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 “Double Valley of Death” diagram below has become something of a classic in innovation policy circles. The first valley, between research and product development, is where most startups fail due to a lack of proof or a prototype. The second valley — between demonstration and commercial scale — is where climate hardware dies. Source: The EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy That’s the FOAK stage. First-of-a-kind plant. First commercial line. First scaled system. And this valley is deep. When government grants fade, angels reach their limits, and venture capital is still wary of industrial risk, there’s almost no one left to bridge the gap. Banks and capital markets only step in once you’ve already made it to the other side. So yes — “we need more capital” to bridge this stage. But what’s starting to bother me is how some people now propose to fill that gap. The first “solution”: Crowdfunding like a VC I first came across this idea through Yoann Berno, who’s building one such platform. The pitch sounds seductive: crowd VC democratizes startup investing, lets retail investors put small tickets into early-stage climate companies, and they too can be part of the next big success story. The problem is that “investing like a VC” isn’t the same as being one. A venture capitalist’s portfolio might include anywhere from five to a hundred startups. Ninety-nine per cent will fail. But because the VC is playing with size and probability — and often with other people’s money — a couple of big wins can make up for all the losses. For an ordinary person with a few thousand euros of savings, that math simply doesn’t work. They might invest in one, two, or three companies, and the odds are brutally against them. History isn’t kind here. I can’t recall a financial innovation that allowed retail investors to access high-risk assets safely. From South Sea bubbles to ICOs, from FX trading to the housing bubble of 2008, the outcome has always been the same — professionals win, amateurs lose. Maybe with one exception: gold. But don’t take my investment advice here) Crowdfunding may have a place — as a community-building tool or a form of donation with emotional return. But presenting it as a way for ordinary people to play the venture game is misleading, even predatory. The second “solution”: Pension funds This idea is even more worrying. I am now reading a report titled “Venture & Growth Capital in Europe – Mapping Pension Funds’ Attitudes”. The argument is that Europe’s pension funds should allocate more of their capital to growth equity — including climate tech and, in some cases, FOAK projects. At first glance, that might sound reasonable: we need long-term investors to fill long-term gaps. But think about it. Pension funds are not supposed to chase outsized returns. Their job is to preserve and compound the savings of millions of people who have no other safety net. Their fiduciary duty is prudence, not heroism. When a venture fund loses half its portfolio, that’s the business. When a pension fund loses it, that’s a social tragedy. Putting pension money into FOAK projects — where even experienced investors struggle to quantify risk — feels like handing matches to a toddler and hoping for warmth instead of fire. And yet, this is precisely the shortcut that policymakers might be tempted to take when they realise how much capital the climate transition actually needs. What we really need to bridge the Valley of Death We are short of capital to fund the first commercial scale of clean technologies. But let’s be honest about what kind of capital is missing, and it’s certainly not “democratised” retail money or pensioners’ savings. What’s missing is patient, risk-tolerant, strategic capital — the kind that sits between public grants and commercial loans. This can only come from a deliberate architecture of instruments: Public guarantees to reduce risk for private lenders. Dedicated FOAK funds co-financed by governments and industry. Outcome-based contracts that pay for real-world deployment and performance, not promises. And off-takes with generous upfront payments, where buyers help bring new tech to market by committing early volumes. That’s hard, slow, and unglamorous work — but it’s what built every great industrial revolution before. We need more bridges across the valley. But we don’t build them by gambling with the savings of those who can least afford to lose. If we do that, the valley won’t just stay — it will deepen.

In our conversation, Dirk Singer made a point that one of the biggest investors in e-fuels isn’t an airline or an energy company — it’s the military. “Armed forces are very interested in e-fuels… The US military is one of the biggest investors, not for environmental reasons, but for energy security and operational resilience.” It makes perfect sense. Moving fuel is one of the most dangerous and expensive operations in any conflict. Solar panels, batteries, and, with creative application of insulation foam, were already used by the US Army in the early 1990s to improve energy efficiency at field bases. What began as a tactical solution later became a civilian standard. The military has always been the earliest adopter of promising new technologies. If we stick to Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruption, every successful disruptive technology starts in a highly specialised, niche market before going mainstream. Defence is exactly that kind of market. The same pattern might now repeat with e-fuels and modular energy systems. Producing synthetic fuel on-site — from captured CO₂ and green hydrogen — could save convoys, lives, and logistics headaches. What bothers me is that for this approach to e-fuels to work, we are using the least energy-efficient methods: first, capturing CO2, which takes a ton of energy; second, making hydrogen, which is not known for high efficiency; and third, spending even more energy to make e-fuel! For this work, a military base should be located close to a nuclear power plant or a hydropower dam. For more insights into the future of sustainable aviation, watch my interview with Dirk Singer here .

