Cloverleaf Infrastructure Co-Founder and CCO Brian Janous

I'm Emily Kirsch, founder and managing partner of Powerhouse Ventures and founder and CEO of Powerhouse Innovation. This is What It Takes, a show about the entrepreneurs making our clean, energy-abundant future a reality. Before we get into the episode, a quick reminder that

we are just a few weeks away from Powerhouse's annual party, New Dawn, celebrating the innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs who have built this industry and those who are taking it to the next level. I hope to see you at New Dawn in Oakland on Thursday, October.

23rd and encourage you to snag your tickets before they sell out. Special thanks to our terawatt level sponsors, Wilson Sincini and Silicon Valley Bank for helping us get the party started. If you are interested in joining us as a sponsor, please reach out to us via our site, powerhouse-innovation.co. And tickets are already sold out for our live recording of What It Takes on New Dawn Eve, featuring former U.S. Secretary of Energy and two-term governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. All right.

On to the show. As we've covered in other recent episodes, the growth of data centers and the massive amount of power they require is reshaping the energy landscape. Today, I want to zero in on a specific challenge at the heart of it all, the Wattbit spread, a phrase coined by this month's guest. The Wattbit spread is the gap between the cost of electricity and the value of computing. Computing meaning the processing power behind AI, cloud services, and digital infrastructure.

Bridging that gap is one of the keys to unlocking data center growth and new power generation.

Despite countless developers' promises of abundant powered land, very few can deliver what data centers and other energy-intensive industries actually need. It's not just certainty of power timelines, but also land, utility agreements, capital. and community support, all critical to reducing the constraints that make the Wattbit spread so persistent.

Too often there's a disconnect between real estate and utilities. Some companies know how to acquire land, others know how to work with utilities, but rarely both. And even when those pieces come together, projects can still be stalled without community support, labor.

or equipment. That's where Brian Janis, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Cloverleaf Infrastructure comes in, working to bridge the Wattbit spread by aligning land, power, and communities to meet the surging demand for computing.

put simply cloverleaf buys land in dollars per acre and sells it in dollars per megawatt our purpose at cloverleaf infrastructure is we're a powered land developer so we are enabling speed scale and sustainability solutions for data center developers for anyone developing energy-intensive infrastructure, and also to work with utilities to help them navigate the complexities of this new era of load growth.

Cloverleaf Infrastructure develops powered land, sites that bring together land, utility agreements, capital, community support, and power expertise, while also accounting for broader constraints like labor availability and equipment timelines that can slow large-scale projects. Their goal is to help data center developers, energy intensive infrastructure projects at the several hundred megawatt to gigawatt scale, and utilities move projects forward faster. Their approach is geared toward

making sustainable choices easier to adopt so growth can move in a cleaner and more resilient direction. The problem we are solving at Cloverleaf is this disconnect between the demand for computation and the availability of power to supply that demand. So we sit in the middle as an orchestrator, as folks who have spent decades either working on the utility side and grid operator side.

or on the data center side, or in my case and some of my peers both, to help bring solutions to the market that help utilities grow and also help data centers and large loads interconnect faster.

Without companies like Cloverleaf, new capacity for data centers and energy-intensive infrastructure will continue to lag behind demand. Cloverleaf is working to bring both sides together so projects can come online more quickly, more efficiently, and with greater certainty. Cloverleaf's customers include anyone who wants to build energy intensive infrastructure.

So anything in the several hundred megawatts to gigawatt scale. Our business model is we buy land in dollars per acre and we sell it in dollars per megawatt. So a lot of people are chasing this demand. wildcatting for sites, trying to be in the right place at the right time. We look at it a little bit more as this is really a power solutions business. And so we're really trying to build a company that's on the back of power expertise. So my co-founders.

all come from the power industry. And that's really how we're trying to differentiate. And the progress so far has been really good. We had a goal over a three to five year period to develop about 10 gigawatts of powered land sites. To date, we're about 12 or 13 months in. We've done about 15 gigawatts in our pipeline. We've sold about three and a half gigawatts and we have another gig and a half that we'll probably be selling in the next.

So in total, we'll probably have done about five gigawatts of total sales. So we're really happy with the progress so far. Brian and his team at Cloverleaf Infrastructure are taking a new approach to one of the biggest bottlenecks in our economy, developing powered land sites that bring together real estate, utilities, and community support. Their goal is to provide certainty of power timelines for energy-intensive customers from hyperscale data centers to other large industrial loads.

I spoke to Brian about his path from a quintessential 80s childhood in Mississippi and Texas to more than a decade at Microsoft leading a 100-person energy strategy team where he began to envision new ways to connect power to the world. the world's expanding computing needs.

That path ultimately led him to co-found Cloverleaf Infrastructure. In less than two years, the company has raised $300 million and closed its first major deal, Project Red Granite, an ambitious development with 1.3 gigawatts. in its first phase, representing $8 billion in total investment and 2 million square feet, and is now in the process of selling a second large project likely to close this year. Brian Janis, welcome to What It Takes. Thank you. Appreciate you having me.

Brian, we met in the mountains seven years ago in 2018 when you were leading energy for Microsoft. And ever since I met you, I wanted you on the show. But as you know, we only feature founders. And so I've been waiting for you to start a company and you have. So I'm so happy to have you here. context that was a big motivation for me to start the company uh otherwise i knew i'd never get on the pod good good i'm happy it worked out

Brian, you're originally from Mississippi, but grew up mostly in Houston, Texas. You had a classic 80s childhood, out the door in the morning, not back until dark, roaming the woods with your friends. What was that like? And what were you like as a kid? Yeah, I mean, as you describe it, it was quintessential. 80s childhood, like straight out of Goonies, you know, minus the hidden treasure, not for lack of trying. We did try a lot. Yeah, my house, my neighborhood backed up to the woods.

So we spent a ton of time exploring those woods. We had these huge creeks and gorges, and we would get machetes and cut vines off of trees and swing over gorges, Tarzan style. We did a lot of crazy stuff. Did your parents know you had the machetes? Were they okay with that? I think we had to sneak those out early on. Later, they started to trust us. But yeah, we just had a blast. I mean, I think...

The vast majority of my hydration from those years probably came from the end of a garden hose. I mean, I don't think we just we just never went inside. So, you know, mom would bring us out lunch on the driveway. And so, yeah, it was it was a great childhood.

