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About Kameale Terry

Kameale C. Terry is the co-founder and CEO of ChargerHelp!, a cutting-edge technology company launched in 2020 that tackles the issue of inoperable electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. A native of South Central Los Angeles, Kameale is driven by her passion for data, technology, and community empowerment. Under her leadership, ChargerHelp! has raised over $21 million, amassed the nation’s largest dataset of EV service work orders, and services stations across 17 states.

Kameale’s innovative approach blends real-world data, predictive analytics, and machine learning to provide industry-leading solutions to ensure EV charging reliability. She is also deeply committed to workforce development, helping to create high-paying jobs through partnerships with organizations like the Society of Automotive Engineers and the U.S. Department of Labor. Her background in operations and technology, combined with her commitment to empowering historically marginalized communities, has positioned her as a thought leader in the clean energy and mobility sectors.

Episode Highlights

How to transform life circumstances into entrepreneurial opportunity
The single biggest secret to sustainable startup success
How to leverage problem mastery to gain investor credibility
How to play the fundraising game like a chess pro
The oath to financial fluency, why it matters, and how to get it
The ins and outs of raising a priced round
How to find great legal counsel before you have funding
What Henry Ford can teach you about go-to-market success
How to make smart bets when the stakes are high
The last word: how to stay in the game for the long haul

Links and resources

ChargerHelp!: The company that Kameale founded and runs
Entrepreneurs for Impact: Leading climate CEO and investor peer group with membership capped at 100
LA Clean Tech Incubator: Clean tech incubator and fund based in California
Elemental Impact: Nonprofit investor in climate technologies with deep community impact.
Grid110: Economic and community development non-profit that runs cohort-based accelerator programs
Blue Bear Capital: Venture capital and growth equity firm focused on AI-powered solutions for the world’s energy, infrastructure, and climate challenges.
Trucks VC: VC firm investing in early-stage ideas that make transportation decarbonized, safer and more accessible
Gunderson Dettmer: In international law firm headquartered in Silicon Valley in California, focused on the innovation economy
Business Wars podcast: Leading podcast diving into details of business competition and strategies

Interview Transcript

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Hello, Kameale. We’re so happy to have you here today on Invisible Ink. Thank you for being here.

Kameale Terry: Thank you so much for having me.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So, I’ve got a bunch of really juicy questions that I want to ask you today. But first off, can you just tell us a little bit about what your startup, ChargerHelp! does?

Kameale Terry: Sure. ChargerHelp! is really looking at EV charging reliability, charging stations are smart assets and a lot of the issues that occur with charging stations actually have more to do with interoperability issues, software issues than anything else. We believe in getting a large data set from the field, like actual field service data, troubleshooting data, and bringing that back into a platform in order to drive reliability and drive more over the air solutions. We’ve been doing this now, for five years, super excited to dive in more about it.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: How did you even come across this opportunity? Like, what triggered you and what got you thinking about this?

Kameale Terry: I’ve been in this industry almost now for 10 years, which is crazy. It started out at a company called EV Connect. I was probably the 10th or 11th employee there. My position was something called EV driver support. And so essentially when an EV driver went to a charging location and they had an issue, I was the lovely voice that they got to chat with. And what sparked my interest is that sometimes EV drivers would describe a behavior of the charging station that I could not really see in our log data set, what the station was communicating to the cloud. Fast forward, I consistently saw that in the industry and not just at EV connect, but across multiple software providers, and definitely thought that, there was something missing in what the stations were experiencing and there was something missing in regards to how we should think about the ongoing performance of an asset like the EV charging station.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So, you see the problem, you see an opportunity, but then there are other hurdles that you have to cross to convince you that this is worth investing your time, because that’s more, valuable than money. What were those triggers and what are the first steps you take to convince yourself that this is something that’s worth pursuing?

Kameale Terry: It was a little bit of happenstance. My mom had always had cancer for most of my life. And there had come to a period back in 2019 where her cancer had returned and it was actually more aggressive. I had done a lot with EV connect and made a pretty good name for myself there, but also was under just a lot of pressure of trying to take care of my mom and also the company.

And so I actually left EV connect in the interim. I was always very curious about getting folks aware of the charging problem. And so the convincing really came about with just the circumstances with having to take care of an ailing mother and then also, I guess, being so interested in this problem. I started to work with the incubator around producing content, and then eventually landed into getting a contract.

I guess, looking back, I didn’t really have a moment of being like, I’m gonna do this thing. It was like a sequence of events that kind of pushed my hand into being like, I guess we’re doing this thing.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: And was there like a moment where the light bulb went on? It’s well, I guess I’m a founder now and I have to go do all these things. What was that moment?

Kameale Terry: I guess it probably was after our first contract, my first contract was with EV connect Southern California, Edison, and we’re getting paid and I have to figure out like all these other things. I was like, Oh, now, yes, you are a founder. Like you have a company.

And that was fascinating to me, like that switch over because, my dad owned his own company and for so long, I was always like, Oh, I will never run a company. I like working for other people. It is very comfortable. So, yeah, getting my first customer really turned that switch, and it was just surprising to me as well, oh, no, you’re really doing this thing.

Vision and Mission

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: And at that point were you thinking, venture capital exits unicorn, or what was your vision if you had one? Or was it more, let’s see where this goes.

Kameale Terry: Yeah, I was just obsessed with the problem. I strongly believe in mass EV adoption, not saying that it’s a silver bullet. It’s going to solve all the problems. I don’t believe that, but is it a better way to move than what we’re doing today? And that really came about during COVID, I live in south central Los Angeles, not too far from the Hollywood Hills and the Hollywood sign, but it wasn’t until no one was driving their vehicles, their gas powered vehicles that I actually saw the Hollywood sign and then started to get more savvy with understanding the air quality index and just savvy with even my mom’s like cancer diagnosis to just be like, How we’re moving can be better.

And I know that electric vehicles can be that way. We have a problem with the EV charging infrastructure. We cannot squander trust, so I wanted to become just like the biggest nerd about solving that problem, that’s, it was never about unicorn raising capital or any of these things.

