Josh Kaufman, President of Nexus Dev

And why wealth distribution matters for solving climate change.

Josh Kaufman is currently the President of Nexus Dev, a platform investing development capital in renewable and circular economy projects. Previously he was an energy investor at the Australian fund QIC, and prior to that was on the GE Power M&A team. Josh has a BA in math and economics from Williams College.

Josh joined us on the Bigger Than Us podcast to talk about the new investment model Nexus Dev is using and what kind of projects they’re open to funding. He also shares why he believes wealth distribution, not climate change, is the biggest issue we’re facing.

Take me to the podcast.

A New Investment Vehicle for Renewable and Circular Economy Assets

Nexus Dev provides project development capital and expertise to renewable and circular economy assets.

Why Nexus Dev?

We’ve been working on this for a couple of months now. And it addresses a spot in the value chain that we think is underserved by other capital providers. So in a project development lifecycle, people need to spend money in order to get a project done. That could be to pay for a land purchase option on the land, that could be to negotiate feature contracts to negotiate offtake agreements, to pay for engineers to do some design work. And all that takes money. And a lot of developers don’t have money. Or if they spend it, they run out of money. And then there’s a gap. And a lot of traditional financing institutions don’t want to spend money on development capital for reasons we get into later.

But generally, what happens is, there’s a bunch of projects that just can’t get to be construction-ready. Once you get to be construction-ready, if you have a good project, there’s a whole suite of capital providers out there who want to fund good projects. There’s a wall of money out there right now. And so what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide both the capital and the services to bridge that gap. And we’re excited because we think we have a unique model.

The Nexus Dev Investment Spectrum

Yes, so our investment spectrum we’re looking to deploy at the moment, less than $4 million per deal. Short-term deals, so we’re looking to deploy into mid or late-stage development projects, where we could see getting our money back within two years. It’s got to be within what we call resource-efficient infrastructure, just stuff that’s good for the planet. And for the time being, generally focused on the US and Canada.

Now, there could be exceptions. Maybe we’ll do something else. But that’s what we’re focused on in the beginning. And, and then so for a developer, what does mid or late-stage development mean? It really is very project-specific.

So, for example, in some sectors, we would require a developer to already have an off-take if they come to us in an area that’s not highly developed we’ll say. In kind of bespoke and product markets, where we don’t have that much confidence in what the end market looks like, we would require an optic, or another example biomass to power, which is a developed market, but we would need to see a PPA in place to do biomass power. Versus other examples like cow manure to AD, sorry, AD using cow manure to renewable natural gas with very low CI scores. We’re not as concerned about getting uptake in that market, we know that they’re there.

And so each project is specific. So I’d say check out our website, nexusdevcap.com. And there’s a questionnaire on there where you can fill out where you stand across all the vectors of project development. And that gets sent to us. And we could have a conversation.

Investing in Proven Technology

We want proven technology. So we’re not a venture investor, we’re looking for things that have been commercially proven. And so at a minimum, we’re looking for technologies that have a demo plant completed, or ideally, a commercial facility completed.

Now, there’s even nuance in that. I mean, sometimes there are applications of a variety of different pieces of equipment that have never been assembled in a certain way. And that’s okay with us if it’s okay with our technical team. But we’re not looking to fund new technologies that have never been proven before and are more venture stage. That means that most of our pipeline is in anaerobic digestion, wood pellets, and various forms of biofuels.

The Nexus Advantage

There’s a partnership with Nexus PMG, which we both work for, and we think have great expertise being able to develop what I consider non-traditional renewable projects. So there’s just a lot of knowledge across all the workstreams. I mentioned earlier how to negotiate those contracts, we actually do a lot of design in-house, etc.

I think one of the reasons people haven’t done this is I think, if you did a traditional 2 and 20 funds to try and invest in these types of projects, the financials just don’t work.

And the other aspect is the financial structure that we set up to do this. So we’re not a traditional fund. And I think one of the reasons people haven’t done this is I think, if you did a traditional 2 and 20 funds to try and invest in these types of projects, the financials just don’t work. It doesn’t make sense, you’d end up running into an issue which every other fun runs into, which is now you’re more incentivized just to grow a UN as opposed to do good deals.

So we were lucky enough to have a partner who was willing to do this bespoke structure with us that I think allows us to stay in this smaller end of the market and focus on these smaller check sizes and making sure we could do good deals down at this end.

