Did you know that Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citi are among the biggest funders of fossil fuel projects in the world? Would you rather leverage your money to fight climate change? What if you could move your money to an entity that builds its lending portfolio around things like clean energy, regenerative agriculture, and direct air capture?
Ravi Mikkelsen is the Cofounder of ATMOS Financial, a digital banking solution dedicated to funding a rapid transition to the clean economy. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Ravi joins Ross to discuss the growing cohort of impact companies at the intersection of climate and FinTech and explain how neobanks like ATMOS fit into the ecosystem.
Ravi shares the market research around why consumers choose a bank, challenging us to consider what kinds of projects our financial institution funds and how big banks might transition their lending portfolios away from fossil fuels. Listen in for insight around the benefits of banking with ATMOS and find out why you don’t have to sacrifice user experience or pay more to do the right thing. George Bailey for the win!
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change Podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am here with Ravi Mickelson, co-founder at Atmos Financial. Hey, Ravi.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Hey, Ross. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: It is my pleasure. Oh, by the way, I’m the creative editor at Nori. Do I even need to say that? I don’t know.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah. I’m the chief email officer at Atmos, so I know what you mean. Blank slate. Do everything we need to do to move the mission forward.
Ross Kenyon: I know my titles at startups are notoriously silly and mine for a long time was lead strategist. I preferred the term cross-functional wildcard because I just would get deployed in strange ways or have ideas or want to run experiments. But it sort of means you do a lot of everything and it sounds like that’s sort of your life too.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Basically, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I’m happy to have you on because there is a lot of development happening in fintech. I’m sure someone listening says, what is this horrible portmanteau neologism that now you have to explain? It seems like you can just add that suffix tech onto the end of basically anything these days and it becomes a new vertical to invest in. 100%.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah. I mean, book Tech, food tech, transportation tech, energy tech, clean tech. Yeah. And with FinTech, yeah, that’s been around for 20 years now or more. Probably, yeah, even longer. I mean, Intuit was started in the 80s. We had PayPal in the late 90s, early 2000s. I don’t remember when it started. And then in the last 10 years, really, we saw the rise of neobanks specifically, and that’s where Atmos sits. And it’s these digital banks that are software companies and not legal banks themselves. But we work with existing chartered banks to Essentially white label their license or charter and then provide lower friction services to customers.
So neobanks are becoming very popular because you can apply for an account and most often Is a bank just that empty building with an ATM attached to it? Nowadays, yes, mostly. So, you know, it’s really like other things within tech. It’s about reducing the friction, making it easier for customers. You know, somebody doesn’t want a mortgage. They want to buy a house. And so that’s what we need is it’s like, what is the purpose of this product? And so it’s we’re facilitating purchasing a home, an EV, solar, et cetera, et cetera, storing money safely.
So how do we do that? More easily, more conveniently, and do it where people are. So now we carry banks with us, we carry dictionaries with us, we carry taxi hailing services with us. Basically, anything we need, we have in our pocket within our smartphone. And so more and more, we’re bringing the services that we use in the physical world You know, at least even still the physical services, we’re now being able to call them or make use of them right from within this device that sits in our pocket.
Ross Kenyon: There’s quite a lot there. I like the history of FinTech broadly and thinking of maybe Intuit. So you probably use their services like Mint or TurboTax. And they’ve also been involved in carbon removal and that’s been cool. But also PayPal. My understanding is that before PayPal, it really was not safe to buy things on the internet. Is that your understanding too?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yes, at least, you know, from the history that they put out. I don’t remember buying too many things back then. One before then that came out. I remember it like when I was starting like in college. So before that, you know, I had a bank account like through my parents when I was younger. And I was, you know, I saved and did all that. But I don’t really remember buying anything online until college. So I remember I think I did some stock trading at the very end of high school once I turned 18 and was legally allowed to do so.
But yeah, I don’t remember buying anything online before PayPal.
Ross Kenyon: The story is possibly more complicated than that, but that’s the version that I’m telling today.
