Craig Montuori

NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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⚡ Massachusetts is paving the way for breakthrough technologies in the climate and energy sector! A quick pitchbook search reveals that in 2024, Massachusetts based companies raised almost 30% of all VC dollars in climatetech/cleantech in the US, outperforming any other US state. The Commonwealth aims to invest $1.3B to cement Massachusetts’ position as the leading climate innovation lab for the world. The administration is right to stress that - next to addressing our greatest global challenge – this will catalyze $16.3B of economic benefits and create 6670 jobs: https://lnkd.in/eB3Vx72K The initiative lists ‘ecosystem builders’ as a key part of Massachusetts’ secret sauce, and I couldn’t agree more. There are so many organizations dedicated to convening and strengthening this ecosystem, collaboratively and across disciplines. Many supported the initiative, which is part of the Mass Leads Act, through this coordinated effort: https://lnkd.in/ePeHduib I'm also impressed by MIT's dedication to this cause, most recently emphasized by the launch of its climate project, an ambitious plan to research, develop, deploy, and scale up solutions to help change the planet’s climate trajectory: https://lnkd.in/eABAJqic 👀 I’m curious how much of the investments in Massachusetts based companies could be categorized as deeptech, as I suspect it’s a high percentage compared to other regions! 

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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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Super helpful article and accompanying doc with a #Startup #Equity Calculator to determine the equity for early hires, thanks to Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum! Thanks for sharing Pejman Nozad! 🙏🏼 You can read more here How to structure startup equity for early hires: https://lnkd.in/ggmpT5-Y Google Doc: https://lnkd.in/gjsvths6

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Climate tech startups raised $8.1 billion in the first quarter, near record amounts of money that suggest 2023’s quiet close might have been more of a blip than the sign of a protracted downturn. A deeper look into the $8.1 billion raised in the first quarter shows that investors focused their attention on materials, including green steel and battery materials and minerals. #climatetech #climateVC #climate

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We took the pulse of emerging fund managers about what it's been like for them during these post-ZERP, venture-capital-winter years. #venturecapital #veteranventures

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Goodbye, 2TWELVE90 😉 We’re renaming to Highway Ventures. Yes, you read that right! Our mission is to give federal technology a consistent path to commercialization. 2TWELVE90 brought this to life. While we stay rooted in this mission, our ambitions have only grown. For this, we need a name that is memorable, inspiring and speaks to our vision. Recently, it has become clear that 2TWELVE90 is not that. Here’s an insight into some of the remarks we received: “2TWELVE90, is that your date of birth?” “2TWELVE90, is that written in words or numbers” “How is 2NINE12 going?” All of this was a clear sign – the time for a change was now. So, why Highway Ventures? Imagine a highway: it's expansive, it's forward-moving, and it's full of possibilities. That's exactly what we envision for our next phase. As we say goodbye to 2TWELVE90, we're buzzing with excitement for what's ahead. Some updates coming soon, follow our page to stay up to date! HIGHWAY Ventures (Formerly 2TWELVE90)

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Next week is NY Tech Week, and on Wednesday, I'll be co-hosting TechWalk at 2 PM in Central Park. More details here: https://lnkd.in/eFey-aBd I look forward to connecting and chatting about the dynamic world of early-stage startup investing, go-to-market strategies, and the venture capital ecosystem. As a Venture Fellow at Fordham Angel Fund (FAF), I bring hands-on experience evaluating startups, conducting market analysis, and developing go-to-market strategies. Let's discuss founder due diligence, growth hacking techniques, and the nuances of crafting effective term sheets. I'm also passionate about discussing programs like Vencapital and Venture Cooperative that support minorities and women breaking into VC. Additionally, I'd love to share insights on content creation and storytelling from my experience hosting a YouTube podcast. If you're interested in personal branding, networking, or leveraging LinkedIn for career growth, let's connect! Join me for a walk and chat about the global business landscape, embracing diversity, and adapting to new environments. See you there! #NYTechWeek #TechWalk #Startups #VentureCapital #ContentCreation #PersonalBranding #Networking #GlobalBusiness #DiversityInVC

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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The case for emerging managers: “What we don’t want to do is lock ourselves out of these high-performing, differentiated strategies for the simplicity of going with the big guys”, Taffi Ayodele director of the emerging manager strategy at the NYC Office of the Comptroller #investmentstrategies #investmentreturns #roi #assetallocation #emergingmanagers #riskreward #premium #performance

