Alex Domin

To all #climatetech #founders and #funders in NYC and beyond, please join us on June 5th for an evening of #breakthrough #decarbonization #innovation at the ReGen Accelerator #DemoDay! 🎉 Get ready to be inspired by our cohort of #earlystage startups: ​ ▶ aich2 is engineering a novel #hydrogen ecosystem, built around Solid Hydrogen carriers. ​​ ▶ carbogenics produces sustainable #carbon adsorbents from difficult-to-recycle organic waste, including coffee cups and wastewater screenings ​​ ▶ TeamStack.ai is driving better performance by harnessing #AI, data, & the collective intelligence of teams. ​ ▶ Tesleon LLC uses compelling characters and #storytelling to instill compassion for communities and our planet in the next generation. ​ ▶ Tolam Earth is a trusted #marketplace for high-quality, high-impact carbon offsets. Don't miss out! Secure your spot below. Big thank you to Brown Rudnick LLP for hosting this event, our partners at ClimateHaven for their hard work and dedication during the entire program, and to our incredible network of #mentors and #facilitators, each of whom have dedicated time to working with these incredible founders this spring, including Jason Ambrose, Marina Rakhlin, Lauren Zujkowski, Stuart DeCew, Matt Puccini Andy Rooks, Nina Raab, and Bill Stephney. And of course Shai Tamary, Lars Korby and Sarah Cleveland, without whom we would not be able run such a #program. #innovation #sustainability #climateaction #accelerator

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Participating in Active Membranes seed round may be one of the most impactful investments Echo River Capital will ever do. The potential to provide more fresh drinking water, to more people, in more places, has never been more crucial. Thanks Arian Edalat and Eric M.V. Hoek, Ph.D. for pursuing this innovation.

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#CarbonBlue Climate-tech startup CarbonBlue announced that it has raised $10 million in a seed funding round, with proceeds to be used to scale up and deploy its water-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technology. Founded in 2022 in Israel, CarbonBlue provides technology to turn any water-based infrastructure into a CDR facility by removing CO2 from water, enabling it to absorb more from the atmosphere. The company’s solution takes water containing dissolved atmospheric CO2 and pumps it into a reactor which extracts the CO2, mineralizing it into solid limestone. Then, using heat, a second reactor removes CO2 from the limestone. The stream of pure, removed CO2 is then used as an industrial feedstock, or sequestered in geologic formation granting a tradable carbon credit by the ton, while the low-CO2 water is returned to its source, for the removal of CO2 from the environment. https://lnkd.in/gnGthxxP

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With thanks to Private Equity International for this month’s deep dive on how #GPStakes helps to finance and drive best in class development in our industry

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A SAFE and convertible note had a baby and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was the midwife- out popped the D-SAFE! 👶🏽🎉 A new #climatetech funding instrument was announced by Elemental Excelerator last week. One of the company’s main goals is to support smaller, up and coming companies during the awkward “Scale Gap” phase between #VC funding and natural growth. It’s called the #DSAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and it aims to aid the process by giving companies a small amount of cash to overcome initial risks and expenses during the developmental stages of a product launch or company. How does it work? D-SAFE has a redemption clause meaning companies can choose to have their payments offered as a loan or convert to equity at the investor’s discretion. Funders and companies will have clear communication and expectations about where the money is going and how it will be applied to either the company or the projects at hand. Financiers and companies will work together with more #transparency, and that’s a great boon for #startups and VC alike. As of this month, Elemental has already invested using D-SAFE in eight different companies, including Dimensional Energy and Origen — both companies investing in innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to environmental issues! Seems like a win-win on the surface. What do you all think about the D-SAFE? Alfredo Coppola Momoka Ueda Tim Wagner Stephen D. Torres Olya Irzak Natsuho Toyama Noriya Tarutani Shin Ogawa

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🔬 The transition towards biomanufacturing, and the move away from traditional, energy-intensive processes in industry is creating unprecedented opportunities for start-ups. Understanding the investor's perspective in this space can help founders prepare more effectively for their fundraise. Investment Manager, Dr Marina Fuentes, details the most critical aspects Mercia Ventures and other investors look for at the Series A stage. Read more ⏬ #BioManufacturing #Blog #Investor #VentureCapital #Investment #SeriesA #Founders #Opportunity #Learning

