🎧 #100: Decarbonization, blockchain, and the Building OS with KPMG and Prescriptive Data

“The current state of climate reporting is a bit like choose your own adventure, but also grade your own paper."
—Tegan Keele

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Episode 100 is a fun, dynamic and enlightening conversation with Tegan Keele, the leader of KPMG's Climate Data and Technology practice, and Sonu Panda, CEO of Prescriptive Data, the makers of the building operating system software called Nantum OS.

Summary

We talked about how the SEC’s new carbon disclosure regulations will change the game for real estate, how new technology can improve upon the mess that is carbon accounting and reporting today, the potential role of blockchain technology in decarbonization efforts, how Nantum OS helps building owners with decarbonization, and more.

Without further ado, please enjoy the Nexus podcast with Sonu Panda and Tegan Keele.

Mentions and Links

1. KPMG (1:27)
2. Prescriptive Data (5:50)
3. Nantum OS (5:51)
4. Rudín Management Company (8:22)
5. The Expanse (1:02:45)
6. Crossing the Chasm (1:03:55)
7. Ted Lasso (1:04:56)

You can find Tegan and Sonu on LinkedIn.

Enjoy!

Highlights

• Why carbon accounting and reporting is important (10:15)
• Why blockchain is needed (27:23)
• Nantum OS and what a building OS is (45:44)
• Carveouts (1:02:32)

Music credit: Dream Big by Audiobinger—licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Full transcript

Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!

[00:00:03] James Dice: hello friends, welcome to the nexus podcast. I'm your host James dice each week. I fire questions that the leaders of the smart buildings industry to try to figure out where we're headed and how we can get there faster without all the marketing fluff. I'm pushing my learning to the limit. And I'm so glad to have you here following along.

[00:00:31] James Dice: This episode is a fun and dynamic and enlightening conversation with Teagan keel, the leader of KPMG's climate data and technology practice. And so new Panda CEO of prescriptive data, the makers of the building operating system software called NANTUM OS. We talked about many things, including how the STCs new carbon disclosure regulations will change the game for real estate.

How new technology can improve upon the mess that is carbon accounting and reporting today. The potential role of blockchain [00:01:00] technology in de-carbonization efforts. How NANTUM. This helps building operators, building owners and operators with decarbonisation and much, much more. So without further ado, please enjoy it. The nexus podcast with Sonya Panda and Tikkun killed. Teagan and Sony, welcome to the show. I'm excited about this conversation taking let's start with you. Can you introduce yourself please?

[00:01:20] Tegan Keele: Of course. Thanks for having me, James. I'm happy to be here today. Um, So Tina keel, I run the climate data and technology practice at KPMG, which was part of KPNG impact, which is our sort of overall ESG services group.

Me and my team focused specifically on helping our clients. Yet what I call operational climate data. So data coming from either enterprise or physical systems like buildings all the way to the point of reporting. So whether that's internal reporting to do things like understanding over underperformance or [00:02:00] climate disclosure type uh, reporting, and sort of managing that whole process from data to calculation methodology, to technology, to finally to output.

[00:02:10] James Dice: Got it. And can we, can we go through a little background on you, like before this role that you're in, can you tell us a little bit about your educational and professional background leading up to that?

[00:02:21] Tegan Keele: I can, so I won't do sort of the full history. But I did my undergrad and DC. I studied political science, among many other things.

And then, you know, as one or to expect, I mostly spent my career in emerging technologies and data. Um, So sort of backed into that one accidentally, but sort of have always been interested in emerging technologies and sort of how they influenced different businesses as a whole and sort of found my sweet spot here at KPMG.

I came in as part of our data and analytics [00:03:00] practice that eventually evolved into running what was our blockchain center of excellence. And as part of that we pretty quickly decided that the. Climate was sort of a good place to focus from an emerging technology and blockchain point of view. I think we've evolved a little bit and focusing more on the data than the technology side of that.

Although technology is still really big. That's how we were introduced to Sony and the lovely other folks at prescriptive data. Um, But since then, we've sort of shepherded the blockchain part of that and focused entirely on climate data and technology as part of our overall ESG offerings that the.

[00:03:44] James Dice: Cool. Yeah, I'm really excited to start to pick your brain on some of these technologies, but also just the state of your clients uh, road to de-carbonization. So who are your what types of clients do you have? Obviously, you can't talk about some of them, but what types of [00:04:00] organizations are they,

[00:04:01] Tegan Keele: but they run they're pretty wide gamut.

So obviously, you know, both given sort of KTMG as a company, you know, our clients fit a fairly, you know, generally large enterprise. Profile. And then if we get specifically into sort of, who's spending the most time thinking about climate and emissions, it tends to be financial services organizations.

Obviously they've got both a large physical footprint, but they're also financers of everything else. So they're on the hook for everyone else's emissions to a certain degree. And then oil and gas companies. We spend a lot of time there for very obvious reasons, but really we spend time in pretty much every industry across the board.

So, you know, retail, industrial manufacturing, all of the above.

[00:04:48] James Dice: Cool. And before we go to Sonos, can you tell us about this plant over your left shoulder? Cause it's amazing.

[00:04:53] Tegan Keele: So the plant is probably more popular than I am and I'm totally okay with that. It doesn't [00:05:00] depends. Some people have a nickname for it.

My boss is named Seymour after a little child report. I take no credit for it. I'm definitely not the green thumb in the family. That's all my husband. But, but someday, like I may just not appear on camera and then it'll just be the plant and that'll be

[00:05:20] James Dice: well, I'm sorry if people are just listening on audio, you can check out the YouTube version to be this amazing plant Sonu.

Can we go to you? Can you introduce yourself please?

[00:05:30] Sonu Panda: Of course. Hi James. Hi, Teagan, Sonu Pando. Um, I'll I will first address the most important question that people are wondering, which is, is my last name actually Panda like the bear and the answer is it is I've been in therapy ever since the fourth grade.

I'm making the best of it. I'm the CEO of a company called prescriptive data. I should have said a fantastic and awesome company called prescriptive data based here in New York city. We are a smart building [00:06:00] technology company that was very much envisioned through the paradigm of operating systems that, that many of you are familiar with this notion of, you know, windows as an operating system or Mac OS or Linux, if you prefer which I'll get into in a little bit more detail.

But these days we spend almost all of our time talking about very specific outcomes. And the one that is the hottest topic of the lot is climate change. And in particular, science-based AI and ML driven. Decarbonisation in buildings. Cool.

[00:06:32] James Dice: Let's go a little bit of a rewind on, on you. Can you talk about what you did before prescriptive data, your, your educational and professional background?

[00:06:40] Sonu Panda: Yeah. Happy to do that. So first things first, I couldn't tell my story without pointing out that my father had. Of himself as a real life, Indiana Jones. And so, as a result, we have, I was born in India, moved to the states when I was little left and moved to Athens, Greece than Indonesia and Malaysia, that Indonesia again.

