#186 Supercool Earth: Making It Rain, Literally

0:00Rohit Gupta: Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I'm Josh Muccio.

0:05Elizabeth Yin: And I'm Lisa Muccio. And on the show today, we have Dacia with Super Cool Earth. She's raising$3 million.

0:11Rohit Gupta: Do you remember when we had a dry spell where no deep tech companies had ever gotten funding on our show?

0:17Elizabeth Yin: I do remember that vividly.

0:19Rohit Gupta: And then we brought on Gecko Materials. Yes. And Capella raised over a million dollars just from our fund and SPV.

0:28Elizabeth Yin: Yes.

0:29Rohit Gupta: Which is insane. And that was the moment that I realized that you all listening love science. You love deep tech. Y 'all are like, forget B2B sass. Give me something interesting.

0:41Elizabeth Yin: Yeah.

0:42Rohit Gupta: So I'm proud to say we're back with some hard science to make it rain.

0:47Elizabeth Yin: Or snow using cloud seeding with natural proteins. It's super cool.

0:51Rohit Gupta: 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?

1:02Elizabeth Yin: The pitch for Super Cool Earth is coming up after this.

1:05Rohit Gupta: 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 slash events.

1:57Rohit Gupta: Welcome back to The Pitch for Super Cool Earth. Let's meet the investors. Mike Ma with Sidecut Ventures.

2:04Mike Ma: I got strings. I'm not an easy yes.

2:06Rohit Gupta: Rohit Gupta with Future Communities Capital. Sloshing money around all over the place. Michelle Kwok with Draper Associates.

2:13Michelle Kwok: We were deep in the cut for three hours. My brain just like lit up.

2:18Rohit Gupta: Jesse Middleton with Flybridge. I'm so sick of people that are building stuff for building stuff's sake. And Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund.

2:25Michelle Kwok: My best deals have been the ones that I've committed on the spot.

2:35Mike Ma: Super cool earth. Hello. Hello. Hi. How are you?

2:41Dacia Leon: Good. How are you? Hi, I'm Michelle. Hi. Nice to meet you. Jessie. Hi, Jessie. Hi, Elizabeth. Hey, great to see you again. Hey, Rohit. I love your sweater. It's my power sweater. You got to put your power shirt on when you're coming to pitch, right? 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 of 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.

3:21Dacia Leon: 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 that 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 Super Cool 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.

4:06Dacia Leon: 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 snowmaking machines.

4:46Dacia Leon: The same natural product that goes into the clouds, we're putting inside of snowmaking 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 you all ready for a video? Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. 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.

5:30Dacia Leon: And in these conditions, it makes rain because they're marginal conditions. The temperatures are too warm to actually make snow.

5:37Elizabeth Yin: Like what range of temperature are we talking about?

5:39Dacia Leon: So generally snowmaking 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.

6:06Michelle Kwok: As ski resorts, a lot of them have struggled with getting enough snow. Are you able to completely replace snow or there's a base layer and it still needs to naturally snow?

6:17Dacia Leon: 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.

6:48Dacia Leon: 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 want to call it like on-demand powder days because that's overstating it. But they would be extra snow days that would boost revenue during the season. Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got into this? I'm a biologist. I got my PhD at UT Austin. I've been in the biotech field for about seven or eight 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.

7:21Dacia Leon: Like no one yet has applied bio to atmosphere and that blows my damn mind.

7:25Michelle Kwok: But I guess like, how did you land on this problem set?

7:29Dacia Leon: I read papers when I'm sad. I like to read scientific papers. It's a bad snow season. And then she gets even more sad. She's like, how can I be happy? 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.

8:09Dacia Leon: That was my first idea. I have 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.

8:22Mike Ma: So I've worked in the ski industry for 20 years. 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 what's the transition to get out of the ski industry into glaciers and crops. Can you walk me through like the big broad strokes of what that looks like?

8:44Dacia Leon: Yeah, of course. So we're starting a ski, which is our beachhead 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 U.S. today is to augment snowpack that then melts into water basins and is used for hydropower that then is used by people. cool. 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.

9:19Dacia Leon: 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.

