Irving Fain

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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As Bruce Blosil from Delmosa wisely said: The benchmark for quality among n/a beverages --promoted by endlessly repetitive and narrowly focused media articles, awards contests, and the opinion of drinkers -- continues to be how close they are to the "real thing". But a large segment of the population is not and never has been looking for the "real thing". They do not consume alcohol. They are not searching for an analogue to alcohol. They have been non-drinkers before non-drinking was cool, and the taste of n/a beer, wines and spirits are foreign and unappealing. It is time that we stop judging n/a beverages primarily through the taste lens of those who enjoy alcohol and start promoting the wonderful, analogue-busting categories of n/a bevs -- such as Muri and others -- to a wider audience whose appreciation for what is delicious and sophisticated is not defined by its association with alcohol.

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A good dataroom makes a great impression, but is not that obvious what that looks like and what consumer VCs are looking for! Having gone through hundreds of these at dmg ventures and seen the good, the bad and the ugly we want to help entrepreneurs putting their best foot forward. So Taos Edmondson, CFA wrote a great piece on how B2C founders can build data rooms that investors will love. Have a read!

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Amongst the most successful VCs in consumer in the past decade has been Kirsten Green at Forerunner So I asked her all about how startups can navigate the 70% reduction in consumer investing & why now might be the best time for VCs to look harder at the category. I loved this discussion. I always learn something from Kirsten. Click below to watch / listen https://lnkd.in/g3kiMPD5

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Fellow CPG founders: Any suggestions on lenders that you have enjoyed working with? Wake Up Water is entirely ecommerce at this time so we don’t have your typical accounts receivable, which makes it more tricky for lenders I’ve spoken to a bunch - there’s all types of models they come up with I’d like to avoid any cash advances where we pay back a percentage of sales (these end up being a crazy high APR) Any suggestions on quality lenders would be greatly appreciated! #funding #lenders #financing

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Despite the headwinds many software companies (even public ones) are facing today, there are still those that are delivering great results. Check out how the top decile companies in our Beyond Benchmarks survey are performing. And don't forget to review the full report for many more insights on the state of private software businesses.

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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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“We have always been inspired by the realization that hunger isn't a scarcity problem, so we've built our entire platform around solving the logistical challenges associated with food redistribution. By addressing these hurdles head-on, we aim to improve the broader problem of hunger and food waste more effectively.” – Kimberly Trouville Smith, CEO of Copia With a swelling global population and a food system that's already over-taxing water, land, and energy resources, it's imperative to tackle hunger and food insecurity sustainably. However, mere food production escalation isn’t the answer. Shockingly, nearly one-third of all food produced worldwide goes to waste – and it comes at a massive environmental and social cost. In the United States alone, the EPA estimates that food waste generates a staggering 170 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent GHG emissions annually—equivalent to the combined yearly CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.   Companies like Copia are leading the charge in this area and connecting the dots, leveraging its innovative platform to redistribute surplus food to those in need. They recognize that curbing waste isn't just about addressing food insecurity; it's about catalyzing decarbonization, easing strain on natural resources, and bolstering bottom lines.

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Campbell's Soup reported better-than-expected quarterly results and raised its annual sales growth forecast, attributing the improvement to increased demand for soups and frozen meals and the acquisition of Sovos Brands, known for Rao's Specialty Foods, Inc. sauce. After a period of decline, Campbell's sales volumes improved sequentially this year, aided by softer price increases and recovering consumer spending. CEO Mark Clouse highlighted gains in the cooking side of the portfolio. With the acquisition of Sovos, Campbell anticipates a 3-4% annual sales growth. Analysts view the acquisition positively for Campbell's growth prospects. Despite a rise in quarterly profit and sales, Campbell adjusted its annual organic sales and profit forecasts downward due to ongoing challenges in its snacks business. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/exuaeKVG Branded Hospitality Ventures #innovation #hospitality #technology #marketing #venturecapital Gerald Drummond Robert Furbee Charles Nevin Mike Pierson Dan Poland Carrie Anderson Chris Foley Stewart Lindsay Danielle Brown

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🔥 Thrilled to see Hydrolix crushing it with a $35M Series B! 🔥 Data is the new oil, but too much gets discarded due to prohibitive storage costs. Hydrolix cracks this with its streaming #datalake platform that leverages object storage, decoupled compute, indexing, & compression. As Marty Kagan puts it: 'We’re cheaper than cold storage and faster than hot storage' Hydrolix’s streaming data lake platform is a game-changer for #AI, #observability, & #security workloads. 💥 Real-time query performance at terabyte scale 💰75%+ savings on log mgmt & 4x more data retained  ☁️ Stateless & containerized for seamless scaling with Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3, Google Cloud GCS, Microsoft Azure Blob 💡 Had the early conviction (first investor) that data is key to unlocking AI & enterprise workloads. It's proving right. Huge thanks to Marty Kagan Hasan Alayli for letting me early on their journey to build an impessive company 🙏 Super pumped to have awesome Aaron Perman at S3 Ventures leading this round along with other strong existing investors - Nava Ventures (Manish Patel) Wing Venture Capital (Peter Wagner) Oregon Venture Fund (Matt Compton Scott Grout) and others 💪 Onwards! 🚀🚀🚀 #cloud #data #ai #ml #llm #largelanguagemodels #analytics #security #loganalytics #datalake #datawarehouse https://lnkd.in/g5i6afP5

