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New Wave | Hugo Rauch | Substack

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Supported by:

Leonard: The innovation and foresight platform of the VINCI Group, to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing VINCI’s businesses: the digital revolution, the accelerating pace of innovation, and the environmental transition.

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🌊 Can Iron Replace Natural Gas?

How a rechargeable metal fuel could reshape high-temperature industrial heat, and Europe’s energy sovereignty.

We’re joined by Driss Laraqui, CEO and co-founder of Fenix Energy, a deeptech founder turning iron powder into a circular fuel for industrial heat.

The premise sounds almost like science fiction: burn iron powder, capture the iron oxide, recharge it with electricity, and use it again.

But for Driss, this is not a lab experiment.

Fenix is building industrial boilers designed to generate high-temperature heat — up to roughly 900°C, for sectors that remain heavily dependent on natural gas and difficult to electrify.

In this episode, we dive into one of climate tech’s hardest problems: how to decarbonize industrial heat without asking every factory to rely on constant access to cheap electricity and massive grid connections. And we unpack what it really takes to turn a scientific breakthrough into an infrastructure business that customers can actually deploy.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why industrial heat is becoming a geopolitical problem — from gas-price volatility to security of supply

→ Why direct electrification does not solve everything — especially for continuous industrial processes and sites without sufficient grid capacity

→ How iron works as a rechargeable fuel — burning into iron oxide, then regenerating the material with electricity

→ Why mobility changes the storage equation — Fenix can move energy in the form of iron powder instead of keeping storage stationary

→ The economics of heat-as-a-service — and why taking CapEx off the customer’s balance sheet can accelerate adoption

→ Why modularity matters in deeptech — finding the right reactor size, stacking systems, and avoiding endless re-engineering

→ How first customers finance emerging industrial technologies before banks and infrastructure funds are ready

→ Why Driss believes Europe is still one of the best places to build climate deeptech

One idea stayed with me.

Most conversations about industrial decarbonization search for the winning technology.

Driss sees the opposite.

The future energy system will be a mix: direct electrification where it works, biomass where it makes sense, nuclear in some contexts — and new energy carriers like iron for industrial sites that cannot simply plug into more power.

Fenix is betting that iron can become one of those missing bricks.

And perhaps the most interesting part is that the core challenge is no longer purely scientific.

As Driss puts it, the company is increasingly in development, not research.

The question now is execution: engineering the boiler, coordinating suppliers, sourcing cheap electricity, building the regeneration infrastructure, moving powder between sites, financing first-of-a-kind deployments — and making the full system competitive with natural gas.

That is where deeptech becomes a business.

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

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🌊 Building Deep Tech at Software Speed

What separates the best hardware founders, and why conviction matters more than consensus.

We’re joined by Clara Ricard, investor at Transition, focused on hardware and industrial deep tech, to explore what it really takes to build and back the next generation of climate and frontier technologies.

Hardware startups don’t follow the neat trajectories investors became accustomed to during the SaaS era. Their paths are messier, more capital-intensive, and often require a fundamentally different way of thinking about risk, talent, and execution.

In this conversation, we unpack why the best venture investments often begin with disagreement, how elite engineering cultures create outsized companies, and what founders can learn from organizations like SpaceX, Tesla, and ASML.

In this episode, we covered:

→ Why hardware investing requires a different mindset than SaaS

→ Why great VC partnerships shouldn’t always agree

→ How SpaceX, Tesla, and ASML created cultures that move hardware at extraordinary speed

→ Why operator networks outperform impressive résumés

→ The role of luck—and how investors try to recognize it

→ Why accepting more failures may actually produce better venture returns

→ Whether Europe can compete with China’s manufacturing advantage

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by:

Heights: a design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 Building Concrete That Stores Carbon

Can the world’s most essential building material become a climate solution?

We’re joined by Andreas Saari, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Paebbl, a company developing carbon-storing materials that can be blended directly into concrete.

Cement is responsible for roughly 8% of global CO₂ emissions. The challenge isn’t just the energy required to produce it, half of the emissions come from the chemistry itself. In this conversation, Andreas explains why decarbonizing cement is one of climate tech’s hardest problems and why entirely new materials may offer a path forward.

