Rod MacGregor On Taking His First Company Public And Now Raising Millions To Build The World’s Largest Solar Energy Facility

In the latest episode of the Dealmakers’ Podcast, Rod MacGregor, a visionary entrepreneur with a remarkable background, shares his journey from humble beginnings in council housing in Scotland to pioneering groundbreaking technologies in Silicon Valley. This blog post delves into Rod’s inspiring narrative, highlighting key moments and insights that shaped his trajectory.

His latest venture, GlassPoint is the world’s largest solar power facility and has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Tomas Mar Sigurdsson, Saints Capital, RockPort Capital, and 300ppm.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Perseverance trumps intelligence; Rod’s journey is a testament to the power of resilience in entrepreneurship.
• Recognize the need for professional management; founders should prepare for potential leadership transitions as companies grow.
• Timing is crucial; Silicon Valley’s rapid growth in the ’90s showcased the importance of seizing opportunities.
• Embrace cultural shifts; the move to Silicon Valley highlighted the different dynamics that can drive innovation.
• Meaningful missions drive sustainable businesses; GlassPoint’s mission to combat climate change led to its success.
• Balancing economic viability with environmental impact, Rod’s ventures prove that sustainability can be profitable.
• Learn from past experiences, proving the value of reflecting on successes and setbacks in entrepreneurship.

SUBSCRIBE ON:

For a winning deck, see the commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M (see it here). 

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

About Rod MacGregor:

Rod MacGregor is the co-founder and CEO of GlassPoint Solar, the leading provider of solar steam generators for the oil and gas industry. For more than two decades, MacGregor has led global companies across the United States, Europe, China, and the Middle East.

MacGregor’s companies have partnered with a range of multinational corporations across the energy and technology industries, including AT&T, Intel, Volkswagen, and Royal Dutch Shell.

MacGregor is an engineer by trade committed to developing and scaling disruptive technologies. His first company, Insignia Solutions Ltd., received the Queen of England’s Award for technical achievement and the Queen’s Award for export achievement and subsequently went public on NASDAQ.

MacGregor has founded three other venture capital-backed companies, which achieved successful market exits. Originally from Scotland, MacGregor received his B.S. in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow. He now lives in California and Oman.

Connect with Rod MacGregor:

• TheOrg
• Crunchbase
• HuffPost
• LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today. We have a very exciting founder a founder that has done it so many times that I kind of like lost track how many times he’s been a founder so I didn’ that we’re going to find this quite inspiring I mean he is saying. Basically launched companies that did an ipo that went and and were listed on Nasdaq other companies where he retired from them and then he came back and did a massive turnaround and and again you know building financing you know exiting you name it. You know he’s done it all and I am sure that you’re all going to find his journey. Quite remarkable and very inspiring so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guests today Rod mcgregor welcome to the show so born in the highlands in Scotland how was life growing up, give us our walk through MemoryLane so

Rod MacGregor: Ah, thank you Very much pleasure to be here.

Rod MacGregor: Oh ah, well I started off in what’s called council housing in Scotland so that’s projects in America ah the toilet was at end of the garden. So pretty basic stuff.

Alejandro Cremades: And also your dad was um was ah was a truck driver I mean always he working working class. You know folks and and you know that didn’t stop you from ah from really knowing that you wanted to get into problem solving computer science you know which you ended up studying. So.

Rod MacGregor: Um I wouldn’t say.

Alejandro Cremades: What got you moving and how and I guess you know were you the first one that went to University from the family or tell us about this.

Rod MacGregor: Um, so actually I’d say my background was the inspiration were’re keeping me going we. We didn’t really have anything but the assumption was that we could do anything my parents told me you could do anything you wanted to do and I believe them and I continue to believe that that that there are no real barriers. Um, it was one of the nice things though about switching from the Uk to the us especially to the West Coast Silicon Valley and the early 90 s it. It was and still is very much a meritocracy if you have an idea. Ah and you have determination. You can get funded and you can build a business. In the u k it’s much harder. There’s still at least back then anyway there was so very much a class overlay and so it was very difficult for some of our truck driver working class lads to get funded in the Uk and it was possible I did 2 startups there but it took a lot longer and it was a lot more difficult. So um.

Alejandro Cremades: Oh I totally get that I mean I’m I’m from Spain too. So obviously you know there is if you’re dad or your mom knows they whatever person then you know that person will pick up the phone if not, there’s always going to be like assistant that is going to be blocking any type of call or email. So.