The Future of Nexus Dev

One of which is the reason that we sized the raise the way we size it is because there’s a world where we recycle the capital and don’t need to raise anymore. And so we deploy the full amount, we get it back. In one to two years, we deploy that amount and just keep doing it. And maybe we want to stay in the sector that we’re in, but we can’t get too big. If we want to maintain the ability to do $500,000 deals, we can’t be a $200 million asset manager. And so maybe we just use the capital to do other things, whatever that may be.

Another success story would be, we start to maintain some small equity pieces in some deals, which we would probably do anyway, depending on the structure. And maybe we need to deploy faster and raise more capital. And so then we go out for a raise and we raise more. Some of these projects, maybe we do some of the bigger projects or maybe graduate from the less than $4 million and do development capital deals for $10 million. So raise more money to do that.

Maybe we graduate and actually start to develop our own projects ourselves in the future. That’s not the plan right now. But maybe it is in the future. So I think all of those are possibilities. And kind of going back to my theory of, I guess, my own career and maybe how it applies here. I think we set this up in a way that maintains the flexibility that we could pursue all of those.

And so what we’re going to be focused on for the next two years is just executing the plan that we kind of laid out. But we’re open to other successful paths.

Why Wealth Distribution Is Our Biggest Issue

I don’t think climate change is the biggest issue facing us right now. I think it’s wealth distribution. And I say wealth distribution, specifically, and not wealth inequality, because I think it’s more encompassing of how wealth is distributed. Because I think we kind of know what we need to do in climate change. We have a lot of solutions. We just have to align and execute. And I think that’s more difficult when you’ve got wealth distribution problems, which to focus on the US specifically, in my opinion, causes a lot of the political divide.

So if we could solve that and get people more aligned, I think we could actually execute on solving the climate crisis a lot faster.

The Full Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited.

Host Raj Daniels 02:19

If you were asked to share something interesting about yourself, what would it be?

Josh Kaufman 02:31

Yeah, I thought about this one. It’s a tough one. It’s almost like a dating app, you got to really define your personality in one sentence, so it’s a tough one to answer. I thought the best way to answer this, in the context of this show, a lot of people, including myself, who come on here are really concerned about climate change.

I think maybe an interesting thing for me is that I don’t think climate change is the biggest issue facing us right now. I think it’s wealth distribution. And I say wealth distribution, specifically, and not wealth inequality, because I think it’s more encompassing of how wealth is distributed. Because I think we kind of know what we need to do in climate change. We have a lot of solutions. We just have to align and execute. And I think that’s more difficult when you’ve got wealth distribution problems, which to focus on the US specifically, in my opinion, causes a lot of the political divide.

You’ve got people who, on one side, think, for example, the wealthy are getting too big of a share, and on the other side, are really pushing back against the socialism concept, because they think that would distribute wealth from those who, quote-unquote, earned it to those who haven’t. I think that’s preventing us from executing a lot of the answers we have.

So if we could solve that and get people more aligned, I think we could actually execute on solving the climate crisis a lot faster.

Host Raj Daniels 03:57

That is a very interesting point of view. I’d like to stay with it for a moment. I feel the same challenge, too. If you had an opportunity to perhaps help solve wealth distribution, what are some of the ideas you have?

Josh Kaufman 04:16

Yeah, so that was my first interest. So rewinding back to college, trying to think about what I want to do with my career, and I was looking for a job that I believed in the overall purpose of it.

And the first thing I was attracted to was trying to solve the wealth distribution problem, and took a couple of classes on it and learned about, for example, the Grameen Bank, which was in India, which was a pretty famous example of how to get micro-lending to small communities. So was on that path for probably a year. And then I just started to feel like I wasn’t exactly sure what a career trying to solve that looked like.

And even now, I mean, I haven’t put much thought into it since then, but it’s hard for me to imagine what a career dedicated to solving wealth distribution looks like. It feels a bit more like an ancillary problem that people solve from outside as opposed to getting a kidding a career to it.

So I don’t have a good answer. I mean, it feels like something that people sell from the outside. So that actually caused me to pivot. And I also started just to notice that I was reading about energy, I was reading two newspapers a day, and I was reading every single energy article I could get my hands on. So that’s how I noticed I was just really interested in energy. And then I made that switch. But it’s definitely something that I kind of keep there. And it motivates me politically, and hopefully, at a certain point in the future can do something a little more proactive with that as well.