And as a [00:07:00] result of our time in Greece, where the only Indians that always have fed a cheese in the fridge, but I snapped her one, chapter two is uh, went to the university of Pennsylvania um, engineering grad, mainly because if you're Indian and you tell your parents, you're not going to go to medical school, you've got to at least get an engineering degree.

And then spent, I've spent almost all my time in the enterprise software space. Was that a world-class darling of.com 1.0 called trilogy software in Austin, Texas in the late nineties. And then was at a company called Callidus software. We took public and sold for $2.6 billion to SAP. And then I was one of the early you know, my co-founder and I started one of the earliest subscription e-commerce companies that was at the end of the day supply chain software, but had a very unique sort of front end to it.

So you may hear on the internet that some people will refer to me as an online florist, referring to a company called H bloom. And I've been in prescriptive data now for [00:08:00] about five years, we're off to the races.

[00:08:02] James Dice: Awesome. And can you tell me a little bit more, I don't know, the founding story of prescriptive data other than it's connected to root.

And can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:08:10] Sonu Panda: Yeah, absolutely. So for those of you that don't know Rudin management company is the operating company that belongs to the root and family. And the operating company looks after and manages on a day-to-day basis. The single largest privately held real estate portfolio in New York city.

It's 10 million square feet of very high-end commercial property and then 5 million square feet of high-end residential property. And to give you a flavor for sort of the caliber of, of, of that organization and of its tenants, they're the landlords of Blackstone, KPMG the NFL. They built a Thomson Reuters building.

They actually still own 32 avenue of Americas, which is where the first handshake took place between at and T and MCI many, many years ago. And they're essentially a blue-chip real estate owner and operator here in, in New York city. We were founded not in the garage, [00:09:00] but in the engine room of 3 45 park avenue, which is a very tall, I forget the exact number of stories.

Probably close to 50 story building 1.8 million square feet at the intersection of 52nd street and park avenue. And we make a big deal about that because we, we, we certainly envisioned all of our technology and our story is being one that was defined by building operators, specifically for building operators.

Admittedly with a initial bent towards commercial office buildings, but with a long-term vision around creating general purpose, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that can be applied to all kinds of other asset classes as well.

Got it. And, and you have something special over your left shoulder as well.

So there's a, there's an elephant there. Is there a story that, that a elephant has?

Oh no, you're talking about. You talked about Philly, the Brontosaurus

[00:09:51] James Dice: Brontosaurus, sorry,

[00:09:54] Sonu Panda: Billy right here. Well, it's funny when people always talk about, you know, is anyone going to [00:10:00] return to the workplace? Let's be clear.

The workplace is where I keep all of my son and my daughter's papier-mache projects.

[00:10:07] James Dice: You have to go back. Yeah. You're

[00:10:08] Sonu Panda: your

[00:10:08] James Dice: friends. That's awesome. As a very special papier-mache. Cool. So let's jump into carbon accounting and reporting. So Teagan, can you kind of set the stage why is this important to your clients right now?

Okay. That might seem like a dumb question, but I would just like to start at

[00:10:26] Tegan Keele: the top. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's especially important and sort of everyone's favorite thing to talk about right now, because I think it was exactly a month ago on March 21st the sec released their proposed guidance for climate reporting.

Um, So essentially what that means is the sec has now sort of put their. Stake in the ground in terms of what they're expecting companies to state publicly and sort of a semi joke, but it's mostly true. I like to say like the current state of climate [00:11:00] reporting is a little bit of like, choose your own adventure, but also grade your own paper. So you can pretty much pick and choose whatever you want to report on. Whatever makes you look good or whatever you have the data to report on. And then nobody with the exception of a few specialized watchdog groups, or, you know, some of our clients are subjects to, you know, federal regulatory oversight from like the EPA or something, you know, nobody's really checking any of that.

And so the proposed guidance from this, we see really sort of put all of that to rest and said, Hey, you guys really need to get, you know, your, your house in order. They laid out some pretty broad guidelines. What they're expecting our clients to report on, which is spoke one and spoke to a missions which is, you know, sort of the, the emissions that you as a organization are responsible for producing.

They laid out some [00:12:00] guidelines for scope three emissions, which is basically everything that's sort of outside of your direct sort of operational control, but includes things like supply chain, like finance emissions, if you're a bank, all those kinds of things. You know, that may or may not be required depending on how you fall from the sec categorization, they talked about climate risk which is basically saying disclosing how much of your business is at risk due to climate factors.

And then they also talked about making sure you're reporting on progress toward public public. So if you've made a commitment to net zero by 2050, or reducing emissions by a certain amount uh, they're basically saying you also have to disclose what those commitments are and how you're tracking to them, and also how you work, how you're measuring that progress.

And then again, depending on sort of how you tat are categorized [00:13:00] within the sec filing guidelines uh, they also laid out some expectations for third party audit on top of all of that.

[00:13:08] James Dice: Okay. I have a million questions and directions we could go with that. Can you just kind of summarize what that now means for building owners then that now they have to do all that?

What's the, what's the re what are the repercussions.

[00:13:22] Tegan Keele: Yes. So for building owners and real estate in particular you know, it depends kind of what the source is, but there's multiple sources that basically say real estate is responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions overall. So it's sort of the best place to start for anyone who's looking to make a significant emissions reduction.

And I think what that means, and obviously, you know, Sonia, we'll probably talk more about this is. You have to have a really good idea of what's happening within your buildings across a lot of dimensions, to be able to understand sort of where you [00:14:00] stand today and what that means in terms of reducing your carbon footprint to get to the targets that you've stated.

[00:14:08] James Dice: Yeah. It really, what strikes me as the fact that I'm disclosing not only my target, but also the progress I'm making. And then over time, that has to be clear whether you're going to make it or not at this point.

[00:14:21] Tegan Keele: Yeah, exactly. The other thing I would mention is that's also a super important, obviously not just from a regulatory perspective, but from an investor perspective.

Right? So part of the intent of what the SNC has outlined I think is to sort of create a more comparable baseline to compare different companies against. And so that obviously also helps investors who are also trying to make sure they're making ESG or climate friendly decisions on where to place their money.

That gives them a better baseline to invest in a certain company or a certain type of property, or,

[00:14:59] James Dice: and do I [00:15:00] have it right? That the disclosing climate risks piece for real estate, there's also this risk of obsolescence. Like if if they don't decarbonize at a certain. Tenants people that use real estate might start to believe that building or that organization is an on-track and therefore that building's not relevant.

Is that the type of risk that you're

[00:15:20] Tegan Keele: talking about? Yeah. So that's a part of the disclosure requirements, but that is definitely a risk. I would sort of qualify that in a more broader category around reputational risk, but you're spot on it's, you know, there's going to be an expectation that you sort of do a bare minimum, otherwise investors or customers or tenants or whoever it is, are going to look at you as a little bit of damaged goods.

