A Glimpse into Alan Werenko the Tech Loving, Risk Assessing Director of GreenAngel Energy

As an Independent Director at GreenAngel Energy, Alan Werenko is a member of the Audit Committee and the Investment Committee. His experience running successful technology ventures, along with his interest in up and coming green technologies made him an obvious fit for Greenangel Energy.

Alan enjoys searching for, and studying young companies with grand plans in emerging technologies. He believes green energy is a hot but sustainable trend with a global market and finds the prospects for investing in companies that can produce high returns on invested capital very exciting. Although he admits he is more of a risk assessor than a risk taker, but of course this is in part why GAE likes having him on the team.

Alan’s personal experience running his own companies is a large reason why he brings so much knowledge to the GAE board. He’s been a self-employed entrepreneur and technology junkie all his life, helping him relate to the founders and CEOs of GAE’s investee companies. Also, much like our investee founders, Alan was an inventor and innovator from a young age. “When I was ten all I wanted for my birthday was piles of wire from Radio Shack to build an intercom to my buddy next door. Soon I was transmitting on the FM band to the neighborhood!” As an adult, he has built a number of small companies and has almost 40 years of growing pain experience. “Companies at $500 thousand, $2 million, $5 million $ 10 million in sales all have very different growth dynamics focused around employees, technology, management, leadership, and financial challenges. Placing bets with investor’s cash is serious business … we are all in it together.”

Of course, it hasn’t been all rainbows and lollipops, and he is not shy to admit that along with his many venture successes, he has also had enough failures to have developed a keen sense of what has a good chance of flying. After all, according to Alan, “risk is all about losing your money … and I don’t like losing money!” Having him on the GAE Investment Committee means that technologies are judged not only on their “tech appeal”, but also on their actually feasibility and realistic value-add to the GAE fund. So when he’s assessing a potential company he looks for an interesting technology or product with wide appeal that can be developed successfully by a passionate management team who can meet the goal of a successful exit. A successful exit according to Alan is producing a 5-10 times return in three to four years, and the prospect of this gets him very excited!

So with his extensive experience and love for technology, he signed on to the GAE concept. He has worked on deals with GAE’s president Mike Volker for almost 40 years, so there was never any doubt he would fit right in. After his first job with HP, out of his Masters in Electrical Engineering, Alan realized that despite the great money, travel, training and job perks, working for a big corporation was not for him. He teamed up with Mike Volker and built Volker-Craig Limited into a $7 million company in seven short years. So when Mike asked if he wanted to develop a public company through the CPC (Capital Pool Company) route, he said, “why not?” The concept of being public and having liquidity for small investors who could play in the Angel space is something new that appeals to him. Green energy makes sense as an emerging technology with a steep trend line. With so many opportunities and so little time, Alan could not miss out on this opportunity to be part of the next big thing!

Currently, Alan is living in the Okanagan in B.C. and is a professor of business at the Okanagan College. When we see him at the GreenAngel offices, there’s guaranteed to be some learning mixed with a lot of fun. We hope that this blog post shed some light on the expertise that our board of directors is focused on. You can read his professional bio here: http://greenangelenergy.ca/alan-werenko/