The Execution Game

The 100 European founders we looked at studied at 118 universities. No institution appears more than 5 times: Cambridge leads with 5 and Delft follows with 4, and St. Gallen, INSEAD, and several others tie at 3.

Matthieu Guesné trained as an electronics engineer at ESEO in Angers and founded Lhyfe, the French hydrogen producer. Laura Rahikka studied process engineering at the University of Oulu in northern Finland and founded Hycamite, which splits methane into hydrogen and solid carbon. Anne Lamp completed her doctorate at Hamburg University of Technology and founded Traceless, which makes a plastic substitute out of agricultural residues.

In the United States the center of gravity is different: Harvard, Stanford and MIT produced 30 of the 100 Americans.

Most founders in both groups went beyond a bachelor's: 77 of the Europeans and 69 of the Americans. Where they differ is the degree most of them stopped at. In Europe studying often runs straight through to a master's, and 55 of the Europeans walked away from university with one. Americans more often stop at a bachelor's, and when they go back to school it is usually for an MBA: 28 of them completed one, against 11 Europeans.

11 Europeans on this list hold a doctorate, compared to 19 Americans. 7 of the 11 had spent most of their working lives in research before founding. Anne Lamp is one. So are Christoph Gebald, who founded Climeworks out of his doctorate at ETH Zurich, and Francesco Sciortino, who left the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics to found Proxima Fusion. Tim Böltken spun INERATEC out of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The other 4 of the 11 took their doctorate and then left academia for industry, tech or business. David Kingham is one: he spent 17 years running Oxford Innovation, a business-incubator operator, before founding Tokamak Energy, the fusion company.

A handful hold no formal degree. Henrik Stiesdal went to university and never graduated. He built wind turbines for 3 decades instead, the last of them as chief technology officer of Siemens Wind Power, and at 59 he founded Stiesdal, which builds floating foundations for offshore wind and electrolyzers for hydrogen. Lawrence Leuschner, a venture partner at AENU, left university without finishing his degree. At 22 he co-founded the used-goods marketplace that became reBuy, and in 2018 he founded TIER Mobility, the scooter-rental company. Marc Coloma never studied for a degree and founded Heura Foods, the Barcelona maker of plant-based meat, in his mid-twenties.

We see the spread across nearly 120 universities and schools as a strength for Europe: the next founder can come out of Oulu or Angers as easily as out of Delft. For us it also means there is a lot of ground to cover. Our peers in the United States can build a network on 3 campuses and call it a sourcing strategy. As an investor in Europe, you can’t apply the same logic. For the next generation of founders in this space, the school on your CV might be the least interesting line on it, at least in Europe.

For many, founding a company in climate tech is a second career: the median European founder here had 13 years of work behind them on the day they started. In the United States it's 16. 43 of the 100 had 15 years or more. In the United States it's more than half. These are people who already had an established career and gave it up to start again.

At least 45 of the 100 worked at an industrial or energy employer at some point before founding. That is the first of two common paths.

Peter Carlsson ran sourcing at Ericsson and the supply chain at Tesla before he started Northvolt, the Swedish battery maker. Robert Falck left Volvo Trucks to build Einride, the Swedish electric-freight company that recently listed on the Nasdaq. Martin Lewerth left Scania to build Aira, the Swedish heat-pump company. Benoit Lemaignan (Verkor, the French battery-cell maker) and Jérémy Caussade (AURA AERO, the French electric-aircraft maker) both came out of Airbus. All 5 spent a career inside established corporates first, then took their insider knowledge, network and instincts, and left to build something new.

At least 46 of the 100 spent a year or more in consulting or finance and learned the sector as advisers, bankers, or investors before they started anything of their own. That route is no smaller than the first. At least 20 spent a year or more in both worlds. Petter Østbø is one. He spent 7 years at McKinsey, then 8 at Yara, the Norwegian fertilizer group, ran EuroChem, a fertilizer producer, and founded Atlas Agro at 42 to build fertilizer plants that run on hydrogen. By the time that adviser founds a company, they know both the ins and outs of financing and operations.

For an early-stage investor, this changes where you look. The founder pool is inside industrial and energy companies, inside the consulting firms and funds that advise them, and among those who have just left. Some founders we meet are early on this route, so one of the first things we look at is the employer they left, and how long they stayed. An industrial company's engineers and managers, 10 to 15 years in, are its hidden founder pool. If you're a decade into one of those companies and keep hitting the same problem, nearly half the founders on this list were where you are.

Not everyone was familiar with the sector they founded in. Jodok Betschart had no energy background when he started Cloover, which finances home energy installations: 4 years at a fund manager, then an event software company. He's one of the 26 who came through finance but not energy. Raffael Wohlgensinger came to Formo, which makes cheese without cows, from a business degree and a short stretch at a venture builder. Neither knew the sector before starting.

Commentary · Hiring from the incumbents — by Green Executives

Authors' note: Hometree is an AENU portfolio company.

Simon Phelan, one of the 100 founders in this study, made his first hires at Hometree: the two men, both in their early sixties, who had built British Gas's home-cover business. Jonathan Rose places people like them for a living. This is his view of when it works.

Jonathan Rose

Partner, Green Executives

Scroll down to find Jonathan Rose's full commentary.

51 of our 100 European founders had founded a company before this one. In the United States, 63 are repeat founders.

At least 25 of the Europeans had already sold or listed a company they founded. 19 had done it once and 6 twice. A further 26 had built a company before and had no sale or listing to show for it, whether that company still ran, was wound down or had closed.

Christoph Ostermann co-founded sonnen, the German home-battery maker, sold it to Shell in 2019 and started green flexibility, which develops battery storage. Aurélien de Meaux sold Cheerz, a photo-printing app, to Cewe in 2018 and founded Electra, the French fast-charging network. Greg Jackson sold C360UK, a software business, to Tangent in 2006 and later founded Octopus Energy, the UK energy supplier. Benoit Lemaignan has co-founded two companies on this list: Waga Energy, which turns landfill gas into biomethane, in 2015, and Verkor, the battery-cell maker, in 2020. Each company contributes one founder, so we count him once, for Verkor; Waga's place on the list goes to its chief executive, Mathieu Lefebvre.

Raffael Wohlgensinger, Petter Østbø and Priit Lepasepp are among the 49 first-time founders. Østbø founded Atlas Agro at 42, after McKinsey, Yara and EuroChem. Lepasepp came to Sunly, the Estonian renewables developer, from Sorainen, a Baltic law firm, and Nelja Energia, a wind developer. Mathieu Lefebvre spent 11 years at Air Liquide and co-founded Waga Energy at 33.

The median repeat founder had 15 years of work behind them at founding. The median first-timer had 11. Investors treat a prior exit as a signal, and there is evidence for it. A Harvard Business School study of US venture-backed companies founded between 1986 and 2003 found that founders who had taken a company public took the next one public 30% of the time.† First-time founders managed 21%, and founders whose previous company had failed, 22%.

What the two groups share is the years. The repeat founder spent 15 of them, some running a company of their own; the first-timer spent 11, all of them working for someone else or no one at all. Either way, the people on this list arrived with a career behind them, and Key insight 2 says where those careers were spent. That is the execution game: a career first, then the company.

† Gompers, Kovner, Lerner and Scharfstein, "Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship", Journal of Financial Economics 96 (2010).