Inevitable (MCJ Podcast)

Episode: Alex Blumberg on Turning Buildings into Grid Assets with DaisyChain Energy

Host: Cody Simms
Guest: Alex Blumberg, CEO, DaisyChain Energy
Release Date: April 1, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Cody Simms reconnects with Alex Blumberg, well-known for co-founding Gimlet Media and co-creating Planet Money. Now CEO of DaisyChain Energy, Alex shares how his journey through climate podcasting led him to tackle grid stress through innovative solutions for buildings. The conversation digs into DaisyChain's business model: converting apartment buildings and hospital campuses into flexible grid assets via real-time monitoring and energy economics that create instant financial value alongside decarbonization.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Alex’s Path from Podcasting to Climate Entrepreneurship

• Background:
  • Transitioned from media/podcasting (Planet Money, How to Save a Planet) to tech entrepreneurship in climate.
  • Key realization from "How to Save a Planet": climate solutions exist and much heavy lifting must come from the private sector.
• On entrepreneurial lessons:
  • “It's such a unique educational experience, starting and scaling and selling a company, and the things you learn along that way are so hard to access any other way.” (04:00, Alex)

2. The Challenges of Decarbonizing the Built Environment

• Fragmented incentives:
  • Building owners, tenants, and utilities have misaligned or opaque incentives.
  • Regulatory complexity, especially in multifamily apartments and condo/co-op settings, is a barrier to coordinated action.
  • Example: NYC’s Local Law 97 introduces fines for non-compliance; public letter grades for buildings act as climate “shaming” signals.
• On the disconnect:
  • “You're on the hook for all your energy consumption, but you don't know what your energy consumption is because you don't actually see it.” (12:12, Alex)

3. The Problem with Conventional Retrofit Economics

• Most impactful carbon reductions (e.g., replacing fossil boilers with electrified heat) typically have the longest paybacks (20+ years).
• Low-impact improvements pay off quickly but don’t move the carbon needle.
• Quote:
  • “The single act that you can take that has the biggest carbon benefit is to replace the fossil heat … but the payback is 20 years. And that's just not gonna happen.” (15:20, Alex)

4. DaisyChain’s Solution: Submetering, Rate Arbitrage & Real-Time Data

• How it works:
  • Converts direct-metered buildings to a “master plus submetering” approach: installs master meter for the building, submeters for residents.
  • Residents pay their bills through the building/management, not utility; rates are unchanged.
  • Buildings pay a lower, bulk (commercial) rate, capturing the delta as new cash flow—true rate arbitrage.
  • Real-time energy usage insight enables better decision making for upgrades and operations.
• Quote:
  • “They buy in bulk from the utility and sell it retail to the residents and they keep the difference.” (17:30, Alex)

5. Aligning Incentives for Decarbonization

• DaisyChain isn’t positioned as a “green premium” product. Instead, it’s a financial no-brainer for building owners.
• Ideal customers are entities (e.g., large portfolios, management companies) with a latent or emerging need/worry around electrification.
• “Decarbonization isn’t the reason to adopt DaisyChain, but … it helps you with those decarbonization challenges.” (21:08, Cody)

6. Unlocking Demand Response and DER Integration

• Load aggregation:
  • Aggregating resident loads behind a master meter turns the building into a flexible, grid-responsive asset.
  • Gives access to new revenue via demand response and distributed energy resource (DER) participation (e.g., batteries, EV chargers).
• Software & control:
  • DaisyChain helps buildings monitor peaks, optimally control loads (common areas, behavioral nudges, DERs), and broaden their profit margin.
  • “We can shape that load, we can shave the peak, and then we can sort of widen that margin…” (24:08, Alex)
• Behavioral & technical flexibility:
  • Residents can receive prompts during peak events, and buildings can directly curtail or operate specific systems for grid events.

7. Unexpected Expansion: Hospital Networks and Power Quality Monitoring

• DaisyChain’s model also addresses high-stakes reliability and monitoring for hospitals (e.g., Northwell Health), solving issues around backup power systems tripping due to invisible grid events.
• Advanced metering at millisecond resolution helps diagnose events and optimize backup systems, soon expanding to all Northwell campuses.
• Hospital incentive:
  • “For the hospitals, we protect revenue by protecting against these events which are gonna sort of threaten your revenue.” (31:05, Alex)

8. The Integration and Control Layer for the Built Environment

• DaisyChain seeks to become the “integration and control layer of electrification for the built environment,” enabling assets to act as distributed, flexible, grid-supporting resources.
• Realizes the long-held vision where the built environment can “absorb” grid peaks, reducing the need for costly over-building.
• Quote:
  • “The big problem with the electric grid is that it's built sort of on a parking lot model...With technology, we can say to electrons, stay home or come from a battery or you don't need to tap into the grid.” (35:01, Alex)

9. Market Growth and Vision

• Current state:
  • Over two dozen buildings, 1,200 units under management, poised to double.
• Future:
  • As building electrification tech matures and DaisyChain’s integration expands, buildings become active, managed nodes on the grid, accelerating affordable, systemic decarbonization.

10. Reflections & Advice

• Entrepreneurship remains a “school of hard knocks.”
• “You just gotta jump in...That's just part of starting a company. You got to go through that stuff because that's how you learn what you should and shouldn't do.” (37:59, Alex)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On incentive misalignment in buildings:

  • “We, the board, don't have much that we can tell residents about how they should be or should not be consuming electricity. And in many cases we don't even know because the residents are paying directly to the utility.” (10:07, Alex)

• On DaisyChain’s advantage:

  • “It's giving them the ability to have...a cash flow positive operating business and some, I assume multi year, but not 177 year, maybe 2 to 5 year payback period on the hardware. It's speaking in the language that building managers and building owners understand.” (18:38, Cody)

• On being an accidental repeat entrepreneur:

  • “I cannot believe I'm a repeat entrepreneur. I cannot believe it.” (04:30, Alex)

• On grid impact:

  • “That's the beautiful dream...as other solutions start to scale...we're moving further and further in the direction of that beautiful world. And that's a great world. It's a world where you don't have to build as much generation because you can control your peaks.” (36:47, Alex)

Key Timestamps

• 03:36 – Alex on lessons from building and selling Gimlet
• 06:16 – Choosing the built environment despite its complexity
• 09:51 – How emissions responsibility is assigned in buildings
• 12:54 – Consultant reports, paybacks, broken incentive structures
• 15:53 – DaisyChain’s core business model (submetering, master meters, rate arbitrage)
• 17:59 – Real-time building data and new cash flow
• 22:37 – DER integration and grid flexibility use cases
• 27:20 – Expansion to hospitals and the power quality market
• 31:05 – Distinct value propositions for multifamily vs. hospitals
• 35:01 – How DaisyChain enables the distributed, flexible grid
• 37:59 – Alex’s advice to aspiring founders

Summary Takeaways

• DaisyChain Energy aims to make decarbonization the default, profitable decision for building owners by solving data and incentive gaps through submetering and rate arbitrage.
• Once core data infrastructure is in place, buildings become assets for the grid, unlock multiple new value streams (rate arbitrage, demand response, DER revenue), and can flexibly install new technologies as they become financially sensible.
• The company’s vision extends beyond multifamily housing, with successful deployments in hospitals facing power quality and grid reliability issues.
• DaisyChain represents a crucial, scalable layer in the transformation of buildings from passive energy consumers to responsive, integrated grid resources.