S1, E9: From Architect to Climate Tech Founder: Transforming Real Estate’s Carbon Footprint

Vithusan: [00:00:00] So developers want to be sustainable, but it comes at the cost of, Hey, like we are running a business. Therefore, sustainability does not kind of add to that bottom line of how we run our business. Therefore, we can’t implement it. So what we’re doing at Tuuli is showing that sustainability can actually increase profitability.

What that actually means is let’s choose lower carbon materials that reduce the carbon emissions of your entire building and actually reduce costs.

Georgi: Did you know the average person will work 90, 000 hours in their lifetime? What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment and become a disruptor for good?

Welcome to the Work That’s Worth It podcast. I’m Georgi Enthoven. And I’m here to demonstrate that an ambitious, meaningful, and rewarding career is not just a dream. It’s achievable. Each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with global change makers who cracked the code on combining income and impact.

If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a [00:01:00] paycheck and your purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the ambitious humans who have done it themselves, ready to make your work worth it. Let’s get started

today. We have a young and brave. Entrepreneur on the show, Vit Vimal, he is the founder and CEO of a company called Tuuli, which is a platform helping real estate developers create sustainable, profitable buildings. He saw the need for greater impact in his industry, and he took action. Tuuli provides data driven roadmaps to cut carbon emissions while balancing costs and profitability for his customers.

Backed by top investors, Tuuli aims to save. 45 billion kilograms of carbon in five years. Simply put, his mission is to make buildings part of the climate solution. His education paved the way for [00:02:00] his expertise. First, he is trained as an architect. Next, he earned a master’s in building science, which he will tell us about.

Also, early on in his career, he gained work experience as a sustainability consultant. I first read about Vit in the Corporate Knights article highlighting the 30 under 30 sustainable leaders in Canada. Hi Vit, great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Vithusan: Thank you so much Georgi for having me.

Georgi: Yeah, well, let’s just jump right in and I can’t wait for my audience to get to know you a little better, but I want to know what makes your work worth it.

Vithusan: Yeah, great question. So to start off, what really makes me passionate and what makes my work worth it is being able to implement sustainability for buildings.

When I was brought into this world, the world was so much more greener and so much more fluorescent than it is right now. And that is a catalyst of climate change. 40 percent of the world’s climate emissions come from [00:03:00] buildings. It’s the biggest reason why climate change happens today. And you can see the effects of climate change in our world.

At the time of recording this podcast, you can see the LA fires right now, and you can see that there’s a whole bunch of these issues that are happening from natural disasters, increasing rainfall, higher tidal waves, land water kind of increasing. degradation of soil. These critical, critical effects on the world are influencing the way we live and are not happening for a positive reason.

And the biggest contributor to that is actually buildings with 40 percent of the global carbon emissions. So right now, things like the concrete that you use for your building, the types of structures, the energy that goes into these buildings. are a huge, huge threat to the environment and the work I do directly influences that.

We’re building a platform called Tuuli, which is a carbon management platform to help building developers really figure out how their buildings are currently performing, [00:04:00] what materials are going into them, to help them be more conscious with what they’re choosing and kind of decisions they’re making so that they can reduce the carbon emissions of the buildings.

Georgi: Oh, that is incredible. How long have you been at this?

Vithusan: I’ve been working for Tuuli for about three years, but I’ve been progressing with this career from the inset of my architecture degree all the way through to where I’m at today for about 12 to 13 years now.

Georgi: Oh, that’s so interesting that you started with an architecture degree and now are involved in business.

Can you tell me about how that transition was for you?

Vithusan: Yeah, so I will start off with where I started in architecture school. So in architecture school, I really loved the idea of designing buildings, designing the way people interact with buildings. And the biggest concept that came towards me is that there’s 200 students out there, and everyone’s going to More or less create these buildings without caring about sustainability or what that actually means [00:05:00] for the occupant or the space it takes up.

In architecture school, I got introduced to a concept called Seleucigenic Design, which is how human health is influenced by how the building is performing. There’s a really cool case study in Australia called the Lady Salento Hospital, which introduces a whole bunch of natural greenery, windows, and a whole bunch of these more sustainable elements to this building to actually increase the way humans heal in the hospital.

