Dr. Nick Kanopoulos: €18.6M+ for a Deeptech Startup During the Greek Crisis

Show notes.

Greece’s 10-year bonds were above 18%, investors wanted software-only, and everyone told him to leave and build in the US instead.

In this episode of Deal Makers (& Fakers), Niclas talks with Dr Nick Kanopoulos, founder & CEO of Brite Solar, about how he still built a solar factory in Patras and closed an €8.6M Series A plus more than €10M in grants and R&D funding.

What did we discuss in this episode?

We go deep into:

• How a Duke-trained engineer went from semiconductors in the US to launching Brite Solar back in Greece for family reasons, right when the macro looked the worst.
• Why agrivoltaics and semi-transparent solar glass can boost crop yields, save water, and generate energy on the same land.
• How he self-funded ~€1.2M, survived years of R&D, and then convinced the ultra-selective EU EIC Fund (sub-5% acceptance) to lead his €8.6M Series A is remarkable.
• The brutal reality of raising capital-intensive hardware money in Europe when local VCs mostly want software, platforms, and asset-light businesses.
• How he defends against Chinese competition on price, IP, and manufacturing flexibility and why his line was designed from day one for agrivoltaics, not generic PV.
• What investors really asked in the final EIC panel included patents, China, gender balance, governance, and scaling risk.
• His metric founders forget to show in their pitch decks the valuation-to-investment multiples of comparable companies and how he uses it to shut down “your valuation is too high”.
• His unfiltered advice to hardware & deeptech founders: OEM vs. your own factory, when to pull the Series A trigger, and why “the name of the game is: don’t give up”.

If you want to learn how to raise serious money for real-world, capex-heavy tech when basically everything is stacked against you, this is the episode.

Learn more about Brite Solar:
https://www.britesolar.com/