And what were you like? It sounded like very outdoorsy, adventurous, independent. But what else? What other parts of you in, I don't know, a school context or anything else? Yeah, I mean, I think I was an okay student, but definitely would rather have been outside. And so I think that time did instill a lot of adventure, creativity, risk-taking. That's just kind of what we did. So, you know, building ramps for our bikes and getting hurt a lot, but never too badly.

Somehow I didn't break a bone until I was an adult. So there too, I was mountain biking. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Growing up, you were the oldest of three kids. Your dad did facility services sales and your mom was a full-time parent. I know your parents set really high standards for you in terms of education and an expectation around advanced education. Tell me more about your parents, their work, and how they shape you.

you yeah i mean my parents were and continue to be a huge part of who i am as a person and i'm very grateful for that um i think who i am as a husband and as a father are in many ways shaped by who they are and how they raised me. So I took a ton of great lessons from that. As it relates to my career path, I mean, there was one thing that shaped me early on. As you mentioned, my dad was in sales.

um and it was very much commission sales so it was kind of feast or famine around our house either you know it was a really good year because he had a big sale or hadn't had a sale in a while and so you know it was not as great um And when I got out of college, that sort of influenced my career decision because I had an opportunity to go into a sales role, which I think it would have been good at. I think I have sort of naturally bent towards sales and storytelling.

But I took a job that paid me half as much because I remembered those those days. And I thought, you know, I'd like to just get a paycheck for a little while and see what that's like. So that's how I ended up starting my first job. And it was in large part influenced by that. And yeah, anything else about your parents that has stuck with you that you feel like has been foundational to who you are? Yeah, look, there was always an expectation that me and my siblings would go to college.

And they helped enable that, you know, so just growing up in an environment where. your parents had those expectations of your career success and launching and becoming independent were instilled in me as well. And so I really appreciate the way they sort of shaped all of us in that way.

In 1995, you went to University of Missouri-Columbia and studied this interesting combination of finance and philosophy. You met your wife, Kim, in college, and your son just started at University of Missouri last week. Is that right? Correct. Must feel very full circle. Why Missouri? Why that combination of majors of finance and philosophy? And then what was your experience like?

Yeah, well, I moved to St. Louis when I was a freshman in high school. So, you know, Missouri was the largest state university. And it's sort of a logical fit. And it's a great college town. And I loved every minute of it. As you said, I was just back there last week dropping my son off. It was really hard for me to leave again. I kind of wanted to stick around.

hang out a little bit longer. He's like, get out of here, dad. Yeah. And I ended up with a dual major in part because I did like college so much. So I was studying finance. And then the very beginning of my senior year, a good friend of mine and I had taken a lot of... humanities classes and philosophy classes together as electives and he came to me and he said hey you know if we stay one more year we can actually get a major in philosophy so i was like oh

That sounds like a great idea. Let's do that. Kim, my wife, will tell you I stuck around because she was one year younger than me and I wanted to stay another year there. Maybe both of those things are true. But I did love being there and I loved being a student. And so the thing about finance and philosophy and kind of why those things make sense is that they're both about systems. And I love thinking about systems. I mean, whether it's economic systems and how humans behave.

in an economic and macroeconomic sense, if it's, you know, how we formulate ideas in our mind, you know, how we understand ideas about personhood and the soul and all of those things are fascinating to me. While they seem pretty disparate, there's actually a lot of similarities between those two fields of study. Do you feel like you get to use them daily in your work now? Oh, I do. Absolutely. Yeah. And in fact, I probably attribute more to...

my humanities upbringing than I do finance. I mean, finance is helpful, but I am a huge supporter of humanities. My son, Grayson, is actually going to study history and constitutional democracy. We were getting his books at the bookstore when I was there and I was so jealous. I was like picking all these things up, these Thucydides and Gilgamesh and all this stuff going, oh my gosh, I wish I could audit some of these classes. I'm sure he'd love that.

After undergrad, you chose consulting over sales in part for the reason you mentioned earlier, you just wanted the predictability of a paycheck. And you joined Brew Baker and Associates. And you were earning your MBA in the evenings. And you completed the MBA just two weeks before the birth of your first kid, Tyler. What were those early career experiences like in consulting? And what did they teach you about yourself?

and the kind of work that you wanted to do? Yeah, a couple of things. So I didn't have any real exposure to the energy industry. And so I was working at a, this was an energy consulting firm. They do a lot of work with... large industrial intervention groups working on rate cases. So right out of the gate, I started working on preparing testimony for rate cases, which sounds mundane because it is. But it is also the lifeblood of this industry, like every dollar.

in the power industry goes through some rate payers bill, right? When you think about like where the money's coming from, it's all coming from a bill. So if you understand how a bill is made, you really understand a lot about. how this industry works, how utilities make decisions, how they make capital allocation decisions, how they think about investment and return on that investment. So it's a lot of sausage making, but I.

really grateful for the time that I got to spend learning some of the nuts and bolts of how rates actually get built. The second thing I learned there is I was never going to be satisfied if I wasn't building new things. And what ultimately led me to leave is I was constantly pushing the firm to create new business lines, to think about new markets. And it was met with a lot of resistance because there was a lot of value to the.

the partners on their the bread and butter their sort of core business which which is fine we just had a sort of different perspective of you know what the business could become so something had to give and eventually it was me uh you know and i was starting actually work with some corporations uh Microsoft included on some of their first PPAs and was seeing a ton of inefficiency in that market and started to formulate a business that was actually ended up becoming a lot like level 10 is today.

So I was working on a business plan, but then Microsoft came calling and that's the route I ended up taking. When you joined Brubaker, did you... have any opinion on the energy space? Like, were you excited about it? Did you know anything about it? Because it seems pivotal to your career. So tell me about that.

Well, what I liked about it is it was back to systems, right? It was like, oh, there's a whole market here that is fascinating. And that's what I actually love about the energy sector is really the market side of it. I'm not an engineer. So, I mean, there's also the physical energy system as well.

which I understand some of, but much more limited, just given my background. What I really like to think about is market formation and how do you actually build markets that result in the infrastructure getting built in a timely manner. course is very apropos to what we're doing at cloverleaf so i just jumped right in to the to sort of learning about energy systems and how those markets worked and then tell me about

joining Microsoft. So you said you were working with them on a consulting basis. How did that go from consulting to full-time? Yeah. So the guy that ended up hiring me, Christian Bellotti, he calls me in the summer of 2011. He goes vacationing with my family. We were in... I think I love Palms, South Carolina. And I remember having this conversation with him. And he said, hey, we really think.

you need to come on and start an energy team for us. And I tried to convince him that I should just keep consulting because it did. That sounded like a dead end job to me. Like, why does a tech company need an energy person? And I even remember going down and talking to Kim after that call and I said, look. I'm going to go talk to Christian about this job at Microsoft, but I don't think it's going to go anywhere. And we're definitely not moving to Seattle. So that December, we moved to Seattle.

started started the role and we told ourselves it's like look this will be a fun adventure maybe we'll go out to seattle for a couple years and you know our kids were still pretty young at that time tyler was i think i think he was in kindergarten and um i was

13 years ago. So you were at Microsoft for 12 years. You mentioned you were their first energy hire, but ultimately became VP of energy. Looking back, what did those 12 years at Microsoft teach you about the energy space and about yourself as a leader? And when it was finally time for you to leave and you told your boss that you were ready to transition, what was that conversation like?

