Kristen Plymale

Thanks Chinenye. I couldn't agree with you more. However while we work on this, we also have to be mindful of the fact that bias isn't just the problem in this data rather a combination of poor economy and bias. Of all these regions mentioned, Africa is the least performing market. therefore Davidson, naturally you would expect investors to do less there. They are not charity organisations but a venture set up for outsized returns.Therefore the major issue we should be discussing is, which sectors are receiving this funding in Africa? Are the investments coming to sectors that will lift the other sectors up fundamentally or to sectors that will window dress the issues? or Worst still the ones that will reap-off on the people and distort rather than disrupt the system. (eg Nigeria POS fintech and the real banking system. a discussion for another day). Until strong investments are made in the technology sectors powering manufacturing strong job growth in Africa be it REAL B2B eCommerce not repeating what is already being done, or B2C eCommerce that is truly efficient and cost effective. Equally important is the improvement in the purchasing power of the consumers via credit card system. in as much as Sub-Sahara Africa lacks good credit system that captures the average citizens and residents, B2C will continue to struggle. in as much as our logistics investments are predominantly in the last mile delivery rather than efficient crosborder logistics, both B2B abd B2C eCommerce will struggle to scale efficiently and profitability. So, it's time for the investors to do away with the low hanging fruits and start tackling the real issues that will empower and propel Africa economies. That's where the main bias lies.

4

1 Comment

I really enjoyed recording this episode of The Digital Industrial Podcast with Ty Findley. We talked about common misconceptions for deep tech, the "Why Now" for the category, and differences between investor diligence for deep tech and traditional tech. https://lnkd.in/eKtwjauu

19

4 Comments

One month left to apply!!!! Apply to NETI's Climate Tech Bootcamp Cohort 3.0, a pre-accelerator program powered by Riffle Ventures, Climate Tech Bootcamp, OHUB and Greater New Orleans, Inc. – GNO, Inc. part of H2TheFuture, a Build Back Better Regional Challenge of The Economic Development Administration. This bootcamp is a 10-week pre-accelerator program for climate tech and new energy entrepreneurs in the United States that have an interest in building in or expanding to South Louisiana. ‍ Five (5) founders from the program will pitch for a $100,000 (US) investment on the terms of their current round. Application is in the comments and here's a quick overview as well: - 📆 When: September 3 - October 31, 2024 - ⏰ Deadline to Apply: August 27, 2024 - 💻 Location: Virtual - 🆓 Cost: Free. The $5,000 per person fee is waived thanks to GNO, Inc. and The Economic Development Administration's Build Back Better Regional Challenge. - 💰 Funding: Up to $100,000 US (equity investment) in current round to the top startup selected at the end of the cohort. - 🈺 Cohort Size: 25-30 entrepreneurs - 🌍 Cohort Geography: United States - 📈 Stage: We welcome applicants from multiple stages, though having a minimum viable product is ideal.

78

2 Comments

Prime Coalition has long taken a different tack to climate finance compared to its for-profit brethren. It makes the usual venture-style investments in startups through Azolla Ventures and also helps philanthropists direct their money to climate-related projects that it deems high impact. Trellis Climate follows the latter model with a focus on middle stages, where capital has grown scarce. #climatetech #climateVC #climatefinance

14

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!

84

9 Comments

🧬 This week's Austin Bio + Health Roundup highlights significant data trends, my stance on covering funding announcements, new partnerships, and action across the Texas Bio Triangle. 🧬 💰 Funding: The Way I Plan to Cover Funding Announcements You may have seen reports of a local Bio & Health startup’s funding round through an SEC report filing. While some outlets have covered this, my position is not to. I prefer to support our builders directly rather than trolling the filings for scoops. There is plenty of real investigative journalism that our city would be well served by if that is where they focused. Remember I am not a journalist and I am not the media. When the company is ready to announce their round officially, I’ll gladly shout it to the rooftops. 📊 Data Peter Walker at Carta reports that in 2017, Biopharma and Medical Devices captured just under 10% of all VC dollars. By 2023, this figure rose to 17.7%, and in Q1 2024, it reached 24%. The overarching tailwinds favor our sector and region with trends towards Bio & Health and the physical & digital intersection. Energy and hardware, two other sector blossoming in Central Texas, also saw similar share gains. 🤝 M&A and Partnerships Sensi.AI, a 24/7 senior care intelligence agent, is partnering with Caring Senior Service to deploy SensiAI’s platform in Caring’s 50 locations across the US. This partnership allows seniors a better opportunity to age gracefully in their homes. 🚩 Texas Bio Triangle BioMedSA is hosting an event called Women in Bioscience, Thursday June 20th. It’s designed to connect and empower women in the bioscience industry across Central Texas, and features Randi Brosterman Hutchens discussing "Building your Personal Board." Find the link to the event in the comments. Houston-based Lokum, a staffing solution to connect clinicians and clinical staff to health care facilities, has raised a $700K pre-seed round. Congrats Ayoade (Joy) Ademuyewo on the raise. What’s Next? #AustinNext #LifeSciences #Healthcare #Biotechnology

16

7 Comments

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

6

We could all learn an ffing lot from the hyper-real attitude of New Orleans to the expected life-changing, planet-changing impact from #climatechange. It's all about WHEN not if and we need a whole lot more of that real talk if we are going to innovate around resilience vs just mitigation. NOLA has a multiple multi-billion dollar plans that just seek to just postpone the ultimate, destructive outcome of extreme weather not cure it. It's an informative and strangely inspiring article. https://lnkd.in/gaSJAFJV

12

Who are some awesome marketplace founders in Austin? We're putting together a community meetup for marketplace founders & teams in Austin and trying to see how many spots we should keep open for invites. We always try to keep a few spots open for invites, so it would be great to get a sense of what that local marketplace scene is like and anyone that should join us. Please let me know in the comments below!

