Andre H.

Having a Cars and Capital event tomorrow in Southern California with Oren Klaff. If you want to join message me. https://lnkd.in/gDQ4D39u Oren Klaff Bridger Pennington #InvestorEvent #FamilyOffice #InvestmentOpportunity #CarlsbadEvent #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #InvestmentConference #CapitalRaising #NetworkingEvent #IndustryLeaders #FinancialGrowth #InvestorsMeetup #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentForum

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Autonomous Vehicle (AV) funding is surging, according to PitchBook with Q2 2024 seeing $2.9 billion invested in AV startups - the highest since Q3 2021. While self-driving cars grab headlines, innovative startups are finding unique applications beyond passenger vehicles. Key developments: - Supply chain optimization: Outrider is revolutionizing yard operations with autonomous electric vehicles, addressing a $60 billion market. - Specialized transport: Pyka's autonomous planes for cargo and Gatik's local distribution trucks are gaining traction. - Safety & efficiency: Evitado Technologies automates airside operations, mitigating airport collision risks. Of course, more established companies such as Lyft & Uber are working on AV rideshare integration via partnerships with Waymo, BYD, Zoox, and others. The AV sector is focusing on gradual integration and specific use cases. While concerns about job displacement exist, proponents argue that automation could shift human capital to higher-value roles. What those roles are remains to be seen. As the AV landscape evolves, it's clear that the future of transportation extends far beyond just self-driving cars on city streets. Check out the full article by Nadine Manske here: https://lnkd.in/g3HJXZHc? And access the PitchBook Mobility Tech Report here: https://lnkd.in/g4_xP5pr #VentureCapital #AutonomousDriving #FrontierTech #FutureMobility

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Waymo's recent doubling of its paid ride volume is an impressive business result. But what does the feat say about the state of the self-driving industry? And how does Waymo stack up against self-driving rivals like Tesla, and ride-hailing giants like Uber? We dive into these questions on the latest episode of TWIST

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Want to know what the California Air Resources Board had to say about #ACFR implementation last night? Cloverleaf AI monitors these hearings distills insights, so your team can stay focused on doing their job. Reach out for a free customized summary! #cleanfleet #Advancedcleanfleet #Fleetelectrification #EVfleet #Hydrogenfleet

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A clear articulation of Elon’s clearly stated direction at Tesla re/ working in the presence of one’s teammates in the office, on the factory floor, etc. It’s simply a matter of optimizing productivity, creativity and results, in my experience. That’s doesn’t mean there aren’t workable exceptions for some companies. It’s a choice. His choice is clear. My point? “choose carefully and wisely”. It’s really hard to push on this ime. It’s way harder to have the market put us out of business because someone else slept on the factory floor to drive results and we chose not to. 🙏🏼🇺🇸🚀 https://lnkd.in/gK8Xaven

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Excited to announce our investment in Alta Resource Technologies alongside Leonardo Banchik (Voyager Ventures) with participation from Orion Resource Partners, Overture Ventures, and WovenEarth Ventures. Rare earths are critical in products from magnets to ceramics and it's important for the US to develop its own supply chain. While the US has some of the best rare earth resources, separating them has historically proven expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Alta through it's computationally designed and optimized proteins allows the US to bring back rare earth production with a cleaner, lower capex, and lower opex solution - and that's just the beginning. Congrats to Nathan Ratledge and the entire Alta team. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gbGnAJn3

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WAYMO -- WAYCOOL or GHOST RIDER? If you preside in San Francisco, Santa Monica or Phoenix you are now seeing driverless Waymo taxies making their way through town on an ever-increasing basis. The network is expanding, and I can honestly say that in the Santa Monica / West Los Angeles area I have not driven anywhere in the last two months without seeing one of them on the road every time. In fact, sometimes they are so prevalent that there might be three in a row waiting at a stop light. It still is kind of spooky seeing cars moving around with no driver, or anyone for that matter, in the front seat. It's not exactly the same as the Headless Horseman but it does conjure up that image in my imagination. I have not taken a ride in one, but several family members have and report their satisfaction. Waymo is a division of Alphabet (GOOGL). I have not seen any visible evidence of General Motors (GM) Cruise vehicles which I understand are still being road tested, while Tesla (TSLA) has been projecting their autonomous vehicle vision for some time. For now, Tesla seems to be behind but that could change quickly. GM is likely to use their own branded vehicles, and it would seem that Tesla will likely do the same. However, Waymo technology could be outfitted on any cars. That seems like a big advantage, staying out of the car business and just being like the "Intel/Microsoft" inside personal computers which is a much higher margin business. There has been a lot of noise in the business journals and chat rooms about a Waymo initial public offering but nothing from Alphabet itself. They recently concluded a $5.6 billion investment round; see TechCrunch post below. The autonomous race is on, and it will be expanding rapidly from here on out. I just wonder if we will ever see an autonomous police vehicle stop a wayward autonomous taxi and write it up for some violation as yet unknown. Will traffic school be an option? #waymo, #autonomousvehicles, #selfdrivingcars, #GM, #Generalmotors, #tesla, #Investing, #business,

