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James Gray
At last week’s ClimateTech Coffee 🚲 Bryan White and I were joined by Kimberly Gilbert, PhD to hear about her work on Carbon Neutralization and Ocean Storage (CNOS) through her company pHathom. Here’s a recap: The ocean naturally absorbs CO2 over time, but we’ve added so much that the ocean has become increasingly acidic. Ocean pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 globally over the last hundred years, and as pH drops it becomes harder for coral-based organisms to form shells. To combat this, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) is an intervention that both reverses ocean acidification and removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Challenges with traditional OAE: - When you add the alkalinity into the ocean, it spreads out. It’s hard to measure the change in pH. - You don’t know exactly when the extra CO2 will be absorbed. Modeling and measurement companies are trying to help with this problem. Advantages of CNOS: - Co2 is captured directly at a coastal power plant or refinery, and then the concentrated Co2 is pumped into water that has limestone (and/or other alkaline materials) in it. - This means the Co2 is dissolved onsite and the pH can be equilibrated onsite, which makes accurate measurement more feasible. Factors that affect progress: - We’ll start seeing more companies enter in this space as the chemistry and its impacts are better understood and seen as safe - Local and national permitting are a huge bottleneck - On the international permitting level, the London Protocol has a blanket ban on ocean geoengineering for anything except for research. There were good reasons for doing that, but it’s unclear who decides when that can change and the circumstances under which the ban is lifted. (Note: pHathom is not doing geoengineering; it’s doing water treatment on-site and releasing it back as ocean water) Open questions for the category/technology: - Can they come up with enough low-cost alkalinity sources, and get them in a way that doesn’t cause additional environmental damage or Co2 emissions? - This approach will require pumping a lot of water. How much will that cost and how can the cost be driven down? - Putting 100 plants’ worth of bicarbonate into the ocean is likely fine for ocean health relative to the climate benefit, but what is the point where the tradeoffs cross over? Some groups doing good work in this space: [C]Worthy Carbon to Sea Initiative University Research: UC Santa Barbara, University of Tasmania, GEOMAR, Dalhousie University, Scripps Join us for the next one in May! Details coming soon, and you can get updates by subscribing to the series page here: https://lnkd.in/g7DTGm2V
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Bruce Alton
As someone who is in the middle of two early stage startups, I found this to be a good article framing the importance of Product-Market Fit (PMF). "Hair on Fire", "Hard Fact" and "Future Vision" are the three different archetypes noted and, for a startup, important to figure out up front (along with founder-market fit). However, chances are somewhere else in the world someone is or wants to launch something similar as your startup so ruthless execution is paramount in order to generate the velocity needed to stay ahead of everyone else. #productmarketfit
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Bobby Pinero
3 years of pricing lessons at Equals condensed into one blog post. Since starting the company, we've tinkered a lot with pricing and packaging. It's one of the single most impactful levers early stage companies can pull. I think folks *don't* experiment with pricing enough, or take big enough bets when they do. We've tried free. We've tried completely sales led. We've tried not listing pricing on the site. Matt Hodges details all the plans we've had, why, and what we've learned in our latest installment on Wrap Text. https://lnkd.in/ecckEDba
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Stacey Murphy❤️🌎
Wondering what Regenerstive Design is and how to implement it? Excited to lead this important conversation. Please join me! Grateful for Portland Design Thinkers for hosting this series. #innovation #planetpositive #naturebasedsolutions #regenerativearchitecture #regenerstivedesign #impactinvesting
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Neal Ghosh
The existing paradigm in the early stage startup ecosystem is there are only two personas which matter: founder and investor. Investors provide capital and guidance. Founders provide vision, grit, technical ability, and savvy management skills to convert capital into disruptive impact and then returns. Other participants -- employees, service providers, consultants, advisors -- rarely if ever are put on a similar tier. They're met with indifference, even skepticism, and are thought as tactical (means to an end) rather than strategic. What's lost in this paradigm is that some of these partcipants -- venture builders in particular -- are delivering a high-value add, both in terms of generating a higher IRR but also speeding up the time to liquidity. At 9point8 Collective we have lots of conversations every day about venture building. Some people are completely unaware of the concept, many are resistant to the premise and need some convincing. Either way, it's our job to educate and advocate. How do we do it? Data helps. Reports like the one here are invaluable, as are our own case studies and testimonials. As evidence mounts in favor of studios, so does the interested audience. Narrative helps too -- walking people through the studio concept, mechanics, and operating model. Breaking things down into why and how they work, not just the data deems it to be so. Finally, the passion and the people make a difference. There's a growing community of venture builders who support each other, share best practices, and willingly collaborate. That develops critical mass which in turn attracts more and more participants into the fold.