Rod MacGregor: Yeah, so that was the the early days. Oh.

Rod MacGregor: Exact and I knew did you go to this school. You’re member of this club. There’s a whole um and I’m sure as in Spain you know we all have accents and your accent places you I’m very transatlantic now. But at the time I sounded very much like ah.

Alejandro Cremades: Very difficult. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Well well in your case, you know obviously incredible drive. Incredible ambition. You did your computer science degree there in the University Of Glasgow and then from there you worked at the united nations now 1 thing that is very interesting is you went from the united nations to startup land.

Rod MacGregor: Ah, we boy through the islands.

Alejandro Cremades: And then obviously you know like you never left startup blank you you got hooked. So what got you in first place into the venture world.

Rod MacGregor: Into the venture world. So um, it’s an interesting question. The the the job at the un was on an Ibm mainframe which back then was pretty much the way all computing and businesses was done. And the brand new thing was the Ibm personal computer and um, the thing that the pc created was a market for software suddenly you could have mass marketed software and the pRod MacGregor: ucts at a time with things like spreadsheeets slowus one 2 3 but they only ran on the pc. So if you were. Ah, computer maker and you didn’t have the Intel Microsoft architecture using them a business and so we created software that let Ibm pc software run on pretty much any hardware whether it be mainframes whether it be workstations where it be the Macintosh which were just out at the time. So that was kind of the inspiration to start the the new business which was in the Uk um took us a we get out unf funded. We wound up um, being funded by various ails of j rosch child and call.

Alejandro Cremades: And this ended up a going public this was in Cs so insignia solutions now in how how do you go from like building this company there in in Europe to all of a sudden you’re listing this thing on nasag and doing an ipo I mean that’s that’s quite remarkable.

Rod MacGregor: Fish exact.

Rod MacGregor: The challenge was back then in the eighty s there’s no ipo market in the uk certainly not with the technology premiums you you see now. So we had a us subsidiary which um actually had the bulk of the headcount at that time. So we flipped it. We made the us subsidiary the parent company. And then we took it out in Nasdaq that was the ah the path there because ah, you’re you’re you’re correct that that that type of entrepreneurship wasn’t really in existence in Uk at the time and we were recognized actually by the queen we got an award for export achievement. An award for um technology achievement just just noting very few Uk companies in the eighty s where we’re doing the structure of things that we were doing.

Alejandro Cremades: And what? what? what were you guys doing Essentially what was the business model. How were you guys making money with insignia.

Rod MacGregor: We made money in two ways. The first one was if you were a computer manufacturer. Ah you would pay us I can remember now this is back in what 86 the the price was a million us dollars to port our translator to your machine. So for a million dollars you could now get access to the ib pc library and then there was a licensing fee for every machine you sold with our software bundled. We got a small fee that was one way the second way was that we sold software at retail. And there was no downloads in those times people go to a software store or go to mailloader and buy software and there was ah a chart like the chart for music and the pRod MacGregor: uct there was called soft pc went into the meisel top 10 which is the software charts so we were in the top 10 of software being sold. Ah, for for the Macintosh at the time so that was kind of exciting was a very different thing than you know, working in the united nations. But.

Alejandro Cremades: Now now tell us about doing the ipo I mean what are what are what an achievement How how was it like going public you know during those days.

Rod MacGregor: So I I was not that involved in it. You know I was the founding technical guy. So the finance guys The management often took care of all that I was not really my yes, it was death. Definitely I’m a moment of pride I mean.

Alejandro Cremades: But obviously you know when you see your baby you know going public. You also the emotions too.

Rod MacGregor: That was that was very exciting.

Alejandro Cremades: So in your case as an entrepreneur. Always an entrepreneur. So then you started ibs which also you know had an nice outcome. You know it was acquired by Nobel now now in this case, um everyone was happy with the outcome.

Rod MacGregor: No it. Yeah oh.

Alejandro Cremades: What were you guys doing there and what was the lesson that you took away from from that experience.

Rod MacGregor: So in those days if I want you to move a file from 1 computer to another I would copy it onto a floppy disk and I’d walk down the corridor and I’d put it into the machine networking was in its infancy and so we developed software which that. Essentially enabled file sharing between computers which now we just take for granted that you can open information which is not on the physical machine. You’re sitting at we do it all day. The cloud. The web. Um, you know all of that didn’t really exist at that time. And so we we built some of the basic enabling software which made that possible and um the leader in that field at the time was Novell so we were focused on the Macintosh. We had a very user friendly approach theve were focused on the pc much bigger macco course and they were very much the leader they were like a billion dollar company in the late eighty s and um, they wound up acquiring us.

