From 00K to 47M: The Playbook for Funding Hard-Asset Energy Startups 00K to 47M: The Playbook for Funding Hard-Asset Energy Startups" loading="eager" /> Building a startup that requires hundreds of millions in capital is a different game. This is the playbook for funding capital-intensive businesses, based on how Verano Energy scaled to 00M in revenue. TL;DR: Verano Energy founder Dylan Rudney turned 00K into a 00M revenue energy company by mastering a capital-light 'developer' model before scaling into a full-lifecycle operator. By de-risking projects on the ground—not in spreadsheets—he raised 47M in debt and equity. This playbook shows how to fund and scale hard-asset businesses in emerging markets. Key takeawaysStart with a capital-light 'developer' model to de-risk projects before seeking major funding.Use preferred equity for early rounds to retain 100% of your common stock and control.In infrastructure, execution isn't everything—it's the only thing. Your process is your product.Master project finance: Use revenue contracts (PPAs) to secure non-dilutive debt for construction.Anticipate market shifts, like the move from pure solar to battery storage (BESS) for the AI boom.Your value is your ability to navigate bureaucracy and on-the-ground reality, not your financial model. Your Spreadsheet Is Not the Business How do you fund a startup that requires hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars in capital? Not with a conventional venture capital playbook. For physical infrastructure—factories, power plants, hardware—the logic of blitzscaling a SaaS app doesn’t apply. The story of how Dylan Rudney built Verano Energy into a leading Latin American renewable energy platform, raising 47 million and executing $750 million in projects, is a masterclass in capitalizing and scaling hard-asset businesses. The core lesson: In the world of infrastructure, your financial model is a fantasy. Reality is the only thing that gets assets built and financed. Before launching Verano, Rudney worked in private equity, watching deals from the investor side. His firm, staffed by successful finance and tech professionals, had no experience in energy or infrastructure. They were experts at building spreadsheets, but not at pouring concrete. Rudney saw firsthand how projects that looked perfect on paper would consistently fail in the real world. This became his foundational insight: Execution doesn’t validate projections; execution creates projections. The Common Founder Mistake: Falling in Love with the Model Most founders in capital-intensive sectors believe their job is to create an airtight financial model to attract capital. They obsess over perfecting their IRR (Internal Rate of Return) calculations and CapEx assumptions. This is a trap. Investors in this space know that no project survives first contact with reality. Your real business isn’t the asset itself; it’s your repeatable process for navigating the chaos of execution. The value is in your ability to de-risk projects on the ground. Phase 1: The Capital-Light "Developer" Playbook Verano Energy didn’t start by trying to raise hundreds of millions. It started with just 00,000 from friends and family and a strategy borrowed from real estate development. To get off the ground with minimal capital, you don’t build and own the asset yourself. You act as a "developer" who packages and de-risks it for a larger investor to acquire. The 00K "Friends & Family" Round on Preferred Equity Raising your first capital from friends and family is common. But the structure Rudney chose was not. Instead of selling common stock, which would permanently dilute his ownership and control, he raised the 00K as preferred equity. 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