Ravi Mikkelsen: We can stick to that one. We’ll stick to that one. Give them a little boost. Yeah. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: And so we can consider that possibly the birth or origin of fintech. And it’s come a long way to, I imagine, On any person’s phone, I imagine there’s at least one app, which is, you know, various banks that you use for different services. But there’s also things like types of consumer facing investment apps like Robinhood or Acorn or Stash or some of these other ones. So there’s some that have like a trading component. And I also, or like Betterment Wealthfront. So things like your retirement accounts. Those seemingly are all a part of the same movement too, you would say, right?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Right. And more in our field is New Day Impact, which is more similar to, I think, Acorns or Wealthfront. But it looks at creating an investment portfolio based on where you’re at, your risk tolerances, and what are the types of more sustainable impact-type companies that you want to support. So there is a growing field or a growing cohort of companies that support climate action, support equal rights and racial justice and gender justice and all of these different things that in general are great. And that’s the things that we want to support, but they’re not...
They’re not everywhere. And the climate tech, impact tech, ESG, various words for all the things. It’s like make the planet better and our society better while creating a profitable business. That’s basically take something good, throw tech on the end of it, and now you’ve got a software startup. And so I think, you know, when you’re going to talk about fintech within climate change specifically and sort of the climate fintechs, you know, there’s a great report released recently by New Energy Nexus, which is a not-for-profit in Oakland and one of the nonprofits that people can donate to on the Atmos platform.
They just did this really great report about the rise of climate fintechs and the role of climate fintechs within climate action and they looked at several different sectors. So insurance, neobanks, investments, payments, cryptocurrency. And then they looked at it in the US, Europe, and in China. So it was really interesting to see how the space is growing, how we’re interacting with sort of the direct action climate tech companies, or as Project Drawdown says, So they describe the energy or the carbon tech as the solutions. And fintechs like Atmos are the accelerants or the accelerators of those solutions.
Because we need to deploy, we need to transition off of fossil fuels to clean energy. And so that is the solution. And lower cost loans from Atmos accelerates the deployment of that solution. Hmm.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’ll get a bit more into detail on the intersection with climate and fintech, which I suppose we’ve buried that lead. That is what we’re going to talk about on Reversing Climate Change. The ostensible purpose of the show is to talk about such things. I want to build up a nice foundation we can build on in more detail first.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Got it. Sorry, I jumped ahead. I do that sometimes.
Ross Kenyon: It’s okay. It’s good to tease it out and let people know where we’re headed. But we’ll back up now a step and we’ll keep getting closer and closer to that. Is it appropriate to see fintech startups and companies as primarily software companies that work with banking rather than the other way around?
Ravi Mikkelsen: So software companies that work with banking versus bank companies? I’m not sure I get to your question.
Ross Kenyon: I think I’m trying to pin this down a little bit. Is the mentality that of a software company and trying to make highly scalable, beautiful user experience, automated plugin APIs to a bunch of different other apps if possible? This is sort of how I think about fintech. Is that even a correct way to think about it?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yes, I think so. And not every fintech company works with a bank as their partner. So there are fintechs that get their own licenses.
Ross Kenyon: But the whole idea- Become a bank themselves is what you’re saying.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Not everyone wants to become a bank or an insurance broker or a payments processor. They don’t want to build the rails themselves. They might want to be the car that sits on top of the rails that runs down the track. But pretty much I would say that either all or the vast majority start off as we’re a highly scalable software company. And especially if pitching VCs and looking for outside investment, you are just about guaranteed to need that type of story. Like we can do this. We can have this level of growth.
Ross Kenyon: You see things like public benefit companies and B Corps existing as a way of getting around this fiduciary responsibility above all else kind of approach, which means impact driven companies could be pushed into positions. That they don’t want to be in because either their venture backers want exits or they, I don’t know, they’re being pushed towards like the IPO model. That’s sort of the end goal of all this, right? Is to IPO and be a public company. But the incentives there are really tricky between shareholder profits and mission. So I can see why some of these...
FinTech for good kind of companies. It seems like kind of a risky approach to go down. I’m curious, like how you’ve been thinking about it as you’ve been trying to launch Atmos.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Right. So one, you know, just backing up a step that being a public benefit corporation, which Atmos is on our way and we’re pending B Corp, that doesn’t necessarily negate or Or remove the opportunity for us to IPO and to become a billion-dollar company. Etsy, Ben & Jerry’s. Was it Ben & Jerry’s? I mean, so there are several publicly traded B Corps. I think Patagonia is one of them. Danone. Danone, yeah. Maybe Patagonia is still private. I don’t know. But I do know there are a lot of billion-dollar B Corps and ones that are publicly listed.
