Somehow, Michael Rigney always knew he wanted to work in the climate and energy space. So he studied engineering, but then wasn’t sure what the path would be. What he did know is that he wasn’t afraid of working hard or trying things. Find out how sometimes the journeys that create the most meaningful things are the long ones.
Somehow, Michael Rigney always knew he wanted to work in the climate and energy space. So he studied engineering, but then wasn’t sure what the path would be. He figured the business side of that world would likely make the most sense for him, so he started out in consulting. But he was drawn to a life that would get him closer to the heart of things. In taking an early opportunity to start a business with his brother, the entrepreneurial bug bit him and after business school he worked in various start-up environments in a variety of fields. All the while, he worked on balancing his natural intensity with units of happiness and ultimately weaved all his experiences into a start-up of his own.
In this episode, find out from Michael how many times the journeys that create the most meaningful things are the long ones …on Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest// Michael Rigney is a serial entrepreneur and current CEO and co-founder of Cala Systems, makers of the world's first intelligent heat pump water heater for the residential market. The new company is the culmination of his decades of leadership experience in climate and energy start-ups combined with a background in building products and in thermal sciences.
Michael Rigney: I think one thing it's taken me a while to learn is that the journeys that create the most value, the most meaningful things, they're long. They're long journeys. And whether that's parenthood or marriage or building a company, building a career. So, it is really important to enjoy the different steps, enjoy the journey, and enjoy the activities that take place along the way.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Somehow, Michael Rigney always knew he wanted to work in the climate and energy space. So he studied engineering, but then wasn’t sure what the path would look like. What he did know is that he wasn’t afraid of working hard or trying things. Find out how sometimes the journeys that create the most meaningful things are the long ones…on today’s Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Michael Rigney and we are going to talk about the roads you get on for a good long while and the ways that even straight paths sometimes feel all over the place and yet go in the right places. So thanks so much for being here finally and talking to me and our audience today.
MR: You're welcome Leslie, it's a pleasure to be here.
LJR: So, Michael, when I sit down with someone for the first time, I ask two questions and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
MR: Yeah, no, thanks for these questions, Leslie. And I knew they were coming, so I was able to give them some thought, because I've enjoyed listening to the show, and so it's a real pleasure to be here. I'll start with who I was, I think, as I came into college. I'm one of a big family. I'm one of six kids, and I think that that's really shaped who I am, three older brothers, two younger sisters, and then sort of a child of New England, if you will. I think that in ways that I didn't understand when I was younger, I think that shaped who I am, you know, what I love. So I think I brought those two things with me to Dartmouth.
LJR: More than just the Red Sox.
MR: More than just the Red, yeah, more than just the Red Sox. Outlook on life, sort of, you know, love of this part of the country, love of being outdoors.
And then in terms of who was I at Dartmouth, I was a student. I was an engineering major. I really enjoyed taking philosophy and history as well. But I took my studies pretty seriously. I was a runner, played some rugby as well during my five years because I was at the engineering school for the fifth year. And those were two really big activities for me. I was fortunate enough to develop a close group of friends that I'm close with, you know, still remain close with today. It's a big part of, of my life as well. I had my first romantic relationship, you know, during those four years, as many of us did. And I think any description of who I was at Dartmouth would be incomplete if—and I say this with something of a chuckle—if I didn't, you know, use the word intense. Because that's probably the word that has been most consistently applied to me my whole life. So, I, in preparation for this, I reached out to, you know, my college friends, and I said, Hey, I'm talking with Leslie tomorrow. Like, help me unpack that. What is that? And so I would coalesce or summarize the feedback that came back in response to this as, you know, a combination of a willingness to work hard, high expectations for myself, and along that with others, an ability to focus, and probably a dollop of earnestness that goes in with it, too, in how I tend to approach things. So, you know, that was definitely true there, and it's probably continued to be true thereafter as well.