[00:15:43] James Dice: Yup. Yup. And so before the sec regulations, you guys were already on this track anyway. Right. So what are the other things that are sort of driving your clients down this road of carbon accounting

[00:15:56] Sonu Panda: and reporting? Yeah. W we, you just said is absolutely [00:16:00] right. But I think the motivations I think the intent was always the same, but I think the motivations have become much more pronounced.

And so what I mean by that is and, and maybe I'll come back to this in a second. I think it's probably helpful for everyone to have some context around. What do we mean when we talk about an operating system for buildings, but pre sec disclosure hoopla. We spent a lot of time essentially helping real estate owners and operators as well as tenants of considerable size within those buildings use artificial intelligence and machine learning to reduce energy demand first and foremost, which that of course is correlated to energy cost reduction.

And they were doing that not only. That's a way to save money and depending upon what kind of stakeholder you are, if you're a tenant that's just outright good for your business. But if you're an owner and operator a real estate, sustained savings means sustained profit increase in sustained profit increased means asset appreciation.

So there's lots of good reasons to do it. I think [00:17:00] now as a function of the carbon compliance regimes that have now come to the forefront, you know, local on 97 in your Berto in Boston, You know, a whole series of, I'm not sure if they're properly named in one shape or fashion, but sort of general building energy performance standards in DC.

St. Louis also has a program that I can't remember, remember the name of, but with the advent of these types of regimes it's become. You know, the, the benefits of focusing on energy demand management have now been amplified. So on the one hand for those that are relatively carbon efficient and have programs that can realize greater and greater efficiency over time, they will be rewarded both monetarily, but also as it relates to all the things that Tikkun was talking about, reputationally employees want to work at sort of thoughtful employers.

Customers want to buy from, you know, sustainably ability oriented purveyors, the list goes on and on. And then it will become much, much more expensive for those organizations that simply don't have a [00:18:00] program or a plan to meet the standards that are prescribed by those, by those compliance rules.

Got it.

[00:18:07] James Dice: Yeah. Some of the T something you said there on grading your own paper was it really makes a lot of sense to me. Because I've been reading, you know, ESG reports for big landlords for a couple of years now. And one of the things that popped out to me in these latest round, you know, end of 2020, and in end of 2021, is there, there are things like, Hey, we've saved 18% of our electric users or something like that.

And it's like, okay how are you doing that? Like, what's the target you've said like how, what progress are you on? And it's, it just seems like they're, they're kind of, you know, like you said, reporting what they've want to report. And so I guess what I'm getting out of that is it seems like that is going to, everyone's going to have their own, their own way to grade their paper.

That's coming from the government

[00:18:52] Tegan Keele: at the time. Yeah. And I think, you know, again, I mentioned sort of the investor angle, but it also makes it really hard for each of those [00:19:00] individual companies even know where they stand against their peers to thing they're doing great. But if somebody down the street has, you know, 40% reduction, but they've maybe categorized it or friended a different way, then you know, that may or may not be obvious.

Um, But I think to your point, you know, some of the stuff that is missing right now, which I think is maybe what you were getting at is there's context around that. Like, is it 18% less because. It was in a lockdown and like nobody was in the building and you could just shut a bunch of stuff off. And so maybe that's an anomaly versus like a sustained pattern don't know.

[00:19:41] James Dice: Right. Okay. And obviously there's challenges to the COVID brought around quantifying energy savings, things like that. We know that, but yeah, so it's, it's not, everyone's working from the same, same sheet of paper. So I'd love to understand more about what your process is with your clients. So you're collecting all this data, some of it's from [00:20:00] buildings.

Can you talk more about that? It's it strikes me as sort of a mess at this point. Collecting all this data and then getting it into a place where it can be reported on, in a meaningful.

[00:20:10] Tegan Keele: Yeah. I mean, I it's, it's not without its challenges. For Sherry thing, part of it is, you know, not the variety of data across buildings is large, right?

If you don't have a system in place to sort of give the same measurements at the same level, you may have more or less granularity across the board, which means you're going to have to make assumptions on how certain things are doing based on Arbor's. Yeah. So your degree of accuracy and reliability goes down a little bit, and then there's a whole sort of, the second part of it is knowing what to do with the data once you have it.

Which is, you know, there's all kinds of complex things around methodologies and the right way to calculate something. And how much of it to attribute, you know, again, if you have a building with multiple tenants, how do you know how much [00:21:00] of that to attribute to a certain tenant or another, you have to have pretty you know, sophisticated sub-metering in place sort of area by area.

So there can be a lot, a wide variety of granularity in terms of what we have, I would say by and large. You know, and I'm, I am personally curious to see how this changes, but I think a lot of our clients are still sort of relying on the utility bill statements to calculate their emissions, which is basically something that says you consumed X amount of electricity that translates into Y amount of emissions.

I think, you know, we'll probably see a move away from that again, sort of given where. Things are moving as a whole of climate reporting, but also what CDC said. And then obviously there's a lot of, you know, technology advancements where it now is a lot more feasible than it was maybe even three to five years ago to get that better level of brain area.

This sort of understand exactly. What's[00:22:00] what's producing how much from an emissions or carbon footprint.

[00:22:04] James Dice: And just to clarify what you mean by that. So typically utility bills, whole building, not necessarily always metered by tenant, but it's also monthly, right? Is that what you mean is like, we're getting, gonna get more granular from.

Building space perspective and a

[00:22:20] Sonu Panda: time perspective. Yeah,

[00:22:22] Tegan Keele: exactly. I mean, in an ideal world, and I think, you know, NANTUM provides some of this for their clients in swimming can talk more about that, but in an ideal world, as a building owner or a company, that's a tenant of a building, which is pretty much everybody.

I would know, basically in near real time, how much energy I'm consuming and what that's derived from, again, going back to like my broader carbon footprint reduction goals so that I know, you know, is it our HVAC system that's kind of causing the energy sought? Is it, we have bad windows, any number of things.

And then I can sort of intervene and fix that.

[00:22:59] James Dice: Got it. [00:23:00] Okay. So can we talk a little bit, I want to get into software in a minute, but I want to stay on the process of de-carbonization for one more question, which is can we talk a little bit more about the role of efficiency versus offsets versus procuring, renewable renewables directly, and talk about how your different clients are approaching that question, because obviously you could just offset all of your usage and now you're good.

Right? That's what some people kind of think. So can you talk about what that process looks like and the decision-making behind it?

[00:23:31] Sonu Panda: Yeah.

[00:23:32] Tegan Keele: I mean, there's nothing explicitly that says you can't do that, but again, it's kind of in the realm of reputational. Yeah.