So what that does is sort of changes the legal designation, which allows us to include another stakeholder within our calculus. So for us, it’s the environment. So we have to take the environment into consideration when we’re making a business decision. So if we’re going to sell to... A large bank and the outcome is that they stop, you know, essentially shut down operations and, you know, we reduce the amount of the transition to clean energy and so forth, then that despite what our outside investors want, We can say, well, this goes against our corporate charter.
And so it allows that protection. And there is really no reason not to have both of doing good for the planet and making a lot of money for investors that we bring in. And it’s just sort of this limited mindset that’s been used before for against this. So that’s sort of the first part of what you said. And then on the second half of, is IPO the exit for fintechs? And if you take outside investment, these investors are going to want to make a return on their capital. And so that means some sort of exit, whether that’s an acquisition or an IPO usually.
Ross Kenyon: Got it. Thanks. Okay. Well, the order of this is getting a little mixed up, Ravi, and that’s on me, but I think we should probably introduce what specifically you are working on directly here.
Ravi Mikkelsen: I think we’re far enough along to say what we’re doing.
Ross Kenyon: Let’s introduce this variable into our conversation. What is Atmos?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Atmos is a banking startup with a purpose of democratizing climate action. And our mission statement states directly, you know, is to finance the rapid transition to the clean economy for all. And we want to move people’s deposits from the banks that they’re with now. Most likely, it’s one of the big four banks, Chase, B of A, Wells Fargo, and Citi, who have roughly somewhere between 40% and 50% of all deposits in the US and are the biggest funders of fossil fuel extraction in the world. We want to take those deposits and leverage them to fight climate change.
So invest or lend for clean energy, electrification, regenerative agriculture, and eventually direct air capture, carbon removal, carbon to use, etc.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s so cool. I love it. I obviously, given that it’s such a passive decision for where to park your money and which interfaces it makes sense to use, I would strongly prefer my money not to be funding things that in my day job I’m trying to fix, right?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Exactly. I’ve been fighting climate change for almost 20 years now, or just over 20 years now. And Pretty much that entire time, my money has been in opposition or neutral to what I’ve done. Most of the people in clean energy or in direct air capture or in agriculture, most likely... Their money sits at a bank. The top 1% of banks is just 50 banks control 70% of the deposits. And these are the banks that are large enough to be a part of fossil fuel projects. So we need to change that.
And similar to what Tesla has done in the automotive industry... Our goal and probably the goal of the other fintechs and neobanks in this space eventually, because we’re going to need lots of them, we need to push these big banks to transition their own asset base, their own Lending portfolios away from fossil fuels. And that’s not just the $100 million, $200 million oil or gas deal. It’s the internal combustion engine vehicles. It’s the fossil gas furnace and stove for somebody’s house. So we’re only going to do electric. We’re only going to do clean energy.
We’re only going to do regenerative agriculture projects. And that’s going to take some time because they’re trillion dollar plus companies and they need to have to unwind stuff. They need to change their internal incentive structures. But the faster Atmos gets going and the faster we show them that this is where the market is heading, the faster they’re going to make that decision for themselves. And I don’t know if you want to jump back to sort of the genesis of Atmos, but like it’s sort of germane to this specific point.
Ross Kenyon: I do, but I have follow-up questions I want to... Let’s follow up. Let’s follow up. Yeah.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: This is maybe a little bit of a strange sentiment, but I do feel some sympathy for the position of the big banks because if they were to try to unload that quantity of fossil fuel assets, I think at the point of unloading, they become truly stranded. If the banks are willing to give up on them, who’s going to pick those up? It seems like that would just effectively be a write-off of 9%, 10%, 11 figure. I’m trying to think of what even those figures are. It’s a huge amount of money that is essentially just vanishing into thin air if they do that.
Ravi Mikkelsen: There’s a lot of zeros behind the ones in front of those projects. Oh, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: But if they were to just say, we’re no longer doing fossil fuels, how do they get any money out of the investments they’ve made? Are they just screwed?