9:33Michelle Kwok: And how are you thinking about the competitive landscape? Like I think rainmakers probably raise more money. How are you thinking about displacing them? How are you looking at the competitive landscape and where you fit in?

9:45Dacia Leon: 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've 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 in to the chemical that's used in cloud seeding today because that chemical uses heat to be dispersed, and that's not good for proteins.

10:21Dacia Leon: 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. How does the protein bind in clouds? 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.

10:52Michelle Kwok: That's really cool.

10:54Elizabeth Yin: Economically, how do you view the cost difference? Are you better, faster, and cheaper? Are you the same price?

11:00Dacia Leon: 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 seating today uses planes and generators, and they're not as efficient as, for example, using a drone to directly deliver. One piece back to the competition I will 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.

11:38Dacia Leon: And we have one that we're testing right now.

11:40Michelle Kwok: I'm no synbio expert, but I want to 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, cause 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?

12:01Dacia Leon: Yeah. So we can't protect the protein at all because it's natural. Yes. 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. 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.

12:36Dacia Leon: And that's essentially 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 the space and I've 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.

12:55Michelle Kwok: I know we had started to talk about sort of the unit economics on this, but maybe you could spell that out. Yeah. Yeah.

13:01Dacia Leon: So you mean the unit economics on the scale up the fermentation or like where are all of it?

13:08Michelle Kwok: 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?

13:17Dacia Leon: 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, a bag of powder. It's a drop-in into their existing operations.

13:54Dacia Leon: 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 ,000 to$8 ,000 per mission. We're saying we're going to 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.

14:25Michelle Kwok: So let's take Heavenly. They've got a lot of different runs. You're going to charge them five, let's just say 5k per mission. Like how many missions would they need for their whole resort.

14:36Dacia Leon: They would probably need one mission for their whole resort, but we would seed like 40 missions in a given season.

14:42Michelle Kwok: Got it. Well, I'm just trying to understand, like you had mentioned, they can make 4 million a day 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 kind of thing. Yes.

14:55Dacia Leon: 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.

15:06Mike Ma: 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?

15:18Dacia Leon: 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 U.S., 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.

15:51Mike Ma: Can I ask about three resorts? 200K is what you're targeting?

15:56Dacia Leon: Yes, about 70K per resort. How are you approaching?

15:58Mike Ma: Are they independents? Are they part of Altera? Are they a part of Vail? What's that go-to-market look like?

16:04Dacia Leon: Yeah, so initially we would door-to-door ski resorts. And that's how we've been approaching ski resorts now 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 Vale, directly talk to Altera 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 Vale or Altera. Unless you have contacts, which... I do. I heard he worked in the industry.

16:41Mike Ma: Don't make fun of me. I'm not. I think you're a great partner. Next time that I find you falling on your snowboard, I swear to God, I'm going to spray you so hard, Jesse.

16:51Elizabeth Yin: I don't know how to ski or snowboard, so I'm like not missing. It happened real soon.

16:55Michelle Kwok: I actually need him. He needs to teach me snowboarding tricks.

16:59Dacia Leon: Do you need people on the ground to do every mission? Yes. Right now, we would need three people on the ground, two drone pilots, and one meteorologist. As we scale, because given that 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 ski resorts versus like having one contract in Nevada and another one in Europe somewhere like that to me is really hard.

17:35Michelle Kwok: But my worry is like you make 5K per mission and you need three people for each mission.

17:41Dacia Leon: Yeah, so over time, what we want to 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 are cogs for our missions today. Our predictions are about a thousand per mission.

17:59Mike Ma: What is the fundraising history before this? Tell me about the round dynamics you're looking at.

18:04Dacia Leon: 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.

18:26Mike Ma: 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? This is the part that you're saying you're cold calling. It's fun.

18:36Dacia Leon: 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. Who runs the commercial motion? Me. I'm the one cold calling.

18:58Mike Ma: Do you have some of this 3 million earmarked for hiring for people to do the do?

19:02Dacia Leon: Yeah, we're hiring likely two folks, an operations person, and then we want a hardware engineer that's going to be able to interface with our hardware partners.

