Scaling Innovo: Our CSO taking it "one conversation at a time"

Scaling Innovo through relentless relationship-driven hustle. Discover how CSO, Chris Kohler is revolutionizing clean energy markets.

Written by: Kavya Shah

Let’s get one thing straight: Chris did not expect to be crashing on investors’ couches in DC when he imagined a career in climate finance. But that’s startup life; and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve seen a startup raise $100 million and fall apart because the CEO had a mental breakdown. I’ve also helped a company raise at an $8 billion valuation,” he says. “So when John and Pratik (Innovo’s founders) asked me to come on board, I went ahead and worked for another startup.” But call it Karma, or luck, a year later, in 2023, Chris joined Innovo, and has now become instrumental to the team: equal parts business development, slack memes, and strategy.

Ask Chris what he does in a day, and the answer depends on the week. Some days, he’s deep in business development, setting up pilots with tech teams, emailing the sustainability divisions of several conglomerates, or he’s cold-calling a potential partner on ZoomInfo. Other days, he’s on the road: last week New York, next week Dubai.

“This job is 90% conversations,” Chris emphasized. “It’s all about finding the next person who might care. Then ending every call with: ‘Who else should I talk to?’ and “Can you connect me to the next potential client or investor,” and in some cases, both. 

It’s about navigating five degrees of separation with the finesse of a chess grandmaster. A VC leads to a trader in Pittsburgh, who leads to someone in Abu Dhabi, who knows someone at a manufacturing firm in Memphis. That’s how Innovo grows, not through glossy ads or PR blitzes, but through relentless, relationship-driven hustle.

Innovo’s approach has always been to start small, prove the model and then to scale smartly. This playbook has worked for several firms: Tesla started with high end electric cars to prove the tech, and then down marketed, Amazon started with books, and then expanded to everything. “That’s us,” Chris explained, “We’re proving ourselves in the most trusted corners of the clean energy economy, and then we’ll scale to other markets and asset classes.”

Because the clean energy world is still running on spreadsheets. And the thing about Excel Spreadsheets is that they don’t scale. Innovo is building the pipes, rails, and trust layer needed to transfer Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and carbon credits. “We’re not just building a company. We’re building infrastructure for a market that still thinks Excel is cutting-edge. It’s time for an upgrade,” finished Chris, before taking a deep breath. He feels very passionately about this. 

Today, Innovo’s platform is expanding from U.S. renewables to carbon credits and global markets like the UAE. Along the way, they’re finding ways to digitize legacy industries that still operate like it’s 1995.

Chris has a quote he loves: “Startups are like eating glass and staring into the abyss.” And he’s only half joking. “There are massive highs and massive lows. It reminds me of that mountain bike race in Colorado, the Triple Bypass; sometimes it's snowing outside at altitude and moments later it's 70 degrees. And companies make bad decisions all the time.” He talked about how it's easier for the Innovo team because the co-founders and core team are not 22, right out of college. They are sustained and supported by the experience they have had before jumping into the startup scene. 

That resilience is built into the Innovo culture. The team knows the energy transition isn’t a straight path. There will be regulatory twists, market volatility, and probably a few more awkward fundraising calls.

Innovo raised its first million through pure hustle and high conviction, and asking for money from family and friends, and the friends of friends. And now, the checks are coming faster than ever, the pilot programs are expanding, and the vision: creating infrastructure for the energy transition is looking a lot less like a PowerPoint and more like a platform that’s ready to scale. 

So why are things working in The Innovo Way? Because it has to. Climate infrastructure isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. “People are using more energy. That’s not changing,” Chris says. “RECs are demand-driven. And we’re building the system that actually tracks and moves that demand.”

Add in a bit of AI, a dash of blockchain, and a team that’s always hustling, and you’ve got Innovo: not just another climate startup, but a company actually helping the transition.

And for Chris? The hard part wasn’t switching sectors. It was asking his friends for $25K instead of institutional investors for $20M. So yes, the startup ride involves some couch surfing. And yes, you might have to connect via LinkedIn to reach a connection of a connection just to land a pilot. But if the mission is big enough and you believe in it, you do it anyway.

Welcome to Innovo.