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Andy Cloyd
Ibotta, Inc., a platform that helps CPG brands deliver promotions to millions of consumers went public today, and you probably didn't hear about it. My guess as to why? It hasn't raised money from any big-name VC firms with big marketing teams. Ibotta was started 12 years ago after Bryan Leach saw someone take a photo of a receipt for an expense report and realized there were tons of interesting data contained in that picture that was going to waste. Fast forward 13 years and Ibotta is a profitable, fast-growing business helping over 2,400 of the most notable brands like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, and Unilever. They touch over 91% of US households... Ibotta offers shoppers cash-back on in-store purchases funded by its advertisers, while also collecting all sorts of valuable data like cart makeup and much much more. They've paid out over $1.8B to consumers over the course of the company Quick 2023 Numbers: Revenue: $320M (+52%) Gross Margin: 86% (best in class despite not being traditional "SaaS") Net Income Margin: 12% (a quick turn around from a $50m loss in 2022) Adjusted EBIDTA Margin: 26% In 2022, they inked a MASSIVE partnership with Walmart that made up for a huge amount of 2023 growth via 3rd Party revenue. As a part of that deal, Walmart also owns a significant amount of the company There are some fun case studies in the S1 showing off some hot up-and-coming brands as well including poppi and Chomps. When you dig deeper, one of the more concerning parts of the business is the revenue concentration inside of Walmart, but with their significant ownership %, it's unlikely they go anywhere. Seed investors paid $0.74.share and it's going public at $88/share so that's a pretty good day at the office. Excited to see how this trades!
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Daniel Fetner
Here’s a question investors are often asked: When evaluating early stage companies, how much time do you spend on due diligence around future exits? It’s not surprising we hear this question a lot. Also not surprising: it’s got a wide range of answers depending on the firm. Some don’t spend much time here at all. Others make it a point to put meaningful time in as part of their process. Our current thinking: take the time to do the work on public market comps. At Alpaca VC, we spend significant time understanding how public market investors will realistically value a business based on margin profile, product, business model & TAM. In short, we want to know: how will this company be valued at scale when we get taken out? Yes, we can acknowledge that the journey toward exit is a windy road and that there may be pivots along the way, but there are still public market companies that have a business model similar to the early stage company you're evaluating. And you can always look at gross profit multiples if you think the margin profile will change over time. So we still do the work on the comps. Quantitative metrics we look at when making the comparison to public market comps include EBITDA multiple, revenue multiple, Gross Profit multiple or all of the above. As part of this process, it’s also important to factor in the public market company’s year-over-year revenue growth as this will also significantly impact the multiple it trades at. Simple example: if you have two public market companies with similar business models and similar margin profiles, but one's growing 100% year over year, and one's growing 50% year over year, then obviously the DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis is going to spit out a very different valuation for the one that's growing faster. Why this matters: When you take all of that information into account as you evaluate an early stage business, you can begin to create a realistic picture of how this company will be valued in the public markets at exit - or how an acquirer will value the company for an acquisition. Strategic acquirers may, of course, pay a premium, but we won’t underwrite for that. This allows us, for example, to form conviction around valuation based on revenue and gross profit predictions. If we think they can do $100M of revenue five years from now, we use this diligence process to form a thesis about whether the characteristics above (product, margin, business model, etc.) will cause the company to be valued at $200M vs. $500M vs. $1B at exit. Curious how other early stage investors think about underwriting an exit and how much time they’re spending on public market comps even though these companies are in their infancy.
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Garnet S. Heraman
Everybody needs a place to put their love. - Karina Dresses tagline, circa 2012 In 2012 I made my first investment in a #femalefounder who also happened to be 50+. At the time I had no idea how unusual these founder traits were. I just knew the founder was passionate, authentic, experienced, perfectly aligned with both the product and the market. Most importantly there was a strong emotional bond between the product and the customers who bought it. 🤷🏾♂️- it just seemed like the smart thing to do. Not a lot of my investor buddies agreed at the time- probably not so surprising. Fast forward 10+ years and the value of my investment is ~20x & the amount of free cash flow distributed to equity holders is substantial & still increasing YOY. My takeaways: ✅Invest in authenticity, passion and intimacy (customer)- no matter what the founder profile looks like relative to others. ✅Follow your gut. ✅Not every deal is venture scale worthy. But there’s a potential investor for every deal. ✅Be the best version of you, not a lame version of someone else. Works for both investors & founders. :) Congratulations to Karina and the team at Karina Dresses! Proud as punch to be on this journey with you all🚀
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Kareem Dabbagh
Cost-effective geothermal energy has the ability to fully transition and decarbonize our grids and industrial systems - in the near term! We believe the team and technology at XGS Energy will realize this vision and we couldn't be happier to be working with them on a geothermal-powered reality.
