Episode 3 – Decarbonizing for a Circular Economy with Cleantech Company CHAR Technologies

Patrick McGuire 

Hey, it’s Patrick. Before we start, at the time of this recording, we went through a bit of a name rebranding from RIC Centre to Altitude Accelerator. With that in mind, we hope you enjoy the following interview. Welcome to the Startups Transformed Podcast. I’m Patrick McGuire, your host board member and advisor at Altitude Accelerator, where we help startups scale to new heights. We chat with phenomenal tech business leaders who’ve climbed their way to success within their industry. Our guests delve deep into the lessons they’ve learned along the way so that you can get a head start on your next big idea. 

Patrick McGuire 

I’m going to tell you a little bit about my friend Andrew here and CHAR Technologies. So the corporate byline is going to tell you that decarbonizing for a circular economy through the advanced design, technology and environmental services. That sounds like a mouthful. And what the heck does it really mean? So first of all, I want to say thank you very much. I want to introduce you to my friend Andrew. And Andrew, you tell me a little bit about what that means and what CHAR Technologies is doing. 

Andrew White 

For sure and, Patrick, thank you for having me. Looking forward to telling the story of having a conversation. It’s always fun. So what does decarbonizing for a circular economy mean to us? Really it’s about two broad areas. On the one hand, we help industrial clients find ways to be more energy or resource efficient, so they’re not creating as much greenhouse gas because they’re not using as much energy. On the other piece is the technology front. So we have a number of technologies, our most prominent is called high temperature paralysis, and I’m sure we’ll talk all about that as the podcast goes on here. 

Andrew White 

But it’s a carbon negative way to process certain waste and create some really high value carbon products and energy products. So it’s all about decarbonizing. And again, that circular economy piece of the equation is taking waste and finding ways to add value to it. 

Patrick McGuire 

Andrew, it’s crazy because it’s circular, as you’ve clearly stated. But you’ve got many, many layers to make that work. We could probably just pick one of those things and have a successful company, but you’ve actually layered in, like, sounds like about five, maybe six different strategies kind of making this circular economy work. Tell me about some of the awards and innovation things you guys got going. Like, I see top 20s, and I see best achievements and young entrepreneurs. Tell me about this stuff because I think people need to know how cool and sexy and exciting this industry could be if you hustle. 

Andrew White 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny using the term because primarily some of the wastes that we talk about are things like biosolids and slutches. And so it’s not often that they can refer to that industry as sexy. I’ve always thought it has been, but I’ve had debates with others who maybe don’t agree with that. So I’m glad you see it as well. I think we’ve got and had some really great recognition over the years as we continue to grow the technology, grow the company and really help people understand what we’re up to. 

Andrew White 

We look at the CIX Top 20 Most Innovative Public companies. For us, that was an awesome award, and it was fantastic to be recognized in kind of the innovation space. But of course, as you alluded to, there was a couple of Entrepreneur of the Year and emerging leaders from the Clean50, which was a fantastic organization. I think they just released their most recent Clean50 in the Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago, and they recognize some really cool people and some really cool projects so check that out as well because they’re always bringing forth such awesome ideas. 

Patrick McGuire 

Yeah and I like that about you. Everything I’ve known from talking to the other members at RIC and you kind of put the company first, you kind of put yourself second. It’s kind of humble. It is very cool. And knowing that you have a vision for the company to succeed far before yourself shows what type of business you run, the operations you run and lead by example, I think that’s really cool as well. Who’s your primary target? Help us understand that because you talk about gases and bio solids and just anything and trying to help clean tech. 

Patrick McGuire 

And I say clean tech to try and make it easy for most people to understand. But you got so much more who’s your target audience and clients that you work with. 

Andrew White 

Yeah. It’s really all about the big industrials and so that can be food and beverage that can be more resource intensive steel and more cement industry, forestry and waste processing. But it’s all large industrial firms that have a fairly significant environment of impact just based on how they historically operate and how that market has historically operated. And one of the best things I’ve learned since going into this is at every level of these organizations, there really is a strong and passionate commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to embracing the circular economy. 