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I'm excited to reshare this timeless episode of #Supermanagers featuring David O. Sacks, a member of the PayPal Mafia, founder of Yammer, Inc., and General Partner at Craft Ventures. David offers invaluable advice for CEOs, managers, founders, and anyone looking to elevate their organization. In this episode, David dives into:  - Introverted leadership - Managing hyper-growth - Knowing when to throw out processes  - And so much more. Don't miss out on his unique perspective and leadership journey. Tune in to learn from one of the best in the business! 🎧 Link in comments 👇

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Wei D. (Founder and CEO of unicorn Clipboard Health) dropped some major 💎 gems of wisdom during her fireside chat with PearX founders at Pear VC SF Studio yesterday. These really resonated: 💎 PMF isn't something you achieve once - staying relevant to your market is an ongoing pursuit 💯 (Wei shared that to date she still LOVES talking with customers and - even at 1000+ employees and with all the success already achieved - she continues to chase unlocks for the business and recently obtained her nursing assistant certification in order to stay close to users and unlock new insights with them 🥇) 💎 If you're scared of sales, don't think of it as sales -- you're just talking to someone who you're trying to help. Approach your customers with care and listen to them as you would a friend. The moment it's an actual conversation with a friend, that's probably where you're going to get your first sale. If it feels "salesy" you're probably not doing it the right way. 🤝 💎 Do whatever it takes to get in front of your customers! (For Wei this meant driving around at 8 months pregnant and walking up to DMs at nursing homes!) 🚗 💎 The users you speak with in your market will give you the key jargon you need to use to speak back to your market. Listen intently and adopt their language! 🗣 💎 There is little you decide that can't be undone. Be smart, make calculated decisions, but don't overthink things --- err on the side of action and quick decision making. 🏃‍♀️ 💎 Iterate until your users feel passionately about what you're doing (ie. they get angry when the product is down or doesn't work). You want your users to care A LOT about the problem you're solving. 😡 Wei's resilience, grit and work ethic are off the charts. What an inspiration! 👏 #femalefounders #inspiration #techfounder #unicornfounder #hero

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Ready to play big? Unlock the billionaire playbook: Start with an Aged Shelf Corporation and master the art of influence WITHOUT ownership. 🏦✨ If you want to learn more. Click here to sign up for my next free webinar ⬇️

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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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Fascinating guest talk at Climate Drift today with Manuela Zoninsein, CEO and Founder of Kadeya. What is it? Zero-waste beverage kiosk. Grab a stainless steel from a bottle filled with your beverage of choice. When you want a refill, bring it back to the machine where it will wash and sanitize your bottle, and give you another bottle with your beverage of choice. Why? 💚 It is simply better. ♻ It's zero waste. No more single use containers. 😎 SS keeps the beverage colder. 💧 The app encourages hydration. 👨‍💼 Reduces operational overhead to truck, unload, stock hundreds of bottles/cans into a refrigerator. 💪 Reduces the need for people to carry around heavy personal water bottles. 😍 Flexibile - water, soda, latest beverage fad, the classics. Tailor it to what you want. 💰 Saves money! If the above already does not make for an incredible business, here's the gravy! 🌎 The GHG Footprint of Kadeya’s 500ml serving of water is 74.8% ⬇ than PET bottled water, 64.1% ⬇ than PLA bottled water, 74.2% ⬇ than aluminum can water, 66.1% ⬇ than boxed water, and 84.6% ⬇ than single-use glass bottled water. When over 1,000,000 plastic bottles are purchased every minute around the world, and much of it ending up in landfills of the ocean (Thank goodness for companies like The Ocean Cleanup), Kadeya will literally save the planet from billions of tons of plastic pollution, and in doing so, save our health. Would you like to see Kadeya in your workplace, school, organization? Check them out at https://www.kadeya.com/ Thank you Climate Drift for the opportunity to engage with incredible leaders and companies - and thank you Manuela for your leadership and crystal-clear focus on solving a logistics problem that also solves for climate.

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Congratulations to Roland Reynolds and the team at Industry Ventures on the raise of its latest $900M hybrid fund (split three ways, 40% backing VC funds, 40% directly investing in promising Series B startups from their existing partnerships, and 20% acquiring stakes in emerging investment firms from other LPs looking to exit). Read more from Marina Temkin, CFA at TechCrunch below. #VC #venturecapital #fundraising #startups #investing #news #technews #startupnews

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We believe in extreme vetting of our founders. You can't build a unicorn if you spend time on silly stuff, like seeing family and friends. Grow up, and focus on investor returns. #vc #startups #investment

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🌱🚀 Exciting News! Xefco, one of our portfolio companies, just secured A$10.5 million in funding to revolutionize the textile industry and reduce emissions! 🌎💡 With their innovative water-free textile finishing and dyeing solution, Ausora, Xefco is poised to make a significant impact. Their technology not only preserves precious resources but also cuts energy consumption and costs. Plus, it's already gaining traction with leading apparel brands like Zara and The North Face. At Investible, we're committed to backing visionary companies like Xefco that are driving positive change. This investment reaffirms our belief in their potential to transform industries and tackle pressing environmental challenges. #ClimateTech #SustainableInvesting #ImpactInvesting #MandiriInvestibleGlobalClimateTechFund 🌿📈

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