Amanda Li
MBA 2018
MBA 2018
“I’ve always wanted to be at the forefront of confronting big problems like climate change and resource shortages, so I love that I’m able to use my skills to do that with my life.”
When Amanda Li (MBA 2018) arrived at HBS, she knew she was interested in pursuing a clean energy career after graduation. But the Vancouver native, a self-described “tree hugger of sorts,” figured it would be in venture capital or private equity. Finance was a field Li already knew, thanks to an earlier experience as an investment associate with Generate Capital, where she sourced and supported deals financing clean energy projects in the areas of solar, wind, and storage.
Not surprisingly, Li joined the Energy & Environment Club, serving as president in her second year. “It was fun to be part of building a community,” she recalls. “About half were interested in oil and gas, and the rest were focused on clean energy. I always said that I wanted to create an environment where if one day we saw each other on opposite sides of a lobbying table we could shake hands and say, I don’t agree with you, but I respect you as a business person.”
At the same time, a second-year course—Launching Technology Ventures—adjusted her plan to pursue a role in private equity “I was directly influenced by professors like Jeffrey Bussgang and Joe Lassiter, who taught 21st Century Energy,” says Li. “The message was essentially: ‘You should take risks now, because you have the HBS brand and your MBA skills to fall back on.’ I stopped all my interviews for various finance jobs and started to look exclusively at pre-seed startups in clean energy.”
As part of a research project for Launching Technology Ventures, Li happened to stumble upon the beginnings of Banyan Infrastructure. The proposed value proposition directly addressed a pain point she experienced firsthand at Generate Capital, where financing a small energy project required extensive oversight of contract terms, operational metrics, financial performance, and risk assessments. “That work manifests itself as a seemingly infinite number of emails and spreadsheets,” says Li. “It involves a lot of paperwork and analyst hours and just isn’t efficient or scalable.” Banyan—where she is one of the founders — is working on a solution to make that process automated, transparent, and accessible. “The long-term vision is also to make it easy to track how an asset is performing in order to refinance it and free up capital so that more projects can be built."
“I’m currently focused on figuring out what our go-to-market product is by translating interviews with our pilot customers into product features,” Li continues. “In addition, we’re in the midst of all the normal startup chaos of finding office space and determining staffing levels. The frameworks that I developed as a consultant and at HBS have been very useful; plus, it’s fun, exciting work. I’ve always wanted to be at the forefront of confronting big problems like climate change and resource shortages, so I love that I’m able to use my skills to do that with my life.”