It was just like, no, there’s a problem to be solved. It doesn’t really seem like anyone else is thinking about it the right way. Let me figure out how to solve it for the industry and then be collaborative, right, as well, on that journey.

Workforce Development

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Great. I love that and I know we talked earlier when we met a couple of months ago and you had this point you had made about how you got really involved with the workforce development. So can you just connect the dots there and say, okay, so now you see the problem. You’ve got this first contract. What happened then and how did that lead into workforce development?

Kameale Terry: Sure. The first thing is just understanding my background, like I’m from South Central Los Angeles. I’m the daughter of two immigrant parents. And even my mom, who worked for the LA school district, was a part of a union and never in her 35 years of working for the school district, did she make over $27, 000. Living in Los Angeles, and even with my dad starting his own company, a similar story where like he only could grow so far. And so I mentioned these things because in my mind to build a company to build a business, you had to consider the worker. And so people put us in this box of workforce development. We knew that we needed to make sure that the industry was properly trained and understood what they were actually going after the fix. But then too, how you did the training, how you did the hiring because of my upbringing was of the utmost importance to me. So, I guess we get put in this workforce development box, which I’m okay with, but to me, it’s just like, we’re figuring out how to run a good business and we’re mindful of our labor force, not only for ChargerHelp! but the labor force for the industry.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Great. So just so we understand where the labor force comes in for ChargerHelp! How heavy is that investment and where does that interaction between them and the labor force in the industry? Can you just walk through that a bit?

Kameale Terry: Absolutely. The first thing to understand is that the EV charging problem is not a labor problem, so just sending someone on site does not mean that you’re going to fix the charging station. And we have to be very clear about that. However, getting someone on site that is aware of the protocols, understands code, understands safety, systems actually helps you to gather more data and information in order to be able to fix the charging station.

So while we do see, these are gonna be great jobs, very coveted jobs, these are not gonna be millions and millions of jobs. And we’ve been very particular about that. But the thing that we do believe though, is understanding a smart asset that’s publicly deployed, like the charging station, can help people transition into what we think is gonna happen as you build, bring more software into the built environment.

So, yes, for us it was an upfront cost because we had to create curriculum. We had to tell that story in a meaningful way. And we also had to bring on workers in order to properly build out our platform. But we’ve just been very cautious to make sure that people understand we’re not promising millions of jobs.

We’re promising good jobs. We’re promising a foundation to understanding this ecosystem, but we should not get into the mind frame that there’s going to be millions and millions of maintenance technician jobs. I don’t want to set people up for failure. And then we’ve been very vocal about that.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So just so I understand then, there’s a big element of training your workforce znd to some extent the workforce of the other side of your clients . Give me a snippet or a tidbit of how this workforce development angle plays into your startup path and how it has influenced how you’ve grown your startup.

Kameale Terry: Once again, it’s less of a workforce development angle playing into our model, but it’s just how we’re doing business. They said, “well, the stations will tell us when something’s wrong. We could just send self healing code.” I even have competitors today that’s like, Oh, we have AI agents that can solve software issues or they can do all these things.

What we believe is that there is not fully one or the other. We believe that you have to figure out where it is that capital and where does the technology play. We believe that as you bring software into the built environment, you do have to have a labor force that is aware of software and systems and all of these things.

So, it’s less of the workforce development angle and more. So, this is just the businesses of the future specifically as you digitize , build infrastructure, which we’ve never really done in a meaningful way before. And so, yeah, it’s the business of the future. People will have to think about labor in a different way and how labor and technology play together.

Overcoming Barriers

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Love that. I love how you played that out. So I’m going to shift gears slightly, you’ve had multiple extra barriers to overcome. You come from, let’s call it a non technical background. So how did you overcome this challenge and how did you build what you needed in terms of resources and networks to start making progress?

Kameale Terry: One, I’m a woman of faith. There’s just a lot of things that I’ve just been grateful for in relationships and people in moments that I cannot look back on and not see that there is some type of divine connection. So there’s just things that are unexplainable places.

I’ve met people I’ve been connected to that I’m just like. How!? like literally I was like, how! But so much of being a non technical founder and also just understanding my gaps as a founder has been collaboration of people that I’ve been able to meet companies, people that have championed us. Every major contract that ChargerHelp! has today, I can point back to an individual that championed the company at that major organization. From our contract that we have with Tesla to the contracts that we have now with utilities.

Seeing that we understand the problem, that we deliver on a service, they’ve said, “Hey, you should work with this company.” Being a non technical founder and just having gaps in general, the way that I’ve been able to fill that is just through meeting people that believe in what I’m doing and being helpful to me, which I’m so grateful for, but like that’s kind of it.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Not to push you on that, but to somebody who’s on the other side, listening to this and saying, how can I implement this in my own startup. Clearly you had to do something to prompt these meetings? Just walk us through what that might look like, what you were thinking, what kind of actions you took, how you progressed and learned along the way to do better,

Kameale Terry: That’s fair, at the end of the day, there’s no one in this industry that understands reliability problems more than myself. Point blank. Period.

I am the expert of this industry. I am the nerdiest person when it comes to protocols and charging infrastructure and all that.

And if I don’t know something, then I definitely know a partner or somebody I can reach out to. I believe in building companies that solve problems. So if you’re looking to solve a problem as a founder, you have to understand that problem better than anyone else.

And the interesting thing about problems is that they are not stagnant. Problems consistently grow and grow and grow. I’ve had to teach myself more things, become more technical. And then, it’s a level of curiosity.

Like I’m never not learning, even when there’s competitors that come about, I’m interested to understand how they understand the solution, how they understand the problem.

So there is a level of obsession around understanding your problem. And I would say that, that attracts people to believe in you, because if you understand a problem and you’re open to being able to be innovative in your solution, there is a natural tying point there.

And people respect that. And people trust it, cause that’s the biggest thing of being an early founder. Oftentimes it’s a level of trust that you have to be able to showcase to folks who are going to work with you. But to be tangible, my suggestion here is that you got to get ridiculously obsessed with the problem that you’re solving.

