What mattersShow
- Andrew Murray
- Primary sector: Climate Tech & Sustainability
- Open the company page to keep the follow-up signal in view.
Andrew Murray, co-founder and CEO of Aslan Renewables, has developed a blueprint for cleantech startups to navigate the complex, resource-intensive world of Canadian government procurement. By focusing on distributed hydroelectric power, a technology that requires localized infrastructure, and leveraging a 'bottom-up' approach, Aslan has successfully bypassed many of which larger established players dominate. Murray’s core insight is that municipal governments—rather than provincial or federal bodies—are often the most innovative and willing to engage with early-stage startups. Local governments face immediate, tangible problems (like energy grid stability) and are more likely to offer a tech-focused 'side door' for initial deployment.
This strategy works because it builds a real-world track record of community buy-in and localized data. For Murray, the goal isn't just securing a contract; it's building a business case that eventually feeds into higher-level procurement processes. He emphasizes that patience is a key operational lever: while long-term provincial conversations can take years, municipal projects provide the/the revenue and proof points required to survive the runway. To scale Aslan’s distributed hydro technology, Murray highlights the importance of federal/provincial agencies like Invest Ontario or Opportunities New Brunswick as intermediaries who arere understand his solution's community impact.
Cleantech founders can scale by leveraging municipal partnerships to generate the proof points needed for larger, economic development agencies and provincial contracts.
From an engineering perspective, Aslan's technology is designed for decentralization—a critical shift from centralized grid models. This allows for smaller-scale hydro projects that can be deployed rapidly and engineering the a modularity into the development process ensures the company is able to build a real track record of data from each deployment. The fact that Aslan aims to target 100 deployments this year alone underscores a high-treadle-of-execution on a distributed power grid infrastructure.
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