Emin Askerov
Cleantech FOAK Advisor

They IPO’d before raising VC. Here’s why that was genius. ATOME Energy didn’t follow the usual startup playbook. No pre-seed. No seed. No “100-slide deck for Sand Hill Road.” Instead, they went public. Early. That’s not just bold - it’s strategic. 💡 Why? Because in capital-intensive, FOAK-scale cleantech, your biggest bottleneck isn’t idea validation. It’s credibility. To secure $400M in project finance, off-take agreements, and long-term power deals in emerging markets… You

Data shows that 10x returns are extremely rare in the climate tech

De-icing a frozen water tower in the middle of nowhere is not on anyone’s job description. However, this is a reality that you can come up against when you are scaling up your climate tech and building your FOAK.  Most climate podcasts focus on finance, policy, or shiny new tech. But real stories of scaling climate hardware? Rare. That’s why The Green Blueprint episode, “𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱’𝘀 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗔𝗖 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆,” caught my attention. Host L

Here is my 4-step framework to determine if your tech is a drop-in solution

A Climate First VC artile got me thinking

Q3 VC investment data from Pitchbook Inc shows otherwise.

Why read my blog?

AI and lithium-ion electrode manufacturing

You’ve got your foot in the door with an NDA, but how do you keep momentum going on the way to an offtake? Don’t rush it! Start with an MOU!

Licensing, Buy-out or Project Finance? 

What is the first question you need to ask a greentech scaleup? 

Investors think that hard tech climate scaleups lack generalist and financial expertise. While Founders agree only with the latter. Why? Source: https://planet-a.notion.site/BUILDING-AND-SCALING-CLIMATE-HARDWARE-A-PLAYBOOK-71e1b097041c49f69e31d4f3cb2de155 📖I’m reading the Building and Scaling Climate Hardware Playbook, and this picture struck me for two reasons. First, are the polarizing views of founders and investors. The gap is simply astonishing. Second, is the confidenc

Strategic investors can be a double-edged sword for greentech scaleups. Here’s what to look out for. ⌛️Never before there was such a meaningless waste of time. I’ve spent three days in a small Siberian town, having endless meetings with a factory, belonging to my host corporation. The purpose - integrate it in the supply chain of my in-house battery startup. Easier to force a square peg into a round hole.  🏭Strategic investors prioritize squeezing every bit out of their curr

What kind of problems should you be looking to solve as a startup founder? Here is a funny example from the heat pump market.

Should we tokenize greentech, and if yes how? I need your help to figure this out. 🙋‍♂️

A strategic investor can kill a greentech startup. Here is why and how.