19:14Mike Ma: Are there more headcount you're looking to hire? Someone in the field who's going to help you do the go-to-market on this. Is that in the pro forma of this?

19:23Dacia Leon: We have advice. So 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 salesperson. And actually one of our snowmaking consultants is like texting me all the day if we could hire him to sell to ski resorts.

19:40Mike Ma: I guess here's a question. What if I were to tell you, I think your hiring pattern is wrong in this. What is your reaction to that?

19:52Rohit Gupta: Are we in the pitch room? or the foxhole right now. Who can say? We'll be right back.

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20:32Mike Ma: 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?

20:45Dacia Leon: So the 3 million is for six to seven seats. And I've told you six seats.

20:50Mike Ma: So what if the market told you you needed two people in sales? Who would go?

20:58Dacia Leon: Likely our hardware engineer. 100 % our hardware engineer would go.

21:03Mike Ma: And this is like, we're just on vibes here. Is that an easy answer for you to say?

21:08Dacia Leon: 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 can slot in there. And so that way we can make two spots for these salespeople. Wait, sorry.

21:38Michelle Kwok: So you are working with three resorts? Two resorts. Two resorts that you said were in pilots. Yep. What does the pilot look like?

21:45Dacia Leon: Are they paying you? 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 snow cat. And so we would show up with our protein. We would put it into their pump house and then they would make snow for three nights and then they would decide.

22:10Michelle Kwok: And you've done this already or you have not done it? We haven't done it yet.

22:14Dacia Leon: So the one field trial we've done that I showed you 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. I'm getting one after this. Oh my gosh. I'm learning so much. 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.

22:43Michelle Kwok: So you have these two pilots who are starting in the fall. And then what happens if they're successful? Do you convert immediately into a contract? Yeah. So they can make decisions really quickly. For that same season. Yep. And what does success look like for them?

23:00Dacia Leon: 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 doesn't need to be stored anywhere it's not stinky and actually we're going to 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.

23:49Michelle Kwok: What does that design partnership to contract look like? Have you talked numbers with them yet?

23:57Dacia Leon: 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 LOI signed with the two major ski resorts that I mentioned earlier, and there's some language in there about converting to a paid contract. But no numbers? We did not put numbers into those early LOIs. This was, I want to say, like month three or four that we had started the company. So future LOIs will definitely contain numbers. Yeah. I think it sounds like you have a really

24:34Michelle Kwok: 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 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 going to be out. Thank you. Thanks for the feedback.

25:13Mike Ma: 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 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'd 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. I mean, that's also perfectly fine as well.

25:42Dacia Leon: Let's have a second meeting. Let's dig in more.

25:44Mike Ma: Great. For me, it's just not, I don't know the category at all.

25:49Elizabeth Yin: I'm also not a skier or a snowboard. 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 early for that, for me to wrap my head around, is that plausible? And so for that reason, I'm not the right fit here. Well, I missed your last round, so I'd like to do this one. Awesome. I have a million other questions I could ask you about, 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?

26:28Elizabeth Yin: You know, giant storm is coming. Can you brunt a flood?

26:32Dacia Leon: Yeah, we could do that. It's speculative, but we can definitely, the way that it works is you would seed before the flood happens and then release the water before all of the water comes out all at once. It's like Elsa.

26:46Elizabeth Yin: So hailstorms are probably similar.

26:48Dacia Leon: Hailstorms, yes. So that is less speculative because people do do that. In Canada, there are cloud seeding companies that help prevent hail and you just make the hail pellets smaller by seeding the clouds. What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else?

27:04Elizabeth Yin: Like one day we're just like, you know, let's screw Arizona.

27:08Dacia Leon: 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, it also makes the opposite of it. So there's anti-freeze proteins that exist. It's like, wouldn't it be crazy if we see 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. What's the fallout of that, though? I mean, we're not going to do that. I'm not into that. We're not doing that.

27:38Elizabeth Yin: Not into, like, causing questions. All I'm going to remember going fallout in this is you really don't like Arizona.

27:44Mike Ma: Everyone, you heard it here first. No, no. Created the end of the world.

