How I Serendipitously Stumbled into a Career in Cleantech

Ali Mamujee
Jul 30, 2017 · 6 min read
Photo Credit: Karsten Würth

It was Spring of 2006, I was finishing my Sophomore year at the University Texas at Austin. I was planning to spend the summer in London. I wanted to do something different from my peers. Venture Capital (VC) was a sexy, unattainable job for future undergraduates at my school. To break into VC, the path for undergraduate Finance majors was 1) Get a top-tier investment banking internship. 2) Get a full-time offer from that job, 3) Work your ass off for another 2–3 years, and 4) Hopefully be lucky enough to parlay your experience into a entry level VC job. I planned to take a shortcut. What if I just got an internship at VC firm this summer?

I must be honest, looking back on this time, I am amazed how bold and naïve I was. I got a list of over 100 venture capital firms with offices in London and sent tailored emails to each of them. I spent about 2–3 hours a day researching, emailing, and cold-calling before the end of the Spring semester. After a couple of weeks, no luck. My batting average was .000. I kept persisting. I knew the chances would be low. I wish I had the exact email template I used, but here is a quick gist of it:

“Hi, my name is Ali, I am interested in learning about venture capital. Your firm caught my eye because of x, y, and z. I will be in London this summer and wanted to explore if I can intern at your firm. I am a Sophomore at the University of Texas, majoring in Finance, and hope for a career in venture capital after graduating. I am not looking for any compensation, just want to learn and explore ways I can offer you value. Here is my resume. And by the way, I can make an awesome cappuccino”.

I know, I know, it was a bit desperate. Nevertheless, after more rejections, I finally got a response. It was from Ann Bowler, a Manager at a very small venture capital firm called, Foursome Investments (now Frog Capital). Ann wrote something like:

“Ali, thanks for your interest. We can offer free lunch. What’s a good time for a phone call?”

And the rest was history. I was off to London to start my career in venture capital. I remember the first day like yesterday. The office was located in what looked like a residential building in the Kings Cross area. They had large raw wood office desks with amazing fine art pieces all around. By the name of the company, I had no idea what they invested in, but I felt like I hit the lottery. I met with Ann for the first time and she introduced me to the other three Partners at the firm. I quickly learned that Foursome did early-seed investing in the clean technology industry. My job was simple. My job was amazing. Evaluate the 10–20 business plans that came through the mail or e-mail per day. I worked with my employer to create a one-page scoring card. A lot of scoring emphasis was based on their own investment criteria, market size, management team, etc. We made it as objective as possible, but I still can’t believe they allowed a 19 year old kid from Texas be the firm’s gatekeeper.

I took my job seriously. I knew nothing about cleantech at the time. I spent the next 8 weeks reading and learning all about the global renewable energy market. This was all I did. Words like “wind turbine technology”, “photovoltaics”, “solar thermal”, “polysilicon”, “inverters”, “wafers”, “feed-in-tariff” etc. were plastered all over the business plans.

I recall how lucky I was reading these business plans. I was able to peek into the future. I started to pick up on patterns. I went deep into fundamental research in wind and solar technology companies. I had never seen a wind turbine or solar panel in my life. However, every business plan highlighted the incredible renewable energy growth in Europe, especially in Germany. Germany? Yes, Germany was leading the solar market in installations. How!? I started to get obsessed with this question. “Why was Germany and other European countries so far ahead of the US in wind and solar installations?” The US had so much more land, renewable energy resource, and demand for electricity. “What were the barriers preventing the US in becoming a burgeoning renewable energy market?

Photo Credit: Andreas Gücklhorn

The market potential for renewables was huge. Traditional power generation (primary coal, natural gas, and oil) resources had two primary issues: 1) Not good for the environment (carbon emissions), 2) Limited resources that were susceptible to price shocks, geo-political issues, and national security.

The biggest barrier for renewable energy was simple. It was just too expensive relative to traditional power generation. Germany was making it happen through a federal incentive system (feed-in-tariff) that made solar cost-effective to build. But a market can’t sustain through incentives, right? I didn’t want to support renewable energy just because it was just altruistic. I wanted to support if it made economic sense.

But what if renewable energy became so cheap it was a non-factor like the cost curves of semi-conductors and personal computers? I sadly remember using the following analogy to make sense of it all. “So the renewable energy industry is the perfect girlfriend. She is smart, pretty, intelligent, funny, supportive, ambitious……but, she is a bit overweight. She is still the perfect girl! What if she loses the weight? Every man in the world will be chasing after her. Not the best analogy I must admit, but I constantly thought about the cost curves for renewable energy technology this way. What if renewable energy did shed its costs? All the business plans said the cost curves will decline overtime. I felt I found the most undervalued asset in the world: renewable energy.

It was during this serendipitous internship that fundamentally altered my career. It has been 11 years since that internship. I have been in the cleantech ever since in various roles including, investment banking, private equity, and consulting. The mission continues to be the same. How do we get more renewable energy projects in the ground faster and more profitable?

I constantly recall the business plans I read in London that faithful summer. The most aggressive business plans estimated a 50% reduction in total install costs in solar PV from 2006 to 2016. They were terribly wrong. Total install costs for solar PV dropped approximately 90% during this time. We went from 2 GW to 300 GW of cumulative global solar PV capacity. A 150x increase in under a decade.

So what part of the wave are we at today? In my opinion, the growth has just begun. For example, solar still accounts for less than 1% of total electricity mix in the US. Regardless of the current political climate, renewable energy is reaching its tipping point. Costs continue to drop. Storage technology continues to advance, transmission continues to be built, corporations like Google, Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, and other corporations are taking advantage of cost savings by procuring renewable energy. The ship has sailed. As a simple reference point, I believe the renewable energy industry Is equivalent to the year 1995 in the internet age. So much progress to date, but it hasn’t scratched the surface of what’s to come.

Thank you Ann for responding to my email. It shifted my entire career path. I have the same excitement today as I did the summer of 2006. It’s renewable energy’s time to shine. She finally lost the weight. Lookout for what’s to come.