You have to know it better than anybody else. That allows you to actually drive value and, and, and people notice that and they respect it. And then they feel confident to introduce you to procurement managers and things like that.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So there’s also the risk that I sit in my office and I learn everything there is to know. But then how do people find out? Like, where does that interaction happen and what are you doing as a founder?

Kameale Terry: Yeah. I appreciate you pushing me on this. Let’s get there.

So knowing the problem, step one.

Step two is, from very early on, I was very vocal about the problem. I use my LinkedIn a lot. Like I like to think of myself as a LinkedIn influencer to a certain extent and I wish one day we could get paid for that, but maybe not.

So I use my LinkedIn to talk about the things that I know. The other thing is, I’m running a LinkedIn series with the top 10 CEOs in my space. And so I collaborate with other people that may know a little bit more and are interested in the edge cases of the problem. So also bringing in their network. Utilizing free platforms to talk about what you know, and making sure that the things that you’re talking about, one are true, but two, that they’re adding value. Like everything that we’re looking at for 2025 because we think is of the utmost importance. It’s about the EV driver experience.

People don’t want to hear about reliability. They want to understand, Hey, if I am a business owner and I install this asset, how do I ensure there’s a superb experience here to get people to continue to go? So that way I can make money off of the asset. And so also understanding your audience.

That’s like a big piece of this as well. So yes, one, knowing the problem to figure out what free platforms can you talk about the problem? And if you don’t necessarily have the following yet, then are there like mid level peers that have a bit of a following that you can do a joint LinkedIn live?

Like this LinkedIn live, I came up with it. I spent no money. I hit up people that I follow on LinkedIn, that they sound interesting. And we just talk for about an hour. I’m super interested to see what my analytics will be, but I have so many new followers, so many new people, and even already new leads that I could tap into.

That’s probably more of the tangible answer you’re looking for.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: I love it. Which leads me to one other question, I’ve seen you in a couple of different instances now. And one thing I’ve noticed is, and I’m not saying you become a different person, but you do a really good job of tweaking your message to suit your audience.

As an example, let’s say you’re talking to someone like me. I don’t know that much about EV charging. Or maybe you’re talking to an investor you know, you’re still talking about EV charging, but it’s a whole other nuance and angle that you bring to that.

How consciously have you developed this as a skill, and what have you done, to get better at it over time because you clearly do a very good job of it.

Kameale Terry: Thank you so much. The first thing is, meditation helps – like every morning, I meditate. So I have a very strong process. So that helps. Even today, I was telling my co-founder, I was like, I feel like life is happening to me today, because I have so many things that I’m trying to get done. And so I’m definitely going to have to take a moment and a beat to just settle down. But I definitely think meditation and developing a practice of meditation. And even if it’s one minute, five minutes, something about quieting your mind and being present and getting into that practice, helps you become aware of self.

The other piece that’s been very helpful to me is I have The Stoic Journals. And so I do a writing prompt every morning. And that’s also a very interesting way to just think about yourself, how you relate to one another, other people. It’s a reflection about acknowledging yourself and then also the reflective piece of writing down a bunch. Every single morning has been very helpful to me over the years. And I started that practice back in 2020 after working with a coach. And so I’ve been doing that now for almost 5 years and then the last piece is that I’m really genuinely interested in people. If I’m talking to someone, maybe my delivery changes because I’m very interested in who I’m chatting with and what will land for them.

And so just trying to figure out okay, what cues am I getting from the person I’m chatting with? What’s important to the person that I’m chatting with? And if there’s a message or something that I want to get across, what’s the best way to get that message across? But that comes from a level of curiosity and wanting to learn about the person that’s listening to you or that you’re in conversation with.

Fundraising Strategies

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: And I’m going to ask you one more thing on that because I’m just really fascinated with what you just said. So I totally get the meditation, the reflection, all of those are proven, to actually improve your effectiveness. The twist is, let’s say you’re in a fundraising conversation, you’re talking to an investor.

First of all, there’s some pressure on you. So you really need to raise the money. Therefore there’s a power differential. They have the money, you don’t have the money. And there’s this pressure that, okay, what’s going to happen to my startup if I don’t raise? So, can you walk me through, how does this awareness and this audience sensitivity of who is this person and what’s going to land with them, how would that have played out or how has that played out in a really high stakes conversation with a potential investor, for example?

Kameale Terry: So the first step is that, I don’t really go into an investor conversation acknowledging any type of power dynamics. At the end of the day, they also have to invest money in good companies. The other step to this is like knowing your numbers, making sure you have a good business, making sure you got your own margins, if you got a solid business and you got a solid story and you know the problem you’re selling all that jazz, I’m coming into the meeting like, no, we are equals like you also are not successful if you don’t invest in good businesses and it just so happens I’m a good business.

And so coming into the conversation that way is very helpful. And then the other part is, I guess two things. One, I try to move through investors as fast as possible. and how do you do that? I have a very strong process of like when I’m fundraising. When I’m talking to people, what I’m talking to them about, what I expect to hear back from them, do they understand my company?Do they understand my business? And so trying to weed out the noise.

And so that way, when I get to the person, I’m really interested in them, that they’re relatively interested in me. It is a relationship. And so then that puts me in the mind frame of, how do I get to know you more? How do I understand what motivates you? How do I understand if you understand my business, when you take it back to the IC (Investment Committee) board, how do I understand what excites you? Cause that’s the biggest thing about the investors you’re chatting with is that. They have to be so excited about your company that they convince the other people on the IC board to vote in your favor.

So I need to understand them just how I would need to understand a customer . What motivates them, what challenges them, what scares them. I need to know every single thing about this investor. So that way the story that I’m giving to them can come back out of their mouth in an authentic way that’s authentic to them. That takes time. The last thing I’ll say is that I don’t believe in the terminology, always fundraising. I’m not an always fundraising type of founder, I do believe in engaging in relationships.

