> it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity. From the perspective of someone who's not a software engineer but rather an ops engineer (a softwar

> it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity. From the perspective of someone who's not a software engineer but rather an ops engineer (a software concierge [1]), I find the idea of a scaling problem to be far more attractive than a software (writing) problem, for obvious reasons. > Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? > Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic? The above two combined would be enough. As sibling comments have pointed out, the nature of the industry means that the players involved will be very large and/or political. It's not that the above three qualities are somehow magical. It's that they're generally necessary (but not sufficient) to create that small, startup (usually high-growth) company environment that appeals to a certain subset here. Focussing on just one aspect of such an environment without understanding the totality of the appeal (and/or effectiveness) can end up turning into cargo-culting, as with (if you'll forgive the caricature) large, bureaucratic companies attempting to attract talent by refurnishing their common areas with brightly-colored beanbags chairs. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17484840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17484840