If you have ever worked in a large multinational, you know the feeling: endless org charts, contradictory KPIs, processes that multiply like rabbits. And somehow everyone is both “responsible” and “not really responsible.” Now multiply that by ten, stitch together the cultures of a dozen legacy car brands, add a dash of crisis-era decision-making, and you get Stellantis - a Frankenstein monster of the automotive world. Not created by one mad CEO, but by years of mergers, restructurings, and “synergy roadmaps” that never quite materialised. And just like Mary Shelley’s creature, it wanders the landscape, unsure how to behave in a polite society. The car world increasingly resembles a polite society of electric vehicles with its own rules: long-term supply security, chemistry bets made years in advance, and a willingness to commit before you’re fully comfortable. Tesla set the fashion, Chinese OEMs showed how to do this properly. All over the world, respectable car OEMs struggle to keep up. Meanwhile, Stellantis, after taking a long, hard look at the mirror, decides that it doesn’t belong in this world, and cancelled several raw-material supply contracts. In battery materials. In 2025. In a world where EV supply chains are the hottest geopolitical topic after semiconductors. Mary Shelley’s monster never had the option to become human; the tragedy was baked in. Stellantis, on the other hand, does have a choice. It can still reinvent itself, commit to a messy and expensive transition, and finally align around a coherent EV strategy. Only if it could muster the courage… Yeah, sure. Imagine doing it from the inside of this monster, where KPI’s are tied to quarterly results, not strategic milestones 10-15 years away. Mega-corporations rarely die from a single dramatic mistake. They fade through a sequence of small decisions that felt “pragmatic” at the time. This one feels like another step down that lonely path of a monster, not fit for a polite society.

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 developing their product. They didn’t have the bandwidth, budget or hours in the day to seriously follow up with everyone. They had to choose. And that choice would likely determine whether they ever get to their FOAK. Founders with “multi-industry” products often treat this as an advantage: “If automotive doesn’t bite, maybe medical will. If medical is slow, maybe defence. There’s always another market.” But dig even a little deeper, and this advantage quickly turns into a liability. You lose focus, your pipeline gets cluttered, and you end up chasing conversations instead of deals. So what do you do? How do you choose where to focus when everyone seems interested? If I had to choose one guiding principle, it would be speed. The faster you get to a sale, the faster you move to your FOAK. The faster you move to FOAK, the faster you build credibility, reduce technical risk, and get to real revenue. People love referencing Amazon or OpenAI as excuses to “go slow” or “burn cash for years.” But these are statistical outliers with extraordinary (and frankly, situational) financing power. You are not Amazon, and I pray that you aren’t thinking of yourself as the next OpenAI (in terms of cash burn). Every extra year without revenue tests your investors’ patience and increases your financing risk. The planning fallacy always catches up. If you have a choice of markets, pick the one where sales cycles, certification, procurement and contracting move fastest, even if the TAM looks smaller on paper. Selling batteries for medical devices might get you cash flow in months. Selling the same chemistry into automotive could take 3 years to complete supplier qualification. Your bank account won’t wait that long. I always advise founders to choose speed over market size. A small, fast market beats a big, slow one every time. Curious about your experience: when you had to choose, did you go for the fastest path to revenue, or the biggest market?