LJR: I love that, Michael, because so much of what we know about memory is we reconstruct it. And sometimes it's on the mark, and sometimes it isn't. But when you were getting multiple inputs from your friends, you know, either we're all making it up, but how are we making it up in the same way? Or we're remembering kind of those core things about our friends and our loved ones that are kind of just true. And it sounds like that is the core of who you were, and I would probably contend still are on some level. I hope the intensity is just shaped by other things at this point, but we'll get there.
MR: We will get there. And I think, I think that's, I think that's right. I think that's been a significant part of the journey for me. Yeah.
LJR: Good. Okay. So you bring this intensity to the running, the engineering, the relationships, the all of it, and you get that extra year of finishing up the engineering degree. Where does that set you off and how do you see yourself as you're going and where does it lead you?
MR: Let me start by answering the questions you formulated originally. Who did I think that I'd become? At least from a professional perspective, I thought that I would work in climate and energy. And that was part of why I studied engineering, why I chose to study mechanical engineering specifically. I always knew that I wanted to work in that space. And as I came towards the end of college, I think that I wasn't sure how to get into it, frankly. I mean, I remember senior year, sort of sending out letters to companies. And I recognize now, you know, as an adult who has done, like many of us have, independent job searches, I look back and I recognize that I didn't really have the wherewithal to go and do that, to get that…you know, to, I didn't understand what that process would take. Probably had some sense of imposter syndrome. So I didn't find my way into the energy and climate field right away. And frankly, it's not clear that there was much of a climate field back in, like, 97, 96, when, you know, when I was, when we, rather, were graduating from college.
But I knew that that's where I wanted to go. More immediately, as I was coming out of college, I had an awareness that maybe I didn't want to go and directly be an engineer. I knew I wanted to work in technical fields, you know, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a hands-on engineer. And I think that there are two reasons for that. One was I was happiest at Dartmouth when I had two engineering classes and a third class that was something else, you know. It was either history or philosophy for me in general. And then I also knew via family relationships—I had an uncle who was an engineer at GE in really complex fields. And I knew via my father that he felt disappointment when things that he had worked on were just cancelled for business reasons. And I had this awareness of, Hey, I think I'd rather be on the other side of that decision making process, you know. I don't want to, I was like, I don't really want to be on the receiving end of working on something for three to five years and have someone come in and say, well, you know, it's not going forward.
And so ultimately that pulled me in more of a business direction. And I ended up getting an internship after senior year at Monitor Company, at a consulting firm. And did that for the summer, came back and got the Bachelor of Engineering degree. And then ultimately did go to Monitor in Boston after I graduated in 97.
And was living, living with a crew of Dartmouth guys at the time on Newbury Street and then out in Brookline. And professionally, it was good and bad. And it was, not bad actually, I'll explain what I mean by that. It was great training. In what is good analytics look like in business? What is good thinking look like in business? How do you comport yourself when you're meeting with a client and you're 15 years younger than them? How do you successfully complete your own work and then pick your head up and take a broader view around The organization and the work being done and say, Oh, that's interesting. And that's important. Let me go and do that. And if everyone on a team does that, then anyone, everyone is able to rise together to a higher level of performance. And so there are lessons that I took away from that, that I've carried with me throughout my whole career.
But I also learned two things. One was that I didn't feel emotionally connected to, you know, a consulting project for X, Y, Z company. I did want to have just an additional dimension to my work. I knew that going in and it, you know, feeds back to what we talked about before about ultimately wanting to end up in the climate and energy related fields, you know, to get at climate change. And then I didn't like handing off the report. You know, for me, it was like, hey, if we think this is the answer to the business problem, I wanted to stick around and be a part of implementing, you know, the solution, which is a great indicator that someone should be in an operating company and not in a professional services environment, right? You just need to, you need to go over to the other side of the table and just be at a company, right? And so that was a much better fit for me.
LJR: How long did that insight take to build?
MR: Less than a year.
LJR: Oh, wow, ok.