[00:23:40] James Dice: I mean, right now, when I hear that. When I hear that, I'm like, okay, so you're not serious then, like that, that's kind of maybe the general public starts to have that

[00:23:49] Tegan Keele: perspective.

Yeah. And I mean, we can have a whole separate conversation on the validity and verifiability of offsets, which is a whole [00:24:00] separate issue. Right. Which I think is part of why that's becoming sort of less, less acceptable as a strategy. But I think, you know, what I, what I usually tell our clients is, you know, start with what you can control.

You can control your energy consumption. You can, to a certain degree, you can control your physical footprint. So start with the, you know, those are the reductions that are going to be most impactful from a long-term perspective. You know, you're not going to get there as fast cause it's going to take some time for things to sort of stack and start seeing the results.

Then I went on to sort of layer in your renewable strategy, which is, you know, can you compensate for some of that by having a better strategy around renewables that could be onsite or offsite. So, you know, think about things like energy generated from a wind farm that's off shore that you're purchasing versus having solar panels on the roof where you can sort of directly consume that.

And then you [00:25:00] bypass the traditional grid altogether and then really offsets should start sort of pretty much should be your last resort to just sort of compensate for anything else as you're working on, they're getting your renewables and energy consumption in line to the point where you no longer need offsets.

[00:25:18] James Dice: Okay. Ideally, ideally. Yeah. So it's kind of like a hierarchy of emissions or hierarchy of energy sources type of approach.

Let's talk about technology a little bit. Can you talk about the breadth of all the different types of technologies that are now being used for this,

[00:25:34] Sonu Panda: this journey? Yeah,

[00:25:36] Tegan Keele: I mean, it's super, this is super interesting to me and I think somebody touched on some of it, but you know, you have a lot of technologies that are coming into the space that are specifically sort of labeling themselves climate technologies, and then you have a much broader set of technologies that have been around for a while.

That maybe didn't start as climate technologies per se, but now have huge roles to [00:26:00] play or could have huge full supply in decarbonizing things like Manheim and other sort of smart building systems that play there. But so I think, you know, we. Are seeing, you know, we work with the full gamut. So we've got, you know, smaller companies that are a little more focused like Nanda.

There's a company that KPMG recently announced that we have a minority equity investment called context labs which does something very similar to trying to understand from an asset level. More granular emissions measurement for oil and gas clients. So using sensor data, using satellites, using drones, all kinds of things, just to get a better handle on those emissions.

Um, But then we're seeing, you know, there's a ton of companies that are playing in the reporting space. So more around how do you do a calculations like output how do you get ready for something like an [00:27:00] sec level disclosure? You know, basically the expectation is that starts to get looked at like a 10 day.

And so they've it's, it's just huge. I mean, you know, there's, you go as broad and as niche as, you know, companies focused on managing water consumption off of water cooling towers to as broad as, you know, full emissions reporting. Okay.

[00:27:23] James Dice: Got it. Yeah. And, and that was a great summary for a very difficult question that I asked you because there are so many different types of technologies.

Can we talk specifically about blockchain? So you've mentioned blockchain earlier in terms of kind of an intersection between blockchain and carbon decarbonisation technology, climate tech. I. I've I have trouble with blockchain because this past Christmas break, I spent my entire break. Like I took two weeks off of work and I like went deep into everything to do with crypto.

And then I came out of it like two weeks later and I was like, I, I still don't [00:28:00] understand what's happening in the world right now. And I'm an engineer. Like I have to understand how everything works. And I got down to that point where I was like, okay, I think I get it, but I still don't get it as like the closer I got to it, the less I actually understood.

That's how I felt at least. And so I feel just a general skepticism towards how blockchain could be inserted into the de privatization process and provide real value. So I'll start you there, but can you talk about what role it might have?

[00:28:28] Sonu Panda: Totally loaded set up.

For the record. I thought what James is going to say is I spent two weeks just thinking about crypto and now on rich. Nope.

Nope.

[00:28:44] Tegan Keele: So I mean, I'll summarize by saying like let's separate the concept of crypto and blockchain cryptocurrency is, and a use case, which I don't really want my term, but any use case of how blockchain can be used and we've in effect. But I [00:29:00] think, you know, the most simple way I've found, and maybe this is just because, you know, KPMG at its core is an accounting firm.

And so this is a language most people hear and understand is everyone sort of understands the concept of a ledger or you're reporting what, who did what, when, where it went, et cetera, et cetera. So. Easiest way I've ever found is describe blockchain as a distributed ledger. So take that concept and just sort of have multiple parties, have some, or all of a Pappy of that ledger that they can verify it against each other.

And digitize it. Right. But it's not really centralized anywhere. That's the point. So if I apply that to the concept of something like the missions or energy it can be very useful and it's not the only way, but it is an application. You want something like that because you have multiple parties that are sort of part of this energy transaction that you want to record sort of the [00:30:00] history of that admission, basically.

And then eventually if you need to report on it or disclose it, you know, you have sort of, again, a verified history. That emission. I mentioned earlier trying not to go down the rabbit hole of offsets, but you get sort of the same concept there around carbon offsets and renewable energy products.

Where part of the challenge in that space right now, I don't know if I'm a company I'm buying it. I may or may not know exactly where it was generated from how it got bundled with other things blockchain. Again, can can't it does not the only technology that could do this, but can play a role in sort of helping give that visibility again so that when I'm as a company, I'm reporting that to the sec.

I have a history of this renewable energy credit was generated, say in Indonesia it was bundled with these other ones from India and China. And then I finally consumed [00:31:00] it in the state of California.

[00:31:03] James Dice: Okay. And I've heard companies that are doing this. We've had a couple come and present to our community before I haven't heard of one, that's a public like open blockchain.

It was almost like we're using blockchain technology, but it's our blockchain, right. That we're using to track it. Is, are there any public projects in this area?

[00:31:25] Sonu Panda: Okay. There are some forthcoming though, James and they're predictably, top secrets and things that I probably shouldn't share too many details around, but this idea of creating an open blockchain as a mechanism that is a dramatic improvement on the offset market, whereby you know, a token can represent relative carbon efficiency amongst you know, market participants is stuff that is on the horizon.

[00:31:53] James Dice: Got it. Okay. Can we just, can we just break that down just real quick? So why would. [00:32:00] A token needs to be created in this case and then traded. And how would that improve upon the current situation of offsets?

[00:32:08] Sonu Panda: Well, it comes, it goes back to um, to riff a little bit more on what Teagan was saying in response to your question about the role that blockchain plays.

I think there's a really important theme here that we didn't talk about. And that's this idea that from the point of view of energy efficiency or energy savings opportunities and how that translates into carbon suppression, you know, decarbonisation, I think the notion of perishability is really important.

So this is a concept that, you know, you hear about in the news when you hear about how, how airlines are doing this idea, that if a plane takes off with an empty seat, that inventory is perishable. Like you never can refill it, right. It's taken off and it's empty and you'll never recover that. And I feel the same way about energy optimization opportunity.

