Our team represents decades of high-impact investing, entrepreneurship, leadership, and climate science.
In addition to his wealth of experience as a clean tech entrepreneur, Giffen Ott brings 35 years of experience structuring deals and applying strategic and operational improvements to private equity investments.
Giffen founded Synova, a developer and supplier of waste-to-value technology and projects, in 2012. He served as its Chief Executive Officer through 2018, stepping down to focus full-time on FullCycle. Synova, an innovative, clean technology company that transforms trash - including plastics- into valuable resources, is FullCycle’s first portfolio investment.
He previously served as an Operating Executive at Golden Gate Capital, which is where he first came across the Synova technology. Before Golden Gate, Giffen was a Senior Managing Director at Evercore Partners Inc., where he worked in Evercore’s private equity group focusing on energy and other investments.
Earlier in his career, Giffen spent six years with Bain & Company, where he advised management teams and private equity and VC firms in due diligence, portfolio management, and exit decisions. Additionally, he originated two successful deals for Bain Capital. In 1993, he left Bain to lead the operational transformation of a private equity client's portfolio company where he led operations and served as a core member of an executive team that delivered five years of 25 percent IRR before organizing a second management buyout that delivered a 3x return.
Giffen is a former C.P.A. and is a member of the California Bar Association. He received a B.B.A., summa cum laude, from Southern Methodist University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