MR: Yeah, I mean, I knew that pretty soon. Yeah, and I didn't stay for two years. So I was sitting there in the summer of probably 98, you know, disaffected. You know, being like, ah, I don't really enjoy this. And you're working long hours. And I remember reading a newspaper article about wildfires, actually. And I sat there at my desk, and I realized, huh, I want to do that. That may sound completely out of the blue and crazy, but in my family it's not. Like, three of my siblings led Outward Bound trips in their 20s, and, you know, one wrote a novel when he graduated from college. So doing something non-traditional upon leaving college was more the norm actually from within my family than not. And in fact, it was the norm. And I was the black sheep I went and got a job. And so I remember going and visiting, well, let me back up. Cause I think these were important sort of steps for me.
So I was like, Oh, I want to do that. And then. Probably, you know, I mulled that over and I realized, well, there's nothing preventing me from doing that, right? Like I don't have a lot of obligations. And then the third thing that hit me was like, huh, if I want to do that and there's nothing preventing me from doing that and I don't do that, well, what does that say about me? And that sort of, that sort of weighed on me and I was like, huh that feels important and I need to work through that. And I went and visited a childhood friend who was in medical school at the time and talked this all out with him. And he just looked at me and he said, Hey, Michael, you just need to say it out loud.
So I said, I'm going to leave Monitor at the end of the year. A huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It was really great. And I went back and I, you know, I told my advisors and managers that I was going to leave at the end of the year. And it was fun to tell them that I was going to leave and go be a firefighter because I'm not sure anyone else ever left Monitor company to go be a wilderness firefighter.
So that was fun. So I left and traveled in Asia with Dan Kalafatas and Chris McGee for six weeks and then I…
LJR: We've heard the story before, so I don't want to get into those details.
MR: Sure sure. Yeah, yeah, and then…So anyway, so I left Boston, so it was the beginning of 99, came back from that trip in Asia, and went out west. Found my way to Bend, Oregon, where I was a wilderness firefighter for the summer. It was a great experience, just really broadening. It's just hard work. You're outside. And I think that there were more people on my firefighting crew who had gone to prison than who had gone to college. And so it was a real introduction to just the breadth of the world.
I enjoyed that a lot. It was an experience that really stretched me in numerous ways. And towards the end of the summer, as I started to pick my head up and think about what I would do next, I got a call from a brother of mine. Brian is his name and he was starting a company and he asked me to come and join him and do that. I thought what he was doing was promising and so, you know, got in my truck at the time and drove back to Portland, Maine, where we started a company called Blue Tarp Financial. My siblings and I had painted houses, done some decks too, but primarily painted houses in the summers. And so I was familiar with the trades. And the concepts around the company was a credit card that tracked information better and managed the flow of dollars in a more efficient manner for the supply houses, you know, your lumber yards, your paint supply houses, et cetera.
So we launched that. We were successful ultimately at the very last in raising some money. And we got that company off the ground. And I was there in Portland for about three years. And along the way or towards the end, you know, towards the second half of that time, you know, what I realized was I don't want to be in the credit card space. I don't want to be in sort of the construction space. And I did feel this pull to get back to something that was more mission driven for me that, you know, ultimately again, to finally find my way into climate and energy. I say, finally, as if it's a long time, you know, I was in my twenties. It was probably, you know, I don't know, mid twenties at that point. So I applied to business school both to make that transition and because I could see the benefit at that point in everything that we were sort of teaching ourselves and learning at this company, I was like, you know, it'd be kind of nice to learn from someone else as opposed to figuring it out on the fly all the time. And so ended up going to Stanford in 2002. It was great for me to live in a different part of the country. And so, headed out to Palo Alto for two years and really enjoyed that. Met a terrific group of people. In some ways, really similar to Dartmouth culture. In some ways, different of course. Different stage of life and all that. And I did successfully use that as a transition to working in climate and energy. I finished it and this time I did successfully sort of see through that individual job search, which I had not at the end of college.
