Emin Askerov
Cleantech FOAK Advisor
Emin Askerov — FOAK & Cleantech Advisor
The two-year lesson
Early in my career, I made a promise to investors I shouldn't have made — not because the ambition was wrong, but because I hadn't thought hard enough about what stood between the commitment and the delivery. Manufacturing limitations. Design cycles. Homologation timelines. I missed my sales targets by two years. Two years in a startup is an eternity. That mistake cost the company, cost my investors, and cost me. I never made it again.
That experience is why I do what I do now.
What I've built
I've spent the last decade building things in cleantech — not advising on them, not modelling them in spreadsheets, but actually building them.
Lithium-ion cell and pack manufacturer — CEO and Chairman. I led the acquisition of a Korean cell maker and oversaw the construction of an 8 GWh gigafactory.
Wind turbine manufacturer — CEO. We captured half the Russian market and closed a $900M sales agreement.
2 GW power generation company — Business Development and Strategy. Turned it from loss to profit.
Every strategy I designed, I also had to execute. Every commitment I made to investors and boards, I had to deliver on — or face the consequences personally. That's not a common background in the consulting world. Most advisors are never accountable for the advice they give. I was.
The gap I work in
The moment I decided to shift from operating to advising came when a founder showed me a carbon-fibre car body he'd built. It was genuinely impressive engineering. But he had no idea how to scale it — no manufacturing plan, no supply chain thinking, no path from prototype to commercial production. I've met that founder in many forms since. Brilliant engineers and scientists with technologies that could genuinely matter, who will never get them to market without someone in the room who has navigated that gap before.
That's the gap I work in.
I help cleantech founders navigate FOAK — First-of-a-Kind — projects: the brutal, expensive, high-stakes phase between a working pilot and a factory that actually delivers. FOAK problems don't respect functional boundaries, so I work across capital structure, process design, supply chain, and offtake — the places things actually break.
How I help
Three areas where I do most of my work:
Capital structuring for FOAK projects
Getting from a validated pilot to a financed first commercial plant is where most cleantech hardware companies die. I help founders structure the capital stack — equity, grants, strategic partners, offtake-linked financing — in a way that actually gets built, not just pitched. I've raised capital from the operator seat and sat across the table from European deep-tech investors. I know the specific gaps that kill otherwise fundable deals before they come up in diligence.
Electrode and process integration, with Korean partners
Battery manufacturing economics are won or lost at the electrode stage. Equipment selection, process licensing, yield curves, supplier relationships — these decisions are hard to reverse once the plant is built, and most European teams don't have the operational depth to make them well on their own.
I draw on a network of Korean manufacturing partners — the ecosystem I worked with when I led the acquisition of a Korean cell maker — to bring that depth into the room. For European projects that can't replicate Asian vertical integration from scratch, this hub-and-spoke model is often the difference between a FOAK that delivers and one that stalls in commissioning.
Offtake strategy
For a FOAK, a signed offtake isn't just a commercial milestone. It's what makes the next funding round possible, the supply chain negotiable, and the investors calm. I've negotiated industrial contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the operator seat, not as an advisor watching from the side. I help founders structure the full commercial pathway — from first MOU to binding agreement — including pricing logic, risk allocation, and the negotiating positions that protect you without losing the deal.
For the situations where each of these typically comes up, and how I engage, see Services.
Who I work with
Primarily founders and executive teams building battery and cleantech hardware, from pre-FOAK through first commercial scale. The segments I work in most are energy and automotive, but also — maritime, heavy industry, and specialty industrial applications — where European manufacturers have real structural advantages and the competitive field is thinner.
Geographically, I focus on Europe, with active links into Korean supply and JV partners.
I occasionally work with investors who want operator diligence on a deal, but the bulk of my work is founder-side.
Writing and podcast
I publish long-form analysis on FOAK frameworks, current FOAK projects, battery manufacturing strategy, and European industrial policy. I also host Watts Up With Startups, a podcast for founders and investors navigating hardware scale-up challenges.
Work with me
I stay in the room through execution. Advice without accountability is cheap, and I've seen what it costs.
The things people assume will be easy are almost always the ones that break them. My job is to make sure you've thought about those things before they break you.
If you're building a FOAK facility in cleantech and want a second set of eyes on the plan — from someone who's made the mistakes, paid the price, and delivered anyway — get in touch.