Pat McCullough

🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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The EV slowdown in pass car is just a hiccup, the transition is inevitable, and commercial EVs are being adopted well ahead of projections. There is now no real technological or cost barrier to Scope 3 reductions.... https://lnkd.in/emM8twCU

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HLC Inc is not just talking about changing the world, they're actively doing it! Negotiating with two companies to reduce landfill waste by 85% is just the beginning. Turning solid waste into valuable commodities worth a fair amount of capital is a game-changer. In addition, Public-Private Partnerships are underway to provide housing, a new railway system, and a canal with eco-friendly properties to a country. Renewable green energy projects are also in the works to provide power to several African countries. All of these impressive projects have been/ are currently being vetted personally by the HLC team. Stay tuned for more updates on how HLC Inc is changing the world! #HLCInc #sustainability #greenenergy #publicprivatepartnerships

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The latest data on the plastics pileup from Crunchbase: as plastic waste soars, so does investment in solutions. Over $300 million has been invested in the last year in companies developing greener consumer products, alternative materials, and improved waste management techniques. Notable solutions include CA based ZenWTR (creating water bottles from recycled ocean-bound plastic), and with Travis Kelce as a lead #investor, Tel Aviv startup UBQ Materials (straddling both waste & alt. material categories), and Hamburg based traceless materials (creating plant based, plastic-free and home compostable materials from leftovers of ag food production). #Sustainability #Startup #Green

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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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The last few days I've been attending SynBioBeta conference in San Jose, CA. Really cool innovations that are tackling big problems in health, industrial production, and climate. It was also AgFunder's AGM... some non-standard observations: 1- Venture markets are not back: it will not be a bounce, but a slow recovery 2- Smart startups are partnering with engineering/EPC firms earlier in their life. This is key to de-risk scale production from day 1. My first employer out of college Black & Veatch was a key partner in the growth of Tesla, and now they're active in the bio space 3- If you say you're AI, you better prove it. Nothing wrong with saying you're doing ML

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Are you developing a medical device or digital health? Come learn about regulatory and legal impacts and how design for manufacturing is critical to your startup's success.

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Ascend Elements - 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲! If you're not yet familiar with Ascend Elements, it's time to get acquainted. Ascend Elements is able to take all types of lithium-ion batteries (LIB) and transform the critical elements into new cathode materials that rival or exceed the performance of cathode materials made with virgin metals. Their proprietary method efficiently separates valuable materials such as cobalt sulfate, manganese sulfate, nickel sulfate, lithium carbonate, and graphite. These can either be sold as commodities or further processed into customer-specified cathodes, which are among the most costly and carbon-intensive components in lithium-ion batteries. Their process results in 50% lower costs and up to 90% lower carbon emissions. Additionally, a recent study revealed that battery cells constructed using the Ascent Elements upcycled cathode material demonstrated a cycle life over 50% longer than cells made using traditional methods and had an 88% increase in power capacity. This implies that fewer batteries would need to be manufactured if we repurposed current and previously used lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).  The attached article may be a little older, but the company is right on track. https://lnkd.in/gywhTeWa

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"Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, will be recycling production scrap for batteries going into General Motors electric vehicles. The company announced Thursday that it’s working with Ultium Cells, the joint battery manufacturing venture between GM and LG Energy Solution, to recycle cathode, anode and cell scrap from both their Warren, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee facilities. Battery recycling is a hot industry as automakers and battery manufacturers seek to control their battery material supply, rather than rely on China, the global leader in the space. Incentives in the U.S. and abroad in regions like Europe are piling up for recycled and domestically produced critical battery materials — like lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed August 2022, provides a tax credit for battery manufacturing and critical mineral processing. Redwood benefited directly from that bill passing in February 2023, when the Department of Energy gave the startup a $2 billion loan to build out its battery recycling facility in Nevada. The DOE also gave Ultium Cells a $2.5 billion loan to develop its cell manufacturing facilities in the U.S." #batteries #evs #gm #redwoodmaterials #finance #equipmentfinance #equipmentleasing #financialservies #corporatefinance #manufacturing #automotive https://lnkd.in/dnBEtzy5