27:48Michelle Kwok: He's thinking he can invest in this company. Whatever creates, like, that's where Rohit's investment went.

27:54Elizabeth Yin: Sitting on the video, like, pointing at the map, rain.

27:57Dacia Leon: Make it rain anywhere. This is straight Dr.

28:00Elizabeth Yin: Evil right here.

28:01Dacia Leon: Don't worry, we're not doing that. Everyone listening. Where are you going with this Rohit?

28:06Elizabeth Yin: One million dollars.

28:12Elizabeth Yin: I got a stupid one. Let's go. What if you dropped it into a hurricane?

28:16Dacia Leon: Yeah, it's not stupid. There is one company out there that's doing... 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 cool liquid in them. And so, yes, we could do something like that.

28:36Elizabeth Yin: All right.

28:37Michelle Kwok: You're saving the world now. Yeah. You're the head of new projects. Can we create hurricanes? He's Arizona. He's the seventh prior. I mean, this is definitely upper alley. So I also would want to take a second meeting. But we've looked at a few companies in this space, including Rainmaker. Let's do it. But definitely up our alley. Cool. Well, thank you.

29:00Mike Ma: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

29:02Rohit Gupta: Before you go.

29:06Mike Ma: Sorry, Josh. You too.

29:08Rohit Gupta: Yeah. Mike, how much would you be investing? Quarter million. And Michelle?

29:13Michelle Kwok: Probably around 500 is usually our check for this.

29:18Elizabeth Yin: Peanuts. probably like 100k I feel small today because all of you ballers

29:26Rohit Gupta: thank you thank you

29:29Michelle Kwok: thanks for all the questions

29:30Dacia Leon: and I don't know thank you

29:33Mike Ma: it's great to meet you we're super cool

29:34Elizabeth Yin: congrats oh wow

29:36Mike Ma: you just did it I was waiting for that

29:43Mike Ma: 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. So, and no, I'm being very honest.

30:00Rohit Gupta: It's very, you don't want to look stupid. Yeah.

30:04Mike Ma: 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 this. and I have some people in the ski industry. So even though you don't like the market,

30:19Rohit Gupta: you still think it's a good market? That one is fine.

30:21Mike Ma: No, that one is fine. The harder one is this, and I think this is what Jesse's saying, is like to get to escape velocity, where this matters from my portfolio, it's the second turn of this distribution lever that matters and I, A, don't know a lot about it. How big is Snowmax?

30:35Rohit Gupta: How big of a business is Snowmax?

30:36Elizabeth Yin: Look, I had one exit in the ski industry

30:38Mike Ma: and we bought ourselves like a nice car. It was like, it's the second one.

30:44Elizabeth Yin: What if like that's not the second one?

30:45Michelle Kwok: Second one is creating hurricanes for other people You can demand any amount of money you want

30:52Elizabeth Yin: There are so many applications

30:54Michelle Kwok: 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 So you just like Pay$5 ,000 to rain on everybody It's Kalshi for Yeah Yeah Yeah, integrate with calcium and then bet like crazy. That's how you really make money.

31:16Rohit Gupta: That's the better business. Okay, Rohit, I have a problem. Yeah. You can't sit there quietly an entire pitch and then just be like, well, I'm in. Yeah. I have no idea what's going on in your brain. And then you just pop in and then drop the hurricane comment.

31:32Elizabeth Yin: Okay, water scarcity is a problem, right? Yes. We're going to start seeing cities run out of water. It's already happening globally. Right. And in the U.S., 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 eye, that doesn't work. And she's just so far ahead of other people.

31:57Michelle Kwok: I actually think rich people would want to use this. Yeah. At$5 ,000 a pop, you can have your kid's birthday party be like a snow fight. You can just buy snow.

32:05Elizabeth Yin: I think you can just buy the guns for$400 and just start spraying snow all over. You should have read Advocates. It's no problem. There you go.

32:11Michelle Kwok: No, I'm only half kidding. Because 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. Just personal garden. I'm not allowed to use the hose. That would be interesting.

32:26Rohit Gupta: Are you coming around on this one, Elizabeth?