Ravi Mikkelsen: So there’s the existing assets that they hold. And then there’s continuing to fund future projects. We’ve seen progress, especially within the last year, of the big banks saying that they’re stopping the financing of thermal coal projects. Thermal coal is the thermal being heat. It’s burning coal for heat, typically for power generation, energy generation. Then there’s metallurgical coal because we still use coal to produce steel and other products. We’ll still finance that for a while, but not the coal for power plants and thermal coal mining, et cetera, et cetera. And also, no Arctic drilling.
They’re not going to finance Arctic drilling. Great. One, it’s uneconomical. So it’s a relatively low bar to jump over for them. But they’re now making those statements, which is great. They’re committing to that. And then in terms of actually unloading any sort of fossil fuel assets that they own, that’s trickier. They need to find buyers for them.
Ross Kenyon: But do we even want them to find buyers for them either?
Ravi Mikkelsen: There are proposals for a cash for clunkers for coal power plants, oil, things like that. Because I believe Canada has done this. It was mentioned that England did this when they shut down the slave trade in England. You know, the country, they paid off, they bought, you know, humans from the slave owners. The U. S. did not. And, you know, we had a civil war. Like, I heard this the other day, which I didn’t know. And, you know, so in this same sentence, this person was saying, you know, we need to buy the assets of the coal plants, the oil pipelines, and the government can then make the transition.
We need the government to step in if we want to make this go easily. The free market is going to do this, and that is going to be a lot more painful, especially for the people, the workers on the ground, on the ground and in the ground, in the mines. Mine owners, the coal companies, the power plants, they’re going to be fine. The executives are going to be fine. The investors are going to be fine because they’re going to take whatever they can get. And the employees are the ones that are going to be hurt the most.
So this idea of governments using tax funds and wealthier countries using their capital to fund the buying out of these assets is one potential solution to avoid this problem that you bring up.
Ross Kenyon: It’s such a fascinating one too, because on the one hand, yeah, if you’re able to buy out the slave trade, there’s something that’s horrifying about having to ameliorate this situation and reduce the political conflict by paying people who did wrong. That’s not great. Civil War though, pretty horrible. Would have been nice to avoid that. And the wounds are still not fully healed from it either. So that’s not costless either. I’ve also seen things, I think this has come up in the show before, but one of our podcasts Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That feels horrible. They should not be rewarded. But it’s sort of hard to argue with that result as well, especially when the alternative is they stay in power and pass that power to their children in perpetuity.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard just to discuss these ideas. It’s like, wow, rewarding people for doing wrong behavior. But how do we, within the energy community, we’re talking about a just transition and It’s often used, it’s like, okay, there’s the racial justice component of we’ve cited most, at least, you know, especially in the US, we’ve cited most of our dirty power plants, water treatment, etc. In lower income areas, you know, communities of color and indigenous communities and, you know, cause greater harm to them versus wealthier and white communities. And globally, we’ve done the same thing.
We’ve shipped our trash and done the more destructive extraction in lower income countries, developing countries, etc. So there is... That component of the just transition is providing greater resources for this transition to those communities that have received more harm. And then there’s also this component of the people who work in those industries which we are trying to move away from. And so if you’ve got a coal miner or an oil derrick worker and they’re making $100,000 plus per year, And the equivalent job in clean energy is making much less. How do we make that work for them?
How do we make them have any job? If this is where the economy is going and needs to go, how do we make it work for them as well? Compassion as human, yes, but really... Like I said, the owners and investors of these companies are all fine. I’m not worried about them at all. But then from the free market standpoint, yada, yada, yada, you got to take care of them too. Whatever. Let’s take care of the people who’ve been harmed and the people who will be harmed. Actually, not just, oh, my portfolio is down a couple of basis points because this is now a stranded asset.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Sorry. I’m not really asking you easy questions here, Ravi.
Ravi Mikkelsen: That’s all right. It’s Wednesday afternoon. It’s the time for hard questions.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. How do you solve the problems inherent in changing the economy in major ways with stakeholders with a vested interest in the status quo? Yeah. I’ll let you move on then. Okay. So that’s the sort of hard, difficult, more negative side of the equation. I see Atmos as much more of a doing what is right rather than fixing what was wrong. God, maybe that framing is bad too. But what exactly does one do once one moves one’s money over to Atmos? What does it look like? What exactly is it supposed to do?
