{"id":3882,"date":"2025-11-16T21:50:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T02:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/?page_id=3882"},"modified":"2025-11-18T16:14:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:14:27","slug":"a-reluctant-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/featured-stories\/a-reluctant-entrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reluctant Entrepreneur"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\"Steven\n\n\n\n
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A Reluctant Entrepreneur<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Story by Melissa Silmore
Photography by Michael Will<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven Meersman (MBA 2010), a native of Belgium, came to the Tepper School of Business determined to avoid the entrepreneurial path and his family\u2019s business in security fencing. Today, his proud father can\u2019t resist a chuckle, as Meersman, who admits to being a \u201creluctant entrepreneur,\u201d is now co-founder and director of Zenob\u0113. The battery solution scaleup has raised over $1 billion from investors.

\u201cI always said I’d never want to start a business as I saw the challenges firsthand when growing up,\u201d explained Meersman. \u201cNow I’m here eight years in, so my parents are laughing \u2026 I couldn\u2019t get away from entrepreneurship!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Global Leader in Battery and Electric Vehicle Solutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

London-based Zenob\u0113 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, Zenob\u0113 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. Zenob\u0113 is also a significant player in grid-scale batteries.

Meersman enrolled at the Tepper School fresh from his engineering bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees to augment his technical education with commercial expertise. This reflected his father\u2019s 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 \u201chow\u201d of building a network with a mindset of: \u201cI\u2019ll do three introductions for you; the rest is up to you.\u201d

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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“Initially, it was easy to spend a bit of time on [Zenob\u0113], and before I knew it, I was spending all my time.”<\/strong><\/p>Steven Meersman, MBA ’04<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Journey Is the Destination<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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 Zenob\u0113 co-founders. \u201cI got lured into it,\u201d he mused, \u201cInitially, it was easy to spend a bit of time on [Zenob\u0113], and before I knew it, I was spending all my time.\u201d

Zenob\u0113 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\u2019s first team members with a Python coding hobby), they consistently outperformed the market by about 30 percent for several years.

\u201cSome students sit in their optimization courses thinking, \u2018What do I need this for?\u2019\u201d he added. \u201cI can say that we applied it, it got us through a financially challenging period to come out stronger, and it helped grow the business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"An\n\n\n\n

Decarbonizing Energy and Transport<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Zenob\u0113 has expanded into EV fleets that Meersman calls \u201cbatteries with wheels,\u201d as they have many of the same fundamentals and challenges. Electric vehicles are Zenob\u0113\u2019s largest division and Meersman\u2019s responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking the cynic\u2019s approach to climate change,\u201d he explained. \u201cYou\u2019re 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 \u2014 the energy grid and the transportation sector.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting Future Sustainable Leaders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.

\u201cI wanted to make sure that others had the same opportunity that I had,\u201d he said, \u201cand my family and I are lucky enough to be in a position to pay it forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Meersman (MBA 2010) reveals how his Tepper School optimization education helped him co-found Zenob\u0113, a global leader in battery and electric vehicle solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3872,"parent":2664,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3882","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4255,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3882\/revisions\/4255"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.tepper.cmu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}