Enerdigm is led by a deep and diverse leadership team.
Darren Kimura, General Partner
Darren is a technology and finance executive with over 20 years of experience in 24 countries including the USA, Japan and India. His areas of expertise includes Information Technology (IT) and energy. Over his career he led Nalu Communications which was acquired by Prodigy, Energy Smart News Podcast which was acquired by GreenTech Media, Energy Industries Corporation which was acquired by VWI Holdings, Solar Power Technology (SOPOGY) which was acquired by MEMC and Hitachi, and LiveAction which was acquired by Insight Venture Partners.
He has been an inventor on 14 patents has led the acquisition of $2 billion in contracts, raised over $200 million in venture capital/private equity and $150 million in project financing. He was recognized as the SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002, Ally of the Year by Hawaiian Electric, an Energy Pioneer by the EPA Energy Star Program and was awarded the Honua “Earth” Prize by the Blue Planet Foundation. Darren is also a Certified Energy Manager®, a licensed electrical contractor, Google Cloud Certified and is an Eagle Scout.
Ken Shimada, General Partner
Ken has deep expertise in Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A). Prior to Enerdigm, Ken was the Chief Operating Officer Energy Industries Corporation overseeing Administration, Finance and Operations. Before that he served as the Vice President of Finance at Solar Power Technology where he assisted in over $90 million of capital formation. He previously served at a publicly traded fuel cell and polysilicon manufacturing company Hoku Scientific where he assisted in the formation of $700 million for the construction of the company’s polysilicon plant in Idaho, oversaw the plant’s construction and participated on the Initial Public Offering to the NASDAQ exchange. Mr. Shimada began his career as an analyst at a Private Equity firm. Mr. Shimada has a BBA from the University of Hawaii
Duane Ashimine, General Partner, Chief Technology Officer
Duane began his career in the energy industry in 1989 as an energy engineer at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii working on nuclear submarines. He later transitioned to the nation’s 15th largest mechanical contractor “Alakai Mechanical”, owned by Japan’s Taisei and then joined Hawaiian Electric’s Power Corp. as an energy engineer. Mr. Ashimine later led Energy Industries Corporation as its Chief Technology Officer. He has been recognized as the State of Hawaii’s Technology Leader of the Year 2007 and received his BS from the University of Hawaii in Mechanical Engineering. He is also a Certified Energy Manager, Certified Demand Side Manager, Certified Cogeneration Specialist, Licensed Hawaii C52 Mechanical Contractor, Certified Project Manager.
Thomas Fitzgerald, General Partner, Chief Information and Security Officer
Tom has over 18 years of experience in IT Security Operations. Originally from Maryland, he started a web development firm at twenty-two that took him to New York City where he created web applications for law firms. He then joined the Department of Defense and served as an intrusion analyst protecting the Global Information Grid involving both Computer Network Defense and Cyber Network Exploitation. He was recruited to Google’s Detection team working to keep Google’s networks safe from attackers. He also launched several security products on Google’s Cloud Platform to help customers keep their data secure. Tom has published several open source security tools to help analysts investigate and respond to threats.
Jeremy Yeung, Operating Partner
Jeremy has over 10 years of experience in Sales & Marketing Operations, helping early stage startups scale their go-to-market processes and accelerate their revenue engines. Jeremy began his career at LiveAction in Honolulu, HI, where he began executing demand generation campaigns, and administering the marketing automation and CRM systems. He moved on to lead Sales Operations at LiveAction (Palo Alto, CA), during which he helped create repeatable and predictable revenue-generating processes. LiveAction grew from 5 to 120 employees, 16x in sales revenue, and was acquired by Insight Venture Partners. He would then move on to run Revenue Operations for SaaS start up companies like Spin Technology and SlashNext, laying the groundwork for high-growth and scalability. Jeremy holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and is a Certified Salesforce Advanced Administrator.