For the past eight years, I was focused on creating and building Nanosolar, the company I co-founded in 2002 to make solar power a lot less expensive.
At Nanosolar, I served as Chairman & Chief Executive Officer from the company's inception in 2002 through commenced normal production in 2010 and was the principal technology architect behind the company's ambitious technology. In lockstep with EVP Ops Werner Dumanski, I drove a lot of the unusual amount of heavy lifting necessary for putting in place a global technology manufacturing operation and getting to ship a very innovative semiconductor product:
Leading the company through all phases of technology development: from "against-all-odds" nanoscience research to manufacturing process development, production tooling development, product development including reliability certification, construction of two state-of-the-art high-capacity factories (one local and one overseas), and ultimately the commencement of 24x7 normal production and shipment of product into power plants for our customers;
Securing $500 million in funding -- in particular via four strong equity financing rounds (all "up"), two of which were each the largest investment rounds any private technology company received world-wide in their years;
Securing the very best power project developers world-wide as customers and a substantial ($4.1 billion) contract pipeline;
Ensuring the team of ~350 includes the best & brightest engineers, scientists, managers, and technicians as very happy campers;
Navigating through one of the worst recessions in a financially safe way -- with the largest cash-per-employee war chest of any company in the industry and with undiminished pace of R&D enabled throughout.
I am very proud of Nanosolar's team and its incredible accomplishments. I am also extremely grateful for the support of the broad range of investors who enabled it all. After ending my active involvement in the company in April 2010, I continue to support Nanosolar as its largest individual shareholder.
Prior to creating one of the first successful greentech companies, I was among the first generation of entrepreneurs to pioneer the commercial Internet, involved in building three companies:
- eGroups, the "mother of all social networking sites"; acquired by Yahoo in 2000 for $450 million; service used by more than 50 million people today. I was the founding CEO, with funding from Sequoia Capital; eGroups was the world's second-largest email hub just behind AOL.
- TradingDynamics (enterprise-class trading software); acquired by Ariba in 1999 for $720 million; co-founder.
- FindLaw (most popular legal website); bootstrapped while I was at Stanford; acquired by Thomson's West Group.
Other:
- Doctorate in engineering from Stanford University; master's degree from Munich Technical University
- Austrian citizen born in Munich, Germany
- Came to Silicon Valley through internship at Xerox PARC (when I was still a teenager)
Also: Fortune named me one of the top ten entrepreneurs in the United States under the age of 40
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