And I landed at a place called EnerNOC And EnerNOC 's actually a Dartmouth company. And the founders, one founder is Dartmouth and Tuck, the other one is Tuck. So it's a, perhaps more accurately, it's a Tuck company. And what EnerNOC did was enroll commercial and industrial customers in programs that allowed them to participate productively in how the electric grid operates. And this allows for the electric grid to be much more efficient, particularly on really hot summer days, when your dirtiest, oldest power plants are going to run. So you effectively tell these sites to, you know, turn something off rather than turning on the power plant. Because the electric grid doesn't care, right? It's very important to balance it, but you can balance it on either side of the equation, which is the elegance and insight of this field, which is called demand response. So I joined that really early. I was about employee number 27. And that did really, really well. You know, the company grew to about 500 people that went public in 2007 and it allowed me, you know, that type of growth at the company level afforded me the opportunity to learn and grow professionally as well, which is great. And during that time while there, learned a lot about sales, about being a sales manager and ultimately moved over to a marketing role as well. So it was commercially focused. I knew when I came out of business school, I wanted to work functionally in those areas and was able to do that and to learn quite a bit.
I started in San Francisco and moved to New York and really enjoyed living in New York. I hadn't lived in New York in my 20s, unlike many of our classmates. And so really enjoyed and still enjoy the energy of the city. But I think it's also worth sort of taking a turn into like the personal side because I think for me an important thing that happened while I was at New York was and this probably relates back to the, you know, the intensity that we were talking about at the outset, Leslie, is…while I was there, I sort of had this realization: I was like, you know, I don't think I'm all that happy. And I thought about what does that mean and why is that? And what I realized is: maybe a useful way to define happiness or a practical way to define happiness is just an accumulation of moments where you're actually happy like where you're truly actually happy in the present moment. You know, whatever way that may be. You know, that may being feeling contented. It might be you know, enjoying being with friends family, whatever. You know, obviously there are many different instantiations of happiness. And I realized that I did not think at the time that I was really good at identifying what would make me happy and then doing it, right? And it's really simple to break down, but I think for me it was hard at the time. Just the idea of fully surfacing and then taking action upon that. And so in like incredibly nerdy fashion, I made a spreadsheet and I gamified my life to help myself identify, you know, individual things that would make myself happy. I tracked it and I did that for a couple of years. And then I put that down because I think that doing it had helped me to sort of grow the muscle, so to speak, of being better at it. So I was able to put it down. Folks in our class who took any philosophy classes will perhaps have a chuckle that I essentialized this nerdy spreadsheet. Going for a run, which was like a very normal thing for me to do, I assigned that to be one point. So for anyone who studied, like, you know, utilitarianism, like one util was one run, and then everything else was sort of scaled off of that, because that was sort of a way for me to understand different, different projects in my life, or different, different actions.
LJR: I'm wondering what my util is. I think it might be bowls of ice cream.
MR: Bowls of ice cream. Yeah, totally. Exactly. So you would get a bowl of ice cream, and then you can scale everything according to what's a bowl of ice cream. But this actually was really, you know, as…I'm very self conscious talking about this…It was very nerdy, but it worked for me. And so here, like a good example of this is—and this is a little bit similar to the firefighting thing—I was like, huh. I think I've always been intrigued by the idea of owning and riding a motorcycle. And it's like, okay, well, I mean, that's a lot of points. It turns out it's actually, it's actually quite a bit of work to get your license, get the training, get the motorcycle, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so, so I broke that down into like a bunch of different steps. And, you know, it's assigned a whole slew of points. And then I was like, oh, it's great. And I finally got it.
LJR: But were they all positive?
MR: Yeah, I didn't, I decided not to have any negative points in the spreadsheet at all. No negatives at all. It was just positive.
LJR: But see, Michael, I think that actually speaks to your intensity thing. Because I think a lot of people would think about all those little steps that you need to take to get to the thing and the thing or the experience of having the thing or doing the thing is that which gives you your utiles. But all the other is like oh god I have to sit and take a test and I have to learn and I have to put together and I have to raise the money and I have to do…like those are negatively, almost sucking things. But for you, like you're like, oh no, they're additive because they're part of the thing. But I think only a very either an intense person or someone who looks at the whole package rather than this discreet endpoint…Like you're a journey person as much as you are a destination kind of person?