Andrew White 

And they are always looking for ways to do so. And when you couple energy costs with carbon pricing, with operational efficiencies, it’s a really interesting space to be in. And it’s one that I think a lot of people don’t immediately think of as that, but there’s just so much opportunity to do so many cool things here. 

Patrick McGuire 

Yeah, it really is. And you’re right. Most people don’t think big companies, even other energy companies that are producing energy from other sources and leaving waste products. They don’t think of it as cool or sexy. It’s really interesting. You guys are going in there and you’re finding a group of people that they’re in this big- what we might consider a wasteful industrial environment. And there’s a core group of people saying we can do this better. We can do it probably faster and cheaper, and we can produce better energy that’s cleaner on the other end. Who should we call, oh CHAR! Let’s call CHAR Technologies. Right. And you’re right. I’ve come across a few. They’re super passionate groups inside of large companies that go, what we do is good. But I also want to be a clean, green machine and you’re giving them that opportunity. And I like that. 

Andrew White 

Absolutely. And just one other quick piece on that is the term waste isn’t used because no one in the industry and in the spaces use it as waste. If you look at where you bring your garbage to the resource recovery facilities because we recognize that there is still resource of value here. And that’s an important message to kind of get across and to get people thinking about. 

Patrick McGuire 

I like that. It’s a new way of thinking because even I still call it waste, right? It’s a byproduct of something that is not my core product or whatever I’m pumping out. But other people are innovative, and it goes to show the way your team thinks it’s a resource that could be recovered. And it’s maybe not energy for X, but, hey, it could be energy for Y or it could be recirculated into the environment somehow, depending on what it is. Of course. 

Andrew White 

Absolutely. 

Patrick McGuire 

So you’re obviously young and you’re motivated and you’re successful. Tell me something that happened early on in your life that actually or your career that has impacted the way that you work today. 

Andrew White 

Sure. And I think there’s two pieces. So we’ll start early life and then we’ll go to early career. So in the early life side, I always count myself as fortunate, but I grew up with two dads. I had a father and a stepfather. Both were really positive influences on me. They both are entrepreneurial. One had a school photography company that he built up and ran. The other was as a stockbroker and a money manager. So kind of have to build your client base within a larger organization. 

Andrew White 

And so certainly saw the hustle from both of them growing up, which I think was obviously a strong influence. But they both also gave me opportunities to practice being an entrepreneur. When I was eight years old, I was running the pop fund at the staff office. So what kind of pop do people want? And while they’re drinking more Pepsi, so I better go buy more Pepsi. I’m kind of doing that marketing and sales piece, to just cleaning the offices, to coming up with lists of potential targets and why prioritizing them and all that good stuff. 

Andrew White 

That was great practice growing up. And then whether that was the big influence or other aspects. When I first started CHAR, I kind of really had to live it. I didn’t have a lot of money graduating University because I started the company straight out of school. Shockingly, I was actually in a little bit of debt. So we kind of went through the process of raising money and got involved in the RIC Centre, which was awesome and really helped us along. 

Andrew White 

On a personal perspective, I didn’t have much. So I would kind of wake up at 5:30 in the morning Monday to Friday, go to a Plaza, sweep up all the cigarette butts, empty the garbage bins, and take me about 45 minutes and paid $40. So that helped pay for food. And then on the weekends I worked at a farmer’s market. I sold poultry, got there at 4:30 in the morning, unloaded the trucks and sold about 7 until 3 and then closed up shop. And that paid a couple of bills. 

Andrew White 

And then I was going between meetings. I had a 100% Commission, 100% cold calling job selling point of sale debit credit machine. Yeah, between a meeting, I’d stop at a Plaza and go knock on every door and hope I could convince him to buy one of these machines so I could have a little bit of extra cash flow. So that having to kind of live through that in the early days, teaches a lot about management of your resources, whether it’s time or your money. And certainly that’s something that you bring along with you when you’re managing the company as well. 

