How BP and Shell abandoned their green ambitions

This is a review of key successful and key failed FOAKs in 2025

Nothing tests a founder’s sanity like having too many “very interested” customers. It’s like speed dating with homework. A few days ago, I spoke with an early-stage founder whose product was attracting a lot of interest. On paper, it looked like a dream: inbound requests from consumer electronics, defence, industrial automation, and even a few overseas corporates. In reality, it was a trap. The team had five people, no sales function, and most of their time was devoted to dev

Why AI power demand won't materialise at the scale imagined.

Adaptation and mitigation are often viewed as competing for capital. In fact, they are not.

Takeaways from FOAK panel at VDS 2025

We need more capital to bridge the FOAK “valley of death” in climate tech — but not at any cost. Lately, I’ve seen two worrying ideas gaining ground: crowdfunding that asks ordinary people to “invest like VCs,” and proposals to channel pension money into the riskiest stage of startup growth. Both sound democratic. Both are dangerous.

The military has always been the earliest adopter of new tech. Dirk Singer noted that today it’s also one of the biggest investors in e-fuels — not for climate goals, but for energy security. Like solar panels in the 1990s, disruption often starts on the battlefield.

I’ve seen this before—in Russia. Decisions made not for policy, not for strategy, but for unchecked power. Now I see this playing out in...

Robotaxi reality check

I stumbled across Martin Gallardo’s post and decided that it would be worthwhile to rewrite my comment into a full post. The consulting...

This was my second Battery Day in the Netherlands. Last year I came for the first time and was surprised at how much battery innovation...

A surprising revival of boring business amid the tech hype

Climate VC funding fell more than 3x from its peak in 2021

The lessons of Natron Energy collapse

In the end, it had to be a political decision. After half a year of sifting through more than twenty locations and countless meetings...

What is the future of electric mobility?

What founders sometimes fail to realise is that as you scale up, you will spend less and less time working on your product and more and more time with your investors.

Two different points of view on climate investment. Both wrong.

We don’t have a cleantech innovation problem — we have a FOAK execution problem. Over the past year, I’ve been building something I wish I had when I started scaling my first climate tech venture: a practical, experience-based framework for getting First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects off the ground. In my latest article, I’ve pulled together my 50+ posts into a structured overview that maps the FOAK journey—from the moment you decide to leave the lab to the day your NOAKs are r