MR: Mm hmm I think, I think that I aspire to be is actually probably the answer. I think a theme of learning for me is that, is, you know, enjoying the journey and making sure that I enjoy the journey along the way. I think one thing it's taken me a while to learn is that the journeys that create the most value, the most meaningful things, they're long. They're long journeys. And you know, whether that's parenthood or marriage or, you know, building a company, building a career, you know. And so, it is really important to enjoy the different steps, enjoy the journey, and enjoy the activities that take place along the way. So yeah. And learning to ride a motorcycle is very small compared to those.
And while living in New York, I met my wife. And so obviously that became part of the journey as well. So that was a big period of my life. And then, after about five years, you know, I had stayed at EnerNOC longer than I thought that I would. You know, it came time to leave, for me to go and do something different professionally. You know, so I headed out. And I think it's worth pushing myself a little bit to say that I also got some tough feedback because I left that, you know, I really tried to work through and take to heart. And that feedback as I left was, as a person who led sales in particular in a high growth organization, I was in a position where you regularly sort of come in with a potential deal. And you had these dialogues with your colleagues where you're saying, if we can do X, then we can accomplish Y, you know, commercially and get the deal closed. And those are hard conversations because you're pushing and what I what I realized was that when I was in those conversations with people with whom I didn't work closely, they just found them really hard because they didn't have a relationship with me and they were inherently stressful situations. The people who work closely with me day to day had a different view of me, the people who worked with me not so closely, but not in those stressful situations had a different view of me. And so it's just something that I try to take away to recognize what's the context in which you're working with people or interacting with people more generally, you know, both professionally and personally.
And again, I think this is sort of a theme like I'm sure that I brought intensity to those conversations, right? Because we were an organization that was seeking tremendous, tremendous growth. But you've got to take care of people along the way, I think, even as you're having those conversations after leaving, you know.
Ended up moving to Boston with my then fiancee, got married. I joined another startup, and that was the first time I did a hardware startup. I really enjoyed being a company with a physical product. It had the opposite outcome of EnerNOC, the company had been at. And what I mean by that is not only did that company ultimately fail, but also every company in the cohort failed, too. And this is what happens with startups when the market just doesn't show up. Just every company will go away. And so that was incredibly important I think for me and forming my perspective on what works in entrepreneurship and what are the patterns that you're seeking. If you're thinking about going on the journey of starting a company, you know, what are you looking for in terms of an opportunity?
That company was called Gridco. I was there for a couple of years and I left that and ended up looking for about a year at an opportunity in the solar space before ultimately deciding not to do it. That was a great exercise. As I finished it, I wish I'd gone through it faster. But it was a great exercise because one of the things that you learn as you're thinking about starting a company is that it's really irreversible once you take outside money. You're really committed to seeing it through. And I was sufficiently uncertain about that opportunity that I was hesitant to take outside money. And ultimately, that enabled me—when I finally assembled the right information—to just literally put it down, like it did reach a point where I was able to gather new information, do an analysis, and I was like, yep. We're done. And just stopped cold. It was good learning for me around sort of all of those, all of those issues.
LJR: Yeah. So Michael, it just seems though, I'm missing some key. Because you are getting into these early stage companies and we're talking about them as though they're the only kind of companies that exist in the world, which they weren't.
MR: Sure.
LJR: So why is it that that is the focus? And it kind of was before business school. It is now, certainly after business school. Is it just something about the pace, the being on the brink? Again, that intensity level? Or is it something else?
MR: It's a great, it's a great question. It's, something that I've wrestled with, and I'll start to answer it, Leslie, by saying that, like, my brother, Brian, with whom I started BlueTarp, you know, he stayed at the company for a very long time, and ultimately he's moved on to be a part of later stage companies. Like, he won't go, you know, he's like, yeah, no, I don't prefer to go and do another startup. Because it has these characteristics that you're talking about, you know, where you've got high failure rates. I think the short answer is, I sort of got bit by the bug and enjoyed, you know, enjoyed being part of them, enjoyed being part of that environment they're talking about. I think there's, there is something attractive in the challenge. And I think that what I was ultimately arcing towards was a desire to start one myself to see if I could to challenge myself to go and do that. And, and, I mean, one way you might say it is, it's almost like to get it out of my system and then could decide, do I want to do it again or am I done? Right? Just done.