When we close rounds, most of the people that participate in the round are not people I just met in a year. I may have been chatting with them for three years, four years. We have an ongoing relationship. So by the time we get to this place, oh, I’m trying to raise capital. It’s not like I’m just getting to know everything about them. We’ve been around each other, so it’s a long game play, but you tell me if that was direct enough, because now I’m trying to make sure I’m delivering on what you need!

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: I love it! I love what you brought up. There are two things that I want to get into on that. You talked about, I get to know them and I have this relationship for three or four years, right? I’ve talked to several VCs and investors and there’s a couple of schools of thought, I’ve heard particularly from angels who say I want to know this person I want to help them way before we ever have an investing relationship so they may be relatively more open, to having a relationship, but a lot of investors hear from a lot of founders like, “hey, can we have a cup of coffee?” That doesn’t really get you very far.

I want to know what you’ve used, particularly with VCs and professional, semi professional investors, angels who are very serious. What has worked in terms of getting through that first time?

Kameale Terry: We’ve been lucky enough like, one; people typically know who I am, who the company is because of our online presence because of press releases. I always tell people, and this is so kind of sexist, but, you gotta be the hot girl at the party. You have to figure out how are you the hot girl at the party, but you can’t be mean. But you gotta be a little, like, untouchable, and how do you do that?

So then it’s really about consistently creating your presence, like, when I’m going out, when I’m starting my fundraising process, we always start out at least a year or a year and a half out before I want to close. So usually in the first 2 months, we’ll start dropping press releases. It’s nothing about fundraising, things like, what customer have you closed? What deal have you done? Just drop the press releases, so then naturally, investors then start to ask,

“Hey, can I have a call”

“Oh no, I’m not taking calls right now, just focused on the business like reach back out to me, in another quarter!”

That’s like the analogy of the hot girl at the party like, people want to talk to you, but you can’t be mean, you gotta be nice, but you gotta be the it person in that moment. And you have to figure out how do you build that moment. To me, the best way to build that moment is releasing press releases specifically around customer relationships, case studies, success stories, and the like. If you had milestones that you were supposed to hit in your last fundraising round, release the press releases about those milestones.

Not like directly on the nose, but like one of our things that we were doing, some work about bringing on third party partners. We’re going to start releasing, press releases around bringing on third party partners. That was one of our milestones, So it’s things like that, that have been helpful. That way, when you want to build the relationship, you’re not building it at a disadvantage. You’re building it at an advantage because this investor actually wants to talk to you.

And then the last piece is, be kind to all of your stakeholders, be kind to all the associates at funds and firms, just be kind, be a good person because that actually goes a long way because then people may warm intro you to other people, which is very helpful. I’ve never had to do a cold, so I really wouldn’t know how to do it like, if I didn’t know an investor at all, to just hit them up and be like, “Oh, let’s go out for coffee.” I’ve never had to do that before.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: I love it. So the picture I’m getting as you’re talking is you start with this core, this obsession with the problem, and then you do everything you can to be the world’s biggest expert on that problem. You go out with an attitude of, if not service, but at least of contribution. Like, how can I help others. Learn more about the problem, solve the problem. How can I match up with other people and build a network of others, who are also interested in the problem. Then you have a very clear plan and a process of how I am going to go solve this problem. And then you build your entire fundraising around like this one, central axis of things that are getting done.

But all of it is kind of built around that. And then that’s kind of closed with this larger envelope of, How can I be a useful member of this community of people who are interested in the EV charger world. Is that a fair characterization of what I’ve heard?

Kameale Terry: I definitely think so. Oftentimes I talk to my executive team that, the way that I look at how we move, it’s almost like there’s chess pieces on the board. That’s where the self awareness comes into play because you have to be very aware of where all the pieces are at and how you want to craft the story and create the environment for your success, so that’s how I’ve looked at it so far. Will that change later? Maybe, but in the beginning stages, that’s how it’s illustrated to me in my mind.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Love it! Okay, so there’s one other point that I want to pick up that you mentioned earlier, which is, I’m here selling a good business, and therefore I’m confident.

You mentioned how important it is for you to know your numbers. How did you develop that fluency? When did you become sensitized to that? And how did you get really good at it?

Kameale Terry: Yeah. I feel like I’m still forever developing it. I have gotten better at it by getting my butt handed to me in board meetings, the hard way. I could get super caught up in solving this problem and then my investors are like, well, how are you making money?

And I feel like that’s the balance that you have to get. It’s something that you’re building. So, yeah, I’ve had it through just very hard, honest conversations with board members. And as you bring people onto your board, it’s like finding people that, for as much as you can trust them that they have a genuine care for you as much as you think that they can, but that they will be honest with you, and in our heart aren’t afraid to have hard conversations with you. So the more board feedback that I’ve gotten, the better I’ve gotten with my numbers.

I also have a group of CEOs that are a little bit ahead of me that I connect with. I’m in a group, it’s led by this professor out of Duke. And, we meet once a month and we get to talk to other CEOs and people who’ve exited companies before and just hearing how they think about their business, how they think about their business model, their cost factors, how those things have changed over the journey of their business.

So to summarize, I’ve learned the hard way through just very brutal honesty and me sometimes having to take it sometimes being annoyed by it. Most of the people that I’m talking to, their businesses are larger than mine, but not hugely larger, but it’s the step that I want to get to.

Just being in their presence of how they’re talking about their business that has got to be better. And how to think about the numbers, right? Because that’s the biggest part about this. You can know your numbers, you can recite them, but how are you really thinking about it? How are you strategizing about it?

And if you’re doing things that maybe not make the clearest sense, can you talk about it through numbers of how you’re going to make it better and how it’s going to make sense on the long end? And that has been an ever growing journey for me that I’m still on, now.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So let’s say, some board member gave you some piece of hard feedback. What happens next? Do you go read a book? Do you find a CFO type to coach you through it? And how do you get over that?

I’m gonna be honest, if it happened to me, I’d be really crushed. Of course, I’d get over it, but I’d initially be crushed. Can you walk through what that looks like when you get that feedback, you realize there’s a gap that you need to now cross. How do you get past that?

