Fintech South 2024: Jonathan Siskin with GA Cleantech Innovation Hub

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from Fintech South 2024 at the Georgia Woodruff Arts Center. So excited to be talking to our next guest. Jonathan Siskin, co-founder, GA Cleantech Innovation Hub. Welcome.

Jonathan Siskin: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about GA Cleantech Innovation Hub. How are you serving folks?

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah, so we’re just recently launched. We’re a nonprofit and our mission is to make innovation a driver of the robust clean tech economy, with a focus on creating the jobs and growth industries of the future, commercializing technologies that combat climate change, and elevate people and communities throughout Georgia and the southeast. There’s a big equity component to ensure that all communities benefit from what we’re doing. So what I come out of the fintech world that had been there for 20 years and really have seen just the unbelievable growth in the fintech ecosystem and what it’s meant for the state of Georgia. And we really see a similar opportunity emerging around clean tech. So our whole focus is to make Georgia one of the top clean tech innovation hubs in the entire world, and we really think we’re well positioned to do that because Georgia has just tremendous assets that I think we can unlock with that potential. Between the deep clean tech manufacturing base, you know, the state’s been the number one source or place of investment that’s come out of the Inflation Reduction Act. There’s been over $20 billion of announced investment in Georgia. In manufacturing. We have leading universities and research. We have a robust corporate base in great demand and a tremendously diverse talent pool. So we really think we’re well positioned. And our role is to help, you know, catalyze and build that ecosystem so we can continue to drive that economic growth. Now, can.

Lee Kantor: You explain for our listeners kind of what clean tech is and means?

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah, sure. Clean tech, I would say most broadly, it’s a broad definition of anything that fits under the umbrella of driving decarbonization of our global economy. So anything from energy, transportation, mobility, circular economy fits within that broader umbrella. So we can use better resources to drive economic growth. And, you know, it really has that, you know, I guess triple bottom line impact of, you know, economic growth, you know, supporting people and supporting the environment.

Lee Kantor: And then how does fintech kind of intersect there?

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah it’s great. You know, it’s actually really interesting. And there’s an emerging kind of terms that people call it. I’ve heard it climate fintech or green fintech or you’ll hear terms like sustainable finance, but I really view it as simply the intersection point between climate finance and digital technologies that really will catalyze that decarbonization of the economy and the adaptation that we’ll need around the world to address this. So it’s just to put this in context, if you think about it, is estimated that there will be over $100 trillion. That’s trillion with a T that will be spent across the globe to drive the energy transition. And some of this adaptation between now and the end of the century. So what’s exciting is financial services companies, fintech companies have a really large role and important role to play within that transition, and you often see it very closely linked to broader climate disclosure movement. I think many people may be familiar with a lot of the rules that are being developed around the world, whether it’s the SEC or the state of California, or a lot of what’s happening in Europe, just to bring visibility and understanding to how companies are driving towards a lot of their sustainability and net zero objectives.

Lee Kantor: Now, I would think that maybe the listener isn’t aware of how much energy like they know about digital. It may not be obvious to them where cleantech would fit into fintech, but that computing power requires a lot of energy and electricity. And is that where this is all coming into play? Is that it could be some.

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah, it’s a great use case. So, you know, let me answer that. And then I’ll give maybe a broader perspective of the types of areas where I think it intersects. But you know, one of the hottest topics in the in the whole area is around, you know, data centers and how to drive. Most of the companies that are running these, you know, want to achieve their very aggressive, you know, sustainability objectives, want to get to renewable energy. So how do we continue to build out all the data center, the infrastructure to support all the things we need to do, but do it in a renewable and sustainable way? So just amazing developments just in the last few years of how to do that. Um, but stepping back, just to give you a flavor for the types of areas this intersects, I always kind of like to think about it in, you know, what are the kind of use cases, what are the opportunities that this is very important. So I see there’s really four out there. The first is around consumers right. Consumers want to to be more let’s say climate conscious. They want while they’re shopping or they’re consuming their products. So everything from carbon footprint tracking and, you know, green banking or investing. Stripe is a great example of a fintech company that is very into this, and investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this to help seed some of these markets. The second group is investors in financing.

