The hardest part about business is making decisions, says Amorn Sapthaweekul, deputy chief executive of renewable energy firm Energy Absolute (EA).
For over a decade, the executive has presided over some of the most financially risky decisions in the industry but has always come out on top. He knocks on the wooden table in the company's 16th-floor Ratchadaphisek office, not wanting to tempt fate.
Mr Amorn bought out EA along with current chief executive Somphote Ahunai with his life savings, which then amounted to nearly 10 million baht after a decade in investment banking.
"I went into investment banking after graduation. Do you know what that is? You kind of advise companies that want to go public," says Mr Amorn, wearing a jet black suit with his hair immaculately parted to the side.
The graduate of Thammasat and Chulalongkorn universities says he always set his sights on building his own business, and banking would allow him to learn from top executives across industries. His prediction has borne fruit.
While the former banker didn't work much with energy companies, he met the former owner of EA through the job.
"The original owner of EA approached me to introduce him to Mr Somphote [now the chief executive]," he says. "After the introduction, Mr Somphote asked me to invest along with him. I was 32 at the time, and I thought If I don't do it now I never will, and if I fail I can just return to work and make more money."
The comparative cost of moving to a startup at 40 when you are at a high management level is much higher than when you are still populating the lower ranks. The appetite for risk also steadily decreases as one marries and has children, Mr Amorn says.
It didn't collapse
While his appetite for risk may have decreased, EA still engages in projects every bit as risky as those he led at the beginning of his tenure with the company. The company is now embarking on the building of a 50-gigawatt-hour energy storage facility. The 100-billion-baht facility is nearly as large as its market cap and will be the largest of its kind once finished in 2021.
Investment banking didn't prepare him to make large decisions, Mr Amorn says.
"As a banker I was trained to think about the pros and cons of alternatives, then present them to decision-makers," he says. "I was advising up to three clients per day, but I had a set schedule. Now I have to take chances and live with the consequences."
A little after starting the company, Mr Amorn proposed a 90MW project to the board of directors. The plant was then the largest in Thailand and in Asia, at a time when 10MW facilities were still the norm. The 30-billion-baht project was also several times larger than the company's 150 million baht in registered capital.
"They thought I was insane," Mr Amorn recalls. "The board asked me if the company would collapse. I said no, and they told me to push forward with it."
But convincing the bank to let go of its cash was not as easy as warming up to the board.
"This was the hardest loan I have ever attempted to obtain," Mr Amorn says. "As soon as I sat down they asked who are you? You don't even have experience. They were extremely sceptical when I said my technology was in-house. It would have been much easier to convince them if I had a Japanese or Korean partner."
Relying on Thai suppliers and Thai technology enabled the company to cut costs, he says.
"The government took such a long time reviewing the application, so I decided to call and ask them to come to the factory. They were amazed when they saw things running; all of this time, they thought I was a scammer. They thought I was merely trying to get tax advantages on imports, since our stated cost was about a 10th of similar projects."
GIGA DREAMS
From the 90MW power plant to the 50GWh energy storage facility, Mr Amorn has always pushed to build some of the biggest facilities of their time.
"It's not that we are trying to make a statement, we are just keenly aware of economies of scale," he says. The company usually proceeds in two steps, first building a prototype project that lets EA identify cost-saving opportunities and secure financing, then scaling up to the project's full size -- which is at times inconveniently large.
"Looking back, I think our 90MW project crossed a boundary in terms of size," Mr Amorn says. "If I had to do it again, perhaps I would go for two facilities with 45MW."
A project of that size, he says, requires coordinating the interests of many landholders in order to push it through. Mr Amorn says the upcoming energy storage facility will not present a similar challenge in terms of land acquisition, but it does comes with problems of its own.
"We had a contract with the government for the plant, so we didn't even have to worry about market share," he says. "With the energy storage project, not only do we have to worry about our share, we have to create the market itself."
EA is expanding furiously to establish a renewable energy ecosystem before competitors enter the country. The company's projects often have a "build it and they will come" flavour to them. The company is rolling out close to 1,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations by the end of the year -- one for every 10 cars in the country.
"We just think the EV market will grow much quicker than everyone else thinks," Mr Amorn says.
From the outside, the deputy chief's decisions may seem impulsive, but those close to him say they are always preceded by extensive research.
"In my experience," says one of his assistants, "there is a lot of research and back-and-forth before any decision, but once it happens there is rarely any looking back."
As for Mr Amorn, he says people usually have a Plan A and then a Plan B.
"Before going into any business, I make sure I have A decisions," he says.
Not much has changed after transitioning from an advisory to a corporate role on the personal side, Mr Amorn says.
"The only thing that is different is the number in my bank account, but I still spend about 100 baht a day," he says.