Patrick McGuire 

For sure. I’m just going to call it out, folks, Hustler, and it’s not in a bad way. That’s a positive connotation. Hustle, hustle, hustle. And that’s what we’re finding with a lot of people we talk to these days that are truly successful entrepreneurs, no matter how big or how small or how enterprise the business is. It’s all about that, Hustle. I mean, from someone who woke up at 5:30 to go sweep cigarette butts and garbage so that he could go to his day job selling point of sale systems while having meetings. 

Patrick McGuire 

And we’re not sure if the meetings were in between the POS sales or the POS was in between the meetings, but just continuously hustling to accomplish that dream. Just so you get to the weekend to sell some poultry to pay some bills. That is hustle, hustle, hustle. And that is why the company is where it is today and why you’re so successful. And I’m very impressed. And I love stories like this. So thank you for sharing that. Sometimes it’s not, again, not clean, not cool. But it’s the truth. 

Patrick McGuire 

And the other thing, too, is I’ll say that I know this. I have two dads, my stepfather and my father both awesome in different categories. So I totally relate with what you’re saying. They breathe success in different ways. You take the best of both, and you are who you are today and you’ve made yourself quite successful. And you hustle, I can’t say it any better way. What inspired you? And I don’t know if it was sweeping cigarette butts. What inspired you to actually do CHAR Technologies as a startup. 

Andrew White 

Yeah. Well, I can tell you it wasn’t sweeping cigarette butts because that came a little bit later. The inspiration came when I was nice and comfortable as a grad student, worked a couple hours and go with some friends to the patio and have lunch and a couple of drinks and maybe go back to the lab, maybe not. 

Andrew White 

It’s a whole different lifestyle, and it was a lot of fun at the time. But I was working on my graduate thesis in chemical engineering at the University of Toronto, and we were working generally in this space of biogas. So organic waste into energy. And my specific topic turned out when we did the work and did the modelling that probably everyone’s heard of the laws of thermodynamics doing the long calculations, what we were trying to do, try to break these laws and you can’t do it. So it looked very much like this thesis was just going to be here’s all my calculations, this is why we can’t do it. 

Andrew White 

You still get your master’s degree, it doesn’t have to be successful. You just have to go through the rigour, right. So it’s like, okay, that’s where we ended up getting a job after I graduated. Figure it out. But then kind of made the decision that maybe we should go check out one of these bio gas plants. We should see how they operate and kind of get out of the academic setting. And so we went down and went to a biogas plant and saw that, well, they take organic waste and turn it into energy in the form of biogas. 

Andrew White 

They also create those byproducts, and it’s called digestate in the industry, but functionally, it’s compost. It’s like a fibre, didn’t really have much value. There was big piles of it at this site. We asked them what they did with it, and they said, well, if we have a spill, we’ll use it to sop up. Maybe the tractor had a week and we sop up the oil with it and throw it out because it absorbs stuff and that’s kind of it. And there was a lot of it. 

Andrew White 

My Professor, John Kirk and I took a bag of this stuff and it’s kind of extra smelly compost. We put it in the back of the CRV, which, if you know, cars, the trunk is not separated from the rest of the car and then took the two and a half hour drive back to Toronto with the lovely smell. Just great. And so we found a way to instead of what we were trying to do before to convert this stuff into activated carbon, which most people would know is a Brita filter. 

Andrew White 

And so we found this great way to make value out of it. And CHAR that’s where CHAR comes from. As we were charing, the digestate, no oxygen, high temperatures and making these activated carbons. So got the IP, started down the road of filing patents and said, well, who else better to take this thing to market than the guys who put it together. So decided to launch the company and go from there. 

Patrick McGuire 

Cool. I mean, you got out of the academic setting and said, let’s go see this for real. And this weird idea just pops in your head like that. I love that you took the chance. And I love that you took the chance just to look at it. More entrepreneurs need to do that. Even just everyday people, they walk around, they go, oh, what if I did that? I always joke about the person who created the stupid little pizza topper tables that go inside the pizza boxes so it doesn’t sink in. 