Jonathan Siskin: And you really have to think, how do we mobilize that type of capital toward decarbonization and adaptation? Or if you’re an investor, how do you make your portfolios more climate aligned to some of your goals? So a big piece of what’s happening, really exciting now is a tremendous amount of money that’s going into financing this energy transition. Fintech companies have a huge role to play for. How do you ensure and facilitate that happening between all the tax credits, the transferability, the large scale project financing. So there’s huge opportunities for financial services firms there. The third group is companies in organizations. You know, they have want to lower their carbon footprint. They want to measure and monitor and offset their impact. They want to create new products and services and drive efficiencies throughout their business. This is everything from what, you know, carbon accounting and reduction of some of their emissions in a lot of this is about creating new products and services that services new and emerging markets. There’s multiple billion dollar plus markets being created as part of this broader transition. And then the final group is insurers and broader financial institutions. They want to find ways to more effectively analyze and price environmental risk into everything they do, whether it’s pricing or underwriting new products and services. So each one of these groups has a huge intersection point between the traditional world of, you know, finance and fintech and all the emerging things happening within the clean tech space.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, you talked a little bit about your background, but can you explain kind of what that point was for you where you’re like, okay, now I’m going to really lean into this clean tech innovation hub, and I’m going to get this off the ground and get this thing going like, what was this? Just a passion for you? Well, it’s.

Jonathan Siskin: Interesting. So I’ve been spent the last 20 or so years here in Atlanta, you know, within the fintech and data community and probably primarily been focused around strategy and corporate development, innovation and business transformation. Most of what I’ve done in my career has been all around helping organizations build and scale new businesses and deliver on mission critical transformation programs. But I actually got my start in economics. In the environmental policy area. It really is, again, been such a big part of the successful growth of this ecosystem several years ago, said, I just think there is the next big opportunity for the state is around clean tech and a lot of the sustainability issues. So what’s the best way to help support that? And I thought taking a lot of my skills and understanding how to help build and grow these ecosystems really was the idea behind this. So immediately I started working with a very small scale organization called the Greenhouse Accelerator that had been supporting cleantech entrepreneurs for over a dozen years in this market. But the idea was, how do we take all the great work you’re doing, but do it at a scale, you know, 10 or 20 times bigger? So that was really the idea behind how do we get the the Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub started? Um, we are a nonprofit, so it’s the foundation of that.

Jonathan Siskin: But we look to continue to build and expand a lot of our products and services to support the growth of this ecosystem. Uh, the first big we actually announced last week, the the first clean tech focused accelerator, uh, will be launching this fall, which is really, really exciting for the for the state. We worked with several partners to bring that here. Cox enterprises is the corporate sponsor in funding it, and we’re working with the venture accelerator firm called generator. So this is a first step of many, but it’s a great step forward to start seeding and building that clean tech incubation center. We we estimate there’s about 40 clean tech startups that have been, you know, started here, that have grown here in Georgia. Our immediate objective over the next five years is to triple that number. So the ecosystems are challenging, they’re complex. They take a tremendous amount of public and private partnership. But we we seek to really bring all those coalition of partners together to do something where we really think Georgia has an outstanding chance to be a leader and really drive the the jobs, the economic growth and the social impacts that I think we all want to bring to the state.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah, this is great. I mean, the key thing is, you know, most of it is around strategic partners. We we work with a variety of organizations. We need more and more corporates, uh, large companies, organizations to support us. Uh, We we still need some seed funding to get started and build our initial capacity. But then really, it’s around designing programs that are very laser focused on the opportunities and some of the challenges that the state is facing. So bringing those partnerships together between economic development groups, nonprofits, the schools and universities, these are all great assets. We have a lot of it is just bringing those together and working. So if anyone’s interested to learn more how to help us, you know, we’re very much in the early stages of building this, but we’d love to find strategic partners that will help shape this and invest and really make this a huge growth area for Georgia.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to connect, what’s the website? What’s the coordinates? Yeah.

Jonathan Siskin: So just look up right at the Georgia Clean Tech Innovation hub.org and you can find us. Um and then within there there’s a contact page you can reach out to to myself Andy Marshall is the managing director who we’ve brought in to run the entire thing. So please reach out. We’re very excited to work. We have a great set of partners that we’ve been working with so far, but always looking to expand that. So thank you very much for your time today. This is very exciting and hopefully it gives people a little better flavor for how this intersects with so many of the things that Georgia does well. And these are all, to me, incremental opportunities for many of the fintech and financial service companies that are here. So really exciting opportunities for them.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jonathan Siskin: Yeah. Well I appreciate it. Thanks so much. This is a great event and I’ve been coming to Fintech South now for over a dozen years. So it’s great to see how this has grown. And this is just an amazing event today and an amazing location.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few. At Fintech South 2024.