32:28Michelle Kwok: Only if he's their go-to-market.

32:30Elizabeth Yin: And then he's out. You can buy my seat. I would trust Mike more than me. Like, honestly.

32:38Rohit Gupta: All right. You guys are crazy. Let's turn it around. All right. All right.

32:43Michelle Kwok: I think it could be a good press opportunity.

32:45Rohit Gupta: Great press. Yeah.

32:46Michelle Kwok: Like they could have, like, yeah, right? Could get the right person to do that.

32:49Elizabeth Yin: Yeah.

32:53Rohit Gupta: Dacia walked out of the pitch room with commitments from Rohit and Michelle and a second meeting with Mike. Can she rein in all three after the show? I'm snow excited for diligence. We'll be right back.

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33:40Rohit Gupta: Welcome back. A few months later, we caught up with Dacia to see what happened after the show.

33:45Dacia Leon: 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.

33:56Elizabeth Yin: That's basically why he's working for you because he found out you're a pitch founder.

33:59Dacia Leon: Yeah. I mean, it's certainly helped. Anything I can do to keep Olaf on the team for as long as possible. And his name is Olaf?

34:07Elizabeth Yin: That's amazing.

34:08Dacia Leon: No way. His sister's name is Elsa.

34:11Elizabeth Yin: No. Stop. I swear.

34:13Rohit Gupta: What?

34:14Dacia Leon: Is he from Norway? No. I know.

34:19Rohit Gupta: Did they name their children after?

34:21Dacia Leon: Before.

34:22Rohit Gupta: They must have lost their minds when that movie came out.

34:27Elizabeth Yin: They did. Are you ready to dive in? Ready to dive in.

34:32Rohit Gupta: All right. I have a question for you. Okay. What was your experience like pitching on the show?

34:37Dacia Leon: I mean, it was awesome. You know, when you do something difficult and you kill it, you're like, wow, I am a superhuman. I am amazing. So like after getting off of the show in the room with Lisa, I really could have climbed Mount Everest. Like I could have lived in a car. I have been recommending it to everyone afterwards. You just feel like so great after doing it. And especially if like you feel like you killed it. Just like a cold plunge.

35:05Elizabeth Yin: I was thinking the natural high after birth.

35:08Dacia Leon: Like 10 cool plunges. Yes. I mean, that definitely came to mind, that natural high after birth. Yeah. Actually, that's really accurate, Lisa. Thank you.

35:19Rohit Gupta: You just compared coming onto the pitch to giving birth?

35:23Elizabeth Yin: More? Okay. What? 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.

35:34Michelle Kwok: Yeah.

35:35Elizabeth Yin: Anyways, continue.

35:37Dacia Leon: 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.

35:46Rohit Gupta: Well, like I always say, if you can make it rain, you can come on the pitch.

35:52Elizabeth Yin: Oh, my gosh. I love that. Don't.

35:57Rohit Gupta: I do. I say that very often, actually.

36:00Elizabeth Yin: Yeah, all the time.

36:02Rohit Gupta: 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?

36:14Dacia Leon: Mike was very fast. So we had a couple meetings after the show and went through diligence with him. And he 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. He's usually like rare for VCs to have a ski portfolio company that has also exited. So he had a unique insight, but 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.

36:49Rohit Gupta: So no trip to the foxhole?

36:51Dacia Leon: No trip to the foxhole.

36:53Rohit Gupta: 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, which I think makes sense. Like coming from an industry that you know super well, like you're just going to see what's wrong with that side of the business. You're just going to see the personalities behind it that you're like, I don't know. I know that guy that runs Vail. He's not going to say yes. he's going to imagine them and just have a hard time thinking about how you're going to scale the business that way.

37:29Rohit Gupta: Do you think that's what you heard from him or am I hearing a different story?

37:34Dacia Leon: No, no, that's accurate. My inclination was like, oh, he knows ski industry. He's going to love this. And he's going to be great. Just going to be a match. I've never met anyone that has a company in ski, but it was actually the opposite, which, you know, we all have our baggage. I got mine. And so that makes sense. But at the same time, we have a 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.