LJR: Well, it's kind of like that early moment in Monitor, like, I know this thing to be true about myself, and if I don't do it, what does that say about me? It's kind of like I have this latent idea and so I'm gonna test it in other ways until I get to the point where I have to.
MR: Yeah, no, I think that, I think that's right. I think that's really well said. I think, and, and this may be foreshadows sort of where I am now, I think that had this sense that there are lots of ways that you can realize aspirations and self-actualize, I think, professionally and personally, of course. But to limit it to professionally, I think by going to that startup before business school, I became aware of this potential pathway to challenge myself to explore my own capabilities and what I could do, you know. Can I actually do that? Boy that seemed hard, you know, can I actually achieve that in this direction of the startup world, so to speak, and, you know, for better or worse, got set on that path. And I do mean for better or worse, like, yeah, you know, you, you've got high risk of failure. There's financial balancing and financial challenges, you know, on a personal level of working in the startup space for sure, for sure. And I'm very grateful for the support of my wife who sort of understands that I sort of want to go and have wanted to go and do this. But it's a great question because there are times when you look at how hard it is and you're like. Wow, it'd be really nice to be at a, you know, at a 5,000 person company. Yeah, or even a 1,000 person company or even a 500 person company and, you know, and have a, you know, and be confident that the paycheck was going to be there for sure.
LJR: But at the same time, I mean, if you knew that you were going to get involved in climate back in our day when no one was talking about that, no one was really paying attention. I mean, you knew on some level you were going to have to be cutting edge to be involved in it at all. Now, hopefully we're, we're seeing a little bit more mainstreaming of that, but I think it makes sense.
MR: Yeah. And I think, well, well, actually this is a nice segue back to the conversation because where I did go after this, after sort of deciding not to pursue that opportunity in the solar space, it was a young company, but it was a 70 person company. So within the spectrum of startups, Leslie, it had more stability, right? I went and got, you know, got to a company that was already funded, that I wasn't starting. It was a company by the name of Energy Savvy. It was a great company. Wonderful cultural environment. Really interesting role for me because I had the opportunity to lead the sales teams, the marketing teams and the public policy team in a unified group. I'd led the first two of those types of organizations before I had worked on and been part of regulatory affairs, but hadn't led it. And because we were selling to utilities, you know, electric and gas utilities, integrating those three functions in one team made a tremendous amount of operational sense. So it was really intrigued by that role, really intrigued by the culture and was there for five years. And, you know, deeply, deeply enjoyed that time. The company is based in Seattle, so I mostly work from home and that corresponded really well to us having like little, little kids, toddlers, and, you know, being able to walk them to daycare, you know, and then walk home and head back up to the office. So this is some nice, really nice aspects of that stage of life for me. And then ultimately in 2019, that company was acquired. It was about 10 years old at the time. Sorry, acquired is really isn't the right word. It was part of a rollup. So, you know, a rollup is when you. Put a bunch of companies together to create a bigger one. So that's six companies were rolled up to create a much larger entity in that space. They're providing software to utilities. And Energy Savvy was one of those companies, was the right thing for the company at that time. And was also the right thing for me to leave was, you know, it's one of those times I think when the universe provides a very natural off ramp and you're like, yeah, you know I'm gonna take the exit here. Of course in a situation like that, you know, you've got five senior teams coming together, so, you know, they're looking for some people to bow out. So I did that. Took some of summer 2019 off and started reflecting on what I wanted to do next and you know, consistent with your question from a couple of minutes before I still wanted to go and start something and started looking around.