This concept was actually introduced in 1970s, 1980s, where when you had smallpox, you were actually placed on launchers in front of windows to soak up the sunlight and cure your sickness. So to me, there was this better benefit of buildings beyond that was just the design element of it. It’s a way people interacted with these buildings and the way it actually situated in the environment.

So from there, [00:06:00] I became really kind of interested in that space. So I want to do my master’s of building science. focusing in sustainability.

Georgi: That sounds like such an interesting program. Where did you do that?

Vithusan: Yeah, I did it at Ryerson University, or now what they call Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto.

It is a very, very niche program. Now a lot of schools have building science. Not a lot of people know what building science is, but it’s really getting into the scientific side of how buildings are built.

Georgi: Okay, so you understood how to map them out and draw them and structure them, and then you really understood about the materials that you would put into them, and it sounds like from your own interest, it’s like, how would these buildings impact people that are interacting with them in a healthy way?

Vithusan: Exactly. It’s getting into the level of detail to understand the fundamentals of how a building is actually built and how we can break away from these traditions that have traditionally been kind of leading us towards the wrong way for climate change [00:07:00] and figuring out ways we can optimize your buildings and push it towards I

Georgi: have a question about your current offering and trying to get developers to first to give them transparency and then ideally hope that they take action on that transparency and build or choose materials that are more sustainable.

1. I want to know, are you finding people interested in sustainability alone, or do they need to meet or exceed costs on what’s currently available to them to take that step and to feel motivated?

Vithusan: Yeah, great question. So, I think generally people care about sustainability. I think generally people want to be more sustainable, but at the end of the day, it is a for profit business.

You need to show your investors, your private equity funds that, Hey, you can build a building that is great. There’s aesthetically [00:08:00] pleasing. There’s a lot of returns from kind of occupants buying up the spaces, whatever the cases is for that financial concern and also bridge the gap for sustainability.

And that gap of bridging the two is just not there right now for these developers, or at least before kind of tech comes into the space. So developers want to be sustainable, but it comes at the cost of, Hey, like we are running a business. Therefore, sustainability does not kind of add to that bottom line of how we run our business.

So what we’re doing at Tuuli is showing that sustainability can actually increase profitability. What that actually means is let’s choose lower carbon materials that reduce the carbon emissions of your entire building and actually reduce costs. There was actually a really interesting study from RMI, the Rocky Mountain Institute, that said You can actually reduce the embodied carbon, so the carbon emissions from your building materials, by [00:09:00] 46 percent for a 0.

5 percent cost premium. You talk to any developer, any asset manager, that is a no brainer. There’s such a marketing story with that. You reduce the carbon emissions. You’re sustainable, it’s a win win for both parties, and therefore they would do it. But the limitation with that study from RMI was it’s so hard to implement without technology.

It’s so hard to implement and investigate all these different materials, all these different kind of overlapping effects between strategies without technology. So therefore no developer has done it. That’s why with Tuuli, we’re really developing the technology to push forward and make buildings More sustainable, give more research back to the teams and produce more sustainable outcomes.

Georgi: Yeah, so give them the sustainability option with the financial incentive to do so, show them the low hanging fruit, so to speak.

Vithusan: Exactly, exactly. There’s so many of them for these buildings that teams just Don’t have the energy to access.

Georgi: Yeah. And I talk about [00:10:00] in my forthcoming book, the idea of the average career is 90, 000 hours.

So find something that you can really contribute to for the long run and something that you care about and build expertise in that, not. Just in a vertical, such as like marketing or architecture or sustainability sounds like the theme that’s really important to you. Can you share with me, other than being influenced by your parents and leaving the world a better place for your future children, what is it that got you interested in sustainability specifically?

And did you ever give sort of careful thought to it?

Vithusan: Yeah, so what interests me most about sustainability is you can really feel the energy that building gives to you once you walk through it. Take your WeWork or your kind of office spaces for example, WeWork wouldn’t be as successful if the interior of this building wasn’t equipped with good ventilation or big bright windows that sunlight comes [00:11:00] through or the space is nice and clean.

has plants and is more natural, like you get more energy from these spaces compared to a kind of plain old office with cubicles and dark, dim lighting. You really feel the energy that comes from buildings. And that really inspired me in my architecture career, where you get to experience these buildings for what they are, and you can actually feel the benefits.