Which is to say, you know, going back to the, [00:33:00] you know, using utility bills to figure out what your carbon footprint is sort of depressing, right? You see this thing that's a month old. It tells you that you wasted a bunch of energy 30 days ago, but it doesn't tell you what you can do right now to save energy.

And so this notion of perishability and documenting all of the circumstantial factors that characterize that perishable moment is a terrific use case for blockchain. And, and mainly because of the ability to capture very granular near real-time snapshots of the context, which is, you know, important from the point of view of them being able to take immediate action to, to remediate or to address the situation at hand.

But certainly from the point of view of an, a AI and ML driven company creates a much, much richer data set around which to create. Knowledge that then can be replicated. And it's it's knowledge from the point of view of identifying what's a negative pattern [00:34:00] so that you can dampen it, or you can attenuate it altogether.

It's identifying a pattern, a positive pattern so that you can repeat it, but ideally amplify it. And then just very simply illuminating the circumstances around that perishable opportunity. And whether you, you, you took it and saved or whether you squandered it and didn't have you know, the benefit of the otherwise would have had.

Okay.

[00:34:21] James Dice: Yeah, that reminds me of.

[00:34:24] Sonu Panda: I

[00:34:24] Tegan Keele: was just going to say, so the other way to look at it is again, and, you know, a lot of our clients like to think about how do I get benefit out of some of these de-carbonization or broader climate things? Cause it starts very quickly to look like a compliance or costs sort of exercise.

But I think part of the concept we're also tokenization comes in as the potential monetization. So we go back to the idea of getting a really good idea of what's happening in a building. If I know that fairly high degree of confidence that at any [00:35:00] given time on below whatever regulatory threshold, if there is one like in New York has a building emissions tab um, from an admission standpoint and I'm below the level and need to be for my own internal reduction targets, anything I reduce above and beyond that could be monetized as a credit.

In the form of a token that can then be exchanged because someone else is not going to be able to reduce it, that level bill need that credit. Um, And so there's also sort of a little big con big idea around monetizing that and using technology that way.

[00:35:37] James Dice: Got it. And that'd be better than the current state where it's kind of just like everyone's saying, here's my credit.

That I verified on my own that I've created for you. Okay. Do you want to buy it? Yeah.

[00:35:49] Sonu Panda: Okay. Well, it's that thing that you just said, the on your own, that I think is also another interesting notion, which is that you need, you can't simply make a claim and [00:36:00] expect that counterparties in the marketplace place are going to accept your claim without, you know, the backup.

So, you know, to give credit where credit is due KPMG and similar organizations are experts at this idea of proving provenance and showing the trail and having the evidence to prove the value of the underlying outcome of that business process. And so I think applying that to carbon efficiency is the name of the game.

[00:36:27] James Dice: Hey guys, just another quick note from our sponsor Nexus labs. And then we'll get back to the show. This episode is brought to you by nexus foundations, our introductory course on the smart buildings industry. If you're new to the industry, this course is for you. If you're an industry vet, but want to understand how technology is changing things.

This course is also for you. The alumni are raving about the content, which they say pulls it all together, and they also love getting to meet the other students on the weekly zoom calls and in the private chat room, you can find out more about the course@courses.nexus lab. Start [00:37:00] online. All right, back to the interview

Well, you kind of led me to where I was going next, which is I, you know, do measurement verification for a living or have done measurement and verification for a living. It's not a perfect science. Difficult right. To do someone today's world, some human that has, you know, a CMDP stamp of approval from a third-party organization has to say, yes, these calculations have been done correctly.

Right. And in the energy engineering sense, I know that decarbonization probably has another organization as well, but it's it's I guess the question is how do, how does a blockchain improve for help that process, that verification process happened? And is it automated?

[00:37:47] Sonu Panda: How does that. uh, yes, it is automated.

Um, I think it can be automated to even a greater extent, but one way that it potentially helps is, is the breadth. If [00:38:00] you will, of the contextual data that applies to every one of those optimization opportunities. So for example, knowing exactly what set of standards were used to arrive at the MNV conclusion is again, contextual data, knowing that it was done by, you know, organization like DVG and L you know, or black and Veatch is important, knowing that it came out of a revenue grade, the data came out of a revenue grade meter made by a reputed manufacturer matters.

And it's the idea that the more depth and breadth of that contextual information that can be captured, the more likely it is that the. Proposed factor that you're looking at or the proposed data is indeed true. And that should be relied upon for all kinds of other downstream outcomes.

[00:38:49] James Dice: It makes perfect sense.

It's like, it's like standardizing an MNB reports and the data that would go into that and then putting that in a public

[00:38:58] Sonu Panda: place. I see. Yeah, exactly. [00:39:00] Right. So on the part of the automation piece of the equation you know, quick, quick digression to explain my point, right? So, so for those of you that know NANTUM is the operating system, that is our product, prescriptive data is the company we're data centric in the sense that it's a platform that runs on top of existing operational technology and then incorporates data from third-party sources like IOT sensors, or utility information or weather data, what have you.

And so the idea here is. Within that environment, we're essentially doing four things. One simply surfacing data that people may not have seen before in their own building that belong to them, that they were never taking advantage of. So this idea that you can't manage, unless you can measure two.

And three are about what we talked about earlier, which is this idea of understand what's business as usual. And what's a departure from business as usual through the data so that when you find negative patterns, you can take evasive action. When you find positive patterns, you can reinforce them. But then lastly, in those environments where the building operators have a sense of comfort with the recommendations we [00:40:00] provide and when the operational technology allows it, we can take complete autonomous control of the building, which is context for, if you come back to the MNV topic that you just brought up, is this idea that as a IOT.

Platform first and foremost, we are a constant and as a data centric IOT platform, we're constantly monitoring all of the data that would produce a positive MNV outcome or a negative, you know, M and V outcome all in real time with the view towards providing IPM VP standardized or ASHRAE standard based assessments of the recommendations and the outcome, or the results that come after that.

And so where we're headed is this idea that while we might be best of breed and a handful of algos we would hope to partner with other folks that are best of breed in the algo business by using NANTUM as a platform that does real-time MNV of energy conservation measures, as well as [00:41:00] other types of AI and ML applications, leak detection.

No slip and fall threat detection security applications you know, water treatment, plant pH you know, monitoring to prevent Legionnaires and the list goes on and on traditional smart building sort of operational efficiency type things, but all with the lens towards, again measure with high fidelity and verify with veracity.

Exactly what happened.

[00:41:26] James Dice: Fascinating. I want to go back to the building iOS thing real quick. All right. And just a second, when you guys are making me think of is like all of the buildings out there that have opportunities for energy savings or have limpid lended them. And it's kind of just a data mess right now, right?