How does it work?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah. Thank you. And I love diving into these hard questions too. And Done wrong. Fossil fuels created great yet wildly unequal wealth in this world. It’s created all of the trappings we have in America and created our... Our great nation. So there is something to be grateful for. But we’ve also known for the last 60, 70 years now at a governmental level and in corporate level in the US that we needed to move away from them. And the fossil industry has fought against that. So yes, you’re saying it’s like, okay, they’ve done wrong.
Well, fossil fuels did some great things for us, the harnessing of energy. But we’ve also known for nearly a century now that we need to get off them and we haven’t moved fast enough. So it’s this transition of just that’s negative to what’s the positive. It’s like, what do we do? And like you said, one step is to move your money out of the banks that are funding fossil fuel extraction into, you know, Climate fintechs, neobanks like Atmos that will use your money to finance this transition and reward you for it.
The national average, you know, yield on a savings account right now is, you 0. 05%. A lot of the biggest banks are paying 0. 01 or 0. 02%. We’re starting off at 0. 3% and our top rate is 0. 51%, a half a percent. So 10X the national average. So you have a savings account somewhere else. You’re earning almost nothing on it. You move it to Atmos, you’re earning 10 times that amount. And you’re having a direct impact on stopping climate change because we’re going to take those funds. And right now we are partnering with banks who directly lend that into clean energy projects.
So that’s sort of Atmos 1. 0. That’s where we are right now. But we’re really building out the full stack banking suite and credit cards, commercial accounts. And eventually, later this year, we’re going to start Lending money ourselves, which is where things get really interesting because we get to more directly dictate the pricing on that. And so we can make all of these things that we want and need to have happen. So this transition, we can more directly lower the cost while still keeping ourselves profitable. We’re not going to lose money, but we can make You know, solar or rooftop solar affordable for millions of more Americans than right now.
You know, electric vehicles, e-bikes, accessory dwelling units. So the increased densification and, you know, net zero homes, passive house, so many opportunities. And I could just ramble on, which I am doing, obviously. But that is kind of where we’re at and where we’re going in a one minute rant.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. A couple of related questions. How are you able to offer such a higher savings interest rate? And how are you able to write and service loans for less than is conventionally done?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Right. So our savings rate, and I use that term because interest rate and interest yield are regulated or protected terms for what the bank offers. And so right now, the savings rate, that comes from Atmos. That’s a payment from us directly. And we’re able to offer that. And similarly, the pricing on our loans is... We’re not going to have branches. So we don’t have the physical locations that we need to pay rent or mortgage for. We are built on a brand new technology stack. So a lot of... The biggest banks, they started introducing software 40 years ago, 50 years ago, and they’ve maintained that software rather than paying to redo everything.
So a lot of their budget is in the maintenance of COBOL and FORTRAN and these other antiquated software languages. I know people who can write in those languages and earning a million dollars a year basically out of college because there are so few people who can do that work. And then lastly, we’re building, as I said, our technology is brand new. And so we can use machine learning and other advanced underwriting techniques and technologies so that we can Reduce the amount of human time that it will take to approve each loan.
As we talked earlier, we can get to a massive scale without having a very large team of loan processors to underwrite and approve each loan. The big banks, they’re not set up to do a $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 solar loan. You know, it’s one of the reasons that they haven’t gotten involved other than doing, you know, multimillion dollar utility scale projects.
Ross Kenyon: Are there a lot of other intersections between climate and fintech? I’ve seen things like a credit card, which instead of giving you airline miles, they’ll buy offsets on your behalf. And I imagine there is quite a lot going on that I’m not even aware of. What’s the space look like overall?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah, it’s growing pretty quickly. The neobanks, there’s payments. So the existing solar lenders, they would be considered climate fintech. So there’s an insurance company called Energetic Insurance. They fall under that category. They help reduce the cost of commercial solar projects because they can underwrite them. And there’s other auto insurance. You could kind of fit them in like lemonade. And then... Underwriting, how do you process payments for off-grid solar? If in a lot of developing countries, it’s like, oh, put lights on your roof and then I’m going to come around every month to collect payment.