Alejandro Cremades: And obviously they say this was an amazing you know transition moment for Youtube because you ended up landing in Cupertino and and I’m sure that that was pretty life changing for you because now.

Rod MacGregor: Yeah, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: You had also the the American you know drive and way of doing things the American dream and and so forth. So how do you think that that changed your perspective.

Rod MacGregor: Well from the earliest days of startingring computer science or reading papers from Xerox Park and park is the Palo Alto Research Center and had no idea what park was where it was and what palo Alto is like so I imagine this high desert plateau that’s where the name sounds like little Adobe huts. But course when you get silicon valley it’s nothing like that. So it did a little bit of a culture shock. Um Insignia was based and ah and in high high wicom and then ibs was based in Windsor so not exactly the sunniest part of the planet and I remember when I was commuting in the beginning before I moved. I was sitting on the freeway in the uk with gray skies and rain drumming on the on the car and feeling quite miserable and a week later I was on highway one a one in California also in traffic stationary but the sky was blue and the feeling was just completely different. And at that time was a very optimistic place. You know it’s very much a sense that everything was possible I don’t feel. It’s like that these days but back then it was very much the land of opportunity.

Alejandro Cremades: So how do you think that that shaped the way that you started your next company. You know your next company online technologies you know started as a rocket ship. So I guess saying what? what were you guys doing there and how do you do things differently from what you did you know with your previous 2 companies.

Rod MacGregor: Yeah.

Rod MacGregor: Um, so the scale was radically different and the timing was radically different so together 2 Uk companies off the ground took six to nine months of calling on doors to try and get somebody to back us with relatively small checks. But in Silicon Valley and 9094 when multimedia was new. The internet was just becoming to the four I think it took us two months started in November we got check in January two months with Christmas in the middle um to get funded and it was a pretty big check I remember it was 4000000 um, and it was very much a feeding frenzy. You know we we were um, we were 2 founders. We’d had a track record of successful exits. We were leaving navel the leader in the field. So it was a very very different experience to cold calling.

Rod MacGregor: There’s something called the national venture capital association in Britain and they published a directory and back in the day I got the directory and I started the a and I just started calling so cold calling for money is like soul destroying so this was totally different. It was all. Ah, but networking people knew who we were it could not have been a more different experience.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then in this case for you guys you know now that you’re networking you have ah a few you know, exits you know, also under your build I’m sure that this was very very helpful I guess how were the because you guys raised quite a bit you know thirty million bucks obviously it sounds like the timing you know was not the right one but I guess the um first and foremost what were you guys doing there. You know and with online technologies.

Rod MacGregor: Well, it’s it’s like insane 1 word now. It was a metaverse so back in the in the early 90 s no wonder had really it was in science fiction but it was not in the popular mind that the metaverse could exist. So our idea was to create a 3 d immersive world where people could communicate with each other. Key enabling technology there apart from 3 d rendering was voiceover ip so the fact he didn’t need a telephone line to do what we’re doing there that you could speak. He could be digitized. It could be sent to other line. It could be decoded or our addition to that was essentially conference calling. You can have 5 or 6 people all talking. And it would do the mixing and rebroadcasting that that a conference switch would do so now with Zoom and and everything we take all that for granted but 9094 that was cutting edge technology especially as the processing power we had access to which felt amazing at the time is like. And what thousands of what you have access to that.

Alejandro Cremades: So so how do you think that the um I mean you guys had all the bigger. The bigger guys you know backing you I mean you had people like a kliner you had softbank I mean you had like some serious guns. You know when it comes to investors.

Rod MacGregor: Yeah, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: How how were you? you know as you as you would point is you know it would be like a smoking crater. You know the company didn’t make it So why when you have like this resources and this people backing you what happened.

Rod MacGregor: If.

Rod MacGregor: It was a very interesting end and it wasn’t the one that you would expect. Um, so basically we were doing really well from a number of subscribers point of view. But as like many internet software companies at the time we had no. Way of making revenue and figured out how to make money yet and there was another softbine portfolio company that also was doing virtual worlds as we called it back then and they said I’ll tell you what we’ll acquire you and they acquired this for some ridiculous sum amount money. Um and stock. So 2 companies merged and the company that acquired is went pop like a year later um and so the stock become worth zero, an interesting anedote along the way is that um Microsoft tried to acquire us and. Ah, given all the internet hubris at the time we said no and they offered I can’t remember the exact number but it would have made my co-founder and I millionaires many times over and we said no no, it’s the internet. What could possibly go wrong. We’re going to be billionaires. Um and and so we turned Microsoft down.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow.