Patrick McGuire 

And I’m like, man, that’s the stupidest idea ever. And it’s brilliant. It’s probably just some junk University student. 

Andrew White 

Yes, for sure. Someone who eats a lot of pizza, no doubt. 

Patrick McGuire 

Yeah. Absolutely. So I love that you got out of your academic setting. You said, let’s go check it out. And this idea pops in your head. I knew that the CHAR Technologies name came from that sort of story. I didn’t know the exact details of the origin of it. So that is really wonderful. Thank you for sharing. So, was there a time in your business that you guys had to pivot? 

Andrew White 

Yeah. And I think it’s natural to have a pivot point. And I think it’s something generally to be embraced for us. It came about because we really had to shift our thinking. As I say, this product we came out of University with was activated carbon. We said, okay, great. We’ve got a process and intellectual property of how to make activated carbon. Now we’re going to go into the market itself. Activated carbon. And you start to run into different issues. One is it’s a very saturated market. We had some strong advantages. 

Andrew White 

Our product was zero waste. Once it’s used, it’s the last value of the fertilizer. So again, circular economy from the beginning. But at the end of the day, you’re still competing in a relatively saturated market. And we found clients and potential clients wanted to know and have the certainty that you have a warehouse somewhere filled with this material, that they needed more. If something happened, they needed to order some right away, that you’d be able to fulfil it. 

Andrew White 

And then you’ve got, Well, we’re a startup. We need a couple of million dollars just to build our processing system and then to have the amount of money to pour into inventory to put in a warehouse to then satisfy kind of this checklist of demands, it talks to and speaks to how challenging certain markets are that require sort of a strong level of rigor behind them. And so kind of struggling a little bit on getting some traction, little traction. There’s certainly enough market validation that we’re going forward. This is really interesting stuff. And we’re getting positive feedback and then kind of the realization came that. 

Andrew White 

Well, the sulfur, the activated carbon stuff is kind of the vitamin from the vitamin pain killer analogy. You really want to be making the pain killers, right. And it’s a vitamin in that it’s better for sure. But there are solutions to solve the problem. It just has some added benefits. And then we go way back to when we visited this first bio gas plant site and said, well, what’s the big problem we could solve? And it turns out it’s that digestate, that compost, that waste that they’re generating. 

Andrew White 

That’s what their problem is. That’s what they can’t deal with. That’s what they need a real solution for. So we pivoted the model from being very product focused. That okay, we’re making SulfaCHAR, to solutions focused where great, we’ll bring and install a high temperature paralysis unit, which is our core technology on your site. Put the digestate through it so that it eliminates that issue and creates a valuable gas energy as well as the biocarbons. And if you like the SulfurCHAR model, then we’ll license that technology and you can create your own SulfaCHAR for your own use because there is a use for it at these biogas plant sites. 

Patrick McGuire 

Awesome. 

Andrew White 

That pivot in thinking, because we’re still going after the same markets, the same technology. We’re just really pivoting the positioning and how we’re approaching it. And that made a huge difference in how we were received in the market and how we’re able to really start to grow. 

Patrick McGuire 

I love it. I absolutely love it. And what you’re doing for those companies is you’re making them leaner and greener and more efficient. You’re also taking care of our environment in a different way. There are so many layers to why this makes so much sense. But who made that change or decision to make that pivot? 

Andrew White 

Yeah. It’s actually kind of funny because I think conceptually, when we talk pivot, it’s like a moment in time. It’s like woke up Tuesday, change directions. And I would presume that in most cases, it’s similar to ours where it was a bit of a transition of we started to test the market with this idea of selling or the equipment, leasing the equipment, getting the equipment on site to deal with the waste, to digest the compost material instead of selling the SulfaCHAR. But we didn’t just stop trying to promote the product either. 

