After last week’s episode we return to the ground but stay with eMobility. Last mile deliveries have never been more needed, as we’re currently so reliant on home deliveries. It’s also fair to say cities, mayors and citizens are quite liking the clean air and lack of both air and noise pollution, I can only expect the successes of Voltia and others in this space will continue. That said, when I first spoke to Juraj some time ago, it was his entrepreneurial story that stood, out. We discuss both in this episode.
About Juraj Ulehla:
Juraj Ulehla, a former investment banker who specialized in risk management when working for international banks, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Voltia. He holds a PhD from the University of Economics Bratislava. Prior to leading Voltia, Juraj focused on solar power plant development and was instrumental in building up Voltia’s predecessor Greenway Operator (GWO), together with his co-founder and co-investor Peter Badik, who heads Voltia’s sister company Greenway Infrastructure (GWI).
About Voltia
Voltia is a European e-mobility specialist based in Bratislava, Slovakia. Launched in 2015, with the mission to help make commercial e-mobility effective and affordable, it supports OEMs by broadening the usability of their mass-market electric LCV models. Voltia’s approach is to add value in terms of application-specific re-design for different purposes. It provides development know-how, vehicle structure engineering, prototyping, production set-up, and sales & marketing support. It has clients in 11 European countries. More than 500 Voltia e-vans already operate successfully in large urban environments, such as London, Paris, Nice, Dortmund, Tallinn or Bratislava.
Social links:
- Juraj Ulehla on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurajulehla/
- Voltia Website: https://www.voltia.com/
- Voltia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/voltia/
- Voltia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Voltia_com
EPISODE LINKS HERE
- Emissions free deliveries in London using the Voltia electric van https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGrQjyZ_1sM
- Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Paperback https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005J3IEZQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
- Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0124PP3AA/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Follow us online, write a review (please) or subscribe
I’m very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter.
If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated.
As you will have gathered from this podcast, I live in and love the intersection of clean technology and entrepreneurship. This passion, and my role as CEO at Hyperion Executive Search brings me into contact with so many fascinating people, and I love to hear and share their stories.
On recent podcasts I’ve spoken to leads at cleantech VCs, Publicly Listed tech funds and soon Corporate Venturing entities, but today a very import part of the funding ecosystem are Angels and Angel syndicates, and my guest Simon Acland has great insights into this part of the funding community.
About our guest
Simon Acland is a Founder and Director of Green Angel Syndicate, the only UK Business Angel group focussed on investing in companies that develop products and solutions that help tackle the climate emergency and environmental crisis and aim for a more efficient and sustainable use of global resources. He sits on the Board of Triple Point Income VCT plc, which has invested extensively in renewable energy and vertical farming, and is on the investment panel of the Triple Point Impact EIS Fund which makes green investments. He is a member of the investment committee of the Angel CoFund. He acts as chair or non-exec director of two companies he has backed in the green technology sector – Powervault, a developer and manufacturer of home electricity storage devices, including products which reuse batteries from electric vehicles, and NatureMetrics, a pioneer of environmental DNA sequencing techniques for monitoring biodiversity. Simon is a Non-Executive Director of the Satellite Applications Catapult, and Vice-Chair of Plantlife, the UK’s main wild plant conservation charity.
Simon has a successful track record from over thirty years of investing in young technology businesses. For 19 years he was part of the team that built Quester into one of the UK’s most active early stage venture capital investors, and was Managing Director when it was sold in 2007. Since then he has personally been an active Business Angel investor. Many of the businesses that he backed have floated on various Stock Exchanges, and/or been successfully sold. He has lost count of the number of company boards of which he has been a member.
Simon spent eight years as a Lambeth Borough Councillor and stood for parliament in 1987 as a candidate for the SDP/Liberal Alliance.
Simon’s 2011 book “Angels, Dragons and Vultures – how to tame your investors and not lose your company”, is widely regarded as one of the most useful guides for entrepreneurs to the world of venture capital. His First Crusade historical novels, the Waste Land and the Flowers of Evil, may be of less practical use to the budding entrepreneur.
GUEST LINKS HERE
Simon Acland on Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/simonacland/
Green Angel Syndicate on Linked In: www.linkedin.com/company/green-angel-syndicate/
Green Angel Syndicate on Twitter: twitter.com/GAS_Investments
EPISODE LINKS HERE
Angels, Dragons & Vultures – www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/18578…rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Follow us online, write a review (please) or subscribe
I’m very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter.
If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated.
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