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Founders: Michael Spencer
Motto/Mission: To make reliable, empowering electric mobility and energy storage accessible to the greatest number of people possible – especially those who can benefit the most from it.
Year Founded: 2019
Stage: Seed
Location: Oakland, California
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Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
Michael: There are 600 million petrol-powered two wheelers on the road globally. The vast majority of these are entry-level 100-200cc motorcycles in emerging markets like East Africa and India.
Commercial users, such as motorbike taxi drivers driving for platforms like Uber, account for the lion’s share of miles traveled on two wheelers in these markets. The average emerging market motorbike taxi driver spends as much on fuel as an American commuter (despite having much lower purchasing power), and travels enough on two wheels circumnavigate the Earth in a year.
Going electric would let consumers nearly double their take-home income, and is a better, cleaner, and safer overall experience. However, current electric motorbike options are too expensive, have limited charging options, and can’t handle the rough road uses that they’re often subject to on these roads.
Climate Capital: What are you building?
Michael: Zeno is an electric mobility & battery-as-a-service (BaaS) company. We are democratizing access to energy storage and electric mobility, putting affordable, productive energy in the hands of as many people on the planet as possible.
We’re starting by building a standardized, cloud-connected modular battery pack that people can rent for various mobility and home energy uses, avoiding a cost-prohibitive and committing battery purchase. These batteries can be slow charged at home, fast charged in public, or exchanged at Zeno-built-and-owned, vending-machine-style battery swap stations.
Finally, we’re building the first vehicle supported by this battery-as-a-service ecosystem – the ultimate sport utility electric motorbike. Designed specifically for the rough-road, heavy-load use cases of emerging market riders, our vehicle equips owners to take charge and face whatever their daily journey throws at them.
Climate Capital: What is next?
Michael: Since inception, we’ve raised just under $10 million in seed funding from the world’s best automotive and climate tech investors. We’re on track to deploy our first 25 customer-paid vehicles with the supporting batteries and charging infrastructure in Kenya early next year, with a launch in other emerging markets shortly after. We’re currently raising a first-of-its-kind asset-backed debt facility to facilitate our buildout of distributed battery and charging infrastructure, backed by battery-as-a-service subscriptions.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
Michael: Solving climate change is hard. Doing so by building excellent, reliable mobility products for some of the lowest-income customers on the planet makes it harder.
At Zeno, we’re intentionally creating an optimistic culture defined by first-principles thinking and the magnitude of our mission. We move with maniacal urgency, set unreasonably audacious goals, and deliver in a strategically scrappy way. All the while, we cut through the noise and stay relentlessly focused on our core mission – making excellent light electric mobility and energy products for emerging market use cases.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
Michael: To fully achieve our mission, we need to facilitate the flow of billions of dollars of infrastructure finance into charging infrastructure and distributed batteries for emerging markets. Designing first-of-a-kind financial products to tap into debt and project finance as an early-stage company has been an interesting challenge – we didn’t expect to be at the forefront of financial innovation for energy storage and mobility in emerging markets when we first conceptualized Zeno.
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
Michael: Doesn’t matter how many rejections you face – you just need one yes to turn the tide.
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
Michael: If you’re interested in piloting an innovative, asset-backed lending model for battery-as-a-service subscriptions in East Africa, reach out to us.
If you want to learn more, visit https://zeno.earth/!