Yeah. So when I joined Microsoft, as I said, it wasn't even clear to me why this job needed to exist. So a lot of it was learning to sort of carve out what is this role going to be? How can I have a meaningful influence on the company?

You know, I wanted the work I was doing to actually be meaningful. And early on, you know, I would tell my team, look, energy is never going to be office, right? You're never going to have that kind of mind share with our executives. It's never going to be that important to the company.

And in fact, I recall my former boss telling me, Steve Ballmer probably thinks about energy one minute a year. And I was like, yeah, OK, that sounds about right. Now, I will tell you, I think Satya thinks about it a lot more than that. And it has become. existential for the company. And so it was fascinating sort of living that journey and just watching how the job changed over time from being something that really was very small and not that important to suddenly getting a lot of attention.

So much so that by the time I left and I was managing a team that was over 100 people, we had a multi-billion dollar budget. And I just came to the realization that you need someone who's really passionate about operating. Because, you know, we were just at that point, it was so big that it was really was sort of an operations kind of role. And I needed to go build something. And so, you know, when my boss came to me or when I went to my boss and told him I was planning on leaving.

You know, he said, why would you leave right now? First of all, I said, I don't accept your resignation, which I was not sure what we're going to do there. But but then, you know, he said, why would you leave now? I mean, your job's never been more important than it is now.

But it was exactly that. It was important, but the type of person that needed to be doing the role was just different than me at that point. I had helped build it, but it was time to hand it to someone who could really take it to the next level.

You identify as a builder, less of an operator. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So after you stepped away from Microsoft, where you had spent over a decade, you mentioned managing this team of 100 people. You finally had the space to think about the problems that you wanted to work on, like how to grow the grid for massive new data center demand. You had this aha moment as it relates to ChatGPT. Tell me about that.

Yeah, so a chat GPT-3 had come out in the fall of 22. And so 3.5 came out in the spring of the next year. And it was a huge step change. Like, first of all, GPT-3 hit and it was like...

an eye opener. Everyone was like, wow, this is amazing. And we were all starting to panic inside the tech world of like, where's all the power going to come from? Well, first it was where all the chips were going to come from. That was what everyone was debating at first. And I was like, guys, it's not a chip problem. This is a power problem.

And then when 3.5 came out and it was a huge step change over three, that's when I was realizing this tech is going to move way faster than utilities are prepared for. And this was before any utilities had really...

reset a lot of their IRP low growth forecasts. They were all still forecasting relatively modest low growth. I think Dominion was the first one. I think it was maybe later that spring that they came out with their new forecast showing they were going to double in about 15 years, which was just. eye-opening at the time. But all that sort of latent demand was always there. It's just we weren't accurately forecasting

what was about to happen. And so I was actually talking to our friend Shale Khan that spring. We were having a drink together and we started talking about this power-centric approach to land development and that sort of planted the seed of... Cloverleaf, and I happened to have dinner with Mike Skelly, who many of your listeners probably know, and sharing with him my intention to leave Microsoft at that time. And he actually then introduced me to Dave Barry, who became my co-founder and is our...

ceo and that was sort of the beginning of you know starting to think about what cloverleaf ultimately became and tell me about the time in between microsoft and starting cloverleaf and the sabbatical you took and just what it was like to have that spaciousness to think and ideate. Yeah, that was critical because, you know, as I said, I'd been talking to Dave probably since the spring about the idea, but I didn't have space.

to really think about it. And so when I left Microsoft, not necessarily even with the intention of starting Cloverleaf, I left Microsoft with the intention of having the time to think about what I wanted to do. Maybe that was start Cloverleaf. Maybe it was do something else. So I did explore.

you know, just taking on some advisory roles. And I took a couple of board seats, you know, in the interim and just had a lot of downtime, which was really nice. It was the last month before my oldest son, Tyler, went off to college. He started UC Santa Barbara that fall. So I got to spend a lot of time with him and just work on that transition. And then it was about December of that year that we ultimately decided, all right, we think this clove release thing is probably a good idea.

Let's go see if we can raise some money and launch this thing.

So before we get into that part of the journey of launching and raising the capital, can you explain the biggest constraints in the data center and energy infrastructure space, things like labor, capacity, land, interconnection? This is a concept you have framed in the Wattbit spread, the gap between the cost of power and the value of computing capacity. Just explain to me and listeners more about...

the constraints that you were seeing and then this concept of the Wattbit spread? Yeah. I mean, power definitely was the number one constraint. There are other constraints that are really important that I think it overlooked. Labor's probably right up there. But power was definitely the primary issue we were thinking about when we started the company. And so what the Wattbit spread highlights is that there's a massive spread between the cost of the input.

of the commodity input, which in this case is a watt, and the value created in the conversion to a bit. So it's similar to like a spark spread in the power space, right? And so if you think about like OpenAI, they're an energy conversion business, right? they need to get as many watts as possible and convert those into the form of bits that turn into larger training models and more capable inferencing clusters right but the key difference between the watt bit spread and other commodity spreads

is that the electricity prices are pretty inelastic. And that has to do in a large part of the way power markets are regulated. And the value of the bits are so high that that spread is pretty persistent, right? In any other market, if...

that bit was super valuable and the thing you needed to make the bit was also therefore valuable then that price should go up and sort of match the cost of the bit or minimize those spreads but you don't see that in power markets they're not going to move that quickly and so You know, I think that there will be a persistent gap between those two. And that creates a lot of business opportunity for people that can take those watts and turn them into bits.