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Madeleine Goldberg
Deep dive on Sylvera 🌎 Extra relevant this week with news that Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce will contract up to 20M tons of high-quality 🌱nature-based🌱 carbon removal credits by 2030, equivalent in volume to the 2030 carbon removal goals of California. https://lnkd.in/dzaEmh53 Learn more about how Sylvera is helping enterprises and governments get on track to net zero below 👇 #Sylvera #CarbonRemoval #Symbiosis
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Ben Yoskovitz
In 2017 Maisie Devine Sherman reached out to me (Highline Beta was working with AB InBev previously through ZX Ventures) and said, "I want to build a new type of startup-corporate accelerator program, focused on sustainability, that actually works." (I'm paraphrasing). And that's exactly what we did. It was an awesome experience to help design, build and launch the first Cohort. Today, 100+ Accelerator is on Cohort 6, with additional partners including The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate, Unilever and now Danone. Startups: You have the opportunity to get in front of 5 of the biggest CPG companies on the planet, all committed to achieving key sustainability goals. You. Should. Apply. If you get accepted, you'll be delivering a paid pilot with 1 (or more) of the corporate partners. And the goal: prove a pilot and then SCALE. I've seen the program change the trajectory of startups. I've seen startups raise millions of dollars off the back of delivering value to these corporate partners. There are many success stories. Honestly, the 100+ Accelerator is one of the most amazing things I've ever had the privilege of working on. We continue to support 100+ and every cohort is insanely cool to be involved with. The effort, iteration, willingness to try things, and commitment to delivering value for everyone is epic. Startups: You should apply. Do it now. (link in the comments)
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Rayyan Islam
🚨 🚘 An exciting day here at 8090 Industries as we ‘roll out’ our latest investment in ENSO - 2023 Earthshot Prize Finalist, to revolutionize a stagnant industry undergoing the largest shift since its inception, with no solution in place, an aging workforce, lacking ingenuity and a business model out of touch with the dynamic needs of its customers - TIRES. World, meet Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, the industrialist pioneering a new dawn for the tire industry. But first, a quick history lesson: __________________________ In 1898, Franklin "Frank" Seiberling, jobless, with a wife and three children, borrowed $3,500 for a down payment from his brother-in-law, to purchase an old strawboard factory in Ohio, to open a rubber company. A science and history nut, he named it after Charles Goodyear, the pioneer of vulcanization, the main method of how rubber was produced. Over the next decade, they brought mechanization and technology to the cumbersome and time-consuming process of hand building tires — enabling one man to produce 60 tires in ten hours as opposed to five tires built by hand in a day. His Seiberling State machine revolutionized tire building and led to an explosion in tire production output. By 1907 - it caught the attention of Henry Ford who purchased 1,200 sets of tires for the Model T. And as they say, the rest is history. By 1913 - Over half the tires made in the U.S. were manufactured on Seiberling’s machines. By 1916 - The The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company became the largest tire producer in the world. _____________________ Today much has changed. @Goodyear is no longer the largest tire producer and tire manufacturers no longer own the direct relationship to fleets. That capitalistic, swashbuckling energy and entrepreneurial spirit that built Goodyear and pioneered the tire industry is in short supply, just when it needs it most as a global transition towards EVs compels the greatest growth opportunity for the tire industry in over a century. Led by Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, Enso produces tires perfectly fit for a world increasing run on EVs - that are tailored to endure the heavy weight and torque, last longer, cheaper and increase range by more than 10% today while bringing circularity to the supply chain and data through owning the direct relationship with fleets. Don’t just take our word for it, some of the largest fleets in the world from Amazon to city cab fleets in Europe are already running on Enso tires and this is just the beginning. 👀 Stay tuned. Much to come! cc Kerem Ozmen Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Garuth A. Andrew Irwin #climatetech #decarbonization
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Liz Walsh
Can poop save the planet? 🤔 Well, in Silicon Valley, it's not just a punchline—it's a multimillion-dollar climate solution. Big players are teaming up with startup Vaulted Deep, paying $58.3 million, to pump organic waste underground. The deal was brokered by Frontier Climate, a coalition launched in 2022 by Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability. But why are tech giants getting their hands dirty with sewage and manure? Vaulted Deep's technology, rooted in decades-old methods used for oil and gas fracking cleanup, gives them an edge. But instead of sludge, they're tackling carbon-rich waste, aiming to sequester CO2 underground. They plan to sequester 152,480 tons of carbon dioxide by 2027 as part of the deal (That equates to 36,000 gas cars off the road for a year). Is this greenwashing, or a silver bullet? Critics warn of cost, the need for rigorous carbon accounting, and potential environmental trade-offs - i.e. emission prevention versus carbon removal. #decarbonization
