Generation
Will the technology perform at commercial scale? Will it be built on time and on budget?
- Small modular reactors
- Next-generation geothermal
- Utility-scale solar & wind
- Firm gas capacity
Portico serves the asset owners, corporations, and investment firms driving innovation across energy systems.
Portico’s leadership team brings a proven track record of bridging the gap between concept and scale. Our prior work spans private markets and principal investing, energy and infrastructure project development, and product launch and go-to-market.
Uniquely in our field, every engagement is led by the Managing Partners who own and govern the firm. We take backstop responsibility for ensuring our insights and recommendations are actionable and enable our clients to win. To retain full independence in our advice, we do not provide sell-side marketing or capital-raising services in any form.
Our work is grounded in primary research with technical experts who bring firsthand experience of testing, procuring, and maintaining the class of technology our client is evaluating. Our solutions are built to identify end-user adoption criteria, verify unit economics, and substantiate drivers of demand. We take nothing at face value and trace everything to source.
Portico's Managing Partners are operators and investors first, advisors second. We are company builders with hard-earned founder experience who have lived with the consequences of our business decisions. We roll up our sleeves, gather proprietary insights and data, and work from first principles to reach independent conclusions. We only give advice that we would act on ourselves.
Most market intelligence is downstream of public information. We execute structured primary research that builds conviction on companies, technologies, markets, policy, and geopolitical dynamics. We generate proprietary data and insights through direct engagement with the operators, technologists, and decision-makers who hold ground truth. The result is conviction that desk research alone cannot deliver.
We evaluate technical performance, product-market fit, unit economics, and team quality on the evidence. We hand-pick experts from our network who have built the class of technology under review, interview from component suppliers to end customers, and verify numbers from the bottom up. Our IC-ready assessments distinguish scalable technologies from vapourware.
Our transaction advice is resistant to narrative and backed by unimpeachable data. We rebuild the seller’s case from primary research, identifying where optionality has been overstated and where our client can engineer value invisible to others. After scrutinising the cap table for hidden conflicts, we design capital structures to fit each transaction’s dynamics.
We build high-conviction investment strategies that enable off-market origination, global platform building, and accelerated technology integration. The critical question isn’t just ‘what’s the ROI?’—it’s whether an investment advances your strategic priorities and extends the edge that your assets, networks, and customer reach already give you. We workshop priorities with leadership, frame the buy-build-partner decision, map how targets integrate with existing operations, and design vehicles built for scale.
Energy is the substrate of the economy.
Our work centres on technologies enabling the energy systems of the future, on both sides of the meter, from generation to end-use demand, plus the materials and infrastructure that make it possible.
If a company's thesis turns on a question of energy—how power gets generated, delivered, priced, or used—we have analysed it.
Data centres are the clearest case. Frequently assessed as real estate or compute assets, their binding constraint is power: procurement, interconnection, and cost per megawatt-hour.
Energy-related investments require sector-specific frameworks, accounting for highly regulated markets and concentrated customer sets.
Everything we do is built on the proprietary market maps and IP we develop, and continuously update, across the layers of the energy system.
Will the technology perform at commercial scale? Will it be built on time and on budget?
Will utilities adopt it at scale? Can the value be captured under current market design?
Do the unit economics work without current incentives? Will the regulatory structure that supports them hold?
Will load materialise at the size claimed? How much of it will be attenuated through efficiency gains?
Can the processing economics compete with incumbent supply? Is the off-take real enough to underwrite capacity?
Are the carbon or biodiversity claims credible? How will the market price them?
Strata is Portico's family of AI-augmented services for investors in energy systems.
Built on our evaluation of more than 600 energy investment targets, Strata applies our vertical-specific frameworks and scoring rubrics to deliver insights no general AI system or prompt can.
Grounded in our distinctive house view of energy systems, Strata gives investment teams an independent second opinion at any stage of the diligence process: triaging inbound deal flow, evaluating commercial fit on targets you're seriously considering, or validating the underlying technology before you commit.
Each engagement is led by our Managing Partners and grounded in domain expertise. Currently in private beta with a select group of energy systems investors.
Pursue or pass?
Pitch deck / teaser
Is the business real?
Detailed CIM / data room
Is the technology real?
Full data room + tech docs
Mike founded Portico in 2016 and has more than 15 years' experience advising investors and entrepreneurs in energy, infrastructure, technology, financial services, and life sciences. He has advised firms stewarding $60bn in assets, and investors on more than $4bn of transactions globally.
Mike began his career working on strategy at the U.S. Department of Defense. He holds an MA in International Relations with a specialisation in International Finance from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. His articles and interviews have been featured in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Bloomberg.
LinkedIn →
Bill joined the Portico team following two years of successful collaboration as a client through a single-family office, where he served as Technical Director for a permanent capital vehicle. Having begun his career with Bechtel, he brings 15 years' experience delivering complex renewable energy and infrastructure projects across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Bill holds an M.S. in Renewable Energy Engineering from Brunel University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly SLO, and is a registered Professional Engineer in California.
LinkedIn →
Ashley brings 18 years of experience advising patient capital investors in energy, agriculture, and technology. Prior to Portico, he co-founded the advisory firm Sofala Partners, achieving six years of 100%+ year-on-year growth before exiting via management buyout. Earlier in his career, he worked in the Office of the Director of Strategy at the World Bank Group.
Ashley holds degrees from Cambridge University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has provided commentary to The Financial Times, Bloomberg, and BBC News. He chairs the Board of Trustees of Humanity Insured, a UK and US charity backed by the global insurance industry.
LinkedIn →