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Over the past few days, I’ve been visiting lots of #farms in Europe and seeing the #regeneration and #destruction that management practices can have in the #land, #nature and environment. These practices are relatively unknown to the consumer and the huge gap between regenerative practices and industrial agriculture as well as the #positiveimpact that regenerative management can have! How do we create #impact in food systems? It starts with the health of farms #soils. Lots of positive externalities come from restoring soils. Soil health is an #outcome and regenerative practices have to be outcome driven. I’ll be talking about creating ‘impact in food systems and regenerative agriculture’ at the Impact Investor Global Summit in London Tuesday next week alongside fellow panelist’s Rosie Wardle, Carli Roth, Matteo Squilloni and Charles Avery. With lots more discussion about regenerative agriculture, sustainable farming and organic conversions - it’s an excellent time for this panel which touches on #naturalcapital, #farming and #foodsystems. Especially in the wake of the latest season of Clarksons Farm where #AndyCato and George Lamb with Wildfarmed joined #JeremyClarkson and Charles Ireland on the farm. Maybe Regenerate Outcomes will be there next season 😉 Our team at Regenerate work across Private Equity, Outcomes and Venture Capital, all working across regenerative agriculture. Come and see us at the event! Regenerate Asset Management European Investment Fund (EIF) Synthesis Capital The Rockefeller Foundation New Private Markets Ryan Cameron David Bates Nicholas Burlington Addy Windsor-Clive Erik Bruun Bindslev Oliver Martin Jeremy Stroud Timothy Coates Taimur Malik Philippa Saxon Matt Jordon Tom Dillon Christopher Heathcote Jake McNaughton

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It's guys like Scott Colosimo who have been a huge supporter for what we're building here at Bloom. We've spent many hours talking about the incredible opportunity we all have in coming together to build stronger ecosystems. Despite many in the industry finding it difficult to escape the negative news loop over the past year (such a clear example of Kahneman's Prospect Theory), the electric mobility industry still presents an incredible once-in-a-lifetime transformation in how people and goods are moved for commercial, recreational and military purposes. There is a growing recognition that we need to come together to share resources and capabilities, derisk the industry to make investments (both debt and equity) more attractive again, and take the lessons learned and apply them to better practices in supply chains, operations, and in the utilization of capital. On my morning walks into the Newlab @ Michigan Central recently, I've been thinking more about this moment we find ourselves in…. Massive electrification of hardware driven by climate tech, push towards more resilient supply chains, once-in-a-century federal investments into the deindustrialization, and then as the incredible Palmer Luckey put it so eloquently in his recent Bloomberg interview: “The zero interest rate phenomenon… there’s a lot of companies that shouldn’t have existed, they never should have been funded, all that money went to paying people to do things that were a waste of time… crypto art nonsense, a fifth, no tenth, delivery app and now that money has become harder to come by you know what they’re working on, they’re working on energy, they’re working on national security they’re working on transportation, I see people working on real problems because the market forced them to and that's a good thing. IT'S TIME TO BUILD” https://lnkd.in/d8AXAydc

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A new study highlights that the battery storage failure incident rate has decreased by 97% between 2018 and 2023. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and Twaice analyzed data showing that most incidents are linked to system component failures and operational errors rather than manufacturing defects. Enhanced quality assurance and better data transparency are recommended to reduce these incidents further. For more details, read the full article on [Energy-Storage News](https://lnkd.in/e4WjJRsm). #EnergyStorage #BatterySafety #RenewableEnergy #CleanEnergy #Sustainability #Technology #EnergyInnovation

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Excited to share Marathon Venture Capital's investment in Eva Magnisali's DataForm Lab! Construction is large enough to be measured in GDP terms, yet remains a laggard in the adoption of automation. Our buildings are still constructed manually! Offsite manufacturing, i.e. assembling buildings in factories, provides the perfect canvas for putting automation to work – still, however, robots are nowhere to be seen... Eva studied architecture and robotics, and worked with design firms, developers and industry vendors, realising first hand what's keeping the industry stuck in the past. Then she got to work... Dataform Lab's software platform translates designs to production drawings and machine code, along with optimising processes and scheduling, essentially offering a modern operating system for construction factories. The company already works with some of the most prominent offsite manufacturers worldwide. Today it announces the completion of a GBP 1.1m Seed round led by Marathon. Eva and her team are on a mission to drive automation in offsite manufacturing. If you are excited about working at the intersection of technology and construction, get in touch! Building construction has been slow and expensive for far too long. Our next homes and schools may come from fully-automated factories, delivered at a fraction of today's time and cost. Keep an eye on Dataform Lab! https://lnkd.in/dVVfnudS