Andrew White 

It was a transition really over a couple of months when we continually tested the market, got some feedback and then really found that this is the direction we should be going and then finally made kind of a real pushover. So when we’re kind of trying to say who made the decision at the end of the day, it was me, but it wasn’t a kind of a snap decision we talked about. Well, let’s explore the market as a team in this direction, we’re getting way better feedback, good feedback over there. 

Andrew White 

Don’t get me wrong. We’re getting awesome feedback over here. So this is where we need to be. So let’s continue to push in there.  

Patrick McGuire 

It makes me think of the 80 20 became the 2080. It kind of just sort of inserted a product. It seemed to work. It seemed to get more traction, more traction, more traction. It’s not like the other side of the business went away. It’s just that the new solution was much more successful than the current solution. And now you’re running sort of a two pronged attack and generating revenues in multiple ways and able to help a lot of different companies. And you’re growing. You guys are growing. 

Andrew White 

Absolutely. 

Patrick McGuire 

I’m going to make you dig down. What was the worst decision that you think you’ve ever made in the company? 

Andrew White 

You kind of think about bad decisions, decisions that you could have done better, could have maybe delayed you or maybe wasted money on this battery. The other thing. But I think for me and for the company, the biggest was waiting too long to build on our team. 

Patrick McGuire 

Oh, wow. 

Andrew White 

I was kind of the solo entrepreneur, graduated, Don, who was my professor, my supervisor, at UofT was part of the company and sort of supported from a technical perspective. But he’s a full time tenured professor. He’s not running a company. And so for the first three years, it was me and bringing in consultants if one week, we kind of needed the extra support on a project or the like. And it’s a good strategy from a cash conservation perspective. You’ve got a very defined project, here’s the consulting revenue, fees that we’re going to be paying. 

Andrew White 

And I know how much cash I have. So we can make this work. Versus, of course, hiring people that you’re making a commitment to that person, that they have continued employment. It’s a very different relationship. And I think with trying to balance the cash flow and the projects and everything else. I think I waited far too long to bring in other full time team members. Once I did it, it really dawned on me that you’re not just hiring full time people to take the workload. We’ve got too much work, so we just need more people. 

Andrew White 

But you’re bringing in all this different experience, all these different views, all these different backgrounds that can all contribute towards the business model, the marketing plan, the sales strategy, like all of these such critical aspects are now not just getting support from kind of advisors, which is obviously very important. But there’s people in there with you. And that coupled with that in the trenches together feeling when you have those kind of lows, that every entrepreneur has of, like, I’m running out of money. Should I have done this? I’m living in a basement. I’m selling chicken on Saturday. Like, what am I doing. To have someone else or multiple someone elses there with you. I think really helps through those periods as well. So for sure, we should have enhanced the team a couple of years sooner than we did. 

Patrick McGuire 

Wow. That’s a big statement. When you say a couple of years, that’s like, wow, we recognize that we could be so much more powerful. We could have been just more efficient or doing different things. But that also shows again, the humbleness to go. We did well, we did really well. We could have done better. And I love that. We could have done better. And then that’s going to go to the next one. We are going to do better and we’re going to do better than that and keep growing. 

Patrick McGuire 

Speaking of that, what’s the coolest or weirdest project you’ve ever worked on? 

Andrew White 

The coolest or weirdest? I mean, probably for the listeners, all of the projects we work on are relatively weird in their own ways. But I think as we continue to evolve the technology, what I’m most excited about now is how we’ve been able to further enhance our offering to not just make these carbon products, which again, have great value, but we’re also making gases. 

Andrew White 

And one of the gas we’re making is green hydrogen. And green hydrogen is getting a ton of market attention right now. And primarily, most sources of green hydrogen are from electrolysis. So you pass electricity through sort of water, splits off the water, hydrogen and oxygen into hydrogen and oxygen. We’re able to do it by reacting some of these carbons within our system. We found ways to enhance the operation to change how it’s operating temperatures, times, all these ingredients. Conceptually, it’s an oven. And we’ve come up with a new recipe that lets us make a lot more hydrogen. 

