464: Our Podcast "Sabbatical" and Cascade Energy Acquires Yield!

Speaker A: Coming up on the Modern Acre podcast, Tim and I are going to talk about our little podcast sabbatical, fill you in on the details. What's happening? Is the Modern Acre continuing? Yes, the answer is yes. And we're going to dig into our big news that Cascade Energy has acquired Yield Energy. So we're going to get into all that. Coming.

Speaker B: Ty, it's been a few weeks, we haven't been on the mics. You're looking good. You've been taking, taking summer kind of easy it seems like, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, just like a super low key easy summer. Uh, no, we've been, we've been uh, working on this news that we were able to announce this week that Cascade Energy has acquired Yield Energy. So uh, we are super excited about this and we're going to share more details around it. Um, but yeah, this was. Tim, we've been doing this podcast now for eight years. Seven. Eight years. I've lost track. I've officially lost track. And we I think needed a break. I think uh, we've been grinding at this and I think the combination of summer, right. And travel and just get kind of being exhausted, plus working on this transaction has taken a lot, right. And consumed, been all consuming and I think it was a good time. We didn't really tell anyone that we were doing it and it just kind of how it worked out. But I think, man, did I, did I need it right? Like not only to just reset from a podcast perspective for me and you to be able to talk about like what does the podcast look like going forward? Like how can we evolve what we've built that we love, but evolve it right. And as well as just giving time for me to uh, me and you to work on getting this transaction completed over the finish line, it just made sense for us. And so we're not going anywhere and we are really excited about how we are going to evolve the podcast from here.

Speaker B: Totally. Yeah. We're not, we're not quite quitting the pod. We're actually doubling down some. Got some exciting stuff in the hopper. But Todd, before we jump in there. Yeah. Let's talk about, talk about this big news. We've obviously talked about, you know, kind of the history, Polaris Energy Services, how we transitioned the business to yield earlier this year and the evolution the business has been on, I think the, the ultimate goal was always to, to take the business to, to an acquisition to a, through a sales process and we're able to execute that this year. And a lot of a, uh, lot of moving parts behind the scenes, but exciting to be able to, to share that news this week. So, Ty, let's give us kind of, give us kind of the update of how that transpired earlier this year.

Speaker A: Yeah, you, you hit it. Right. Tim M. Is when. When we came on to join the leadership team at Polaris, now rebranded to Yield Energy, the ultimate goal was take the business to the next level. Right? That was the goal. How do we grow what we're doing? And so we've done a lot of work over the past two years, nearly two years since we joined, to grow the business, to develop the business, reposition the business. That had a lot to do with our, uh, rebrand to Yield and, and ultimately look for how do we take the next step and that the best fit for the company was through acquisition. How can we join a larger organization that has the scale, the resources, the team to take our business to the next level? And that was really how we thought through this process strategically is finding the right partner and the right fit. And Cascade Energy is, is ultimately the right fit. And I am so excited to be joining the team there. They have really grown into a really substantial business historically, uh, focused on strategic energy management and energy efficiency across the country, with dozens and dozens of utility customers and enterprise customers, and with a team and a strategy that was increasingly moving and evolving towards what's happening in the macro market, which we've talked about on this podcast quite a bit with the, uh, load growth that's happening on the grid, and that is creating an increased need for demand flexibility, which means working with large energy assets to shift their energy use from periods of high grid stress to periods of low grid stress. And that's been our business model in demand response and demand flexibility. And Cascade was looking to build on what they've started in demand flexibility and us working together to combine our capabilities and expertise to expand and grow the business. Right. And it was just a really, really good fit. And what I love about Cascade is they work with a lot of food and ag customers already. They have a thesis around that segment of the market and other commercial and industrial customers as well. But they have a thesis around food and agricultural. And us partnering together just bolsters that thesis and got me excited because of why we have built Yield was to really focus on the farmer and, uh, the farm and the ag market. So us coming together just made philosophically and strategically a ton of sense. So this has been in the works obviously for quite some time and ultimately finalized the transaction with a lot of work from all the parties involved. To officially announce the deal earlier this week.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's super, super exciting. Like you hit on it just kind of the, the fit overall. Like, you know, when these acquisitions happen, it's always like, you know, how do you combine cultures and kind of make this cohesive? And you and I had the chance to meet some of their leadership team in person back in June and like feel like when we were at the airport debriefing, we're like, it just seems like really good people. Like they're a combination of very nice people, but also very hungry, aggressive, entrepreneurial, which is like how we think about business. So it was just kind of like minded and like that's, that's a cool thing when you're, when you're talking about deals like this of like just doing business with people that you, you like and enjoy doing business with. So that was, that was a awesome part of it as well.

Speaker A: What are you talking about? I don't like doing business with you.

Speaker B: Are you cutting me out, dude?

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if you'll make the transition over, but um, the whole team

Speaker B: remains intact except me. We're.