So kind of going down that pathway, you start to really understand. What makes a building successful interior wise for the occupants? And you realize that in most cases it comes at the cost of the environment. There’s a role where both these, like, building a building for the occupant, building an aesthetic building, and a sustainable building can all happen at the same time.

But being in, kind of, working as a developer, working for multiple buildings all across North America, you can really see that there isn’t this correlation that is being put [00:12:00] into development right now. So for me, that’s what really got me into the space is kind of understand this relationship and using my really kind of unique experiences working in sustainability, architecture, tech.

Yeah.

Georgi: That really does sound like you found the perfect place where your runway is large. There’s lots of opportunity ahead of you in the area of interest and the impact is tangible, easy for you to see.

Vithusan: Exactly.

Georgi: What about your capabilities? I’ll share with you my experience of going through college and then graduate school is I spent a lot of time leveling up weaknesses and not as much time really leaning into strengths.

And if I could go back to my younger self, I would say, you know, for most of the part, forget the weaknesses and really sort of lean hard into where you shine and what you offer that’s unique. Can you share with me your experiences? in your educational journey or after [00:13:00] wanting to know and doing that self reflective work about a bit more about your talents, what advantages you have in life, your strengths, perspectives you share that can really help give you the leg up in the work that you do.

Vithusan: Yeah, for sure. So I actually started off my career in kind of just this design kind of sticking into my workspace. I would just sketch out all day, all night, produce results, bring it to the classroom and repeat that over and over again. And then I went from this more creative role into engineering of the buildings, like the building science.

Then I went towards consultancy, which is talking more about the business, talking more about the sustainable benefits that can be implemented. And to be honest, I never really considered myself a master of anything. I didn’t really focus on one aspect of my life and start to kind of drill away at it.

What I noticed was my greatest strength was the fact that I had no [00:14:00] particular strength at all. Instead, it was the bits and pieces that I put energy into and started to push more and more each day.

Georgi: So like the combination of what you brought, being able to be creative and an engineer and understand business was like the special sauce that gave you the leg up.

Vithusan: Exactly. I think a lot of people can really focus down on one niche and really be good at it, and to all power to them, I think that’s still a great strength. But what I saw is bringing all these pieces of the puzzle and rearranging it and making sure that they can all work together in a beneficial way.

is what made me excel at what I’m doing right now. I can be creative, I can talk to these real estate developers who have been working for several, several decades, understand the complexities of their buildings, and really build on technology to help them solve the problems that they’re facing today.

Georgi: Yeah. Let’s talk about risk profile and how you are in a startup environment. And I talked to all sorts of people, young professionals, and [00:15:00] some are more inclined to take the risks and others feel they really need to pay off student loans and debt before they jump in to take more risk and sometimes never getting to the place where they can take too much risk because our responsibilities change as we get older.

But I’d love to find out from you why the startup environment was so appealing and how you’ve made that work.

Vithusan: Yeah, absolutely. So Actually, I wasn’t really involved into the startup environment until maybe four or five years ago, maybe, maybe even less. I was really stuck on this pathway of once I graduate, I’ll get a job.

I’m chasing after kind of a director of sustainability position. That’s kind of where I want to be at an architecture firm. And I was slowly kind of progressing towards that. And then I got introduced by one of my closest friends to the startup world. He took me to an incubator program called Next 36 here in Canada.

It [00:16:00] brings together 36 of the greatest entrepreneurs in Canada for that year. and puts them through a really high intensive accelerator. I got to experience one day of that and I fell in love with the space. It allowed my creativity kind of to flourish. It allowed me to think about solutions. It really pushed the boundary for what a risk was and what a benefit could be.

So what really intrigued me and kind of pushed me into the zone was That there was this freedom of creativity, I can build up solutions for real world problems, and I can see that for myself, like, as a consultant, you work on a project, once it’s done, it’s done, you don’t really see the benefits, but with my work, I really see that.

Georgi: What you really like is to be able to see a project through. So if you have the idea, you don’t want to pass the idea to another team to implement. You actually want to get your hands dirty and work the problem all the way through to the end.

Vithusan: Yeah, exactly. From the start of the concept of [00:17:00] that problem and solution to talking to real world people around, Hey, does this seem interesting to you?