You had never started a company before, despite being a builder at your core, and the world of private equity and finance was new to you. What doubts did you have early on about starting Cloverleaf and how did you overcome them? Yeah, I think my biggest doubt is we weren't...

saying anything that everyone didn't already know, right? Of course, we needed more powerful data centers. Everyone was talking about it. In fact, I remember the spring when we were raising capital, you know, there were three weeks back to back. It was front page of New York Times, front page of Washington Post.

front page of some other... Oh, Wall Street Journal. Sorry. Yeah, Wall Street Journal. So I was like, okay, this is no secret that there's a gap here. And so our assumption is a lot of folks are going to go after this problem. But I also believed that the right team could create a competitive advantage in the space. And I think if you really approached solving this problem in a power-centric way, and it is an access to land problem, right? Because it's...

One thing to create more power, but you still have to find a place to build these data centers. You have to find communities that want a data center there. You have to understand water. You have to understand labor. So I did believe that the right team really could build a durable competitive advantage in the space.

Did you have any, I don't know, internal fears or was it all just like, let's try this and see what happens? Oh, I definitely had fears. I mean, I just left a nice paying job at Microsoft. As I mentioned, my son was starting up at UC Santa Barbara. The UC system is very proud of their schools. especially for out-of-state students. So I was taking on these huge college bills and I wasn't getting paid anything. And so, yeah, there was definitely some risk. And I was also concerned about...

You know, I don't how are we actually going to make money in this business? You know, this is a going back to sort of how I described my dad's work as like, you know, I'm in sales now. I'm developing projects. We don't have a revenue stream that's not selling a project. And so.

Was that going to take three years? Was it going to take five years? When before we would actually make any real money? So yeah, there were a lot of questions that I had about how the business was actually going to perform.

And who were the people who you talked to along the way when deciding to start Cloverleaf who supported you and said, yeah, those fears are valid and you can do this? Yeah, I'm blessed with having a lot of friends who have started companies, who've been investors.

Just really great mentors. So I mentioned Christian Bilotti, the person that hired me to Microsoft. He also left Microsoft about the same time. So he and I were kind of on this journey together and continued to collaborate on a lot of different things. Dan Leff, who's a friend and fellow board member at Veer, the superconducting transmission company with me. Shale is someone I talk to a lot.

Kim, of course, my wife, was critical in this. And I think the key was, one, sort of affirming that there's a good idea here, and also just recognizing that my role at Microsoft had really ceased to be life-giving, and I wasn't... really working in my strengths uh and so just the importance of going to find somewhere where i could do that so in february of 2024 you cross the point of no return you start cloverleaf

What was easy about starting Cloverleaf and what was hard? The easy part is like building things comes naturally to me, right? Just that part, like waking up and just being excited every morning to think about, okay, what's the next thing we need to do? So that wasn't hard. As I said before, when you're working in your strengths, which I was, that's super easy. It's not work. The hard part was visualizing exactly how and when we would see some form of success.

like really thinking through like you know how is this going to play out and and you know we built a lot of pro formas and put a lot of assumptions in there and so had all these models was like i don't know i mean we're just sort of drawing numbers you know on a graph like we think this is what it is we don't really know valuations of projects we had some assumptions about it but until we sold our first project there were no proof points there's nothing

along the way you know there's no pilots there's no nothing you can say hey we achieved this this metric this quarter and you know we're this much closer to profitability you know the way that a lot of businesses work that's not the way this business works um so it just it took a little bit of a different path and therefore there was a lot of uncertainty you know and again until we sold our first project

And how did you feel about that uncertainty, especially given what you said earlier about, you know, your dad and being in sales and the lack of predictability growing up? Like, were you okay with that? Was that hard for you? I was okay with it. I'd say it was still hard walking away. I mean, you know, when I left Microsoft, I had...

a lot of stock that just vaporized like i didn't get to take it with me right you don't get to you know all the all the unvested shares you know stay with the company and so um there was and that was a you know big part of my nest egg too i'd been saving up you know i had all this stock over the years and so um

So, yeah, I mean, I had to walk away from a lot, but I was still convicted that there's an opportunity here. There's a huge market inefficiency. There's something to build here that can be valuable.

At its core, Cloverleaf is a real estate company that is energy first. So turning land, as you said earlier, into access to megawatts. As you started thinking about projects, acquiring land, advising utilities, what did validating the model look like? in practice, especially because earlier you said this wasn't new, like a lot of people were already attempting to do this well. So what did it like to validate your model?

Yeah, you know, that was a big part of the discussion that we had when we were raising capital because investors had the same question. Like, how do we prove out the model? you know and there's not one formula or secret sauce um and i think a lot of people want there to be sort of this is the solution like the solution to we need more data centers is we need a bunch of

behind-the-meter SMRs running data centers. That's the thing that's going to... There's not one answer. The grid is a complicated machine. And there's a lot of different things you have to do that deal with technology, that deal with regulations, that deal with business models.

So validating it was really just about doing it, like finding investors that believed that we had the right team that could go solve these problems and go out and start doing it. And and what I always believed is it's very much a relationship business.

like its relationship with customers its relationships with utilities its relationship with the local communities and that if you build the right team that can go out and and really create those relationships or bring those relationships with them you're going to be able to create outsize value

At Microsoft, you've said you learned the importance of hiring not just for competence, but for culture fit. And as you started building the Cloverleaf team, how did that lesson shape who you brought on and the culture you wanted to create, especially like you just said, given the importance of credibility and validation of the work that you were proposing to do?

Yeah, I think what I learned in my time building that team at Microsoft is the key to a successful team is you have to have diversity of talent and perspective, but you have to have similarity of culture and values. And so being able to balance those two things of having a diverse workforce and talent pool, but then the people also being very similar in some core ways were important. And what I realized over time is that I had specific core values.

that that were important to me and it was important for me to communicate those to the team because if you wanted to be successful on my team specifically you needed to understand what those values were and they were mutual respect ownership and insatiable curiosity like those are the things that

I look for in when I build a team and what I want in terms of the culture. And I'd share this in interviews all the time. So people would come through and I'd say, hey, just so you know, these are my values. If these resonate with you, you're going to like working here. If they don't, it's fine.

Like, but they're not changing. Like this is, this is who I am as a person. It's who I am as a leader. And so you kind of have to adapt to that or go do something else. And I did, I only had like one person that I ended up having to. let them go because they were so resistant to some of the things that were like core important to me. And I should literally remember having this argument with them at some point. And I had to stop them and say, listen,

there's really only one person whose opinion at this point matters on this. And it's me. I'm just sorry. And it wasn't in an arrogant or condescending way, but it's more of a teaching moment. And I said, look, I have to do the same thing.

