The whole world is supposed to go electric, Tiya Gordon points out, and yet in the largest city in the United States there was nowhere to charge an electric car. On a pandemic walk through Brooklyn, she and her co-founder noticed the solar panels going up on rooftops and asked a simple question: what if the buildings could power the cars parked in front of them?
Tiya is a Parsons-trained designer who had never worked in tech. She tells Erica Brinker how a sketch became it's electric. It started with cold-calling the experts and asking if they were insane, then pitching Hyundai in N95 masks. Then came the hard part, raising venture capital with no network. Her mom is a New York City schoolteacher, her old bosses didn't know any VCs and the company's first logo was designed in the minutes before an accelerator deadline. She explains why she stopped pitching at mixers and repeats what one investor told her: with a young male Stanford grad's headshot in place of hers, the company would be worth five times as much.
Then there's the call. After seven cities and three and a half years of building, her phone rang under the clock in Grand Central. Her co-founder had two words: "We got it." it's electric is now building New York City's curbside charging network.
In Mixtape, she throws a '90s hip-hop dance party, invites Ali Wong and Julia Louis-Dreyfus to dinner and tells her 25-year-old self to trust her gut.
Executive Producer: Sara Glassman
Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcast | LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/at-the-brink-media | Erica on Instagram @official.erica.brinker
Follow it's electric: itselectric.us | Instagram @itselectric_co | LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/itselectric | Tiya on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiya-gordon-itselectric
www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com
","author_name":"Erica Brinker"}