Erin Harkless Moore, CFA

It has been a week of climate at The Drop and another incredible one coming up with NY climate week! Another topic that's close to my heart: Spotlight on #femalefounders: There's been a recent decline in the aggregate number of female startup founders (down almost 2% in 2023), one of the lowest % in recent years. While this decline affects many traditionally active sectors (education, consumer, biotech, and SaaS), FemTech is a notable exception - with a 1000% increase in startups over the past decade. Still, in 2023 - only 1.4% of capital invested went to #FemTech, many citing the "ick" factor. To add salt, male-led FemTech startups have historically secured more funding than female-led ones. Many have written on this, including Cindy Gallop 👏🏻. This is a largely untapped and underfunded market - some argue the "Femtech Revolution" will exceed $103 bil. by 2030. I'm excited to see more funds with female partners executing deals - which will naturally #growthepie and increase the capital flowing to female founders. The #formula is simple: Female investors + female founder expertise puts us in solid position to solve the many issues that disproportionately affect women - from #healthcare, #FinTech and #sustainability. ⭐️I'm proud to work with the fantastic team at Emmeline Ventures - and if you haven’t heard: they are doubling down on this focused thesis. 👀 #WomenInTech #VentureCapital #Investing

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Lexington Books managed to release my book Disagreeing despite the Data before the election. It argues the belief segregation underway in the US may be irreversible. Today's battles over climate change, disease mitigation, and election results run deep -- they're cognitive, not just strategic. Here's the gist of it. 20th-century revolutions in the philosophy of mind, meaning, and matter uncover three surprising requirements for widespread factual agreement. Critical thinking and community building have the potential to reverse two of them -- the growing refusal to test assumptions and individual isolation. Factual agreement between groups is impossible without the third one, though -- shared projects or other meaningful interaction. And a large part of American society has insulated itself from the rest. Without shared projects, communities gradually lose the ability to tell whether they agree or not regardless of the words they use. Belief segregation with similar roots has led several developing countries to the brink of failure. We'd better watch out. The attached flyer gives a discount code that makes the book -- priced in this initial run for academic libraries -- a little more affordable. Please feel free to forward it and, if you're connected to any libraries or book stores, pass it on!

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A good article from Kevin Starr in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on Big Bet Philanthropy (a new adjective philanthropy!). There's some good insights from those on the front line on the upside and downside - as always, interested in your views and insights. One of the big questions for me is whether 3 years of a big bet approach to solving a social problem can have more impact than 10 years of consistency of guaranteed funding? Is lack of money for big ideas a problem to be solved? Or is lack of consistency in funding a bigger barrier to impact? A quote from Starr below: "It’s fun to feel like your money is going to make the critical difference. The problem is, it won’t, at least not in the long run. Even a Very Big Check cannot solve the problem." Letting go of attribution is a tricky thing, because attribution inspires more giving. It's one reason theory of change work can be really effective, if done in the right way within Foundations. Jane Magor Emily Wellard-Baring Stevie McGregor Sharon N. Andrew Baker Daniel Tomé Tania Cecconi Drew Bourgeois https://lnkd.in/g5ETcG-H

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Check out my recent post on why President Trump is the forcing function for us to solve the “Missing Middle” and catch the industrial Tsunami of onshoring coming to the US!

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Divestment requirements have a very real cost. This reduces the ability of endowments and foundations to support their mission driven enterprises. As the list of divestment demands grow, at what point do the consequences outweigh the perceived benefits? Hiding at the end of this article is the below quote: Golden admitted the divestment had undermined Princo’s returns, saying the endowment “would have been better off” otherwise. But he pointed to a bigger concern: the pressure to “keep adding things to divest from”. “Fossil fuels are necessarily part of getting to where the overall economy needs to be [and] it would be impossible for the world to not use fossil fuels tomorrow,” he said. “Divestment is a pretty weak tool to change the economy.” https://lnkd.in/g3SeC8rg #energy #investing #vc