There's plenty of times that I don't agree with the decision that my boss makes, but I can, you know, voice my opinion. And then after that, I'm going to get in line. And I think a lot of that, too, was, you know, how I was raised, you know, growing up in the South, respecting your elders. You know, that was a.

core value that my parents instilled in me. And so, you know, I've just always been of the mind. Now, there's a limit to that, right? There's certainly times where, you know, you really do need to speak back and push back. But that's also where mutual respect comes in. It's mutual. It's both respect from...

the employee to the leader and the leader down to the employee. And so as long as that exists, then at the end of the day, you still have to say, okay, you know, you've been put in charge. And so, you know, I'm going to step in line to your... leadership on this issue. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And tell me about how that's impacted who you've brought onto the Cloverleaf team.

Well, it brought a lot of people on that I've worked with in the past. And so people that I know have been able to deliver success that share those same values as me. And then just other people that I've met and known over the years. that I've not necessarily worked with. But yeah, I've grown the team in much the same way. It's really about those core values.

uh that continue to drive my work and i don't think those will ever change i mean those are that's why they're core values um they're they're pretty they're pretty innate at this point so uh i don't think that's regardless of what i build in the future it's always going to be around those those same principles Can you say a minute more just about what I guess at times and early on in Microsoft felt like a conflict between

competence and culture and I think a lot of people including myself you know earlier in my career have maybe over indexed on competence and under indexed on culture can you talk about that shift over time Yeah, early on, I definitely over-indexed to competence. In fact, I remember I got my first four recs to hire people. This was probably in late 2012. I went out, hired four people.

And two of them ended up only making it about two years. And so I had about a 50% hit rate, which wasn't great. But I'm glad I made that mistake early because I quickly learned. I was like, oh, these people are super smart. They just don't fit the culture that I'm trying to build. And so from then on out, it was really about building culture. And, you know, our retention rate after that was extremely high, like probably way higher than most of other peer organizations.

Because everyone that you brought in also carried on that culture. And I remember someone asked me one time, like, So, you know, it's great that you've built this great culture, but how do you maintain it? And I was like, maintaining it's the easy part. Like once you've got the people that are committed to it, they maintain it. Like you don't actually have to work that hard to maintain it. But to get it going at the beginning.

That's the hard part, like to know what you want and to be able to get those those like those initial hires that can come in and then help you carry on that culture. That that's the hard part. Coming up, Brian talks about financing Cloverleaf infrastructure. But first, a word from our sponsors.

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Cloverleaf's first capital commitment came in in July of 2024 via a private equity-style fund model totaling $300 million from Sandbrook Capital and NGP alongside contributions from the company's management team. Can you walk me through how that financing structure came together, why you chose it, and what convinced investors to back you all, especially when it was pretty much like a team and a dream?

Yeah. So we'd spent a lot of time in that fall sort of brainstorming about the business. And I'd mentioned, you know, Dave and I were talking about it for a while. Neither of us were working at the time. And as I mentioned, my oldest son was going off to college. And so I'm like, oh, now I have this new college bill.

And there were definitely times I thought maybe we should just raise a little equity so we can pay ourselves something in the interim. But we quickly came to the idea that access to capital is really going to matter in this business. And so we decided to just skip the equity round altogether and just go straight to the larger pool of capital that we needed. But as I mentioned, we didn't have a lot of proof points along the way. So there was definitely a risk in doing that.

But I do believe equity just might have slowed us down and it might have just complicated things for us. So I'm glad that we did it the way we did it. There's certainly a lot of debate ahead of time and while we're going through the process, but the fundraising.

process itself ended up being relatively quick i mean we started in earnest in january and we closed in june so you know we were able to move relatively quickly you know with a great set of partners as you mentioned in sandbrook and in gp yeah

I think it speaks to who you all are as founders to raise 300 million in six months with basically a dream is pretty good. In terms of building the company. Your first major project became the Project Red Granite in Port Washington, a site spanning about 1,900 acres. Tell me the story of how that project came about, how you found the site, what made it stand out, and why

was the right place to start? Yeah, it's actually the backstory of this goes back to my time at Microsoft. So in the spring of 2022, I got a call from one of the heads of the local utility there, WeEnergies, about... the old Foxconn site and they were looking to position what was going to be a very large Foxconn site into being a very small Foxconn site. Community was disappointed. The utility was disappointed. They had a bunch of land and they had a bunch of power. So.

Dan Krueger from the utility calls me and says, hey, I've got this site. It can do over a gigawatt of power. Would Microsoft be interested in this for a data center? And I said, well... Dan, I don't know what a data center would do with a gigawatt of power. That's too much power for a data center. This is 2022. This is pre-chat GPT. And a couple weeks later, I was sitting in a meeting and we were talking about...

open AI partnership and AI. And that's when the light bulb went off. I was like, oh, that's what we do with the gigawatts. So I called him back and I said, hey, you still have that site, right? And he's like, yeah. So that ultimately became the Microsoft site in Racine. So fast forward to the summer of 24, I get a similar call from Dan at WeEnergies and said, hey, we were trying to attract a chip fab to Port Washington, Wisconsin.

We had 48 landowners who were agreeing to sell their land, 1,900 acres, and we have a bunch of power. It's like, we've run this playbook before. Can Cloverleaf do this for us just like you did at Microsoft? So I said, absolutely, I can. And that's actually how we got introduced to the Red Granite project through, as I said before, this relationship business through just having done similar work before. And, you know, it ended up being a great.

I mean, we know it was the right utility because we've worked with them before. The Economic Development Agency, also we'd worked with before. M7, they're fantastic. And you had a super supportive community, a community that was ready for something to get built there. and really excited for someone to step in and resurrect that project. Can you talk about the outcome of that project? What did it mean for you all? What were the inputs and outputs just from a return standpoint?

Yeah. So, you know, we what we ultimately did is we took on all the land options. So we agreed to take over 48 different land options to have the right to purchase that land. We assumed all the utility agreements. So we started signing contracts. I think it was that December with the utility for long lead equipment. So we had to order transformers and switch gear, start the engineering on transmission upgrades.

