David Yeh
Founder & Partner, Precursor. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderinvestorexecutivepoliticianLinkedIn ↗precursor.earth ↗
David Yeh is the founder of Precursor, an advisory and project development platform focused on financing first-of-a-kind clean energy and infrastructure projects. He previously served as a clean energy and infrastructure adviser in the Obama administration and worked at Generation Investment Management and CIBC Capital Markets.
1shows
1appearances
15statements
4resolved
4supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything David Yeh said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Yeh: FOAK investors must be long-term greedy for nth-of-a-kind returns
“In order to do first of its kind, to be an investor that's an anchor or a catalytic investor, you have to be long-term greedy.
And I think that's understanding that the first of its kind project you're doing is not the only project you're doing.
You're doing…”
Yeh: 30x to 100x lab-to-utility scale-ups are rarely project bankable
“So they're trying to scale 30 X, a hundred X. That is very hard to be seen as bankable in the project finance and infrastructure markets.”
Yeh: Mainstream infrastructure investors wait until Project Three for $500M checks
“For many of these mainstream project financiers and infrastructure investors, they may not look at this stuff until it's project three. But then at Project Three, they can lean in, and these firms can write five hundred million dollar, billion dollar commitmen…”
Yeh: First-of-a-kind project finance is a critical horizontal climate solution
“To me, I think one of the biggest climate solutions is FOC, which is a horizontal finance solution that can essentially be the one financial solution to help catalyze them all.”
Yeh: Top VCs yield 20% over 10 years, infrastructure mid-teens over 20
“I thought one of the smartest things I've heard about the difference between venture capital and private equity and infrastructure is that I think if you're a great venture capital firm,
You know, you're providing 20 plus percent returns for 10 years.
If you…”
Yeh: FOAK financing requires government partnerships and non-dilutive catalytic capital
“And I think, for me, one of the key things to understand about folk financing Is that you need to embrace government as a strategic partner and be able to look for new non-dilutive capital sources, including a lot of this catalytic capital there, like, you kno…”
Yeh: Climate hardware startups must begin FOAK project planning at Series A
“I think the first thing you need to start thinking about your FOC project at the Series A. These projects take years to get ready and then take years to build and finance. So you want to start this early. This needs to be part of your business plan. It needs t…”
Yeh: Hardware startups must hire dedicated in-house project finance talent
“I think the second thing is that you need to actually get project finance and project development DNA into your firm. Like, I think that old analogy that people talk about, you know, venture capital, it's like, what are the top three things you pick in a, for …”
David Yeh: Tech companies sign long-term offtake contracts for green cement
“And this is like some of my friends at these, some of these green cement companies, they're realizing what they're producing for green cement is a premium product where buyers, especially, you know, a lot of the large tech companies are willing to create, chan…”
Yeh: Founders must code-switch between VC disruption and project finance bankability
“One of the things that I'd like to add is an important part of the checklist for being Making your projects folk bankable is that a lot of these CFOs and CEOs of these new climate tech startups have to learn the language of infrastructure and product, project …”
Yeh: Fervo Energy's long-term business model is operating as a geothermal DevCo
“And I kind of think about a lot of these companies that are now coming up, these kind of next great climate tech leaders, like Fervo, which is doing next generation geothermal. I think their future is being a development company for geothermal and producing gi…”
Yeh: Most first-of-a-kind industrial plants cost hundreds of millions
“And I'm saying most first-of-its-kind plants are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Yeh: The DOE Loan Programs Office holds $400 billion post-IRA
“I think the LPO now with IRA money is, you know, has about four hundred billion dollars in resources, and I think they've become, for lack of a better word, must-see TV, or the key stop for any company that's doing an ambitious climate tech, hard tech startup,…”
Yeh: Climeworks followed a decade-long multi-step scale-up path to Mammoth
“You know, like in 2012, they build demo. Few years later, they did a bigger demo. 2017, they did their first commercial scale. And now, like a few years ago, they did Orca, and now they're going to be doing Mammoth. So they took multiple steps to get to commer…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 CATALYSTLEDGER | Founder & Partner, Precursor | 1 | 15 | 100% 4/4 | full record on Catalyst → |