Climate and energy startups have never mattered more.
Electricity demand is rising. Industrial systems need to decarbonize. Communities need cleaner, more reliable, more affordable energy. Critical infrastructure needs to become smarter, stronger, and more adaptive.
The technologies that will shape this future are being built right now by founders willing to take on problems most people consider impossible.
TerraScale was created to help those visionary leaders.
Breakthrough technology is not enough.
The world needs more than invention. It needs companies that can commercialize, deploy, and scale.
Too often, promising technologies stall before market adoption. Not because the science fails, but because the business does not get built quickly or effectively enough. We've constructed TerraScale to help these founders build successful businesses around breakthrough technology.
Prior to co-founding TerraScale, Manoj served as Innovation Services Director at an energy-tech non-profit based in the Midwest. He co-founded, led, and managed a nationwide, fractional executive practice where experienced founders and executives partner with cleantech & energy startups to accelerate their path to customers and capital.
As Co-Founder & CEO of Hyr Medical, Manoj reshaped healthcare staffing through an innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. Before Hyr, he was an innovation strategy, engineering management, and product development consultant at Deloitte, a product engineering leader at Fortune 500 companies, and a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, where he inspired future leaders through innovation and marketing strategy courses.
Manoj holds an MBA in Strategy, Finance, and Entrepreneurship from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He earned an M.S. in Industrial & Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University, graduating Summa Cum Laude, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, graduating Cum Laude.
Beyond his professional endeavors, Manoj is passionate about playing, coaching, and watching basketball, playing golf and pool, and immersing himself in podcasts and audiobooks during long drives. He loves trail running with his music blasting, exploring the world through international travel, volunteering for important causes, coaching entrepreneurs, and spending time with kind, driven, and curious people. He is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Andrew Johnson, Managing Partner
Andrew Johnson is a product marketing leader with two decades of experience building brands. A three-time exit founder, his career began at Apple, where he spent nearly a decade in product marketing, learning how to craft compelling project narratives for complex technology. Since then, he has built and scaled ventures across multiple industries, raising more than $50 million in venture capital. Along the way, he developed end-to-end expertise across product strategy, brand positioning, fundraising, market expansion, and early operations.
Over the past several years, Andrew has focused that expertise on helping companies advance how we manage energy and conserve Earth's limited resources. He has worked hands-on with founders building novel solar arrays, new battery chemistries, wind turbines, AI-powered SaaS emissions platforms, and water-based solar. He has also supported national and local climate non-profits navigating product strategy, revenue models, and market analysis. That accumulated experience, helping early-stage teams translate breakthrough technology into products the market will actually adopt, is what led him to co-found TerraScale.
Beyond his professional work, Andrew is an avid road cyclist and pickleball player, and a lifelong car enthusiast. He is based in sunny San Diego, California.
Erik Bjornard, Managing Partner
Erik Bjornard has spent the last 18 years building and leading marketing organizations for venture-backed startups across NYC, California, and Ohio. He has helped scale companies from pre-revenue to market leadership — driving millions of users, tens of millions in revenue, hundreds of millions in valuation, and multiple successful exits.
His experience spans cleantech, energy tech, industrial automation, and SaaS. Erik's superpower is orchestrating growth in early-stage environments where resources are limited and pressure is high. He excels at dialing in positioning, building impactful brands, accelerating go-to-market execution, and constructing scalable demand generation engines.
When he's not blasting early-stage startups into orbit, you'll find Erik outside — most likely coaching youth sports. He has coached 24 seasons (and counting) of soccer, basketball, and flag football. After living in Seattle, NYC, Boston, Phoenix, Brussels (Belgium), and Lingen (Germany), Erik chooses to call Columbus, Ohio home.
Let's build what comes next.
If you are working to bring breakthrough climate or energy technology to market, TerraScale can help you build the company around it.
