Manik Suri
Executive summary:
I am proud that I founded CoInspect (the precursor to Therma°) and Therma°. This is the second company I started. I’ve had a successful academic career, graduating at the top of my class at Harvard. Another highlight would be working in the White House as a junior analyst on the Obama economic policy team.
What is your field of expertise?
My expertise is at the intersection of technology, sustainability, finance, and public policy. I think of myself as a “jack of all trades, master of none.” I’ve trained as a lawyer. Before that, I was an equity investor. I started two tech start-ups and have some finance and policy background. However, for the past decade, I’ve been building technology. Due to all these titles, I think of myself as interdisciplinary.
Describe your journey to where you are today.
Before Therma°, I worked in the GovLab nonprofit at New York University. At GovLab, we tried to build technology to help improve government and public problems. Then, I worked as a fellow in the Obama White House. That’s when I began to try to build tech for good. I think I realized early on in my journey that one of the significant advantages of tech is that products, if aligned with human incentives, can transform society rapidly. Looking at companies like Facebook and Google: Google enables convenience and sharing of information, and Facebook allows connection and community. People want both things, and as a result, they’re products of scale to billions. Building a technology that improves safety and sustainability was attractive to me. I didn’t see much innovation in public safety, public health, and sustainability.
In addition, I grew up in a farm town in Fresno, California, which exposed me to the food supply chain. When my co-founder, Aaron Cohen, and I realized how broken the technology that food businesses were using, we started to think about ways to reduce food waste and spoilage and improve safety from farm to fork.
What does your company do, for whom, and how does it fit into the bigger picture of solving global issues with clean tech?
Therma° is trying to reduce the climate footprint of refrigeration cooling. Eventually, we will tackle air conditioning. Cooling is necessary for human wellbeing, but it causes a lot of carbon emissions. Many of the carbon emissions are due to spoilage, refrigerant leaks, and the total energy consumed. Refrigeration and cooling equipment use lots of electricity and are relatively inefficient. We are trying to reduce that climate footprint by combining IoT sensors, Smart Controls, and data science that help run these refrigeration assets more intelligently. Ultimately, this will catch down for cooling equipment, reduce energy use, and prevent leakage.
What do you think is the most important thing we can be doing in terms of clean tech solutions?
I think it’s time to adopt new solutions. I genuinely believe that people want to do the right thing, mainly if it saves them money and lives healthier lives. For example, there’s an influx of people shifting into sustainable eating, using fewer resources, or even driving hybrid or electric cars. Similarly, there’s technology adoption, and we are using more efficient and optimized products. It’s a great time to replace things like high-energy light bulbs with energy-efficient light bulbs. Try putting an intelligent thermostat into your house so your air conditioning isn’t fully running when you’re not home. There isn’t a single tech solution. All the tech solutions help.
What do you wish you could tell the younger you – what would’ve been incredibly helpful to you ten years ago?
I would tell my younger self to surround myself with people I find inspiring. I think there is a saying that ‘you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’ The people you hang out with shape your values. It shapes your priorities. It affects what you do with your time and how you think about your life. I think that helps shape what one does with life choices. And that’s something I’ve been learning and doing more and more.
LinkedIn: Manik Suri