A Reluctant Entrepreneur
Story by Melissa Silmore
Photography by Michael Will
Steven Meersman (MBA 2010), a native of Belgium, came to the Tepper School of Business determined to avoid the entrepreneurial path and his family’s business in security fencing. Today, his proud father can’t resist a chuckle, as Meersman, who admits to being a “reluctant entrepreneur,” is now co-founder and director of Zenobē. The battery solution scaleup has raised over $1 billion from investors.
“I always said I’d never want to start a business as I saw the challenges firsthand when growing up,” explained Meersman. “Now I’m here eight years in, so my parents are laughing … I couldn’t get away from entrepreneurship!”
A Global Leader in Battery and Electric Vehicle Solutions
London-based Zenobē develops grid-scale battery projects that capture renewable energy to make the electricity grid run more efficiently, owns and operates electric vehicle (EV) fleets, and repurposes vehicle batteries to decarbonize the construction sector. With 380 employees in eleven countries, Zenobē is one of the top two electric transit bus fleet operators in the G7, with over 2,700 operational units, and is investing in the North American market, with 1,100 electric transit buses in Brampton, Canada. Zenobē is also a significant player in grid-scale batteries.
Meersman enrolled at the Tepper School fresh from his engineering bachelor’s and master’s degrees to augment his technical education with commercial expertise. This reflected his father’s technical bent and his love of commercial deal-making. Having arrived during the 2008 financial crisis, he was grateful the school paired him with alumnus Sean Harley, who provided contacts that led to internship opportunities and taught him the value and the “how” of building a network with a mindset of: “I’ll do three introductions for you; the rest is up to you.”
Honing his sales skills, Meersman secured himself (and several classmates) work. Meersman joined a grid-scale battery startup inside Virginia-based utility AES, building battery dispatch algorithms and liaising with banks for John Zahurancik and Chris Shelton, co-founders of Fluence, an original equipment manufacturer battery company.
“Initially, it was easy to spend a bit of time on [Zenobē], and before I knew it, I was spending all my time.”
Steven Meersman, MBA ’04
The Journey Is the Destination
After graduation, Meersman traveled the globe, optimizing commodity trading strategies around physical infrastructure like ships, storage terminals, refineries, and power plants. Batteries came knocking a second time when he was asked to help analyze an investment in a New Jersey-based zinc oxide battery startup for a group of private investors.
Like many consultants, he moved to industry at Trafigura, where he learned about trading, risk management, and operating in a fast-paced corporate environment. He was privately consulting when he met his two Zenobē co-founders. “I got lured into it,” he mused, “Initially, it was easy to spend a bit of time on [Zenobē], and before I knew it, I was spending all my time.”
Zenobē started with the first grid-scale batteries in the UK. Shortly after their first fundraising round, energy prices collapsed, and utility auctions previously held every few months became weekly. Meersman saw an opportunity in this crisis.
Recognizing a mixed-integer optimization problem from his days at the Tepper School, he approached the problem with his optimization textbooks and what he appreciatively described as some supportive calls from Professors Michael Trick, R. Ravi, Willem van Hoeve, and the whole operations research team. He pointed out that thanks to the Tepper School (and the work of one of the company’s first team members with a Python coding hobby), they consistently outperformed the market by about 30 percent for several years.
“Some students sit in their optimization courses thinking, ‘What do I need this for?’” he added. “I can say that we applied it, it got us through a financially challenging period to come out stronger, and it helped grow the business.”
Decarbonizing Energy and Transport
Zenobē has expanded into EV fleets that Meersman calls “batteries with wheels,” as they have many of the same fundamentals and challenges. Electric vehicles are Zenobē’s largest division and Meersman’s responsibility.
“We’re taking the cynic’s approach to climate change,” he explained. “You’re not going to get mass adoption unless the ecologically sustainable is also financially sustainable, and the way to have the biggest impact is by going after the two sectors that pollute the most — the energy grid and the transportation sector.”
Supporting Future Sustainable Leaders
Meersman remains in touch with several Tepper School classmates. He recalled finding interactions with his more experienced classmates invaluable, as were classes that built essential broad foundations like accounting, corporate finance, and managing intercultural organizations.
Along with his continued support, Meersman recently endowed the Sabina Nys and Johan Meersman Endowed Fellowship at the Tepper School in honor of his parents, who had helped support his education. The endowment will support both international and local students who have a demonstrated desire to find ecologically and financially sustainable solutions.
“I wanted to make sure that others had the same opportunity that I had,” he said, “and my family and I are lucky enough to be in a position to pay it forward.”