16

14 Comments

Austin continues demonstrating its broad startup strengths, coming in at number 6 overall and ranking in the top ten in five key sectors. Notably, we are number 2 in hardware—We build! Peter Walker's latest ecosystem analysis highlights the expected top regions: Silicon Valley, NYC, Boston, and LA. San Diego and Austin are essentially tied at 5th and 6th, separated by only ~$60M. While Austin was ranked 5th in the previous analysis, this slight shift reflects the minor pullback seen in other Q1 venture data. Austin's sector diversity continues to be a strong foundation: ⚙️ Hardware: Number 2 💳 Fintech: Number 5 🏥 Healthtech: Number 7 🌐 SaaS and 🛍 Consumer: Number 8 While all of this showcases an overall healthy ecosystem, I'm a bit concerned about 2024's fund raising traction. If we extrapolate based on what's been announced so far, the region will come in between $2B-$2.5B for the year. Significantly lower than the roughly $4B in 2023. We were one of the few ecosystems to show positive momentum coming out of the 21/22 venture bubble. I hope this is more a lack of a funding announcements and not an actual regression. What’s Next?

52

14 Comments

"How can we make more females successful? By building up the pipeline and seeing more future leaders - Anna Hong Join us on this powerful episode as we explore Anna Hong's journey and her impact on the entrepreneurial world through B.E.L.L.E （Formerly GirlUp Entrepreneurs） Save this post for later!

1

When we asked CPG founders who they wanted at Founderland... Their answer was clear: People who can help them grow their business & achieve their goals. Specifically: - The top retailers - The most founder-friendly investors, and - Other founders they can learn from and share with This conversation that I'm hosting at Founderland is a perfect representation of this group, plus one BIG bonus. We're also including Joel Toledano and ChargeUp.ai which is one of my favorite tech companies that is supporting consumer brands today. They automate the retail deduction and chargeback process for brands, saving them an insane amount of time and money. Such a cool co. Excited to teach, share and connect...and get some deals done, while of course having lots of fun. Joel Toledano Jen Zeszut Kim Coffin Deb Conklin

89

41 Comments

The #VentureStudio community is thriving and when two leaders from different studios get together it is always going to be a great conversation. This podcast is huge as two brilliant Venture Studio leaders Barry O'Reilly from Nobody Studios and Ben Yoskovitz from Highline Beta join to unpack the innovative world of venture studios and uncover the strategies that make startups thrive. In this episode, you will learn: 📈 The fundamentals of creating and scaling a venture studio 🛠️ Strategies for innovating with accelerators, incubators, and venture capital 💡 How to apply Lean Startup principles to build products people actually want 🤝 The importance of collaboration between founders, corporate partners, and investors 🔄 Insights into the specialization and future trends of venture studios Take a listen and learn from two masters.

11

3 Comments

#ObsessivelyEnthusiasticInvestor #UnreasonablyEnthusiasticInvestor #IrrationallyEnthusiasticInvestor at REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. We look for the people we believe are doing the best work in Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology; Attempting the impossible. Then we go all-in on them. With obsessive and unreasonable enthusiasm. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital #DemandTheImpossible #UnreasonableEnthusiasm #ObsessiveEnthusiasm #IrrationalEnthusiasm 

10

Last Wednesday, we were lucky to get a hold of Investor, Technology Thought-Leader, Host of Austinpreneur Podcat and Principal at Capital Factory VC, Nick Spiller amid his busy schedule for an inspiring interview (dropping soon) on the Insert^Innovation podcast at the Leatherby Center of Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics via Chapman University Argyros College of Business & Economics. Key takeaways include: 📌 Innovation is a methodology used to help solve problems and add value to society. 📌 Robotics, AI and Semiconductor Startups are a few upcoming tech trends that investors are keeping an eye on. 📌 Before diving into Entrepreneurship, find your "Why" behind pursuing that career path. 📌 People typically read about the success stories of Startups and well-known Entrepreneurs, but it isn't always an easy road. Be prepared for the entire journey. Stay tuned for the full episode! #techinvestors #technology #investing #startups #fintech #technews #vc #chapmanuniversity

43

5 Comments

Practice your #voting skills and help us highlight #regenerativefinance at SXSW!

5

1 Comment

How do other Austin-based tech/entrepreneur types feel about this observation? 🤔 "Being in Austin lowers my ambitions. The city doesn’t inspire me to be great like San Francisco or New York. But what I lose in ambition, I gain in focus. The city’s relative slowness makes it easy to focus." These I feel ring pretty true, however: "Austin’s laptop class is different from San Francisco’s too. For starters, it’s cool to be ambitious in Austin but uncool to be too ambitious. The grindset is frowned upon. Some of the coffee shops don’t allow computers on Sundays, and people will scoff at you for skipping weekend social events to work. Austin entrepreneurs also care more about profit than growth. The people I know aren’t in a rush to build their company. They have a life to live and an income-to-effort ratio to maintain. Slow, steady, and sustainable is the name of the game (which makes it a tough place to be a venture capitalist)." "The most successful people I know are understated because it’s not cool to flaunt your wealth here. That said, a trusted friend insists that almost 100 billionaires will move here in the next decade, and these days, I’m seeing more and more private jets at the airport. Though they’ll call Austin their home base, they’ll leave town for the summers, just as snowbirds on the East Coast migrate to Florida in the winter."

9

Whether it’s a free market (like retail energy in Texas and EVs) or highly regulated (like carbon), sometimes the best solution is simplifying things for people. Enable people to easily save money, change habits, or make environmentally friendly choices, and adoption will follow. Complicate the process, and we slow everything down. #electricvehicles #energytransition https://lnkd.in/gsusmi2H

11