According to PitchBook’s Q2 2025 data, overall clean energy VC deal value dropped 6% from Q1 and is on track for a second consecutive annual decline. Yet beneath the surface, important shifts are taking place: 🧠 Fewer deals, bigger bets The number of deals is down 22% year-over-year, but median deal sizes have jumped 65%. Investors are concentrating their firepower, targeting nuclear, grid software, and datacenter-friendly energy tech. ⚛️ VCs’ can’t get enough of Nuclear Four of the seven largest deals this quarter went to nuclear startups. TerraPower raised $650M, with Nvidia’s VC arm participating. Fusion spinouts like Proxima Fusion and TAE also closed large rounds, riding the AI infrastructure wave. 📉 Solar, wind and lithium cooling off Segments like solar PV, lithium-ion, and (finally!) green hydrogen saw steep drops in deal volume and value. Wind was the only intermittent segment with any notable momentum—led by startups like PhysicsX and Aerones. 🌐 Grid infrastructure is the new darling With interconnection delays plaguing every market, investment in analytics, VPPs, and non-lithium batteries is rising fast. Base Power, Mainspring, and Natron are examples of this shift toward grid-enabling tech. 🏛️ Policy uncertainty casts a shadow In the U.S., the rollback of IRA tax credits and sourcing rules introduced by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” are shaking confidence in solar and wind. Developers are rushing to meet revised deadlines—but exits remain weak. So while the capital tide has receded, the strong swimmers are clearer now. Nuclear and grid tech are getting the spotlight. Grid investments are long overdue, and I applaud their resurgence. VCs' fascination with nuclear puzzles me. Any investment in nuclear should have an investment horizon of 20+ years. Last time I checked, VCs aimed for 10 years at most. An investment by the government or a big strategic investor would not have elicited any comments on my part, but with so much VC money thrown down the reactor core, we are witnessing the birth of another bubble. For more on investment in nuclear energy, check out my dedicated blog section here .

A car is never just a car. It’s independence. It’s private space. It’s memory and identity. For many, it’s also an emotional anchor. No wonder car brands invest billions into shaping not only technology but also cultural image. Toyota equals reliability, Volvo equals safety, Porsche equals speed—and fun. Renault? Value with a French twist. These identities sell far more than specs or pricing tables ever could. And that’s exactly why we should be careful when we start treating EVs as just a hardware commodity. At the EcoMat conference in Istanbul, the discussion kicked off by Hakan Dogu wasn’t just about batteries and motors. It was about meaning, ownership, identity—and what might be changing forever. Tech ≠ Trust Chinese EVs are here. They’re not just cheap—they’re very good. Superior range, seamless software integration, fast charging, and high automation. BYD is now one of the top global players by volume. And yet, would I buy one? Not even at half price. Because it’s not just about price or tech, it’s about trust. And today, when you buy a car, you’re also buying a data pipe that constantly streams your location, driving habits, and even conversations. So if I have to choose between feeding my data to an overregulated EU bureaucracy or to the Chinese Communist Party, I’ll choose Brussels every time. China has built an impressive technological machine. But brand image is not something you can scale with a CAPEX injection. It’s decades of meaning, of alignment, of cultural fit. Unless China becomes a democracy and remains one for the next fifty years, I’m not letting its EVs into my garage—or my metadata stream. (That’s why I’m not on TikTok, I don’t use DeepSeek, and I get slightly nervous when my Xiaomi robot vacuum follows me around the flat - so I keep a baseball bat handy, just in case.) Will Brand Loyalty Survive In The Age Of Electric Mobility? This emotional power of car ownership might hold. Or it might collapse. None of my three grown-up kids has a driver’s license. I got mine the moment I turned 18. For them, cars don’t signal freedom—they signal congestion, cost, and climate guilt. Urban Gen Z prefers walkable cities, ride shares, and maybe e-scooters. That’s where the battle is shifting—from owning a car to using mobility. If that happens, brand loyalty becomes harder to maintain. It’s easy to love Porsche when it sits in your driveway. It’s harder to feel the same about a shared Tesla robotaxi that smells faintly of wet dog. Autonomous vehicles and mobility-as-a-service could upend the personal meaning of cars entirely. Or at least dilute it. Infrastructure Reality Check Let’s assume we do want everyone to switch to EVs. Can we? Not without pain. European cities were built before the car, let alone the charger. Narrow streets, dense layouts, and heritage buildings don’t mesh well with rapid EV infrastructure rollout. Strengthening the local grid to support mass charging is technically possible, but economically painful and politically slow. So we’re likely to see a multi-modal future: more trains, trams, buses, bikes, walking—and a niche but persistent segment of private EV owners. The car becomes more of a “subscription object” or luxury good. Less mass, more margin. That’s where brand still matters. Europe: Tech-Late but Brand-Rich Europe doesn’t make most of the EV supply chain. Not the motors, not the batteries, not the inverters. Over 90% of all battery-grade materials, cell manufacturing, and EV components are sourced from China, and a bit from Korea, or Japan. So if Europe wants to catch up, it will have to pay. In my previous roles localising wind turbine and battery production, I’ve seen this up close. Our made-in-Russia products were always more expensive than Chinese imports. We improved, localised, and optimised, but we never caught up on cost. Europe will likely follow the same pattern: local EV and battery production that is 20–40% more expensive than Asian imports. Can this be justified? Yes, if two things happen: 1. Friendly shoring: Europe can offset some costs by building upstream capacity in strategically aligned, lower-cost nations like Morocco. 2. Brand premium: “Made in EU” still means something. Look at the comeback of the Renault 5. Nobody’s buying it for specs. They're buying nostalgia, identity, and the comfort of knowing who gets their data. Asia + Europe = Necessary Partnership At the same time, reshoring without Asian partners is wishful thinking. While China has most of the technological and resource cards, Korean and Japanese firms already understand Europe. They are geopolitically safer, commercially reliable, and looking to expand. Collaborating with them is less about dependency and more about co-creation. Europe offers the world’s largest, most stable car market. Asian players bring the tech and the know-how. A partnership of equals is possible—if we treat it that way. The Chinese case is trickier. Many European players are already working with Chinese firms. That cooperation is not going away. But public sentiment, political optics and geopolitical risks will make these partnerships harder to scale or sustain. What Comes Next? I don’t believe car ownership will disappear. But it will shift—from mass-market to a more curated, value-driven choice. EVs won’t just be appliances. They’ll remain symbols of values, identity, and trust. Brand, once again, will make or break the deal. So the race is not just about cost, nor even technology. It’s about meaning. And meaning takes time to build. 👋 Want help navigating this new mobility landscape? I advise companies and investors on how to scale cleantech businesses in a way that balances technology, market, and trust.

