MANAGEMENT | PARTNERS | ADVISORS
David Firshein
Partner
David Firshein has been a commercial financier and financial entrepreneur for 36 years, working in most aspects of corporate lending, private equity, venture capital, and startup management operations. Mr. Firshein is the President and Owner of Cascade Capital Corporation, a 26 year old licensed commercial finance lender/broker and financial advisory firm in Fairfax California. During his career, Mr. Firshein has completed over $900 Million worth of a wide variety of private debt or equity financings for various development stage, middle market, and Fortune 1000 companies to date. Such financings have included senior, subordinated or venture debt, mezzanine capital, equipment leases, bank revolving credit and term debt facilities, and seed, venture stage or private equity financings. Project types included various forms of growth capital, venture capital, turnaround, restructuring, co-op financings, and M&A or buy-out financings. While industry agnostic, the majority of the enterprises that were financed often included clean-tech or environmental, high-tech, wireless and telecom, medical devices/drug-delivery/biopharma, food and agriculture, and various heavy industrial or other manufacturing businesses. Through Cascade Capital, Mr. Firshein has also been an angel investor in a dozen different early stage ventures. In relation to such investments, since 1997 he has intermittently held six early stage CFO or CEO roles, including two co-founding positions, in six start-up companies, involving two high-tech, one energy-petrochemical industrial, one clean-foods, and two clean-tech ventures. Earlier in his career, he was a co-founder and managing executive of the senior team that started the first ever North American venture debt fund, dedicated solely to financing environmental companies or environmental assets, with $110 Million of committed capital. In addition:
Since late 2011, David Firshein has also served as the Chief Financial Officer of Brillouin Energy Corp. of Berkeley CA (“Brill–oo-in” - https://brillouinenergy.com). Brillouin is a leading mid-development-stage venture in a new field of renewable alternative energy known as “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” (LENR) technology. To date Brillouin’s unique form of LENR has demonstrated a potentially controllable, safe method of producing large amounts of industrially useful, ultra-clean thermal energy. There are No radioactive or other hazardous wastes, and no carbon gases of any kind created in the reaction process (Zero pollution) and virtually no fuel cost (only the initial capital expenditure cost). Brillouin’s technology can potentially power everything from small water heaters and commercial boilers to utility-scale independent power plants for the generation of low-cost, carbon-free, ultra-clean electricity. The technology has been jointly advanced under a 6-year formal research agreement that concluded with the Stanford Research Institute and SRI’s leading LENR scientists in Menlo Park California. The Directors Emeritus of the SRI LENR program continue to assist Brillouin today as its senior science advisors. Since becoming CFO, Mr. Firshein has closed the large majority of the $19.8 Million in total development stage equity capital, grants and early license revenue that the company has raised from its inception to date. He has also generated most of its investor and strategic business communication materials and is the senior manager of all master document edit and archive functions. He continues to lead all financing efforts and further assists with all related senior business development efforts for the acceleration of Brillouin Energy’s business growth.