And this is where I think by my background at Dartmouth really played a role in what happened next. I hit a point where I, right around Thanksgiving of 2019, where I put down the area that I was looking at which was okay. I didn't like what I was seeing from a commercial perspective. So I just put it down. The slate was clean, so to speak. And, and so I went through some reflection. I said, what do I want to do? And I realized I want to do hardware. You know, there's a reason why I studied engineering, you know, hardware is really important for solving the climate crisis. We can't do it just with software. I want to do hardware. And so I took a week where I just went through intellectual property, sort of summaries from universities and government labs and just looked through a couple thousand of them. And if I thought they were interesting, I threw them into a spreadsheet and like in a really high level, like, do I understand what this is even talking about? Do I think it's a fit for my background? Do I think there's a lot of carbon? And so I threw that into a spreadsheet and then I came back in January and I started going through it. And two of those pieces of intellectual property related to water heating. And this was one of those moments where it is sort of like a big aha. So I looked at the intellectual property, but not so much then I looked at the space and what I saw when I looked at home water heating was three things.
First, this new technology called heat pump water heaters, which were well under one percent of the market. They just made sense. Like, they provided tremendous savings to homeowners. They allowed for the decarbonization of water heating entirely because they're electric. So, you know, if you power them with wind and solar, they will be zero carbon.
The second thing was the existing products blending my engineering background with my understanding of how electricity markets work, which is a major sort of through line for my career. It was very clear that the products could be significantly improved. And one of the pieces of IP that I was looking at, Leslie, was really relevant to doing so.
And then the third piece was I looked around and I didn't see other startups doing it. And that's really rare, actually. Oftentimes when you see a promising area, there's Do some googling for an hour or two. And you're like, yep, there's a couple of companies that started three or four years ago and they're working on the space.
You know, so those three things got me really excited, you know, stood up from my desk, went for a walk and it was like, huh, I think this might be it. Spent the next couple of months trying to disprove the idea. I mean, one of the things that I learned from, you know, career experience that we've talked through here is you really have to try to disprove the idea because once you get past it, commit to it, particularly once you raise outside funding, you're just in a very high commitment scenario. So you have to try to prove that it's not there. And I couldn't do that. And so I said, okay by the, you know, probably by May of that year, which is, you know, at that point we're into COVID, I was like, yeah, so this is going to be it. I'm going to go do this. And licensed one of the pieces of intellectual property from a government lab, met my co-founder and, you know, just started to get going on building the company.
And so that's what I've been doing over the last four years. We've been working quietly at a lab space in Somerville, Massachusetts, and we will be launching a very high efficiency, highly intelligent heat pump, water heater for the home market. If we're able to stay on our schedule, we'll start to sell it in the first part of next year. And that will be the end of the beginning of this journey, you know, in terms of the, in terms of the company, it's been certainly stressful at times, but, but it's been enormously rewarding because every part of my background has been brought to bear in what I've been doing for the last four years, you know, from fluid dynamic classes that I took.
In college, you know, my, my senior project fifth year in the engineering school, you know, was on computational fluid dynamics, you know, everything that I've learned professionally and done professionally. Business school, et cetera. All of that has come to play at one time or another and continues to come to play, you know, into, into what I'm doing now. And I'm very grateful for that. That part is, is really rewarding. So I'm excited to see how it goes once we actually—knock on wood—you know, are able to bring it to fruition and put it out on the marketplace.
LJR: Super exciting. I can't wait for you and see how this goes.
MR: I bet you didn't think you were going to say water heaters were exciting when you started this call.
LJR: Well now I know they are. So actually what I find most interesting about this is thinking back, you know, you put everything in a spreadsheet and thinking back to the happiness spreadsheet. And wondering if you'd been still, well, first of all, you said you, that exercise helped you build the muscle to know when you're experiencing the happiness and like taking more advantage of that, which ultimately leads to your wife and family and all that good stuff. So I hear some of the outcome. But is there another learning or outcome from that spreadsheet that you could apply to the new ootles, utils spreadsheet? At what stages are you finding the happiness? Is it again, the journey piece? And now, like, yes, you'd like to continue this in a positive direction and sales and all that stuff, which I'm guessing would keep your happiness very high. Or is it like, okay, I've just done this thing. And I'm gonna launch it. And then that in and of itself is the high number and anything else is gravy or like where yeah, do you understand?
