FOAK tales

This week, we're bringing you a special episode of Catalyst with Shayle Kann, a show about how to decarbonize the planet. In this episode: what it takes to secure investments for first-of-a-kind infrastructure projects. 

First-of-a-kind projects need infrastructure investment, the kind of money that costs less than venture capital and usually comes in the form of deals worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But infrastructure investors are notoriously conservative and convincing them to bite can be challenging. 

So what do infrastructure investors really want?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy’s FOAK finance program. It has worked with companies like Rondo, Form Energy, and Lanzajet to overcome challenges on the path to infrastructure investment. Coincidentally, the program is also called Catalyst (no relation to our show). Mario and Shayle talk about the journey from lab-proven technology to a fully de-risked infrastructure investment, covering topics like:

• Why investors want to see a path to multiple, repeatable projects

• Mario’s prescription for a scale-up path: pilot, demo, and FOAK project

• The difficulty of following that path on a limited financial runway

• The commercial construct and the tension between negotiating a flexible offtake and securing a customer

• Developing the right capital stack and accurately estimating capital needs

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.