I spoke with a European founder developing his own battery cells. Just getting permits for the mixing and coating stages pushed his project back by three years. Those two stages alone would make up over 60% of total capex. That’s why building dedicated electrode toll-manufacturing foundries for scaleups makes so much sense — they can shortcut years of permitting and tens of millions in investment. At higher volumes, though, around 5–8 GWh, it flips. The economics start favouring in-house manufacturing. The next wave of collaboration will likely emerge between those two extremes — shared infrastructure for early-stage scaleups, a foundry for founders, and independence for mature ones.

Last week, at the Battery Day in the Netherlands, I heard a presentation by  Rob W. Postma , Managing Director of  Airbus  Netherlands. He told the story of how Airbus became a global leader by creating a European-wide collaboration that, within a few decades, managed to overtake Boeing.  Airbus didn’t try to build everything under one roof. Instead, it mastered the art of distributed manufacturing and cross-border collaboration—leveraging national strengths across Europe and binding them into one coherent whole.  The message of Mr Postma to the audience of battery professionals was simple - if we could do it, so can you. The “Moneyball & Moonshots” Perspective  An article by  Charlie Parker  on  BatteryTechOnline  put it nicely: the battery sector often swings between “moneyball” strategies—incremental efficiency gains and cost reductions—and “moonshots”—radical new chemistries and disruptive models. You can check it out here:  https://www.batterytechonline.com/battery-manufacturing/moneyball-moonshots-strategies-for-innovation-in-the-battery-industry .  What caught my attention most was the section on Contract Research Organisations (CROs) and “partners in success.” CROs in pharma showed how companies can outsource specialised R&D without losing speed or quality. Applied to batteries, that could mean new collaborative manufacturing models where specialised players share risk and scale together, rather than each company reinventing the entire value chain in-house.  This thinking is close to what I’ve been writing about over the past year: - Could a battery factory operate like a franchise? (spoiler: yes, if we design it right). - Can Europe build its industry not through copy-pasting Chinese gigafactories, but through leveraging its strengths in distributed supply chains? - Should we consider hub-and-spoke models that pool investment in cell factories, materials, and equipment across borders?  You can find these posts on my blog:  Franchise model   How to build a battery industry   Hub & Spoke Model   EU battery industry: a new hope   Why Europe Should Lead With Collaboration  Chinese and Korean champions perfected the vertically integrated gigafactory model. Europe is unlikely to beat them at their own game. But Europe has something different: a proven track record of collaborative industrial ecosystems—Airbus and ASML being prime examples.  This culture of distributed production, integration of highly specialised suppliers, and cross-border collaboration is precisely what the battery industry needs. Instead of each startup or OEM building its own silo, we can create networks of partners in success, each contributing to a shared outcome.  That could mean: - Electrode foundries serving multiple cell producers. - Shared R&D hubs acting like CROs for chemistry and process innovation. - Equipment makers embedding themselves not as vendors, but as co-developers of production lines. - A fabric of mid-sized specialised players forming a resilient European supply chain.  The (EU) Future Is Collaborative  More and more people are now questioning whether a future built solely on giant vertically integrated gigafactories is desirable—or even possible—in Europe. The alternative is not fragmentation, but orchestration: distributed but connected, specialised but aligned.  Just as Airbus showed, you can build a world leader by spreading production across many regions, if you master governance, quality, and integration.  For Europe’s battery industry, this might be the smarter “moneyball” path forward. And perhaps the only realistic “moonshot” too.  What do you think? Is the future of batteries in Europe built on one-roof gigafactories, or on collaborative industrial ecosystems? Or is there a future for Europe in the battery industry at all?

I stumbled across Martin Gallardo’s post and decided that it would be worthwhile to rewrite my comment into a full post. The consulting business has never been so good, but with the advent of AI, people were predicting that it would soon go out of business. I believe that these comments are made by people who either had a very negative experience hiring consultants (I had that experience, too) or have no idea what they are talking about. I’ve seen three very different ways in which top-tier consultants like McKinsey, BCG or Roland Berger are used inside large corporations, and AI can’t replace any of them. First: the “cover-your-ass” document Hiring McKinsey can serve as management’s indulgence—if the strategy fails, the blame is safely outsourced to a glossy consultant report. Second: the battering ram When I once developed a new strategy, my boss said: *“Let’s hire McKinsey first. The board won’t believe it if it comes from us—but they’ll approve it if McKinsey puts their logo on it.”* Sometimes, you need that external stamp of authority. Third: genuine value creation. I worked with Roland Berger for a couple of years, and they exceeded my and everyone else's expectations. They didn’t just deliver a report (they did, and it was great in itself). They embedded themselves into our business, became part of the team, established a project management and reporting mechanism for a $1B project that didn’t require our teams to fill out endless time-sheets or status reports, and at the same time provided clear visibility of the project status to the C-suite. I’ve written more about that experience here . Now, the top-tier consultants cost a fortune. McKinsey rarely bills less than $2M for any kind of work. The cheapest offers I saw from other top-tire firms were never less than $300K. If you’re a startup or scale-up, you don’t need to spend millions to get this kind of insight. I work with founders and investors to bridge the gap between technology and large-scale deployment—without the overhead of Big Three pricing. If that sounds relevant, reach out—I’d be glad to help!