Opportunities that have been identified, but haven't been implemented. They need to be funded in some way. They need to be approved in some way. A lot of times the funding is hard to come by, even though the payback might be really great. So the ability, what I'm hearing is like [00:42:00] the ability to create a token out of that.

If, if, and then sell that token could help just get stuff done better. If we're, if we're

[00:42:10] Sonu Panda: imagining it creates a relative carbon efficiency creates a currency of sorts not to get too kokanee, but a currency of sort that that can be traded to then become a funding source for those folks that are particularly carbon efficient.

And it's a bit of a virtuous circle, which is. You know, by creating that engine, if you will, you get efficiencies, those efficiencies create more funds, which then makes you even more efficient, which is essentially the name of the game. If we're going to turn back the clock on climate change, as quickly as we think we all need to, and certainly wants it.

[00:42:47] James Dice: And so, okay. So the, the way to then create a business case for doing energy efficiency type of things in the future could be, if I'm hearing it correctly, it could be a cost savings which [00:43:00] is what everyone uses. Now. Obviously it could be the ability to sell a token. It could be the lack of need to buy an offset for that piece of carbon.

What else is there? Is there, is there more layers than that then avoid fines?

[00:43:15] Sonu Panda: I guess another one, I was just gonna say, if you'll let me reorder that the way I think about it is energy demand management equals energy cost reduction, energy cost reduction equals. Carbon footprint shrinkage, which equals carbon compliance regime, fine avoidance.

And now all of a sudden you have a bunch of hard dollar black and white ROI that can be recouped on a relatively quick payback schedule that can then be used for reinvestment into other de-carbonization initiatives, or just as importantly, can you be the economic engine that pays for all the other wizbang smart building outcomes that real estate owners and operators and enterprises are looking to implement.

In other words, like for example, [00:44:00] a you know, tenant app tenant apps are the rage right now, really hard to justify the actual value associated with them. But if all of a sudden, now what we say is take this ESG related. And these real time savings opportunities or carbon reduction opportunities and deliver recommendations based on that logic through that app, to the individual tenants.

Now, all of a sudden you have a base building cause responsible for a hundred percent of the fine distributing, the potential to avoid the fine amongst the other 60% of the energy consumption stack in that building by empowering the individual employees of the tenant with data that again, gets them into this virtual cycle of saving, being more efficient, getting some benefit from that and reinvesting that effort and Goodwill into the next initiative.

[00:44:50] Tegan Keele: When I would even take that a step further. And if I sort of take, add one thing to, so news lists, then you also get lower costs of capital access [00:45:00] potentially. Right? So again, going back to the investor angle, the better you perform on climate, that's now sort of going to become combined with your overall financial performance, which helps feed your cost of capital.

I see.

[00:45:15] Sonu Panda: And then we haven't even gotten, well, we haven't even gotten to your last point monetize, but to add to Teagan's point about, you know, more efficient cost of capital, we're also seeing, you know, PNC insurers say, we'll reduce your policy premiums because you've got this omniscient brain monitoring, every single data stream in the business, taking evasive action before problems become disasters.

And then, and, and again, like I said, we haven't even gotten to monetization yet.

[00:45:42] James Dice: Fascinating. Okay. Let's go from. Big and broad down to buildings. So this audience is used to hearing about a lot of technologies like NANTUM. So if we could go back to that building OSPF definition you gave there so new, like, can you just [00:46:00] describe you?

You, you gave us a full definition, but like, what is a building

[00:46:04] Sonu Panda: iOS if you start there. So, we, you know, we think of the S dimension in the same way. Anyone who uses a computer thinks about an operating system, which is to say whether you're a windows fan or a Macko S fan or Linux, or what have you. There's some interesting things that are happening under the keyboard.

And then there's something interesting happening above the keyboard, which is to say the operating system of choice, whichever one you happen to prefer whatever platform you prefer is doing all kinds of things. Autonomous. That helps you do your job better. Meaning if you put your fingers on the keyboard and the operating system is managing the hard drive and managing the USB connectors and the list goes on and on just so that you can do production, you know, well maybe I don't know that, you know, Instagram is, you know, falls in the category of productivity, but that you can do things above the keyboard that are oriented towards your job your [00:47:00] desired outcome and that is supportive of your workflow.

So in other words, above the keyboard, you might use the exact same hardware to edit this podcast. And I might spend all my time and. The same concept then applies to buildings, which is to say prescriptive, which is to say NANTUM is first and foremost middleware. We ingest data from existing operational technology, regardless who the manufacturer is, regardless of the protocol, upon which it communicates regardless of the vintage, in many cases, and almost always across lots of different vendors, such that we can create a unified very deep and detailed but also secure an actionable dataset that enables us to then create applications that are use case specific.

So commercial office oriented versus warehouse oriented, and that are designed around the workflow of building operators. So to give you a flavor, those apps are everything from proprietary apps that do things like predict when your next demand charge [00:48:00] will be incurred based on all of the operating characteristics of the building and the kind of supply environment that you're in to.

You know, things like making sure that you're constantly within range on pH for Legionnaires' compliance you know, in your water systems. And again, there's a broad range of, of outcomes that we're ultimately trying to drive. But the idea there is we're data centric. We're an overlay system that again, sits on top of the existing operational equipment.

We don't compete with Schneider. We don't compete with Siemens. We don't compete with Honeywell. We leverage the data that those systems create augmented with IOT sensor data, with service bureau, data, everything from, you know, real-time utility pricing information to the kind of data you get out of systems like walk time and singularity around carbon coefficients, as an example, all to create the baseline for applications that help building operators, one buildings more effectively, more efficiently and, and more responsible.

[00:48:59] James Dice: And we're probably going to have so [00:49:00] many questions on national are probably gonna run out of time, but Teagan, can you put this in context with, do your, are your clients accepting the need for a building LS? Can you think about. All the other types of software that we talked about earlier, like how prevalent is this building LS concept.

And this strikes me as has such room to grow at this point. You know, how many buildings have an operating system? Like, so just

[00:49:23] Tegan Keele: described it does, and not enough of them is the short answer. I think this concept of sort of bringing the bottoms up and some of it like this very kind of building focused technology into the broader ESG and climate agenda as uh, you know, for a company is sort of what I spend my days doing.

Right. I think it's been a lot of focus on what we're reporting and what we're not reporting and what I think Brian learned. A lot of companies I've struggled with is [00:50:00] tying that to, you know, overall climate strategy to the actual operationalization of that strategy, which is where you start looking at things like NANTUM and other technologies to help you meet that goal.

But I think a lot of companies still struggle to sort of get all of those things in alignment. And now, especially again, not to harp too much on that sec guidance, but you know, that proposal is sort of kicking off again a whole, what are we reporting? What are we not reporting? And what's sort of getting lost in there.