So our capital was really in keeping those land options going and keeping the utility agreements going. Because what we're selling to our customers is certainty of power to mine. Like that's the real commodity. that we're selling and so our ability to go in again having access to capital to be able to sign those agreements is ultimately what made the project successful

And can you say more about, yeah, what are you delivering? So you're buying land initially, and then when you turn it over to a hyperscaler, what are they getting? What they're getting is certainty of power timeline, right? And so you have a lot of folks.

who are in this market selling, quote, powered sites today. And I was talking to the head of one of the hyperscalers who is responsible for buying land. And they said, yeah, we'll get 100 pitches in a month. And 100 times out of 100, there's no power.

like they haven't actually solved the power issue like they might have an email from utility they might have something but they don't really have certainty of power and so the key in this industry is speed like speed to bits and like you know actually pushing computation. And that requires reducing those error bars around power. That's step one. You have to reduce all the error bars. You have to reduce error bars around zoning. You have to reduce error bars around access to labor.

But the critical one is power. And so if you can take that error bar in power and get it to be very small, suddenly you have a project that's highly differentiated from everything else that's out in the market.

got it so in the case of project red granite once you found the site what was your approach to Working with the landowners, local officials, other stakeholders, how did you all get them on board? Like you said, it's a relationship business. How did you go about that? Lots of boots on the ground. I mean, our team was in Port Washington every week for about six months straight.

meeting with, you know, over coffee with the individual landowners, meeting with the town council, meeting with the mayor, the electric utility, the utility commission, the governor's office, economic development. I mean, you name it. Lots of meetings, lots of FaceTime. uh you know we were a new company i mean cloverleaf didn't have a brand name we weren't microsoft we weren't amazon um so you know coming in there and convincing these folks that hey

We actually understand the space. We can actually help you get a good outcome. It just took a lot of face time. And that continues to be how we manage all of our projects. And we want to be in communities that want us there. Because again, if you go back to the key is speed, like having an unsupportive community is not going to help you get a data center built very quickly. It's going to mean a lot of contentious community meetings. It's going to mean delays in getting...

votes that you need that are critical to moving a project forward you know i was just down in in monroe county georgia uh where we're developing another project right now uh and this is a very rural county and the county commissioner who's lived there his whole life says you know We're really excited about data centers because we want to remain rural. And we like data centers because unlike a distribution center, unlike a factory, you don't bring as many jobs and we like that.

And so it's important to understand that because a lot of people think about data centers and say the bad thing is they don't bring enough jobs. But not every community wants to build a new high school, right? They don't necessarily want all that traffic. They actually like...

the size of a data center and what it means. You definitely bring high-paying jobs, but just not as many of them. And sometimes that's a really good fit for a community. So spending time in the community and listening to people really understand what are their goals, what do they want.

So that's what helps make a successful project in this business. Where does Project Red Granite stand today? And what lessons did you learn from this first project that you're going to carry into others, including this one in Georgia? Yeah, so we sold that project to Vantage Data Centers back in...

May. They actually just announced last week that they finalized the development agreement. So it's going to be the first phase of this project. And it's just phase one is 1.3 gigawatts, 8 billion in total investment, two and a half million square feet under roof.

So an absolute massive project. So we're really excited. Vantage was a great partner. I've known that team for a number of years. I was honestly very excited we got to sell our first project to them. And there's a lot that we learned. I mean, we learned about... valuing projects and how do we think about the value of power, you know, in a megawatt in a given year, which is kind of how we think about this industry is a power, you know, today is worth a little more than power tomorrow, but.

exactly how much more and so um you know it really helped us just think about you know our business model and evaluation of the business overall and so we were really excited to get that deal done and excited to be moving on to our next deal

Tell me a little more about the next one in Georgia. Yeah, that's the one that I mentioned in Monroe County. We're in the process of selling that now. We expect that transaction likely to close this year. Got a ton of interest. Georgia Power has been a fantastic partner. Again, relationship business. So I've been working very closely with them to develop this site and some other sites in their service territory. And so, yeah, it's just continued to validate the model that we sort of have.

We think the right approach. We understand generally what the market's looking for in terms of speed, scale, timing, sustainability, all of those critical issues. And so it's just further confirmation that we feel like as a company, we're on the right track. Did the timeline for those projects and the multiples you were able to earn meet expectations, exceed them, underperform expectations?

No, they definitely met well and even exceeded expectations. So we're very happy with the outcome so far for the business. Our investors are very happy. So, you know, as I said, I think we're on the right track.

In terms of fundraising and the path you took, what do you think other founders who are in similar capital intensive businesses should know about securing funding at this scale? What I would say, and this is a mantra I've had for many years, which I stole from.

Arrested Development, not the band, the TV show. But there's always money in the banana stand. And what I mean by that is there's always money for good ideas. And I would say this at Microsoft all the time. Anytime my team would come to me and say, oh, we can't do X, Y, or Z, I was like...

We can. You just haven't made a good case as to why we should get the resources to do it. Microsoft is not limited in the resources. And I would say just globally, we're awash in capital. And so the real questions are, do you actually have a good idea?

And can you tell a good story around it such that the person that has that capital would want to give it to you? Because the money's there, especially when we're talking about AI. There's no shortage of people that want to throw money at this problem. It's really about.

How do you identify one of those key constraints and how your tech or your business model can help solve it? Makes sense. Can you take listeners to one of your projects, whether it's Project Red Granite? or Rumble Road Data Center in Georgia. Like, you know, put me there. What am I seeing? What am I feeling? What's it like to be on site?

Yeah, I mean, every community is going to be a little different, right? Wisconsin, it's mostly farmland. You know, it's really pretty flat or just slightly rolling hills. You know, down in Georgia, it's a lot more wooded. You know, it looks like a wooded lot, maybe an old industrial site. right um they're all a little bit different uh so you know that's part of you know understanding in each community you know what's what's a good location for a site like this what

you know, what community can support. Like one thing you'll never find in a Cloverleaf site is it's never next to a neighborhood, right? It's never next to, because there's just places where it's just not really appropriate to put these sort of projects and you're going to get. And we have tons of scars from my time at Microsoft of having to try to develop in more congested areas. And so we really look for locations that like Monroe County, like Port Washington.

are going to be supportive of data centers because it's a good fit for that particular county. And once a project is built, you mentioned... Some communities don't want a ton of jobs or foot traffic associated with this build. What does it look like once the data center is fully built out? Yeah. Looking at the Port Washington project, as I said, that's going to be a massive just phase one.

you know, two million square feet, you're still going to have hundreds of good paying jobs that come out of a project like that. And so, you know, you do and the communities that I've worked in and the rural communities over the years, they love that. They love. you know, bringing good paying jobs in their community. And as you said, they also love that it's not too many to where it really changes the culture of the community. And so that's the ideal solution is that you end up with a.

