Sharon Creek Ventures

Energy advisory · Board leadership · Venture studio

About Sharon Creek.

Founded by Sam Schutte, Sharon Creek Ventures focuses on the commercial decisions that make energy companies and projects buildable, with development capital planned through a fund in formation.

Find your path Read Sam's story

Operator-led judgment for energy businesses.

Sharon Creek Ventures is a founder-led energy advisory and venture studio. Sam Schutte brings advisory and board leadership to commercial, financing and execution decisions, and a venture-builder's perspective to new energy businesses.

Sharon Creek is raising and forming a fund intended to invest development capital. The fund is not closed and is not actively deploying capital.

That perspective draws on Sam's prior work as CEO and co-founder of Synthica Energy, including the siting, contracting, financing and commissioning work behind the Synthica St. Bernard facility. This is Sam's founder and operator experience, not a Sharon Creek project or an implied affiliation with Synthica.

Explore the commercial question in your sector.

These areas of interest apply that development discipline to specific dependencies, milestones and counterparties.

Sam Schutte, founder of Sharon Creek Ventures

Sam Schutte, founder of Sharon Creek Ventures.

A builder from the beginning

From writing software to building energy infrastructure.

Sam is a Cincinnati native whose career has consistently centered on turning complex ideas into working businesses. After studying at the University of Pittsburgh, he began as a software engineer during the early years of Java and .NET, working across programming roles and startups.

He later earned an MBA and founded Unstoppable Software, a custom software company he built and eventually sold to a longtime colleague. That experience shaped the operator’s perspective he still brings to founders: understand the system, get close to the hard details, and build the organization needed to execute.

Sam’s next chapter moved from software into climate and infrastructure. He co-founded Synthica Energy and helped advance anaerobic-digestion projects across multiple markets, including the $65 million Synthica St. Bernard facility in the Cincinnati region.

Visit Sam’s personal blog

The founder journey

A career built across technology, companies, and physical projects.

01

Software engineer

Sam started his career in software, learning how complex systems behave and how disciplined teams turn technical requirements into useful products.

02

Company founder

He founded and grew Unstoppable Software before selling the business—experience that gave him firsthand perspective on leadership, customers, capital, and transition.

03

Energy developer

At Synthica Energy, Sam moved into renewable infrastructure, working across the commercial, permitting, contracting, and capital challenges behind real projects.

Founder proof · Synthica St. Bernard

One difficult project. Nine years from concept to commissioning.

Sam Schutte helped originate the St. Bernard concept, then led Synthica Energy as CEO and co-founder through the siting, financing, construction, and commissioning work required to make it real.

The result was a large-scale organics-to-energy facility designed for approximately 190,000 tons of food-derived feedstock each year. That is the operating experience Sharon Creek brings to projects where every constraint has to resolve together.

Discuss a difficult project Read the St. Bernard story
Aerial view of the Synthica St. Bernard organics-to-energy facility near Cincinnati
Synthica St. Bernard · Designed for approximately 190,000 tons of annual feedstock capacity

2019

Site

An industrial parcel near Cincinnati aligned feedstock sources, transportation, gas infrastructure, and the controls needed for an urban setting.

Financing

Capital

Utility-backed project financing and a contracted route to market helped turn a development thesis into a financeable project.

2023

Construction

The project broke ground in July 2023, beginning the work of turning years of commercial and technical development into a physical facility.

2025

Commissioning

First feedstock arrived and commissioning began in May 2025—roughly nine years after Sam Schutte began work on the original concept.

This project record reflects Sam Schutte’s prior work as CEO and co-founder of Synthica Energy. Sharon Creek Ventures is a separate, independent firm.

Why Sharon Creek

A living reminder of what progress must protect.

Sharon Creek runs behind Sam’s home in southern Ohio, through a landscape shaped at the edge of retreating glaciers. It remains a vibrant, healthy creek where Ordovician fossils, crayfish, salamanders, turtles, snakes, and other wildlife are part of everyday life.

Since he was little, Sam’s youngest son has spent hours turning over rocks and discovering what lives beneath them. In the surrounding five acres of woods, two barred owls call at night. These are not distant wilderness scenes. They exist beside a thriving suburb, which makes their health feel both remarkable and fragile.

Sunlight reflecting through trees onto the rocky water of Sharon Creek
Sharon Creek, southern Ohio
Sam’s son stepping across rocks while exploring Sharon Creek
Sam’s son swimming in a quiet pool along Sharon Creek

Our mission

Use smart capital and sound business choices to strengthen the natural systems people depend on while improving human lives.

The name Sharon Creek keeps that responsibility close. Cleaner energy, better ways to manage waste, lower-impact fuels, and more thoughtful use of materials can support prosperity without treating healthy places as expendable. The companies and projects we choose to help should move both goals forward.

Choose your next conversation.

For project teams

Bring your development stage, unresolved dependencies and next financing milestone. Discuss the evidence and contracts needed to test project financeability.

Discuss project readiness

For capital partners

Discuss the development-capital thesis and fund formation. Interest is non-binding and does not imply an offering, allocation or current deployment.

Discuss fund formation

Founder answers

Questions about Sam Schutte.

Direct context on Sam's background and the experience he brings to Sharon Creek Ventures.

Who is Sam Schutte?
Sam Schutte is the founder of Sharon Creek Ventures. He is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and energy project developer whose work has spanned software companies, company building, and physical energy infrastructure.
What companies has Sam Schutte founded?
Sam founded Unstoppable Software, built the custom software company, and later sold it. He also co-founded Synthica Energy and served as its Chief Executive Officer before founding Sharon Creek Ventures.
What energy-development experience does Sam bring?
At Synthica Energy, Sam worked across the commercial, permitting, contracting, capital, and execution challenges behind renewable-infrastructure projects, including the Synthica St. Bernard organics-to-energy facility.
Is Sharon Creek Ventures part of Synthica Energy?
No. Sharon Creek Ventures is Sam Schutte's separate advisory and venture-studio platform. The Synthica work is presented as Sam's prior founder and operator experience.