There's like, well, why aren't you reporting those things? Because you don't have the data to tell you the things that you need to report on. So I think we'll get there, but I think it'll probably take a little bit of time in the meantime. I think what's great about, you know, some of this stuff, is it sort of outside of the climate agenda, you know, ROI.

There's an ROI story in and of itself. It's just a matter of tying that all together. [00:51:00]

[00:51:00] James Dice: Got it. So, so maybe a little bit more on NANTUM specifically. So I was checking out the products and I haven't dug into it in a couple of years. So you guys are doing a lot in terms of capabilities at this point. And I was really struck by like how many types of things can be done.

Whereas if we think about the history of smart buildings, you have a lot of startups that focus on one of these things, right. You know, we have a history of kind of solving one of the problems and then leaving the other problems for someone else. And you, you guys have seemed to take this, like we're going to do energy render M and V.

We're going to do analytics. We're going to do indoor air quality. We're gonna do supervisory control. We're going to do a grid interaction. There's a little bit of tenant engagement. It seems like as well. So can you talk about like, why that comprehensive, why you took that sort of comprehensive

[00:51:43] Sonu Panda: approach?

Yeah. I mean, I think there's two ways to look at it. The first one is you know, he bought a computer that only let you play solitary. You'd probably be pretty irritated, you know, or if you bought a mobile phone and all you can do is look at Instagram, eventually be like, now I can [00:52:00] use some email. Maybe I can use some news.

And so the same sort of notion applies, which is to say that there is a threshold that needs to be achieved of efficacy across a broad number of workflows. Otherwise you're not actually turbocharging the building operator like you think you are, right? So there's a, there's a threshold that needs to be achieved.

And that's really the story around the operating system should be made up of primitives that are flexible and that can be reconfigured in order to deliver different types of outcomes. And w you know, if you don't have that level of modularity, that level of flexibility, the likelihood that you're going to be relevant to the widest possible audience is low.

And so the, the paradigm that we use in building prescriptive. We're building NANTUM is that while, you know, people that care deeply about a particular business outcome might think of us just as a, you know, through the lens of that particular business outcome. Ultimately this is about middleware.

It's about data science and [00:53:00] artificial intelligence as a service. It's about integration as a service. It's about flexible user interface as a service. It's about integration with third-party best of breed providers that can bring something that we can bring to the table. And essentially it's a Lego kit.

And so what goes hand in hand with that is that means that we have the right AI and ML level driven solution for the right building in the right asset class at the right time and crucially at the right price point such that people can, can begin their journey into the smart buildings world. You know, if, if that's what we're talking about, and by the same token, they can begin their journey in a really meaningful and effective place when it comes to decarbonize.

[00:53:39] James Dice: Got it. And you guys, you were telling him before we hit record about this new partnership. Can you talk a little bit more about that around, I think it's David, JP Morgan chase

[00:53:47] Sonu Panda: that you guys yeah, absolutely happy to.

So this particular engagement with JPMC is particularly exciting in that we're embedded within the JPMC decarbonized by 2030 plan. And [00:54:00] that involves a couple of different concepts and components that we've already talked about. It is about finding renewable supply in quantities that will say C8 to the needs of the firm on a global basis.

But it's also just as importantly, about energy demand, right? Okay. And so we've been asked to put, to work all of our energy conservation measure algos in NANTUM across all of JP Morgan's commercial owned properties, commercial lease properties, specialty, real estate, things like warehouses and call centers as well as their data centers initially in north America, but ultimately in the Europe operating theater, as well as the Asia pack operating theater basically a, a scope that goes from, you know, 1.2 million square feet to 26 million square feet of space to a massive amount of space thereafter.

When you start to consider. JP Morgan Chase's managed real estate assets for investment purposes. And the goal there is to bring together [00:55:00] three key technologies. The first and foremost is all the stuff we've been talking about in terms of an IOT platform and sensor capabilities in combination with artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with fancy talk from blockchain here, digital ledger technology to enable JP Morgan chase to be not only best in class, on both sides of this coin, the supply side, as well as the energy demand reduction side, but also to be and I give them tremendous credit for this to be a deacon for what's possible to sort of use their own real estate, use their own dollars to show a path, a playbook to create a playbook, if you will, for decarbonization that their peers can follow and that their customers can.

[00:55:48] James Dice: And the way I understand this is like the, the platform NANTUM as a platform, does all of these things, it sounds like they're buying, we want to buy a de-carbonization. Right. And how does [00:56:00] it work when you guys have clients like that? Do they then lead into all

[00:56:03] Sonu Panda: the other things? Yeah, exactly. Right. So back to that ROI waterfall that we were talking about, you know, demand management equals energy cost reduction equals carbon footprint, shrinkage equals fine avoidance and all that money.

Plus all the other things that we talked about then become the engine for which by which other smart building value props can be purchased and, and ultimately justified for. And so what we typically see is folks do start with energy because that's where the the, the, you know, the funding for all these initial subsequent initiatives come from, and then they are buying.

You know, dedicated modules around indoor air quality, they're buying dedicated modules around space utilization, which is going one step further than just understanding whole building occupancy. They want to see individual tenant usage analytics the water stuff we talked about before is particularly compelling.

And the list goes on.

[00:56:55] James Dice: Got it. Okay. Two more questions that we've got to wrap this thing up on, on NANTUM. So when I look at [00:57:00] you guys as the product itself, it seems like what I would call the back of the house. You guys have a lot covered there as far as that's what a building operating system does.

Right. I think about the front of the house. Like if we think about like Ruden running their real estate business, for example keeping tenants, happy, leasing spaces, all the business side of things. Can you talk about how NANTUM might integrate with those types of software systems and how

[00:57:24] Sonu Panda: that might happen?

Yeah. Well, there's two things to tell you about there. The first one is, first of all, I love the back of the house. I love the back of the house. I think it's important to recognize why the back of the house exists. So in a commercial office building, we're talking about delivering an experience that's comfortable.

That's safe through all of the incredible hard work of the folks that are in the back of the house. And so, from that point of view, you know, we don't exist for the sake of technology. We exist for the sake of saving money while also optimizing for the [00:58:00] tenants experience in buildings. So I think maybe that's not necessarily exactly what you're asking for, but I think that's an important theme in terms of the coming back of the house in the front of the house.

And of course that that storyline can be different across other asset classes, but as it relates to integrations with front office, let's call it that you know, software applications in the real estate world. I can think of two that are particularly. The first one is this idea that having leased commercial office space myself here in New York, one of the things that's always so maddening aside from how ridiculously long the contracts are, is that there's no way to know you get all this detail about square footage.

How many desks can you fit in there? The list goes on and on, but you don't have any understanding as to what the operating cost of this real estate is. And so this idea of creating a system of record around back office operations in the real estate world can dramatically influence the selection of sustainable [00:59:00] property in the front of the house.

