Guy Yavin, investment director at Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars for 2024.
Guy Yavin was instrumental in setting up the Doral Energy-Tech Ventures unit when it was founded just over three years ago. He was the Doral Group insider who came to the team to partner with Roee Furman, who had come from outside the company, to set up the investment arm for the Israeli renewable energy company.
In those three years since founding, the team has already made 18 investments, plus a number of follow-on rounds. An early win was investing in the series B round of Ascend Elements, the US lithium-ion battery recycling company, which reached a valuation of more than $1bn at the end of 2023.
Now, Yavin is keen to expand into other circular economies from treating waste to renewable energy.
“We do not want to replace one problem with another,” he says. “We want to generate green energy, but what happens when these energy storage units come to end of life?”
Recycling of photovoltaics, for example, is on the list of areas to look at. Yavin is interested in a broad range of areas from grid storage to green cement. What several investors and entrepreneurs particularly single him out for, however, is his deep knowledge of the sustainable aviation fuel sector.
Operating a venture unit in Israel in the months following the attacks on 7 October has been a challenging time, says Yavin. The team has continued to do deals, but at the same time Yavin has stories of investment committee meetings interrupted by warning sirens and times when voting on a deal has had to be done by WhatsApp in a bomb shelter.
Despite the war in Gaza and a generally challenging investment climate, Yavin says 2023 was the best yet in terms of performance, with several portfolio companies managing to close up rounds. He is also optimistic for 2024, although he says any real upswing is unlikely to happen before the second half of the year.
See the full list of GCV Rising Stars for 2024 here.