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NY Tech Week has been exhilarating, dynamic, diverse, and inspiring! So many organic connections were made between investors, founders, and rising change-makers, and we learned so much about the current landscape and the future of innovation. The Fourth Effect, in partnership with EisnerAmper, hosted a vibrant panel discussion "Let's Talk About Boards" at Savills with uplifting expert speakers Mina E. Black and Caroline McCaffery. The Fourth Effect founders Breen Sullivan and Katrin de Haën are on a mission to empower female & minority executives to advise on governance boards and contribute their wealth of knowledge to the world by connecting them with startups seeking to establish boards and scale. So many founders in particular attended this event, and from the lively discussion afterwards, it's clear we all walked away thinking a whole lot more about the importance of proactivity, diversity & inclusion, and expertise when establishing company boards. AcceleratorCON, New York City Economic Development Corporation, and Civic Hall co-hosted the panel "Reimagining Accelerators for Tomorrow's Startups." Especial focus was given to tailoring accelerator programming to the startup cohort's unique skills and needs, peer-to-peer learning, intentional considerations to engage diverse founders, industry-agnostic accelerators, follow-on support and investor networks, as well as the rise of pre-accelerator accelerators. So much great info was shared at this event! My friends at Kaplak Ventures hosted a climate tech demo night at Brown Rudnick LLP on Times Square, where we heard enthusiastic pitch presentations from a diverse cohort of startups, from deep tech to arts-based solutions, including aich2, carbogenics, TeamStack.ai, Tesleon LLC, and Tolam Earth. Copenhagen-based Kaplak Ventures just partnered with New Haven-based climate incubator ClimateHaven to host the 3-month ReGen Accelerator program for seed-stage startups addressing the climate issues of today. I was especially touched by Kaplak's "Dreams & Details" model of leadership coaching and presentation, and am continually inspired by all the great work happening in the climate innovation ecosystem from Boston to New Haven to NYC. #NYTechWeek #NYC #NewHaven #Innovation #InnovationEcosystem #Startup #VentureCapital #Boards #Advisors #Accelerators #Climate #ClimateTech #TechWeek

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Today marks a groundbreaking moment for BLCK VC and our fellow collaborators—Diversity VC, All Raise, 2Gether-International, SomosVC, StartOut, and VetsinTech—as we proudly announce the launch of the Diversity Data Alliance. This important alliance underscores our unwavering commitment to nurturing a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem abundant in equity and inclusiveness. By standardizing and linking our data, we empower ourselves with the essential tools to track deeper trends that have, until now, eluded us to identify and fill funding gaps for historically excluded investors, founders, and operators. We can’t change what we do not measure, and now with the Diversity Data Alliance, we're now equipped to do both. Join us in this mission. Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/eEZKdrac #DiversityDataAlliance #BLCKVC #VentureCapital #MeasureToChange

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For NY Tech Week we'll be demo-ing Substrate at the South Park Commons Science Faire on Thursday: https://lnkd.in/e5JwDKKX There are so many incubator-shaped things out there these days, but there's nothing quite like SPC. It's like a chill, small-batch, locally-sourced alternative to YC, where you can either hang out as a member forever - or choose the VC-funded adventure. The -1 to 0 phase [0] they talk about at SPC is real, and it made a real difference for us to have a home at SPC. It takes a lot to quit your job and do something new, especially when it isn't entirely clear what you're doing. (1) Do it – take the leap! and (2) consider joining SPC. Though the core vision has remained the same, many of the important turns in our squiggle at Substrate (including the graph framework) came from those early days at SPC. If you're here for tech week and can't catch us at SPC on Thursday, DM me if you want to meet up! [0] https://lnkd.in/e6KEMr9V

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DC area ranks as the 12th best #startup ecosystem globally. Highlights from this new report ranking global startup regions. You'd be surprised at DC's standings.

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Summary: Harlem Capital, a venture capital firm focused on backing diverse founders, is raising its largest fund to date of $150 million. This would be its third fund and is a testament to the industry's continued support for diverse communities. Key takeaways: Harlem Capital was founded in 2015 with the goal of supporting diverse founders. The firm has $174 million in assets under management and has made investments in over 80 companies. The successful raising of the $150 million fund would be a show of success for both Harlem Capital and the industry's continued focus on diversity and inclusion. #venturecapital #vc #venture #diversity #dei

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Wilmington North Carolina USA is #1 Startup Ecosystem in the WORLD for small cities under 300,000 people #2 in North Carolina behind an ecosystem that is 40 years old #22 in the USA no matter what size population #61 in the WORLD and the fastest climb up the rankings by moving up 32 spots  in StartupBlink #WilmingtonNC #startup #entrepreneur #investor #NorthCarolina

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First day of NY #TechWeek has been a blast. I’m also so excited that Next Big Thing was included in the NY Guide for Climate Tech Founders, created by NYCEDC, Vita Vera Ventures, Streetlife Ventures, Segal Ventures LP, and SOSV / IndieBio, and launched at this morning’s breakfast for climate tech founders. We collectively (and urgently) need to move faster on climate issues. The guide was created to help climate tech founders navigate NY’s rich ecosystem and find the support they need to build and grow their companies faster and more successfully for people, the planet, and business. If you’re in NY and trying to solve for the climate crisis, please grab this guide and share it widely!

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We need more GovTech funds backing innovative ideas to help democracy get back on track worldwide. Technology will fail unless the systems that govern it succeed. We need a lot of innovation in our political systems: better communities, better advocacy, smarter policy development, fairer elections, and the list goes on. Many of political problems can be solved or improved by technology. GovTech has been largely overlooked by investment, and look at the results. Now is an inspiring time for positive change. We can fund innovations that will make politics better for everyone. Let’s do it.

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