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- [00:01]
A
I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don't freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion.
- [00:14]
B
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump into today's episode. Our guest today is Harun Enam, CEO of DG Matrix. Harun, thanks for being here.
- [00:53]
A
Thanks very much, Brett. Pleasure to be here.
- [00:55]
B
I'm sure every day in your world is busy, but today has to be a very, very busy day. You just announced a $60 million round, so thanks for taking the time to speak with us on such.
- [01:04]
A
Thanks, Brett. As you know, it takes a lot to close around like this and the celebration is short lived as you face the challenges of tomorrow very quickly.
- [01:13]
B
Then we're going to get all into it and all of the details about what's coming next. But let's maybe take a step back. Let's talk about what the company does. So imagine you're on a flight, you have a chatty person next to you and they sit down and they say, so what do you do? How do you explain what the company does in simple terms?
- [01:28]
A
Very simple. Power is power. Those that have electric power will get to superhuman intelligence first. The United States doesn't have enough juice. And the best way to power up AI data centers is add sources behind the meter to add power more quickly than utilities can. We have hands down the best behind the meter architecture for combining multiple AC and DC sources to provide that power to AI data centers in a nutshell is what DG Matrix does. We didn't start out this way. We actually started building the same capability for fleet electrification because we were advised by our consultants that'll be a big market. And that's before AI data centers came along. And one day we got a call from a famous company that makes GPUs and chips for AI and they said, have you thought about adapting your architecture data centers? And that was almost two years ago. And now we're collaborating with them and a number of other significant channel partners to enter the data center market with a record amount of products.
- [02:32]
B
What happened to that other product line? Did you have to shut that down completely and go all in and focus here?
- [02:38]
A
No, Brett, we were courting customers for a couple of years. We were running pilots with some of them. There are nine figure deals on the table and we classified that as a general electrification market. And we're not going to abandon our customers. It may be smaller volume right now, but we believe over time it's going to grow as the world doesn't have enough power and in a cellular fashion, we can add more cellular power to the grid than the grid can. And so we're not going to abandon electrification. But today data centers is 80, 90% of the focus with a platform that can do both without changes.
- [03:17]
B
Let's maybe take a step back and also just talk about the problem. So I want to pull the language from your website. So the language says legacy power infrastructure can't keep up with the demands for AI and electrification. Talk to us about why that is.
- [03:29]
A
I think the biggest problem is that transmission lines, distribution lines, are limited in how much power they can carry to a certain site. And the demands for AI data centers in terms of power far bigger than what utilities can deliver at spots where the data centers are located are going to be located. Secondly, you've got inside the data center multiple racks where they stack up servers. And these servers are operated in parallel modular fashion. Well, each rack is going from 6, 8 kilowatts to a megawatt over the next couple of years. And as that happens, we are facing unprecedented density in the data center of power. The grid is the constraint. So I think the data centers cannot get power from the grid and that's what's created an opportunity from behind the meter power.
- [04:18]
B
I feel like there's a lot of discussions taking place right now with the energy consumption of AI data centers. What's real, what's not. I read mixed things online.
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, I think there's a big question of how big of a bubble is the AI data center market. But if you are a daily user of AI and you see the amount of work that is now getting done by machines, electricity in, knowledge out, it is staggering. And the AI pundits are saying this is a fraction of what's about to come in the next five or 10 years. So even if it is a bubble of some sort, demand is going to be monstrous. As you look at global GDP, what is it? 100 trillion to use Nvidia CEOs numbers. 20% of that is services. 20 trillion a year. So it's going to be a massive infrastructure spend to replace or augment those services business for 20 trillion. And we're not even close to the amount of expenditures needed to get the AI world to that level.
- [05:21]
B
How do you think about navigating this political landscape? When I see things like, I think it was Bernie Sanders calling for a demand to end construction of new AI data centers, how do you think about, as the leader of this organization, how do you navigate this type of climate and this type of world?
- [05:36]
A
Brett, we deliberately stay apolitical. We don't want to be associated with Democrats or Republicans. We want to be associated with the American way of doing things, bringing American exceptionalism, American entrepreneurialism and American creativity. That both the founders here are immigrants to the United States and both of us have learned this and that's what we want to do and that's how we do it. Now, if a certain party has issues with all the noise that data centers are creating around communities, then you know, we've got to solve that problem. You can't go and disrupt somebody's neighborhood because you want to put a data center in. So they have valid concerns that need to be solved. But you might find the cure for cancer, you might find replaceable human parts, you might find 200 other protein based cures that come out of AI. You can't stop that progress. So there will be some ups and downs that we have to cater to and adjust. But look at what it's going to do for the human race.