you know a site that actually becomes a really uh advantageous member of that community um i want to talk about the one big bad bill o triple b i don't know what to call it i yeah It's projected to slow clean energy deployment, which seems directly at odds with the need for data centers to access affordable, clean power. Since Cloverleaf's model is about securing energy first sites with a line of sight to renewables, how do you...

see this policy shift affecting data center growth and how does it shape your strategy for working with utilities? Yeah, it's pretty detrimental. And it's not just the OBB, but the other anti-development moves the administration is making right now. putting up barriers to wind and solar just this weekend with the Orsted project. I heard EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin talking about this this weekend about, hey, we just need more baseload power and people think that wind is a solution and it's not.

there's just a radical misunderstanding of how the electric grid actually works. And this idea is actually kind of rampant on the data center side too, which is, oh, I've got a 24-7 load in the form of a data center. So I must need a 24-7 generator to match it. And it's not the way the grid works. It's never worked that way. It's not like a utility connects an amusement park and goes, okay, well, what's an amusement park-shaped resource that I can now bring to the grid?

That's not how grid operators do planning. Like everything is on the margins and everything is incremental. And so you're really only looking at what are, how are my peaks now going to be impacted? Not what's going to happen, you know, 8,000, 760 hours a year. Right. And so. I think this administration should be pursuing and what I had hoped that they would pursue is more of an all of the above strategy and say, let's just let everything compete.

That doesn't seem to be what they're doing. And that is going to set us back because the things we can deploy the fastest are wind, solar and storage. They're going to have the lowest barriers to entry in the market. And we need those resources to be coming on. as quickly as possible and they do contribute materially to helping data centers operate 24 7. so they just i can't fathom how the approach to this administration

on energy abundance is so close-minded to the role that all these resources play in a truly abundant energy system. How do you navigate that given...

the communities you're working in, you know, in the South, like how do you approach this conversation there? I have always talked about clean energy in the context of jobs. Always. I have my time at Microsoft too. I don't care if you... agreed with microsoft's you know commitments on climate it doesn't matter we're going to spend billions of dollars on getting wind projects built solar projects built often in red states and that's going to mean jobs for your community so

That's always been the way that we've approached it. It is an economic development issue. It doesn't matter, agree or disagree on the climate goals. But most of our customers, most of the big data center operators, they want clean energy.

That's the product that we want to sell them. And I think when you get down to the local level, you don't really have a lot of resistance to that. No one on the ground is saying, no, we don't want jobs because we don't like those kind of jobs. That's insane. Everyone likes jobs. It doesn't matter what they're building.

So, yeah, that's always been our approach to it. Pivoting to some more personal questions. How has your leadership style changed over the course of your career and especially now at Cloverleaf? Yeah, I think early on, I focused a lot on my weaknesses. Like, how do I look at what are my gaps? And how do I fill those? How do I get better at that? How do I be more organized? How do I do, you know, this sort of stuff. And I think now I really pivot to recognize that, like.

I'm way better off just working in my strengths and focusing there and finding ways to compensate for weaknesses, bringing people around me that are good at doing those things that I'm not. And I get part of that as a luxury to like part of that is a career progression. And as you get on in your career, you actually can choose a little bit more.

um how you spend your time and what you spend your time on you know early on it's just like well i just have to do what anyone tells me to do even if i'm not very good at it i better learn right um but but i have learned i you know i'd rather just spend the vast majority of time focusing on things i'm good at um and and i do fortunately especially starting a company get to do that a little bit it's part of the reason i'm not the ceo uh i knew going back to my time at microsoft like

I'm not going to be a very good CEO. And I remember when I met Dave, I was so excited because I was like, this guy would be a really good CEO. And I would love for him to be the CEO of this company and not me. Was he on board? What's that?

Was he on board initially? Oh, yes. Because he's... that's who he is he's driven that way he's naturally a ceo so it was an easy there was no debate or discussion about who's going to be the ceo of the company it was it was very clear we were both in alignment we're going to start this company together we're going to be co-founders but i'm not going to be the ceo So very glad to have him on board. That's great.

I think you're spot on too about just playing into strengths and same thing over the course of my career. I think it's easy early in your career to feel insecure and feel like I have to work on the things that I'm not good at. And yeah, the older I get, the more I'm with you on just understand our strengths, lean into them. find other phenomenal people who can complement our strengths and make up for the things in which we are weak. So I couldn't agree more. Exactly.

Can you speak to your experience, given your demographics of who you are in this industry that has a lot of people that look like you? How do you think about that? Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I recognize I have a ton of privilege just, again, having grown up with parents who raised me and gave me resources and expected me to go to college and provided for that. Not everybody gets that.

You know, and as the father of daughters, as part of a mixed race family, as a father of a trans kid, you know, I think a lot about, you know, their future and what inclusion actually looks like. And, you know, like everyone, I'm. on a journey as well and i'm having to always learn what it means to be an ally and continue learning every day um but this has always been a priority for me i mean i i think my team at microsoft was about 50 female which i was really

and I love just creating opportunities and career opportunities for a diverse talent pool. And we've continued to do that at Cloverleaf and something that I am definitely passionate about.

Well said. You are a partner to your wife, Kim, who you mentioned and a parent to your five kids. What is it like being a parent, a founder and a company leader all at the same time? Controlled chaos. I mean, it's just daily learning to say no to good things. You just can't say yes to all the things.

um you know there's that analogy of of you know the rocks you know you have big rocks and you have small rocks and so the way you manage your time is you put the big rocks in first and let the small rocks fill in um and i think i don't know if it's atomic habits but some book is like

It's such a stupid analogy because everyone knows we have too many big rocks, right? We have too many things that... It was 4,000 weeks. 4,000 weeks. Thank you. No, I remember it was one of those two books, actually. I actually just bought that book for my boys. I love that book. Oh, it's fantastic.