Rod MacGregor: And shortly afterwards bill gates personal ah money foundation at that time contacted myself and my founders said we know you sell little company but Mr Gates would like to buy your common stock your founder stock and. Ah, my co-founder said yes and I said no and you know so he he became very rich, very early on as part of that process and so my stock that held onto become worth nothing. So if you’re a founder something to think about is. Ah, you know if there’s money on the table take it I mean there is a lot of value to cash now as opposed to you know potential cash in the future.

Alejandro Cremades: But that’s that’s interesting. Why the common stock Why would he want to buy the common stock you know versus maybe like doing like a like a different blend of of a transaction. Why the common stock especially from a founder.

Rod MacGregor: Yeah, So there’s a whole Now. There’s a whole cadro companies which do this there is secondary transactions where they’ll find people who currently own stock in a company and they will they will buy it and back then it was less developed Market. It was a pretty smart move. Ah, you’re behind the preferred stock in terms of liquidation preference but usually the found runs a pretty big chunk and in this particular case I think when they they thought highly enough of it to try and buy the whole company and when that didn’t happen. They probably correctly assumed that was. Ah, that the investor didn’t want to sell out and they thought well maybe the founders do and we can still participate so that was um, the Logic. Um.

Alejandro Cremades: So then tell us tell us when when all of a sudden you know like this company. You know you were coming from successful. You know transactions that you had done with your previous companies and now this is the time where you need to face the music you know with a different beat and. Obviously not not fun and not a nice. You know, unfolding of events that happened so how was that for you, you know to really experience. You know the downside of of of I would say an outcome you know like that for the first time.

Rod MacGregor: Um, the start startup land is very much a roller coaster There’s incredible hives and incredible lows and you just can’t let it get you. You have to um, maintain your inner optimism. And I think if you don’t have that you find it very hard to function in the venture world in my particular case it’s self-confidence verging on arrogance. It’s just like okay that one didn’t work I’ll do another one and I’m sure it would be fine. Ah so pretty irrational, but but I think if you don’t. Have something like that it could emotionally be very brutal if you get into the we we won’t learn Lessons. You look back and say what could have done better. What lessons should I really take away from this if you do that then it’s very much a positive experience. But if you start self-doubting what was wrong with me. Why can’t I make it those sorts are things. That could be soul destroying. So fortunately I’m lucky enough not to suffer from that particular.

Alejandro Cremades: So Nano Nano Muscle was the next one. So um, you know we see Nano Muscle You know it was um it was an outcome where you got um a stock acquisition there. So What did you learn from Nano Muscle What were you guys doing there and what was the outcome. What the listen that you took for for. With it from with you.

Rod MacGregor: So nanomasel is making a miniature motor for various industries and the thing I learned there was and new cultures because most not most all of the manufacturing and most of the headcaunt was in China so I relocated to Hong Kong with a factory just across the border and um. Learning a new culture and a new way of doing business was eye openingening to me in the west business is transactional. We’re here for transaction we made the transaction and that’s it in China and most of the east business relationship based. Relationship is more important than the individual transaction which means you can’t fly in and fly out into business. You have to actually build relationships over time and so so I found that really a really interesting way of doing business. Um, so I was one of the one of the um learnings another one was. It was an accidental startup. So at the time you know I didn’t know okay in the previous startups I wasn’t wealthy but I didn’t have to work particularly and I had kids by then and I thought I’d make for the kids a little ah pet robot thing that could move just tinkering in my labp. And tried putting motors together with batteries to make this thing move and realized oh it was going to walk it needs to carry some batteries so any bigger motors. Oh I need bigger batteries now and the the thing became the size of a shoebox very quickly. It was not a little cute thing. So then I thought okay well these motors have to get replaced. How can I do that and.

Rod MacGregor: Working with um, some contract Engineers came up with was what was then what became the na muscle the shape memory alloy actuated motor which you moved smoothly and silently and animate elting and then somebody said ah you know if you’ve got a motor that uses a fraction. The power is a fraction the size you Know. Could probably make a business out that ah and I thought oh s wasnt good actually and thought that and then the company was born. Um.