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 is happening here. This year the event was bigger, much better organised, and had over 600 participants. It also gained an international dimension — with Matthieu Hubert from ACC giving a keynote on the French sector, and a dedicated session on cooperation with China. A few takeaways: 1) Scaling Dutch startups means going international. The government recognises that startups like LeydenJar, E-Magy and LionVolt cannot scale alone in the Netherlands. They need cross-border financing, partnerships with Asian manufacturers, and access to larger markets. 2) The ASML / Airbus model was mentioned several times. The call was clear: Dutch battery companies should think beyond national borders and build supplier and manufacturing networks across Europe and beyond. With more than 20,000 new industrial customers unable to connect today to the Dutch grid, massive local scale-up is out of question. 3) Push without pull. Subsidies, grants and shared facilities provide a useful push, but almost no “pull” measures exist to create a stable demand for battery technologies in the Netherlands. That gap remains critical. 4) China's cooperation was openly debated. The consensus was “yes, there should be cooperation” — but with risk management in mind. My own question to the panel on what happens in the event of a blockade or invasion of Taiwan added a layer: diversifying suppliers and technological partnerships with Korea and Japan. 5) Recycling is everywhere in the discussion. Circularity matters, but with low volumes of retired batteries expected for at least a decade, the current attention to recycling feels like a safe distraction from harder conversations about scaling and the pain points of decarbonisation. And, of course, the best part: meeting many colleagues and making new connections — Rene Vounckx, Ashley Cooke, Kevin Brundish, Casper Peeters, Elena Orlova, Andre Schilt, Mustafa Amhaouch, Ellen Jacobs, Gunjan Kapadia, Man Yong Toh and many others, it was great to see and connect with you! Battery Day 2025 showed both the ambition and the constraints of the Dutch and European battery ecosystem. Scaling climate technologies remains the real frontier.

When I first started working on climate hardware, I thought in terms of one valley of death. You raise early money, build a prototype, and then you face the brutal task of scaling up manufacturing. If you survive that stage, you have a shot at becoming a real business. Talking to Dirk Singer, author of Sustainability in the Air, made me realise that aviation startups face not one but three valleys of death. That difference explains why progress in aviation feels so much slower than in energy, batteries, or transport. The paradox of aviation emissions Today, aviation accounts for roughly 2.5–3% of global CO₂ emissions. A small slice compared to power generation or road transport. Dirk points out that this share is set to rise to over 20% by 2050 as other sectors decarbonise faster. The paradox in aviation is that it is relatively small in size but disproportionately hard to clean up. Physics, regulation, and industry structure all conspire to slow it down. Here is how Dirk describes these three valleys and my takeaways. “Valley one is the product risk: does the technology even work in the real world?” This is not like shipping an app or even launching a new battery cell. In aviation, the baseline is safety at 30,000 feet. Certification cycles run 7–10 years, and a promising lab prototype is only the beginning of a decade-long journey. Only a handful of electric or hydrogen aircraft have flown at all, and those are small prototypes. Getting from the first flight to a certifiable aircraft is a leap few survive. “Valley two is the commercial risk: can you secure real customers, not just pilot projects?” An airline agreeing to a pilot (no pun intended) is not the same as signing a binding contract for a fleet of new aircraft. Airlines operate on tight margins, and their willingness to bet on unproven technology is low. Compare this to wind or solar, where offtake contracts are well established. In aviation, offtakes are rare and often symbolic. Universal Hydrogen managed some test flights and had great press coverage. But when the time came to turn MOUs into orders, investor confidence collapsed. The company shut down last year despite raising over $100 million. “Valley three is the scale risk: can you build and deliver reliably, under budget and at volume?” Even if you have a working aircraft and a first customer, you still face the Everest of industrialisation. Dirk used the example of Elysian, a Dutch electric aircraft startup. Their 90-seater design could take $5–8 billion to bring to market, with realistic service entry no earlier than 2033. That number dwarfs the capital needs of most climate hardware projects. And it explains why, outside of eVTOL, only five aviation startups worldwide have ever raised more than $100 million. Beyond hype Aviation is a test of patience. Investors accustomed to 5-year exits in SaaS or AI will find the timelines unbearable. And yet, if we ignore aviation, its emissions share will balloon as other sectors clean up. Dirk’s framework of the three valleys is a reminder that hype won’t carry us through. Only staged capital, credible execution, and realistic timelines will. And perhaps the hardest truth: success in aviation may not look like disruption from a startup, but gradual infiltration of sustainable fuels, small-scale electrification, and eventually, a reshaped industry. Watch the full interview with Dirk Singer here: