Invest in startups like Paces alongside Climate Capital here.
Founders: James McWalter, Charles Bai
Motto/Mission: To enable the climate-optimum use case for every piece of land in the world.
Year Founded: 2022
Stage: Series A
Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA
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Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
James and Charles: James grew up on a farm in Ireland that converted to organic when he was 14. His whole family read extensively on environmentalism at the time, embedding the importance of environmental issues in the back of his mind. However, he didn't initially pursue this in his career. By 2019, James was constantly reading about climate change and becoming increasingly pessimistic. This culminated in January 2020 when he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to working on climate change. From there, he began iterating on some agriculture-focused ideas, which led to speaking with farmers who were being "pestered for my land" by solar developers. This interaction sparked the idea to start pestering solar developers and learning about their very specific problems, which aligned with the thesis he and Charles were developing.
When Charles worked at Meta AI, his team provided inference service of large AI models at scale, serving millions of QPS. Training and providing inference for such large models became very computationally expensive, leading them to start tracking the power and carbon footprint of these AI models. As he delved deeper into the climate space, Charles started reading extensively about climate and energy. Similar to James, he grew increasingly pessimistic about the future and decided to work on climate full-time. To maximize climate impact, Charles and James decided to focus on one of the most heavily polluting sectors: energy. They discovered that renewable energy developers faced significant challenges in deploying their sites, so they founded Paces to help developers deploy as many climate-positive sites as possible with a much higher project success rate.
The transition to clean energy is critical, yet the process of developing renewable energy projects is often slow, complex, and fraught with obstacles. Developers face significant challenges in finding suitable land, navigating permitting processes, and connecting to the grid—issues that can delay or derail projects entirely. This inefficiency not only hampers the growth of renewable energy but also delays our progress in addressing climate change. The market for renewable energy is expanding rapidly, driven by the urgent need to decarbonize our power grid. However, the industry still lacks the streamlined tools and data necessary to keep pace with this growth. This gap inspired James and Charles to start Paces with the mission to enable the climate-optimum use case for every piece of land in the world. By providing developers with the data and insights they need to move quickly and confidently through the project lifecycle, Paces accelerates the development of clean energy projects, making a tangible impact on climate change and contributing to a more sustainable future.
Climate Capital: What are you building?
James and Charles: Mitigating climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, requiring the rapid deployment of clean, renewable energy sources. However, current development timelines are often too slow, expensive, and encumbered by regulatory and logistical hurdles. Paces addresses this issue by harnessing the power of technology to accelerate and streamline the entire project lifecycle. Our platform integrates critical environmental, geospatial, grid, and permitting data, enabling developers to quickly identify optimal sites and proactively navigate potential roadblocks. By doing so, Paces empowers developers to save time, reduce costs, and scale their efforts, ultimately driving the faster deployment of renewable energy projects that are essential for a sustainable, climate-resilient future.
Climate Capital: What is next?
James and Charles: Paces has successfully closed its Series A funding round, enabling Paces to enhance its capabilities beyond construction siting, encompassing the entire project due diligence process and the broader development ecosystem, further accelerating the number of grid-connected projects it can support. These extended capabilities will support various sectors, including renewable energy developers, data centers, and EV charging organizations. Paces’ expansion efforts will include further development and implementation of Permitting Predictor, which leverages large language models to quickly assess site risks in specific areas.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
James and Charles: At Paces, we are guided by four core values: Climate First, where every decision aligns with our mission to combat climate change; Directness is Kindness, believing that honest, continuous feedback is the greatest form of care; Act, Learn, Adapt, emphasizing the importance of making decisions, learning quickly, and adapting to new insights; and Shared Success, ensuring that we celebrate and elevate the achievements of our customers, team, and society as a whole.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
James and Charles: The toughest time was early during Y Combinator. We had no revenue or customers, but three solar developers were trialing. On the same day, all three said they would not buy our product. Within a week we completely changed our approach to solving problems for developers, relaunched and were able to close our first customer.
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
James and Charles: Trust your gut. We love insights from great advisors and read all the best thinkers, but in the end, the only times we ever regretted a hire, a specific action, etc., were when we went against our gut.
There’s no perfect process. If your startup continues to scale, all processes will be broken by default, and you want to identify the most broken ones and fix those to a degree. We adjust our product development cycle multiple times as we scale the team, and it’s important to acknowledge that it’s impossible to make it “perfect.”
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
James and Charles: We are hiring multiple roles in NYC and we are looking for people who are passionate about climate! Please check opening positions on paces.com/careers
If you want to learn more, visit https://www.paces.com/!