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Alexandra Piedrahita
Very rarely in venture, magic 🪄 happens and you realize in the first meeting that you've found founders and a company that you absolutely want to back. When I met Sam Atkinson and Zach Bailet last summer, I had just this feeling. We live in a globalized world 🌎 and country borders don't factor in our shopping 🛍️ decisions. We don't think twice about ordering products from overseas, and we expect seamless checkout, shipping, and returns experiences 🔁from our our merchants whether domestic or international. You'd think cross-border logistics and returns management were solved for merchants in today's globalized world? As I continued to spend time with Sam and Zach and spoke to more and more merchants on their logistics stacks, I found just the opposite to be true. Returns and cross-border logistics are still extremely messy, inefficient, and expensive for merchants to handle. Enter, Swap. THEN, the real magic happened - when as a VC you introduce a potential customer to help you DD a product, and they not only provide glowing reviews, but end up signing with the company before you get to IC 😀 Win-win-win. Hill House Home We at QED Investors couldn't be happier to lead the Series A for Swap, and get to support Sam, Zach and the entire epic Swap team on their mission to build a hub for a merchants logistics stack. They've started with the two hardest problems to crack - returns and cross-border - but have already launched insurance, recycling... just wait till you see their product roadmap 🤤 So excited to partner with some of our favourite investors on this journey - Cherry Ventures & 9900 - as well as ecommerce insiders such as Ed Hallen of Klaviyo and 2100 Ventures from the Benetton Group family. Watch this space 😀 Nigel Morris Frank Rotman Bill Cilluffo Ashley Marshall Yusuf Ozdalga Victoria Zuo Dinika Mahtani Chris Corbishley Cian Wright Juan Pellerano-Rendón Martine K. Rory Sweeney
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Jeremy Utley
What do you do when a radical new technology puts your main product right in the crosshairs of disruption? Listen to David Okuniev — co-founder of Typeform | Ask awesomely — discuss the challenges of innovation within existing structures. David shared a game-changing insight: Radical innovation is really, really difficult to do inside your own product. He emphasized the need to break free from the constraints of familiarity and embrace change from outside the box. Henrik Werdelin and I have both seen our fair share of this in our respective careers. What struck us most was how David leveraged structure to overcome the innovator’s dilemma. By creating a culture of experimentation and providing space for bold ideas, he propelled Typeform beyond incremental improvements. What other hacks have you seen or employed to help your organization overcome the innovator’s dilemma? Share your stories below! 👇 And if you want to dive deeper into our conversation, click the link in the comments to catch the full podcast episode!
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Andrew Park
These extremely insightful interviews were based on an already eye-opening session led by Alexandra and Stefan at last year's DevGuild: AI Summit event. #ML is an exciting and very of-the-moment discipline, but to those of us without a PhD in it, it may seem like a non-deterministic black box that's just too risky to be reliable. The recommendations shared in this article: - Aligning around #metrics everyone can agree on (including the eventual need to ship something) - Investing in #eval, and - Driving cultural alignment Seem like things that teams can start doing today. I expect we'll see even more important #AL, ML, and #software #dev topics covered at next week's DevGuild: AI Summit II in San Francisco. If topics like this are of interest to you, please consider registering: https://lnkd.in/gzxq5M9n
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Chang (CK) Kim
Starting a new fun project with Victor Lee - an AMA series with early stage founders. There are many podcast shows featuring successful, famous entrepreneurs. But what about those who are still relatively early in their journey, perhaps just one step ahead? The zero-to-one founders who have recently cracked the product-market fit and raised Seed or Series A capital. They may not have figured out everything yet, but they have fresh, relatable tips and advice to share. We’ll invite early-stage founders for a one-hour AMA session. Afterwards, we’ll create a public webpage featuring each Q&A session with media clips and transcriptions. This will be 100% free and open to the public. Our first AMA (June 11 1pm PST) will feature Will Drewery, whose company (Diagon) recently raised $5.1 million in Seed funding. We’ll get to know Will better and cover topics such as tips on raising funding in this tough environment. It will be a fun AMA, and you can register for free using the link below. RSVP now!
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Marc Cohen
My first ever Waymo, courtesy of a fund I met. I rarely make such a bad impression that they'll pay to get rid of me. Full marks for creativity! I love tech so much - this is one of the highlights of my San Francisco trip. #founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic More at unbundled dot vc.
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