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Yesterday, Bill Beer Caroline Rubach and I had the pleasure of attending a great full-day event put on by the Emerson Collective “Building a Consequential Climate Company.” The day was a tour-de-force of best-practice sharing, hard problem tackling, and difficult conversations.    SF has been buzzing this week with great events focused on climate technology and I thought I’d share some of the key takeaways of the last three years as climate has become a growing theme for our client base in AI, software, infrastructure and frontier technology.   Supporting entrepreneurs tackling the climate crises at companies like Pachama, Anza Renewables , Loop Global , Turntide Technologies, Derapi, and cove.tool has provided a new platform opportunity for our team to do what we do best; analyze and tear apart markets, guide founders in the best practices of building outstanding companies, and identify, access and close the best talent, to tackle the world’s biggest challenge.    Ultimately, for private companies to have a meaningful impact on the climate crises, they must do exceptionally well what all companies must do; deliver demonstrably better solutions for customers biggest pain points, and the tradecraft of recruiting world-class executives translates perfectly. That being said, here are some of the points that are recurring themes for me with our partner’s in climate-tech about what really matters: - Mission over Technology and Solution <-> Market fit over everything: Exceptional leaders are inspired by a compelling mission, and exceptional executives are drawn to massive markets with real problems to solve – focus on the "why" and "why now" of a problem rather than just its technical aspects.   - Grit and stage fit is sector agnostic: We seek individuals with relentless curiosity, a proactive mindset, and a drive for problem-solving. Alignment in stage and a hunger for challenges are crucial and cannot be ignored in favor of sector expertise. This is particularly challenging in industries that are most ripe for disruption, the more entrenched the incumbents are, the less startup-appropriate talent will be housed within those key companies.   - Passionate sector experts attract top talent: We immerse ourselves in each client's domain, while I don’t expect to come up with a novel EV technology or fusion reactor, I promise my clients that we will be as sophisticated as a lay person can be on the dynamics of their market, their positioning, and their opportunity.    - Strategic Search as an Iterative Process: You won’t always know exactly who you need when you start a search. Crafting the ideal candidate profile, acknowledging uncertainties, and empowering recruiters leads to swift connections with the right individuals for insightful conversations, fast calibration and thoughtful alignment throughout a search is how you get great outcomes in markets and growth stories without a lot of blueprints to follow.   

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I am fully on board with the article from the Sorenson Impact Institute detailing the authentic combination of purpose and profession behind impact investing. It's really worth calling out from the piece that as assets under management (AUM) of sustainable and impact investing are growing faster than in any other sector, investment organizations are responding to this accelerating client demand. #ImpactInvesting

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Happy Thanksgiving! Love this perspective on fund diversity and deployment strategy. "For early stage investing, large portfolios (~100 investments) outperform small portfolios (~30 investments). The goal for pre-seed or seed GPs is to invest in a large enough number of companies to maximise the chance of finding outliers (about 2% for ~50x, 5% for ~15x according to data from Dave McClure). From that point, once you have built a sufficiently diversified portfolio, you can consider a strategy to deploy remaining funds into follow-on rounds for best looking companies as "call options". This only makes sense if you think these follow-ons are the best opportunity available for that capital. Evaluate them as you would any other investment. A lot of VCs (and LPs, for that matter) understand the logic of concentrating into winners, but not the first step of building an appropriately sized portfolio. Why? Probably because the former amplifies risk, while the latter reduces it — playing into the principal-agent problem in VC and the "power law" smokescreen. It also happens to be a lot easier to manage a small portfolio. I've spoken to LPs that say they prefer small portfolio strategies because concentrating into winners is more likely to produce >10x returns. In a world where only the top 5% return >3x, it makes ZERO sense to optimise for that level of risk. Especially when you are allocating other people's capital (pension funds, MFOs, sovereigns, etc). "Few investors demand diversified funds, so GPs don’t offer them. A slow and steady 'venture is a numbers game' pitch is much less emotionally compelling than 'I am a rock star who can consistently beat the odds.' And GPs need an emotionally appealing pitch to get funded." - The Pervasive, Head-Scratching, Risk-Exploding Problem With Venture Capital" This is how we built our fund's strategy -- to invest early in a diverse portfolio. Our current partially deployed fund already has 42 bets, averaging a deal every 1.8 weeks. Dave McClure taught us that investing in 50 companies on a 10x lower cost basis leads to close to the same ownership in each one as investing the same capital in just 5 companies. This approach seems advantageous for startups too as it allows us to give an easier yes to diverse and early companies. We are still finding our sweet spot around valuations and portfolio construction, and we are passionate about these core principles. Jamie Rhode, CFA has done many podcasts on this for those who want to hear more about the data. I look forward to fund 2 when we will have enough capital to both make diverse bets (60+) as well as have follow-on capacity for winners when they are, as Dan says, the best available opportunity for that capital. For investors and startups, what do you think about this strategy? https://lnkd.in/gizefUYC Benjamin Rolnik Julia C. Manu Satyavolu Aman Verjee, CFA Sophia Platt