- [06:37]
B
This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. Years ago, I worked with a industrial scale bitcoin mining and they were doing very, very big, big, big projects. And they were, you know, very active in trying to, I don't want to say push for legislation. They were really spending their time to try to clear up misconceptions and that was their belief that if there was negative regulation that was going to come, it was because people were just misinformed and they weren't educated in you know, the mechanics of how it all works. Do you view that as something that is a responsibility for the company as well, is to go out there and educate and evangelize and make sure that everything's all clear and there's no confusion?
- [07:38]
A
Absolutely. I think you have to point out why you are a better solution. You also have to point out why getting to better intelligence should be something that benefits the whole human race. And I think quite frankly you have to evangelize that you can do this with far less materials and far less burden on the planet or for the same materials you can get 5 to 10x more bang for the buck. And absolutely you have to do is education and the smarter people who understand that at the end of the day the green in clean tech is the profit will bring them because we're doing things with less material in a more efficient manner. Because you put that green in clean tech and holy geez, you stand back and let economics and physics drive the growth. That's the way to do it.
- [08:25]
B
Now from a go to market perspective, could you unpack that for us? How are you bringing this technology to market?
- [08:31]
A
Well, we have of course early on segmented that hey, we'll go after the large customers ourselves because we want that close relationship. And we thought we would also have channel partners that would carry us to a lot of small and medium customers. What we didn't realize was that a lot of large customers have large orders to give and we won't have a balance sheet that'll allow us to take an order like that. Not in their eyes. So we then have to adjust where we find channel partners to carry the orders on their books. So today we're talking with multiple very large electrification conglomerates, some of whom may or may not be investors in us. Today ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are investors in us and and so let's say in the future they end up carrying our product. That would give us a lot of credibility because they have gangs of PhDs and engineers to vet this out, but they also have global fleets of people to deploy this everywhere and to service it everywhere. So that has become very important for large customers for us. And meanwhile we're working with engineering, procurement and construction firms. We've recently signed a deal with PowerSecure, a billion plus dollar division of Southern Company to roll out micro grids all over the United States. So we're pursuing a multi pronged strategy for going to market.
- [09:47]
B
Any lessons learned so far on that go to market strategy?
- [09:51]
A
Yeah, when you think you know something, you might not listen to your customers and solve their objections. My way of closing deals, Brett, is very simple. I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don't freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion. And if there's a need, you'll get the order.
- [10:14]
B
What are the most common objections that you're coming across right now in the field?
- [10:17]
A
I think the biggest ones we have when people come and see our product working and they go, good God, this is 10 to 15% of the size of legacy. This is the best behind the meter solution. Have you deployed a gigawatt anywhere? We're like, no, we haven't deployed a gigawatt. We might have deployed a couple of megawatts, but we're not there yet. So the objection is how do we know you'll be able to scale? Or how do we know that you have built a reliability into the product? And I think that's an objection we'll have to solve by showing that the type of work we've done in aerospace in the past where we've developed power electronics based jet engine starters for Boeing aircraft or for military aircraft or whatever, and the care we took, we have to show them the pedigree of our screening that we do in the supply chain, but we'll also have to show them field results and how we solve problems real fast. That whole being able to scale reliably is going to be something we have to answer very well. And the second part that we have to answer is the bankability and insurability. So we're working on that by allowing white labeling of our product with large international conglomerates. But we're also exploring special deals through our VCs that have focused on this sort of a problem before and Clean Energy Ventures has and they're helping us take this out with the right shores and the right banks to cross that chasm.
- [11:35]
B
Any learning so far as you've made that push on the banking and the insurance side?
- [11:39]
A
Excellent to have all the documentation in place. Make sure you have your cybersecurity thought out from day zero. Because if you're supplying something for energy security, you can't have third party actors hack into it.
- [11:55]
C
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- [12:14]
B
co. What's next for you, if you think about the year ahead? So we're two months into 2026, just raised some fresh capital. What's the plan for 2026? What's coming?
- [12:23]
A
Well, I think I'm trying to organize a celebration for all of our partners and customers, but that might be two hours. What's coming is intensive visits with customers. Make sure we understand what they're looking for. As we're looking at a record ramp the number of orders that are in the hundreds of megawatts to multiple gigawatts. It's significant. And so meeting the customers, understanding the needs, and that's one thing that's coming in a much bigger way. And the second thing, Brett, that keeps me up at night is how hard are we running our team? How many people are in the red zone? How long will they stay there? How do we not burn them out? How do we take care of the time that they need to take out for their families? Because let's face it, life is short, and not everybody wants to spend it working for behind the Meter Power Solutions.
