Chiron | Case Study
People foundations, built from the founder up
Building a team for a clean-energy startup, one right hire at a time
Regeno · an ongoing Chiron engagement, delivered by Craig Jackson
Regeno is a University of Strathclyde spin-out founded by Adarsh Bhardwaj, developing the world's first flat-pack, modular, plug-and-play wind turbine. It is genuinely ambitious deep-tech: crane-free installation, recyclable materials and a design built to make homegrown renewable energy far cheaper and simpler to deploy.
When we started working together, Regeno had just been through a pre-seed funding round and the team was, quite literally, Adarsh. A strong founder, a strong product, and a blank sheet where the people function needed to be.
We met, and I spent the time understanding the vision and the ambition for the business, not just the next role to fill. From there we built a hiring plan that matched where Regeno actually was, on a startup budget, rather than where a bigger business might be.
That vision and those values became the basis for every hire. We matched people to roles not just on technical competency, but on genuine fit with the values Regeno is building around, because at this stage a shared outlook matters as much as a strong CV.
The first thing we put in place was a handbook built specifically for Regeno. No fluff, no borrowed corporate policy, just the essentials a fledgling business genuinely needs. It is designed to grow and develop as the business does, so it stays useful instead of gathering dust.
With the foundations in place, we started hiring the people who would actually build the product.
I brought in two new hires to head up the mechanical and electromechanical design functions, the core engineering capability the turbine depends on.
More recently I supported the hire of a Principal Technical Advisor on a 12-month contract, adding senior technical weight without committing to a permanent cost the business could not yet carry.
All of it delivered on a tight budget, with every hire chosen to earn its place.
Early-stage deep-tech hiring in an academic ecosystem comes with real compliance complexity, and getting it wrong is expensive. I helped Regeno navigate the issues around moving people from PhD study into employment, and the nuances of post-study work permits, so the right talent could be hired properly and with confidence.
Alongside the senior hires, I secured two internships for students. That does two things at once: it gives real experience back to talented undergraduates, and it builds a pipeline of people Regeno already knows and can look to hire as it grows. Working with great undergrads now, with a view to bringing them on later, is exactly the kind of long-game thinking a scaling startup should be doing.