Investment: solar energy and startups

When I joined SunEdison Solar in 2009, renewable energy finance was still a relatively new field, so I had to learn it from scratch. I eventually led more than $200M in solar transactions, and was involved in over $1B worth of deals - I was involved in every aspect of a deal, from building the financial models to negotiating deal terms.

I used these financial modeling skills to help my brother raise debt and equity for his Michelin-starred Brooklyn restaurant, The Four Horsemen, in 2015.

When I started angel investing in 2018, I similarly couldn't find good information online about how to project the future value of an angel investment. Exit value is most obviously linked to the company valuation at investment and company valuation at exit; however, there are other variables at play including total amount of capital raised (e.g., dilution) and employee option pools. After screening over 150 deals, I was able to make several investments including in tech companies Chronosphere and WaveSense.

I created a dynamic financial model to capture all of these variables, and would be happy to share it with any aspiring startup / angel investors (available in Excel only, not in Google sheets). Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like a copy!

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