- [13:14]
B
And what do you do when you do see that the team is burnt out, that they're in the red zone? Do you give us some days off or how do you work around that?
- [13:20]
A
Yeah. By the way, inside DG Matrix, on many disciplines that are constrained, we run 24, 7, but it's not the same team. It's three different shifts, and it's people that work five days a week and eight to 10 to 12 hours a day. But we make sure that they take holidays off. We make sure that we provide family benefits for them that are up to par. And when we see somebody getting burnt out, we encourage them to take extra days off. There are some people here who come to work every Saturday and Sunday, and I can't convince them to go home, but I try to. Right. So they don't burn out. But we do want people to have a normal life because we think when they come to work happy and rested up, they'll be far more productive than if they're working without adequate sleep and adequate health.
- [14:05]
B
You touched on deals a little bit there for you. What's the average deal size? It has to be just massive, massive deals that you're talking about.
- [14:12]
A
I mean, as we look at getting over this, getting through the pilots, the average deal size is anywhere from 50 to, to a few hundred million dollars. And there's multiple deals in the pipeline like that. The question for us is how quickly will we be able to Scale to a billion dollars in revenue in a stable fashion with reliable product. But the deals are massive because of AI data centers and the need for electrification.
- [14:39]
B
What's the best guess or prediction there on when you'll be able to hit a billion?
- [14:43]
A
I think there are multiple scenarios and it's conceivable we hit it in four years. It's conceivable it takes six, seven years. It'll be tougher to do it in two, three years. But some people are telling us that we could be the reference architecture for AI data centers. In that case we better be ramping up multiple cms and we better be looking at licensing deals with large companies to carry this product to market in different ways.
- [15:09]
B
What's the anatomy of a deal that big? You know, let's look at a just $100 million deal or a few hundred million dollars deals. Can you unpack that for us of what that would even look like?
- [15:17]
A
Well, it doesn't start off where somebody says, hey, let me give you a wire deposit of 50 million into your account. It's mostly starts off in a way like do you really have this? And so there's some disbelief that you have to overcome. You have to show them the product, you have to show them that you have a team that can support them. You have to show them the financing, you have to show them the operational pedigree that your team brings to the table, the engineering depth. You have to show them a very clean legal structure of doing deals. And then you have to have a framework of technical and commercial risk mitigation that they can accept. And with all those things on the table, then you work through, let's do the pilots, let's do a crawl walk, run, and let's make sure that we can go through how we ramp up after that with you. And you also have to have an excellent process for solving field issues in a very fast fashion. And if you don't, you're not going to get follow on deals.
- [16:12]
B
Now, final question for you. You've touched on it a little bit, but let's talk about the picture vision. So we can go out however far out you want to go. We can go 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. What's the big picture vision for everything that you and the team are building?
- [16:24]
A
I think cellular power or distributed power is the way to go. The model of centralized power flow that was created 100 plus years ago where main generators supply power in a unidirectional radio fashion is not going to serve us in the future. In the United States. It's not going to serve us in the developing world either. Nobody wants to build a hundred million dollar trans to power up a village of 2,000 people. But you can put $2 million into creating hospitals and clinics and industry for a village with 2,000 people. I think the future calls for cellular power. What cellular telephony did to plain old telephone service. I think that's what a solution like ours can do for electrification in the world. And that's what I see becoming more prevalent. Bring your own power, make your own energy far cleaner and far more economical. Far more financially feasible.
- [17:17]
B
Amazing. Love it. Love what you're building. Before we wrap, for anyone listening in that wants to follow along with you, where should we send them?
- [17:23]
A
Send them to dg matrix.com. there's a new branding we've gone through. If you look at our logo, dg, you can turn it upside down, but it's a play on a symbol of infinity. So we call it the infinite grid. One that you can expand cellularly to however far you want to go. But dgmatrix.com and it has our contact information or you can reach one of us through LinkedIn. We try to be very responsive.
- [17:47]
B
I'll be anxiously waiting for my branded hat to come with the logo. Awesome. Awesome logo.
- [17:52]
A
Brad, it'll be our pleasure to send you a branded hat.
- [17:55]
B
Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it.
- [17:57]
A
Thank you very much. Have a good afternoon. Thank you.
- [18:01]
B
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO where you'll find a library of more than 50, 1400 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders, where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO Podcast as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.