Battery factories as a franchise? Sounds strange. Until you look closer. What if scaling battery manufacturing didn’t mean raising €100M? What if, instead, you could license a smart factory — equipment, layout, software, SOPs — and run it like a franchise? This is where JR Energy Solution is headed. They already built their first factory in 8 months. They already manufacture electrodes as a service — with real customers and revenue. Now, they’re getting the same question from clients again and again: “Can you help us build our own version of this?” And the answer is: yes. A smart-factory-in-a-box — not theoretical. Not on slides. Already tested. Duke Oh, the founder of JR, is building this model step by step: First: Offer production capacity to startups that can’t build factories Then: Co-develop and co-invest in new lines with strategic clients Now: Package the whole thing into a replicable platform (ERP, MES, AI optimisation tools, equipment specs, training) Think of it as battery manufacturing infrastructure as a product. Less like Tesla, more like McDonald’s — but with cleanrooms instead of fryers. The bottleneck in cleantech isn’t innovation. It’s deployment. And this model — factory as a service, factory as a franchise — might just help speed things up. If you're developing new battery tech and planning your scale-up strategy, don't assume you need to own the factory. Sometimes it’s better to borrow execution, and then scale it. #Batteries #SmartFactory #ScaleUp #Cleantech #EnergyStorage #Electrodes #FOAK #ManufacturingAsAService

Picture credits: The Boys, TV Series “Emin, this is bullshit! It’s never gonna work!” I often heard these words from my deputy. And I was grateful for them. I tend to come up with wild ideas, and I needed someone sceptical and independent-thinking who could stress-test them. And stress tests there were! This diversity in opinions and views allowed me to avoid many mistake When Polina Vasilenko started building her team at HelioRec, she did what many technical founders do: She hired people who were highly capable, experienced… and strikingly similar to each other. At first, it felt like a strength. Everyone got along. Everyone came from the same kind of background. No one questioned the basics. But soon, that surface-level harmony became a drag. The team moved slower than expected. Designs stayed inside the same conceptual box. And when execution problems showed up, they showed up everywhere—because no one had looked at the work from a different angle. Eventually, she realised the issue wasn’t individual competence. There was a lack of difference. “I had to restructure the team. Not because they were bad, but because we were all thinking the same.” It’s a common trap, especially in hardware-heavy fields like cleantech. You look for people you can trust quickly, who share your technical language and who seem aligned from day one. But aligned doesn’t always mean complementary. What helped HelioRec move forward was precisely what made it harder to manage at first: Hiring across cultures, sectors, and personality types. Bringing in a COO with deep oil & gas operations experience. Letting go of the comfort of easy consensus. It wasn’t smooth. But it unlocked real progress. From my own work with cleantech teams, I’d add this: diverse teams don’t just outperform because of values. They outperform because scaling requires friction. And friction only happens when different ideas collide. If you want to build a product that scales in the real world, you need more than people who agree with you. You need people who see what you don’t. For early-stage founders building technical teams: Are you hiring for comfort, or for perspective? #cleantech #engineeringteams #diversity #scalingup #leadership #climatetech #team

“I thought building floating solar would be the hard part. It wasn’t. Managing people was.” That’s how Polina Vasilenko described her early days at HelioRec. She had already done the impossible: left oil & gas, invented a floating solar system for ports, raised over €1 million. But once she started hiring… things started to get much harder. "When you do your business alone, you know more or less how to do everything, and once you hire people, they do it in a different way, and you need to understand if it is right or wrong, if they're making mistakes. You need to find out, you need to educate them, etc, etc. So more people, more problems, but you cannot grow without people .” On top of that, her first team all came from the same background. It lacked diversity. The product improvements stalled. Deployments slowed. So, she did what smart founders do—admitted the mistake and fixed it: ✔ Hired a COO with 20+ years in operations ✔ Brought in people with different perspectives ✔ Built clear onboarding, clear roles, clear mission As a result, she got a stronger, more diverse team that could actually scale HelioRec beyond “garage mode.” Here’s the lesson for hardware founders: 🛑 Tech alone won’t scale your startup ✅ The right people, with different skills and viewpoints, will If you’re building a cleantech company, ask yourself: Is your biggest bottleneck the product… or the team? Picture credits: HelioRec | BCorp Watch the full interview with Polina here: https://youtu.be/moPYTdvsPOE?si=VkOzgCSBmPdmGLfE Listen to the full interview here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ehsvHpxLWdVTuUWAfFaMm?si=H8FB3-MMRZqQ6AwgkR9oeQ #founderstory #teamculture #cleantech #scalingstartups #leadership