Alejandro Cremades: Now Now there you know obviously it ended up being a stock transaction. You know I’m sure that you learned quite a bit but that actually you know put you into you know you you decided after that transaction to kind of like going to semi retirement until you watched the documentary from Al gore.

Rod MacGregor: Yes.

Alejandro Cremades: And in Comedian Truth and that really got you on the path that you’re in now. So tell us what what changed when you when you saw that in and what were the immediate steps that you took in order to bring you know your current company to life.

Rod MacGregor: So I think you can be um, comfortable, not working. But it’s not very fulfilling at least for me and so I think subconsciously was looking for a mission Ideally, something could make a difference and an inconvenient truth was all about climate change. Which we all are very aware of now. But you know in 2009 2008 it wasn’t quite that well-known but it looked very much like an engineering problem which could have engineering solutions and um I had co-founder from Nanoussel and stayed in touch with. And he’d seen it at rough at the same time when we got talking about. You know we could do something about this and that’s what got glass point off the ground. Um it was ah inspired by him I’ll fast forward a little bit to close the loop because we grew very quickly and we deployed at better large scale. Mostly on oil fields because if you look at who the biggest emitters are is the oil and gas industry so we end up providing solar solutions which reduced emissions in oil and gas and as a result of all activity the world Economic forum. Um, you know, ah. Ah, recognize he’s a technology Pioneer. We get invited to all these events and it were. We sat me down next to al gore and I thought this is great I can tell him that he inspired the whole thing so I was very happy and I told him his story and he looked at me appalled and said you use solar for pRod MacGregor: ucing oil that’s terrible.

Rod MacGregor: So he did not approve at all which is kind of ironic as he got is going into first place. But yeah, so that that was um, the transition into class point. Um, we make.

Alejandro Cremades: And then and then with class point two I mean I get saved for the people listening you know why don’t you summarize? how do you guys say make money.

Rod MacGregor: It changed so the company is a restart. The original company had a different business model. Its business model was essentially selling solar equipment. So an oil company would say I need this much energy for my oilfield build me a solar array does that. And we had a proprietary form of solar that we would deploy and they would pay us for it. So a typical transaction would be you know $600000000 to build something over three or four years and when you were finished building. It. You would hand them the keys they would own and operate so that was. Business model. There’s good things about that business model. Lots of the values front loaded and the numbers get very big very quickly. The downside is that there’s no recurring revenue. You’ve sold your solar field and you’re done and there’s a gap until you get the next deal. You’ve got a company. You’ve got a button rate you’ve got nothing coming in so a new business model doesn’t do that. We sell steam as a service we project finance the solar arrays with den equity from the outside and we sell the customer steam on a 20 year contract and there’s lots of advantages to that to the company. We get returning recurring revenue. So. It’s very stable and even if next year you made no new sales. You still get revenue. But as you do get more sales it a layer cake. You’re building at top It’s so very predictable and from a customer’s point of view. He doesn’t have to allocate capital to the project. So if.

Rod MacGregor: You get into talking hundreds of millions customers often say well, what else could I do with that money I could drill more oil wells I could invest in my my mining business There’s lots of things I could do with that money so you compete for capital but today they buy gas to mix steam. So now instead they just buy renewable steam. Was a very easy transition and what that does is accelerates adoption. It means that they will buy it quicker than if they had to allocate the capital themselves. So that’s how glass point makes money know.

Alejandro Cremades: Now obviously you know eventually the the company needed professional management and they say kind of like invited you to retirement again. So walk us through what were the sequence of events there that happened and then also eventually funny enough. You got to call back. To to to to come back and take the range again. So what happened first.

Rod MacGregor: Um I think and I assume this category when I was starting companies with Ceo H summed as my company and I would always be the Ceo and of course that almost never happens. The fact that the ah the likelihood. The founding Ceo has the skill set to manage a very large business is pretty low and and it’s not your company. It’s owned by the investors and so I think a recognition that that’s the case would would help entrepreneurs to to know that. I’m probably not going to be the Ceo when this thing goes public or gets acquired. Um despite what the the the early venture guys might tell you that’s almost certainly not going to happen. You know, even some of them Google you know they brought in e schmidt very early on to provide you know. Adult supervision is they light calllar. Ah so that is the backdrop happens in most startups in this particular one we went from 0 to 100000000 in revenue in three years so it was a pretty yeah steep curve from first revenue to and I said you did a great job bro. Well done. you’ a startup guy. Time to step aside and let professional manager take over and I did not agree I didn’t think that was the right timing for that with my experience I knew it was going to happen and I wanted it to happen because obviously I wanted the company to be successful and people who run big businesses are not startup entrepreneurs but I thought the timing was wrong.