We also explore what it takes to bring a novel industrial material to market, how risk is shared across the construction value chain, and why Europe could play a defining role in the next industrial era.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why cement remains one of the toughest sectors to decarbonize

→ How Paebbl turns captured CO₂ and abundant minerals into a carbon-storing construction material

→ Why customers increasingly demand low-carbon concrete—and who’s willing to pay for it

→ The challenge of proving performance when buildings and infrastructure are on the line

→ How Paebbl brought companies like Holcim and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund onto its cap table to align incentives

→ Why scaling industrial climate technologies requires a completely different financing model

→ Europe’s opportunity to lead a new wave of industrial innovation

→ The emerging software, AI, and materials technologies transforming the construction industry

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by:

Heights: a design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 Turning Deep Tech Into Industrial Champions

Why commercialization is the real bottleneck for climate and industrial innovation.

We’re joined by Beau-Anne Chilla, Partner at ForwardONE, an early-stage deep tech investor focused on industrial and energy technologies.

In this episode, we explore what it really takes to turn breakthrough technologies into category-defining companies, and why Europe may be entering a once-in-a-generation moment for industrial innovation.

Beau shares lessons from investing in hardware, quantum computing, energy infrastructure, and industrial software, as well as his perspective on where climate investing is headed next.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why “technology without commercialization is just expensive science”

→ The biggest mistakes technical founders make when scaling sales

→ How to evaluate deep tech before the market fully exists

→ What VCs get wrong about hardware investing

→ The reality of commercializing industrial technologies

→ Why customer validation matters more than investor excitement

→ Investing in quantum computing before the market arrives

→ Europe’s opportunity to lead in energy and industrial innovation

→ Why efficiency may be one of the most overlooked climate solutions

→ How ForwardONE identifies winners and doubles down on conviction

One theme stood out throughout the conversation: innovation alone isn’t enough. The companies that create lasting impact are the ones that bridge the gap between technical excellence and commercial execution.

As Beau puts it, founders need to build products customers are willing to adopt, not just technologies that are impressive in the lab.

We also discuss why climate and industrial investing should no longer be viewed as separate categories. Improving efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and modernizing industrial systems may not always be the most radical solutions, but they can create enormous impact at scale.

And as Europe pushes for greater energy independence and industrial resilience, Bo believes the timing has never been better.

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by:

Heights: a design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 The New Alchemy of Clean Energy

Why the future of climate-tech may depend on replacing critical minerals altogether.

We’re joined by Assia, CEO of Milvus Advanced, an Oxford-born materials startup developing earth-abundant nanoalloys that can replace critical minerals like platinum, iridium, and indium.

What started as a PhD research project became a mission to solve one of the biggest hidden bottlenecks in the energy transition: our dependence on scarce, geopolitically concentrated materials.

In this episode, we explore why the clean energy transition is ultimately a materials challenge, and what it takes to build entirely new metals from scratch.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why Assia abandoned the idea that renewables are inherently sustainable

→ The journey from Oxford chemistry labs to venture-backed founder

→ How a 13th-century story about “German Silver” inspired a breakthrough in nanomaterials

→ Why most climate technologies depend on fragile mineral supply chains

→ The hidden role of metals in batteries, hydrogen, semiconductors, and clean energy systems

→ Why performance alone isn’t enough—and why cost always wins

→ How Milvus is creating substitutes for platinum-group metals using abundant materials like copper and nickel

→ The challenge of scaling chemistry from milligrams to kilograms—and eventually tons

→ What founders can learn from academia about risk, persistence, and conviction

→ Why climate startups are increasingly becoming sovereignty and defense companies

One of Assia’s most striking observations is that technologies don’t actually care which element they’re using. They care about the properties. The opportunity is about recreating critical minerals behavior with materials that are abundant, affordable, and locally available.

If that thesis proves true, the implications stretch far beyond climate.

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by:

Heights: a design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 Building Conviction Before the World Sees It

What it takes to back scientific founders before there’s a product, revenue, or proof that the science will work.