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#ProjectForABillion Today, in our regular column, I want to talk about the Cariloop project, which raised $20 million in a Series C round this spring. The lead investor was ABS Capital, which is also known for its investments in PowerReviews (recently exited) and LabConnect. But let's get back to the project in the Mental Health category. By the way, if psychologists ever asked me how to get rich and build a capitalized business, I would recommend working in their specialty and creating projects for corporations in the psychological and mental health category. In 2023, $435.2 billion was directed to this industry (this includes all project investments, not just venture capital). While there are still some managers in Russia (and elsewhere) who don't believe that a depressed employee who sleeps poorly, is torn between caring for children, and walks on the parapet at night is unlikely to create high results and a sustainable team, managers of almost all large corporations around the world are paying just as much attention to mental health as to physical health. Maybe these naive people are indeed investing half a trillion dollars so that employees can more efficiently scold their parents and school teachers? I've heard that silly version too. Cariloop is a platform where each employee is assigned a Care Coach with whom they can share or, in light cases, delegate the search for solutions to problems (although the platform indicates various types of problems, medical issues are most often mentioned in examples) not only for the user but also for their family members: children or even parents. A Care Coach can help navigate the healthcare system, provide educational support (about diseases, care methods), emotional support, and, if needed, legal or financial assistance. Special emphasis is placed on the fact that health coaches interact with each other and exchange information (how they do this without violating confidentiality, I will clarify later). I will not dwell in detail on the business efficiency claimed by the startup. It is clear that there are very beautiful infographics and analytics on the website about how much employee efficiency and, consequently, business efficiency improve when interacting with such a service solution. Check it if you want. I am skeptical about trying to measure the impact of employees' psychological health on business in numbers. However, evaluating the results of a business managed by psychologically unhealthy employees in numbers is much easier. We can start from there. *This is not an investment recommendation. **This is not a project the author has invested in (yep, it's required now). ***This is not a project I've been studying in detail for 10 years; it's just my subjective assessment of one of the most interesting projects that raised a round in the reporting period.

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Key Investment Highlights from The Seraphim Space Index Q2 2024 🌌 Let's take a closer look at the key highlights from the latest quarter: 💰 $8.5bn invested in TTM to Q2 2024 👩‍💻 174 deals in Q2 2024 🛰 $2.4bn invested in Q2 2024 🤝 385 deals in Q2 2024 compared to 320 in Q1 2024 🚀 Space Pioneer closed the biggest deal of $208m in Q2 2024 💲 Average deal size is $18m ◾ Median deal size is $5m in Q2 2024 Check out the full Index here - https://lnkd.in/d-vf-mVN

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Stop this removal-only obsession in the carbon markets. What kind of hare-brained approach is that? We need avoidance even more than we need removals. This article reminds me of the analogy I made a few months ago about a sinking boat. No amount of bailing water with buckets will save you if the hole in the hull is getting bigger. Remember, if deforestation was a country, it would be the world's third largest emitter. And no, you cannot just demand/legislate that poor rural people stop deforesting without providing alternative income. That is why forest carbon exists. It takes some form of totalitarian mindset (and/or total lack of understanding of rural economies)to think one can just ban things they do not like. https://lnkd.in/eCddBRwt

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After $400M of capital invested and 30 portfolio companies in health and pharma tech, we are excited to publish our SignalFire health and pharma tech sector thesis, 2024 edition and beyond! 👊 Here are 5 major trends that we're focused on 📈 If you are a founder building in any of these categories below, we'd love to hear from you! 1) Explosion of healthcare data creates both opportunities & risks in the GPT-4 era 2) PharmaTech is accelerating R&D, manufacturing & distribution to tackle inefficiencies 3) The labor shortage crisis and the need for AI to improve productivity 4) Aging population and the shift to hybrid, value-based care models in patients’ homes  5) Scaling access to lifesaving therapeutic breakthroughs: GLP-1s & CGTs Grateful to work closely with an incredible team focused on this sector including our legendary Eric Larsen, and partners in crime Sooah Cho, Tony Pezzullo, Sahir Raoof, Adele English 🙏 What gets me up every morning is our incredible portfolio, each of which making their own dent in our healthcare system for the better — Grow Therapy, Color, Ro, CodaMetrix, Health Gorilla, Verse, Wellth, PayZen, Recora, all.health, Bicycle Health, Form Health, Health Note, Osso VR, Praia Health, Freshpaint, Auxilius, Ovation, OrthoFX, Moxie and many others coming out of stealth soon 🚀 #healthtech #pharmatech #sectorthesis #innovation https://lnkd.in/gDE3nQqK