So that's the first thing. Then the second thing is, you know, the example I shared with you earlier, which is this idea that local on 97, Is penalizing buildings in New York city. So owners and operators and occupiers for whole building energy consumption, even though more than 50% on average is generated by the tenants.

And so how do you address that? So you'll have some particularly switched on tenants that have the funding and have the sort of vision to be equally sustainability oriented. But it ultimately does come down to the individual humans, the employees of those tenants and their behaviors and how they engage and use the space.

And so, you know, to come back to your original question, whether we, you know, provide the tenant experience app, and of course we've got one, or you are an HQO customer, or you're a lame customer, or you built your home grown one or a VTS rise. Our argument should be that we should be able to provide you with [01:00:00] real-time actionable information as an employee from the back of the house.

Into the front of the house. Do your phone all safe and secure that helps you understand what your daily real-time carbon footprint is as a human. And if we're able to then optimize individual behavior, then we are well on our way to turn back the clock on climate change.

[01:00:24] James Dice: Love that vision. Okay. One last question, fire.

And we, as we get down to the end, so you guys have this capability called chief engineer. I think it is on your website. It's something I always like to bring up with people that are thinking about this problem. Like you are so new, what do you say to chief engineers that might feel like the software is taking their job from them?

[01:00:44] Sonu Panda: First things first, I've never encountered somebody that I thought either based on intuition or cause they said it to my face that we were in the business of replacing them quite the opposite. We think, and again, this goes back to, we're proud of the fact that we're a system [01:01:00] that was built by building operators for other building operators.

And so this is not about, you know, jobs, elimination. The reality of it is they've got this massive difficult multi-dimensional job. And what we're joined to do is empower them to do it in the single most efficient way they possibly can do it. And so I think that's a, just a, it's a mindset thing. If anything, we definitely encounter folks that.

You are simply don't, haven't had the time to sort of marinate and learn the system. But what we find is that, and we do this as part of every one of our customer success implementations. We spend a lot of time helping them understand the concepts behind NANTUM the outcomes that can be driven. And ultimately this only works if they embrace the technology and they put it to work in their daily workflow.

Right.

[01:01:53] James Dice: Yeah. A lot of, I just, I've just seen so many operators that are like, they feel such ownership [01:02:00] over doing things like saying what time the building's going to start up tomorrow. Like, things like that, that you guys is, you guys are quite rightly in my opinion, automating some of that. And I do think it's a mindset shift and it, it, it doesn't, maybe they can repurpose those things and do other things with their time because they're so busy anyway.

So, it's, it's the good fight. All right. Let's finish this off. This is one of those episodes where I feel like I'm going to need to listen to it again. Cause I feel like there was so much good stuff. So thank you. Both. Let's end with some carve-outs. So what book, movie, TV show podcast, or other sort of thing in your personal life or work life would you like to share with the audience and recommend that they check out?

Let's start with YouTube.

[01:02:45] Tegan Keele: Well, I will never not recommend the expanse. It's probably my all-time favorite show for those who like Spotify or just shows in general. It's great. It's all done now. So it's very bingeable. And it's also a series of [01:03:00] books that I haven't read, but then understand the TV shows and an excellent adaptation of the books.

[01:03:05] James Dice: Awesome. I've never even heard of it. So

[01:03:07] Tegan Keele: I'm very excited. I'm gonna send a little bit, cause it's got kind of a funny story, but it started on network was canceled and then supposedly was Jeff Bezos's favorite show. So as all billionaires that have this at their disposal duke, he bought it. And so the third, the seasons four or five and six for on crime.

[01:03:36] James Dice: Got it. And what a streaming platform is it a.

[01:03:40] Tegan Keele: And it's on prime, Amazon

[01:03:41] James Dice: prime, I guess that makes sense. Yeah.

[01:03:47] Sonu Panda: Well, I'm, I'm sort of on a mission at prescriptive data to sort of bring back in old favorites oldie, but goodie a book called crossing the chasm, which, which I bring up mainly because of course [01:04:00] I'm surrounded by millennials that didn't grow up with a book. But I certainly did, and I think it's super relevant to what's happening in the real estate needs technology sphere, which is we've got lots of early adopters kudos to them.

We wouldn't be in business without them. And we are now finding ourselves, spending all of our time on those folks that are on the other side of the chasm folks like JP Morgan chase who are embracing the new, new thing in a really rapid fashion. And I would argue that, you know, your podcast. Nexus labs is part of actually crossing the chasm, right?

You're popularizing you're sharing information, you're creating a forum for discussion. And so I'd say crossing the chasm as much as it's kind of a boring looking book. I think it's particularly exciting and relevant to what we're talking about. Um, But as it relates to TV I have to admit something that might be ridiculous, but I have embraced Ted [01:05:00] lasso as religion.

Nice. Everybody had prescriptive data on the executive team has to have watched it. I actually bought their apple TV plus subscriptions. Sure. That there were no excuses. And then at least during the first season and part way into the second season, they had to take a test. Every single Monday morning about what they learned from Ted lasso.

That's amazing how they would apply to their job. And then at the end of that session, I asked them if they believe,

[01:05:34] James Dice: alright, I love it. And so I have to ask you then what you thought or the second half of the last

[01:05:40] Sonu Panda: season? Oh, I was so upset with Nate. I don't want to spoil this for anybody that hasn't seen it.

And that's largely because Nate is a you know, pudgy short Indian guy, just like me. So I'm slightly irritated with his behavior, but that was the most disappointing part of season two. Well,

[01:05:59] James Dice: what's so [01:06:00] beautiful about it is there's a little mate and all of us. Right. And it's just a lesson about life, like packaged into Nate.

And so you hate them, but you also hate that part of you, which is fascinating. Okay, so mine, I'm just going to reshare what you just said, which is, I think everyone in our industry should walk or should read, crossing the chasm. Very, very, I was trying to point to it behind me, but I think I moved it to the bookshelf that's behind the camera, but everyone should read that.

I also wrote an essay that I'll put in the show notes. That's called how analytics software can go mainstream and it used the entire framework. That's. And you know, it used the crossing, the chasm framework and kind of applied it to analytics, software and energy management software. So I'll put that in the show notes for people, and it's basically like, we need to do better at creating what he calls uh, Jeffrey Moore calls, a whole product.

It needs to solve the whole problem. Not just say here's, you know, here's this analytical [01:07:00] insight that we hope you do something good with, but you're probably not going to because you have 20 million other things to do. So that was one of my favorite pieces of writing that I've ever done. And I just think everyone should, should read that book.

So anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been super fun.

[01:07:17] Sonu Panda: Thanks for hosting.

[01:07:22] James Dice: All right friends, thanks for listening to this episode of the Nexus Podcast. For more episodes like this and to get the weekly Nexus Newsletter, which by the way, readers have said is the best way to stay up to date on the future of the smart building industry, please subscribe at nexuslabs.online. You can find the show notes for this conversation there as well. Have a great day.