Today I came across a curious piece titled “Micromobility Does Not Need Hypergrowth.” The author makes a simple point: not every industry is built for Silicon Valley–style blitzscaling. Some technologies grow slowly, linearly, and in close dialogue with infrastructure, regulation, and physical reality. Trying to force hypergrowth on them distorts incentives, misprices risk, and burns founders. Reading that, I couldn’t help thinking about FOAK climate hardware. Micromobility founders are told to “be the next Uber.” FOAK founders are told to “be the next Tesla.” Both are equally unrealistic. And yet the majority of the advice circulating online is written by people whose job is not to build bikes, cars, electrolyzers, batteries, or anything with a supply chain, but to deploy capital into stories that look like they could grow like software. That dissonance shows up everywhere in the FOAK fundraising journey. I see this clearly because I’ve lived on both sides: scaling wind, cathode materials, and doing early evaluation for battery cell manufacturing, while also spending a year listening to VCs, interviewing them, and trying to understand how they really think. The conclusion I reached is quite an uncomfortable one: VCs are the performers of the cleantech stage, excellent at attracting attention, less equipped for the trench work of scale-up. And that’s fine, as long as founders understand what game they’re playing. VCs Are Optimised for Speed. FOAK Is Optimised for Physics. The EnvoDrive article argues that micromobility collapsed under the illusion that every physical business must pursue hypergrowth. When the business is actually infrastructure-dependent and margin-sensitive, that mindset becomes toxic. FOAK companies face the same trap. Hardware does not obey software scaling curves. Building factories takes years, not sprints. Procurement cycles run on seasons and budgets, not growth hacks. Your next customer is not “the next million users,” but one B2B account that can take six months just to align internally. Trying to convince a VC that your FOAK will grow like SaaS is not just unrealistic - it can and will backfire. But there is a temptation to do just that, because VCs look for exponential scalability, and what grows better than SaaS? So how do you manage this temptation and get the VCs on board? Here is a 5-step framework for pitching FOAK to VCs I’ve developed, based on what I’ve learned about how VCs see FOAK projects. 1. You Must Show a 10x–100x Outcome VCs don’t get out of bed for businesses that might return 3x in 10 years. Their funds can’t survive that math. They need outliers. So when you pitch, TAM becomes theatre. You’re not asked to prove what’s achievable - you’re asked to prove that the market is big enough to absorb a unicorn-level outcome plausibly. FOAK founders often confuse this with a request for realism. It isn’t. It’s a request for a possibility. Meanwhile, the EnvoDrive article reminds us of what happens when you push physical businesses into growth trajectories that don’t fit their physics: you lose the plot. Overfunding creates pressure to scale prematurely, just like the micromobility bubble did. FOAK is no different. Hypergrowth expectations can suffocate a hardware business that is still debugging its procurement and cost curves. 2. VCs Want to See Your Technical Brilliance, Even Though Scaling Is Not Technical This is always the funniest part. VCs want deep tech, patents, PhDs, and simulations. Meanwhile, every founder who survived scale-up will tell you that FOAK success depends on: - supply chain discipline - vendor qualification - off-take negotiation construction management operational reliability …none of which show up in pitch decks. But again, VCs aren’t wrong. They’re optimised for early risk, not operational risk. So they select for genius, not operators. They assume someone else (corporates, later-stage investors, project financiers) will pick up the baton later. This is the same misalignment the EnvoDrive article points out: the investor ecosystem applies a software mindset to a hardware reality. 3. Show Modularity or a Path to Commercial Scale VCs love modularity because it's a clear path to scalability. But many cleantech systems are not naturally modular. Nuclear reactors, district heating, and chemical processes are usually optimised for scale, not Lego. There is no easy way around it. Show how 1 pilot becomes 10 pilots becomes 100 units (for more on that, see my article on choosing the right scale). If the underlying economics depend on going big, show the path to achieving the commercial scale you need. Show how fast you can go from equity finance to project finance - because that’s how non-modular technologies scale, and that shows how VC’s can exit. 4. FOAK Economics Are Not Unit Economics The EnvoDrive article argues that micromobility companies misled themselves by applying SaaS-style economics to a physical business with physical depreciation, physical maintenance, and physical wear. FOAK founders fall into the same trap. But the VC world wants to see improving unit economics. The thing is that your FOAK unit economics will be terrible, your NOAK economics may be good and your nth factory economics may be excellent. The job of the founder is to show the cost curve clearly: what improves, when, and why. VCs need to believe in the slide from “today’s ugly” to “tomorrow’s profitable.” You are not judged on current numbers, but on narrative + physics + learning curves. 5. Show FOMO. And an off-take. This is a classic fear vs. greed problem. No investors want to be first. Everyone wants to be second. Show who is already in your round, who is doing due diligence, who signed NDAs and who “can’t lead but would follow”. The biggest carrot would be a signed off-take, as it signals customer commitment. Why FOAK Founders Must Understand This Dynamic When you do FOAK projects, you face incredible complexity and have to operate with extremely limited time and energy. That’s why chasing the wrong investors and wrong metrics kills companies. Not everything needs to be pushed into hypergrowth. Not every market rewards speed. And not every FOAK project needs a VC investor. FOAK hardware is fundamentally a reliability business. It is measured in uptime, cost per unit, procurement lead times, supply chain risk, off-take security, and regulatory clearance. It rewards patience, discipline, and operational excellence, not blitzscaling. VCs, meanwhile, reward stories. There is no blame here. Only misalignment of risks.

Tesla is trying to rebuild its battery supply chain without Chinese materials, and do it fast. According to the latest reporting from Battery-Tech, Tesla is pushing Korean suppliers to ramp up silicon-rich anodes and other critical materials to replace China. Re-engineering a supply chain under normal conditions is hard. Doing it in one or two years is possible if you are willing to pay the price. I’ve been through this a few times — localising supply chains for wind turbines, cathode materials, and evaluating localisation options for battery cells. The reality is sobering: * Our locally built wind turbine ended up costing more than double what a comparable one costs in China. * For cathode materials, the delta was closer to 200×. * For other components, after months of market study and supplier mapping, we realised we only had a fighting chance if we built 20+ GWh of battery capacity from the start. Tesla is, of course, operating at a different scale. They can give suppliers better volume, certainty and payment terms — and therefore reach better prices. But even for Tesla, this shift will raise battery costs. But it will improve resilience. And resilience is exactly what is needed with the U.S. tariffs, China’s willingness to weaponise critical materials, and the very real prospect of a Taiwan crisis in the next two to three years. The “Taiwan factor” might explain Tesla’s aggressive timeline better than tariffs or trade frictions. Multiple analysts point out that the Chinese military will be capable of at least a blockade of Taiwan by 2027. The Chinese government has been very clear that it will not let the island remain independent indefinitely. Outside China, only Korea offers a complete, reliable battery materials ecosystem today. No surprise Tesla is pivoting in that direction. If you’re also rethinking your supply chain footprint and considering Korea as an alternative, I'd be happy to share what I’ve learned.

The French invented the word *bureaucracy*, so you’d expect that getting anything done here would involve a respectable amount of… well, bureaucracy. At least that’s what all my French friends told me before I moved. But today I received my micro-entrepreneur status — and the whole process was online. I never went to any préfecture, never had to translate a single document into French, and everything moved surprisingly smoothly. It took about two weeks end-to-end, most of it just waiting for INPI to process my file. Opening a business in Istanbul took less time, but it cost me ten times more. Maybe it’s a Parisian thing. Or maybe France is changing for the better. Either way: officially open for business in the EU! 🇪🇺🇫🇷

In the past few months, AI has turned from a digital disruption story into an energy story. The International Energy Agency  estimates  that global data-centre electricity consumption could double by 2030, reaching 945 TWh — roughly the annual electricity use of Japan. These expectations have been fueling an investment frenzy across the entire energy chain: from dull but indispensable transformers, to speculative fusion-energy startups that promise infinite clean power sometime between now and the Second Coming. In the meantime, the AI bubble keeps swelling. Sam Altman recently announced that over $1 trillion is needed to fund OpenAI’s next growth phase — a figure so large that it leaves one befuddled whether to marvel at the audacity of OpenAI, the stupidity of those who fund it or both. The financial engineering that underpins this boom would have made any old-school investor faint. Patrick Boyle’s recent  video  offers a good laugh (and mild horror), dissects this wrapping reality with elegance and wit.  When I was at the Valencia Digital Summit (VDS) in October, the same thesis echoed through every panel: AI will consume unimaginable amounts of power.  And while that’s a catchy headline, I kept hearing something else between the lines.  Put all the pieces together, and it looks like we’re heading for one of the biggest energy bubbles of this decade.  1. The math behind AI’s energy demand is flawed  Most projections are built by taking today’s data-centre efficiency and multiplying it by tomorrow’s AI compute demand. Simple enough — and simply wrong. Two major problems here.  First, the forecasts ignore technological progress. By the time new data centres come online, they will run on new architectures, chips, and software optimisations that radically cut power use. In Valencia alone, I met startups like  Multiverse Computing , developing quantum-inspired algorithms or new cooling systems that could reduce data-centre energy consumption by 30% to threefold. Second, phantom data centres. Many of the “planned” AI centres in the U.S. forecasts exist only on paper — speculative filings inflating future demand. The Financial Times recently described these  “phantom data centres”  and how they distort grid-planning models. Utilities are building capacity for loads that may never materialise. Add these two together, and the exponential demand curve starts looking less like a law of nature and more like a marketing deck.  2. The hysteria lifts all boats — even the leaky ones  Scepticism aside, there’s no denying the hype’s financial power. In a collective fit of FOMO, investors are throwing money at anything with “AI” or “energy” in the headline. Some bets make sense: transmission, transformers, grid-scale batteries. Others are misplaced at best. The most outrageous examples are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), fusion and fuel cells. There are precisely three SMRs operating today — two in China, one in Russia — and none of them are genuinely modular or cheap. The Western SMR startups I know don’t plan commercial rollout before 2035, and that’s the optimistic timeline. Fusion, as always, is 20–30 years away — perpetually. Meanwhile, reality bites. The U.S. government just  signed an $80 billion deal  with the owners of Westinghouse to build conventional AP1000 reactors — new, but very much old-school nuclear. Even the usually optimistic  CTVC  newsletter now takes a noticeably sceptical tone on SMRs. And then there’s  Bloom Energy  — the fuel-cell company whose shares spike every time someone says “AI needs more power.” They recently issued $2.2 billion in convertible bonds, while executives reportedly sold their own stock amid the hype. That’s surely a great confidence-building signal.  3. When the tide goes out  Sooner or later, demand projections will deflate, and so will valuations. When that happens, we’ll see who’s been swimming without a balance sheet. The AI-energy bubble will burst, pulling down investors who chased the wildest promises: fusion startups with perpetual timelines, SMRs with nonexistent supply chains, and fuel-cell fantasies pitched as grid solutions.  What will remain is a more modest, realistic trajectory: Moderate growth in electricity demand from AI — real, but not exponential. Efficiency gains from better chips, algorithms, cooling and other technologies. Clean generation from renewables, batteries, and natural gas filling the gap. In other words, the future of AI power won’t be powered by magic or modular miracles. It will be powered by the same trio that’s quietly been doing the heavy lifting all along — wind, sun, and storage.

I loved the iPad when it came out. The idea of keyless entry, handwriting, and replacing a laptop felt like the future. More than a decade later, my iPads are gathering dust. My MacBook still handles 80% of the work (the rest is on the iPhone). I even bought a keyboard and mouse to lift the MacBook for better posture. The iPad looked like the future then. It didn’t materialise.  It feels to me that the car industry is going through a similar phase with the “software-defined vehicle.” But this time it’s not Apple, it's China setting the pace.  I read an article by  Dr. Gabriel Seiberth  on the hidden costs of the Chinese automotive industry, and then comments from several respected automotive experts like  Hakan DOGU  and  Michael Sura .  I saw two worlds: one obsessed with touchscreens, OTA updates and the breakneck speed of Chinese automotive industry growth. The other is more sceptical, highlighting unsustainable business models, government oversight and (so far) limited geographical penetration. There are tons of insights both in the article and in the comments and the linked articles. Check it out!  For me, that takeaway from the discussion and my own experiences is that touchscreens and voice controls are like iPads (which they are) - cool, nice to have, but ultimately useless.  #Batteries  are a different matter.  China’s real strength in EVs isn’t WeChat integration or going from idea to vehicle in three years. It’s in batteries, their supply chain, and manufacturing discipline. Take that away, and no hyperscreen will save the Chinese automakers. And that’s the fundamental weakness of Western car makers. Until they master batteries and their supply chain, China will dominate global  #EV  markets, regardless of whether knobs or voice commands regulate your cockpit temperature.