When you're racing to bring a FOAK (First-Of-A-Kind) cleantech project to life, corporate governance feels like a distant concern. You’re busy with technical de-risking, hiring your first team, maybe even finding space for a pilot line.   But governance? That sounds like something for big companies with CFOs and audit committees. Not for startups trying to survive.   Until it is.     What Duke Oh Learned the Hard Way   Duke Oh, the founder of JR Energy Solution, didn’t build a new battery chemistry. He built a factory — a 500 MWh/year smart manufacturing facility for electrode production. In just 9 months.   He and his co-founder raised $40 million, largely from strategic partners: equipment suppliers, materials vendors, and future customers.   But here’s what caught him by surprise:   “As a startup founder, I didn’t really consider governance. We were focused on execution. But once institutional investors got interested, they started asking who controlled what. They needed to know that leadership had the authority to follow through. That’s when we had to catch up.”   By that point, it was harder to reshape the cap table. JR Energy had multiple shareholders. The founders were no longer majority owners. They had influence, but not automatic control. As Duke’s share of capital went down, his responsibilities stayed the same. He couldn’t just come up with a decision and go straight to execution. He now had to “align interest” and “communicate with stakeholders”.   What Is Governance, Really?   Governance isn’t just about compliance. It’s about power, control and continuity.   •    Who approves major capital investments? •    Who decides whether to raise again, sell, or IPO? •    Can founders be replaced? •    What happens if one of your strategic investors has competing priorities later?   These are all governance questions. And if you’re raising money for hardware — a FOAK plant, a pilot line, or commercial manufacturing — you’re going to be answering them sooner than you think.   5 Lessons for Cleantech Founders on Corporate Governance   1. Don’t Wait Until Series B to Think About This Structure matters from Day 1. Cap tables are easy to fix early. Later, not so much.   2. Know the Difference Between Capital and Control Even if you sell only 20% of the company, investor rights and board seats might prevent you from making key decisions.   3. Strategic Investors’ Strategy May Change Their priorities may change. Your alignment today doesn’t guarantee alignment tomorrow. Build in safeguards.   4. Maintain a Long-Term Narrative Show how your governance structure supports scale, partnerships, and future liquidity. Investors want to know the founder isn’t just the visionary but also a steward.   5. Keep Your Promises Execution is your biggest asset. If you deliver what you say you will — on time and on budget — you earn trust. And trust often matters more than voting rights.   What This Means for FOAK Projects   FOAK cleantech companies often raise large sums quickly. Factories, pilot plants, equipment lines — they cost real money. But money comes with strings.   Governance structures that work at the seed stage will break when you’re negotiating with infrastructure funds or corporate co-investors.   If you want to be the one leading your company through commercialisation, you need to prepare for that now. Not when the data room is already open.     Need Help?   I advise cleantech founders building real assets: battery factories, hydrogen pilots, carbon capture systems, and more.   If you’re navigating your first institutional round, negotiating with industrial investors, or designing a founder-friendly governance model for scale, let's talk.

I read two contrasting pieces today, back to back. One by Chris Wright, the current U.S. Secretary of Energy. The other is by Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, known for backing climate tech like TeraWatt (lithium-ion batteries), TerraBlaster (agriculture tech), and Realta Fusion (yep, fusion energy). Chris Wright accepts that climate change exists, but treats it as collateral. He sees rising emissions as a fair price for longer lifespans and rising living standards. His policy stance leans toward conventional fuels—gas, coal, nuclear—with little room for clean energy support. He raises valid concerns about wasteful subsidies and a narrow focus on climate solutions at the expense of the broader economy. Vinod Khosla offers a different narrative. Clean tech is mature, he says—wind, solar, and EVs no longer need help. But in the same text, he calls for government support for fusion, high-temperature geothermal, and green steel. These are not cost-competitive yet, and won’t be without major public backing. That includes e-fuels, which he openly admits will forever remain on government life support. Both pieces make reasonable points, but neither addresses the present bottleneck. Wright looks to fossil fuels and nuclear for affordable energy and grid stability. In practice, this won’t deliver. Wind and solar are already cheaper than gas and coal across most of the world. Even in the U.S.