What do you think about this? Give me some feedback. To actually being able to sell this to them is really fulfilling to me.

Georgi: That is amazing. Is there a part of this that you feel you don’t want to be doing, but you have to be doing, and you’re just so motivated by your contribution you’re making to the world that you’re willing to do it?

And I’ll give you my example is social media. Like that is not something that I enjoy having to feed, but it’s an important part about being an author and it will help me get the message out to the people that I care about. And so is there something also that you have to do? I don’t know if it’s sales, you had mentioned selling maybe that, or is there a piece of it that you just have to say, okay, this is a small part, but this will break through what I really care about.

Vithusan: Yeah, for sure. I think this brings up the theme of the podcast is doing work that really matters and kind of bringing in that business [00:18:00] aspect of it as well. My passion, my Everything I’ve built in my career comes through sustainability and buildings. In an ideal world, I would just kind of work on this project, solve small problems here and there, and make the place 1 percent better each day.

But in the real world, that’s not how kind of life operates. You need to think about what impact looks like for you, where you want to be in your life, and think about the financials that come with it. So, I think you said it spot on. The one part that I don’t necessarily love doing is trying to sell this and make some money from it as well, because it kind of, it creates a barrier for sustainability, but only if I’m able to kind of.

push and kind of get that solid product is I can start to kind of further my career, further kind of build up the business, and I can implement sustainability at a greater scale. So it’s a small price I need to [00:19:00] pay right now and probably for the next couple of years. But once at scale, once this becomes a big, big company, I can really push sustainability in all sorts of ways.

Without having to tackle that barrier.

Georgi: Yeah, yeah. I love that you had mentioned at NEXT 36 that you were very invigorated by that environment. And one of the pieces I talk in the book on sort of the connections in your community is surrounding yourself, like you’re the average of the five friends you surround yourself the most.

And that applies to career as well. And being around people who care and want work that’s worth it is a really important ingredient to being what I call a disruptor for good, where you are having a, making a big difference in the world, but you’re not self sacrificing in order to do so. And I would love to hear about the people you are surrounding yourself by in order to keep invigorated and excited and how important that is to you.

Yeah. How are you choosing your people? [00:20:00]

Vithusan: Yeah, I think it’s so, so critical. The support system that you develop for yourself is so critical to building out something as a startup. With a startup, there’s ups and downs. It’s like a roller coaster, as you’ll hear many people say. One day you might have signed the biggest client, and the next day you might be facing one of the biggest tech challenges that you’ve ever faced before.

And having that community around you is so critical. So one of the greatest things about the program, the incubator program and being surrounding myself with other startup CEOs and kind of co founders is you get to see that you’re not alone in this journey. You see other people face the same issues.

And still rise the next day and do greater things. I’ve seen companies that have started off with the biggest challenges become multi billion dollar companies pushing sustainability for buildings kind of further. So, like, that community is so [00:21:00] important. Surrounding yourself with people who are facing the same issues.

It’s bouncing ideas back and forth, seeing what they’re going through, grinding out 10, 12 hours every single day, not to push kind of that hustle mentality, but that’s what I did for the first couple of days throughout my work week is really push the amount of hours with these other sort of people. And it really kind of Excites me and kind of gives me the energy to keep pushing as I see all my friends do the same thing.

Georgi: Yeah, really providing the support that you may not get in an entrepreneurial environment. So the support to continue with what you care about and the support to hold you when you’re not having that good day.

Vithusan: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Georgi: I was wondering if you have ideas and resources for people thinking about sustainability and real estate or architecture and what are some good places to think about either educational programs like you had found [00:22:00] or even resources to learn more about it?

Vithusan: Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the best ones for sustainability, especially in kind of this embodied carbon field that we’re in right now, is to look at RMI, which is a Rocky Mountain Institute. I brought that up in one of their studies earlier on. They’re a great resource to kind of tap into other professionals in the space, Kelly from Half Climate Design, Mantle Developments, and Ryan Sizzle.

These pioneers in the space really push what sustainability is for buildings. They’re great resources to tap into. They have blogs, they have case studies being posted, but kind of switching over from the sustainability side to the tech side. I think some of the greatest resources that I found on the tech side is looking at Y Combinator’s library of documentation and kind of what information they’re providing is really helpful.