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Summary: The article discusses the challenges faced by climate tech startups as they transition from the lab to commercial outfit. These companies, which work on hardware and infrastructure projects for climate solutions, struggle to raise necessary funds and often face difficulties in scaling up production. Key takeaways: The transition from early-stage startup to commercial operation is difficult, especially for hardware and infrastructure projects in the climate tech industry. The lack of financing options and specialized expertise for these types of projects creates a "commercial valley of death" that many companies struggle to overcome. Startups often fall into the trap of trying to expand their business too quickly, losing sight of their core value proposition and failing to ensure proper execution. Counter arguments: Some may argue that this "first of a kind" problem is not unique to the climate tech industry and can be seen in other industries as well. Others may argue that with the increasing focus on climate change and need for sustainable solutions, more funding and support will become available for these startups. #venturecapital #vc #startups

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Summary: A settlement agreement has been reached between Venture capital firm Fearless Fund and the American Alliance for Equal Rights, resulting in the shutting down of Fearless Fund's Strivers Grant program. The program was initially developed to provide funding for small businesses owned by Black women, but faced a lawsuit for alleged discrimination against non-Black founders. Key takeaways: The Fearless Fund's program has been shut down due to a lawsuit from AAER claiming it discriminated against non-Black founders. The fear of legal repercussions has resulted in the Fearless Fund losing partnerships and shifting focus away from initiatives benefiting minorities. Despite the settlement, Fearless Fund remains committed to helping under-resourced entrepreneurs. Counter arguments: Some argue that using the Civil Rights Act of 1866, intended to help the formerly enslaved, against a program benefitting Black entrepreneurs is ironic and counterproductive. The shutting down of the program is a blow to the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, as companies continue to struggle with addressing disparities in funding and opportunities for minority groups.

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I'm very excited to announce the official launch of my impact investment fund know.capital with a $250,000 donation to the Drexel Food Lab which was founded by the omnipotent and super human Jonathan Deutsch, Ph.D., CHE, CRC at Drexel University in 2014. These funds will help build out the physical plant at the lab which will expand its capacity and capabilities to work deeper with industry both large and small, and also create more amazing experiential opportunities for Drexel's undergrad, grad, and certificate students. Jon truly runs a unique and impactful program at Drexel University's College of Nursing and Health Professions, and I can't think of a better partner with whom to embark on this journey. know.capital is an investment fund that invests at least 2/3 of our fee revenue profits in creating and operating unique nonprofit and for-profit social impact initiatives while pursuing maximum return strategies for our investors who bear no financial sacrifice for our philanthropic work. I've been working on this for 12 years (no one has accused me of working fast), and this is a culmination of countless mistakes and trial and error, and just pain and suffering (honestly). And there is more discomfort ahead of course. The pain points that I'm addressing are two fold: 1) "impact investing" is ill-defined and the impact side of the equation is unclear, and 2) nonprofits suffer from structural liabilities of fragmentation, governance structure, and fundraising dynamic that potentially compromise the pursuit of their missions and their ultimate impact. These two pain points have to be addressed concurrently since there is no other mechanism that I've been able to come up other than what I know best (Wall Street's fee business model) that can act as a sustainable funding source for needed social solutions that may not have any ROI prospects. And we need to pay nonprofit professionals more if we are to attract the best talent. We can't ask people to sacrifice "for the greater good" when they are often doing thankless work, getting paid pauper wages, and worrying whether or not they can retire with any level of financial security. From an investor's point of view, it's important to point out that this is not a zero sum equation. We're just offering another solution to investors who may care about also making a social impact of some kind, but with no financial sacrifice (have cake and eat it too). One can still have a traditional wealth manager and investments, one can still donate money to a worthy nonprofit or a university endowment, etc. We just want to expand the pie of what social impact investing and philanthropy could mean, create solutions that can potentially be massively scalable, and direct capital and world-class talent to initiatives that can potentially make the world a better place. Imagine if "Wall Street" can do that. More to come!