—where solar modules cost triple what they do in Europe or China—they still win on price. As for gas turbines, lead times are long and growing. Any new capacity won’t arrive in time to ease the current market strain. Khosla is correct to argue that we should prioritise technologies that are already commercially viable. But that shortlist doesn’t include fusion, geothermal, or green steel. The real contenders are wind, solar, and EVs—technologies with global supply chains, proven economics, and a scale-up path already in motion. The missing link is not invention. It’s production. The U.S. can’t build fusion plants when it’s struggling to manufacture heat pumps. It can’t decarbonise steel when it’s not even assembling its own solar panels. What’s needed now is not moonshots but execution on technologies that already work. Apart from Tesla’s impact on global battery and EV markets, the U.S. has not played a leading role in the deployment of clean technologies. Most of the industrial scale-up has happened elsewhere. If the goal is to decarbonise quickly and cost-effectively, then the strategy must start with what can be delivered now. And it must be built, not imagined. Sadly, both the US government and its most forward-looking investors seem to be missing the point. Essay by Chris Wright: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/07/14/climate-change-is-a-by-product-of-progress-not-an-existential-crisis-says-trumps-energy-czar Essay by Vinod Khosla: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/07/09/vinod-khosla-on-how-the-anti-green-agenda-could-help-climate-tech

In the battery world, execution often lags ambition. Factories get announced, funding gets press-released, and then… silence. Because between a PowerPoint and a product, there's a factory. And building one is hard. That’s why I want to talk about Duke Oh. He’s not a battery scientist. Not an IP hoarder. He doesn't pitch solid-state cathodes or next-gen electrolytes. He has 20+ years of experience in Korean battery manufacturing and is the founder of JR Energy Solution, a company that builds batteries for others. More precisely: they build electrodes as a service, for startups and new battery players who want to scale fast but can’t afford their own production lines. Think of JR as the TSMC of batteries, minus the media spotlight. But that’s what makes it interesting. This post is about how Duke went from idea to operational factory in under 9 months—and what practical lessons it offers for cleantech scale-ups. 1. The Foundry Model: A Quiet Revolution Duke’s idea wasn’t new tech. It was a new role in the battery value chain. While others chase patents and performance metrics, JR Energy chose to become a neutral, chemistry-agnostic manufacturing partner. They don't sell cells. They don’t design battery packs. They just make high-quality electrodes, reliably and at scale, for others. The idea is elegant: help startups and new battery players bypass the capex trap. If you're a startup with a promising anode or cathode, what you lack is not ambition—it's a clean room, a coating line, and a team that knows what they're doing. That’s what JR Energy offers. Manufacturing-as-a-service. A foundry for battery electrodes. 2. Funding Strategy: No VCs, Just Industry The usual route would be a few million in VC funding, a pitch deck full of traction curves, and a long pre-revenue runway. Duke did the opposite. He raised $40 million, not from financial investors, but from strategic partners: Equipment suppliers who became both vendors and shareholders. Materials providers who saw value in supporting their downstream client. Future customers who wanted reliable supply. In Duke’s words: “They trusted me because they knew the market—and because I wasn’t asking them to imagine the future. I was showing them how we’d build it.” The JR founding team also had skin in the game, investing $1 million of their own capital—not symbolic equity—real cash. That changed how partners listened. 3. Speed by Design: How to Build a Smart Factory in 8–9 Months Here’s where it gets impressive. From founding to commissioning, Duke and his team took just 9 months to make the first factory operational. How? This is his five-step framework: Step 1: Parallel Planning Factory design, equipment selection, and fundraising happened simultaneously. Not sequentially. No "wait for permits, then order machines." Everything ran in parallel. This required precise coordination, but it shaved months off the timeline. Step 2: Early Equipment Orders JR didn’t wait for construction to finish. They pre-ordered all key equipment before breaking ground, working closely with top-tier Korean suppliers. By the time walls were up, machines were arriving. Step 3: Top-Tier Partners The facility was co-designed with a firm that had built factories for SK On and LG. Suppliers like PNT and Young FNC treated the project as a priority, partly because they were investors. Step 4: Smart Scope JR’s first factory wasn’t massive—500 MWh/year—but it was enough to serve initial clients and prove quality. It also helped avoid the trap of building a giga-scale facility with no customers or cash flow. Step 5: Strong Team The core execution team came from established players like SK and LG. They knew the timelines, standards, and where things usually go wrong. 