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Mergers and acquisitions are currently outperforming last year's figures, with activity levels tracking 10 per cent to 15 per cent higher. This improvement is evident both in the overall number of deals being completed and in the total value of these transactions. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/eHaAXw5G. Branded Hospitality Ventures Hospitality Headline Newsletter #MandA #Mergers #Acquisitions #finance Matthew Lerner Michael Schatzberg Noah Stern Dylan Challenger

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#orion #Sweetwater_Royalties Orion Resource Partners, a global investment firm specialising in metals and materials, has sold an 8% minority interest in Sweetwater Royalties, a private industrial minerals royalty company, to a Canadian pension fund for $100m. The transaction implies an approximately $1.9bn enterprise value for 100% of Sweetwater Royalties, with Orion retaining a 67% majority ownership share in the asset, having sold a 25% stake to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in March 2023 for approximately $220m. https://lnkd.in/gkKMP3Tr

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“About every ten years we face some financial crisis or reckoning, during which around 20% of the GPs fail to re-raise another fund” per Bain & Co’s private equity practice. Investors are growing restless, and the increasing pressure to return their capital is creating a critical juncture for many general partners. Distributions, the return of capital to investors, are at their lowest in over a decade. Early data for 2024 suggests a bleak outlook, with the year on track to be the second-worst for exit value since 2016. Private equity's business model depends on a continuous cycle: raising money to make acquisitions, exiting via sales or initial public offerings, and then returning capital to investors. When one part of this cycle stalls, it risks disrupting the entire system. This situation is putting a strain on pension funds, endowments, and other investors, known as limited partners. Cash-strapped, these investors are hesitant to commit to future funds without seeing current returns. And at the SuperReturn conference more general partners attended than limited partners! #privateequity #privatecapital #privatemarkets #pe #vc #growthequity #institutionalinvestor #liquidity #sponsor #limitedpartner #generalpartner #superreturn #distribution #m&a #realization

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What questions are we asking when we look at new pre-seed climate investments? This was the answer from the LLM trained on our last 26 weeks of partner meetings. Some bits are unsurprising, like team questions or moats. But we spend A LOT of time trying to understand if there are real customers, which routinely leads us to unpack potential unit economics. Here's the complete response - Ability to generate both compelling financial returns and climate impact + If successful, can this company deliver a large enough exit to return the fund? + Does the environmental impact story go beyond just marketing greenwashing? + How do the actual carbon and pollution reduction numbers pencil out? Market size and growth potential + Is the total addressable market large enough to support a venture-scale outcome? + How quickly is the market growing and evolving? Strength of the founding team + Do the founders have relevant industry experience and strong entrepreneurial qualities? + Can they attract top talent, communicate their vision, and execute well? + Are they coachable and do they take feedback well? Competitive differentiation and defensibility + How is this company different from incumbents and other startups in the space? + Do they have a unique technology, business model, or go-to-market strategy? + Is their competitive advantage sustainable or could it be easily replicated? Technical and execution risk + How complex is the underlying technology and how much development risk remains? + Can the team actually build what they are pitching and scale it commercially? + What external dependencies or bottlenecks could impede their progress? Pathway to profitability and attractive unit economics + How will the company make money and are the unit economics attractive at scale? + How much capital is required to get to profitability and a successful exit? + Is this just a service business masquerading as a tech company? Customer validation and ability to sell the product + Who exactly is the target customer and what evidence is there of product-market fit? + Can they actually close enterprise sales deals or get consumers to adopt the product? + How long are customer sales cycles and how lumpy is the revenue? Overinflated valuation and round dynamics + Is the valuation reasonable given the company's stage, traction, and market? + How competitive is the round? + Is there a risk of a down round if they raise too high of a valuation too soon?

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🌟 Interesting yet unsurprising findings from the latest VC performance report: 📈 Established European venture capital funds (fund 5+) are delivering 2x the IRR of New (fund 1-2) and Developing (3-4) funds. 🌍 European VC funds consistently outperform their US counterparts, underscoring Europe's strength in the global investment landscape. Read the article at sifted https://lnkd.in/eZYF4THT

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"But despite these important omissions, Han Feizi does make four interesting arguments about the positive effects of China-style industrial subsidies. Roughly, these claims are: --Subsidizing production improves consumer welfare by creating abundance --Subsidizing market entry improves consumer welfare by increasing competition --Industrial subsidies correct various negative externalities --Industrial subsidies accelerate innovation The first of these ideas is just wrong, but it’s useful to explain why it’s wrong. The third one is true for a relatively narrow range of goods. Argument #2 is a little bit interesting, and argument #4 is very interesting. So let’s go through these ideas." https://lnkd.in/giYpwp-w

