Startup Series: Distributed Hydrogen with Fourier

My Climate Journey

Siva Yellamraju is the Co-founder and CEO at Fourier.

Fourier's mission is to make hydrogen universally accessible with on-site and on-demand production. Fourier is not Siva's first startup, it's his fourth. He sold his last company to Apple the one before that to Google and the one before that to Polycom, so he knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship.

Fourier is barely two years old and they raised a seed round in mid-April led by General Catalyst. They've largely operated in stealth. In fact, there's nothing on their website at fourier.earth other than their thesis statement for starting the company, so we were excited to learn from Siva about why he transitioned from a very successful entrepreneurial career in software to tackle a business in the energy sector. We were also eager to learn specifically about what Siva’'s building in distributed hydrogen and what he's learned from the process thus far.

In this episode, we cover:

• [2:01] Siva’s entrepreneurial background
• [4:46] His decision to work on climate and energy
• [7:35] Customer pain point understanding
• [12:44] Potential use cases for distributed hydrogen, including power backup solutions and data centers
• [15:04] Approaching hydrogen production as a data problem
• [21:47] Customers working with Fourier as part of a broader movement around clean energy
• [24:01] Potential use cases for distributed hydrogen, including power backup solutions and data centers
• [27:14] Advantages of hydrogen over batteries for long-term storage and heavy transportation
• [33:20] Geographic markets for hydrogen deployment; the US, Germany, India, and Indonesia
• [35:33] Fourier's success to date and plans for commercial rollout
• [37:12] The goals for Fourier's pilots in the US and India
• [40:16] Siva's learning curves in building an energy company
• [42:29] Potential for India to become a leader in hydrogen
• [44:21] The name behind Fourier
• [45:34] Fourier's current capital and hiring needs

Episode recorded on July 25, 2024 (Published on Aug 1, 2024)

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