Hi, climate friends 👋 

Big news! The Climate Scout has already been read by thousands of climate founders, investors, talent and builders all over the world.

I’m amazed and grateful at how fast we’ve been able to grow this in such a short amount of time. Excited to see where we’ll be in a year of helping make meaningful connections for climate founders. Thank you for being part of this!

Today at a glance:

• Introducing Argyle Earth

• Business model, tech, traction and team

• Why do we need this now?

• How you can help them!

-  Angelica 💜

Featured Startup: Argyle Earth

📍 Headquarters

San Jose, California

⚙️ Technology

Low temperature heat (below 225C/450F) has been a tough nut to crack, many have tried, but written it off as economically unfeasible.

Argyle Earth leaned into that and tried to figure out if there are newer ways to tackle the challenges that have made low temperature waste heat so elusive. What they came up with was a sensing and control technology (applied to an organic Rankine cycle heat engine) that can identify the saturation state of the working fluid and adjust the flow to maintain a specific operating point in saturation.

Ultimately, this enables Argyle Earth to bypass the portion of the ORC that returns to a liquid state, where most of the efficiency losses occur.

💲 Business Model

Argyle Earth’s business model is an as-a-service model, where Argyle owns the units and customers pay only for the electricity they consume. This provides operational cost savings and improves overall energy efficiency, with no upfront capital investment.

The initial target market for this solution is food manufacturers, who have told Argyle Earth that cost savings are a top priority, for example, “even $30,000 in annual cost savings is worthwhile” (CEO of large California regional brewing company).

Key metrics for success include:

• Recurring revenue per customer per year (projected average is $45k)

• Internal payback period on deployed units (project 18-24 months)

• Customer savings annual savings (varies widely, but targeting greater than $25k per year)

🚀 Traction

• Total funding: $310,000

• Bootstrapped today, with some friends and family investment

• Developed partnerships with several regional hubs, such as:

  • NYSERDA

  • Cornell's COE for Food & Ag

  • Fresno State's WET Center

  • NM CERG

  • CMTC

  • Tech Futures 

• Developed relationships with Sandia National Lab and Southwest Research Institute to support technical development

💪 Founders

• Kristina McMillan, CEO:

  • 20 years of go-to-market experience, helping dozens of startups bring their tech to market

  • She helped launch a sales and marketing analyst firm that later sold to Gartner in 2019

• Christopher McMillan, Chief Technical Officer:

  • Hardware and systems engineer, with a background in electrical engineering

  • Spent 20 years developing hardware for Cisco, Samsung, and Apple, particularly power systems

💁🏻‍♀️ Why Now?

The waste heat to power (WHP) industry has been around for decades, but existing solutions (GE, Siemens) have focused on higher temperature applications, as is common in steel and cement manufacturing or power plants. Many of the existing ORC solutions are implemented to capture heat after the primary process is complete, but the ORC system then exhausts heat that is still 300-500F or greater.

This presents a significant opportunity for a solution to plug into the waste heat from the existing ORC systems and recover more of the energy for power production, increasing the overall energy efficiency of a facility and lowering the cost of electricity purchased from the grid.

The DOE estimates that 20-50% of all industrial energy inputs end up as waste heat, and 70% of that is low temperature. That represents roughly 15 gigawatts of clean electricity that we are not utilizing today.

⚡️ How Can the Community Help?

💸 Investors

Argyle Earth is looking to connect with investors who are passionate about deep tech and bringing innovative hardware solutions to market that benefit climate.

 👨‍💼👩‍💼 Advisors

Argyle Earth is looking for technical resources to help accelerate their technical development efforts.

💡 How Can I Help?

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