Thomas Cain

Orange County California and Scottsdale Arizona

Mr. Thomas Cain is a co-founder and managing partner of EFW Partners (www.efwpartners.com), a multi-strategy investment firm focused on energy, food and water. In 2001, he co-founded SAIL Capital Partners, a cleantech early stage venture firm, where he is now a special general partner. Cain has directly invested hundreds of millions through these firms.

Examples of such investments are: Xtreme Power, SNTech Motors, Kokam Ltd., Dow/Kokam, Townsend Advanced Energy, Ice Energy, Sungevity, Enerpulse, Flex Energy, Water Health International, Stem, Electratherm, Codexis, Solezyme, Project Frog and Oryxe Energy and has been a director in over 30 public and private companies. He is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at conferences around the world, and in 2008 co-authored Energy Venture Capital Best Practices.

Cain started his business career by founding Distribution Architects Int’l. (“DAI”) in 1977, which grew into one of the world’s largest supply chain and ERP software companies with offices around the world. Through both organic growth and accretive M&A, he retired as chairman of the acquisition corporation in 2001, with 2,500 employees and annual revenues of $120M.

Cain next founded Starco Energy, an owner/operator of restored petrochemical fuel terminals, which he sold to Quintana Energy in 2006. He also founded Focus Capital Group of America, an extension of Focus Capital Group - Israel, through which 20 distressed turnarounds were accomplished and exited. One such turnaround was Evans Systems, Inc., a Texas-based public petrochemical company.

Cain is a member of YPO and WPO, founded their Global Supply Chain Conference, served as chairman of the MIT Presidents Education, and group-led the Harvard Business School Presidents Education for a combined 10+ years.

As a software developer, Cain’s software has won prestigious national competitions as the Internet Computer Expo’s “Best Business Product” and the Retail Information Systems Conference’s “Best Innovation in Logistics.” He is considered the father of the modern day “DLL” architecture. DAI was DEC’s largest commercial OEM and Cain