Well, it’s like, how do you do payment solutions there? That’s climate fintech. So the solutions that are developing are different based on the market and based on sort of the sector they’re going after. But there really... Companies that are forming and growing at sort of every stage. Yeah, so from insurance to banking to payments to credit cards, like you said, all sorts of different things. So credit cards with the points for offsets or for other projects or setting carbon budgets. Probably think of a few more as we go, but it’s nascent, but it’s a growing space other than sort of the, you know, fintech lenders for clean energy.
Ross Kenyon: Huh.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Like SolarCity and Sunrun, you know, massive publicly traded. Now SolarCity is part of Tesla. But that was, you know, a quote unquote climate fintech.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, certainly. Yeah. When I think about why I do banking with the groups that I bank with, I’m trying to run through the reasons and maybe you can tell me if this maps with your experience in doing customer research and trying to develop this, but I care about not paying ATM fees and I like it when my banks also have I think Chase has a really, almost certainly the most valuable credit card operation of any of the big banks. And I like having it as a relatively quick, like low fee intersection that I can pay bills through.
There are also things I see like many fintech startups Reimburse for ATM fees. So maybe that matters less than I think it does. And I’m trying to think of a good reason besides the credit card thing.
Ravi Mikkelsen: So, you know, let me put it back to you. So it sounds like you’re with Chase before, you know, our conversation. And I said that Chase is, you know, I said it’s one of them, but it’s actually, you know, the largest, you know, funder of fossil fuels in the world. One, did you know that?
Ross Kenyon: I didn’t know it was the largest in the world, but I assumed that they were funding things I probably didn’t like very much.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah. So now that you know that Chase is like, how do you feel? Because like you said, it’s in direct opposition to what you do on a daily basis. But at the same time, you probably get a lot of services from them. That, you know, cannot be replicated right away from, you know, fintechs like Atmos. Like right now we’re launching with a savings account and then we’re going to add these other things in. And so, you know, it’s like, well, Ross, I want you to move some money to Atmos, but I understand that we’re not going to be able to replace your entire relationship right away.
So again, you know, let’s have a little compassion for you. I don’t want to, you know, Make fun of you or say anything bad that’s like, okay, you’re with Chase. And it’s like, yeah, now that you know this, let’s start to replace those services that you get from them with services like Atmos that are going to use your money how you want it, which is to stop climate change or reverse climate change even as this podcast is so aptly named. And so now that you know, it’s like, would you include this calculus of what your bank, your banking provider, what they do with your money?
Is that now going to be a part of your thinking as you look for future service providers?
Ross Kenyon: I think so. In Ceteris Paribus, I prefer my money not to be doing things I don’t like. I’ve also done things in the past of moving money to credit unions or local neighborhoods. I’ll tell you the truth, though, the user experience at bigger banks that I’ve had is much superior. Most of it’s at the software level, too. Trying to interact with these not very nice apps and websites, and then also having... I’ve found bigger banks are sometimes more forgiving with fees, even small things like ACH transfers being fee-less. I’ve seen that more at bigger banks like Chase than I’ve seen at the credit union where if I have to get charged $3 every time I’m moving money between...
I’m spoiled at this point is basically what I’m saying. I’m not saying this is either some sort of paragon of virtue here either, but I imagine maybe I’m a good stand-in for the average person.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah, we’ve done some user surveys and some market research before launching. And you are not alone. The no fees, the convenience. Yes, big banks, they’ve got a billion-dollar software budget versus your community bank or credit union may have $10,000. And so they hire a contractor every few years to make some updates to their app. So it is a wide disparity. It’s like, hey, I just need this to work. I don’t have a lot of time. I can sign up for a Chase account in a few minutes on a mobile app.
And so that’s where people go. There’s a branch on every single corner. It’s like they make it really easy to sign up with them. And that is kind of where we come in. And it’s like, hey, we’re going to make it. Just as easy, if not easier, to sign up for an account. We’re going to make it beautiful. You did sign up for an account and you didn’t sign up for a beta account a few months ago. So you didn’t get to see all the progress that we’ve made in all the work we’ve put in to make it intuitive.
