2021 Newsmaker: Robert Laikin, entrepreneur, investor

Robert Laikin never does something small—so perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s turn out to be one particular of Indiana’s most lively gamers in the latest SPAC (or particular goal acquisition corporation) craze.

Laikin rose to prominence a long time in the past, when he established Brightpoint Inc., a wi-fi distribution and logistics enterprise in Indianapolis, and crafted it in excess of two a long time to $5.2 billion in gross sales and about 4,000 workforce.

He offered the business in 2012 to Ingram Micro, of suburban Los Angeles, for $840 million. After the sale, he hung about for seven a long time in a wide variety of assistance and advisory roles.

But Laikin was just finding began. Very last 12 months, he jumped into SPACs, forming the 1st of two with the backing of buyers and board users. The aim of a SPAC, or blank look at firm, is to raise cash by promoting shares and use the dollars to obtain a private company, basically taking it public as a result of a back again door.

Laikin and his group immediately elevated $100 million on their enterprise, launching a SPAC referred to as Novus Cash I. The business then merged with AppHarvest, a startup primarily based in Lexington, Kentucky, that boasted it could revolutionize agriculture by building substantial-productiveness, sustainable indoor farms inside enormous greenhouses.

With one particular merger in their reserve, Laikin and his staff this calendar year set alongside one another a second SPAC, Novus Funds II, and elevated far more than twice as much—$288 million—as for their to start with SPAC.

In September, they declared designs to merge with Strength Vault, also of suburban Los Angeles—a 4-calendar year-previous enterprise that desires to guide a transformation of the renewable-electrical power sector and slow the use of fossil fuels.

The company’s technological know-how is related to the utility grid, employing a method of application and cables to use surplus strength manufactured by wind or solar farms to elevate 35-ton bricks large into the air. Later on, when the solar is not shining or the wind is not blowing, the bricks are reduced to return electricity to the photo voltaic and wind farms when they cannot deliver any.

What drives Laikin is the urge to find the next essential factor and get adequate folks fired up to put their dollars in a deal. He needs them to aspiration significant…