Non-Dilutive by Design: Backing Your Portfolio from Seed to FOAK
Public grants are usually left to founders to chase on their own, but they're one of the most direct levers an investor has to shape portfolio value, from seed through large-scale deployment.
This session is about putting that to work: how investors can help portfolio companies prepare for and win non-dilutive public funding across the full company lifecycle, up to and including the large-scale grants for first-of-a-kind (FOAK) demonstration and deployment that often determine whether a climate company reaches commercial scale.
This holds whether you invest early or late. Early-stage investors can support companies in securing near-term grants and position them for the large programmes to come. Later-stage investors capture immediate value on the FOAK and deployment grants already in reach. And much of what we recommend is simply good company building, done in a way that also wins large-scale public capital.
We will keep it concrete and EU-specific, focused on the programmes and value chains that matter for European deployment, and the policy shaping both. Although this approach applies globally, wherever your companies pursue public funding.
We’ll dig into:
Why FOAK and deployment grants are won years before the deadline, and what an investor's early support does to position a company for them
How the major EU programmes for demonstration and deployment are structured, and where in a company's trajectory each one becomes winnable
The concrete levers an investor holds, such as consortium and value-chain introductions, project structuring, blended and co-financing, and governance that keeps a company grant-ready
How to read a company's public-funding trajectory in diligence and tell genuine grant-readiness from grant-chasing
Venue and speakers to be announced.
The event will be hosted by Climate Finance Solutions as a side event at The Drop, convened by Joel Armin-Hoiland (Founder and CEO) and Alun Jones (Europe Lead for Project Development). CFS is a climate funding advisory firm, with $1.6B+ in public funding secured globally and €500M+ supported across European programmes.