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Last month, Uncork Capital celebrated its 20th anniversary with a jubilant gathering attended by 420 guests, marking two decades of success in the venture capital realm. Over the years, the firm, alongside industry peers like First Round Capital and Felicis, has witnessed remarkable growth, now managing billions of dollars in assets. This expansion reflects the flourishing landscape of venture capital, with the industry experiencing exponential growth in investment. Moreover, positive shifts in VC norms, such as the evolving attitudes towards board seats, underscore a commitment to providing tailored support to startups, enhancing their growth prospects. Amidst discussions surrounding sectors like AI, optimism prevails, emphasizing a steadfast dedication to investing in innovative ventures with lasting impact. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/efN6-Spd Branded Hospitality Ventures Jeff Clavier Susan Liu Ashley Cravens Tripp Jones Sarah Du Andy McLoughlin Amy Saper #innovation #technology #management #venturecapital #startup

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For anyone working in VC, I highly recommend taking a look at the Progress Map from Fifty Years. The map calculates a 'Competition Ratio' representing a market segment's relative level of saturation. This ratio is calculated by dividing a sector's TAM by the dollars invested in Series A startups from that sector over the last 10 years. In doing so, 50Y not only sheds light on the markets where there is outsized opportunity for disruption, but also the areas where outperformance is likely to be more challenged and the resulting impact on innovation & the economy comparatively small. Interestingly, what can be seen is that traditional software verticals like SaaS and CRM are among the most over concentrated markets, while industrial manufacturing segments like petrochem and paper are the most ripe for change. What's fascinating to me is that we as VCs are often focused on fostering growth within the same few areas. That's not to say that investing in software isn't critical. It certainly has streamlined how enterprises operate and changed how enterprises and customers interact. It also provides a certain scalability to VCs that make it attractive from a potential returns perspective. On the flip side, hard technologies and manufacturing processes are extremely hard to build, have much longer timelines to achieve revenue traction, and face stiff competition from legacy incumbents. But this makes me think that perhaps these areas are the most worth venturing into if progress is our ultimate objective. We are fortunate at Harpoon to be partners with companies like Solugen that are proving this day in and day out. They have fundamentally revolutionized the chemicals industry by proving that a traditionally carbon intensive industry can be decarbonized in a price competitive way. I hope we continue to see change and investment in every industry, but I think VCs should also not shy away from the challenge of investing in those technologies where rapid revenue expansion is not immediate.

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Last week Peak Energy announced its $55M oversubscribed series A, which Xora Innovation led, joined by lead seed investor Eclipse (Greg Reichow, Ryan Gibson), as well as TDK Ventures (Anil Achyuta), TechEnergy Ventures (Alejandro Solé), Doral Energy-Tech Ventures (Roee Furman), Lachy Groom, and Tishman Speyer (David Aron). Special thanks to 🌱🤝🌍 Anil Achyuta for the original introduction.   Peak is commercializing a new standard in grid-scale energy storage systems based on sodium-ion batteries. Peak’s market is benefiting from the twin tailwinds of renewables and AI, and the company has just the right founding team to scale at "ludicrous speed".   Landon Mossburg, Co-Founder and CEO, is one of the most phenomenal team builders we have had the privilege of backing. He brings deep experience in building battery gigafactories from his prior role as Chief Automation Officer of Northvolt, where he didn’t shy away from sleeping on factory floors for months in Northern Europe.   We have a special place in our hearts for entrepreneurs who have the grit to spend 10 years+ building deep tech startups from the foundational stage to commercialization. Cameron Dales, Co-Founder, President and Chief Commercial Officer, has done it not only once, but twice, at Symyx Technologies and Enovix (current market cap $2.65B).   Liam O'Connor O’Connor, Co-Founder and COO, previously scaled major portions of Tesla’s and Apple’s supply chains, flying over 500,000 miles a year when required. Liam has a deep understanding of what it takes to build resilient supply chains in hypergrowth mode, having previously scaled from <$5B to $40B in spend over a matter of a few years.   The climate tech sector is in need of more entrepreneurs who truly understand what building on a massive industrial scale means. We couldn’t be more excited that Landon, Cam and Liam have decided to apply their talents to enabling grid-scale energy storage.

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