He Took An Energy Company Public At 26, Built A Renewable Energy Business, And Is Now Developing Tech For Sustainable Drinking Water

When Sami Khoreibi took his first company public at just 26 years old, he marked the beginning of an extraordinary entrepreneurial journey. His story spans industries, continents, and cultures, offering valuable insights into building, scaling, and innovating businesses in dynamic global markets.

From leveraging his Middle Eastern heritage in North American capital markets to spearheading renewable energy in the UAE, Sami’s path is a testament to courage, adaptability, and the power of bold ideas.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Early Foundations: A Childhood of Multicultural Influence

Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Toronto, Sami’s formative years were shaped by a multicultural environment and a family steeped in entrepreneurial tradition.

“Growing up in Toronto during the ‘80s and ‘90s, I had the privilege of experiencing a safe, diverse, and dynamic city. This exposure to different cultures and ideas instilled in me an open-mindedness and a drive to innovate,” Sami reflects.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t a foreign concept in his household. With a father and several relatives who had carved entrepreneurial paths, Sami was encouraged from a young age to explore, create, and build.

Sami recalls the encouragement to try new things, including selling books on street corners and experimenting with small ventures, which laid the groundwork for his eventual journey into the world of business.

Candax Energy: From Coffee Meetings to IPO

Fresh out of university in Ontario, a chance coffee meeting became the spark for Sami’s first entrepreneurial venture. He connected with an old family friend who was also an incubator.

Inspired by conversations with seasoned entrepreneurs in Toronto’s resource-focused capital markets, Sami and his co-founders identified an opportunity to acquire undervalued gas licenses in Tunisia and leverage Canada’s robust appetite for resource investments.

Sami explains that Canada has a very mature market in terms of capital structures and capital flows–particularly in sectors like mining and oil and gas production. Canada’s capital market was interested in buying the assets at a multiple than their prices in Tunisia.

In 2004, Candax Energy was born. With oil prices climbing from $25 to nearly $100 a barrel and capital markets booming, Candax quickly gained traction. Sami recalls that his partners were well-experienced in capital markets.

Learning on the Job

“Being part of a young, agile team, alongside seasoned co-founders, was an unparalleled learning experience,” Sami recalls. By 2006, just two years after its inception, Candax achieved a milestone that most entrepreneurs only dream of: a public listing.

At just 24 years old when he founded the company and 26 at the time of the IPO, Sami rang the bell and oversaw a business valued at $250M at its peak. Quickly rising oil prices, heated capital markets, and an ideal team and network contributed to their success. Yet, success wasn’t without challenges.

“I often felt like the youngest and least experienced person in the room,” Sami admits. “But that forced me to learn quickly, adapt, and embrace a mindset of perpetual growth.” His uniqueness differentiated him from his peers and colleagues, teaching him valuable lessons.

The intense learning experience included lessons in legal and capital market aspects and general deal structures. Surrounded by bankers, lawyers, his co-founders, partners, and investors, when ringing the bell felt like experiencing imposter syndrome, Sami recalls wryly.

Pivoting to Sustainability: The Genesis of Enviromena Power Systems

After his success with Candax, Sami’s entrepreneurial compass pointed him toward renewable energy. His company was looking for assets in the Middle East and North Africa under the thesis of arbitrage. The objective was to pick up assets at lower costs than those on the capital markets.

A business trip to Abu Dhabi in 2006 introduced Sami to a nascent sovereign wealth fund. He specifically met with their energies and utility team, exploring the possibility of acquiring small assets that Candax could acquire. Or, perhaps, do some due diligence on it.

During their conversations, Sami learned that they were searching for energy entrepreneurs. Their objective was to make the UAE a global hub for renewable energy. This was an entirely foreign concept at the time since there was zero renewable energy across the Middle East and North Africa.

There, Sami explained his background in oil and gas, specifically in a more mature market where the emphasis is less on technology and innovation and more on transactions, growth, and scale.

Intrigued by the convergence of technology and sustainability, Sami saw an opportunity to create something transformative. Being a tech nerd at heart, he started exploring renewable and solar energy, which were evolving rapidly.

Founding Enviromena Power Systems

By 2007, Sami co-founded Enviromena Power Systems, the first solar company in the Middle East and North Africa. He teamed up with his roommate, a solar engineer, and brought a third co-founder on board, with whom they had great dynamics.

Starting with a modest $5M in seed funding, Sami and his co-founders faced the daunting task of entering an entirely nascent market. “The policies and infrastructure for solar energy didn’t exist. We had to be fluid and adaptable,” Sami explains.

At the time, the co-founders didn’t even have a business plan. They started by buying some demo units and hiring a small team. Their first major break came when Enviromena won a tender to build the first solar plant in the Middle East and North Africa—a $50M project.

The project was much bigger than their early projections and beyond their core team’s potential. Their solution was to partner with China’s leading solar manufacturer and SENTEC, both of which had more relevant experience.

The team delivered the groundbreaking project within 10 months. “Signing that contract was exhilarating but terrifying,” Sami admits. “We had to assemble a team, secure financing, and navigate a booming Abu Dhabi market with limited resources.”

The “convergence of challenges,” as Sami calls it, turned into a real company builder and resulted in building a robust core team. The project also escalated the company to the next level as an organization.

Breaking Barriers to Venture Capital

By 2010, Enviromena became the first UAE-based company to secure international venture capital. Because of the lack of a local VC ecosystem, Sami led roadshows across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, attracting investment from the largest clean tech funds in both regions.

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This milestone not only validated Enviromena’s vision but also paved the way for future startups in the Middle East to access global funding. As Sami sees it, the capital markets had gone through a crash in the previous year.

Raising a smaller amount of capital took about as much time as converting their idea to IPO as with his previous company, Candax. This was Sami’s first lesson in the importance of timing and ensuring adequate runway to maintain continuity within the company while achieving operational success.

Enviromena ended up getting acquired and delivering multiple returns to investors. As Sami learned, going through an acquisition is a unique type of liquidity event. This time, it took them 11 years to exit the company.

This period defined Sami’s character and was an exciting journey in personal growth. The company built the first solar project in seven countries across the region, pioneering, enabling, and creating multiple markets that are mature today.

Collaborating with Masdar Capital

The experience of building the foundation, coordinating technology and regulations, and completing projects was fascinating for Sami. They brought on Masdar Capital, which was wholly owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi at the time, as the largest minority shareholder.

Masdar Capital became a critical part of the organization, offering incredible advice as board members. The investor also contributed expertise in sustainability and an in-depth understanding of the region, which proved invaluable.

At the same time, Masdar respected the autonomy of the management team, allowing them to run operations. Sami remembers that checks and balances were required in the structures to get things done.

However, as long as the company operated within those parameters, they were able to deliver projects. Eventually, a UK pension fund purchased the company in 2017. By that time, Enviromena had operations in nine countries with $750M in revenues, being a business at scale.

In retrospect, Sami talks about dedicating much more time and involvement to the transaction. He also experienced having a single shareholder post-acquisition. They had to work according to the investor’s strategy regardless of whether they aligned with it.

Sami and his co-founders transitioned from venture capital to pension capital and had to develop an understanding of the different expectations and attitudes of different kinds of investors.

Incubating Investments–The Next Step

Sami and his friends stepped away from Eniromena around 18 months after the acquisition. Sami started incubating investments since he had always wanted to be an investor. He was experienced in two successful exits, which enabled him to explore the opportunity of early-stage businesses.

Sami’s focus is on region, sustainability, and technology. His objective at Incubayt is to seed young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and offer his expertise to convert those ideas into businesses while helping them scale.

Sami has made around 30 investments to date and has been an active investor in many of those businesses, working to support them across multiple fronts. They have seen additional funding rounds and big successes within the portfolio since starting it in 2019.

Building Wisewell

Soon, Sami was ready to go back to venture building. His next project is Wisewell, a company trying to disrupt the way we drink and deliver water. Today, 600 billion plastic bottles are thrown out by the bottled water industry, a $400B sector growing at a 6% CAGR.

Similar to the perfect storm happening within solar energy, Sami noted that bottled water is bad for the environment, our wallets, and our health. Just as solar power costs and carbon emissions went down, the world realized that there were better alternatives.

Sami is attempting to replicate that philosophy with drinking water. The better way for people to drink and deliver water is through incredibly intelligent purification systems. He explains that they are going after a very fragmented market and trying to build something from day one.

Wisewell is a scalable technology business, a marriage of venture capital with a private equity mindset to scale to create yield in very short order. Sami’s vision for the world tomorrow is a lot less plastic in landfills, the ocean, and in our bodies.

People would be spending less on bottled water. There are parts of the world where people are spending a significant percentage of their disposable income on hydration when 95% of taps in almost every country worldwide have water.

We need that 5% refinement at the point of consumption and use to turn any kind of tap water into the highest quality mineralized water. The technology for making that happen is available and packaging and selling it effectively is the solution. Sami sees it as a tremendous opportunity.

The water purification market is worth $200B, which is much higher than the bottled water market, making it a viable business opportunity.

Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur

Reflecting on his journey, Sami emphasizes several key lessons. Sometimes, it’s critical to take a step back, breathe, and get an outsiders’ perspective. Founders tend to make assumptions about the merits of their business, but being critical of their own views is also important.

Getting a broader perspective of the industry is crucial instead of having a laser-focused view of what founders are doing in their own companies. Sami considers himself fortunate to have built scalable businesses across geographies and sectors.

However, the scale of that opportunity could have been much bigger, with broader opportunities going from millions to hundreds of millions or hundreds of millions to billions in terms of revenue, market cap, and more. That’s the advice he would like to give his younger self.

Looking Ahead

Sami Khoreibi’s entrepreneurial story is far from over. With a proven track record of identifying emerging trends and executing bold visions, he continues to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Sami’s journey—from the oil fields of Tunisia to solar farms in Abu Dhabi—is a reminder that success lies not just in seizing opportunities but in creating them.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Sami Khoreibi’s diverse background helped him embrace open-mindedness and creativity in his entrepreneurial pursuits.
• At 26, Sami took Candax Energy public, showcasing the value of learning quickly and taking bold risks.
• Founding Enviromena, Sami identified opportunities in the nascent solar energy market in the Middle East.
• Breaking into new industries requires fluidity, as seen in Sami’s pivot from oil to renewable energy.
• By securing international venture capital, Sami bridged regional startups with global funding opportunities.
• Success at both Candax and Enviromena stemmed from assembling skilled, complementary teams.
• Sami’s bold moves, like launching the Middle East’s first solar company, demonstrate the importance of taking calculated risks.

 

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