Rod MacGregor: So we disagreed on that I think the advice I’d give to anybody facing a similar thing is um, have that conversation long before cars so stay in touch with the investor stay in touch with your board talk about that transition even before they think it’s something that’s going to happen so you can agree on 2 things 1 is. Um, when it’s going to happen what stages the business at so that you’re all seeing it the same way and secondly what your plans afterwards. As as as the founding Ceo that way you won’t get um what I came to call the knight with the long knives. Where you got you got a board meeting out of the middle of nowhere and the subject is that you’re no longer. The Ceo you know that’s what you want to? avoid you want to be much more controlled than that. Um, so yeah, that was if you talk about roller coasters that was actually harder than a company failing. Company doing really well and you’re getting kicked to the site that was that was emotion quite tough.

Alejandro Cremades: And do you think that if you would have stayed on. Ah maybe things could have been different and and this professional management would have not destroyed. You know the the 400000000 enterprise value that you guys had at the point.

Rod MacGregor: It’s a noble isn’t it I mean as I said at the beginning and pre Arrogant I Like to think so but you never really know you don’t know what would have happened Um, but at least if that happened I would have warned it you know yes I made that mistake. Yes, that happened yes I learned from it. So it’s very frustrating that that.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah.

Rod MacGregor: Somebody else was at the hell and when it happened because you feel so out of control.

Alejandro Cremades: So then what happened when you receive that call you know hey Rot We need you back.

Rod MacGregor: Well, it wasn’t quite expressed like that. Although it wasn’t too far off, um well a couple of years gone by the business had been dormant for 2 years No employees, no customers and I thought the chances of resurrecting it would be incredibly low. And so it’d be a filter and we might be able to raise money but the business would not get restarted and what turned me around was there was a particular customer of the predecensor company who really wanted to proceed. He really wanted to go ahead and he had contacted. Give me the investors that people are doing liquidation everybody you could think of to try and find a way of continuing to to do his project. So I thought oh okay, that’s that’s interesting. There’s a customer who wants to keep going and so that’s what caused me to say yeah okay I’ll I’ll jump back in the.

Alejandro Cremades: So what happened next what happened next.

Rod MacGregor: Starting well the original institutional investors didn’t fund in the end they said they would but they didn’t so I put my own money in acquired the ip with the presor company and got it started then raised $9000000 to get to where we are now and what that did is it led to the announcement of what will be the world’s largest industrial process solar industrial process heat system ever. It’s one point five Gigawatts so one thousand five hundred megawatts seven square kilometers of of project. It will reduce emissions by six hundred Thousand Tons of cotwo is a mega project by any measure so don to 0 and then up the other again you like.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, back up back up back up back swinging now Now let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight Ro and you wake up in a world where the vision of the companies fully realized what does the world look like.

Rod MacGregor: Um, where we made a measurable difference to emissions I mean the whole reason we started this in the first place was not economic. It was to make a difference to climate change and that’s still very much what what fires normally me but the rest of the team in the morning is that you know we we want to make a difference. Want to reduce co 2 emissions and so if we were actually manage to do that I think we all feel satisfied to be so a sustainable company though. You do need economics. So you you do have to be um, economic from your customers perspective. And from your investor’s perspectives. In other words, you do have to make money but that’s not the reason you do it. You know that’s the thing you need to do to get to the reason but that’s not the reason you do it. So so yeah, very very much driven by the by the outcome the climate change outcome.

Alejandro Cremades: Now imagine that I put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time to that moment where you were still in United nations and you were able to give that younger Rod one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why you know why you know now.

Rod MacGregor: Took here.

Rod MacGregor: Ah, gosh. Yes, Um, so I think I’d say never give up Something. Perseverance is the key I think that’s more leads to better results than Intelligence Education. Anything you can think of Perseverance just seems to be the thing that that makes the difference.

Alejandro Cremades: So wrote I’m sure that there’s a lot of people that are listening that are really inspired that they that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Rod MacGregor: I Would think I send him an email. It’s very easy is Rod at glasspoint dot com and I live on email so I actually do actually read my own email.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well easy enough. Well hey Rod thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Rod MacGregor: Looks like you own chopping me.

*****

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at al*******@pa**************.com“>al*******@pa**************.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More