Kameale Terry: So my co-founder is on the board with me. And so usually after I’ve had hard feedback, then her and I are debriefing and being like, okay, well, what did we miss? What didn’t we understand? What do we need to fix? Usually from there, I tap my CEO network.

We have like a Slack channel. So I might tap a CEO that maybe they’ve already exited the company. Maybe we’re struggling with understanding what we should could be considered in a cost of sale or something to that extent.

And then I will look in my network and be like, okay, what founder is closer to this or have experienced this before? Or I’ll put out a blanket, “Hey, I’m struggling with X. Is there anybody that can help me?”. And then from there, yeah, it’s just like a conversation. Sometimes you do have to push back on your board to be like, well, like actually we’re not really paying attention to that right now, but here is why, right?

So even understanding the strategy of pushing back, but yeah, it really is like using my co-founder. It helps me not take it personally because I want to be great. And I just have all these aspirations for myself. I could feel deflated very easily, but then it’s always like, okay, well, listen, lick your wounds, get it back together.

And then, I’m absolutely reaching out to my network. I probably have about 20 CEOs from varying, parts of this journey that I can tap into for very specific things, and then they will show me. I’ve had CEOs show me their board deck, or show me how they’re looking at their models, and we talk through it, and then I fix it.

That’s the one thing I believe I can say pretty confidently, my investors in my board, they know if they bring something to me, I’m going to figure it out and I’ll have it fixed by the next board meeting. I take that very seriously.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Awesome. And how did you get introduced to this network of CEOs?

Kameale Terry: So, it came through Entrepreneurs for Impact. So, Entrepreneurs for Impact is one of the groups I’m a part of. I was also a part of the LA Clean Tech Incubator Elemental Accelerator, and then the other one was like Grid110. And then sometimes like when you go to invest, some investors will have events for their portfolios.

So there’s a couple of people that I’ve met through, where, we just share an investor. So we’re connected that way. But Entrepreneurs for Impact is always like my first kind of go to group and they’re made up of about a hundred CEOs. And then after that, it’s probably that looking at, my, like from LA CleanTech to Elemental to Grid, there’s a whole bunch of Slack channels of people, but I usually go to Entrepreneurs for Impact first, that group of CEOs.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: And you said it was through this professor at Duke, right? How did you get in?

Kameale Terry: Yeah, so Entrepreneurs for Impact, you’re typically invited in by someone else. That’s a part of the organization because he holds the group at a hundred people. And so once you’re invited in, you interview and then, dependent upon that, you can get accepted into the group. We meet once a month, in smaller groups, and then we have two in person events a year where we’re together for about 3 days, where they have speakers come in past folks who have exited companies.

Funding and Fundraising Journey

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So you’ve raised a few rounds so far. How much have you raised, from what kind of investors have you raised and what kind of vehicles did you use for those raises?

Kameale Terry: Sure, so we’ve raised about 20 million or so dollars, and that’s up into our Series A. I did our Series A, maybe about 2 years ago. My first round was priced around. So when we went out to fundraise, we were actually going out on a convertible note, but then we ended up getting an investor that wanted to invest more capital if we thought it made sense for the milestones that we were going after. So that was a priced round. And then in between that seed stage. I guess even taking a step back, like my Pre seed, was actually a pitch competition. So I did about a half a million dollars through just like pitching places. It was just really cool. So it was non dilutive funding that we got in early on.

That helped us get a product, and also get a contract. And so when I went out for my seed, we already had customers. We were already post revenue and so that’s where we did the price round. In between my priced round and my Series A, we did a convertible note and that was to help us expand into additional states.

Which is funny because all of those states we retracted, we don’t work in those states anymore. So just as a founder, like sometimes you may raise capital for something you figure out, no, this is a horrible idea, and then you reallocate that capital for a different milestone. Then we ended up doing our Series A, which was a priced round and that was led by Blue Bear Capital.

We typically look for funds that can either bring us technical assistance or connections. So we’re a big data place. So we either need people that they’re connected to data sets that we’re interested in, or they have data sets that we’re interested in.

And then the other one is introduction to customers. So a lot of the folks in our Series A, we’re one of the two, so like Energy Impact Partners, their LPs are utilities. And it just so happens, most of our customers now are utilities. So, yeah, so that’s how that has played out.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Great. You mentioned this priced round, doing a priced round, Doing it that early is somewhat unusual. So what was the process like and what were your big surprises? What were your big learnings? Can you just walk us through that a little bit?

Kameale Terry: Yeah, like the crazy thing, it ended up in my first round. So I didn’t really know anything different. it was really confusing to me if I’m honest, like in that process, because I was like, oh, convertible note to a priced round like I was learning as we were going.

My law firm is Gunderson. Just shout out to them, because they just do really well by first time founders. And my lawyer at that point, I just told him and I was just really honest like, look, I just noticed I don’t really understand can we just spend time going through all of these legal docents and helping me to understand.

So yeah. So the convertible note: We went out for a convertible note. We had oversubscribed around and then Trucks VC who led that round, they’re just like, well, look, you can do more. We need to grow fast. We had a contract already. They’re like, let’s just do a priced round. I don’t think I knew enough to know if that was wrong or right at that point.

We just went along with it. It’s fine looking back, but I didn’t really know too much of what was the up or downside? Because of the amount, that’s why they didn’t want to do convertible notes and usually people get a little scared of having large convertible notes, because when it does convert, you really don’t know the pricing. It just gets a little funky.

So, having Gunderson was very helpful to decide on that. After that, we did do a small convertible note, that was fine. And then, we did another priced round at the Series A.

Navigating Legal Relationships

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: There’s a lot of angst or at least, apprehension around working with lawyers, they’re expensive, and you can ask them questions, and then the bill is kind of ticking up the whole time, And then there’s also this question of a lawyer gets paid regardless of how your outcomes turn out, because they’re essentially a hired hand.

Can you just walk us through your thoughts on how you manage this lawyer relationship? How do you make sure that you’re setting aside your interests as a founder, separating them from their interests as a lawyer, and making sure that you’re doing what’s right for you and managing that whole relationship?