38:12Elizabeth Yin: All right.

38:13Rohit Gupta: Next up is Michelle Kwok. You recorded your pitch with her after the pitch to send to their investment committee, aka Tim Draper.

38:24Dacia Leon: Yes.

38:25Rohit Gupta: What happened after that?

38:27Dacia Leon: Well, I had a couple more meetings with them and I actually have one, another one right after this call.

38:33Rohit Gupta: No way. Okay. So the diligence is still going on?

38:37Dacia Leon: The diligence is still going on. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about them and I think they would be a good fit for us given like what they fund and whatnot.

38:48Rohit Gupta: They love all the weird shit. Yeah.

38:51Elizabeth Yin: We're weird. 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?

39:01Rohit Gupta: Lisa.

39:03Dacia Leon: I try. So my head goes. Dating, right? Yeah. Your head goes there. It's like, what are they thinking? Yeah. I try to not go there as much as possible. But the one thing I do tell myself is that when investors invest time in you, it's not a bad sign. 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 is going to invest. I like them. They like me, blah, blah, blah. And they don't. And it's a bummer. So I try to stop my brain from thinking like positive or negative either way and just take it meeting to meeting. Yeah.

39:39Rohit Gupta: You got to protect your heart. Yeah.

39:43Dacia Leon: I mean, exactly. We're laughing, but for real. No, but yes. Yes, Josh. The up and down swings are so high in a startup. And so you kind of just want to maintain neutral as much as possible, especially if you're one of the founders, because no one else on your team wants to see you swing. It's fair. Yep.

40:05Rohit Gupta: Right. Oh, man. All right. Yeah, this is fun.

40:13Dacia Leon: Josh is having fun.

40:16Rohit Gupta: We are getting Dacia uncorked. This is great.

40:20Dacia Leon: Dude, I think you all know this, but this is how I operate. Like, it's hard for me to be corked. So. Okay.

40:33Rohit Gupta: So, finally, we have the pitch room's supervillain of the weather, Rohit Gupta. Yeah. How was your call with VC Dr. Evil? Any more? Great. Genius go-to-market ideas from him?

40:48Dacia Leon: Rohit's the best. We had, like, an immediate bond. And our rapport is really great.

40:55Elizabeth Yin: I have a question for you.

40:57Dacia Leon: I love your questions, Rohit. Well, here it comes.

41:02Elizabeth Yin: How do you feel about prediction markets?

41:07Dacia Leon: Yeah. I mean, I can't say that's something that we are currently watching too much of or, like, have on our radar.

41:16Elizabeth Yin: how concerned are you even if it's not you right like both of you seem very sort of straight 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 does that thing where you're like you're not allowed

41:40Dacia Leon: these prediction markets if you work here yeah i mean so you you have read us correctly we do like to steer away from evil is a strong word but like we do have a moral compass and why we will not cross one of those lines for example is weaponizing cloud sure not only is it illegal but that's something that we would never ever do totally get it i appreciate that

42:04Elizabeth Yin: 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 send me a safe and wire instructions.

42:14Dacia Leon: Amazing.

42:15Elizabeth Yin: Done. Appreciate you.

42:17Dacia Leon: Appreciate you. High five.

42:19Rohit Gupta: Yeah. High five. How much did Rohit invest?

42:23Dacia Leon: He invested 50k. We got his check already.

42:26Rohit Gupta: No way.

42:27Dacia Leon: Yay. Yeah. Yay.

42:30Rohit Gupta: Can you confirm that he's not going to try to use your technology to make weather bets on Kalshi?

42:36Dacia Leon: Yes, yes. No evil is being done. Don't worry.

42:42Rohit Gupta: How is your fundraise going overall? I know you were raising$3 million during your pitch.

42:47Dacia Leon: 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.

43:14Rohit Gupta: Did the terms change?

43:16Dacia Leon: No, the terms are the same. And we've just started last week.

43:20Rohit Gupta: Well, the pitch fund is in, if you'll have us.

