dacia: Appreciate you. High five.

Rohit: Yeah. High five.

Josh: How much did Rohit invest?

Dacia: He invested 50K. We got his check already.

Josh: No way.

Lisa: Yay.

Dacia: Yeah. Yay.

Josh: Can you confirm that he's not gonna try to use your technology to make weather bets on Kalshi?

Dacia: Yes. Yes. No evil is being done. Don't worry.

Josh: How is your fundraise going overall? I know you were raising 3 million during your pitch.

Dacia: we have changed a plan for our fundraising, and that's mainly around the lab results going really well and also our customer traction. Those two things have gone super, super well, better than expected. And so what we've decided to do instead is raise a focused amount, 500K, for our winter program to fund that and get field data and deliver on the demand that we're seeing, and then punt the seed raise until next year.

Josh: Did the terms change?

Dacia: No, the terms are the same. And we've just started last week.

Josh: Well, the Pitch fund is in, if you'll have us.

Dacia: I will 100% have you. I was waiting-

Lisa: Yay

Dacia: I was like, you know, you hope dating, um, that, that y'all would say this on the show. I'm like, "Oh- maybe they'll say it." Last night as I was falling asleep at 1:00 in the morning

Lisa: Oh my gosh.

Dacia: Is where my head went. But hell yeah, of course I'll have you guys

Lisa: Loved what you've been building since the beginning, and obviously we're big fans of you as well.

Dacia: Right back at ya.

Josh: Let's make it rain.

Lisa: Ah.

Dacia: Let's make it rain.

Josh: So what else is happening with the business? You mentioned you landed a new customer that you guys have discovered.

Dacia: It was new, and I'll tell you how we discovered them. Through our, one of our investors. Folks in water districts are just hard to find and talk to and cold call and all that.

Josh: Yeah, I don't know anyone from water districts.

Dacia: I know. Me neither. Until you find your first, right, that, like, loves you, and then they introduce you to more, which is what is, is, has happened with us. And so yeah, the water district has happened earlier than we had anticipated to get this connection, to have them move super fast, which is why we've changed up our raise. And so within the past couple of months, we're in discussions to do a cloud seeding trial with them March, February of next year. And it's huge because we would be generating water for their citizens. Like, that's massive. I was just there-

Lisa: Wow

Dacia: looking at the river that we would be increasing flow to and talking with water experts in that area, and it's… Yeah, it just, not only is it inspirational, but it's like this is why we're doing it, right?

Josh: Yeah.

Dacia: Is to bring value to folks that definitely need it, and this area specifically thinks a lot about water. So it's not just this water district. There's others too that are interested in us seeding for them. And while this is all happening, we've grown the team a bit since I was on the show, which is cool, and we're a team of five, and like- ... dude, everyone's just killing it every day, which is cool.

Josh: Cool stuff, Dacia.

Dacia: Yeah. Thanks, Josh.

Josh: How many times can we use the word cool in your episode?

Lisa: Oh my God.

Dacia: As many as possible.

Josh: Keep us posted on the Draper situation.

Lisa: Oh yeah.

Dacia: Oh, I will.

Josh: A few days later, Draper invested 100k in Supercool Earth, bringing their total raised on the show to $300,000

Lisa: Deeptech wins again.

Josh: Yes. It's interesting that, like, a core reason why the VCs passed in the room was because Dacia was selling only to ski resorts, and this secondary market of municipalities and-

Lisa: Ag.

Josh: Ag, yeah, was unclear.

Lisa: Yeah.

Josh: Like, unproven.

Lisa: And then in just a month or two after that, she's already selling to, like, water districts.

Josh: Right.

Lisa: And it just shows how much can happen in such a short period of time.

Josh: Yeah. You can tell she's really excited about that market. I remember in diligence before the show, I asked her, "If your company only ever sells to ski resorts, and that is the full business, will you be happy with that?" And she sat with it for a second, and she goes, "No."

Lisa: Right, 'cause this is, like, a bigger mission than, like, helping people ski. This is about bringing water to people.

Josh: Wait, are you saying my annual ski trip is not important, Lisa?

Lisa: You know, I'm not saying that.

Josh: My ski trip with the boys is a priority.

Lisa: I'm just saying that there are higher priorities-

Josh: When there's not snow-

Lisa: in this world, like-

Josh: It's a problem ...

Lisa: drinking water

No offer to invest in Supercool Earth is being made to the listening audience on today’s show. But we have a venture fund where we invest alongside the VCs on the show

When you invest in the pitch fund you get ownership in all the companies that we invest in on the show. We’re open to new investors through the end of the year! To learn more, go to thepitch.fund

Next week on The Pitch…

Cam: At my 21st party, my friends rolled out a three-wheeled motorbike as my gift. They said, "Cam, everybody at the party chipped in to get this for you." So we built PaySquad to make group payments native at checkout. It's the first buy now, pay together.

Mike: recovering banking and payments person here. how do you beat this race to the bottom

Cam: For PaySquad, we have the K factor of, like, an early 2000s social network.

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.

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

–

This episode was made by 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, 1939 Ensemble, Imagined Nostalgia, Soul City, Ønders, and Peter Jean & The Runaway Queen.

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