We’re joined by Max, Founder & Managing Partner at Nucleus, a pre-seed venture fund backing scientific and technical founders across food, biotech, and industrial innovation.

In this episode, we dive into what it really takes to become the first institutional believer in a company, often before there’s an MVP, customers, or even certainty that the underlying technology can scale.

Max shares the lessons from building Nucleus from scratch, how he learned to evaluate breakthrough science without being a scientist himself, and why the best founders combine technical brilliance with the ability to tell a compelling story.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why founder-market fit matters more than market analysis at pre-seed

→ How Nucleus evaluates scientific risk and separates companies from science projects

→ What Max learned from building a fund as a first-time manager

→ Why early investors need to make mistakes to develop conviction

→ The role of advisors, operators, and domain experts in deep-tech diligence

→ What “great” looks like in a scientific founder

→ Why storytelling is an underrated superpower for technical teams

→ The differences between European and American deep-tech founders

→ How Nucleus supports founders beyond capital

→ Why Europe may have a unique advantage in science and industrial innovation

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by:

Heights: a design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 Building Europe’s Climate Growth Engine

Why the next generation of climate champions will need more than early-stage capital to win.

We’re joined by Renaud Visage, Co-Founder at SlateVC and former CTO of Eventbrite, for a deep dive into what it really takes to scale climate companies in Europe, from founder psychology to growth-stage financing.

After helping build Eventbrite from startup to IPO, Renaud spent years angel investing and learning the mechanics of venture from the inside at Index Ventures and Point Nine. Today, with SlateVC, he’s focused on one of the biggest gaps in European climate tech: growth-stage capital.

In this episode, we unpack why Europe needs specialist climate investors now more than ever, and what separates companies that scale from those that disappear.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why brand matters more than product in the age of AI

→ The hard lessons Renaud learned from 80+ angel investments

→ Why many climate startups still underestimate their “equity story”

→ What growth-stage climate investing really looks like in practice

→ Why climate specialist funds may outperform generalists over the next decade

→ How founders should think about exits earlier than they do today

→ What makes a company financeable beyond venture capital

→ Why Europe urgently needs more Series B and growth-stage climate capital

One of the strongest takeaways from this conversation:

The tourists have left climate tech, and that may actually be the best thing for the sector.

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.

Brought to you by Heights:

A design agency founded by Gabri Grassi, helping impact-driven tech companies sharpen their brand, attract investors, and scale their reach. Grab your free brand checklist here or reach out to Gabri to elevate your brand.

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🌊 Riding the Next Energy Wave

Why wave energy might become the missing piece of the 24/7 clean power puzzle.

We’re joined by CorPower Ocean co-founder & CEO Patrick Müller, an engineer and deeptech entrepreneur building one of the world’s most advanced wave energy companies.

In this episode, we dive into the future of wave energy, and unpack what it really takes to turn one of the ocean’s harshest environments into a scalable source of clean electricity. Patrick explains why wave energy has historically failed, what changed technically over the last decade, and why CorPower believes it can finally make ocean power commercially viable.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why wave energy could become a multi-terawatt global opportunity

→ The brutal engineering challenge of surviving 18-meter ocean waves

→ How CorPower’s “phase control” technology boosts energy capture 3x

→ Why wave energy complements solar and wind instead of competing with them

→ The economics behind 24/7 clean power systems

→ Why modular “Lego-style” deployment matters more than giant machines

→ The role of grants, public support, and first commercial projects

→ Why data centers may become one of wave energy’s biggest customers

→ How CorPower spent nearly 14 years de-risking the technology before scaling

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation was Patrick’s framing of the ocean as a giant natural battery. Instead of generating power only when the wind blows or the sun shines, wave energy captures energy already “stored” in ocean swells, creating a much smoother and more predictable production profile.

And that changes the economics of clean energy systems entirely.

According to CorPower, adding wave energy into a renewable mix can significantly reduce the amount of storage and grid infrastructure required to reach near-constant clean electricity.

✨ Leave a review and share the episode if this conversation challenged the way you think about growth, innovation, and sustainability.