Host Raj Daniels 05:42

I’m motivated by it too, and you know, you spoke of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, I’ve been a fan of theirs for years. I’ve been donating. I guess donating is more like lending to kiva.org for about 12 years now on a consistent basis. And, you know, we support the local food bank quite a bit here.

Recently, I’ve been very interested in weatherization. And I’m looking forward to seeing what the new administration puts out regarding tax credits and weatherization because I believe that going back to energy here, you know, if we can help more people specifically who are lower on the income rung, weatherize their homes or pay less from their wallet share towards utilities, then they can reallocate that money to other perhaps education, food, you know, whatever it might look like. But it’s absolutely a topic that perhaps you know, you and I can explore another show, because I’m very, very interested in that too.

Josh Kaufman 06:34

Definitely. That’d be great. Yeah, I don’t have to keep I actually forgot I had a Kiva account. And they took my money this year because I was inactive. So I have officially donated to Kiva the company itself. And I volunteer as well. And I’ve definitely done to talk about it, I think there are things that people can do in their spare time for sure to address this problem. It’s harder for me to think about how to commit a career to it.

Host Raj Daniels 07:01

I agree, maybe some kind of national commitment to an hour a week, whatever that looks like that’s, you know, 150 million adults donating an hour a week, I’m sure that we can think you know, think of a roadmap to solve the problem.

Josh Kaufman 07:13

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Host Raj Daniels 07:15

So I’m going to switch gears here and ask you to give the audience an overview of the newly launched Nexus Development Capital, aka Nexus Dev Cap, and your role at the organization.

Josh Kaufman 07:26

We’re still working through exactly how we want to call it Nexus Dev, Nexus Dev Cap. So understand, we haven’t landed on what we want to do yet. But the exciting part is that we’ve officially closed our raise, $20 million.

I think there are two real key things about this.

One is that there’s a partnership with Nexus PMG, which we both work for, and we think have great expertise being able to develop what I consider non-traditional renewable projects. So there’s just a lot of knowledge across all the workstreams. I mentioned earlier how to negotiate those contracts, we actually do a lot of design in-house, etc.

Host Raj Daniels 09:58

So you mentioned the partner. During the conversation with the partner, what enabled the partner to have the confidence to partner with us to invest in the fund?

Josh Kaufman 10:10

It was a partner that we had a relationship with a while. So a lot of it was personal. And I think the experience and Nexus PMG helped. I think the broader theme that we’re all interested in is doing good for the environment helped. And so for them, it was more of a capital allocation decision. Allocating a certain amount of capital to someone who they trust, and who’s doing good work, as opposed to kind of getting into the weeds and picking apart our business model. So there was a lot of trust involved there.

Host Raj Daniels 10:42

You mentioned development capital. What would be the ideal scenario from an investment standpoint, and from a developer standpoint, that wants to approach you for an investment?

Josh Kaufman 10:52

Yes, so our investment spectrum is we’re looking to deploy at the moment, less than $4 million per deal. Short-term deals, so we’re looking to deploy into mid or late-stage development projects, where we could see getting our money back within two years. It’s got to be within what we call resource-efficient infrastructure, just stuff that’s good for the planet. And for the time being, generally focused on the US and Canada.

Host Raj Daniels 12:45

And I’ll absolutely put a link to the website in the show notes. What kind of technologies if any, are you looking to invest in if there are any specific ones? Or if not, you know, what are some of the more popular technologies that you’re ready to invest in?

Josh Kaufman 13:01

Host Raj Daniels 13:46

Got it. Now, earlier, I think you alluded to competition. Why haven’t we seen more competition in this segment of development capital?

Josh Kaufman 13:57

That’s the ultimate question. You know, I have a thesis on this but want to be careful, because understand that we haven’t actually executed and succeeded yet. So we’re wading into territory that, that there’s an obvious need for that other people aren’t doing. And so there’s a reason other people aren’t doing it.

So, you know, we’re very aware that we might trip ourselves. But if you talk to a lot of developers and investors, there’s no question that there’s a need for this type of capital. In the conversations we’ve had, almost everyone says developers and investors say there’s a need for this. So why aren’t they doing it?

I think it goes back to that the two kind of differentiators I think we’ve got in our structure. And so I mentioned that the three highest technology categories in our pipeline are biogas, biofuels, and wood pellets. Those are all bespoke technologies. They’re not solar. They’re not pipelines. They’re not things that people have put billions of dollars in. They’re all a little bit unique.