But that’s our goal is to make it invisible so that it just works. And then you can do great things with it. One of the things we’re launching with is the ability to donate frictionlessly to these various world-changing nonprofits. As I mentioned earlier, to the new Energy Nexus report, we’ve got clean energy, we’ve got youth climate action, we’ve got endangered species, indigenous rights, ocean conservation, and All sorts of different nonprofits that we’re working with. And because we’re paying a high savings rate, part of that 0. 51% is a little bump, a 0.
11% bonus. If you make a donation, so if you want to share a portion of that little monthly bonus, that monthly savings rate that we give, we’re going to give you an extra bump because we’re grateful for you, for you helping these nonprofits to do their work. And then we’re collecting. So you said one of the things you like is a credit card with partner benefits with these offers. So we’ve got some of those. You can get a discount on going clean energy. Rather, you’ll get a $25 into your Atmos account if you sign up for Arcadia Power, which is a clean energy retail vendor.
So we’re trying to replace the services and provide that full suite that you’re looking for in the big bank, but put all of your money towards Reversing Climate Change and have an even better experience. No fees. One of the largest revenue sources for those big banks are those nickel and dime fees, overcharge fees, wire fees, ACH fees, or not ACH fees, but definitely wire fees of $20, $30, ATM fees, all sorts of things. So we want to get rid of those. We want to make it more human. And we want to make it more inclusive and fair.
And we want to reverse climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think a lot of that speaks to me pretty clearly. But I did think of something that I found more persuasive than everything we’ve just talked about. And it’s a little emotional and maybe a tiny bit maudlin, but I’m hoping you’ll allow it, Ravi.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Go for it, Ross. I mean, you’re giving me sales points. I love this. What spoke to you about Atmos?
Ross Kenyon: If I was watching It’s a Wonderful Life, I would want to bank with George Bailey, right? Like that’s...
Ravi Mikkelsen: Have you seen that? Do you even know what I’m talking about? I do know what you’re talking about.
Ross Kenyon: You wouldn’t want to be like, hmm, well, the mean guy, I think he offers no fees. I should probably bank with the terrible guy. You should probably bank with George Bailey, right?
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah, I agree. And are you saying that I’m George Bailey-ish?
Ross Kenyon: I think you’re on the right road to George Bailey-dom. I need to look farther into it. But I think you are headed that direction, which is great. Well, thank you. I take that as a compliment. It’s meant highly so. Because sometimes I take pleasure historically and being like a little bit hard nosed and being like... Well, I’m like a rational consumer and they’re not charging me fees and blah, blah, blah. And who cares if I don’t do anything because the system as a whole isn’t going to change. So why should I take like a worse experience with higher fees if it doesn’t actually change the thing overall?
And I’ve actually had a change of heart over that and probably over the last year where I’m like, because there’s a sense in which you only control your actions. So you can’t control outside events really in meaningful ways for the most part. So that’s a good reason to act selfishly because everyone else is. But since you can only control your own actions, that’s actually a good reason to act more nobly. Or to at least aim that direction. So I’ve been trying to flip that game theory that’s been just hounded into my head over the years and try to be a cooperator rather than a defector in the prisoner’s dilemma that is life.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Right. You know, Prisoner’s Dilemma, it trends towards cooperation, you know, as you iterate on it and you run it multiple times. And that’s really what life is. You know, it’s an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma conundrum and that, you know, leads towards cooperation. And I think ultimately as we, you know, look to that, then our, you know, businesses, you know, it’s like Tesla, you know, hopefully, eventually, you know, we use that analogy because It’s a beautiful, well-functioning machine. It’s great to drive. And it’s like, you don’t have to sacrifice. 15 years ago, people were putting lead acid batteries into the trunk of their car and swapping out the engine for a motor, electric motor.
And that was the EVs of the time. And now, you know... You got ones with hyperdrive, you know, ludicrous mode, all this stuff. So the idea that we have to sacrifice or lose to do the right thing, I think is shifting. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And, you know, I think as an industry and as sort of community industry, It’s not put on a sweater because it’s cold. It’s, hey, we’ve got so much power because we’ve got an overabundance of sunshine and we’re now properly air sealing our homes and doing this right.
