This Stove Company Wants to Change How the World Uses Energy

Joe Weisenthal (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios.

Tracy Alloway (0:05)

Podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, we just had one of the most amazing steaks of our lives.

Tracy Alloway (0:29)

It was really good. I just ate the cap, and it was delicious.

Joe Weisenthal (0:32)

It was so good. And you and I are both into steak.

Tracy Alloway (0:35)

I like steak.

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

And you're also particularly exacting standards for steak.

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

I don't think it's exacting. I just like my steak cooked a particular way. I like it black and blue, which is weirdly controversial at some steak restaurants. I think because they have health and safety rules about serving raw and burnt meat. But that's the way I like it.

Joe Weisenthal (0:55)

I like it. I'm more of a medium rare guy. But I do-

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

Mid, very mid Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

Very mid, very mid take. But yes, we just had an amazing steak. And listeners might be wondering why-

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

Why we're eating steak.

Joe Weisenthal (1:08)

Well, why we're talking about steak and why we would be introducing an episode based on the fact that we just had steak.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

So full disclosure, Joe came to me before we started this episode and said, I really want to interview the Stove Company out in San Francisco. And I was kind of like, a Stove Company? Like, are we doing consumer goods reviews now? But after seeing the Stove and hearing more of the overall pitch, I kind of get it. Like I hadn't realized the scale of ambition here, but it is really interesting. It's not just a Stove.

Joe Weisenthal (1:41)

So on Twitter, I would say over the last six to nine months, every once in a while, I'll see a video of someone who made a pilgrimage to San Francisco. And they're like, oh my God, I just had this crazy steak. And so in my mind, when I knew that we were coming out here, I was like, we should learn about this crazy steak. But actually, it's not the steak, though that was good. It's the stove that made the steak. And if a bunch of people feel the need to tweet about a particular stove that they saw when they came here, it's like, we should also make that same.

Tracy Alloway (2:11)

Yeah, and as we just learned, it's not just the stove either. There's also a battery component, which gets into some really interesting energy ideas.

Joe Weisenthal (2:18)

There's a whole energy vision. So why don't we just kick it off? We are going to be talking about steak. We're going to be talking about stoves. We're going to be talking about electrification. We are going to be talking about batteries.

Tracy Alloway (2:29)

American culture wars over gas versus electric stoves.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

We're going to be talking about manufacturing. There is a lot of meat here, so to speak, for Odd Lots.

Tracy Alloway (2:38)

You've been waiting to unveil that one.

Joe Weisenthal (2:40)

So we have, yeah, the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking with Sam D'Amico. He is the CEO of Impulse Labs, the maker of the legendary stove. We can confirm they're really good.

Tracy Alloway (2:50)

And the whole thing was it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:51)

Yeah, it was perfect steak.

Tracy Alloway (2:52)

Oh, so nice.

Joe Weisenthal (2:53)

They said they are legendary. Sam, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots and cooking us a steak.

Sam D'Amico (2:57)

Thanks for coming to the office, so I didn't have to go anywhere.

Joe Weisenthal (2:59)

Yeah. I'm trying to think where to begin. Actually, obvious question, which is, you know, there are a lot of software companies around here. There are a lot of AI companies. What moved you to launch a stove company?

Sam D'Amico (3:14)

That's a fun one. So it's actually funny is I've been in consumer hardware basically for the past 10 plus years, working on a number of different AR VR headset programs. So, you know, infamous ones like Google Glass or famous ones, depending on your interpretation of that, was at Oculus kind of as they got acquired, joined the team, got to kind of shepherd the first true consumer product of theirs to market by basically being one of the people at the factory, like helping bring the factory up from the ground up. Also worked in a couple other programs, including like headsets, VR controller, stuff like that. So I've been in kind of hardware, but not culinary. I've been into cooking for a long time. Personally, it was this sort of like some family background, but also I like to cook the food from the places I visit. So I got really into cooking like Chinese food, got like one of those outdoor skewer grills. And then at one point, I kind of got fixated on pizza. And I was like, I want to cook a pizza really fast.