Rafael Molano

Rafael is an expert in the software, hardware and alternative energy industries. He has more than 25 years in marketing, finance and global operations experience for large and small companies. He is a serial entrepreneur with four startups in the last twelve years and has a strong operational and executive level experience that spans many venture capital funded start-ups, ‘dotcoms’, mergers and acquisitions and large multi-national companies. Rafael is currently a principal at R&R, advising companies in business and financial strategies. Prior to R&R, Rafael was a partner at Woodside Capital Partners, an investment bank in Silicon Valley for M&A transactions in the technology industry. Before that, he held the COO position for Blue Bamboo, a Shanghai-based electronics payments company.

Earlier in his career, Rafael worked in the energy industry where he spent eight years in the utility and alternative energy field. During this time, he held engineering and finance positions at Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Booz-Allen and Hamilton, where he was responsible for generation planning finance, solar technology commercialization and transmission planning.

Prior to Blue Bamboo, Rafael held C-level positions at four different startups in payment technology, supply chain and the Internet industry. During this time, he raised several rounds of funding from U.S. VC’s, which led to acquisitions and where he served as President, VP Product Development, VP Marketing and VP Operations.

In addition to the energy industry and startups, Rafael has held a variety of marketing, finance and general management positions at Diebold, VeriFone, Triad Systems and Unisys. Rafael holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, an MS in Economics from the University of Wyoming and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana State University.