Josh Reidy Builds Thread To Modernize The Power Grid

Few people understand the challenges America faces in modernizing an outdated power grid like Josh Reidy, the co-founder and CEO of Thread, an asset management platform for the power and utility industries.

Reidy’s grandfather founded an electric utility cooperative in the sparsely populated, unforgiving terrain and weather of North Dakota where an ice storm could take out 95% of the utility polls in a service region, leaving people without power for weeks and sometimes longer.

“I was raised with a man who was the second closest in my life, next to my father, who had this great passion about him to improve the world,” says Reidy in an interview.

Reidy himself hopes to improve the world with Thread by addressing the challenges of our aging energy infrastructure and climate change. Nearly three quarters of transmission lines are over 25 years old and approaching the end of their typical 50–80-year lifecycle, according to data from the Department of Energy.

Reidy believes Thread will help power companies prioritize their maintenance work on the old grid while introducing renewable energy sources where possible.

Co-founded by Josh Reidy, Jim Higgins, Joshua Reid and Travis Resell in 2019, the Grand Fork, North Dakota-based Thread is a software-as-a-service provider for electric utilities and power generation. Its UNITI Workspace an asset data management, workflow and collaboration tool that combines multiple data sets from everything from drones and robotics to engineer and repairman reports into one digitized data base—providing a detailed and updatable digital road map for every asset.

Thread is part of the growth in the global fixed asset management software market that is expected to reach $4.24 billion in 2024 and rise to $6.65 billion by 2028, according to The Business Research Company.

Other such companies include SafetyCulture, AVEVA Enterprise, ManagerPlus, InvGate, Sage Fixed Assets, SAP Asset Manager, IBM Maximo, AssetExplorer to name a few. Though Reidy believes Thread is the only platform focused on the utility industry.

Reidy was inspired to start his journey creating Thread in 2018 when he read a Bloomberg report that energy company Xcel announced it would be the first utility to swear off greenhouse gases and pivot to renewable sources. That coupled with a chance meeting with Microsoft’s President Brad Smith encouraged him to proceed with his idea for Thread.

“Those two events propelled me to quit my day job and move forward. It’s really ironic that after I quit my day job as you can imagine, I started to question my decision. Especially because venture capital and a startup culture really was not present in the state at the time,” says Reidy who credits Smith with giving the advice he needed.

It took Thread a year or so to build a prototype of the platform that they took to Xcel who was willing to become their first customer and work with the Thread team to bring it to full fruition.

Today Thread has some 60 employees and 15 customers. And while the customer number may sound small, they all represent multi-billion dollar utilities servicing tens of millions of customers like Xcel, Constellation Power and Otter Tail Power.

Chris Harris, Renewable Generation Supervisor, who works with Thread at Otter Tail Power stated in an interview, “With Thread’s support, Otter Tail Power can achieve its goals in part to reduce overall cost of the annual blade maintenance program and to transition from reactive blade repairs to proactive blade maintenance, which is something that the industry as a whole has been struggling with for many years.”

The company leveraged grants early on to fund the company and later took on Venture Capital. The firm’s $15 million Series A funding round in October 2023 was led by Badlands Capital with participation from Minnkota Power Cooperative, Generational Partners, Rosecliff Ventures, Excell Partners, Homegrown Capital and Kevin O’Leary’s Wonder Fund North Dakota.

“To date, we are eclipsing $20 million of venture capital raised and prior to that, the State has a very unique environment for a lot of non dilutive capital that has been instrumental to our well being and formation as a company over four years time trying to solve a very difficult problem,” says Riedy.

“Josh and the Thread team have listened to customer needs from day one, building a software-centric solution that is optimized for their use. As the grid continues its transformation with trillions of dollars in new infrastructure spending, the status quo will no longer suffice and customers will need solutions like Thread’s UNITI platform to make real-time risk-based maintenance decisions,” states Asher Kraut, Partner at Generational Partners in an interview.

Growing up on a ranch and farm in Thunder Hawk South Dakota on an invisible line between north western North and South Dakota, Reidy was accustomed to hard work in a harsh environment at an early age.

He graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in education management and began working for the university in IT management and later worked for the University of North Dakota where he worked his way to became vice provost and chief strategy officer. He then became chief operating officer of Edge Data for two years before leaving that role to start Thread.

When he was twenty he first tried his hand at becoming an entrepreneur, but failed. “I had a great product that was mobile before mobile, and content management. And I didn’t have the business acumen. And my oldest daughter was born with Down syndrome. And I got cold fee,” says Reidy who then returned to his day job at the university.

He attributes Thread’s success to being more experienced and working with an accomplished co-founder team. “I’ve been flanked by good people. And then the spirit of North Dakota is just one that is pioneering. I scratched and clawed my way. And now I look back, from 2018 to 2024, there has been this entrepreneurial ecosystem emerge, where if you have an idea and you’re looking for early stage capital, I don’t know of a richer place in the world right now than North Dakota to get that,” says Reidy.

As for the future? “We believe there an opportunity to really have an influence on decision making in the modernization taking place within the power and utility industries. And five years from now, I see Thread sitting at that intersection of increased infrastructure spending, the need to update the power grid and address climate change with workable solutions,” concludes Reidy.