Andrew White 

And as that kind of hydrogen economy is growing, it’s pretty exciting to be right there, ready to go and ready to create it and have an alternative source. You’ve got limitations to the power grid, where and how much hydrogen you can make with electrolysis. Our limitation is how much residual materials are there and where are they? And sometimes there’s some overlap that you can do electrolysis or you could do high temperature paralysis. But sometimes there’s times where there’s a single power line going out there, not enough capacity to really run one of these electrolizers. But there’s a whole lot of biomass or bio solids or compost that we can turn into some cool rehydrogen. 

Andrew White 

So that’s probably at this point, I would say that the most interesting one. But you kind of look back and they’ve all been cool and interesting. Our last project with the steel industry, where we created a biocarbon that would replace coal in their blast furnaces so they can decarbonize. That was very cool and not too long ago. Back in March, we got an order for 1000 tonnes of this material that we call clean fire. So that was also very cool. 

Patrick McGuire 

1000 tonnes. Think about that. 1000 tonnes. That is an insane amount of what somebody might have thought was waste. So you guys have turned into something productive. 

Andrew White 

Absolutely. And to put 1000 times into a real concept, tractor trailer load is 40 tonnes. It’s only 40 tonnes. So if you do the math, it’s a lot of tractor trailers. That’s the coal that we’re letting stay in the ground and it’s not creating greenhouse gas emissions. So it’s all very cool. And as you can maybe tell, we might have to go to a new topic. Otherwise, I’m going to use up our time talking about how exciting this is. 

Patrick McGuire 

Absolutely. I know. And I do. And honestly, I could definitely continue to chat with you. And in fact, I’m going to I’m going to get you to do another conversation because this is a passionate area that a lot of people are getting into it. A lot of people need to understand that there are people like you and the CHAR Technologies team that are just as passionate, if not more. You’re leading the charge, not just in greater Toronto area, south central Ontario Canada, but globally. I mean, you’re working in California, projects you’re working in everywhere you get the chance. People are looking to CHAR Technologies as a leader. And that’s really exciting, knowing that your grassroots is sweeping cigarette butts, selling poultry and changing the world to green energy. I love it. 

Patrick McGuire 

Think back to the young Andrew. I know you’re still young, but what are three things that you would have told young Andrew before you started the entrepreneurial journey? 

Andrew White 

It’s interesting because it really was a debate. There was like a 50 50 shot that CHAR Technologies didn’t start. And coming out of chemical engineering at U of T, you get some pretty decent job offers for large firms and you pay off your student debt and you get benefits and retirement plans and your life is set. I guess I have the good fortune of working for a large engineering firm as part of a co-op and really realized that living my day to day life so I can set myself up for retirement, didn’t drive my passion. 

Andrew White 

And I’m not trying to be rude about people who do work in large engineering firms, it’s all about trade offs and what you’re passionate about. For me, I didn’t find passion there. So the kind of advice for young Andrew and young entrepreneurs in general is if it’s something that you’re passionate about, something that you see a market opportunity for and you’re thinking about doing it, the time to do it is now and test it out, particularly when you’re young, when you don’t have a lot of liabilities and expenses, mortgages and families to support and you can take a risk and when you have the opportunity to take a risk, go for it. 

Patrick McGuire 

Absolutely. I like that if you’re passionate go for it, thinking through things. How did you end up getting connected to RIC Centre? Was it a person? Was it an event? Why RIC? And how did you find us or we found you. 

Andrew White 

Yeah. Actually, it was kind of a series of fortunate events. So leaving U of T chem eng, I decided I could speak engineering, but I couldn’t really speak business yet. So I went to the University of Waterloo and they had a program called MBET, Masters of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology. So I enrolled in that. Great accelerated eight month program. And as part of that, our team. Fortunately, we had a business plan team that was working on my idea down to Ivey and competed in a business plan competition. 

Andrew White 

And we won that much to the chagrin of a few of the Ivey teams. But hey, here’s this MBET team beating all the MBAs, which was just awesome in its own right. But one of the judges was a guy by the name of Dennis Ensing, and Dennis was a volunteer advisor for TechAlliance in the London area. And so he knew one of the RIC volunteer advisors, James Sbrolla, who’s really the clean tech expert. 