But yeah, like I definitely see my life as too many big rocks problem. Right. You know, with five kids and they all have their things and we can have a whole podcast about that, about parenting. But there's just so many things that you have to juggle. uh and so and as someone like me who just from a personality standpoint like just wants to do all the things like i'm an enneagram seven like it's always like yes to all the things yes

And so I've had to really discipline myself to be like, okay, what are the things I'm going to say no to? How am I going to create sort of intentional space in my life to slow down? You know, as a husband, you know, my relationship with Kim, like prioritizing date nights and weekends away, you know, personally just having quiet time in the morning that I'm not getting up and immediately checking email. So there's been a lot of things that I have to do to sort of control my own.

you know, natural inclination to take on too much. Zooming out, if we succeed at rethinking how and where large scale loads connect to the grid, and what does the data center and energy infrastructure landscape look like in a decade? what does it look like and and what role is cloverleaf playing well as i mentioned before i think the dominant school of thought right now is that 10 years from now all data centers are going to be off grid

They're all going to have their own power plants. They're going to be running on SMRs or their own dedicated gas plants. If that's what happens, I think we've failed as an industry and Cloverleaf has probably not had as much impact as I'd like it to have as a company. Because what we should be focusing on is how do data centers better integrate into the grid? How do they work in concert with utilities, with grid operators to enable grid enhancing technologies, more flexibility resources?

Like those are the things that are actually going to achieve the industry objective, which is go quickly, grow really big and do it sustainably. You can actually have all three of those things. You don't have to compromise. But unfortunately, there is a big school of thought. I mean, going back to the comment earlier about, oh, I have this 24-7 load, so I need a 24-7 generator. That's pretty prevalent today. And so we're working really hard to find partners.

And there are a lot of great companies that are thinking about this. So, you know, it's not just Cloverlake. There's a lot of folks that understand this issue and are working for, you know. more sustainable solutions and fortunately there are a lot of great technologies out there that we can use it's just about how do you orchestrate those solutions and get them in a market as quickly as possible

Is there a time horizon for Cloverleaf? Like, is there a role for you to play in this moment, given the moment? Or do you see this as a... You know, this is a multi-generational company that you founded. I think it's, I mean, it's hard to say. You know, it sort of depends on, you know, how long does this inefficiency in the market persist? Like we are definitely.

We definitely exist because there's an inefficiency in the market because, you know, there is clearly not enough power for the computation that that we want to see happen. So, you know, is that going to last for? Three years, it's going to last for five years, it's going to last for 10 years. I don't know. We're definitely building it to be able to run that length, but we may not be needed that long. We'll see. But there's definitely going to be other opportunities that get created.

as a result of this regardless perfect opportunity to segue into our high voltage round these are quick questions quick answers quick like a couple words per answer brian janice if you were going to be an animal what would you be and why A leopard because I have a lot of energy and like to move quickly. Nice. What inspires you? My family. If you had to start a new career tomorrow, what would it be?

Oh, it would probably be in the outdoor arena. A guide of some sort. What would be your top guide activity? Or top view? Probably. Hiking, probably. Would love to just spend more time up in the mountains. Other than yourself, to whom do you attribute your success? My wife. Tell me about a specific time that you failed.

Well, this is one that my mom brings up. This is kind of a weird one. She brings up all the time. I want to hear this one. Yeah, I was throwing a fit about something. I think we were leaving church, and the pastor was standing there with a cup of coffee. I ran out and just knocked it out of his hand and spilled it all over him. And she never let me forget that. And maybe that's led to me maybe being a little bit calmer with my emotions.

A little more laid back over the years. Nothing's that important to get so worked up over. Yeah, that stuff is formative. Those memories get burned. They get reminded all the time of when this happened. She still reminds me to this day. What is something that you thought was true that you no longer believe? I thought that I needed to be sort of all things to all people, that I needed to have all the strengths as a leader and realized, hey, it's okay to just embrace your limitations.

Who has had the biggest influence on your life and why? Definitely my parents. I mean, I think I'm shaped definitely a son of Don and Karen. That's because of who they are is who I am. When are you your best self? When I'm at home with my family. What is your worst trait? I'm probably too confident. I get overconfident sometimes and think I can probably take on more than I can and don't say no enough and recognize my limitations.

It's so tricky. Like on the one hand, it's like a necessary quality, I think, to be a founder. You have to be somewhat optimistic and believe in your abilities beyond maybe we should. But then at the same time, it can absolutely hold us back. And get in our way. If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Climate. If there was just one person who was going to hear this episode, who would you want it to be? Whoever's making the decisions in the administration right now.

about climate and not even climate just just energy infrastructure just understand how the system works and let's go work together because i do think this administration has goals around Energy dominance. We need more power. We need to compete with China. I completely agree with that perspective. We just have to do it the right way. Finish these sentences for me. Companies fail because... Poor leadership.

If you really knew me, you would know. I love my dog. Actually, not the one that's standing behind me. I like her too. Oh, wow. Bird on the dog behind you. No, it's the other dog. He's looking at me right now. uh he's he's one of my favorite people and i didn't want the dog i didn't i was so opposed yeah we had already had this dog and i was like we don't why do we need another dog i love this dog absolutely what's the dog you love's name his name's otis hey otis otis hey buddy

He's just sitting on his chair right now. Oh, Lucy's fine. I love Lucy too. They're both great. But Otis is my favorite. Like everyone knows it. That's really funny. Success is. Having an impact on the planet and people. If I could have done one thing differently, I would have. I might have started a company earlier. It's a lot of fun. I'm really enjoying it.

How much earlier would you have wanted to? Not a lot. I think I needed the time that I had. I needed to work inside of a big company. I think it's a huge opportunity for learning, and I'm thankful I had it.

But I probably could have done it a few years earlier and taken those learnings. Do you know what stopped you? I think it was just such a chaotic time. It was hard to leave. That was in the midst of... covid and we were building a global team at the time and then ai started and so there's always a reason not to leave there's always like and as a sense of like i can't leave now because i can't let my team down i can't but at some point you have to um so

I think in some ways the chaos of it kept me there longer because it didn't give me the space to really think about what I wanted to do. If the world knew me for one thing, it would be... Being a good dad. I hope. I mean, I don't know. I hope that's what I am. But yeah, we should ask them. They seem cool. Yeah, they're pretty good kids. I'm most proud of? My relationship with Kim. Oh, shout out to Kim. Yeah, she's awesome. To build a successful startup, what it takes is? Lots of friends.

Lots of friends. I look at so many people that are not directly part of Cloverleaf or part of our founding that were so influential in getting this team together, giving us the advice. And continue, I mean, today to be able to connect with people about opportunities and strategies and how we partner. I mean, we're a partner driven company. So definitely love having lots of friends in this industry. Yeah, well said.

Well, I'm so happy you started Cloverleafs that we can finally have you on the show. Me too. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, this has been great. Brian, thank you for being who you are and building what you're building. I'm happy you're a builder. Thanks, Emily. I really appreciate you having me on the pod. Brian Janis is the co-founder and CCO of Cloverleaf Infrastructure.

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