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Over the last year I've been digging into the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) - arguably the most significant law ever passed for energy transition globally. The IRA is complicated, but it represents $1T+ of federal funding for clean technologies. Today I'm proud to announce the launch of Giraffe Financial - a business focused on helping organizations of all types take advantage of IRA incentives. Our theory of change is that while dealing with the IRS can be challenging, getting IRA tax credits doesn't have to be. Giraffe helps any organization deploying electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, renewable energy, or energy storage access IRA funding. We streamline the process of determining eligibility, ensuring compliance, and completing IRS paperwork. Please take a look at our press release (https://lnkd.in/eu-V59su), visit our website (https://giraffe.financial/) and email me directly with any questions or interest ([email protected]). I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the incredible ecosystem of partners and investors that made this all possible: Skyview Ventures, Momentum (BuildMomentum.io), Andy K., Shawn Garvey, Matt Hart, Wallace Kyle Jr., MBA, Homer Robinson, Oktay Kurbanov, Alexander Scammon, Steven Eisenberg, Lewis Wagner, Sean Carney, Michael Greten, Jonathan Burnston, Tyler Lancaster, Skip Dise, Titiaan Palazzi, Sarah Valdovinos, Jordan Ramer, Richard Matsui, Bill Van Amburg, Dedrick Roper #InflationReductionAct, #IRA, #TaxCredits, #RenewableEnergy, #EVs, #EVCharging, #emobility, #electric, #solar, #electricvehicles

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'Drill, baby, drill' isn't just for oil and gas - it could unlock geothermal energy and geologic hydrogen too. That's the fascinating paradox of climate tech I discussed in a recent TechCrunch feature examining how VCs are viewing the sector's future. The reality is that policy impacts are rarely straightforward - deregulation of drilling and permitting, such as for overhauls in transmission and distribution, could actually accelerate clean energy solutions. Furthermore, the sector has shown remarkable resilience through multiple administrations and market cycles. The core message I shared with Tim De Chant and Rebecca Szkutak rings true: technological advancement and declining cost curves will keep driving solutions forward, regardless of the political situation. The energy landscape continually presents new opportunities at every turn. Worth a read for anyone interested in the exciting future of climatetech investing. https://lnkd.in/gjNdm4DW #ClimateInnovation #VentureCapital #Geothermal #GeologicHydrogen

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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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On-point piece in Kiplinger explaining that impact investing goes beyond checkbook charity by focusing on measurable social and environmental impact, as well as a financial return. I'm particularly struck by the closing point that contends being an impact investor means tracking progress and making sure that your goals are being met. That is absolutely the case. #ImpactInvesting

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Patrick Sieb and I spoke with Jared Lynch from The Australian about how a potential Trump administration may impact the momentum of climate tech investments.  Despite the headline-grabbing rhetoric around ending the "green new scam," many of the factors supporting climate tech resilience appear highly robust, driven by market forces, state-level policies, corporate commitments and private investment. Here are some key takeaways: 1️⃣ Policy Resilience: Not all policies can be easily unwound. Initiatives like production tax credits for renewables have bipartisan support and deep roots in the economy. 330,000 new jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act - mainly in red and purple state which many republicans won't want to see unwound 2️⃣ Market Forces: Renewables are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels. This shift is driven by market dynamics rather than policy alone. 3️⃣ Corporate Commitment: Leading companies, including Fortescue, Amazon, and Apple, are setting ambitious decarbonization targets and investing heavily to achieve them. This signals a strong commitment to climate tech, regardless (or in spite of) political leadership. "Corporates are leaning in and taking action, irrespective of the policies... It’s about making them more profitable, de-risking their business, de-risking their supply chains.” Climate tech is about more than emissions reduction—it’s a competitive edge in today’s market. If you want to learn more about Climate Tech Partners and the wholesale VC fund we are raising, go to https://lnkd.in/gDGah2Vr #climateaction #corporateinnovation #VentureCapital https://lnkd.in/g84TPQAA

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In the work I do at Earth Finance, I see everyday that the large companies, with complex value chains and net zero strategies, require and rely on innovative technologies to achieve their goals. Being able to meet their need is vital not only to their success, but also for an emerging technology startup’s success. In this episode (our third which I think officially makes this a series 🤠), we talk basics of securing the business and trust of a large customer when they take a chance on your new tech and aim to scale it across their business.

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Thanks for inviting me TEN Capital Network and Hall T. Martin to talk about some of my favorite topics - climate tech investing and how we are building an energy transition economy in New Mexico.

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Listened to Bloomberg’s Zero: The Climate Race recently—worth a listen for anyone in the climate tech space. Akshat Rathi interviews Eric Toone from Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Key topics: ⚡️ Carbon removal ⚡️ Grid modernization ⚡️ Nuclear fusion and fission ⚡️ Green hydrogen—the hype, promise vs reality Good insights on where innovation is heading in sustainability and energy. #ClimateTech #Sustainability #Energy #Innovation

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