Andrew White 

And Dennis said to James, I just judged this business competition. You got to meet Andrew. So I connect with James, drove back to Mississauga and got hooked up with RIC. And to kind of continue the story, James went from a volunteer adviser at the RIC Centre to a mentor to a friend to an investor to a business partner. There’s just so much that came out of my relationship with the RIC Centre besides the normal support, the access to funding all the great things that RIC does, but it really put us on such a phenomenal trajectory. 

Patrick McGuire 

There you have it, folks. I don’t have to say anything. Andrew said it better than I could. RIC is more than just a program. Thank you very much. And James is awesome. The guy is somewhat of a beast in his own nature and cares about people. He’s passionate about entrepreneurship and just general success. So that is really cool that you guys have such a strong bond and connection. I got one more question to ask you. Then we’ll sort of sign off, and then I’ve got a secret question I keep tucked away for the end. 

Patrick McGuire 

So prepare yourself. Thinking of what’s going on now, what is the future of the company? 

Andrew White 

I’m more excited than I’ve ever been about it. We’ve got these great projects where we’re making this biocoal we call CleanFyre for the steel industry. We’re down in California, turning anaerobic digestate compost into green hydrogen in that market and turning wood. We didn’t really talk about it too much in the podcast, but again, the exact same high temperature paralysis we can also make renewable natural gas out of wood and woody materials. And there’s just such an opportunity to find value from these residuals. And those opportunities just keep expanding drastically as the whole world moves towards being more and more environmentally conscious, more and more concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, more cognizant, especially larger firms about their ESG reporting, environment, social governance reporting, that a lot of people now look at before investing in firms, the opportunities are just expanding so fast. It’s very exciting. 

Patrick McGuire 

So you’d say your future is a bright green? Would I say that? 

Andrew White 

It’s a very bright green. 

Patrick McGuire 

Good. Well, on behalf of RIC and Startups Transformed, it’s fantastic talking with you. This is my last and final parting question. I like to ask everybody if I can. If you got the chance to do it all over again, would you do it? 

Andrew White 

No question, no question at all. And to be honest, there’s parts that get nostalgic for living in a basement apartment. Eating Mr. Noodles and Kraft dinner every night. So no hesitation on that one whatsoever. 

Patrick McGuire 

That’s awesome. And I didn’t expect you to say anything different. To be honest, you’re so driven. And if you’re out there sweeping cigarette butts and selling poultry and selling POS systems while you have meetings for CHAR Technologies, yeah you’d love the whole experience. I mean, the whole enchilada. So that is fantastic. Andrew, I really do appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. For anyone that wants to think about starting up something. If you’re passionate about it, just go for it and start that up. 

Patrick McGuire 

Check out RIC Centre [rebranded to Altitude Accelerator]. You can Google us. You can find us on LinkedIn. You’ll find us everywhere that great startups are happening. And maybe one day you’ll be the next CHAR. Or maybe you’ll be working with Andrew at CHAR Technologies that is. So Andrew, thank you so much for your time, my friend. This has been great. It’s been a pleasure. And I can’t wait to talk to you again. And I can’t wait to see all the cool stuff you guys are doing. Again. It’s a sexy environment, a sexy industry and a sexy business. And you’re the cool guy to make it happen. So thank you very much. 

Andrew White 

Awesome. Thanks, Patrick. It’s been great. And I look forward to our next chat. 

Patrick McGuire 

This has been a pleasure talking with Andrew White at CHAR Technologies and check them out. Visit their website, chartechnologies.com. See what they’re all about and how they’re changing the world one bio solid at a time. 

Patrick McGuire 

Thank you for joining us on Startups Transformed Podcast. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the conversation, a rating or review goes a long way, recommend the show to a friend. Find us at altitudexcelerator.com where we can help you begin your startup journey with access to our workshops, advisors and mentorship opportunities. Be sure to tune in for our next episode.