🌱 Great discussions and valuable insights from this week's Scale-Up Finance Roundtable on financing First-of-a-Kind (#FOAK) industrial projects by Tech for Net Zero. Together with a group of highly experienced investors, we dicussed how to tackle one of the biggest challenges in the industrial transition: moving proven technologies from pilot to full-scale deployment. Key takeaways for the climate tech ecosystem: 🏗️ Financial structure matters: SPVs, credible offtake agreements, and careful project structuring can make capital-intensive projects bankable faster 🔁 Offtake models are evolving: Solutions like Hardware-as-a-Service can turn high-CAPEX assets into predictable, financeable cashflows 💬 Think bankability backwards – Banks usually join later in a project’s lifecycle. Initial debt can come from private markets. A big thank you to everyone who contributed insights and examples – and especially to Dr. Susanne Kurowski on the German Energy Agency (dena) #StartupHub and Tobias Lechtenfeld for the moderation throughout the session. 🙏👏 #Energy #Industry #Resilience #Scaleup #Finance #FOAK
💡You always learn so much when surrounded by highly experienced institutional investors, investment bankers and VCs. This week, I had the pleasure of moderating the 6th Scale-Up Finance Roundtable by Tech for Net Zero, co-hosted with our partners German Energy Agency (dena). A few takeaways from an excellent discussion in Berlin: 🏗️Financial structure matters To attract project finance for first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects, structuring must follow the core principles of project finance. For example, SPVs are often essential to isolate risk and make capital-intensive projects both bankable and replicable. 🔁Offtake models are evolving Models such as Hardware-as-a-Service can turn high-CAPEX assets into predictable, financeable cashflows. The most successful scale-ups don’t just sell hardware – they build financial solutions around it. ⚙️ Think bankability backwards Banks are usually the last lenders to join a scale-up’s financing journey. Well before that, founders should focus on private debt for working capital and asset finance. Only once projects reach steady cashflow, banks can step in through refinancing. 👏 Many thanks to everyone who joined and contributed to the discussion on advancing Scale-Up Finance for asset-heavy innovators. Stay tuned – we’re doubling down on Scale-Up Finance, with more to come. 🚀 #Finance #ScaleUp #FOAK #Energy #Industry #Resilience Christiane Lübke Sebastian Kraus Timo Bartell Michael Pfennig Kelsey Emms Oona Poropudas Leon Sander Martin Eichholz Isabelle Canu Pascale Schütze Lea Saurin Hauke Burkhardt Marek Edmund Winter Max Werny Niklas Oettle Victor van Hoorn Jules Besnainou Dr. Susanne Kurowski Pia Dorfinger René Böhm