Most founders think of the supply chain as something that starts after the prototype works. In FOAK projects, that’s already too late. Your supply chain starts the moment you begin sketching your pilot. If you wait until things work to call suppliers, you’ll be fighting lead times instead of managing them. This post expands on my earlier FOAK Supply Chain Framework . Here are five steps to build your FOAK supply chain before you need it 👇 1️⃣ Start planning your FOAK supply chain before your pilot SunFolding learned this the hard way — they hired a COO after landing their first large solar project. By then, their supply chain was already locked and under-prepared. Lead times don’t shrink because you’re in a hurry. If a vendor needs nine months to get the part you need, you will wait nine months. When you start designing your pilot, map your supply dependencies: * Lead times & origin countries * Material specs & documentation * Backup vendors & regulatory constraints You don’t need to list every nut and bolt — focus on the few key items that won’t change between pilot, demo, and FOAK. And start talking to suppliers while your pilot is still on paper. You’re not asking for quotes yet — you’re stress-testing your assumptions. 2️⃣ Show suppliers the money (or at least the commitments) Suppliers don’t worry about your technology — they worry about getting paid. Even when I represented Rosatom — a state giant — some suppliers still wanted to see project approvals before committing. For startups, investment commitments speak louder than promises. If you’ve secured funding for a pilot or demo, make it known. A credible investor or corporate backer boosts your standing. Even better if that backer could become a customer for your supplier — they’ll see you as a gateway, not a gamble. 3️⃣ Secure customer commitments early Nothing calms suppliers like a real buyer at the end of the chain. When we built a wind-turbine supply chain in Russia, we had 660 MW of projects with guaranteed payments. That 10-year visibility changed everything. Suppliers invested in specialised presses and moulds just to serve us. Your startup may not have that scale, but the principle is the same. MOUs are nice. Conditional offtakes or long-term terms of reference are better. The harder and longer the customer commitment, the easier your supplier conversations. 4️⃣ Choose the right kind of suppliers Big name suppliers bring credibility and support — but they move slowly, negotiate hard, and prioritise their largest clients when things get tight. Smaller or mid-size suppliers move faster, adapt more easily, and often love being part of something new. They might even promote your partnership to others. Of course, that comes with risk. CustomCells survived the collapse of Lilium, but it was a close call. If your supplier is also a startup, make sure they can survive your FOAK cycle. 5️⃣ Build trust and professionalise procurement When your shipment is stuck in a port, you want your supplier to pick up the phone and care. That doesn’t come from contracts — it comes from trust. Suppliers judge you by your RFQs, contracts, and payment discipline. A vague order process or late payment pushes you to the bottom of the list — or adds a “startup premium.” Hire at least one person who speaks both “startup” and “procurement.” And remember: trust is built in the small things — answering fast, checking quality before shipment, and being transparent about delays. Bottom line A FOAK supply chain isn’t a logistics problem. It’s a relationship problem under pressure. Start early. Show you’re credible. Bring customers and suppliers into your journey before the first purchase order. Because once you hit the FOAK phase, your scarcest resources will be time and trust. 💬 What was the hardest part of building your own supply chain — lead times, contracts, or trust? #FOAK #Scaleup #Cleantech #SupplyChain #ClimateTech #HardwareStartups

It’s hard to get suppliers to work with your startup. FOAK projects are usually the worst type of customer for suppliers: No track record → you have to build trust from scratch. No certainty → you can’t really guarantee your product will work or that your customer will pay you. No stability → your bill of materials will change as you tweak your design and process. From a supplier’s perspective, why bother talking to you at all? And yet, many do. Smaller suppliers may struggle to win large, predictable contracts and are willing to take a bet on you. Big suppliers might see your FOAK as a showcase for entering a new market. All of them need to hit sales targets—sometimes risk is part of the job. The real questions are: how do you approach them? What should you have ready? What risks should you watch out for? And how do you get the best terms? That’s where my five-step FOAK supply chain setup framework comes in: Start mapping suppliers before your pilot. Secure investment commitments. Secure customer commitments (off-takes are gold). Have a clear FOAK execution plan. Reach out—start with small/medium suppliers, don’t overlook used equipment suppliers. FOAK supply chains are messy, but they can be built systematically. And if you do it right, suppliers can become your biggest allies.

Adapt or mitigate? The climate crisis is unfolding very slowly, not like wars or the rise of AI. Having missed the target of keeping the global temperature rise under 1.5 °C, more voices are talking about investing in climate adaptation technologies. After all, if we cannot stop climate change, then we should adapt to it, so it is prudent to spend more on adaptation, rather than mitigation technologies. The argument misses the fact that mitigation and adaptation don’t actually compete for the same pool of capital. They need different kinds. Mitigation — solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs — is now mature and de-risked. It fits the profile of banks, infra funds, and pension investors: long-term, asset-heavy, and predictable. Adaptation, on the other hand, is still in its early innings. Climate-resilient crops, water reuse—all these require high-risk, patient capital—the kind that comes from angels, VCs, governments, and impact funds. From where I stand, the real fight isn’t between mitigation and adaptation — it’s between money going to AI and wars on one side, and climate on the other. So the capital divide is not the problem. The attention divide is. We’re betting big on AI models that write poetry and war machines that destroy cities — and hoping that someone else will build the seawalls and redesign the power grid. So, when you look at the next climate mitigation or adaptation technology, be sure to check out my framework for understanding whether a climate tech is worth investing in, from the climate perspective.

At VDS 2025, I joined a panel on First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects — that messy moment when a technology leaves the lab and enters the real world. The panel had three people, representing each side of a FOAK. First, and foremost, the investors view was delivered by Mirjam Terhorst, partner at Move Energy. Second, the engineering and technical side of a FOAK was represented by Carland Lopez, CTO of Aeroborn, And third was me, representing the bridge builder or consigliere — working on the business models, team structures, and partnerships that make FOAKs succeed. Our panel was also a first-of-a-kind panel at VDS, where software projects usually take the main stage. Just before our panel, we had a panel on AI adoption in large corporations, which was as boring as it was crowded. Our panel was precisely the opposite - a sharp discussion with plenty of free seats. Which kind of illustrated the point that FOAKs are unglamorous and lonely! We covered what FOAKs are and why they are difficult for investors, engineers, and managers. We also discussed how to streamline FOAK financing by reducing risks and getting creative with funding structures. Laurent-Frederic Lohmann smoothly guided us through the panel and then dropped a bomb question, which he had kept quiet about during our prep session - what is the one thing the EU should do to speed up FOAKs in Europe? My answer - copy and paste the U.S. DOE Loan Programs Office—Large-scale, non-dilutive loans that back early deployments. FOAK discussions are a recent feature of climate startup conferences. I only wish that there would be more of them and that they would focus not only on the most fascinating subject of financing FOAKs, but on a more critical one - the execution of a FOAK project. Because we need to learn to FOAK — and FOAK fast.

The first session at VDS 2025  opened with a topic that’s been on everyone’s mind: how Europe can stay competitive against the U.S. and China when it comes to investment. Three points stood out for me: Chris Broad  stressed the value of international teams — and therefore, the importance of easy cross-border movement. Álvaro-Miguel Cabrera  argued for EU-wide startup rules  — common frameworks for funding, stock options, and governance. Andrés Ubierna  noted that raising capital in Europe remains harder than in the U.S. or China. I agree with the first two, but not entirely with the last one. Having just moved to Paris , I know first-hand how difficult it is to move professionally between EU countries — and that’s exactly what Europe should fix first. Mobility fuels innovation. A European legal framework for startups  would indeed be transformative, but I doubt it can happen without deeper political integration. As for funding — yes, it’s tougher here. But maybe that’s not entirely bad. Less money wasted means more capital available for good projects . Europe’s edge has always been collaboration . Out of the three takeaways, the only one we can realistically act on in the short term is professional mobility . What do you think Europe could achieve in the next year or two to strengthen its competitiveness?