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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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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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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Hey all 👋, I finally got around to editing the PMF workshop (yes, please hype me up for just doing my job). Thanks again to #founders Mina A. Leonel Lacayo and Monica Vespe Lincoln for sharing their startups and building in public! Grab the video or sign up to be notified of the next workshop at the link in the comments. —— Want to a stress test your #startups Product-Market Fit? Get the free PMF workbook at the link in my profile and make sure your #marketing and #branding are minimum viable for your stage of growth.

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Learn a bit more about our DNA and how we operate at Acurio Ventures from Kate Cornell

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Congrats to Christopher Robson, Kurtis Broda and Kristen Cote at Wyvern on bringing on fantastic new investors Guy Filippelli, Dan Madden and Isaac Carp, CFA at Squadra Ventures. I'm a broken record at this point, but we're in the early innings of the Earth Observation market, and as we're seeing with Wyvern there is more demand for hyperspectral data than supply. As we will see in the coming years, there will be all kinds of problems that can be addressed by understanding our world beyond what our eyes can see. https://lnkd.in/gEzTjYks

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We’re in the transition phase from value creation through human labour to value creation through machine labour — labour being the key word. The jobs that’ll be replaced first are the most laborious. Three areas stand out: 1. Movement of People & Goods Autonomous vehicles. Wayve, Tesla, Waymo. 2. Movement of Parts Warehousing and robotics. Figure, Tesla. 3. Movement of Information AI agents. OpenAI, Anthropic. My back-of-the-napkin calculation suggests that over 250 billion human hours are spent each year in these areas. From delivering packages to component fabrication or intra-company accounting, we’re headed toward a future where over a billion people will need to rethink how they spend their working time. What’s interesting is that training for these laborious roles is incredibly skill-specific, making them particularly vulnerable to automation. In a way, they’re very non-human tasks, requiring situational awareness within the capabilities of today’s machines. This suggests a stark truth: each year, 250 billion hours of human life are spent enduring non-human behaviours to make a living. The issue? Many adjacent roles face a similar risk, pushing unprepared workers into potentially major career shifts. I think we’re dropping the ball when it comes to preparing today’s workforce for this shift. And we’re certainly failing the workforce of the future through outdated education. The shift to machine labour is happening. It’s glacial — slow, unstoppable, and world-changing. On balance, I think it’s a net positive. Fewer laborious, non-human jobs being done by people. But we need much greater emphasis on preparing people for that change.

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One of my favorite things is to have a conversation with builders & founders about the personal experience and complexity of working to bring new deep tech to the point where it makes a real difference in our world. So looking forward to this!

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Early this morning I took a 20-minute drive on I-5. I passed over 40 trucks. Of these exactly 100% of them were burning diesel fuel and 0% were electric. Almost all of these were short-haul trucks moving containers to and from the Seattle port—onward to local distribution centers. I find this deeply frustrating. We have all of the “hard” tech problems solved here—dense batteries, multiple truck manufacturers selling fully electrified trucks, high speed chargers. So why is everyone still burning diesel? Why are we spewing not just CO2, but also major localized pollution around the ports and nearby communities? It turns out that despite the hard physics problems being solved, the soft problems of coordinating, financing, and routing EV trucks remains. The traditional owner-operator model of short-haul trucking won’t be able to quickly transition to EV truck ownership. We need to optimize routes with charging, train drivers on new vehicles, and finance trucks in new ways. Enter Nevoya, a recent Stepchange investment. Anay and I met Sami Khan, John Verdon, and Thomas Atwood over the summer and were blown away by their grasp of the industry and how to unlock massive scale of EV trucking now and not in 10 years. This can't happen fast enough.

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