Exeger CEO Giovanni Fili Educates The World On Sustainability For All

Many of us can recall the 19th-century nursery rhymes about how boys and girls are made of different ingredients, like sugar and spice and, well, snips and snails and puppy dog tails. The English poet Robert Southey attempted to paint a poetic picture of both little boys and girls of his time. Trite, maybe, but a notion of the remarkable nature of our species and indicative of our forever pursuit to understand the how, what, and why of miraculous experiences whereby our species captures life to the fullest.

Giovanni Fili, a man whose smile gleans horizon-wide, could easily get lost in a crowd. Fili, the founder, and CEO of Exeger, looks like your neighbor or this reporter's fellow soccer dad on a blustery fall day on the pitch. He doesn’t tower over his audience of global sustainability competitors, experts, and proponents. Fili, though, might be as globally recognized as the likes of world-changing figures such as Bezos, Gates, Branson, Musk, and Winfrey in a staggeringly swift amount of time.

This reporter spent time with Fili in his hometown of Stockholm, under secure circumstances, for an on-the-record interview. Various topics were discussed, covering his family, his boyhood dreams, and his current efforts to extend life's power grid for himself and all of us.

Under typical interview experiences, this reporter enters a room with a preconceived sense of the guest based on extensive research. Sometimes the experiences with an interviewee run counter to publicly documented statements and noted public perception. This reporter decided to limit pre-interview research to the written word. In hindsight, this singular decision became this reporter's soundest judgment call made over the last year.

Fili’s entrance wasn’t wrapped in pomp and circumstance. Instead, his deference was to my comfort and appreciation for taking some of my time. Agendas were set aside, and an open, revealing discussion emerged.

The reader might ask why such a long and visually portrayed preamble – a good and sophisticated question, to be sure. Years will pass, and Fili’s name has the potential to harden in the annals of history, marking the innovative and inspiring left turn paved by Fili for the planet’s benefit.

And, as historians peer into the rearview mirror of civilization, this reporter bets school children, aspiring entrepreneurs, and citizens of this planet might want to know what Mr. Fili was like before his doggedness achieved the once-thought unattainable for a world desperate to sustain.

Opening Discussion

Fili’s entrance to the discussion and his life story was casual, like his workout attire. Small talk and banter about Stockholm and family quickly pivoted to the passions of this deeply proud Swede. The initial strikes of flint igniting Fili’s insatiable internal fire to explore and achieve set the table for a winding discussion located deep in the Swedish terrain to the world stage in Beijing.

The desire started early for Fili, who spent his summers in the forests of Sweden planting thousands of trees per day to earn money. For many young Swedes, this is a right of passage, yet the staggering consistency of the then-young Fili separated himself from his contemporary arborists.

While one might contend that this entrepreneur lifer cut his teeth on the saplings of Swedish sustainability, his first venture into entrepreneurism came at the age of 15, selling candy to his friends.

The independence of Fili has been with him since his earliest memories as a teenage entrepreneur. “I’ve really always been on my own. I have my own companies, and it’s because I’m passionate about working on projects I love. If I’m honest, my greatest luxury in life is that I only work with people I like. I love people, and I’m so interested in people that I and we, as a company, collaborate with.”

His eyes widen as he repeats his love of people and projects that mean something to Fili. This would become a trend in the interview and our exchanges that day.

Whether it was selling candy or planting acres and acres (hectares in Swedish equal 2.74 acres each), Fili has a sense of history in the challenges he embraces and the legacies he looks to extend. “Sweden has been known around the world for innovation. Saab, Electrolux, Volvo, Spotify, Skype, nanotechnologies, and environmental sciences epitomize the passion and power of Swedish innovation. My dream when I started Exeger was and still is to architect and build a new Swedish industry impacting over 1 billion people over the next 10 years.”

It’s a significant goal and target for Fili and the team at Exeger as they run full steam ahead with their patented solar cell technology.

The energy in the conference room at Exeger headquarters continued to vibrate through the room and into Fili’s lavalier microphone. Fili isn’t concerned with the fear of failure. On the contrary, this father of three children chases the future while others might be accused of running from fear. “I live my life like a shark,” says Fili. “My philosophy is that if I stop moving, I die. I will suffocate like a shark.”

His metaphor of the deep sea predator might illuminate an approach to life and work, or it could paint a vivid portrayal of a man unafraid of unchartered waters ahead in a world of ESG and sustainable efforts at all levels of government throughout the world. “I have failed plenty of times, but I have also found myself in the midst of incredible opportunities that provided me with an opportunity to test myself,” says Fili.

Travel back in time as Fili boarded a local bus to be shuttled into the “middle of nowhere” over seven Swedish summers. The days were long and hot, and the predator, at that time, was the universally reviled mosquito. Fili was motivated, then and now, to accomplish his goals.