I think for other investment firms to really understand a biofuel deal, for example, it takes a lot of work, they have to find the right people. That’s not easy. They might not have fully on staff. And then the dollars are, are pretty small. So it takes a lot of work. So a lot of the funds will end up looking to deploy capital in spaces that are more repeatable, programmatic, however you want to say it. I think our ability to carve out this niche of off-the-run technologies, which I think won’t be off the run for much longer, I don’t know if they’ll ever get to solar scale, I don’t think they will.

But I think there’ll be a lot of growth ahead of them. Our ability to have:

A. have Nexus PMG expertise on staff that we can tap into it.

B. Have the financial structure, which is not a standard 2 and 20 Fund, which allows us to focus on doing deals and not have as much deployment pressure as we otherwise would have if we were doing the 2 and 20 fund.

That’s the thesis for why we might be able to set this up.

Host Raj Daniels 16:04

It sounds very interesting. You’ve been on this energy journey for a while now. Broadly speaking, macro viewpoint. How have you seen interest? Or have you seen the landscape in energy change? And then how have you seen the changes toward renewable energy?

Josh Kaufman 16:23

Yeah. There are definitely more people involved, even just you know, the last eight months has really taken off. I started my career. When I graduated college, I joined GE, and then was doing M&A in the power business for a while across all power generation technologies, not just renewable. But even there, we had a solar business, one of the first deals that worked on was selling that to First Solar. It was just a bunch of IP really at the time. And it was still kind of a sideshow at GE, just because gas made so much money for the company at that point. But obviously, the tides were shifting and people like First Solar were up and coming. And obviously, people are talking about Tesla, Vestas.

GE did make a great purchase of the wind business that came out of the Enron bankruptcy well before I joined. And just slowly over time, and that was a company that was entrenched in kind of traditional fuels. But slowly over time, people were just figuring out how to play in renewables. It was challenging because it was hard to make money.

In GE, the gas business made so much money from the service contracts. And you don’t have lucrative service contracts, certainly in solar and not as much in wind and so that the company just struggled to figure out how to do it. I was lucky enough that I was able to focus a lot of my time on solar and storage. We tried to sell our battery technology to Tesla, it was a sodium nickel chloride technology that no one really wanted. Spent a lot of time looking at some of these companies that have recently gone public and SPACs like EVgo and Stem. And when I would go to these battery conferences, maybe that was 2013 or something. There was hardly anyone there. But there were still more conferences than projects. That was kind of the joke. People would go to conferences and talk about projects, and they just were no projects. Because costs were still high, because we’re regulatory frameworks were still difficult to promote, not aligned to promote kind of storage deployments.

So all that certainly changed. I mean, I’m not as close to it anymore in the spot I sit in, but certainly, storage attachment rates have gone through the roof. Storage costs have come down dramatically. Even when I joined GE and they bought the sodium nickel chloride, I think lithium-ion was somewhere around $2,000 a kilowatt-hour, which is now $150 or something. So just the cost declines have been incredible.

And I think the number of people who are just interested in this space just continues to grow and be fascinating. And I think it’s this incredible, almost juxtaposition that you can be in renewables and working every day and renewables and there’s so many smart people and feel like there are all these smart people to challenge, but also recognize that we’re just at the beginning of this journey. And there are more people coming in, it feels like all the time.

Host Raj Daniels 19:22

It’s very interesting. And I agree with you that I feel too that we’re at the beginning of this journey. So I’m going to switch here to the crux of our conversation. The why behind what you do, you know, we started off this conversation, talking about income disparities, and you’ve been involved in energy now for 10, 12 years, I believe. What keeps you motivated? What continues to drive you?

Josh Kaufman 19:46

So I started my career really focused on trying to get a job in a sector I believed in whether it was wealth distribution, or whether it was climate change.

Eventually, I got my dream job doing M&A at GE and that stuff. And I was just thrilled. And then eventually after time started to realize that my day-to-day, while it might have been in energy, that fact alone was not necessarily fulfilling enough. A job needed to provide the other things that matter. Whether that’s paying you enough and whether it’s working with people you would like working with, and whether you like the people you’re working with whether you have kind of flexibility and whatnot.

So I was applying to business school around at the time, and I ended up doing that for like, two years. And you have to write what do you want to do in five years, in 10 years? So I spent weekends for two years of my life trying to figure out what I want to do and eventually just gave up. Because I don’t know if there’s a right answer to that. And I’ve just got used to accepting that there’s not a right answer, what do I want to do? And I rather accepted the answer of here’s the criteria that I want in my life and I want in a job. Does this satisfy those criteria? And if not reevaluate my criteria, reevaluate the job.

