James Freeman, '95 MBA

James Freeman, ‘95 MBA, is a seasoned technology executive, investor and advisor with over 34 years of diverse experience across Telecommunications, Electric Utility, Oil & Gas and Agri-food industries.Throughout his career, he has held executive positions and played a pivotal role in scaling innovative solutions that leverage IoT and SaaS for clean energy transitions. As the founder of Valentis International, he has been actively involved in consulting and investment work, contributing his expertise to early-stage ventures through his roles with Alberta IoT, Weave VC and Foresight. Driven by a commitment to the environment, he is dedicated to fostering innovations that support the energy transition and addressing climate change challenges.

Learn about James and his professional journey in this insightful interview with the Business Alumni Association below!

BAA: Please share with us your career journey, starting from its early stages and how it has evolved up to where you are today?

My career journey began after I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering at the U of A. I was sure I was going to go on to do a PhD, but in 1991 I completed one year as a post-graduate research assistant at TRLabs, an organization that brought together university, government and private sector to do applied research in telecommunications. By 1993, I got a position in the telecom sector doing network planning for various organizations and eventually landed at Telus, where I stayed until late 1999, when an opportunity to participate in a start-up in Czechia emerged. That marked a shift in my career, moving me from engineering work to marketing and product management. I returned to Canada in 2002, and from then until 2007, did consulting through my own consulting company on a variety of IT and enterprise software projects, primarily in the electric utility sector with EPCOR.

In 2007, I joined the executive team of Zedi Solutions, an IOT company providing a cloud-based SCADA solution to the upstream oil and gas sector. I remained there for 10 years until I returned to consulting, spending time in the agricultural technology and oil and gas technology sectors with TrustBIX and Westgen/Convrg Innovations, respectively. Presently, I am consulting to Calgary-based SensorUp Inc, which offers industry-leading methane emissions management software to oil and gas companies, and am also an executive-in-residence with Foresight, Canada’s cleantech acceleration leader. I also work with an investment banking start-up in Calgary and am an active angel investor and venture partner with Edmonton-based Weave VC.

BAA: What inspired you to pursue an MBA from the Alberta School of Business, after earning your MSc in Electrical Engineering, and how has it complemented your technical background in shaping your career as an executive and advisor?

I realized that to be both effective in my career, and more generally, a literate citizen in the world, I needed some formal education in business. I also recognized the value of building relationships outside of engineering, and felt an MBA would start creating my network of business contacts.

I actually began my MBA part-time in the fall of 1992, using accrued vacation time from my work as a research assistant to attend Tuesday/Thursday classes. I then switched to full time in January 1993, and then back to part-time with evening classes when I secured my position with ED TEL by the fall of 1993. I finished my coursework in December 1994.

It was not unusual for Engineers to want an MBA to secure promotion to more senior management positions, and that combination, then and now, is still a great platform for a career.

BAA: For professionals with a technical background considering an MBA, what advice would you give them about how it can impact their career trajectory?

An MBA is useful for an engineer because it gives you options. These options in your career might take many forms:

1. Executive Management Path: It can unlock the door to a move to technical management and executive level positions;
2. Senior Technical Path: If you decide to remain technical, it can help you understand how others see the world. Applying science to create solutions to problems in the world means understanding economic constraints, marketing, buying and selling processes and financials. Having a formal education here helps engineers be better engineers.
3. Founder Path: It opens the door to entrepreneurship. Perhaps there is a future date where you want to strike out on your own and take a new product idea to market. A business education, paired with a technical background, can make you a better founder.

BAA: What are some memorable experiences and key lessons you took away from your time as an MBA student?

Rushing from work as a research assistant to attend Tuesday and Thursday morning classes on campus, and then going back to work in the afternoon, is certainly a memory, as are the evening weekly classes. I have fond memories of professors too, like Dr. Rolf Mirus in finance, Dr. Richard Field in leadership and Dr. Lloyd Steir (with whom I almost did a PhD back in 2007(. I also remember getting involved with the Varsity Consulting Group and doing summer research projects.