“I made two cents per tree, and I estimate that I planted over half a million trees, and yet I remember, not the money, but the immunity I gained from mosquito bites, like a badge of honor for that time I served in my youth. I found commitment to my daily goals intoxicating because I had the time and space to think about my dreams and how I could make a difference. Looking back, I can easily say that my initial passion for sustainability was forged with each tree planted and each mosquito that bounced off of me,” emotes Fili.

Olympic Size Opportunity

It was 2000, and Fili was nearing graduation from the Stockholm School of Economics. He had developed a company that set out to disrupt the clean technology industry with the backing of the Swedish government and the Swedish Environmental Institute. The collaboration resulted in Fili developing and presenting his first, in his words, “real” contract pitch to the organizers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “I worked with a fantastic group of people! I wrote the whole pitch and collaborated with the team securing over 1 million square meters of the Olympic village,” says Fili.

Who would blame Fili for hanging his LinkedIn profile hat on the hook of lifetime achievements with five interlocking Olympic rings? At this point in the interview, my verbal dance partner took the proverbial lead leaning into deeper reflections of his personal and professional ‘why.’

“I have always loved the idea of disrupting assumptions about the way we interact with the world around us, especially those challenges that have traditionally been considered impossible. When I was a boy, I would hear moans of impossibility from my friends or adults on the periphery of my world. I never retreated. I dove in.”

Did Fili feel a sense of superiority over his contemporaries even if they, too, were just opening the door to early adulthood? No. “I remember thinking to myself; I can work a little bit harder than most of my friends. I’m not necessarily smarter, but I can probably work harder than they can,” states Fili. A brief and visual acknowledgment of Fili’s rolling boil of a response elicited a very direct, unwavering stare and follow-up from the son of a librarian mother and a father and grandfather steeped in Swedish manufacturing lore.

Fili continued, “When others are super tired and want to go home after one day of strenuous work, I’ll work two more days. And then I’ll work one more day just to prove I could.”

Generating A Sustainable Pitch

Today, Fili helms a team, and a company indoctrinated through a collective passion for making a difference in every nook and cranny of life, or light as it be. The mantra of Exeger screams of Fili’s influence, world-changing science and technology for sustainable energy called, thought-provokingly, ‘Irreversible Technology.’

The self-powered products fueled through Exeger are slotting into the lives and experiences of millions across the world, disrupting the belief that solar energy is notoriously driven on terms of impediment rather than within the lives of its users.

Instead of solar benefits residing in the deserts of the American West, the patented Powerfoyle assumes the rules of the past are just that. Like Fili, the driving force of Exeger allows for application across the spectrum of consumer products. Flexible solar cells and Exeger appear to be the future currency of the masses, where products pulling power from ambient light are only the beginning.

At this point in the interview, the line between interviewer and interviewee blur into two adults musing about the possibilities of solar cells that can embed themselves into every corner of our world. In a fantastical and poetic manner, Fili beams with excitement to share the essence of Powerfoyle. “I know you’re going to laugh, but the idea behind our solar cell material was inspired by photosynthesis.”

A season back, this interviewer spent time with the Red Rocker Sammy Hagar of Van Halen, discovering his roots in the lettuce fields of California. That interview concluded with an observation about the DNA of the lettuce field's role in carving out the man Hagar became.

Fili, like Hagar, undaunted by his beliefs, might have left the hectares ripe with saplings turned towering canopies of opportunity, but the lessons learned remain through each boyish grin of his own and very personal nursery rhyme.

The visit with Fili concluded with a walk around the Exeger campus and a peak into the future of solar power and its possibility.

The role of the visionary casts a romantic shadow over the ordinary across the globe. Those that forever change the experience of being human – sometimes advancing our abilities to connect with one another while other approaches to modern exploration yield new methods of reversing the natural and human course of nature and time.

Many of these iconic names and brands are bold, unrelenting, and permeating personalities rife with a direct and strategic mode of public engagement. Fili feels different. To sit across from the man who might just single-handedly power our planet sustainably is like listening to the riveting Mandela: The Lost Tapes on Audible by Richard Stengel.

Fili shared current company intelligence, off the record, that metaphorically cracked the window into his demeanor when the chips on the table are real, international, and consequential to billions worldwide. The passage of time will reveal the essence or, more poignantly, Fili’s superpower. Fili doesn’t fear the moment, the adversary across from him or the friend on the other end of his phone. This poise might be the personality trait that supercharges current projects and future explorations.

Fili is a father, son, husband, friend, competitor, and the energy source required to sustain a delicate planet and a powerful species. In reflection, I cannot surmise the entirety of Fili, but needless to say, stories and nursery rhymes await this extremely likable innovator steeped in the power of lifelong learning for the betterment of all.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.