So that was a long way of saying, I can’t answer the question.

Host Raj Daniels 21:21

What it sounds like you did give a few answers there in the middle. Let me ask you another question, then. You seem to be a very introspective fellow. What are some of the most valuable lessons that you’ve learned about yourself on your journey?

Josh Kaufman 21:37

One event that was the most impactful for me was having a job offer revoked from Energy Impact Partners. I had an official offer there five, six years ago, and continued to negotiate what I thought were pretty minor points, and they ended up revoking it. And I later learned that it was just I came off as too brash. And I think the same thing happened in my business school applications. Came off as a bit too brash. And so I think, learning that I came off that way, and needed to be a little bit more understanding in my approach. That was certainly a lesson. That was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn early on.

Host Raj Daniels 22:23

That really is an interesting lesson. How did you change your approach?

Josh Kaufman 22:30

I don’t know how conscious it was, I just looked back to the way I operated 10 years ago, and can certainly see what others saw in me then. So maybe just the rejections had an automatic impact on me. One thing maybe related to this issue is just getting a real understanding for I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I had a memory, my senior year of college where elders will say, the young people always think they know what they’re talking about. And I remember thinking, I feel like I’m at that age where I think I know what I’m talking about. Truly understanding that I didn’t really know what I was talking about. You can maybe you can be a very analytical person, a smart person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you know, what you’re talking about. And just being kind of conscious, and that may be more deferential to seniors and more deferential to elders.

Host Raj Daniels 23:25

Again, sounds like a lot of introspection. So I’m going to go back to Nexus Dev and ask, you know, perfect scenario, magic wand, 10 years from now. So 2031, what does Nexus Dev look like to you?

Josh Kaufman 23:43

This is actually a perfect example of what I don’t know. I could actually name some potential outcomes, but I think they would all be great.

And so what we’re going to be focused on for the next two years is just executing the plan that we kind of laid out. But we’re open to other successful paths.

Host Raj Daniels 25:26

Well, it sounds like a world of opportunities and possibilities, and I look forward to working with you to bring that vision to fruition. Last question I have is, if you could share some advice, or words of wisdom with the audience, and it could be professional or personal? What would it be?

Josh Kaufman 25:43

I’ve never really liked giving advice because I think advice is everyone’s own personal experience that they just project onto someone else. And so if I were to give a specific piece of advice, it’s really me thinking back through my successes and my failures, and assuming that that applies to other people. So I’ve struggled with that question, too.

I think the one piece of advice that I like the most is to enjoy the journey because I think that’s probably applicable regardless of anyone’s individual experiences. So who knows how this journey ends, but I think it’s important to enjoy it as we go. Because I think it’s certainly true, a lot of people might end up they have a mentality of I’ll be happy when we do this raise, or I’ll be happy when I have a family or I’ll be happy when whatever your determination of successes, and then you get there and it’s not as satisfying as you thought it was. So I think enjoying the journeys is helpful.

Host Raj Daniels 26:43

I love enjoying the journey. I think it’s reminiscent of the hedonic treadmill, which you spoke about. And I think part of that enjoying the journey is, you know, being present in the now. And I really appreciate your time today. And I look forward to perhaps getting back with you on a part two or three, even to further discuss, you know, perhaps some solutions for the wealth distribution problem we started the show with.

Josh Kaufman 27:07

That’d be great. I look forward to that.

Host Raj Daniels 27:09

Josh, I appreciate your time and look forward to catching up with you again soon.

nexusdevcap.com

Before we go, I’m excited to share that we’ve launched the Bigger Than Us comic strip, The Adventures of Mira and Nexi.

If you like our show, please give us a rating and review on iTunes. And you can show your support by sharing our show with a friend or reach out to us on social media where you can find us at our Nexus PMG handle.

If there’s a subject or topic you’d like to hear about, send Raj Daniels an email at BTU@NexusPMG.com or contact me via our website, NexusPMG.com. While you’re there, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter where we share what we’re reading and thinking about in the cleantech green tech sectors.

Author
Recent Posts

Raj Daniels

Director Strategic Partnerships and Sustainability Initiatives at Nexus PMG

Raj is an experienced business consultant and has been involved in business ventures across several verticals as a consultant, owner, investor and advisor. He has a personal passion for strategy and vision building that has allowed him to lead successful strategic initiatives for both profit and non-profit organizations.

Enter your email Address