Leni’s podcast is a really great one [00:23:00] to to understand these like experts coming every single week to talk about one niche thing and get really good at that. So it helps me think about it. And finally, bringing everything together. A really, really good space to, kind of, learn and kind of observe this information is X.

There’s a bunch of professionals posting new content that’s happening in their industries. There’s tech updates happening there. You can start to see some of the sentiments around sustainability and tech design at the same time. It’s a really good place to, you might scroll for like 10 minutes a day even and soak up so much information.

So,

Georgi: yeah. Sounds like lots of really great resources. Thank you. We’ll definitely link to those in the show notes and you know, as you talk about the different people or resources that you use to continue learning. I’m interested in your views on collaboration versus competition in the space that you’re in, because it may be different if you don’t have a common purpose such as sustainability.

Vithusan: Yeah, absolutely. Collaboration [00:24:00] versus competition is one of the biggest things in the real estate industry right now. Just to kind of map out the landscape, real estate developers are always competing with each other. One building being kind of erected in one spot versus one in right next to it. You’re always competing for rental rates, for asset value, some of the issues that you’re facing and what real estate developers are currently facing is they just can’t release information about their buildings to the public or share this information with their competitors.

And therefore it become all this information industry, which is so critical to develop out these tech and kind of. understand the landscape, benchmarking, things that are so important for us are being isolated within the companies right now. So that’s the competition that we’re seeing in industry and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

The biggest themes that are coming out of these real estate conferences are collaborations where these real estate developers, consultants, energy [00:25:00] modelers, everyone needs to share information to kind of push sustainability forward. Unique ways teams are addressing sustainability. So that is so critical, but for our technology, for Tuuli and other kind of collaborators at our competition out there, we’re all pushing towards the same goal, regardless of if one company is five people and they’re making a million dollars per year versus a hundred percent company making a billion dollars per year.

As long as someone is working on the ground, pushing sustainability further, every project matters. Kilogram of CO2 emitted from the environment is so critical, so I think you talk to any sustainability kind of team out there, they’ll say the same thing, that they’re all pushing towards the same goal, so there isn’t a lot of clashing that happens in the industry right now for sustainability.

Georgi: Yeah, yeah. Well, I so appreciate everything that you have shared with us, and it gives lots of food for thought, and it sounds like such an [00:26:00] exciting career pathway. Is there something you would go back and tell your younger self when you were studying architecture, like one thing you would go back and tell yourself now?

Vithusan: Yeah, I think it would be to take risks. I played it pretty safe for the first couple of years of my life, kind of going through a pathway that was pretty well defined for the most part. And I never really strayed off of that path, trying out new things, building out new solutions. Going and talking to people on the ground to get the real insights.

I think taking risks, putting yourself out there was so critical. Something that’s so critical to me that happened near the end or closer to where I’m at in my career right now. But if I had a chance to go back, I’d tell myself to take that opportunity, take as many opportunities as I can, and really put myself out there to make mistakes.

Making mistakes is the best way to learn, and once you kind of [00:27:00] flex that muscle over and over, you become really good at it and you learn really quick. And that’s how you become better at what you’re trying to do.

Georgi: Yeah, such good insight and transferable to anyone, any industry. So thank you so much for sharing that, Vit.

I appreciate you being here and look forward to watching where you go with your career. Thank you so much.

Vithusan: Thank you so much for taking time to interview me. I’m happy to share my story.

Georgi: Yeah, take care. I want to emphasize a key point after this conversation with Vit. The idea is to keep putting yourself out there and follow your curiosity.

It was a leap for Vit to become an entrepreneur and join the world of startups, but he jumped in 100%. For each of us, there are a handful of experiences in our lives that really changed the course or direction that we’re living day to day. And for Vit’s story that he shared with us, visiting the incubator program for the day lit up something in his core that shifted his mindset.

And then he followed through on it. So keep taking [00:28:00] risks. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Work That’s Worth It. Remember, every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy. There are future disruptors out there just like you who would appreciate the conversations in this podcast.

Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two, or visit my website. at georgienthoven. com. That’s spelled G E O R G I E N T H O V E N dot com. Until next time, ask yourself, what problems am I solving and are they worth my valuable time? Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow.

Thanks for listening.