And it’s fantastic and we’re comfortable, but we’re not paying an arm and a leg for our energy. It’s like, let’s not sacrifice. Let’s have an abundance, but we’re doing the right thing now.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Well, where do you see Atmos going in the next couple of years? And I guess maybe in order to answer that, where are you right now? Are you raising money? What are you doing?
Ravi Mikkelsen: No, so we’re not raising money at the moment. We finished that for this round. We just launched yesterday. This is Wednesday, January 13th. And we went live yesterday and are growing. So we’re getting the word out. And we have a savings account right now. And we’re going to be building on top of that. So we’ll have multiple savings accounts and be able to sort of structure around that. Because, you know, just as individuals, it’s like we don’t want our money to be used. Like, why are solar installation companies and, you know, carbon capture companies, why is that the money that, you know, of these companies, why are all of our companies being used in direct opposition to the work of the company itself?
And then, you know, the big thing is, like I said, is we’re going to start making loans later this year and offering, you know, Perhaps that’s a credit card, perhaps it’s some other form of that. But then the loan, so reducing the cost for residential solar, for electrification, for EVs, e-bikes, etc. And it’s how do we use capital more effectively from a bank or banking provider from that standpoint. How do we use capital to reverse climate change? And that’s what we’re going to keep iterating on. We have a plan for the next few months.
Beyond that, it’s really hard to say. Two years out, that’s a different life.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s really great to hear. I have tried many of these apps before and played around on them. And I like being involved in thinking about my finances, where my money is spent and stored. And I certainly look for various types of incentives and deals with inside of the various financial institutions of which I am a part. I got to say, I’ve been pretty, I’ve been slacking and this is a component that I haven’t really thought that much about. And part of it is because of those Sort of inferior user experience decisions or experiences.
But I think I really need to meditate on George Bailey. Everything else you said, Ravi, it’s all very good. But honestly, I think you should just lean on that. I’m sure that’s deeply patented, copyrighted. But that speaks to me. I find that the most persuasive of anything. And that makes me kind of a sucker and sentimental. But it’s true.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Hey, we haven’t thrown that into our multivariate advertising testing. So I’m going to create a landing page around Atmos as a... What is it? I forget the name of his bank.
Ross Kenyon: Like the building and loan? I just watched it over Christmas.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Yeah, it’s like something savings and loan. Bailey Savings and Loan. It’s named after his last name. That old George Bailey... We’ll run with it. We’ll see how it goes. But I think doing the right thing and working with the customer as George Bailey did, as me and Pete, my co-founder and our whole team, Like you said, cooperation. We want to work with people. We’re not trying to get one over on people and use trickery to make it so that you overspend and we charge you $30 on an overcharge fee like some of the big banks do.
We want to make it so that we all thrive. It’s like, hey, you’re saving more money. You’re earning more money. You’re spending less. It’s like these are great things because we’re leveraging that money to finance We can all win if we work together. George Bailey for the win.
Ross Kenyon: I bet you didn’t expect that to be where we ended on, huh?
Ravi Mikkelsen: I didn’t think we were going to go there, but I like it. I’m here for it.
Ross Kenyon: You didn’t know I was such a sappy, melodramatic kind of guy, but it’s true. I am.
Ravi Mikkelsen: If it works, it works.
Ross Kenyon: All right. Well, if someone wants to try Atmos, where can they find you? What should they do? Give them some tips here to get started.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Sure thing. If anyone would like to join Atmos, they can go to joinatmos. com. And that is J-O-I-N-A-T-M-O-S dot com. We’re also the same on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. My email is Ravi at joinatmos. com. So feel free to reach out. And yeah, even if you aren’t joining, but you have questions, feel free to reach out. And I hope I’ll do my best to answer them. And then maybe you’ll join. And then together we can move our money and reverse climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, links to all of those things are in the show notes if you’d like to follow up, join Atmos, etc. Ravi, thanks so much for being on the show.
Ravi Mikkelsen: Ross, this has been a great pleasure and I look forward to doing it again in the future.
Ross Kenyon: Sure. Happy to have you back on for an update. Thanks, listeners. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, if you’re a fan of the show and you haven’t already and you’re on an iPhone, please open up your podcast app, which comes natively on your phone. Give us a great rating, five stars, if you truly believe that is deserving of it. And write us a review. It certainly helps us a lot. Get this out to more people. And thank you, as always, for listening.
