Hey Grove readers,
In World Cup mood, I’ve been thinking all about strikers ~ 3 of my recent guests scoring real goals in bringing climatech into the world.
Devesh Sharma is a seasoned veteran and CEO of Aquatech, a water company founded by his father in the 80s that’s now playing offense in the lithium market as well.
Sean Joseph, co-founder of Altilium, left 20 years of banking to dribble through the expensive work of turning dead EV batteries into critical metals.
Last, Matias Figliozzi is the player who never stops asking why why why. Keep showing up for the pass and the game eventually comes to you. He’s now co-founder of Unibaio and working with global food companies.
Let’s dive in!
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In this week's issue
- Scoring goals off the rebound
- When VC leaves the pitch
- Always show up for the pass
Scoring goals off the rebound
Devesh began working at Aquatech as a teenager. He’s now leading the company and expanding their game plan into lithium, though nobody saw that ball coming.
One of their mining-group leaders noticed that pulling lithium out of brine used the same skills they already had for cleaning very dirty water. It was a 2 birds, 1 stone kinda situation, but it’s not enough to be lucky.
We switch sports for a minute as he tells me a hockey story.
Someone takes a slap shot, and the puck hits the goalie right in the face mask instead of going in the net. People watch that and say the goalie got lucky.
You can call it luck, or you can say the goalie was good, because he was in the position to have his head there in the first place.
Winning is a team sport
45 years in, Devesh refuses to let Aquatech behave like a giant bureaucracy. If you want to scale, you can’t have ideas disappearing into an air tube and passing through three different floors.
He sums up that positioning in two values, “maniacal urgency” and “radical collaboration”. The puck only found Aquatech because the company had spent decades putting itself where opportunity could find it.
The science itself is actually the easy part, because it’s measurable. Building the right team and getting everyone pulling in the same direction is much harder, but also the only true way forward.
When VC leaves the pitch
After working as an investment banker for 20 years, Sean's journey in cleantech kicked off with a phone call.
A scientist, who would later become his co-founder, convinced him that the energy transition would be the next industrial revolution.
His company, Altilium, recycles end-of-life EV batteries back into critical metals. It requires a real, expensive chemical refinery, and his job was to make sure the money was there to build it.
Many people’s first action would be running straight to venture capital, but Sean argues that heavy hardware, like the type they’re building at Altilium, actually requires a different approach.
In the UK, building a factory for what they do would cost something around $60 million. Most VCs see that price tag and retreat to their own half.
You need someone who can scale with you, so the money needs to come from somewhere else.
Playing the long game
In Altilium’s case, financing came one factory at a time.
Each new plant became its own company, backed by o agreements. If customers have already agreed to buy what the factory will produce, banks are much more willing to lend the money to build it.
Sean’s main advice is to start talking to banks about 18 months before you actually need the money. Building trust takes time, and you'll often have to explain your business before anyone is willing to finance it.
Then it comes down to discipline ~ promise less than you can deliver and keep a close eye on your cash. Sean lost plenty of negotiation matches before getting his first win.
Always show up for the pass
Matias knew nothing about farming or chemicals when he started. He’s an economist, coming from a family of artists, joining four scientists who had spent decades studying plants.Today, UniBio makes a powdered additive that helps farmers use less chemistry without sacrificing yield. Getting there meant first understanding how the industry actually worked.
In business, like in soccer, you don't score by standing still. You keep making runs into space until the ball finds you.
So he began asking a whole bunch of questions.
After joining an accelerator in Chile, every meeting ended by asking “who else should I talk to?”, and each introduction led to another, and another, and another.
He describes it as becoming a child again, asking "why?" over and over until the industry started making sense. First farmers, then supermarkets, food companies, chemical companies and even governments.
A second-half turnaround
One lesson came from a wrong turn. UniBio first tried selling to large chemical companies, but got stuck in an endless cycle of trials that never became real business.
That's when Matias stopped giving pilots away for free. Even charging a small fee was enough to separate companies that were genuinely committed from those that were simply curious.
The breakthrough came when a global food company saw Matias pitch at a competition and reached out first.
You can call it luck, or you can say he’s a damn good striker. He was in the position to receive the ball in the first place, so he found the net.
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With love, Blake
See you next week!
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