A key lesson would be to try to get involved in activities outside of formal class work. Attend talks by guest speakers, and get involved in extracurricular activities that build connections and are meaningful to you.

BAA: What motivated you to start Valentis International, and how has your consulting and investment work evolved since its inception?

I founded Valentis International to formalize the consulting work I was doing upon my return to Canada. I suspected I’d always have some sort of side gigs, and over the years, in periods between formal employment, I’ve operated through Valentis International, as I am today.

BAA: As an advisor with Alberta IoT, Weave VC, and Foresight, what common challenges do early-stage companies face, and how do you help them navigate these?

I’ll break the challenges down to the five dimensions I use to do a quick assessment of the invest-ability of an early stage venture. I call these my “Five T’s”:

1. Talent (or Team): early-stage companies often struggle to assemble the right mix of talents to help their venture scale. Further, founders often have strong skills in a particular area, but not a broad set of skills needed to run a successful, growing company. Part of government policy to encourage the innovation economy has been to invest in Accelerators, that provide formal training and access to mentors to help address these gaps.
2. Technology: this challenge can take many forms. Generally, the start-ups I see are good at creating technology, but need support in understanding how to protect that technology IP.
3. Traction: getting access to first customers or markets can be a challenge for some early-stage companies.
4. Timing: for an early-stage company to sell, they need to provide practical solutions to problems that are (ideally) pervasive and where there is a sense of urgency. When neither of these two attributes exist, the ability to gain traction, scale and attract capital will be limited.
5. Transaction: access to capital is definitely a challenge. Early-stage founders need to sell their solutions to customers and their vision to investors. There is a nascent community of angel investors in Western Canada, but there are some challenges in securing Series A or B money from the Canadian ecosystem alone, despite the fact that different levels of government are behind much of the VC money in the Canadian ecosystem. It is well-known that Canadian investors are more risk averse and place lower valuations on companies than their US counterparts, so many companies start to raise in Canada, and then continue in subsequent rounds in the US.

BAA: You focus on scaling solutions that support the clean energy transition. What excites you most about this space, and what challenges do you see ahead?

The energy transition is a key part of addressing the challenge of climate change. We need to reduce, and in fact reverse, the carbon we put into the atmosphere, or parts of the planet will become unlivable, leading to social and economic stress. Biomes will not be able to adapt quickly enough, and the loss of biodiversity will be tragic and lead to additional knock-on consequences

The challenge in the energy transition is a behavioral one, because incentives to adopt solutions often don’t portray the full cost of the status quo. Externalities, and putting a price on the services nature provides us, don’t make it into the balance sheets of companies or the budgets of homeowners explicitly, though they are there in, for example, the rising cost of insurance. We need to find better ways as society to “price the priceless” as Paula di Perna laid out in her book of the same title.

BAA: What innovations or trends do you see having the biggest impact on the industries you work in over the next five years?

I’ll break trends into three components:

1. Technology Trends: I tend to start by using Industry 5.0 as a model for where technology will lead us, and this includes AI, IoT, Robotics and other enabling technologies. I tend to be an AI optimist, and see AI as a copilot in the next few years.
2. Geo-political: the polarization that has occurred makes it difficult for businesses, as regulation, incentives, and signals that industry gets from the government can be threatened every  four years. This makes long-term planning difficult, as incentives to invest (or not) in cleantech solutions can be seen to be held hostage to whichever political party is in power.
3. Climate: all industries and companies now should be factoring climate-based risks into their business model, but the form these risks take can be sometimes difficult to quantify or predict. But there is one truth that needs to prevail: ultimately, all our wealth is derived from a healthy, functioning planet. This is why I choose to focus on the cleantech sector.

BAA: What drives your involvement across these diverse roles, and what kind of legacy do you hope to create through your work?

I am in the legacy phase of my career. My daughters are at the University of Alberta, with one at the Alberta School of Business working towards her BCom degree. The damage done to the planet through climate change concerns me as the economic and social costs continue to climb. am motivated to try to leave the world in a better way than it is today.