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Mark Carney OpEd: We must stop prevaricating and expand carbon markets. I would add one critical point: Enough with the self-flagellation. Plenty of reason to be optimistic, and there is a lot of work to do! ✅️We have the ICVCM. We have strong science-backed standards. ❌️We allow tabloid journalists (often financed by oil nations) to spread misinformation. They tout "academic articles" attacking carbon, but do not retract even after articles are proven flawed by science.  ❌️We have big NGO executives with 7 figure packages pontificating about more 'equitable distribution'. We have corporate executives with 8 figure salaries finding excuses in those articles to delay fair pricing (imagine the benefits for communities at $50/ton?). ❌️We have Verra (and others) pandering to eco-radicals whose only objective is to derail carbon. You will never appease a fanatic - they do not want 'better carbon markets', they do not believe in markets - they believe in taxes and prohibitions. ❌️We have nationalistic USA and EU politicians opposing nature based credits (e.g. REDD) in compliance markets. Why? Because money  would flow from rich countries to poor countries via private sector, without voter protectionism. Without ability to use them in foreign policy. ❌️We have newcomers, particularly some 'rating agencies' using the old Silicon Valley trick of telling VCs: "This market is broken, but we are going to fix it". Obvious trick. Nothing is broken, Sherlock - except, perhaps, your morals. ✅️Nature Based Solutions like REDD are MILES AHEAD of any industry in nature when it comes to impact.  Find a business operating in remote, rural areas that is better. Logging? Agriculture? Tourism? We invest in some of these sectors, and I can tell you that the best actors in those are miles behind a half-decent REDD developer. 🤷‍♀️There are bad events, as in ANY market. The Financial Times will show 500 audit scandals a year across all industries. And in carbon there will be errors, and bad actors. This does not make the carbon markets any worse than healthcare or education, where these things happen too. 📊Keep high standards. Ensure auditors work. But stop double-guessing the industry's own process. If Barclays has a case of bad accounting,or misconduct in UK, the central bank will not close all their branches - even if they are guilty. They will be fined, they will be forced to improve processes. But they will not be brought to bankrupcy. Why are we more unforgiving with an industry that is inherently more beneficial for the planet than transport, fashion, chemicals, etc? Have we gone mad? ⚡️In all this debate, I can understand (although I despise) the self-serving interests of polluters. But not the number of ideology-fuelled 'naive people' who are being played to keep the status quo. 🔥 The market will be massive, but we have no time to waste.Time to wake up. Time to get going.

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Boards of Directors – How Relevant To The Business Is The Board? In 2014, activist investor Starboard Value successfully replaced all 12 directors on the board of Darden Restaurants. The following shows the Darden incumbent board at the time of Starboard's proxy fight, Starboard’s value creation plan initiatives, the Starboard director nominees and the before and after performance (revenue, EBITDA, EBITDA margin and stock price). Note especially the direct relevance of each Starboard nominee to the industry or some aspect of the value creation plan. How often do you see this level of relevance on public company boards?

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Exciting news for startups! California accounts for about 50% of all venture investments. The not-so-secret reason is that non-competes are illegal in California, so engineers at FAANGs can build competitors without fear. Today, the US Federal Trade Commission declared non-compete agreements illegal nationwide. This means that engineers at big tech companies can now leave and build their own companies without fear of violating a non-competes (legacy agreements for executives are still enforceable - talk to your lawyer), this is a step in the right direction for fostering innovation and competition across the country. A variety of big-business groups have vowed to sue to bring non-competes back, but at least for now, they're gone! #startups #innovation #competition #noncompete Official Announcement: https://lnkd.in/gRXUpgDy Impending lawsuit: https://lnkd.in/gqSiVuTd

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The electric vehicle market is an industry that will continue to grow steadily in the future. Recently, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), an energy market research firm, predicted that the global electric vehicle market will grow 21% this year compared to the previous year. Although the electric vehicle market has slowed, short-term volatility does not change the long-term trend, and considering each country's carbon reduction policies and support and automobile manufacturers' electrification promotion strategies, the growth rate may be somewhat lower for a short period of time when adjustments are needed, but it is still growing. It's about industry. However, it is said that there is a need to improve various problems with electric vehicles that have been pointed out so far during the Chasm period, a temporary market stagnation period before the product is popularized. #GreenPower, a secondary battery charger and discharger company, is conducting battery-related business while keeping a close eye on these trends. We ask for your interest in Green Power’s efforts. Green power~ 😀 #battery #recycling #wirelesscharging #wirelesspower #bts #agv #wps #wireless #charging #ev #electricvehicles #power #powersystem #batterytestsystem #evcharger #charger #discharger #kbattery #evwirelesscharger #cycler #formation #wirelesspowertransmission

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