Engineering a Faster, Cheaper, Cleaner Future | South Park Commons

Gigascale Founding Partner Mike “Schrep” Schroepfer joins South Park Commons to share lessons from Meta to Gigascale on builder cultures, how speed to data, cost-down trends, and capital efficiency drive real-world progress, and how engineering deep tech can drive climate impact. As he puts it, “You don’t have to wait for perfection. You have to show progress.”

Read more on how cost curves drive trillion-dollar opportunities in this recap of Masters of Scale 2024 on Deep Tech for Climate Impact.

Conversation Highlights

• Creating Culture for Scale: Schrep reflects on Facebook’s early engineering days and what it taught him about leadership. “The best set priorities and create conditions for great ideas to emerge.” The lesson carries over to his approach to investing: clarity of focus and iteration speed consistently outperform hierarchy.
• Getting to Data Faster: At Meta, moving from weekly pushes to continuous deployment transformed execution. The same lesson applies to deep tech. “The best hardware companies are the fastest iterators,” Schrep says. Vertical integration, computational modeling, and 3D printing now enable builders to test faster and more cost-effectively. At Climate Week NYC, Gigascale explored how this is making it possible to scale clean energy.
• From Green Premium to Green Discount: Schrep argues that durable progress happens when better economics align with better outcomes. “The only sustainable path is to make products people want because they’re better and cheaper, not just greener.” Companies like Dioxycle, Arbor Energy, and Mill are proof: solutions that cut emissions can win on performance.
• Clean, Cheap Energy Drives Progress: Schrep emphasizes, “Energy is prosperity. The more abundant and clean it gets, the more we can build.” From electrification to fusion, he sees compounding technological progress reshaping systems and improving modern life. At Masters of Scale, Schrep expands on how deep tech is transforming multi-trillion-dollar sectors of the physical economy.

Key Takeaways

• Speed of iteration defines success in software and in the physical economy.
• Falling cost curves across batteries, solar, and more are creating massive new markets.
• When a company’s inputs fall annually, your advantage compounds.
• The shift from “green premium” to “green discount” is where durable business models emerge.
• Technology enables both prosperity and sustainability, eliminating trade-offs.

Watch the Full Conversation