4. The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Tech—It’s Execution Duke’s story isn’t flashy. There are no press releases about “game-changing chemistry.” What JR Energy did was execute—on time, on budget, and on purpose. In cleantech, that’s rare. Most companies in this space underestimate how hard it is to build at scale. Or they focus on the next round of funding rather than the first day of production. JR’s approach shows another way. Start with something boring but vital. Raise from partners who understand what you’re doing. And build faster by planning in parallel and delivering what you promise. 5. What This Means for Scale-Ups If you're in cleantech and stuck between prototype and production, ask yourself: Can your product be manufactured in someone else’s factory? Can you borrow execution before you raise $100M to own it? And if you do plan to build—can you coordinate fundraising, equipment, and construction as one project? It’s not about scale for scale’s sake. It's about smart sequencing, partner alignment, and speed without shortcuts. JR’s model won’t work for everyone. But for companies in batteries, electrochemistry, or even hydrogen components, this is a playbook worth studying. 📩 Want help figuring out your manufacturing strategy, investor targeting, or smart factory rollout? That’s what I do. Let’s talk: https://www.askerov.pro/contact-your-cleantech-help Watch the full interview with Duke here: https://www.askerov.pro/scale-up-and-foak-podcast-and-video?wix-vod-video-id=9ee563c4754e4333a12173eaa4793ae5&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-lsadk39d

Image is AI-generated. Scaling up sustainable aircraft is like scaling up nuclear power—a comparable challenge in terms of regulatory obstacles, timelines, and the weight of responsibility. At least, that’s how it seemed to me, looking from the outside. I was sure that the climate tech community could learn many lessons from the aviation startup experience, so I’ve asked an expert. I’ve just finished recording the next episode of WattsUpWithStartups with Dirk Singer, aviation expert, book author and consultant. Dirk spent decades working in the aviation industry and has seen startups rise and fall. Here are some of the questions we covered: 1.     Why does aviation take so much time to scale? 2.     How much money do you need to go from idea to full order book, like Airbus? 3.     Which technologies might disrupt traditional aviation? 4.     What investors are looking for when investing in sustainable aviation startups? 5.     Lessons learned from successful and failed aviation startups. This episode will be completely packed with insights! Whether you are working in the sustainable aviation industry, batteries, or circular materials, you will recognise a lot, learn a lot, and have fun while watching it. I will be publishing it in a few weeks, so stay tuned and catch up on previous episodes! #sustainableaviation #podcast #cleantech #scaleup

Why do many cleantech startups stall before they even start? They skip the hard part: talking to customers. When  Polina Vasilenko  founded  HelioRec | BCorp , a floating solar startup, she didn’t just build prototypes and pitch investors. She went to the ports, the future clients. Image credits: HelioRec One hundred fifty conversations later, she had the data she needed: ✅ Ports want to decarbonise ✅ Rooftop solar isn’t enough  ✅ Wind turbines? “Not beautiful” for city ports ✅ Floating solar? Interesting, but “too risky” She says, "Everyone talks about climate action, until they need to change how they work.” Polina heard every objection: ⚡ What if a ship crashes into it? ⚡ Solar panels can catch fire ⚡ What would extra maintenance cost? But because she did the hard prep, 150+ meetings, events, customer interviews, she knew the pain points and had answers ready when investors asked: “Is this scalable?” Takeaways for cleantech founders: ✔ Start customer discovery before you fundraise ✔ Expect objections, plan your risk-mitigation pitch ✔ Real clients beat fancy pitch decks every time Want to build something that scales? Talk to your customers, all of them, before you talk to investors. Image: HelioRec