Speaker A: No, we're just demoting you. That's the, that's the plan. You're going to be on the team. Just, uh, my assistant, you're my boss. But you hit on a good point, Tim. And another key piece of this is that the Yield brand is going to continue. So we will operate as a business unit within the broader Cascade organization, Retain our brand, retain all of our programs and everything. So it's business as usual for us. But now we get to grow and scale and accelerate the business in partnership and collaboration with Cascade. And that gets me so excited. And like you said, the team there is fantastic. They're industry experts. They know the utility space, they know the energy space there. It's really an engineering driven company around decision making and a lot of the fundamentals of business. And it just gets me super, super excited if you can't hear in my voice about scaling what we do, which what Yield does is we connect on farm energy assets like irrigation pumps into energy flexibility programs. And that is an awesome business because our business, we don't charge growers anything. We pay, uh, growers through these programs. And so growers get a new revenue stream by participating in the programs that we implement and coordinate with utilities and large enterprises. And we get to keep doing that and building and scaling what we do to really address this, what's happening on the grid. And again, we've talked about it, but with uh, the rise of data centers, grids are increasingly desperate for more capacity. Right. They need more energy capacity to be more power to support these new data centers coming along. And they can either do that by building new power plants which no one wants to do and is expensive and slow, or they can do that through demand flexibility, meaning demand response programs or energy flexibility programs that compensate large electricity customers to shift their energy use. And that's really been our sweet spot in our core competency on the farm through, through irrigation flexibility. But now we get to do that at bigger ah, scale in more markets faster and that's what it's all about. And taking yield to the next level.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited what this means for our uh, current growers as well as growers in new markets as we continue to expand. And we've built a lot of relationships with irrigation automation primarily in California. And this gives us the ability to scale in new markets with them where they might have, you know, devices in Pacific Northwest or Texas or other markets that we're exploring. And it's a way that we can turn on and add more value to our partners on the irrigation automation side as well.

Speaker A: That's exactly right Tim. More and more growers are adopting irrigation automation technology at a, at a very fast growth rate. It's, it's over 10% compound to annual growth rate. And what that means is there's more connected pumps nationwide and it's just growing and growing and compounding every year. And what that means is all of our partners that are connected to our platform and our programs get to offer these revenue generating programs to their end growers. And so it's really uh, an exciting collaboration with our hardware partners and so big shout out to them and uh, really believing in what we're building and now are ready to scale this nationwide.

Speaker B: So Ty, you've obviously been in the CEO seat for close to two years now. What does this mean for kind of your role, the transition, like integrating into, into Cascade.

Speaker A: Yes, I will no longer be the CEO, uh, of the business. Yeah, exactly, demoted. So given our integration with the Cascade business, I will um, my new role and title still be running and leading the yield team as managing director. I'm actually quite excited about that. Uh, that fact is I think it'll be nice to not be in the CEO seat and be able to lead and drive our team within the larger organization. And Dan Brown is the CEO of Cascade, uh, Energy and has been leading this team for several years and I'm so excited to just be under his Leadership and his vision for what, what Cascade has been building and scaling very successfully over the past several years under his leadership. And it's going to be a lot of fun building together. He's a builder, we're builders and we're excited to get after it and keep, keep growing what we started together.

Speaker B: And for those concerned about what my new title is Beat is going to be, we're still kind of workshopping it. We're thinking like assistant to the managing director. Assistant managing director. How are we thinking about this, Taya?

Speaker A: You already know the answer. Assistant to the managing director. And yeah, really excited what you're going to bring to the table, Tim, as my assistant.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. So we appreciate all of you listening who have been following this journey. When I left Rivian and I joined this company called Polaris Energy Services, we rebranded to Yield Energy and now we are a part of Cascade Energy. We'd love to connect with you if you're interested in being a part of what we're building. So if you're uh, a, if you're a grower. I remember Tim, when we announced a yield, I got a ton, we got a ton of inbound from growers in other states, in states that we weren't currently operating in. And now I'm excited that we are going to be, you know, very quickly across, across the country as we scale this. And so if you're a grower in California, where we have existing programs or wherever in the, in the country, we'd love to hear from you if you're interested in these types of revenue generating program, if you have connected devices, connected pumps, and love to start the conversation with you. And if you're a part of an irrigation automation company, we'd love to partner with you. We have I think nine or 10 of the leading irrigation automation companies who are partnered with us and integrating with our platform and we'd love to talk to you about how we, how we do that with your company and platform. And lastly, I know we don't have a ton of utility listeners here, but if you work with utilities or large enterprises that are interested in energy flexibility and this could be across both the farm and big agribusinesses, we'd love to talk to you and love to be connected to see how we can support your business, be more profitable. So, uh, that's my pitch at the end there. But Tim, I think we need to transition to the podcast. Is the podcast over? What is happening? Maybe I'll ask you this, Tim. Um, in taking a break and kind of thinking strategically. We've been talking over the past few months. How are you thinking about the future of the podcast?

Speaker B: Yeah, the little reset was, was nice to kind of take a step back and like we, we still enjoy doing the podcast. We get, you know, chat with each other once a week. We get to talk to smart people. Like, how can we kind of iterate and expand on that? And so next month we're going to be, you know, iterating on, on the format and model where we might be, where it's going to be a little bit more programmatic and not necessarily long form. So us talking more general news like I think a lot of people enjoyed, like when we used to do acre insights and kind of like riff on the news of the week and stuff like that. So I think just kind of taking stuff that we've enjoyed doing over the years and building that into a new format.

Speaker A: That's right. I think that's how I felt about it. We uh, uh, are never going to stop the podcast. I think it's allowed us and given us so many opportunities and really built our network and um, enhanced what we have done professionally in agriculture. But I think we need to liven things up and we need a fresh format and something that is compelling to listeners today. And so I think we've thought a lot about, we've had this kind of standard interview format and I think there's a way to spice that up and bring in the best of both worlds. And so that's how we're really thinking about restructuring it. So we're not going to divulge too much, um, but I hope you guys, uh, follow along and follow this next iteration, um, which is to come, um, in a few weeks. So be on the lookout for that. Make sure you're subscribed on all platforms and following us on LinkedIn, um, and connecting us with us there as well. So we appreciate you guys listening. A lot of exciting things to come and be sure to check out Cascade and what we're up to with Yield and we will talk to you guys soon.