Member Spotlight: Phil Dillard

I interviewed Phil Dillard, founder and CEO of Thruline Networks and creator of Wisdom Wednesday. He discussed how to bring value, his definition of success, and what makes a great entrepreneur. 

Will Hespe: So how did Thruline Networks begin? And what was starting the company like?

Phil Dillard: I have always been focused on clean tech and climate tech, and how to leave the planet a better place than I found—it’s just the right thing. Since I was a kid, I wanted to be an inventor, before I knew what an engineer was, and my Eagle Scout project was building a recycling program in my hometown. Now, launching the company was a different story, because I knew what I wanted to do, but didn't know how to do it. If you're trying to design something new because the existing system works, but it doesn't work well enough, you’ve got to figure out what's fundamentally broken. So I did the research around how a corporation is different from a nonprofit, which is different from a government entity, and how the mission driven startup can really build to solve the most pressing issues on the planet today. 

Will Hespe: Would fixing a broken system be how you define success?

Phil Dillard: That's a good question. We started out saying we wanted to have a hundred impact unicorns in the next ten years. It's a crazy number, but we thought: “how crazy is it?” It's gonna stretch us to think, “how do you get them?” Right now, we want to get to the first one, and think about a hundred afterwards. Success is proving the model, in a way that we have a number of companies that say, “this has been a great experience for us. And we looked at other ways. We're happy that we went this way.” It's a founder who says they are happy that they did this with us. Success for us is helping prime the pump for those companies to come into the ecosystem that we're building, so that they can have a fair shot at building their company. It's building a thriving ecosystem where people can be not just commended for their passion, but they can be putting real dollars on the table. 

Will Hespe: How do you help companies zoom into something actionable when climate issues are so huge?

Phil Dillard: The beauty of a really good entrepreneur is that they're really focused, and they have a scale plan. Like Amazon—you're starting with books, but you have a vision of selling a whole lot more, and disrupting retail as we know it. We're looking for founders who've already got a little bit of that traction somewhere, but we, together, see that there's a bigger opportunity. We started with a very tight focus on companies that were taking difficult technology and commercializing it, but sometimes there are people who are enablers of those companies, with the specific focus of “we can add value here.” We just have to find the right match with that founder. 

Will Hespe: How would you say Thruline Networks specifically brings values to these founders in a way that no other company can? How does Thruline serve the industry?

Phil Dillard: We're designed to operate a little bit differently. We want to meet a Founder where they are, and deliver stage specific services and capital. If you look at some accelerator programs, they say “come into our program, we will give you x amount of dollars for y amount of equity, and at the end we’ll introduce you to all these different people that we know.” I think that might be problematic, especially for a climate tech company, because the valuation of some of these companies is so uncertain, they may be giving up way too much equity. So we'd rather work out a deal that works for them and works for us in the short term, in terms of how you can pay for the service. We want to be working with them through it. 

Will Hespe: Why did you choose to join 9Zero?

Phil Dillard: That's an easy one. Community is critically important in the early stages of something new. 9Zero in an environment that a lot of people are yearning for. You might be reluctant to spend the time in an uncertain space. You might be nervous when you come in and don't see as many people there as you might want to see. But every community starts small, and you never know who you're going to meet, but you're going to increase the probability by putting yourself in the right place. The best, most unexpected returns came from when I just showed up to help somebody else out. 9Zero is designed to accelerate those interactions, and if you're serious about climate, then be a part of this community.