43:23Dacia Leon: I will 100 % have you. I was waiting. I was like, you know, you hope. Dating. that y 'all would say this on the show. I'm like, oh, maybe they'll say it. Last night I was falling asleep at one in the morning. Oh my gosh. That's where my head went. But hell yeah, of course I'll have you guys.

43:44Elizabeth Yin: Loved what you've been building since the beginning. And obviously we're big fans of you as well. Right back at you.

43:50Rohit Gupta: Let's make it rain.

43:51Dacia Leon: Let's make it rain.

43:54Rohit Gupta: So what else is happening with the business? You mentioned you landed a new customer that you guys have discovered.

44:03Dacia Leon: It was new. And I'll tell you how we discovered them through one of our investors. Folks in water districts are just hard to find and talk to and cold call and all that.

44:14Rohit Gupta: Yeah, I don't know anyone from water districts. I know.

44:17Dacia Leon: Me neither. Until you find your first, right, that like loves you and then they introduce you to more, which is what 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 arrays. 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 looking at the river that we would be increasing flow to and talking with water experts in that area.

44:54Dacia Leon: And it's, yeah, it just, not only is it inspirational, but it's like, this is why we're doing it, right? 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.

45:20Rohit Gupta: Cool stuff, Dacia. Yeah.

45:23Dacia Leon: Thanks, Josh.

45:23Rohit Gupta: How many times can we use the word cool in your episode? Oh my God.

45:27Dacia Leon: As many as possible.

45:29Rohit Gupta: Keep us posted on the Draper situation. Oh yeah.

45:32Dacia Leon: Oh, I will.

45:38Rohit Gupta: A few days later, Draper invested 100K in Super Cool Earth, bringing their total raised on the show to 300K.

45:46Elizabeth Yin: Deep tech wins again. Yes.

45:49Rohit Gupta: It's interesting that like a core reason why the VCs passed in the room was because Dasia was selling only to ski resorts and this secondary market of municipalities and...

46:01Elizabeth Yin: Ag.

46:02Rohit Gupta: Ag, yeah, was unclear, like unproven.

46:06Elizabeth Yin: And then in just a month or two after that, she's already selling to like water districts.

46:12Rohit Gupta: Right.

46:13Elizabeth Yin: And it just shows how much can happen in such a short period of time.

46:16Rohit Gupta: 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. She goes, no.

46:34Elizabeth Yin: Right, because this is like a bigger mission than like helping people ski. This is about bringing water to people.

46:40Rohit Gupta: Wait, are you saying my annual ski trip is not important, Lisa?

46:43Elizabeth Yin: You know, I'm not saying that.

46:45Rohit Gupta: My ski trip with the boys is a priority.

46:47Elizabeth Yin: I'm just saying that there are higher priorities in this world.

46:50Rohit Gupta: It's a problem.

46:51Elizabeth Yin: Like drinking water.

46:52Rohit Gupta: No offer to invest in Super Cool Earth is being made to the listening audience on today's show. But we do have a venture fund where we invest alongside the VCs on the show.

47:03Elizabeth Yin: 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.

47:12Rohit Gupta: Next week on The Pitch. At my 21st party, my friends rolled out a three-wheeled motorbike as my gift. I said, Cam, everybody at the party chipped in to get this for you. So we built Pace Squad to make group payments native at checkout. It's the first, buy now, play together.

47:30Mike Ma: Recovering banking and payments person here, how do you beat this race to the bottom? For Pace Squad, we have the K-factor of like an early 2000s social network.

47:41Rohit Gupta: 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.

47:52Elizabeth Yin: And if you're a founder raising a pre-seed or seed round, apply to pitch at our next event. It only takes a couple minutes. Go to pitch.show slash apply.

48:01Rohit Gupta: We'll see you next week in The Pitch Room.

48:07Jesse Middleton: 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 imagine nostalgia soul city anders and peter jean and the runaway queen the pitch is made in partnership with the vox media podcast network

48:40Jesse Middleton: meet klaviyo your brand's new best friend with all your data in one place Klaviyo knows you and your customers. Its AI agents build campaigns from one prompt and answer questions 24-7. Always on brand, always with your OK. Go to klaviyo.com slash best friends.