Building first-of-a-kind (FOAK) cleantech projects is the main thing we can do now to avert catastrophic climate change. We have all the innovations we need, but we fail to deploy them at a sufficient scale. FOAK projects are not about innovation - they are about execution in the most complex, high-stakes environment imaginable.  Over the past year, I've documented this process, drawing from my own and other founders’ hands-on experience to create a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for cleantech founders and operators. This is still  a work-in-progress , but enough material has piled up that I wanted to structure it and give it an overview. Here’s an overview of the key stages, each linked to detailed articles for deeper insights.  1. Laying the Groundwork for the FOAK Journey Why are you doing it? Will it make a noticeable reduction in CO2, methane, or other gases? Will it genuinely help avert climate change, or will it simply postpone it? How should you start? When do you know that you are ready? Every FOAK journey begins with a solid foundation. Understanding the unique challenges and opportunities in cleantech is crucial. Here, I cover how to move from an innovative idea in the lab to a scalable business model, aligned with real-world energy needs and market expectations. The key articles so far: When are you ready to scale?   The 1% check Why most climatetech startups don’t deliver 10x returns A framework for choosing scale-up business model Do you have a drop-in solution?    2. Financing FOAK  Most of the online articles on FOAK contain funding advice and most of them are written by VC’s whose partners never had to execute a FOAK. In my posts, I examine VCs and strategic investors’ perspectives, provide actionable advice on how to de-risk FOAK, how to avoid strategic investors’ traps, when to take VC’s advice and when not.  From Series A to Series B What do VCs get wrong in cleantech? Navigating the capital stack from lab to NOAK The pitfalls of FOAK capital stack   How to de-risk your FOAK   How important is intellectual property for a scale-up What strategic investors are looking for   How strategic investors can kill a startup   When to listen to VCs and when not   Grants for FOAK  3. Securing Off-take Agreements Off-takes are revered in the FOAK space. They give investors certainty, validate your product, and reduce your next customers' anxiety. Off-takes are more than contracts. They’re signals to investors, anchors for financing, and roadmaps to NOAK. What most available articles fail to provide are the step-by-step instructions and insights to get an off-take. I’ve written a series of posts about each step you need to take to secure an off-take, and provided negotiating tips and tactics from my own experience and those of other founders.  What do you need to know about off-takes? A primer. The road to off-take - what are the main stages of getting there Step one - MOU Step two - letter of intent Step three - term sheet Step four - off-take term Step five - off-take price How to sell to utilities - a case study  4. From Pilot to FOAK to NOAK: Scaling Up You’ve validated the tech—now you need to prove it at commercial scale. These posts cover what it takes to build a pilot, transition to demo, and finally deploy your FOAK. I dive deep into each stage, providing actionable and clear frameworks for execution. What are the three key steps to build a FOAK? How big should your FOAK be? Pilot stage framework Demo stage framework Do you need an EPC for your FOAK? How to select an EPC   Beyond FOAK  5. Building and Managing Your Team You can’t FOAK alone. And your early-stage startup team is not up to the task. These articles share what I’ve learned about building teams that can execute when speed, risk, and ambiguity are all high. What skills are usually missing? Why is it important to hire a chief operating officer? What mistakes did I make in hiring for my FOAK? FOAK management means managing chaos. Are there ways to control it? I am still working on this section and will add new posts on hiring and managing FOAK teams soon.  What skills are usually missing in FOAK Hiring mistakes - my case study CTO - Why do you need him? Simplifying FOAK management   How ATOME built its leadership team  6. Building a supply chain It is said that modern warfare is defined by supply lines, and this is equally true for businesses. Simply managing your supply chain is a big challenge. Building it is a whole new challenge. Sometimes, mapping your suppliers and bringing them together will be straightforward. Sometimes, your supply chain might not exist yet, and you’ll have to build it up from scratch.  How to build a supply chain How supply chain chaos can sink a startup  7. Real-World Case Studies: Lessons from the Field Learning from others' experiences is powerful. These stories show what works—and what to avoid. FOAK lessons from nuclear energy Building wind turbines in the shadow of a nuclear giant Dangers of ramping up battery manufacturing - Fraunhofer report review Redflow - flow batteries failure Canoo - electric minibus failure DAC FOAK success story Vianode - sustainable graphite success story (video) Explore the Full FOAK & Scale-Up Blog Directory For a comprehensive collection of articles, case studies, and resources on FOAKing and scaling cleantech innovations, visit the full blog directory: 👉 FOAK & Scale-Up Blog Directory Whether you're at the ideation stage or preparing for your NOAK deployment, this resource is designed to guide you through each step of the journey with practical, experience-based insights. What would you like to see in an expanded version? What FOAK and scale-up challenges should I cover more?