Kameale Terry: Getting recommendations about law firms is super important from other founders. If you’re working with a law firm and you don’t know another founder that’s worked with them,I would say talk to the founders that you know, ask them what firms they’re working with.

So Gunderson came recommended to me. I was also familiar with Cooley because when I was at my prior company, we worked with Cooley, they were fine, but there’s a specific lawyer, Cody, who’s the partner at Gunderson and so many LA businesses work with them. And he just has a great reputation.

And these are from founders that I know and trust and their biggest thing was that he was really good for first time founders because he explained things. He wasn’t going to nickel and dime you for costs. And because they’re a very reputable and large, investment fund, because that’s the other thing when you’re raising capital and you’re working with another, investment fund and if that investment fund doesn’t trust your lawyers, or doesn’t trust the brand of your lawyers, I’ve heard this from other CEOs, it can just get very contentious really fast.

And because Gunderson is very well known by a lot of the investors, that allowed our conversations and our negotiating to just be more smooth. But I definitely think you have to get recommendations. I would not go cold on a lawyer.

So if you’re looking for a good law firm, Gunderson is it. Cody is your guy. So hit them up! You got to sponsor this actually. Tell Cody to send you some money.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Please do. We’re looking for sponsors! That said, was there ever a conflict or concern on your side of how you’re going to fund it? Or were you just clear that it’s going to come out of the round and therefore you weren’t like, super concerned about how you’re going to afford

Kameale Terry: So I believe that a lot of law firms do this but Gunderson specifically, up until you raise the million dollars, your bills are deferred. So you have to raise the money. If you don’t raise, you shut down, then you don’t owe money. I believe a lot of, like the really reputable, law firms have that program.

So yeah, no, I was never worried about it. ’cause it was just like, well, if I don’t fundraise, I don’t owe any money. But if I do fundraise, yes, of course, you gotta pay.

At some point, we got to a point where we only use Gunderson for fundraising rounds and then I actually ended up contracting two lawyers that helped us with commercial contracts. Cause that’s the one thing that did get very expensive is using a bigger firm for your commercial contracts. Specifically for us, because we were working on a lot of utility and really large commercial contracts where there’s a lot of back and forth and that got very pricey with a firm like Gunderson.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: How did you find them? Is that also through your referral network?

Kameale Terry: Network actually, both of them I found out through, the Entrepreneurs for Impact. They were recommendations.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So looking back, clearly you’ve done an excellent job raising 20 million so far. Is there anything you would do differently, or how would you characterize or summarize your biggest learnings or advice to other founders trying to do the same.

Kameale Terry: After the Series A I probably would have hired more slowly. I feel like investors are kind of like this, “Well, how much money do you need? Like just raise more money, hire other people”, like execute, execute, execute.

It’s like this whole thing, like going really fast, in retrospect, I feel like if we would have slowed down a bit, we probably wouldn’t have hired. Two years ago, we had 60 people, today we have about 40, and so we’ve restructured and I feel like we’re even more productive today than we were with the 60 people.

But the thing that really pains me is those are people’s livelihoods, which we don’t take for granted. Right. So I’m sure folks know the risk level of working at a startup, but still, I wish we would have just like taken our time with hiring. That’s like the only thing I would have done differently.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So how hard was that? Especially for you, given your commitment and how sensitive you are to the fact that your workforce is important, how, how hard was that process? Was it all at one go? Did you have to do it over time? Like, how did that work out?

Kameale Terry: We decided to do a restructuring all at once and no, it was really hard. It was just like, oh, like, we got this wrong. Like, how we structured the org wasn’t right. It’s always difficult to have to make those decisions that impact someone’s livelihood. I think that our saving grace was that we were really big on giving out severances, all of the folks that work at our company has, equity in a company and so that softens it, if you will, a bit, but nonetheless, it’s just, yeah, it makes you feel horrible.

Like being a CEO and a founder, I was thinking about this today. It’s the most interesting experience. You have to really stay even keeled because you can have a moment where you get recognized for something incredible, but then might have to make a really hard decision that impacts someone’s livelihood, all in the same day, and it could be such a mind break.

People like sometimes maybe over romanticize being a founder, but it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: That resonates for sure from what I’ve talked to other people.

Go-to-Market Strategy and Industry Impact

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So one other thing you mentioned was, you’ve talked quite a bit about your customer base and the fact that you work with Tesla, you work with utilities, can you just talk a little bit about your go to market strategy?

How did you start off and how has that evolved over time?

Kameale Terry: Yeah, man, this one, I feel like when we write a book, this will be the biggest chapter. So the interesting thing, even though there was a problem in the industry around broken charging stations, no one really talked about it and no one really had money for it and there was no regulation to say you had to have a working station.

So you could deploy infrastructure, go public, and 30 percent of those stations could be broken and, and no one cared, so the first thing that I had to do was actually create laws, which at that time my investors were like, either you’re really smart or really dumb. Because my first hire was in government relations.

And I sent it to D. C. And we started to work on federal regulations, we were also working on state regulations. So we passed the bill, the Charging Reliability Act in California about three years ago, what it did was it required there to be a contract on all publicly deployed charging infrastructure.

And since that day, we’ve seen multiple states take up that requirement and most importantly, we’ve seen the same language come about in a lot of commercial contracts. So it’s so interesting. I had to build the company and the industry in the market all at the same time and I had to convince people that this would catch on, it would carry on.

Thank goodness it has like today people cannot talk about charging without talking about reliability and people do not talk about reliability without talking about ChargerHelp! But that was a go to market strategy. Like, I had to create the market, but I had to be so convinced that the timing of creating the market would hit.

And the reason why everything fell in line really was from the car OEM sector. And this was a hunch, I started to see some of this kind of reared its head early 2020, even during the pandemic and different things, you start to see more car OEMs make commitments around electric vehicles.

My bet was that this thing was going to happen. I was also paying attention to international markets. and seeing that, we were significantly behind from EV adoption from international markets. And we were not competing internationally from an electric vehicle perspective.

So anyways, go to market strategy first was that I had to create laws, which is crazy for a startup to do and do not recommend because it may not work, but we had to create laws. And then from there we had to look at, okay, what is the product that the industry will buy today? And how am I setting myself up for the product that I know they need to buy?

I do a lot of research on, switching from the horse and buggy to the car. That was crazy, like people didn’t know they wanted an automobile, right? You had to figure out how to sell them the automobile, it’s the same thing, people didn’t know they wanted reliability service contracts that were a fixed rate and that was driven by data.

So I had to bring people to the future while still making money today. So we first sell like ad hoc services. We first did workforce development training. There’s a lot of revenue early on that feeds into what the product is today, but was never what I knew would grow the business. It’s just that I had to bring revenue while building the market to get to the product that we’re selling today.

And finally we’re here for liabilities and service actually makes up almost 70 percent of our revenue stream. And that we have a lot of growth looking forward to next year with that growth as well.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So first of all, congratulations. That’s awesome. I want to know, did you actually do and do the research on how they converted from horse drawn carriages? Like, where’d you find the material? I’m very curious.

Kameale Terry: YouTube, everything and I have a chat GPT agent that teaches me a lot. So I train agents in my spare time. So I have an agent that teaches me everything about changes that have happened in interoperability issues, I have an agent about the internet. About switching from horse and buggy to the roads, all these things.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So you actually watch all these YouTube videos, you ask this AI agent to teach you what needed to be done. And then you figured out how to apply this to the EV industry, is that?

Kameale Terry: It’s all happening at the same time. I had a hunch about things. I had an understanding of, oh, this could happen and through this whole process, that’s this thing about just, like, consistently learning about your problem and learning how your problem has evolved. And I guess that’s the other thing I didn’t really mention.

The best way to learn about the solution you should create is understanding similar problems that have happened in the past and how those solutions were created. It wasn’t like, oh, I did all this and then I execute it. This was always an ongoing journey and what I’ve uncovered in the last year that I’ve got very hyper like aware about is like.

Where have there been problems similar to what I’m facing today? What solutions had to come about, but most importantly, what environment had to be created for those solutions to come about? And I won’t go down 200 rabbit holes.

But, look into the internet. How the internet came about looking to even telecom, how the telecom got consolidated, even looking into computer processing systems.

How did those come about? It’s so fascinating. Like there were these major companies that were doing great work, but there was also a lot of regulation that to be done associations, that’d be great collaboration. Sometimes we founders and CEOs, don’t realize that yes, you’re selling a product, but like, in order to truly win, there’s this whole ecosystem of things that are happening.

So it’s either you’re going to help create that ecosystem and drive the ecosystem, or you’re going to get impacted by the ecosystem. And we just decided that we were going to create & drive it, and for the industry, because we believe that we have the best solution of how we should think about this problem.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So I’m guessing that this idea to pass a new law or get a new law passed also came from those learning experiences?

Kameale Terry: Oh, absolutely. Looking at how regulation can nudge early markets, that was something I was very interested in understanding also looking at how if you don’t tend to policy, at some point in building a company policy will tend to you. And so looking at, what has happened from meta to all these places at some point policy tends to you.

So, if you can’t figure out a way that you and your company and the policy that’s out there can be in alignment with one another. It’s going to come back to you at some point. And so that was a big learning lesson of being like, we have a viewpoint of the world that we believe aligns with the common good.

And we believe it aligns with a lot of the policy work that would be presented during that time period. So, let’s make sure that we’re a part of that conversation and not squashed by the conversation.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Amazing. So, it’s hard enough for a B2B company to go get these large contracts, it’s kind of like building the plane when you’re flying it a little bit. How do you pull this all off in this short time frame? Like you’re only one person or even with your co-founder, you’re like two people.

How do you make all of this happen?

Kameale Terry: I don’t, I don’t, that’s when I go back to, I’m a person of faith. Like, I just don’t, I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you.

I feel like we’ve just been very lucky of having the people that believe in us. I just, I don’t, I don’t know. And then the thing is this crazy, like during this whole time period, two years in, well, first year in, I got a divorce two years in, my aunt passed and my uncle passed, my uncle was murdered and then my mom died.

And so like almost all of this, like, that’s not just saying like, I just, I really couldn’t tell you it fascinates me myself. I live in gratitude. Like I am grateful for this opportunity for this moment. And, I just, I’m just. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So let me just ask you one more question and then I have a few closing questions for you. So you have this law passed, it takes time for the market to kind of digest and absorb all those relatively quick, if it’s a law, they got compliance dates and stuff like that. Was that a significant tailwind that it pushed really hard and made your go to market easier?

And was there anything else you want to talk about in terms of your go to market strategy that you think would be of interest or helpful?

Kameale Terry: The interesting thing about the law was like, and I had to keep telling this to my government relations person, it wasn’t even that the law had to be enforced. We saw at the moment that a press release was made about the law and the idea that this thing was coming, you started to see it in RFPs almost within a month later, and because the industry is so new, people are just trying to grab onto and get an understanding of like how they should do this thing right. And so that law actually is just now being enacted, but we’ve been seeing the flutterings of it.

And the biggest thing is choosing the right state, so people look to California, like literally legislators, we saw the bill passed in Maryland last year and we’re like, Oh, we had nothing to do with that. But it’s like word for word, the same bill.

I feel like that’s the thing is understanding like influence and then also how people have to think about the stuff that they’re building.

I don’t know. But that was the thing that I knew to be true. I was like, we didn’t even need the law to be enacted per se. Like, I would love for it to be enacted. But for someone to have thoughtfully have it written out and thoughtfully can correlate it back to you. You know, driving experience to revenue growth to reliability that someone had just taken a time to acknowledge that this thing should be done. People automatically picked it up.

And then with the go to market strategy the last thing that I’ll add there that was very helpful to us is that early on we joined a lot of accelerators that had to be tied to innovation centers. So, specifically, if you’re looking at our space. It is more so about utilities.

A lot of utilities actually have innovation programs. It’s an accelerator but it’s different where it’s a way for a utility to really de-risk the products that they’re looking to bring on. And so if you get into one of these innovation programs, like I know that Duke Energy has one, I know, Exelon has one.

I would just literally put in whatever utility and put innovation center innovation program. They more than likely will have one. And what they’ll do is they’ll give you a pilot. So you got to apply to get in, but once you get in, you would get a pilot to do work with that utility and every single one of the pilots that we’ve done, I think almost 5 of them. They’ve all turned into full blown contracts. And so it’s a great resource for the utilities. And then also as startups, it really allows you to build the right products for your consumer and for you to potentially turn a pilot into a full blown contract.

I guess that’s another go to market strategies where we’re always looking for opportunities to prove ourselves. And with these larger companies, and then how do you turn a pilot into a contract?

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Awesome. I love it. So I just want to close out of the few questions in terms of you as a founder and your experiences and what you’ve learned. So you’re as non-traditional as they come for this. I’m sure there have been low points. Is there anything specific that you’d like to call out in addition to the meditation, the journaling, and some of the other things that you feel are important what has worked for you tangibly and tactically in terms of. You get hit, something bad happens, you have to let go people, whatever the case might be.

What’s something that you keep going back to?

Balancing Personal and Professional Life

Kameale Terry: Three things, one, I don’t work on weekends. I’m not a Saturday, Sunday person. I never have since I started the company. I don’t do it. Because Monday through Friday, I might start a 4 AM day and maybe finish around 11 PM midnight.

And so my Monday through Friday may run really, really long, but because of that, Saturday Sunday, don’t call me! Don’t ask me about ChargerHelp! If I’m out with you, I’m not gonna talk about my company to you. Like my friends know, like, Nope. So figuring out whatever that is for you, that might be.

I forgot what founder It was. There’s a major CEO of a big corporation and he was talking about one of the things that he always wanted to protect was his marriage. And so he said that every day on Wednesdays, he always left at 4 PM to have dinner with his wife. And he did that for almost 20 years.

And so he kept his marriage and always drew that barrier and people just knew like, it didn’t matter. Okay. I could talk to you tomorrow about that. So it’s so important as founders to figure out what that boundary is for you. And it looks different for every single person. So I wouldn’t say everybody has to do it my way, but I’m just like, I will run to heaven and earth Monday through Friday for Charger Help! Not Saturday and Sunday! No, thank you!

So that’s one figure out what your boundary is. The other piece is my family, my family is so important to me. Like during the holidays we’re off next week at ChargerHelp! I host events with my family like we have game nights. I have three brothers they’re all younger than me, I force them to hang out with me at any chance that I get. Investing just and having whatever those relationships that mean a lot to you to do it.

And then the last part is just like having really good friends. Like I have a set of girlfriends, both of them are actually VCs and they’re like my best friends and we’re like neighbors and even like last night we had to go to this holiday party, but then afterwards we all just came to our house. We all have dogs. We like sat in my den and like, watch like TV together.

And it was just so nice. But even with them, they’re the type of folks that can relate to me. So outside of just having like a CEO network, if you can find friends that really understand what you’re going through, so if I can be like, Hey, I have to like do this really hard thing tomorrow, I’m a bit nervous about it. They really understand what that means. And they can be like, okay, let’s strategize about it. Or do you need a break? Let’s get a glass of wine and then strategize. Like, having somebody, a group of friends that really get you guys, that’s the biggest thing as a founder.

This space can feel so lonely, it can feel like you’re just by yourself that people don’t understand, right? Like people make it like, Oh, well. She’s too hard on us or she doesn’t, but people really don’t understand as a founder, like the weight that you carry, especially when you take on venture capital and when you hire people and you’re responsible for their livelihood. And so community is just so important.

Advice for Aspiring Founders

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: So somebody who’s maybe three years behind you or a few miles behind you, what are the top three pieces of advice, learnings, observations, thoughts you would offer?

Kameale Terry: The first thing is just don’t give up. I feel like there’s so many hard moments and you may think that, like, your back is against the wall and you can’t figure it out. I would say don’t give up. And a good way to remind yourself not to give up is one, read other CEOs that have been successful.

If they have any books or memoirs out there or even, Like, one of the ones I came up about recently that I really enjoyed is the CEO of FedEx. And hearing how he stood up FedEx, and he’s still the CEO today, and just, what he had to go through with FedEx. Like it’s fascinating, but it allows you to put things in perspective.

And even like, I don’t know how much people like the Amazon’s CEO, but even him, he has a very interesting story of like where Amazon was, where it is today and like the moments where he had to give up a lot of his company in order to get a little bit of capital. Like there’s always these moments that can feel hard.

The other podcast, I would say folks could listen to is called, Business Wars. Business Wars is very interesting because it talks about different companies and how they had to go head to head. And also how you should think about your competitors. It’s always fascinating to me how competitors interact with one another and where the collaboration pieces, whereas the competitive piece, and even like, what are some of the crazy moments that had to happen to have these companies be where they are?

Sometimes people think that you just have this straight line trajectory. Everything’s great, but it really is like, sometimes you may think that your company is going to collapse and fall apart and then tomorrow it doesn’t. Don’t give up.

The second one, like I said, it’s just get a strong community, whether that’s other CEOs, friends, family, you can’t do this alone.You got to talk to people. And then the third one is, I believe that like meditation, journaling, figuring out a way to be introspective while building is so incredibly important. And the more you can develop the habits now. Habits in the beginning, they’ll pull you through in those moments when it’s really, really hard.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Fabulous. Is there anything that you wish I had asked but I didn’t?

Kameale Terry: I don’t think so.

Shubha K. Chakravarthy: Fantastic, Kameale. This has been truly one of my most fun conversations. I’m really impressed again by how much you’ve accomplished and how amazing you are. So thank you for taking the time. And you can be sure that me personally and all of us here will be rooting for your success.

Definitely count us as your big fans, so thank you very much and, we’ll talk to you hopefully soon when you’ve gone public or been acquired, we’ll have you back and feature you as an alum. Thank you very much!

Kameale Terry: Thank you. I received that. Thank you!