MP: No, I totally do. I think I think I do so let me let me try. I think there's a couple things We've been at this for four years. It was a fairly long time. [LJR: Yeah.] And so absolutely There are lessons there just lived day to day Around pacing and around enjoying it. I think I'm very fortunate in that I deeply love working on this. I joke sometimes with my teammates that like, when I walk in the door in the morning, you know, as I'm like turning the corner towards our desks, I'm like, I get to build water heaters today. It's awesome. Which is just like incredibly crazy you would think that about building something as mundane as a water heater, you know. But it affects everyone's lives and it has a quite large carbon footprint. It's 3 percent of GHG emissions for the United States by itself. Home water heating is 3 percent of the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire country. But I don't think that fully answers your question.
I continue to grow and work on what does it mean to be present and how to stay present in each day. And I think that that definitely helps me to balance what is definitely a busy time for sure. You know, my kids are eight and ten now, you know, the company's It's obviously a ton of work. My wife has a demanding job as well. And so it's a busy household. And we're certainly not alone in that. But part of the answer to your question is that, you know, two things in the last five years, I think have really contributed to that for me. One is, I started meditating and that has become a very regular practice for me. What has helped to make that very regular is, to do it really daily, is that, somewhat organically, a couple years ago, I just started to realize that, like, bedtime with my kids, while great, would also run to, like, nine o'clock. And if I tried to work afterwards, A, it wasn't that productive, but B, I'd be, like, wired and I wouldn't go to bed to one. And so it just wasn't sustainable. So I started just going to bed right away. But I wake up at, like, you know, 5:15. And I meditate and I work before the morning kicks in for the family. And that's like super sustainable for me. That pattern is highly repeatable. And that's, that ties, I think, would back to something you're asking about of sort of staying present. And it is also related to another theme. That we've been talking about here, which is around consistency and sort of doing things over time. Like these are long journeys, you know, building this company will, for me, be a long thing. And so making it sustainable and finding the patterns that allow me to be present while doing it, that's been really rewarding. And, and for that, I'm really grateful.
LJR: Michael, what was your go-to event in your track career?
MR: The half mile and the mile.
LJR: Yeah, ok. That tracks.
MR: Why does that track?
LJR: Well, you would not be the hundred-meter kind of guy. You know, you're the consistency and the put it in and be present with the goal, but the goal is not in 30 seconds. It's going to take a while and you need to be measured, but you need to kind of have your eye on the prize and give it as much as you can throughout but know you have to keep some in the tank for what's around the corner. And you might not know, or who's at your heels, or all that stuff. So I like that, and I feel like it's…
MR: I think you're right. I think you're right. It also is playing out professionally. There are a lot of companies now in climate and energy that are looking to build hardware. And building hardware is hard. It is challenging. And so, there is this dimension of just persistence. And we have worked to cultivate it at the company. There's just this sense of, yeah, we just keep going. Like we're, we are a persistent gritty group of folks who are trying to get this done. And that is what it takes to launch a new piece of hardware.
LJR: Okay. Well, by the time this gets out into the world, this episode you will have launched. What is the name of the company? We'll put it in the show notes.
MR: Cool. Cala Systems. C-A-L-A Systems.
LJR: We will take, take a look and know that we're at the frontier and who knows what's going to come. But no doubt it will come from hard work and intensity that you’ve put together and with a lot of know-how from a lot of life experiences. So we think it will be very successful and we wish you the best in this. And thank you so much, Michael, for bringing us along on this journey.
MR: Thank you for having me. I really appreciated it.
LJR: That was Michael Rigney, serial entrepreneur and current CEO and co-founder of Calasystems, makers of the world's first intelligent heat pump water heater for the residential market. The new company is the culmination of his decades of leadership experience in climate and energy start-ups combined with a background in building products and in thermal sciences. Check out his new venture at calasystems -that's CALA systems -- dot com. // We know he'll appreciate it because we love when we see you listeners checking out the episode archive and show notes at RoadsTakenShow DOT com. As long as you know to go there or follow or subscribe in your podcast app, you won't miss a new episode with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.