If you’ve spent time around cleantech startups, you know the type. A charismatic founder, a glossy pitch deck, and just enough market buzz to book a panel at COP28. But the problem isn’t the pitch. It’s the follow-through. Scaling a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate venture isn’t about ideas. It’s about execution infrastructure. And that infrastructure begins with people. Olivier Mussat understood this from day one at ATOME Energy. He didn’t hire a team. He engineered one. The Wrong Way to Hire for FOAK Before we get into how ATOME did it right, let’s talk about how many do it wrong. In the cleantech startup world, hiring often mimics Silicon Valley patterns: 👉 Hire a generalist. 👉 Hire a “strategy guy.” 👉 Hire a charismatic BD lead with no sector experience but a killer network. That might get you through a seed round. But it won’t get a 400 million euro industrial project financed, permitted, built, and delivering product on-spec. What FOAK projects demand is not a “startup team.” They demand a team that knows what it’s like to go to war with infrastructure — with regulators, corporate offtakers, contractors, timelines, and physics. That’s what ATOME built. Here is their three-step framework to build a FOAK-ready leadership team. Step 1: Execution Core – People Who’ve Already Done It The first thing ATOME did right? They didn’t start with founders. They started with a foundation. Olivier himself came from the IFC (the private investment arm of the World Bank). He had managed a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of energy and infrastructure investments across emerging markets. He didn’t need a course in project bankability — he taught that class. Their Chairman had taken multiple companies public. That matters when your go-to-market plan includes going public before raising venture. Yes, ATOME IPO’d before VC—but we’ll come back to that later. Then there was the local lead in Paraguay: a former Minister of Finance and head of the national hydro company. When your first plant is in Latin America and relies on baseload hydro, that’s not a nice-to-have. That’s survival. Step 2: Domain Depth – Experts in the Right Places ATOME’s intent wasn’t to invent new hydrogen tech. It was to use mature technology to produce green ammonia and sell it into the $70 billion fertilizer market. Fast. So they recruited accordingly. * A former lead on hydrogen strategy at the International Energy Agency (IEA) * An Executive VP from Yara and Euram, two of the largest fertilizer players on the planet * And instead of hiring an in-house engineering army, they retained AECOM — the 50,000-person global EPC giant — as their external “on-call” engineering brain. In the early days, that meant access to exactly the right experts for FEED (front-end engineering design) decisions, without the bloat of a 40-person in-house team. This is how you stay light while moving heavy. Step 3: Incentive Alignment – It’s Built In Most startups reward early hires with equity, a title, and a good luck handshake. ATOME went further. They tied ownership to execution milestones. They brought in strategic investors, like Baker Hughes, not just as capital, but as future suppliers with skin in the game. And they embedded delivery expectations into their contracts, ensuring partners were as accountable as employees. As Olivier said during our conversation: “This isn’t just a team-building exercise. It’s a risk management strategy.” Watch the full interview here: